ABSTRACT
The German author Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829)—one of the founders of the literary and cultural movement Kierkegaard refers to as both “irony” and “romanticism”1-is one of the many thinkers with whom �ierkegaard was in dialogue as a young student. Like a great number of German authors who show up in Kierkegaard’s early academic studies in his early journals, however, Schlegel’s name essentially disappears from the authorship after his student days. But unlike many of these other figures�� the thoughts that were provoked by �ierkegaard’s early study of Schlegel end up returning throughout his pseudonymous authorship in a central way. One might even argue that Schlegel, as a representative of Romantic thought, plays a role comparable to that of Hegel as a representative of philosophical thought. �specially with regard to �ierkegaard’s anthropology-the development and misdevelopment of the �self��—his interpretation of Schlegel’s theory of the self is always in the background. In fact, I do not think it is an exaggeration to assert that Schlegel is the eminent model for a position Kierkegaard considers to be one of the most pernicious threats to selfhood: the modern “poetic” consciousness.
