Novalis, Nature, and the Absolute

Reviewed by: The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804 by Dalia Nassar Leif Weatherby Dalia Nassar, The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). Pp. 360. $50.00. Dalia Nassar’s The Romantic Absolute proposes a major shift in the way we view the movement known as Early German Romanticism, a shift contained in the book’s title: the conception of the “absolute” is at the center of the widely varying strands of metaphysical, epistemological, and literary work of the central figures in Jena. Nassar is seeking to overcome a division between those who emphasize epistemology (especially Manfred Frank) and those who emphasize ontology (especially Frederick Beiser). The claim, reinforced with compelling evidence throughout this finely argued book, is that the “absolute” is conceived as both, and that this combination of being and thinking instantiates itself in such a way that the cognizer participates in, and can even change, the nature she cognizes. The “absolute” is therefore a singular contribution of what Nassar classes as “Romantic”—it differs from the theories of Kant and Fichte, but also, pace Beiser, significantly from that of Hegel. In a sense, this Romanticism is Spinozan, but that is only one of the surprising and fascinating results of this study. The three parts of the book address Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Friedrich Schlegel, and Friedrich Schelling. The latter is often counted as an “Idealist,” but Nassar makes a strong case for his inclusion in the project of Romantic philosophy. All three fashion the absolute as beyond the distinction between thought and being, and yet immanent to the world. And all three share an interest in the figure of “intellectual intuition,” as well as a strong relationship to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Intellectual intuition [intellektuelle Anschauung] was formulated by Kant as an impossible kind of infinite knowing that displays a necessary relation between the sensible contents of perception and the intellectual forms of cognition. As Nassar details, Fichte used this figure to describe the basis of self-identification. But the Romantics took it in a different direction, starting with Hölderlin (whose work is not explored here) and Novalis. Nassar explores their varied takes on this figure, which threatens to reawaken metaphysics after Kant’s proscriptions, in what is probably the most detailed and illuminating investigation of this topic to date. The book consistently sets this Idealist figure into dialogue with Goethe’s natural-scientific methods, as well as with recent work (especially that of Eckart Förster) on this topic. What emerges is a deep historical account of the emergence of Romantic metaphysics, juxtaposing Goethe and Idealism and finding between them a Romantic philosophical voice all its own. The “absolute” is both intellectual intuition and metamorphosis, a combination of being and knowing in expressive development. The chapters on Novalis reconstruct the development of his philosophical thought beyond the early Fichte Studies, which have received much attention. Nassar points to the centrality of Novalis’s 1798 turn to Hemsterhuis and Kant, during which he conceives of the crux of his later thought, an absolute that transcends antinomies and is immanent to the world. Novalis’s concern for building a “moral organ” and his attempt to write a Romantic encyclopedia find their complement in the section on Friedrich Schlegel, a truly interdisciplinary study in which we find Nassar deftly moving between Schlegel’s understudied and extraordinarily hermetic philosophical writings (her account of the Lectures on Transcendental Idealism of 1800 is a major contribution to English-language scholarship on Schlegel) and his [End Page 316] genre-projects (not only an encyclopedia, but also the “new Bible”). The suggestion that the famous “Wechselerweis” is not only an epistemological tool but also an ontological structure (122) will surely provoke debate. The section ends in one of the highlights of the book, a reading of Schlegel’s Lucinde that explores the complexity of his notion of the novel as a “plant” that remains true to the conception of the absolute. This reading will surely be of great interest to literary scholars. In the masterful Schelling chapters, Nassar succeeds in showing that Schelling’s systems...

This article examines the portrayal of romantic love in the works of P. G. Wodehouse, the preeminent English humorist of the 20th century. The concept of «romantic love» is considered through the lens of early German Romantic philosophy. By analyzing the works of F. Schelling, F. Schlegel, Novalis, as well as major scholarly studies on early German Romanticism, the article elucidates the Romantic concept of love. The image of romantic love in Wodehouse's oeuvre is analyzed using examples from different periods of the author's career, including early novels (Ruth in Exile, A Gentleman of Leisure), mature works (The Luck of the Bodkins), and later texts (French Leave, Money in the Bank). Particular attention is paid to the short story The Reverent Wooing of Archibald. The study employs the comparative method. Wodehouse's works are compared with texts by the early German Romantics and A. Tennyson, specifically his cycle Idylls of the King. Wodehouse's writing is also examined within the framework of Yu. N. Tynyanov's theory of parody. Drawing on existing scholarly literature, the article interprets the motif of chivalric love in Wodehouse's work. This study is the first in both Russian and international literary scholarship to focus specifically on the image of romantic love in his writing. While previous researchers have traditionally emphasized the comic aspects of love in Wodehouse's works, this article argues that irony and parody function not to diminish the concept of romantic love, but to reveal and revitalize it. This leads to the conclusion that the portrayal of love created by Wodehouse is unique in 20th-century literature. The findings of this research provide grounds for a partial reconsideration of the established view of Wodehouse's place in the 20th-century literary process and may be utilized in courses on the history of English literature.

