Friedrich Schleiermacher's Essay on a Theory of Sociable Behavior (1799)

Awarded the Adele Mellen Prize for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Addresses the question of why Schleiermacher never completed the two final parts of his work, Essay on a Theory of Sociable Behavior, the first two parts of which were published in the 1799 January and February editions of Berlinisches Archiv der Zeit und ihres Geschmacks. The author’s argument is persuasive that it was never completed because Schleiermacher made the move from an understanding of sociability that was secular to a much fuller understanding of sociability as religious.