Friedrich Schlegel’s conversions: political philosophy as the mystique of time

Abstract

By converting to Catholicism in 1808, Friedrich Schlegel, a central figure within Jena Romanticism, assumed very different political and philosophical positions from those developed in his previous texts. This paper investigates if and under which conditions we could still suppose some epistemological and ideological continuities between the two phases. In order to do so, it approaches the complexity of the philosophy of history introduced through the very idea of conversion, and intends to demonstrate that, from its emergence on, the efforts that Schlegel himself had undertaken towards a retrospective reading of history illustrates the issues on the fate of German Romanticism.