Friedrich Schlegel 1772 – 1829
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel was a German philosopher, literary critic, and one of the central figures of early Romanticism. With his brother August Wilhelm he founded the Athenaeum journal in Jena in 1798, which became the manifesto of the new movement and the home of his celebrated philosophical Fragments. His Lectures on the Philosophy of History and on the Philosophy of Language gave Romantic thought its first sustained historical and philosophical-linguistic shape, while his theory of irony and the fragment shaped modern literary self-reflection. After his conversion to Catholicism in 1808 he served the Austrian state and developed a religious philosophy of universal history.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Continental, German Idealism
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Friedrich Schlegel:
“A historian is a prophet looking backwards.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Schlegel:
“Irony is a permanent parabasis.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Schlegel:
“Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Schlegel:
“Philosophy must always remain a striving and never claim to be a possession.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Schlegel:
“Beauty is the meaningful manifestation of the infinite in the finite.”