Life & Wisdom Quote by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Schlegel’s line cuts Kant down to size by praising him with a praise that feels like a trap. “Duty is for Kant the One and All” reads less like admiration than a diagnosis: Kant’s moral universe is so rigidly organized around obligation that other motives (love, pleasure, curiosity, grace) are treated as suspicious freelancing. Schlegel, a Romantic poet steeped in classical and modern tensions, aims at the austere spine of Enlightenment ethics: the idea that moral worth depends on acting from duty rather than inclination.

The barb sharpens with “the duty of gratitude.” Kant’s reverence for the ancients is framed not as living dialogue with Greece and Rome, but as a moral repayment. That’s Schlegel’s subtext: Kant’s relationship to tradition is contractual, not creative. “Defend and esteem” makes the ancients sound like a court case, not a source of inspiration. The poet’s insinuation is that Kant can only value what can be justified as an obligation.

Then comes the slyest twist: “only out of duty has he become a great man.” It sounds like a compliment until you hear the implied cost. Greatness, for Kant, isn’t an eruption of genius; it’s self-discipline elevated into destiny. Schlegel is questioning whether a life built entirely on duty can produce culture that feels alive, or merely culture that feels correct.

Context matters: early German Romanticism admired Kant’s revolution in thought while resisting its emotional austerity. Schlegel is staging that ambivalence in miniature: salute the titan, puncture the saint.