Goethe's Werther, Kant's Critiques -- heart- and headbreak

"In the late 1780s and the 1790s Kantian philosophy made a good number of converts among Germany's educated youth. It was not the first time that an eighteenth-century author had struck a chord in a generation coming of age. From the mid-1770s onward, a veritable youth cult had developed around Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. But even to today's readers Goethe's novel conveys an extraordinary sense of emotional immediacy. It is not hard to understand why the book overwhelmed young men, and indeed why, to the author's consternation, they found Werther a hero to be emulated. Kant is quite another matter. Piece by piece, he was building an awesomely abstract and intricate philosophical system, and he did not pretend to be able to explain it in a layperson's language. The new philosophy was, in Fichte's apt description 'headbreaking.'"

--  Fichte, The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762-1799, Anthony J. La Vopa, 2001, p. 46.