This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

The word “romanticism” designates in German as in other European languages a broad movement in literature that originated at the beginning of the nineteenth century and has often been characterized as an opposition to the preceding age of rationalism and Enlightenment. Situated between the classicist schools of taste of the previous century and the realistic and naturalistic trends in literature of the later nineteenth century, Romanticism or romantic literature is the product of the creative power of the (...) imagination; it appeals to the emotions, has a preference for the mysterious aspects of nature, and shows a strong predilection for the past, the Middle Ages, and mythological traditions. With its strong affinity to the novel, romantic literature departs from the classical forms and the classicist canon of literature, but when these classical forms were nevertheless used by the authors of this movement, something new was created – the romantic tale, the romantic drama, and romantic poetry. The great romantic authors in Germany were E. T. A. Hoffmann, Eichendorff, Brentano, Arnim, and Fouqué. There is both a narrower and a broader notion of Romanticism in Germany, the broader also relating to painting (Friedrich, Runge) and music (Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bartholdy, Wagner). Romanticism had a great impact on the general view of the world and was influential in the rise of the historical consciousness, the revival of a religious spirit, and the emergence of a conservative political attitude. As far as philosophy and the sciences are concerned, Romanticism is associated with figures such as Schelling and Schopenhauer, the development of a philosophy of art, of nature, and of the subconscious. On the whole, Romanticism is one of those movements that shaped an entire age and manifested itself down to the most particular features of popular belief and scientific interest. (shrink)

This paper considers how women and gender are conceptualised within early German Romanticism and argues that work by early German Romantic women should be addressed in scholarship on this movement. The chapter addresses feminist critiques of early German Romanticism as exemplified by the work of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, concluding that an essentialist view of traditional gender characteristics informs central aspects of these writers’ work, including their view of the relationship between human beings and nature (...) and their theories of language and poetry. The paper argues that a thoroughgoing critique of gender categories and development of the implications of this critique are found in the early German Romantic writings, not of Schlegel and Novalis, but of Dorothea Veit-Schlegel and Karoline von Günderrode. (shrink)

Many revolutionary proposals entered the biological disciplines during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, theories that provided the foundations for today’s science and gave structure to its various branches. Cell theory, evolutionary theory, and genetics achieved their modern form during this earlier time. The period also saw a variety of new, auxiliary hypotheses that supplied necessary supports for the more comprehensive theories. These included ideas in morphology, embryology, systematics, language, and behavior. These scientific developments forced a reconceptualization of nature and (...) the place of human beings therein. The legacy for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been a materialization and mechanization of the most fundamental processes of life. From our current perspective, it’s easy to look back and assume that the foundational ideas of our contemporary science must have had the same character as they now seem to manifest. I think a closer inspection of biological science of this earlier period will reveal a discipline whose philosophic assumptions are quite different from those of its present incarnation. This becomes especially vivid when 1 we focus on the contributions of German Idealism and Romanticism to the biology of the earlier dispensation. (shrink)

This examination considers the influence of the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist Cudworth upon the thought of the late eighteenth century German thinker Herder. It focuses upon Herder's use of Cudworth's philosophy to create a revised version of Spinoza's metaphysics. Both Cudworth and Herder were concerned with the problem of determinism. Cudworth outlined a number of difficulties relating to this problem in the thought of Spinoza and proposed amendments, particularly the introduction of the middle principle of plastik, which would mediate (...) between the Ideas of transcendent reason and mechanical materialism. We find these amendments to Spinoza's philosophy also employed in Herder's contribution to the Pantheism Controversy, in which he too offers a revised Spinozism and introduces his own middle principle of Kraft. This demonstrates an important but under-explored English contribution to a key development in German intellectual history. The Pantheism Controversy was an epoch-making event, helping to bring an end to the German Enlightenment and to inaugurate the Romantic movement. Herder's version of Spinoza's thought revived the philosopher's fortunes, and Herder's notion of Kraft became central to Romantic aesthetics. Finally, Herder's use of Cudworth demonstrates the important but overlooked source of Platonic realism in German Romantic thought. (shrink)

The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy. Preface: The. Literary. Absolute. I. "There are classifications that are bad enough as classifications, but that have nonetheless dominated entire ...

Explores the philosophical contributions and contemporary relevance of early German Romanticism.

