Manfred Frank: the lesson about Friedrich Schlegel. Anti-foundationalism and irony

Abstract

To understand M. Frank's reconstruction of Early German Romanticism, it may be necessary to focus on the extensive work Unendliche Annäherung. Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik, published at 1997. Although the author has published other previous works on Romanticism, this work concentrates on the background, discussions and intellectual constellations that determined Frühromantik. In this article, I am interested the explanation of, probably, the most outstanding figure of this German movement: Friedrich Schlegel. His interpretation of the figure of this young romantic aroused not only the attention of specialized academic studies, but has also enabled a renewed look at the intellectual tasks of the German Romantic project. Precisely, this article aims to present and highlight Frank's interpretation of the philosophy of Schlegel. Towards the end, we present the academic appropriation that his interpretation has provoked in philosophical contexts such as the Anglo-Saxon one, to conclude by pointing out some problems that Frank's perspective.