The Reformation marked a turning point in the history of Western Christianity as the German monk Martin Luther challenged the authority of the Church and exposed the corruption of ecclesiastical authorities. By emphasizing the importance of the individual's relation to God, Luther liberated the conscience of Christian believers. Salvation, according to Luther, is possible by faith and Scripture alone; the mediation of the Church is unnecessary.
Luther's first treatise of 1520 was "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation". Significantly, it was written in German, not Latin. The printing press helped spread his words quickly, making his movement popular.
The second work was 'The Babylonian Captivity of the Church", in which Luther attacked the sacramental systems of the Church.
The Third work was "The Freedom of a Christian Man.". This was a conciliatory, open letter to Pope Leo X.
1. It was written in Latin and in it, Luther argued that without faith, man is incapable of free will, an Augustinian idea.
2. Only those with God's grace have free will and they can do good or evil. Those who don't have it (and this included the vast majority) are forever damned and incapable of wanting good.
3. This idea is later developed by Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804). Thus, we can say that Luther was a pioneer of German philosophy.
Together, in these three works, we see a denial of Aritotle and scholastic philosophy. For Luther, the stress is on good faith, not good works. He refused the doctrine of externality which would link the two. Luther was instrumental in fashioning the German idea of freedom. In the Anglo-American tradition, freedom is tied to democracy, but Luther ties it to the individual. This position influenced later German philosophers like Goerg Hegel (1770- 1831).
Now turning to this question 真国学大师都认为儒学是专制主义思想？I do not know. But interesting enough, Martin Luther's work started reformation movement against the authority of Church, not by inventing a democratic thinking or a democratic scheme. As an authoritarian thinker, Luther didn't threaten the aristocracy. He even wrote against various democratizing inclinations and was appalled by the remonstrances of the peasantry. He justified violent suppresion of political upheaval. He would have considered many Protestant sects that followed as evil for their unstable (or destabilizing) tendencies.
The Lutheran Reformation legitimized the individual ego (even though that term had not yet been coined).
1. Before Luther, there was a sense of corporate community.
2. Luther couched his arguments in theological terms; by the time of John Locke (1632 - 1704), these ideas had been secularized. But there is a connection between the two men.
3. Luther viewed the ego from its spiritual side in discussing faith and justification. Salvation was for the individual, not the group. In the next two hundred years, the ego examined by such thinkers as Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) is a Lutheran legacy. But Martin Luther didn't necessarily understand the political implications. Arguably, Luther is the bridge between the static society of the Middle Ages and the modern ideas of the 'rights of man.'
After Martin Luther, two very individualistic thinkers are worth mentioning here:
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855) a Romantic thinker who abandoned the Enlightenment for a theology that was both ascetic and Romantic. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), in someways, is the antithesis of Kierkegaard. Nietzsche decided not to abandon all to religion (even though he was the son of a clergyman), but rather to abandon religion to the ideals of antiquity. He sesembles Machiavelli in being amoral; power is the center of his world. His is an atheistic heroism that replaces religion with art. In this, he influenced James Joyce.
I will transcribe more on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche later. Stay tuned...
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