Heidegger and the Romantics

The Literary Invention of Meaning

Pol Vandevelde

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136466632
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

While there are many books on the romantics, and many books on Heidegger, there has been no book exploring the connection between the two. Pol Vandevelde's new study forges this important link.

Vandevelde begins by analyzing two models that have addressed the interaction between literature and philosophy: early German romanticism (especially Schlegel and Novalis), and Heidegger's work with poetry in the 1930s. Both models offer an alternative to the paradigm of mimesis, as exemplified by Aristotle's and Plato's discussion of poetry, and both German romanticism and Heidegger owe a deep debt to Plato. The study goes on to defend the view that Heidegger was influenced by romanticism. The author's project is thus both historical, showing the specificity of the romantic and Heideggerean works, and systematic, defending aspects of their alternative mode of thinking while also pointing to their weaknesses.

Part I

The Literary Project of Early German Romanticism

What came to be known as early German romanticism (Frühromantik) was the gathering together and collaboration among several figures from about 1796 to about 1801 around Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel in Jena, Berlin, Dresden, and again Jena. Included in this group in Jena and Berlin were Friedrich von Hardenberg, known under his pen name as Novalis, whom Friedrich befriended in 1792, and Friedrich Schleiermacher, whom Friedrich met in 1797 in the salon of Henriette Herz in Berlin and with whom he shared a house, living in “symphilosophy” with him from 1797 to 1798 in Berlin. It is also in this salon that Schlegel met Dorothea Mendelssohn-Veit, his future wife. The gathering in Dresden took place in the summer of 1798, consisting of Friedrich, August, his wife Caroline, Novalis, Fichte, and Schelling. Finally they met again in Jena from September 1799 to April 1800, for a time at the house of August and his wife Caroline, who both had been invited to Jena by Schiller. Friedrich came with Dorothea. Tieck joined them with his wife Amalie. Novalis was living close by and joined them occasionally. Schelling, who was professor at the University of Jena, was also part of it, as was Wackenroder.¹ Although Hölderlin was connected with some of these authors he did not directly belong to those groups and instead was gravitating in another circle, the Homburg circle. As Manfred Frank assesses the situation, “there was no direct relationship between the two circles” (Frank 2004, 27). Frank explains the similarities in thought between the Jena and the Homburg circles as being due to “the constellation of the conversations that played out among Reinholdt’s students starting in 1792” (28).

There are many perspectives on what romanticism is in its different periods of early or late romanticism as well as on the similarities or differences between romanticism and idealism. As mentioned in the Introduction, it has been argued that early romanticism is part of idealism or that it is a specifically different movement.² Because my focus is on the project about the literary invention of meaning and not on German romanticism specifically, I will not directly address this question, although I show the originality of the early romantics.

Besides the perspective one can take, there are also different frameworks within which we can make sense of the romantic views. What brought the romantics back into the philosophical discussion in France was the postmodern reading offered by Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe, closely associated with the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and already sketched out by the deconstruction of Paul de Man. The romantics are seen in this framework as forerunners of the view that the literary work and the literary language are models of what thought and philosophy can achieve. It is the view that systems of ideas cannot be closed, that the interpretation of a work cannot be separated from the work that is interpreted as if they were two different well-circumscribed and self-enclosed entities. Positively, it means that there is a moment or an aspect of production in thinking such that thinking itself cannot be reduced to a set of propositions or judgments. As a consequence, interpretation is part of the flesh of the text that is interpreted, grafted onto it, as Derrida will say, so that the unity of the text to be interpreted is itself an interpretive task. As we will see, the romantics can be summoned as advocates for these views and quotes from them are readily available as support.

As an alternative to the postmodern framework, there is also an effort to rehabilitate the early romantics as thinkers and philosophers against the aesthetization of their project. Beiser (2002; 2003) and Frischmann (2005), among others, attempt to show the philosophical relevance of the romantics by cashing out the philosophical value of the romantic insights.³ In some sense both frameworks—postmodern and strictly philosophical—share the same presupposition that there is a duality or even opposition between two modes of thinking, the literary and the philosophical, thereby unwillingly continuing the “old quarrel” Plato complained about while himself giving this quarrel its lasting form.

While both efforts to show either that the romantics are the actual founders of literature or that they are philosophers in their own right are praiseworthy, my interest in the romantics lies precisely in their effort to move beyond existing frameworks. For them Dichtung or Poesie is not only a linguistic activity resulting from a craft. It is also and primarily a potency lying dormant in nature, things, and people. Now, if we were to translate these insights back into existing frameworks of a “literary absolute” (Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 1988) or a strict philosophical system, we would miss the radicality of what they offer. I will thus strive to avoid this opposition between philosophy and literature and focus on what the romantics emphasize: the invention of meaning. I will thus restrict my focus to the particular view these Romantics had on what a literary (but also a philosophical) work is and will leave aside their other views on aesthetics in general, on religion or on politics.

