Schlegel Friedrich von (1772–1829), German literary critic and philosopher, one of the principal representatives of German Romanticism. In On the Study of Greek Poetry (1795), Schlegel laid the foundations for the distinction of classical and Romantic literature and a pronounced consciousness of literary modernity. Together with his brother August Wilhelm, he edited the Athenaeum (1798–1800), the main theoretical organ of German Romanticism, famous for its collection of fragments as a new means of critical communication. Schlegel is the originator of the Romantic theory of irony, a non-dialectical form of philosophizing and literary writing that takes its inspiration from Socratic irony and combines it with Fichte’s thought process of affirmation and negation, ‘self-creation’ and ‘self-annihilation.’ Closely connected wih Schlegel’s theory of irony is his theory of language and understanding (hermeneutics). Critical reflection on language promotes an ironic awareness of the ‘necessity and impossibility of complete communication’ (Critical Fragments, No. 108); critical reflection on understanding reveals the amount of incomprehensibility, of ‘positive not-understanding’ involved in every act of understanding (On Incomprehensibility, 1800). Schlegel’s writings were essential for the rise of historical consciousness in German Romanticism. His On Ancient and Modern Literature (1812) is reputed to represent the first literary history in a modern and broadly comparative fashion. His Philosophy of History (1828), together with his Philosophy of Life (1828) and Philosophy of Language (1829), confront Hegel’s philosophy from the point of view of a Christian and personalistic type of philosophizing. Schlegel converted to Catholicism in 1808. See also FICHTE. E.Beh.