SCHLEGEL, FRIEDRICH von. — Philosopher, born at Hanover on 10 March 1772, died at Dresden on 12 January 1829. He studied philosophy at the universities of Leipzig and Göttingen; he was a scholar of ancient languages (Sanskrit, Persian), an avid reader of Greek classics and the works of Winckelmann. After spending several years in Dresden (1794), Jena (1796), and Berlin (1797), from 1800 to 1806 he taught philosophy at Jena, where he became the herald of the new Romantic movement. In 1803 he went to Paris; then, returning to Germany, in 1808 he was in Vienna as secretary to the imperial chancellery.
In his first work, which inaugurated his scientific activity, *Über das Studium der griechischen Poesie* (1796), he contrasted ancient poetry with modern poetry; subsequently, under the influence of Fichte’s *Doctrine of Science*, he discovered the essence of modern philosophy in spiritual becoming and hoped for the advent of Romantic poetry, which was to be a universal, progressive poetry. Later, thanks to Schleiermacher, he turned his attention to the religious problem (his conversion to Catholicism occurred in 1808 through the efforts of St. Clement Hofbauer). A fertile but disorganized mind, a tormented soul, highly sensitive to environmental changes, Schlegel effectively expressed the three moments of Romantic evolution—the aesthetic, the philosophical, and the religious—and contributed in various fields, especially to the clarification and deepening of the spirit of Romanticism.
Religion, without dogmas and without the Church, is neither knowledge nor action; it is feeling, that is, the immediate consciousness of the dependence of the finite upon the infinite, of man upon God, and it resides in affectivity (*Gemüt*). In the *Monologen* of 1800, Schlegel vigorously defended freedom of conscience. In his more mature *Dialektik*, feeling seems to assume an even more transcendental function: it is the “carrier” (*Träger*) of all other functions, beyond ordinary knowing and feeling, inasmuch as it is the original identity of both. Hence, feeling is not subjective but actualizes individual self-consciousness as universal: “it is the universal form of having-being” (*Dialektik*, complete ed. by R. Oldebracht, Leipzig 1942, § 215, pp. 286 ff.). Revelation is not an extraordinary communication from above but consists in becoming aware of one’s own inner life and of a new intuition that arises in it from the Infinite. The most perfect religion is Christianity, and Christ is the highest religious personality to appear in history: in His soul, divinity unfolded with full clarity, showing that every finite being needs a higher communication in order to adhere to God. It is therefore useless to debate the historicity of Christ’s life and His miracles. Revelation continues always in every discovery of the human spirit, and prophecy is nothing but an anticipation that this spirit makes of its own development. His principal work, *Der christliche Glaube* (1823), systematically develops the principle of the “feeling of dependence,” showing how the various dogmas are the “modification” (*Modification*) of that feeling; thus, for every dogmatic truth concerning the attributes of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, Redemption, sin, and grace, etc., the content valid for Christian consciousness is determined by what the “feeling of dependence” expresses in the consciousness of individuals at a given moment (*Der christliche Glaube*, part 1, chap. 2, § 30). This feeling therefore takes the place of miracles, prophecies, official teaching, and any kind of proofs: it is the sole interpreter of “sola fides,” understood here as the feeling that arises from the encounter of self-consciousness with freedom in the face of nature and history (op. cit., § 32). These principles were later taken up by Modernism (v.) and by the advocates of “theology of feeling” (*Gefühlstheologie*); they inspired the development of modern trends in the philosophy of religion and the history of religions, which reduce the demand of religion to “religious experience” (R. Otto, A. Ritschl, W. Herrmann, G. Wobbermin). Radical critics of Schlegel have been Hegel, B. Baur, Strauss, Feuerbach, and the entire Left Hegelian school.