When it comes to the romantics an immediate challenge presents itself to the investigator. The romantics themselves reflected on interpretation, giving us through Schleiermacher the discipline of hermeneutics or, through Schlegel, the discipline of literary criticism. In their reflection on interpretation the romantics explore or test the different paradoxes that can arise in the interpretive enterprise. In the interpretation of a text, as mentioned in the introduction—what the romantics themselves did and what a commentator on the romantics does as well—we have to deal with three levels or layers of meanings in the sense of three spaces where sense is made: the author’s intention, the meaning of words and sentences, and the significance of those meanings to a particular audience.⁴ In a sense, the romantics offer a challenge to any effort to identify any of those spaces of meaning. Regarding authorial intent, on the one hand they were instrumental in the recognition of the authority and thus the rights of authors, while, on the other hand, they themselves play with this authority by means of such tactics as publishing anonymous writings (in the review Athenäum) or writing unfinished and allusory sequences of words that present themselves as non-works in the form of fragments. Regarding the meaning of words and sentences, at the second level, they practice irony, play with paradoxes, and use different characters who present different views, as in Schlegel’s Dialogue on Poetry. They also claim that what is written is to be considered not backward-looking as the expression of something that has been previously well thought-out before being expressed and is thus independent of its expression, but forward-looking: what is written is a seed for thought— pollens, in Novalis’ expression—as a stimulation for further thinking, giving traction to thought. Regarding irony, which plays a prominent role in Schlegel, Frischmann argues that it is a method linked to dialectic that consists in trying to think from the “in-between,” or, we might say, the space between terms in opposition (2009, 83). Irony renders logic more flexible and is seen by Schlegel himself as a new theory of syllogism (84). Irony brings to the fore what Frischmann calls the “process-character” (Prozessualität) of knowledge (84).

Finally, regarding the third level of meaning, the significance of a work, the romantics have shown themselves to be distinctly multifaceted and protean when it comes to interpretation. As mentioned above, their relevance can be seen in a postmodern realization of the limits of rationality and of the end of truth as a property of judgments; yet, they can also be seen as strict and somewhat traditional philosophers if we translate their metaphoric language into more pedestrian and classical prose.

The challenge the romantics offer to interpretation with regard to these three layers of meaning does not undermine the distinction between these layers of meaning, to the contrary. The challenge consists rather in reminding ourselves that somehow a harmony has to be found between these layers of meaning and such a harmony does not give itself. It has to be created or, in my terms, invented. The invention of meaning thus also applies to the reading of philosophers, blazing its own trail between mere discovery and fabrication. A discovery of meaning would mean that meaning is an autonomous entity in the form of a content of thought lying somewhere for us to stumble upon it. A mere fabrication of meaning would mean that subjects—in our case: interpreters—project into the object of interpretation what in fact comes from them. Between these crude forms of realism— meaning as discovery—and idealism—meaning as fabrication—the invention of meaning treats both text and interpretation as processes, at the same time inchoate and progressive, finite entities and completable.

In order to approach this notion of invention of meaning, I will focus mostly on Friedrich Schlegel who, to a large extent, held the loose group of the early romantics together and formulated a sketch of their common project. Under the traditional term of Dichtung (poetry, literary production) or Poesie, Schlegel and other romantics promoted a new way of practicing literature both in its forms and content. It was a radical break with mimesis and its basic assumption that the literary work is a totality in itself imitating another totality in itself, namely nature or reality. With the romantics the work is now seen as fragmentary and in need of completion. However, this is not due to an intrinsic lack, but to the fact that the “object” of the work (nature, the world, or reality) is also incomplete and in need of poetic configuration. “The world is incomplete” (unvollendet, KA XVIII, 421, n. 1222; 1991b, 42). And the same is true of the human being who is “an infinite animal” (ein unendliches Thier, KA XVIII, 453, n. 234) or “a constant becoming” (1991b, 42). Dichtung or Poesie is the name of that configuration that bears upon both poetic activity and the world or human beings. This makes of the romantic project an aesthetic as well as an ontological enterprise. This is the reason why we do not have to choose between the characterization of early romanticism as doing literature or philosophy. Their claim is precisely that literature is concerned with the nature and make-up of reality and thus has ontological repercussions. Thus, from a “backward-looking” perspective, the romantic ambition is to articulate the ontological claims literature can make and to reconcile or bridge the gap between the traditional disciplines of philosophy and literature. Whereas, if we take a “forward-looking” perspective, the romantic ambition is to advocate for a new discipline that would be both literature and philosophy, in which the notion of a “bridge” between the two existing disciplines will be understood in its active sense of “bridging” and thus charting new territories by the new connections it establishes.

