Review article
Schiller's Play Wilhelm Tell In the Light of Kant's and Rousseau's Thought
Tihomir Engler
; University of Osijek
Petra Žagar Šoštarić
; University of Rijeka
Abstract
The works of Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) and Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) represent the pinnacle of literary production in the German-speaking world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This is the period of Weimar Classicism (1794–1805), whose theoretical framework was mainly formulated by Friedrich Schiller in the form of a program of aesthetic education of man. The paper examines the conceptual links of Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell with Rousseau's idea of the good savage and Kant's philosophy of morality in order to question, on the one hand, the rootedness of Schiller's dramatic text in the intellectual good of the aforementioned philosophers, and on the other hand, the moral foundation of the central problem of the play, Tell's murder of Gessler and the related understanding of the humanity of human existence.
Keywords
good savage; Friedrich Schiller; categorical imperative; self-love; Wilhelm Tell
Hrčak ID:
349036
URI
Publication date:
9.7.2026.
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