Rede über die Frage: Gehört allzuviel Güte, Leutseeligkeit und grosse Freygebigkeit im engsten Verstande zur Tugend? Socrates as Secular Jesus in Schiller’s First Karlsschule Speech

Schiller’s First Virtue Speech, “Gehört allzuviel Güte, Leutseeligkeit und grosse Freyge- bigkeit im engsten Verstande zur Tugend?” (1779), designates Socrates as the most sublime spirit ever born to the ancient world. Schiller’s choice of Socra- tes is representative of the views of a number of leading Enlightenment thinkers; including Moses Mendelssohn, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jef- ferson. All four not only portray Socrates as a prac- tical moral-political role model for the pursuit of happiness in the Age of Revolution, but consciously feature him in parallel narratives in which Socrates (as well as Christ himself) appears as a Secular Jesus, a role model for virtue, national, and global citizen- ship. The common goal of these narratives is the es- tablishment of a sphere of public authority based on self-knowledge through reason that secures freedom of and from faith and religion in civil and public af- fairs by relegating divine dictates to the annals of untimely historical necessities.