Literarische Experimente um die Endlichkeit des Menschen. Schillers Philosophische Briefe und Der Geisterseher

The article takes a closer look at the Weltanschauungskrise, recognised by scholars as the greatest common denominator between Friedrich Schiller’s Philosophical Letters and his fragmentary novel The Ghost-Seer. The ‘crisis’ around which both works revolve is not, as often argued, a temporary «feverish paroxysm» artificially induced into a «well-organised soul» in order to consolidate its (moral) health. Rather, it represents the literary outcome of Schiller’s encounter with the finiteness of man and the relativity of all values, and with the need for a foundation of existence without metaphysical underpinnings. Read against the background of the anthropological debate of the 18th century and the poet’s medical studies, Schiller’s ‘literary experiments’ analysed here actually reveal the concern and hubris of two different protagonists who discover not only their own absolute freedom and self-determination, but also the urgent need to take full responsibility for existence.