The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795-1804

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Bevington Fund.

DALIA NASSAR is assistant professor of philosophy at Villanova University and an Australian Research Council Fellow at the University of Sydney.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

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Nassar, Dalia, author.

The romantic absolute : being and knowing in early German romantic philosophy, 1795–1804 / Dalia Nassar.

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-08406-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-08423-7 (e-book)

1. Absolute, The.   2. Philosophy, German—History—19th century.   3. Novalis, 1772–1801.   4. Schlegel, Friedrich von, 1772–1829.   5. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 1775–1854.   I. Title.

B2743.N37   2014

111'.6—dc23

2013019863

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

THE ROMANTIC ABSOLUTE

Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804

DALIA NASSAR

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

CHICAGO AND LONDON

FOR LUKE

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

Part One: Novalis

1. Interpreting the Fichte-Studien

2. Beyond the Subjective Self: Hemsterhuis, Kant, and the Question of the Whole

3. Romanticizing Nature and the Self

4. A Living Organon of the Sciences

Conclusion to Part 1: Romanticism and Idealism

Part Two: Friedrich Schlegel

5. New Philosophical Ideals: Schlegel’s Critique of First Principles

6. From Epistemology to Ontology: The Lectures on Transcendental Idealism

7. Becoming, Nature, and Freedom

8. Presenting Nature: From the System of Fragments to the Romantic Novel

Conclusion to Part 2: Schlegel as Philosopher

Part Three: Schelling

9. The Early Schelling: Between Fichte and Spinoza

10. The Philosophy of Nature

11. From the System of Transcendental Idealism to the Identity Philosophy

12. Identity Philosophy and the Philosophy of Art

Conclusion to Part 3

Conclusion: The Romantic Absolute

Notes

Works Cited

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been long in the making. Throughout both the research and writing process, I have received invaluable support and encouragement from a number of individuals and organizations. I first wish to thank Frederick Beiser, who has been one of the most supportive and generous mentors that one could wish for. It is thanks to his encouragement and insistence that I undertook this project. I also want to thank Manfred Frank for generously welcoming me to Tübingen and patiently listening and responding to my unending questions. Without the two of them, this work surely would not be what it is today.

I would like to thank Vanessa Rumble and Christoph Jamme for their continued support and generosity. Additionally, I wish to thank Eckart Förster for his incisive reading and innovative approach to German idealism; Brady Bowman for insightful discussions on Schelling and Hegel; David W. Wood for illuminating the mathematical background of the romantics; and Laure Cahen-Maurel, Richard Eldridge, Mildred Galland-Szymkowiak, Kristin Gjesdal, Paul Livingstone, Yitzhak Melamed, Jennifer Mensch, Elizabeth Millán, Paul Redding, Robert Richards, John H. Smith, and Jakob Ziguras for invaluable conversations on romanticism and idealism. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers at the University of Chicago Press for insightful remarks and helpful suggestions.

My parents, Rosette and Talal Nassar, and my friends Enite Giovanelli, Kristin Funcke, Lutz Näfelt, Michael Lindner, Sean Ferrier, and Nathan and Joanna Smith have been supportive and loving companions throughout this journey. And my husband, Luke Fischer, to whom I dedicate this book, continues to be my greatest inspiration.

There have been several organizations whose support made it possible for me to dedicate a large part of my time to researching and writing this book. I want to thank the Thyssen-Stiftung for a six-month grant to undertake research in Germany from August 2009 to January 2010. I also wish to acknowledge the Office of Sponsored Research at Villanova University for a summer research fellowship, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Villanova University for a one-semester sabbatical, and the generous support of the Australian Research Council (DE120102402).

I also would like to thank my colleagues in the Philosophy Department at Villanova University and at the University of Sydney. Finally, I wish to thank the University of Sydney for providing me with access to its library facilities during my stay in Australia from July 2010 to July 2011.

Preliminary versions of sections of several chapters previously appeared in the journals Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, and Goethe Yearbook, and in the collection Spinoza and German Idealism, edited by Eckart Förster and Yitzhak Y. Melamed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). These essays were composed with this book in mind. While the majority of the translations are mine, I have consulted published English translations when available.

ABBREVIATIONS

Frequently cited works have been identified by the following abbreviations.

All citations contain volume and page numbers. Division (Abteilung) number is given only when appropriate, followed by a / and then the volume number. In cases where there are separate parts to a volume, the volume number is followed by a period and then the part number.

