ABSTRACT
Manfred Frank's earlier account of Friedrich Schleiermacher's epistemology and hermeneutics in terms of a model of truth as social consensus was exegetically untenable and anachronistic, as Frank himself eventually came to realize, whereas his later account of them is more exegetically accurate, but also makes them seem somewhat less original. Nobody has done more than Manfred Frank to draw attention to the rich and fascinating epistemological dimension of early German Romanticism. Friedrich Schlegel was essentially the inventor of the very idea of the romantic, that is, of the concept of it and of the commitment to it as something defensible. Schlegel began his career as a classical philologist with a strong interest in ancient philosophy concerning influence; an especially important factor is the impact that Schlegel's ideas had on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel attended Schlegel's 1800-1801 lectures on Transcendental Philosophy.
