Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
Religion is neither metaphysics nor morality but the feeling and intuition of the infinite — a defence to Romantic intellectuals who had outgrown orthodox doctrine
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (Early) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Both |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
Time is emergent within the infinite-finite relation. Religious experience accesses the infinite within time without abolishing temporal life.
Space
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
Similar to time — finite space is the field within which the infinite is intuited.
Matter
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
The finite world is the medium of religious experience; not denigrated but seen sub specie aeternitatis.
Observer
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
The Schleiermachian observer is the religiously sensitive embodied person whose feeling-and-intuition discloses the infinite within the finite. Active in piety; moral authority is experience.
Energy
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
Not directly engaged.
Information
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
The substantival informational structure of religion is the universal experience of dependence on the infinite. Personal information conserved in Christian eschatology.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Schleiermacher's relocation of religion in feeling has been criticised in two directions: by orthodox theologians (Barth especially) as evacuating Christian doctrine of cognitive content; by secular philosophers (Hegel partially, modern critics fully) as protecting religion from critique by removing it from the sphere of truth-claims. The tension shaped the entire subsequent debate between liberal and confessional Protestant theology.