The philosophical disagreement between Schiller and Fichte goes beyond what is commonly known as the Horen Dispute. For the central point in this dispute is the confrontation between two ways of conceiving the dialectics of life and thought: on the one hand, a dialectic of identity (Fichte) and on the other a dialectic of difference (Schiller). These logical devices develop from very different, even contradictory, postulates. While Schiller starts from the primacy of aesthetic reason, Fichte starts from a radicalization of what Kant called the primacy of practical reason.In this article I will offer an analysis of both dialectical devices and the conceptions of recognition, moral and political intersubjectivity, and of the role of the State they offer. As a conclusion, I will briefly outline certain parallelisms between Schiller and Fichte's proposals and two central issues of contemporary democracy: on the one hand, the resignation and/or disenchantment with politics and on the other the anger and distrust of politics and politicians that allows populist (or radical democracy) discourses to gain persuasive force in our societies.