The Romantic Absolute

Stone, Alison (2011) The Romantic Absolute. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 19 (3). pp. 497-517. ISSN 0960-8788

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Abstract

In this article I argue that the Early German Romantics understand the absolute, or being, to be an infinite whole encompassing all the things of the world and all their causal relations. The Romantics argue that we strive endlessly to know this whole but only acquire an expanding, increasingly systematic body of knowledge about finite things, a system of knowledge which can never be completed. We strive to know the whole, the Romantics claim, because we have an original feeling of it that motivates our striving. I then examine two different Romantic accounts of this feeling. The first, given by Novalis, is that feeling gives us a kind of access to the absolute which logically precedes any conceptualisation. I argue that this account is problematic and that a second account, offered by Friedrich Schlegel, is preferable. On this account, we feel the absolute in that we intuit it aesthetically in certain natural phenomena. This form of intuition is partly cognitive and partly non-cognitive, and therefore it motivates us to strive to convert our intuition into full knowledge.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/researchoutput/libraryofcongress/b1
Subjects:
?? ABSOLUTEBEINGKNOWLEDGENATURENOVALISROMANTICISMSCHLEGELPHILOSOPHYPHILOSOPHYB PHILOSOPHY (GENERAL) ??
ID Code:
34074
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
26 Aug 2010 09:57
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
20 Sep 2023 00:06