Abstract

Schiller’s philosophical attitude developed early on and remained unswerving thereafter, being unaffected by either intellectual or personal events. This was mainly due to the education he had received at the Stuttgart Karlsschule, which was first and foremost, although not officially, an education in philosophy. Despite the vocational nature of their specialisms, all students were in fact taught logic, history of philosophy, ethics, psychology, and aesthetics, and so from 1773 to 1780, Schiller attended courses given by Johann Friedrich Jahn, August Friedrich Bök, Jakob Friedrich Abel, and Johann Christoph Schwab, acquiring knowledge of both the German and the European Enlightenment. This chapter aims to reconstruct this initial experience of philosophy, while also pinpointing the features that were to prove key and enduring in Schiller’s subsequent thinking.