The Hermeneutic of Tradition in Joseph Kleutgen's Vorzeit Project

Joseph Kleutgen (1811-1883) is arguably the most influential German Catholic theologian of the 19^th century. His major works—The Theology of the Past (Die Theologie der Vorzeit) and The Philosophy of the Past (Die Philosophie der Vorzeit)—provide the then-emerging Neo-Scholastic movement with its programmatic project. He is a watershed figure in modern Catholic theology and as such an examination of his thought is a condition of the possibility for any revisionist account of modern Catholic thought.

After providing an orienting sketch of Kleutgen’s life and times in Chapter 1, the first task consists of a descriptive analysis of Kleutgen’s dogmatic presentation in volumes 1-3 of Die Theologie der Vorzeit across two chapters. While attending to notable differences between the first and second editions, I expound their basic aspects and operations and extensively explicate their structure and content with a particular focus with argumentative strategies and historical sources. The second task is to treat his hermeneutic of tradition as articulated in part 2 of his Theologie der Vorzeit, particularly as it relates to competing historiographies in modernity and to his diagnostic posture vis-à-vis the tradition and modernity.