Hippokratischer keunstler, philosophischer kopf. Toward a philosophy of history in Friedrich Schiller's early works

While Schiller's contributions to the development of the discipline of history have enjoyed greater critical attention in recent years, his interest in history has often been relegated to the so-called "historische Phase" of 1787-92. This stems in part from definitions of disciplines rather than a consideration of Schiller's work. Literary critics have tended to focus on history in his dramas as operative in character, circumstance, or through the rubric of current events; historians have often ignored Schiller's medical and dramatic texts. In this dissertation, I pursue an interdisciplinary approach, which suggests that Schiller's notion of history allows us to move beyond the realm of interference between the representation of fiction and fact and to recognize Schiller's commitment to temporal speculation in his earliest writings. Building on the anthropological and medical discourse of his time, I examine representative early works—all three of Schiller's medical dissertations, his drama Die Räuber, his historical play Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua, and the extant lectures on universal history delivered at the University of Jena. These lectures offer substantial evidence of this philosophy of history and its application. Schiller's anthropology requires a concept history. His consideration of human development in a temporal context reveals significant consequences for the intersection of aesthetics, politics, drama, and ethics, which I explore thematically through his understanding of progress, the vocation of man, the conflict between human agency and nature, and teleology. My research provides evidence that Schiller not only proposed a fully developed concept of historical study as well as philosophy of history, but also an ethics of historiography. Finally, this project lays the foundation for future considerations of Schiller's evolving philosophy of history in his aesthetic treatises and later historical dramas. It describes the importance of Schiller's early work on history not only for the understanding of his oeuvre, but also for German Idealism in general.