Abstract: In this seminar Andrea Wulf will introduce her forthcoming book “Magnificent Rebels” (published September 2022) – a story about a remarkable group of rebels who changed the way we think about ourselves and the world. Forget Paris… the real Revolution in the 1790s happened in Jena, a quiet German university town where the unlikely revolutionaries were not soldiers or politicians but poets and playwrights (Goethe, Schiller and Novalis), philosophers (Fichte, Schelling and Hegel), literary critics (the contentious Schlegel brothers) and scientists (Alexander von Humboldt). And at their heart was the formidable and free-spirited Caroline Schlegel who sparked many of their dazzling conversations about the self, nature, identity and freedom. The Jena Set were the first Romantics. And their unconventional lives were laboratories for their radical ideas – about the creative power of the self, the aspirations of art and science, nature and the true meaning of freedom. We are still empowered by their daring leap into the self today. The French revolutionaries may have changed the political landscape, but these young Romantics incited a revolution of the mind that shaped our modern world.
Noyce Conference Room
Seminar
US Mountain Time
Speaker:
Andrea Wulf
Andrea WulfMiller Scholar 2019 & 2022
Purpose:
Research Collaboration
SFI Host:
Jessica Flack