Franz Xaver von Baader
Resisting the empiricism of his day, he denounced most Western philosophy since Descartes as trending into atheism and has been considered a revival of the Scholastic school.
He was one of the most influential theologians of his age but his influence on subsequent philosophy has been less marked, and tends to be submerged into the esoteric discussions of later thinkers rather than cited explicitly in major publications.
[4][5][6] Today Baader is thought to have re-introduced theological engagement with Meister Eckhart into academia and even Christianity and Theosophy more generally.
[9] He studied under Abraham Gottlob Werner at Freiberg, travelled through several of the mining districts in north Germany, and resided in England from 1792 to 1796.
But he also came into contact with the mystical speculations of Meister Eckhart, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, and above all those of Jakob Böhme, which were more to his liking.
[9][lower-alph 4] Their friendship continued till about the year 1822, when Baader's denunciation of modern philosophy in his letter to Tsar Alexander I entirely alienated Schelling.
[15] He gained a prize of 12,000 gulden (≈117 kg silver) for his new method of employing sodium sulfate instead of potash in the making of glass.
[17] In 1838, he publicly opposed the interference of the Roman Catholic Church in civil matters and, in consequence, was interdicted from lecturing on the philosophy of religion during the last three years of his life.
[16][18] His doctrines are mostly expounded in short detached essays, in comments on the writings of Böhme and St-Martin, or in his extensive correspondence and journals.
[19] Baader starts from the position that human reason by itself can never reach the end at which it aims and maintains that we cannot throw aside the presuppositions of faith, church, and tradition.
His point of view may be compared to Scholasticism, since like the Scholastics he believed that theology and philosophy are not opposed but that reason has to make clear the truths given by authority and revelation.
[16] In his attempts to draw the realms of faith and knowledge still closer, however, he approaches the mysticism of Meister Eckhart, Paracelsus, and Böhme.
[16] The Trinity (called Ternar in Baader) is not a given but is rendered possible, is mirrored in, and takes place through the eternal and impersonal idea or wisdom of God, which exists beside through not distinct from the "primitive will".
[16] Baader considered the angels to have fallen through a desire to ascend to equality with God (i.e., pride) and man through permitting himself to sink to the level of nature (via the various bodily sins).
[16] Baader considered that the world as we know it—with time, space, and matter—only began after the fall of mankind and was created as a gift from God permitting humanity the opportunity for redemption.
[16] Baader developed theories of physiology and anthropology over a number of works based upon this understanding of the universe, but in the main coincides with the ideas of Böhme.
[20] Baader was regarded as among the greatest speculative theologians of 19th-century Catholicism and influenced, among others, Richard Rothe, Julius Müller, and Hans Lassen Martensen.
[21] His idea state was a civil community ruled by the Catholic Church, whose principles opposed both passive and irrational pietism and the excessively rational doctrines of Protestantism.