Reviews Kant’s Elliptical Path, by Karl Ameriks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012, xiv + 365 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-969369-6 pb $45 Ameriks’ latest volume represents yet another major contribution to our understanding of Kant and his place within the history of philosophy. 1 Ostensibly, Kant’s Elliptical Path is a scholarly treatment of the development of Kant’s thought throughout his career. It assuredly is that, but it is also much more, since it plumbs the depths of Kant’s entire Critical project by revealing the crucial systematic roles of freedom, reason, and religion, and shows their relevance both for the course of post-Kantian German philosophy throughout the nineteenth century and for our philosophical interests and ambitions today. Along the way, we are treated to an unusually broad range of kinds of discussion: detailed interpretations of particular passages that can appear problematic or are often misunderstood, remarks about the linguistic nuances of German terms which can easily get lost in translation, helpful interpretive hypotheses regarding Kant’s views on crucial points, and, of course, broader considerations of Kant’s overall project and commitments. Ameriks’ book comprises an introduction and then fifteen substantive chapters, which are divided into three parts. The introduction offers an innovative narrative of Kant’s overall development that provides an indispensible context for each of the parts and chapters that follow. Its defining claim is that once Kant was ‘turned around’ by reading Rousseau in 1763–4, his basic views, e.g., about the primacy of practical reason and the importance of absolute (libertarian) freedom, morality, and certain religious beliefs (involving God and immortality), did not change fundamentally, even if later developments (such as Transcendental Idealism) proved to be ‘ideal means [. . .] to fill out a systematic defense that allows for a return to his deepest pre-systematic beliefs’ (p. 1). Crucial to Ameriks’ understanding of Kant’s development, however, is not only that Rousseau was important and that there is a basic continuity to some fundamental aspects of Kant’s thought, points on which many (if not all) scholars agree, but also that there is an elliptical movement to Kant’s career, with the ‘heavens above’ and the moral ‘law within’ serving as distinct foci, that precludes either a simple linear or purely circular movement, because of various (theoretical and practical) complications that take Kant further away from his starting point before he is able to return to it. Further, late in the book Ameriks uses the image of an elliptical path to put much of post-Kantian philosophy into context, including figures such as Reinhold, the German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel), the early German Romantics (Novalis, Holderlin, and Schlegel), Nietzsche, and various contempo- rary philosophers (such as MacIntyre, Cavell, Taylor, and Frank). Ameriks’ narrative is thus not restricted to Kant, but provides a useful perspective well beyond, one that he even takes to recommend a certain conception of hermeneutical philosophy today. The first part, on Kant’s pre-Critical period, has a first chapter, ‘Kant, Human Nature, and History after Rousseau,’ which describes various ways in which Rousseau influenced European Journal of Philosophy ••:•• ISSN 0966-8373 pp. ••–•• © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

This essay traces the philosophical precursors of Lacan’s theory of the gaze back to the semiotic theory of representation developed by the German philosopher Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801), and his questions about the contours of the self or what happens to the self when it begins to seek consciousness of itself.

At once lucid and multifaceted, Alexander J. B. Hampton’s Romanticism and the Re-Invention of Modern Religion offers a fresh understanding of the German Romantic movement at the turn of the 19th century. As its subtitle promises—and as its cover image illustrates with the personification of Germany and Italy embracing—the book maintains that key figures of the movement reconcile the German post-Kantian emphasis on idealism and immanence with the Platonic-Christian legacy of a realist transcendent absolute. Tracing in particular Early German Romanticism (‘Frühromantik’, 1795–1801) as embodied in Schlegel, Hölderlin, and Novalis, this work argues that the Romantic project was a creative pursuit of a religious nature. It thereby distinguishes itself from two common and simplified characterisations of Romanticism, the first being part of the secularisation narrative, a picture that ‘associate[s] its ideas with the progressive decline and disappearance of religion’, and the second placing the movement firmly in one of two intellectual camps, that is, as ‘a development of either post-Kantian Fichtean aesthetic egoism or Spinozistic monist pantheism’ (p. 6). Both characterisations, according to Hampton, depend on a narrow definition of the term ‘religion’, as institutionally- and doctrinally defined, and as strictly separated from philosophy (pp. 5, 6). Challenging these characterisations, Hampton argues for a Romanticism that had an intrinsic constructive religious dimension by highlighting the movement’s elements of transcendence and the absolute (p. 7).