This examination considers the influence of the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist Cudworth upon the thought of the late eighteenth century German thinker Herder. It focuses upon Herder's use of Cudworth's philosophy to create a revised version of Spinoza's metaphysics. Both Cudworth and Herder were concerned with the problem of determinism. Cudworth outlined a number of difficulties relating to this problem in the thought of Spinoza and proposed amendments, particularly the introduction of the middle principle of plastik, which would mediate (...) between the Ideas of transcendent reason and mechanical materialism. We find these amendments to Spinoza's philosophy also employed in Herder's contribution to the Pantheism Controversy, in which he too offers a revised Spinozism and introduces his own middle principle of Kraft. This demonstrates an important but under-explored English contribution to a key development in German intellectual history. The Pantheism Controversy was an epoch-making event, helping to bring an end to the German Enlightenment and to inaugurate the Romantic movement. Herder's version of Spinoza's thought revived the philosopher's fortunes, and Herder's notion of Kraft became central to Romantic aesthetics. Finally, Herder's use of Cudworth demonstrates the important but overlooked source of Platonic realism in German Romantic thought. (shrink)

This book develops a philosophy of aesthetic experience through two socially significant philosophical movements: early German Romanticism and early critical theory. In examining the relationship between these two closely intertwined movements, we see that aesthetic experience is not merely a passive response to art-it is the capacity to cultivate true personal autonomy, and to critique the social and political context of our lives. Art is political for these thinkers, not only when it paints a picture of society, but (...) even more when it makes us aware of our deeply ingrained forms of experience in a transformative way. Ultimately, the book argues that we have to think of art as a form of truth that is not reducible to communicative rationality or scientific knowledge, and from which philosophy and politics can learn valuable lessons. (shrink)

This third 2021 issue of "SYMPHILOSOPHIE: International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism" contains a main dossier of new research articles guest edited by Leif Weatherby (New York University) and devoted to the topic of early German romanticism and science. In addition to the papers of this main section issue number 3 of SYMPHILOSOPHIE includes translations of primary sources and book reviews. All contents are freely available online.

This article provides a detailed conceptual and historical analysis of the controversial and often misunderstood notion of the “absolute,” examines the philosophical reasons behind its development, and offers an in-depth account of Schelling and Hegel’s disagreement on its meaning and role. It uniquely examines romantic as well as idealist views of the notion of the absolute, and investigates both its metaphysical and epistemological foundations.

Azade Seyhan provides a concise, elegantly argued introduction to the critical theory of German Romanticism and demonstrates how its approach to the metaphorical and linguistic nature of knowledge is very much alive in contemporary philosophy and literary theory. Her analysis of key thinkers such as Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis explores their views on rhetoric, systematicity, hermeneutics, and cultural interpretation. Seyhan examines German Romanticism as a critical intervention in the debates on representation, which developed in response to (...) the philosophical revolution of German Idealism. Facing a chaotic political and intellectual landscape, the eighteenth-century theorists sought new models of understanding and new objectives for criticism and philosophy. _Representation and Its Discontents_ identifies the legacy of this formative moment in modern criticism and suggests its relevance to contemporary discussions of post-structuralism, orientalism, theories of textuality, and the nature of philosophical discourse. (shrink)