INTRODUCTION

This project was born out of a desire to understand the questions and concerns that motivated and inspired post-Kantian philosophy. Like most students of German philosophy, I found myself at a loss trying to grasp the transition from Kant’s critical idealism to Hegel’s absolute idealism. The questions which arose in the wake of Kantian philosophy and the concerns which inspired philosophers to embrace the idea of the absolute, were, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, no longer evident. I thus began to research the pre-Hegelian philosophers, in particular the Jena romantics (1795–1804), who were not only enthusiastic admirers of the critical philosophy, but also its first idealist critics. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in the works of the romantics we witness the first comprehensive attempt to elaborate a philosophical system that was, on the one hand, inspired by the insights of Kant and Fichte and, on the other hand, dissatisfied with the premises and conclusions of transcendental philosophy. In the writings and lectures of the romantics, we find some of the most vivid accounts of the questions that motivated post-Kantian thought and the concerns that directed its development.

Although in the last two decades, there has been an increase of interest in the philosophy and philosophers between Kant and Hegel, and in the romantics in particular, there continue to be fundamental disagreements about the nature of philosophical romanticism.¹ These disagreements ultimately rest on diverging views regarding the goals of the romantic project. A number of recent interpretations have argued that the romantics were primarily epistemologists, concerned with elaborating a theory of knowledge and explicating self-consciousness.² By contrast, others have argued that romanticism is a metaphysical project, concerned with understanding the nature of being or reality.³ The fundamental difference between these two interpretations rests on their diverging understanding of the romantic conception of the absolute. While in the first instance, the absolute is explicated as an epistemological notion—such as a Kantian regulative ideal or a Fichtean transcendental self—in the second it is a metaphysical idea, not unlike Spinoza’s substance. For the romantics, however, the absolute was both an epistemological and a metaphysical idea: a cognitive ideal and an existential reality. They argued that the absolute must be conceived in both senses, and that the two senses of the absolute are necessarily interrelated. As I shall show, it is precisely this conception of the absolute—and the identification of epistemological and ontological concerns—that is at once the most exciting and the most challenging aspect of the romantic project.

THE ROMANTIC QUESTIONS

While it is difficult to delineate (and thus limit) the romantics’ key questions and concerns, there are three interrelated questions that encompass the most important issues in romanticism. Each of these questions, moreover, concerns both the theory of knowledge and the theory of being or reality and directly relates to the question of the absolute. The questions can be identified as follows:

1. What is the relation between mind and nature?

2. What is the relation between the one and the many?

3. What is the relation between the infinite and the finite?

In the first instance, the romantics sought to understand the relation between mind and nature, or the self-conscious mind and the unconscious natural world. That this is both an epistemological and a metaphysical question might be self-evident—after all, the question concerns not only the relation between the human being and the natural world (or the place of the human in nature), but also the way in which the mind grasps reality.

The romantics came to the view that nature, like the subjective mind, is one aspect or presentation of the absolute. Thus, unlike Kant and Fichte, who saw nature as a product of our understanding or self-intuition, the romantics argued that nature must be self-producing. Nonetheless, they refused to overlook the creative role of the mind in the process of understanding nature, and thus argued that nature, although self-subsisting (and hence independent), cannot be ultimately distinct from the mind. If nature and mind were fundamentally distinct, then, in thinking about nature, the mind would be positing something outside of itself—an object opposed to the subject—and would thus be committing two grave mistakes. On the one hand, it would be naively overlooking its role in the act of positing. On the other hand, it would be undermining the idea that nature (as productivity, as natura naturans) is not an object, but a self-subsisting, self-creating reality. While an object is determined or caused by conditions that are external to itself, a self-producing reality is not—that is precisely the distinction between a product or an object, and a self-producing being. By positing nature as something outside of myself, however, I necessarily oppose it to myself and, as such, determine it by an external condition. In other words, I necessarily make it into an object, or objectify it. Thus, for the romantics, the goal was to explicate the apparently paradoxical view that mind and nature are at once independent of yet identical to one another. In other words, the question which they sought to answer was: How can we think both mind and nature as self-producing and irreducible to one another, without overlooking our own creative role in the knowledge of nature or undermining the independence of nature?

The question of the relation between mind and nature leads directly to the second key question that motivates the romantic project. As self-subsisting and self-creating, nature, the romantics maintained, is an integral whole, a nexus, which underlies and determines the relations between its parts. This means that nature is not an overarching and amorphous substance in which difference is annulled. It is also not an abstract concept, which subsumes the particular under the universal. Rather, the romantics insisted that nature as an integrated nexus is a unity that emerges only in and through difference. It is an ordering principle or archetype, which is manifest in the parts and their relations and in which each of the parts actively participates. However, the question remains as to how such a unity can, on the one hand, underlie the relations between the parts and thus determine the parts and, on the other hand, be determined by the activity of the parts. In other words, how can the whole and the parts both be active and independent?

