Stanford Humanities Center
Brent Sockness is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford, where he studies the philosophy of religion and intellectual history of Christianity in the modern period. He is the author of Against False Apologetics: Wilhelm Herrmann and Ernst Troeltsch in Conflict and co-editor with Wilhelm Gräb of Schleiermacher, the Study of Religion, and the Future of Theology.
SHC Project
Ethics in History: Ernst Troeltsch's Moral Theory
Long recognized as the “systematic theologian of the history-of-religions school,” Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) has more recently become virtually synonymous with the so-called “crisis of historicism” of fin de siècle German academic culture. Less well-known, but critical to understanding his constructive efforts to theorize valid norms and values after the rise of radical historical consciousness, are Troeltsch’s writings in the field of ethics. Sockness’ book will be the first full-scale critical interpretation of the system of ethics developed by this pioneering cultural historian, theorist of modernity, sociologist of religion, and philosopher of history.