1 The Work as Fragment

Toward a New Kind of Criticism

The poetry that is advocated by the romantics cannot be encompassed in the notion of genre, even a new one. It is an activity of configuration that has its own techne, understood both as craft and knowledge. Its aim can be characterized as irenic and polemic. The irenic goal consists in striving toward peace, reconciliation, harmony, and unity among disciplines otherwise separated. Its polemic goal consists in disturbing traditional disciplines and subverting established practices. Let us examine these two opposite and complementary goals. Regarding the irenic side, Dichtung is a new configuration that aims at unifying disciplines that were separated before: art, philosophy, poetry in the narrow sense of the term, but also the sciences, which also deal with the world. Dichten thus consists primarily in configuring and only secondarily in composing. In addition, this configuration is material: “Art is the material poetry [materielle Poesie] in sound, color, or word” (Schlegel 1991a, 61). The romantic use of the expression romantische Dichtung or romantische Poesie was thus not confined to what we call literature. As Beiser puts it, “romantische Poesie designates not a form of literature or criticism but the romantics’ general aesthetic ideal. This ideal was truly revolutionary: it demanded that we transform not only literature and criticism but all the arts and sciences; and it insisted that we break down the barriers between art and life, so that the world itself becomes ‘romanticized’” (Beiser 2003, 8–9).

The polemic side of Dichtung is more difficult to grasp because it uses many resources and devices, like irony, wit, the use of fragments, anonymous writing in the review Athenäum, etc. This side has been emphasized by the postmodern reading because the configuration Dichtung provides consists, on the polemic side, in disrupting traditional disciplines and original texts, fragmenting them, breaking them down into parts that were not the original parts—in short: in turning them into ruins. This polemic side is inscribed in the motto of romantic hermeneutics that the starting point of interpretation is the non-understanding. While the irenic side of Dichtung puts the understanding as the subsequent activity completing and thus resolving the nonunderstanding, the polemic side of Dichtung makes of non-understanding an epistemic attitude that performs operations on an object like a text in order to solicit it—in the Latin sense of sollicitare: to shake to the ground—so that the text can be re-constructed not according to its original joinings, but according to a new structuring that brings out the power the text has. We can already see here how the romantics use the notion of power or potentiality in a nonteleological and thus non-Aristotelian manner, because it is the Dichtung or the interpretation that brings a thing or a text to its second power without presupposing that this potentiality was already lying in the thing or the work. For, in the Aristotelian framework, potentiality is envisaged on the basis of a preceding energeia so that the potentiality a thing or a work possesses has already been circumscribed by the preceding energeia. By contrast, the configuration—what the romantics call “romanticization”—is not merely an auxiliary, helping out, as it were, a thing or a text to reach its second power. Rather, the second power is what the configuration invents and not what could be anticipated on the basis of the preceding energeia.

The notion of invention thus includes the two aspects of Dichtung as irenic—reconciling and unifying what already exists—and polemic—disturbing, subverting, and, yes, deconstructing what can be re-dynamized and completed. This is how invention—the task of Dichtung both as poetry and interpretation—is beyond mere discovery of what would already be fully configured and sheer fabrication of what would be arbitrary.

The expression romantische Dichtung or romantische Poesie (romantic poetry) is highly complex or ambivalent, if not ambiguous.¹ In response to a query by his brother August, Friedrich famously wrote him back: “I cannot really send you my explanation of the word romantisch because it is 125 printed sheets long” (KA XXIV, 53). As Pikulik notes, 125 octavo-printed sheets would be 2000 pages (Pikulik 1992, 78). Hans Eichner gives us a nice overview of what the term romantisch in Schlegel’s time could mean, from which I borrow (Eichner 1967, liii f; 1970, 51f). Romantisch held multiple connotations, which were not really distinguished, but were rather perceived as a whole. First of all, the romantischen Sprachen at the time, in the eighteenth century, designated what philologists now call romanische Sprachen, romance languages. Wilhelm Grimm uses the word about the Middle High German poetic writings, which he characterizes as “those which are translated from the Romance languages” (quoted in Sorensen 2001, 99). The old French romanz, the Spanish romance, the Italian romanzo designated texts written in the vulgar or vernacular language as opposed to Latin. The term romantisch kept this sense, while progressively slipping into a chronological consideration and designating for the most part a period of history (Eichner 1970, 51). In Schlegel’s time, the age of chivalry was called the “romantic era.” Schlegel himself uses the expression “romantic poetry” in his writings of 1794–95 in order to refer to works written in the period stretching from Dante to Cervantes and Shakespeare.

I have set up a definite characteristic of the contrast between the antique and the Romantic. Meanwhile, please do not immediately assume that the Romantic and the Modern are entirely identical for me … If you wish to realize the difference clearly, read just Emilia Galloti, which is so extremely modern and yet not in the least Romantic, and then think of Shakespeare, in whom I would like to fix the actual centre, the core of the Romantic imagination. This is where I look for and find the Romantic—in the older moderns, in Shakespeare, Cervantes, in Italian poetry, in that age of knights, love, and fairytales in which the thing itself and the word for it originated. This, up to now, is the only thing which can be considered as a worthy contrast to the classical productions of antiquity … Certainly all that is best in modern poetry tends toward antiquity in spirit and even in kind, as if there were to be a return to it. (Schlegel 1968, 100–101)

Romantisch thus designates negatively works that pertain neither to Antiquity nor to modern times. Moreover, because the works written in romance lang...