Stanford Humanities Center
Brent Sockness’s teaching covers a variety of thinkers, movements, and topics in the history of European and North American religious thought since the seventeenth century and explores the ways in which Christian theology has undergone modernization via its engagement with the rise of modern philosophy, the natural sciences, scholarly history, and liberal political institutions. His research has focused on German post-Kantian theology and ethics, in particular the thought of the early nineteenth-century theologian, philosopher, and humanist Friedrich Schleiermacher and the early twentieth-century theologian, historian of religion, social philosopher, and philosopher of history Ernst Troeltsch. He is currently completing a book on Troeltsch’s systematic moral theory in relation to his historicist commitments.
Professor Sockness holds a BA in Economics from St. Olaf College and an MA in Religious Studies and PhD in Theology from the University of Chicago. He is author of Against False Apologetics: Wilhelm Herrmann and Ernst Troeltsch in Conflict and numerous published articles. He is co-editor of two large international conference volumes: Schleiermacher, the Study of Religion, the Future of Theology and Kommunikation in Philosophy, Religion und Gesellschaft. A former three-term Vice-President of the Schleiermacher-Gesellschaft e.V., he has held fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the American Academy in Berlin, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He serves on the Board of Consultants of the Journal of Religion.
Photo by LiPo Ching/Stanford University
SHC Project
Ernst Troeltsch's Ethical Thought
Dubbed the “systematic theologian of the history-of-religions school,” Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) has long been associated with the “crisis of historicism” pervading German academic culture at the end of the long nineteenth century. Central to Troeltsch’s attempt to “overcome” the moral and cultural relativism implied by modern historical consciousness were his repeated attempts to formulate the outlines of a complex moral theory indebted to Schleiermacher as well as Kant. While Troeltsch has been widely admired for his work in the history of religious ethics in the West, surprisingly little has been written about his constructive proposal in ethics. Ethics in History: Ernst Troeltsch’s Moral Theory will be the first full-scale critical interpretation of what this quintessentially liberal theologian regarded as his “system of ethics.”
New title:
Kommunikation in Philosophie, Religion und Gesellschaft: Akten des internationalen Schleiermacher-Kongresses 25.-29. Mai 2021. Edited with Christian Berner, Sarah Schmidt, and Denis Thouard. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, November 2023. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111128801/html
Article related to project:
“Historicism and Its Unresolved Problems: Ernst Troeltsch’s Last Word.” In Historisierung: Begriff – Geschichte – Praxisfelder, edited by Moritz Baumstark and Robert Forkel, 210–230. Stuttgart: J.B. Meltzer, 2016.