Enlightenment - both the phenomenon specific to the eighteenth century and the continuing trend in Western thought - is an attempt to dispel ignorance, achieve mastery of a potentially hostile environment, and contain fear of the unknown by promoting science and rationality. Enlightenment is often accompanied and challenged by countercultures such as German Romanticism, which explored the nature of fear and deployed it as a corrective to the excesses of rationalism. The Aesthetics of Fear in German (...) class='Hi'>Romanticism uncovers the formative role this movement played in the development of dark or negative aesthetics. Recovering a missing chapter in the history of the aesthetics of fear, Paola Mayer illustrates that Romanticism was a crucial transitional phase between the eighteenth-century sublime and the early twentieth-century uncanny. Mayer puts literature and philosophy in dialogue, examining how German Romantic literature employed narratives of fear to radicalize and then subvert the status quo in society, culture, and science. She traces the development of this aesthetic from its inception with pre-Romantics such as Jean Paul Richter to its end in Joseph von Eichendorff's critical retrospective, and juxtaposes canonical authors such as E.T.A. Hoffmann - the father of the modern fantastic - with writers who have previously been ignored. Today, when the dark side of science looms in the foreground, The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism points to the power of a literary movement to construct competing currents of thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Enchantment of Art: Abstraction and Empathy from German Romanticism to ExpressionismDavid MorganA familiar tradition since the eighteenth century has invested art with the power to heal a decadent human condition. Inheriting this ability from religion—the romantic enthusiast Wilhelm Wackenroder considered artistic inspiration to originate in “divine inspiration” in the case of his hero, Raphael 1 —art eventually replaced institutionalized belief in an evolutionary schedule of cultural (...) development determined by German idealism. Hegel, for instance, theorized the evolution of spirit from religion to art as a qualitative advancement over time. Rejecting the metaphysics of German idealism, Friedrich Nietzsche nevertheless contended that “Art raises its head where religions decline.” By assuming the “feelings and moods” of religion which had been dismantled by enlightenment, Nietzsche claimed that art gave new form to the life of feeling and imbued human endeavors with a “loftier, darker coloration.” 2 In the early twentieth century Wassily Kandinsky believed that the “spiritual in art” was the historical manifestation of an “inner necessity” that was in itself timeless and universal. Kandinsky portrayed the “life of the spirit” as “a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts.” In a kind of “trickle down” aesthetic, the compartments of the triangle move slowly upward toward the apex, which is inhabited by the solitary genius of an age whose vision gradually elevates all those who occupy the lower stages. 3 [End Page 317]The point for proponents of the spiritual in art from romanticism to expressionism (and beyond) was to find in works of art what can best be described as an enchantment. 4 As the negotiation of the gaps or disjunctures separating human beings from complete power over their lives, enchantment conjoins the plane of immediate human experience to a desirable state of affairs through the mediation of such symbolic devices as rituals, incantations, or charms. Thus, evil can be warded off by the use of an apotropaic amulet, and fertility can be enhanced by the recitation of a suitable prayer or the performance of a certain ritual. In a modern analogy a sense of impotence is often alleviated by a trip to the mall where the bored therapeutically lose themselves in symbolic acts of self-renewing consumption. In the traditions of philosophy and science, systems of representation such as astrology, the microcosm, the harmony of the spheres, the great chain of being, the celestial hierarchies, or the mechanisms of theurgy and divination situate humanity within a cosmos that follows a particular order accessible to and in some degree manipulable by human beings. Enchantment consists of an apparatus of belief whose form of representation or enactment is thought to exert influence over the realities it configures.But enchantment is not limited to the spells and magic of premodern metaphysics (or modern consumerism). By means of religion, morality, and aesthetics, Nietzsche once averred, “man likes to believe that... he is touching the heart of the world.” 5 This study will focus on the manner in which art as constructed within the idealist tradition of German art theory functioned as an enchantment. Specifically, it will explore what the history of ideas about abstraction and empathy has to tell us about the spiritualization or enchantment of art. After identifying the philosophical and aesthetic wherewithal of enchantment in nineteenth-century Germany, attention focusses on Franz Marc’s early twentieth-century theorization of abstraction. It is certainly more customary to study Kandinsky, whose writings and early efforts at abstraction are much better known, but Marc’s ideas offer more immediate connections to German intellectual history and clarify the aims of his abstract art as a strategy of enchantment. Moreover, Marc was unusually articulate and wrote often, exploring ideas and artistic efforts with great insight. Focusing on Marc therefore offers a corrective to the historiography that has favored Kandinsky’s writings. Finally, Marc differed from his Russian friend over the cause of the war. Manifesting a difference that is portentous for this study, Kandinsky left Germany for Russia in 1914, while Marc enthusiastically took up arms for the fatherland. Given these circumstances and the unfortunate tendency of art historians to valorize expressionist art rather than situate it in the ideological context of... (shrink)

This book offers a unique account of the development of thinking about nature from Early German Romanticism into the philosophies of nature of Schelling, Hegel, and beyond. Alison Stone explores the ethical and political implications of German Romantic and Idealist ideas about nature, including for gender, race, and environmentalism.

In this article I ask how fruitful the concept of alienation can be for thinking critically about the nature and causes of the contemporary environmental crisis. The concept of alienation enables us to claim that modern human beings have become alienated or estranged from nature and need to become reconciled with it. Yet reconciliation has often been understood—notably by Hegel and Marx—as the state of being ‘at-home-with-oneself-in-the-world’, in the name of which we are entitled, perhaps even obliged, to overcome anything (...) in nature that is alien to the human mind. This approach to alienation derives ultimately from the German Idealist philosopher J. G. Fichte. I explore an alternative conception of alienation and reconciliation to be found in the work of the Early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. The Romantics think of reconciliation as including a dimension of alienation, in the form of an awareness that nature is greater than and exceeds the understanding of human beings, insofar as we are merely limited parts of the all-encompassing whole that is nature. I argue that this is a more fruitful approach to alienation and reconciliation than that pursued by Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. (shrink)

In this study I have presented Early-German Romanticism as a philosophical movement and Friedrich Schlegel as its major philsopher. The central philosophical problem which concerned this movement was the problem of philosophy's beginning. Schlegel's skeptical view led him to reject both Reinhold's foundationalism and Jacobi's irrationalism. This skeptical position distinguishes Early-German Romanticism from Fichte's idealism. ;Schlegel's rejection of Fichte's solution to the problem of philosophy's beginning led to a unique solution: the Wechselerweis. This involves the claim (...) that philosophy cannot begin with any single principle, but only with the interaction between at least two principles. This interactive model involves an ever-changing dialogue between the knowing subject and the world. For Schlegel, philosophy cannot be understood without an understanding of change. Therefore, history becomes a central part of the activity of philosophizing. According to Schlegel's view, philosophy never begins with a point of absolute certainty but always in the middle. (shrink)

_Explores the philosophical contributions and contemporary relevance of early German Romanticism._.

