The Romantic Absolute

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

Dalia Nassar

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780226084060
• eBook ISBN: 9780226084237
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

The absolute was one of the most significant philosophical concepts in the early nineteenth century, particularly for the German romantics. Its exact meaning and its role within philosophical romanticism remain, however, a highly contested topic among contemporary scholars.  In The Romantic Absolute, Dalia Nassar offers an illuminating new assessment of the romantics and their understanding of the absolute. In doing so, she fills an important gap in the history of philosophy, especially with respect to the crucial period between Kant and Hegel.

            
Scholars today interpret philosophical romanticism along two competing lines: one emphasizes the romantics' concern with epistemology, the other their concern with metaphysics. Through careful textual analysis and systematic reconstruction of the work of three major romantics—Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, and Friedrich Schelling—Nassar shows that neither interpretation is fully satisfying. Rather, she argues, one needs to approach the absolute from both perspectives. Rescuing these philosophers from frequent misunderstanding, and even dismissal, she articulates not only a new angle on the philosophical foundations of romanticism but on the meaning and significance of the notion of the absolute itself.

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 is simply a matter of degree: in his later writings, Novalis develops more nuanced and explicit conceptions of being or reality, of the relation between humanity and the natural world, and of the meaning of moral action. One can see the seeds of this mature conception in his 1797 Hemsterhuis-Studien and Kant-Studien, in which Novalis begins to think of morality in terms of relationality and affectivity (rather than his earlier one-sided Fichtean conception of morality as self-activity), considers the “place” of the human being in the world, and develops an understanding of the difference between an organic “whole” and an “aggregate.” In these writings, one also witnesses Novalis’s initial encounter with the idea of a system of knowledge and the first notion of a unity of the sciences.

The following chapters will be dedicated to explicating Novalis’s understanding of the absolute and of the relation between the human being and the natural world, in light of Novalis’s development and his interactions with and criticisms of various philosophers. Given the significance of Manfred Frank’s interpretation in the contemporary reception of Novalis, the first part of chapter 1 outlines Frank’s reading and considers the opposing reading (i.e., of Novalis as a Fichtean) put forth by Molnár and Loheide. The chapter then discusses the Fichte-Studien and shows that this early writing contains not one but two distinctive conceptions of being—only one of which accords with Novalis’s later understanding. In chapter 2 I consider Novalis’s study of the Dutch philosopher Franz Hemsterhuis and his return to Kant in 1797. The goal of these first two chapters is more introductory than systematic—in them I seek to introduce the reader to Novalis’s questions and concerns rather than present his views in a philosophically coherent and justifiable manner. This is because until 1798 Novalis did not seek to develop a methodology or present his ideas in a systematic manner. 1798 thus serves as a turning point, not only in relation to Novalis’s interests—specifically his interest in the natural world—but also with regard to his own self-understanding and his goals as a philosopher. It is in 1798 that Novalis commences his “encyclopedia” project, develops his most astute critiques of transcendental philosophy, and begins to develop his own theory of knowledge.

Chapter 3 is thus concerned with Novalis’s thought from 1798 onward. The goal is to explicate Novalis’s understanding of the human being and the human relation to nature. One of the most significant contributions of this chapter is the explication of Goethe’s influence on Novalis’s development, in particular his increased interest in the study of nature. In chapter 4, I discuss Novalis’s goal of providing a systematic presentation of knowledge and his criticism of previous philosophical systems as “unpoetic.” The conclusion briefly enumerates the key moments in Novalis’s development in relation to his notion of the absolute.

CHAPTER ONE

Interpreting the Fichte-Studien

1.1 NOVALIS IN THE LITERATURE

In his 1989 Einführung in die frühromantische Äshtetik, Manfred Frank makes the remarkable statement that Novalis’s Fichte-Studien offer “the most significant philosophical contribution of early romanticism.”¹ In this way, Frank places Novalis and the Fichte-Studien at the center of philosophical discussions of early German romanticism. In his earlier writings on the romantics, Frank’s concern had been to distinguish Novalis from Hegel and the neo-Platonist tradition.² In Einführung, by contrast, his thesis is that in the Fichte-Studien, we witness a “break” with idealism as elaborated by both Hegel and Fichte.³

Frank’s reading of Novalis, and his emphasis on the Fichte-Studien, are in large part due to the fact that Frank’s primary interlocutor is Dieter Henrich. In a more recent work on the romantics, “Unendliche Annäherung.” Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik (1997), Frank acknowledges that he was in part inspired by Henrich’s recent “discoveries.”⁴ Frank’s concern, however, is not to follow Henrich, but to challenge his claim that Hölderlin was the first realist critic of Fichte and German idealism in general. Novalis, he argues, offered a critique of idealism as early as (but independently of) Hölderlin. Frank’s goal, therefore, is to illustrate that in the Fichte-Studien, composed in 1795–1796,⁵ Novalis arrives at the conclusion that being or “pure being (Nur Seyn)” is “given” rather than “constructed” by the I, and that being eludes conceptualization.

