Abstract

After struggling in Law at the Hohe Karlsschule, Schiller delivered two speeches on the nature of virtue and received his doctorate in Medicine on his third dissertation attempt in 1780. High embarks from an analysis of the philosophical roots of Schiller’s Karlsschule speeches, then proceeds to articulate their significance for Schiller’s medical dissertations—foremost his first and last—on the interplay of physiology, intellect, and the nervous system; and on the interconnection of the animal and intellectual natures of the human being. Throughout, the essay focuses on the impact of Scottish Enlightenment concepts of happiness as the end of all human activity, and on Socrates as Schiller’s paradigm of the sublime agent of happiness through freedom, evident in his subsequent literary and philosophical works.