Ernst Troeltsch

This first full-length biography meets the growing interest in Ernst Troeltsch's insights in modern historical consciousness and the relativism that seems to accompany it. Hans-Georg Drescher traces Troeltsch's life from his birth in Augsburg, distinguished university career and meteoric rise to be professor of theology in Heidelberg to his final change of faculty and appointment as professor of philosophy in Berlin. In connection with each major period of Troeltsch's life, Drescher analyzes Troeltsch's major theological and philosophical work, much of which has never been translated. Here, then, is a vivid picture, not only of the thinker who was virtually the first to tackle on a broad front the many problems for religious belief and practice raised by the rise of the modern historical consciousness but also of German university life in all its facets before, during, and immediately after the First World War. The impact of this study is heightened by a series of contemporary photographs. For many Troeltsch is problematic because his expressions seem to vary depending on the context. Drescher's genetic approach presents a deeply dialogical thinker who, as his friend Carl Neumann, the Heidelberg art historian, once put it, carried on "dialogues . . . with books and people." A monumental introduction to Ernst Troeltsch.