 There is, to be sure, a rather different style and tone evident in many of Schlegel’s later writings and lectures. In some of the lecture series, there is a good deal of repetition and argumentative flaccidity of a sort the young Schlegel would no doubt have sharply criticized. But it is far from clear that Vienna represented simply a phase of ossification in Schlegel’s intellectual life or even a turn away from the most important philosophical and literary concerns of the young romantic. The literary lectures reveal interesting shifts in his treatment of the literary genres (Eichner 1970, 117–23), the philosophy of life pleads not unconvincingly for a “modest” conception of philosophizing that avoids the excesses of merely abstract or empirical points of departure (Schlegel 1847), and the philosophy of language insists upon the essentially dialogical character of human thought and expression (Schlegel 1847).