 The feeling of absolute dependence, conceived as Schleiermacher conceives it, presents him with several problems that he does not seem to resolve. 1) Despite his claim that the feeling is “immediate” in the sense of non-cognitive, we have just given a quite cognitive account of the feeling. It seems to depend on a particular way of thinking about the world and what is beyond the world. Both world and agent need to be thought of in terms of effect and receptivity to effect; and then the Beyond needs to be conceived in analogy and contrast with this aspect of the world, in its relation to the agent (subject of the feeling). A person who did not engage in this process of thought, at least covertly or subconsciously, would never get to the feeling of absolute dependence as Schleiermacher describes it. 2) Schleiermacher is a Christian theologian and thinks he has given an account of the most basic experience of God. But any God who existed would be part of the “world” on Schleiermacher’s conception and thus could not be the object of the feeling of absolute dependence. Furthermore, the God of Christian tradition is not utterly incapable of being affected by human beings. God responds to states of the world with actions and emotions, and hears and answers prayer. 3) Absolutizing the dependency relationship in the way that Schleiermacher does seems to evacuate ‘dependency’ of its usual meaning. The “other” towards which one feels absolutely “dependent” in Schleiermacher’s conception must be predicateless to protect it against any influence (in particular, epistemic contact) from the side of the world; but that move eliminates any positive sense in which we depend on it. Absolute dependence in the object comes to equal absolute incapability of being affected, and the feeling of absolute dependence amounts to a feeling of complete lack of effective agency vis-à-vis the other — that is, it becomes a purely negative conception. So the feeling of absolute dependence might better be called the feeling of absolute impotence.