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There are some points in cultural history (Hundred Schools-era China, classical Athens, Elizabethan London, Scottish Enlightenment, Jena Group, etc.) where the social conversations about humans provide easy on-ramps for people to develop metacognition.
By sheer and utter coincidence, these same periods are also those that tend to produce the "canonical" classics of art and culture in their respective cultures.
Goethe wouldn't be Goethe in the time of the Peasants' Rebellion. Goethe had to be in the Sturm und Drang to be Goethe. But because Goethe was there, then, he could produce Faust.