Between 1791 and 1795 Schiller produced a number of essays on aesthetics and dramatic theory which spring from the challenge of establishing the autonomy of art and its central importance, not only in the development of the individual but also, as Schiller gradually came to see, in the regeneration of society and politics. The formulation of his ideas was significantly shaped by his reading of perhaps the greatest modern philosopher, Immanuel Kant, whose critical philosophy was transforming philosophical enquiry from the 1780s onwards. Schiller's debt to Kant has been the subject of numerous studies, but while he did have a profound impact on Schiller his influence was assimilated and transformed, interacting with the particular cast of Schiller's mind and the complex intellectual legacy of his early philosophical development.

The fact that Schiller was able to devote himself to sustained thought on aesthetic matters was due to the breakdown in his health. The pressure of work both for his duties at the University of Jena and to fulfil his commitments to various publishers was bound to tell on his health in time, for he was already weakened by the Mannheim illness and years of overwork. In January 1791 he developed a type of pneumonia accompanied by stomach complications. Slowly he began to recover but suffered further relapses in the course of the year. His recovery was hampered by anxiety about his ability to support himself and his wife, an anxiety which becomes plain when we see how in a year punctuated by life-threatening illness he was still reading, writing and promising to deliver copy to publishers.