Frank’s reading focuses on two main ideas. The first is that for Novalis, intellectual intuition does not (as it does for Fichte) realize or produce the self—rather, the self has to have already been there in order for intuition to take place. In other words, the ground of the self is not the self’s own activity, but a “being” that precedes and eludes the self in its attempt to know itself. This leads to the second point, namely, that intellectual intuition does not grant insight into the ground of the self. Rather, in intellectual intuition an inversion (“ordo inversus”) of the ground with the grounded takes place, such that what appears to us as primary (self-consciousness) is in fact only secondary to the true primary (being).⁶ The ground of reality is therefore “given” and not “constructed” by intuition. As such, it is ultimately intractable and unknowable.⁷ In the place of self-knowledge, Novalis offers “feeling” or “self-feeling (Selbstgefühl).”⁸ In this way, Frank argues, Novalis provides a biting critique of the Fichtean notion of intellectual intuition and of idealism in general.

Precisely because Novalis recognizes that the self’s activity depends upon an already “given” ground—a ground that is infinitely unknowable—Frank argues that Novalis is putting forth a realist, nonidealist understanding of being, in other words, being as “outside of consciousness,” or “mere being (Nur Seyn).”⁹ Novalis is, in other words, a skeptical realist and not an idealist. Frank’s fundamental argument is that Novalis, and the romantics in general, remain true to Kantian restrictions.¹⁰ They acknowledge the impossibility of a philosophical presentation of the “infinite absolute” and thus turn away from philosophy to art. Frank locates this turn in the Fichte-Studien because they begin with a general skepticism toward philosophical method and conclude in art.

In deep contrast to Frank’s interpretation, Gezá von Molnár and Bernward Loheide have rehabilitated the old interpretation of Novalis as a Fichtean whose philosophical and artistic goals can be understood as a continuation of and expansion upon Fichte’s thought.¹¹ In his reading of the Fichte-Studien, Molnár interprets Novalis’s search for the absolute (which Frank locates outside the I) as the search for the I.¹² Molnár acknowledges one significant difference between Fichte and Novalis: Novalis emphasizes the manifestation of the absolute unity within the empirical opposition of subject and object.¹³ Ultimately, however, for Molnár, Novalis remains within the realm of the self and intellectual intuition.

Loheide argues that Fichte played a significant role not only in Novalis’s early works but also in his later writings.¹⁴ The interesting aspect of Loheide’s interpretation, in contrast to that of Molnár, is that it agrees with Frank’s reading of Novalis, but disagrees with his claim that there is a substantial difference between Novalis and Fichte.¹⁵ Rather, in Loheide’s reading, not only Novalis, but also Fichte, developed skepticism toward intellectual intuition and elaborated a philosophy of finitude and realism.¹⁶ In this way, Loheide sees both Novalis and Fichte as continuing in the Kantian tradition of transcendental philosophy, differentiating themselves only in emphasis. What unites Fichte and Novalis is their prioritization of the moral over the theoretical and their conception of the self as primarily active and ethical.¹⁷ Like many of Novalis’s contemporary interpreters, Loheide’s goal is to show that Novalis (and Fichte) is an enlightenment philosopher, and his turn to art was a rational, philosophically justified turn that had nothing to do with Schwärmerei or religiosity.¹⁸ According to Loheide, for both Novalis and Fichte, the self is a finite being who becomes aware of its finitude, and its inability to know the absolute, through transcendental philosophy.¹⁹

Although Molnár’s and Loheide’s interpretations clearly differ from Frank’s, they agree with his emphasis on Fichte and the claim that Novalis was in some sense working in relation to Fichtean (transcendental) philosophy. For this reason, they emphasize the centrality of the problem of self-consciousness and self-knowledge for Novalis. Insofar as the Fichte-Studien are Novalis’s attempt to work through Fichtean philosophy, the problem of self-consciousness was a key concern in that context. However, it plays a less important role in Novalis’s later writings, and Novalis’s philosophical interests cannot be reduced to the problem of self-consciousness.²⁰ Therefore, by emphasizing Fichte’s concern with the self and self-consciousness and interpreting Novalis in light of it, they overlook the fact that Novalis was also interested in questions that cannot be limited to or interpreted in terms of the question of self-consciousness and self-presentation.²¹ Furthermore, by focusing on Fichte’s influence, all three fail to notice the ways in which other thinkers influenced Novalis. An examination of the Allgemeine Brouillon, the encyclopedia project which Novalis undertook in 1798–1799,²² reveals Novalis’s interest in Kant and Fichte as well as in the neo-Platonist Plotinus, in Goethe, and in Spinoza (to name a few).²³

In addition, there are important logistical problems with the Fichte-Studien that prevent them from being the groundbreaking work that Frank considers them to be.²⁴ First, Novalis is taking notes while reading Fichte, and thus at times it is unclear whether Novalis is writing his own thoughts or trying to work out or work through Fichte’s. As Loheide has illustrated, many of Novalis’s notes closely correspond to, even mirror, Fic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: Novalis
• Part Two: Friedrich Schlegel
• Part Three: Schelling
• Conclusion: The Romantic Absolute
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index