While this question may appear to be solely metaphysical, concerned with the nature of being or reality, or with the relation of the one and many, for the romantics, it was also—and necessarily—an epistemological question. As they saw it, it is not simply a matter of positing a unity and assuming that it emerges in and through the parts. Rather, they came to the view that it was essential both to perceive and understand nature’s integrated nexus.

This leads directly to the third question, which similarly concerns the nature of the relation between the one and the many, but from a different angle. One of the key problems in any attempt to think the relation between the one and the many has to do with the way in which the one is commonly considered to be unconditioned and transcendent. By contrast, the many are conceived as conditioned and immanent. That is to say, while the one (as the complete or absolute being) is beyond or outside of determination, the many are determined and conditioned. The question then is: How can the one (or unconditioned) ground or determine the conditioned? In other words, how can something that is outside of determination be the ground of determination?

While this question also may at first appear to be solely metaphysical—once again concerned with the ground of being—for the romantics it was also a question of knowledge, concerned with understanding the nature of systematic unity and thought. It has to do with the relation between an unconditioned first principle and the derived or conditioned principles. The romantics became critical of both the notion of an unconditioned principle and of the deductive method employed in constructing a system based on a first principle. In its place, they sought to develop a system of knowledge that refers to or is inspired by the unity of the natural world. While Novalis came to the view that only an organic whole can adequately articulate relations among ideas, and Schlegel aimed to develop a system of fragments modeled on the symbol of the plant, Schelling argued that systematic knowledge must, like nature, develop and transform. Importantly, for all three thinkers, the metaphor of the organism and organic unity was by no means merely heuristic—that is to say, it was not adopted simply to bring order onto an otherwise unordered world. Rather, they surmised that the kind of organization that is most evident in organic beings underlies all of reality, including nonliving (anorganic) substances, and for this reason should be the model for knowledge. Thus, the organic metaphor came to represent both unity in the world and unity in thought—a unity, however, that is not abstract or general, but concrete and internally differentiated.

These three epistemological-metaphysical questions were for the romantics deeply connected to both ethical and aesthetic concerns. The romantics repeatedly argued that the possibility of an ethical life depended on an original unity between mind and nature. This did not simply mean that human beings should be able to transform the world with a spontaneous and free will, but also—and in some cases more significantly—that the human being should be affected and thus transformed by the world. Similarly, the work of art, the romantics contended, is neither a presentation of pure artistic freedom nor a simple mimesis or imitation of nature. Rather, it involves both a mimetic moment achieved through developing insights into the natural world and a moment of artistic creativity or freedom, such that the result is a transformation of nature, or what the romantics called second nature. In both cases, the human subject (either as an ethical being or an artist) does not stand outside the world but is actively participating in it. As an intentional consciousness, which can reflectively act and create, the human being is also necessarily transforming that in which she is partaking. Thus, their views on both ethics and aesthetics reflect their metaphysical and epistemological concerns.

THE ABSOLUTE AND INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

As I have indicated, for the romantics, one of the basic and continuing problems in the history of philosophy is the objectification of the absolute. By thinking the absolute as distinct from and opposed to the individual mind or self, philosophers inadvertently objectify the absolute and distort the relation between the knowing mind and the absolute. After all, the absolute (as absolute) cannot be distinguished from or opposed to the knowing subject. Rather, the absolute inheres in all beings, including the knowing subject. This means that in positing the absolute, the knowing subject does not posit something outside of itself, but something in which it participates.

With this insight into the relation between the knower and the absolute, a significant metaphysical or ontological insight concerning the nature of the absolute emerges. If the knowing subject is active in the absolute—that is, if the act of knowledge participates in the absolute—then it necessarily follows that the absolute must itself be active and productive. The absolute therefore is not a static and unchanging substance, but a dynamic, living reality. In turn, as that which inheres in all things but is not reducible to any one thing, the absolute is not a simple substance, nor can it be reduced to any one substance. Rather, the absolute is a living nexus composed of different but related parts, or better, an internally differentiated unity.

The romantics agreed that only a certain mode of thought or way of thinking is capable of adequately grasping the absolute as absolute, and thus of effectively responding to the three questions. In other words, only a certain cognitive capacity can adequately grasp the relation between nature and mind, understand the relation between the one and the many, and finally, explicate the way in which the infinite and finite can reciprocally determine one another.

