Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern

A German philosopher and modern Protestant theologian, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was an outstanding scholar, achieving high marks in all of his theological field exams at the university, except in the one to which many know him to have originally contributed, dogmatics (see his Christian Faith). He eventually landed a pastorship at a local hospital near Berlin where he would frequent social gatherings of German Romanticists, who challenged him to write a defense of religion. In response, Schleiermacher produced On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. A true Kantian at heart, he developed therein the element of feeling and intuition that was acknowledged but unrefined in much of Immanuel Kant's work. Finally, among his theological and philosophical work, he (along with his close friend, Friedrich von Schlegel) was a steadfast champion of establishing equality between the sexes.