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On Novalis’ Pivotal Role in Early German Romanticism

Early German Romanticism

This article examines the origins of modernism/postmodernism and their presentation in the light of aesthetic and philosophical treatises or literary works of Friedrich Schlegel, Heinrich Kleist, Friedrich Schiller, as well as in the triad model of the world history and the biblical story of the fall of the man. The common idea which lies at the basis of the works presented is the contrast between the principles of nature and reason and the search for opportunities for their synthesis. The main thesis of the article is to present the commonality between the maxims of modernism/ postmodernism and early German romanticism, as well as to consider postmodernism as late romanticism with its inherent manneristic features. The basic concepts of modernism and postmodernism are presented through the prism of works and theories of Friedrich Nietzsche, Wolfgang Welsch, Christoph Bode, Rolf Günter Renner, as well as Victor Žmega?. The central concept in the article is the concept of self-reflection of literature and art as the most vivid feature of modernism and postmodernism.

Given the obvious grounding of the Buber-Rosenzweig translation (1926-1930) of the Bible in general (german) culture, it is interesting that in most reactions to the first publication the specifically Jewish character of this translation is noted. The A. examines the extent to which this translation can be regarded as a bridge between German culture and Jewish tradition: (a)the translation and traditional Jewish sources; (b)the translation and «Wissenschaft des Judentums»; and (c) the translation and early German Romanticism

Early German Romanticism. Its Founders and Heinrich von Kleist.

The Practice of Irony in Early German Romanticism

As Written presents an investigation of selected literary configurations of musical ineffability in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By putting literary parables into constellation with media technologies and texts from philosophy, critical theory, aesthetics, and media theory, the dissertation seeks to better understand the ways in which literature engages, discloses, disrupts, and determines musical discourse at times of aesthetic, political, and technological shift. The dissertation begins by establishing the “cryptographic” ineffable that emerges in early German Romanticism through readings of Novalis. These readings suggest this formulation of ineffability to arise out of an instrumentalization of instrumental music that emphasizes the symbolic relations of musical notation over music’s sound—this in service of a literary and philosophical project that strives to transcend its own medial and epistemological limits. Subsequent chapters will analyze alternative configurations of ineffability in writings by Richard Wagner, Theodor Adorno, Thomas Mann, and Helmut Lachenmann, but vestiges of this “originary” Romantic configuration will remain. Indeed, while the literary texts analyzed in these later chapters will respond to the medial, technical, and technological developments of their historical contexts, more than merely disclosing discursive formulations of musical ineffability, they, like Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen, will be shown to enact these formulations in forms of linguistic, sonic, and material absence through their complex narratologies and poetologies. How, this dissertation will ask, might literature’s ability to accommodate changing contexts in these configurations ultimately suggest musical ineffability as a conduit through which a music-discursive tradition that emerges in literature around 1800 is able to preserve itself into the twentieth century?

Nietzsche describes “Kant’s tragic problem” as a matter of making things seem “relative” and thereby giving art a “new dignity.” What Nietzsche means by “tragedy” here is not a matter of pain or ethical conflict but rather the impact of modern science and Kant’s Critical philosophy, which teaches that our theoretical knowledge is limited in principle to phenomena and does not reach unconditioned reality. This is not a form of skepticism or nihilism, but it does imply that the search for such knowledge can be considered secondary to other human interests. This chapter argues that this position also fits well the outlook of the aesthetic approach of Kant and the Early German Romantics. To make this case, it argues against suggestions, coming from a Hegelian direction, by Frederick Beiser and Robert Pippin, that the Kantian aesthetics and Romantic philosophy are overly subjective.

This article investigates, from an atmospheric point of view, the constellation of a selection of works from the post-war period and their recent reiterations by artist and political activist Gustav Metzger (1926--2017) to render visible the conceptual underpinnings that inform their philosophical coherence, so as to illuminate their capacity to resonate with the alarming features of our own contemporary air condition. The Second World War, in which the war was in the air on a global scale, was the deadliest moment in human history. Given the prominent role and dialectical conceptualization that the air (and subsequently the act of breathing) plays in the history of modern civilization as both common air and common threat, it is in the context of the atmospheric constellations of the air war that we will consider Metzger's counter-modernity project. After-images of the air war figure prominently in his uncompromising interventional and radical actions for anti-capitalist, anti-war and environmental causes to perform an aesthetic and social critique on our damaged life, damaged nature and denatured culture. Like the early German Romantics, Metzger sought to restore our relationship with nature by generating alternative ways through which harmony between people and their breathing space might be established. Featuring the author's interviews with Metzger published for the first time, this article provides a critical interpretation of Mica and Air Cube, Dancing Tubes, Mobbile, Earth minus Environment and Project Stockholm, June (Phase 1) to argue that the contemporary relevance of Metzger's works in the context of the current environmental crisis is quite telling and now feels more imperative than ever.