While they did not always use the same terminology to speak of this special mode of thought, the romantics agreed that it must be nondiscursive or nonconceptual. As such, they often termed it intellectual intuition (intellektuale Anschauung) in order to distinguish it from, on the one hand, sensible intuition and, on the other, discursive or conceptual understanding. This mode of thought must be intellectual, they argued, because it must be capable of seeing ideas and not merely sensible data. In turn, it must be intuitive, as opposed to discursive, because it does not grasp empirical objects, in other words, things determined by and known in terms of external conditions, but a self-subsisting, self-producing unity. Thus, as Schelling put it, intellectual intuition is a mode of thought which grasps no object at all and is in no way a sensation (HKA 1/2, 106).

Because it is nondiscursive, intellectual intuition proceeds not from the part to the whole, but, as Kant put it in the Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment), "from the synthetically universal (the intuition of the whole as a whole) to the particular, i.e., from the whole to the parts. For this reason, Kant continues, such an understanding as well as its presentation of the whole has no contingency in the combination of the parts in order to make a determinate form of the whole possible" (AA 5, 407). In other words, for the intuitive intellect, the whole is not an aggregate or composite constructed out of the parts. Rather, intellectual intuition grasps the whole as a whole, which is to say, as an integrated and independent unity or idea. Intuition thus discerns the ideal unity that underlies and determines the parts and their relations.

Furthermore, intellectual intuition, unlike discursive thought, does not grasp something in terms of an external condition or ground, in other words, as an effect of an external cause. Instead, intellectual intuition grasps it as it is in and for itself, and thus as its own condition or ground (as self-causing). Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi had poignantly noted that the discursive intellect results in infinite regress precisely because it seeks to understand something by means of something else.⁴ This implies that the discursive intellect has two options: either it locates an ultimate or final condition, from which all conditions are then derived or derivable or, lacking such an ultimate condition, it fails to grant knowledge of anything. In other words, discursive reason must assume an unconditioned in order to achieve coherence. This, however, results in several problems, the most striking of which is that discursive thought—precisely because it is discursive—has no access to and thus cannot positively assume an unconditioned. After all, for the discursive mind, knowledge is based on conditions; an unconditioned, therefore, is beyond its grasp. This means that another, nondiscursive capacity, which would be able to grasp or at least posit an unconditioned, must be assumed.⁵

That the discursive intellect fails to grasp the unconditioned is closely connected to the fact that it is unable to grasp a self-organizing and independent unity, in other words, the absolute not as a product of our cognition, but as a self-producing reality. In that case, the unity is not caused by something outside of itself and thus cannot be determined by means of external conditions or determinations. Yet the discursive intellect gains knowledge of something only in terms of its conditions, that is, only in terms of what is outside of or other than that which it seeks to grasp. Therefore, once again, in order to gain insight into the absolute—into nature and mind as self-producing rather than as mere products—another capacity must be posited, which, in contrast, is able to grasp a unified and integral whole.

From this it is clear that for the romantics, intellectual intuition is not only epistemologically significant but bears metaphysical significance as well. By offering insight into the way in which mind and nature inhere and participate in the absolute, intellectual intuition is an important step in the romantics’ quest to move beyond transcendental idealism.⁶ In turn, precisely because intellectual intuition articulates the relation between the particular mind and the absolute, it also enables insight into the relation between the one and the many. For the romantics, intellectual intuition does not imply an undifferentiated insight into an amorphous substance, an abstract concept or simple identity. Rather, intellectual intuition discerns the one in and through the many—the ideal unity in and through the parts. As such, it is able to recognize difference—difference, that is, which is inherent to the unity or identity. For this reason, the romantics argue that intellectual intuition does not posit an undifferentiated, simple identity in the form of an unconditioned first principle. Rather, they dispute the very notion of an unconditioned and contend, as Schlegel put it, that both systematic knowledge and reality are based on two reciprocally conditioning principles—the one and the many, the infinite and the finite.

Although the romantic notion of intellectual intuition has often been identified with Fichte’s understanding of intellectual intuition as intuition of the absolute I, a close examination reveals a more complicated lineage that links intellectual intuition to Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge and Goethe’s intuitive judgment.⁷ While Fichte offered the romantics insight into the active nature of intuition—self-intuition as an act—Spinoza elaborated a way by which to perceive unity in difference, the one in the many, and Goethe offered a living example of how such an intuitive capacity can be fostered and maintained. By bringing together the views and practices of these three thinkers, the romantics sought to develop an account of a cognitive capacity that could grasp the absolute as absolute, that is to say, without objectifying it and without overlooking its inherent relation to the subjective mind, or undermining the diversity of its presentations.

