Nonetheless, Döllinger does not end his address on a fretful note. He holds
out the hope that what might appear impossible to the individual scholar
might be rendered possible by the collaborative efforts of many, the combined
work of theRespublica literaria.‘Under the burden of this gigantic task (der
Last dieser Riesenaufgabe), the individual, with all his thirst for knowledge,
must succumb. But that which is impossible to the individual may at least be
approximately possible to combined labour, to the efforts of many working
together with a single purpose.’^53
CONCLUSION
The newly elected rector, Döllinger gave this address on 22 December 1866 in
the Great Hall (Aula) of the University of Munich. I will leave it to one’s
historical imagination to reflect on how this address might have been received
by his audience then. In conclusion, I would like to suggest what remains
noteworthy in Döllinger’s address to us today in light of the broader category
of Christian humanism.
We might begin, however, by pointing out a couple of things that we
perhaps ought to question. Thefirst is Döllinger’s sometimes strident nation-
alism. In his address, he sometimes speaks grandiosely about the‘German
mind’or the‘German national genius’. Historical scholarship and university
development are outward expressions of a distinctly German national genius,
he belabours. To be sure, this type of nationalism—the assumption of a kind of
collective ethnic mind and identity—pervades numerous discourses (and not
just German ones) in the nineteenth century, and perhaps we should not dwell
on it.^54 Even so, let the record show that this is a decidedly unfortunate and
unfruitful aspect of Döllinger’s outlook and from the standpoint of a more
cosmopolitan Christian humanism should be questioned.
Second, Döllinger’s confidence in the progressing and self-correcting power
of science (Wissenschaft) will understandably come across as wanting to those
of us who have witnessed the passing of‘the Enlightenment project’into its
many post- or anti-modern successor movements today. The criticisms that
Alasdair MacIntyre levelled against the rationalism informing the production
of the ninth edition of theEncyclopedia Britannicain hisThree Rival Forms
of Moral Inquiry, it appears to me, might legitimately be levelled against
(^53) Universitäten,55–6;Universities,48–9 (translation modified).
(^54) On the larger topics of‘the nation’and‘nationalism’in nineteenth-century Germany, see
Helmut Walser Smith,The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the
Long Nineteenth Century(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
236 Thomas Albert Howard