_Explores the philosophical contributions and contemporary relevance of early German Romanticism._.

Resumen: En el presente artículo buscaremos analizar los diversos tratamientos que Walter Benjamin ha realizado a lo largo de su obra acerca de la crítica como temática eminentemente filosófica. Para ello abordaremos, en primer lugar, su acercamiento a la poesía del Romanticismo alemán, luego a la poesía barroca y, finalmente, a la obra de Baudelaire con el objetivo de justificar que una comprensión acabada de la crítica implica necesariamente para el filósofo alemán recuperar la actualización como clave de lectura de (...) la historia. En efecto, si actualizar presupone para Benjamin la asunción de la no coincidencia del tiempo consigo mismo, esto es, la supervivencia del pasado en el presente y el potencial significante de sus emergencias, buscaremos mostrar cómo la noción de crítica benjaminiana descansa en ese diferencial temporal y encuentra allí su fuente de sentido.: In this article we intend to analyze the different considerations that Walter Benjamin carried out in his work on the problem of critique as an eminently philosophical subject. To do this, we will address, first, his approach to German romantic poetry, then baroque poetry and, finally, Baudelaire’s work, in order to explain how a full comprehension of critique means, for the German philosopher, to recover the idea of “actualization” as a key for reading History. In fact, if the actualization presupposes, for Benjamin, the assumption of the non-coincidence of time with itself, that is, the survival of the past within the present and its potentiality to signify, we try to show how Benjamin’s notion of criticism rests on that temporal difference and finds there its source of meaning. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to examine Giorgio Agamben’s important but underappreciated debts to the early German Romantics and to Hegel. While maintaining critical distance from these figures, Agamben develops crucial aspects of his approach to radical passivity with reference to them. The focus of this essay is on Agamben’s consideration of the early German Romantics’ notions of criticism and irony, Hegel’s notion of language, and the implications of this view of language for his notion of community.

This dissertation investigates the initial reception of the Bhagavad Gita in German intellectual circles, focusing in particular on the ways that the German Romantics who translated and anthologized the text constituted it as an object of European knowledge. By examining the intellectual debates and textual practices at play in early nineteenth century representations of Indian religious culture, this project contributes to the contemporary debate about Orientalism, which often lacks focus because of inattention to historical context. In addition, by (...) bringing this under-investigated topic to light, the dissertation adds an important chapter to the history of the study of religion and offers historical perspective on the comparative philosophy of religion. ;The works of Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and G. W. F. Hegel provide the matrix of this project. With these writings a German discourse on India took shape. Local intellectual preoccupations guided the Romantic presentation of the Gita, permeated its translations, and were thus enlisted to accommodate its difference. These preoccupations were thematized first in Herder's experimentations and then gained clarity in the work of the Schlegel brothers. Later exchanges between von Humboldt and Hegel illustrate the way that these preoccupations were reinterpreted after early Romantic enthusiasm had dissipated and conventions of academic discipline had evolved. ;The dissertation concludes by asserting that Romanticism leaves a legacy wherein broad cultural "myths" can dominate the "logos" of scholarship on India and Hindu religious sources. Reflection on the history of cross-cultural inquiry draws attention to such "myths" and thus enhances the self-consciousness of future scholarship. (shrink)

This article examines and elaborates the nature of subjective experience by drawing on a variety of perspectives in recent philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis. The question of subjectivity has been much debated in each of these disciplines. In contrast with postmodern thinkers who wish to discard subjectivity altogether, I discuss alternative ways to understand and conceptualize subjectivity, or self-consciousness. I consider a tradition of thinkers that includes Sartre, Fichte, and the early German Romantics, who conceptualize self-consciousness as a "being-familiar-with-oneself" that (...) is prior to all reflection. I argue that a developmental corollary to this approach can be found in the psychological research of Daniel Stern, who attributes to infants a "simple non-self-reflexive awareness," while Jacques Lacan's discussion of the specular misrecognitions of the self complicates any simply rendering of "mirroring." By thus combining epistemological, developmental, and phenomenological treatments of the self, I believe it is possible to achieve a conception of subjectivity that avoids the snares of Cartesian essentialism. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant Yearbook Jahrgang: 8 Heft: 1 Seiten: 117-142.