PHILOSOPHICAL ROMANTICISM TODAY

Although the publication of the critical editions of key romantic thinkers in the 1950s and 1960s played a significant role in the increase of interest in romantic thought, it is the work of Manfred Frank and Frederick Beiser that has brought philosophical romanticism into the limelight and emphasized both its legacy and contemporary relevance. It is therefore not surprising to see that much of the more recent literature on romantic philosophy is heavily indebted to their work and in part seeks to carry on their projects.⁸

Frank and Beiser agree on certain aspects of romantic thought. They see romanticism as distinct from Fichtean and Hegelian idealism and seek to save the romantics from the Hegelian legacy, as Beiser puts it.⁹ Both illustrate the inaccuracy of Hegel’s view of romanticism (i.e., as a poetic exaggeration of Fichtean idealism) and disagree with Hegel’s self-understanding in relation to romanticism. Furthermore, they agree on the continuing relevance of romantic thought.¹⁰ Although they illustrate its relevance in significantly different ways, they concur on the claim that romanticism can offer answers to contemporary questions. Finally, Frank and Beiser do not simply explicate the philosophical aspects of romantic thought; rather, they contend that romanticism was a philosophical movement. That is to say, the romantic school does not offer, among other things, insights of philosophical interest; rather, the romantics were, first and foremost, philosophers, whose other works and interests are directly related to and influenced by their philosophical ideas.

However, and in spite of these points of agreement, Frank and Beiser approach romanticism in significantly dissimilar ways and emphasize different aspects of romantic thought. First, it is important to note that their aims and methods are quite distinctive. Frank proposes that his goal is to seek out and elaborate those romantic ideas that are relevant for contemporary philosophical problems.¹¹ His investigations are thus often determined by presuppositions of relevance, and his interest in the romantics is limited to those texts and ideas which seem to offer insights into contemporary problems. This is most explicitly the case in his interpretation of Novalis. While Frank describes Novalis’s early notes on Fichte, the so-called Fichte-Studien (1795–1796), as the most important contribution of philosophical romanticism, he all but ignores Novalis’s other philosophical writings and his poetic works.¹²

By contrast, Beiser’s concern is, as he puts it, to interpret the romantics from within, according to their own goals and historical context.¹³ Thus, rather than commencing with questions of relevance, Beiser undertakes a historical reconstruction of the romantic project. This means taking into account the larger corpus of romanticism and, as Beiser sees it, allowing our contemporary assumptions to be challenged by romantic ideas.¹⁴

One of the key differences between Frank’s and Beiser’s interpretations concerns the relation between romanticism and idealism.¹⁵ Frank’s thesis is that early German romanticism was a fundamentally skeptical movement whose roots can be traced back to the Niethammer circle’s critique of first principles and to Jacobi’s critique of transcendental philosophy.¹⁶ On at least this account, Frank argues, romanticism must be distinguished from idealism. While the romantics were realists, positing being outside of consciousness and claiming that it can never be grasped by consciousness, the idealists maintained that being can indeed be grasped by consciousness.

There are several problems with Frank’s view of the romantics, the most striking of which concerns the ambiguity surrounding his understanding of the romantic notion of the absolute and its relation to being. Frank appears to waver with regard to the ontological or existential status of the absolute. Thus, in Einführung in die frühromantische Ästhetik (1989), he seems to imply that the absolute is an ontological reality, writing that the romantic absolute and Heidegger’s being have strong parallel effects: both are the ground of the revelation of a world.¹⁷ He indicates a similar view in Unendliche Annäherung. Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik (1997), where he claims that the romantics begin with original being [Ur-Seyn] and emphasizes that this being has an existential meaning or reality.¹⁸ Yet he also states in Unendliche Annäherung that for the romantics, pure being is an unreachable idea in the Kantian sense.¹⁹

A second, more obvious difficulty with Frank’s interpretation concerns his distinction between romanticism and idealism. To begin with, the romantics often called themselves idealists and termed their philosophical methodology transcendental idealism. Furthermore, Frank’s division between romanticism and idealism is in large part based on the question of first principles and systematicity. While it is true that Schelling sought to ground the system of knowledge in first principles, this does not mean that the romantics (Novalis and Schlegel) were anti-idealists. Idealism, in other words, is not equivalent to foundationalism. Finally, the distinction which Frank draws between the romantics and idealists (especially Schelling) undermines and overlooks the proximity of their thought and their shared questions and concerns.

In contrast to Frank, Besier situates the romantics within the idealist tradition, calling them absolute Idealists, opposed to Kant’s and Fichte’s subjective Idealism.²⁰ He emphasizes that for the romantics, the absolute is an organic rational whole, which is to say that it develops in accordance with a final purpose, conforms to some form, archetype or idea.²¹ The absolute, in other words, is an ideal reality, and the romantics are therefore idealists. In this way, Beiser draws clear connections between Schlegel, Novalis, and Hölderlin, on the one hand, and Schelling and Hegel, on the other hand.

However, Beiser’s reading of Hegel’s relation to romanticism remains vague and in some ways problematic. As he professes at the beginning of German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1805 (2002), his goal is to free the study of romanticism from the Hegelian legacy. Thus, Beiser challenges Hegel’s interpretation of the history of philosophy, arguing that Hegel was not doing something radically different from or opposed to what the romantics, including Schelling, had already done. There is not a single Hegelian theme, Beiser writes, that cannot be traced back to his predecessors in Jena, to many earlier thinkers whom Hegel and the Hegelian school either belittled or ignored. The fathers of absolute idealism were Hölderlin, Schlegel and Schelling.²² From this it would seem that Beiser is undercutting Hegel’s self-professed significance. However, Beiser then goes on to propose a view of the history of German idealism that delineates a development from Novalis and Schlegel to Schelling (and thus implicitly to Hegel). Thus, he controversially states that what was merely fragmentary, inchoate, and suggestive in Hölderlin, Novalis and Schlegel became systematic, organized, and explicit in Schelling.²³ In other words, although Beiser seeks to extinguish the Hegelian reading of the history of philosophy, he inadvertently offers an interpretation that confirms Hegel’s linear view of the development of philosophy and its culmination in his (or Schelling’s) thought.

While Beiser’s delineation may be helpful in articulating the shared questions and concerns of the romantics and idealists, and identifying their common ideas and goals, it tends to undermine the distinctive contributions of each of the thinkers. Moreover, the claim that Schelling’s philosophy is the culmination of romantic thought overlooks the complex relationship between romanticism and philosophy and assumes that the goals of romanticism were best achieved in the form of a philosophical system. It also overlooks Schelling’s own dissatisfaction with his various attempts and the fact that he often altered his views, not only with regard to content, but also with regard to the form in which they were best expressed. Thus, after publishing his best-known systematic work, System des transcendentalen Idealismus (System of Transcendental Idealism) (1800), Schelling composed the dialogue Bruno (1801), because he thought it might offer a more appropriate form for expressing his ideas.²⁴

Unlike Frank, Beiser is concerned with romantic metaphysics, specifically with the romantic conception of the absolute as the ground of both objective being and subjective mind, which he identifies with Spinoza’s substance.²⁵ In doing so, however, Beiser overemphasizes the significance of Spinoza and, thus, ultimately underemphasizes the continuing relevance of critical philosophy for the romantics. Although Beiser’s explicit view is that the romantics sought to wed Fichte and Spinoza, his interpretation veers much too often to a Spinozistic reading of the romantics, which ultimately ignores the romantic concern with the self, freedom, the nature of knowledge, and the active or creative role of the mind in its relation to nature.²⁶ Thus, in contrast to Beiser, I propose that the romantics remained sympathetic to Kant’s and Fichte’s key insights concerning the active and constructive nature of the self and argue that it is precisely for this reason that they never became committed Spinozists.

The difference between Frank’s and Beiser’s interpretations can be summed up as a difference in their understanding of the notion of post-Kantian idealism. Frank takes it to mean abiding by the limits set out in the critical philosophy, accepting the antinomial nature of reason, and regarding reason as incapable of offering transparency and complete knowledge. Beiser understands post-Kantian to imply a critical encounter with Kantian philosophy born out of a deep dissatisfaction with both its premises and results. For this reason, while Beiser acknowledges the romantic debt to transcendental philosophy, he maintains that the romantics ultimately sought to move beyond Kantian subjective idealism.

This difference can be most clearly seen in the way in which Frank and Beiser interpret the notion of the absolute. Both agree that the absolute was the central idea and motivating principle of the romantic project. Yet, in spite of its significance (or because of it), the two vigorously disagree on its meaning. While Frank progressively came to the view that the absolute is equivalent to a Kantian regulative ideal, and is therefore an epistemological category, Beiser argues that for the romantics, the absolute is the ontological ground of being and knowing.²⁷

Although Frank’s and Beiser’s contributions have been invaluable to the study of romanticism, and this work is heavily indebted to their rigorous investigation, I take issue with what I perceive as an overemphasis on specific aspects of the romantic project and with the various consequences resulting from this one-sidedness. The goal of this book is to show how every one of the questions which the romantics posed and sought to answer was always an epistemological and a metaphysical question. In every instance, the romantics were concerned with the nature of reality—with the absolute ground of being and knowing—and with our cognitive relation to it—with the relation of mind to nature, and with the way in which the mind perceives, presents, and articulates the absolute. My interpretation of philosophical romanticism seeks to explicate both aspects of each question and uncover the ways in which the romantics saw being and knowing, nature and mind, the infinite and the finite, as two sides of the absolute.

ROMANTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY

As I have already indicated, the different pictures of romanticism which Frank and Beiser offer are not solely due to their diverging approaches and interests. They are also due to the fact that the romantics were at once deeply influenced by critical philosophy and extremely dissatisfied with its premises and conclusions. In one sense, they did not abandon the critical project, but, as Novalis and Schlegel put it, sought to be more critical than Kant and Fichte had been (NS 3, 445, nos. 921 and 924; KFSA 18, 32, no. 143). Thus, they agreed with Kant’s fundamental claim that the mind actively participates in creating knowledge and sought to determine the meaning and implications of this activity. Furthermore, the romantics were not simply Fichte’s first critics, but also his greatest allies. They considered his contributions to philosophy invaluable, and even when they leveled their caustic criticisms of first principles, they continued to agree with Fichte’s most important insight—the freedom and nonobjective nature of the self.²⁸ Moreover, they did not entirely reject systematicity and systematic knowledge. Although they recognized the potential errors and limitations of systematic thinking, they were aware of its necessity. Thus, Schlegel famously states that it is equally deadly for the spirit to have a system and not to have one. It must therefore decide to unite them both (KFSA 2, 173, no. 53). In turn, while they considered Spinoza to be an important source of inspiration for overcoming subjective idealism, they were never entirely sympathetic toward (and were at times outright critical of) his apparent dogmatism.

The romantics certainly were absolute idealists, in the way that Beiser describes them: they agreed that the ideal and real are originally one, that the subjective mind is dependent on (and is a manifestation of) an archetypal idea (the absolute), and that differences in nature and mind arise on account of differences in the degrees of organization and development of the same living force.²⁹ Nonetheless, each of the romantics understood and articulated these complex relations—the identity and difference between mind and nature, infinite and finite, ideal and real—in a distinctive way and from a particular vantage point.

Furthermore, each of the key figures in the romantic circle brought with him a specific background, which played a significant role in his approach to philosophy and his self-understanding as a philosopher. Novalis was, among the three romantics to be considered, the only trained and practicing scientist, whose geological studies and work in the mines informed his philosophical concern with natural phenomena. Novalis in fact speaks of his work as a kind of empirical idealism, precisely because he strove to bring observation, reflection, and imagination together and thus grasp the relation between the ideal and the real through a dedicated practice of empirical observation.³⁰ In turn, Schlegel’s background in literature and classics played a significant role in the development of his understanding of a philosophical system and his critique of first principles. Schlegel can be best described as a hermeneutic idealist, for whom the beginning is always in the middle and reality and understanding are equally dialogical. Finally, Schelling’s proximity to both Fichte and Spinoza was a determining factor in his thought—not only in his early writings, but also throughout his tenure in Jena. Schelling’s systematic aspirations are clearly grounded in both Fichte’s and Spinoza’s methods and their approach to knowledge. This does not radically distinguish Schelling from Novalis and Schlegel, as Frank has argued, but rather points to differences among all three of them—differences that were also evident in their varying modes of expression.

Thus, the goals of romanticism, and the distinctive contributions of each of the romantics, must not be seen through the lens of Schelling’s aims and achievements. Furthermore, the romantics did not forgo the basic insight of critical philosophy: the creative or active role of the self in the attainment of knowledge. While they certainly sought to overcome transcendental idealism as practiced by Kant and Fichte, they continued to insist on the significance of the self, or I, and on its role in both knowing and being. My goal is to consider the complexity and variety of the romantics’ questions and concerns and to allow for differences in their views without overlooking their fundamental affinities.

The following chapters explore the ideas of three key figures in Jena romanticism: Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Friedrich Schlegel, and Friedrich Schelling. The book explicates their understanding of the absolute, both from an epistemological and a metaphysical perspective, and considers the way in which each of them sought to grasp and express the absolute. The book is divided into three parts. Each of the parts is dedicated to elaborating the individual philosopher’s version of idealism and investigating how he sought to resolve the problem of knowing and articulating the absolute. The work as a whole offers a historical and systematic account of the development of romanticism and examines the philosophical reasons why the romantics sought to develop new ways of thinking and new modes of expression. Finally, the book seeks to consider the significance of the notion of the absolute as it was understood by the romantics, both by elaborating the challenges facing the attempt to think and articulate the absolute and by suggesting its philosophical relevance.

PART 1

Novalis

In 1954, Theodore Haering wrote that to speak of Novalis as a philosopher is to speak of the unknown Novalis.¹ Since then the situation has significantly changed. The publication of the critical edition of Novalis’s work (1960–1975) has shown that much of Novalis’s time and effort were spent on philosophical writings and that he was deeply engaged in the questions that concerned the major philosophers of the period.² There has thus been an increased interest in Novalis’s philosophical writings and in his relations to and understanding of his philosophical contemporaries. However, in spite of the growing consensus that Novalis should be considered a philosopher, there is little to no agreement on his philosophical views. What were Novalis’s philosophical goals and methods? Who were his philosophical allies and influences? What (if any) is Novalis’s own philosophy? These questions remain highly contested.

This has to do—in great part I think—with the fact that several of Novalis’s philosophical writings are notes taken while studying various philosophers.³ These notes do not suggest a clear philosophical program or strong leanings in the direction of any one philosopher. Thus, while at times Novalis appears to be very much in agreement with the philosopher he is studying, at others he seems rather critical. This has led to widely diverging interpretations of Novalis.⁴ At this time, there appear to be two dominant schools of interpretation. The first regards Novalis as a Fichtean idealist—an old interpretation represented most recently by Géza von Molnár and Bernward Loheide.⁵ The second regards Novalis as an anti-Fichtean, Kantian skeptic. This more recent reading was first put forth by Manfred Frank⁶ and has become widespread in the Anglo-American reception of Novalis (such as Andrew Bowie and Jane Kneller).⁷ While there continue to be interpretations which attempt to locate Novalis’s philosophical interests outside the confines of transcendental idealism (most significantly, Hans-Joachim Mähl and Frederick Beiser),⁸ the contemporary reception of Novalis has focused on his relation to (Fichtean and Kantian) transcendental philosophy.⁹

The emphasis on Kant and Fichte is to some degree warranted. Novalis spent a great deal of his time and effort working out questions of self-consciousness and knowledge and was clearly influenced by both thinkers. However, these interpretations have underestimated the significance of other philosophical questions for Novalis’s thought and have overlooked the fact that Novalis was interested in the work of other philosophers, including Spinoza, Plato, and Hemsterhuis. Ultimately, Novalis’s philosophical concerns cannot be reduced to questions about self-consciousness or knowledge. While Novalis was certainly a post-Kantian critical philosopher, he was not only an epistemologist. By reading Novalis from the perspective of transcendental philosophy, these interpretations have failed to account for Novalis’s interest in nature and the natural sciences, and, more generally, the ontological dimension of his thought.

Although questions concerning self-consciousness occupied Novalis during his early engagement with Fichte in the so-called Fichte-Studien (1795–1796), they became less significant as he turned his attention toward understanding the relation between the human being and nature and the ethical or moral dimension of human life. This is not to say that Novalis was not concerned with either ontology or ethics in the Fichte-Studien. Indeed, a careful examination of the text reveals that already in these early notes, Novalis was articulating a conception of being and developing a theory of moral activity. Thus, as I will show, the significance of the question of self-consciousness in Novalis’s thought (even in the Fichte-Studien) has been overstated.¹⁰

In contrast to these interpretations, I will illustrate that in Novalis’s philosophy, the absolute does not amount to either a Kantian regulative ideal or a Fichtean act of self-consciousness; rather, as the ground of all that is, the absolute is the mediation of being and knowing and cannot be reduced to either. Throughout, I will demonstrate that Novalis’s notion of the absolute as mediation (Vermittlung; Mittlertum) or presentation (Darstellung) is intimately connected to his understanding of nature and of the human relation to nature, and informs both his conception of artistic creativity and moral activity.

Already in the Fichte-Studien, Novalis develops a conception of being as mediation—of being as relation, development, presentation—and takes the first steps toward explicating the human relation to being, and the relation between knowing and being. Novalis’s concern with being in the Fichte-Studien is continuous with his later interest in nature and in the human relation to and knowledge of the natural world, as revealed in his encyclopedia project, his two novels, and his published and unpublished fragments (1789–1799). What distinguishes the Fichte-Studien from Novalis’s later works