Critic, poet and philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829) was a leading figure of German Romanticism. In the two years before his untimely death, he wrote three cycles of lectures intended as part of a larger project to lay the foundations of a new general philosophy. Two of these cycles, 'Philosophie des Lebens' (given in 1827, published 1828) and 'Philosophie des Sprache und des Wortes' (given in December 1828 and published posthumously), are reissued here in an 1847 English translation. The first (...) presents Schlegel's understanding of philosophy as independent of theology or politics, concerned with the 'inner spiritual life' of humankind. The second explores the nature of communication through language and art. Schlegel argues that full human consciousness cannot be restored by Enlightenment science, but only by divine revelation and redemption. He offers no ready-made solutions, but encourages his listeners to develop their own responses to these questions. (shrink)

Terrorism challenges our Western world system with a new form of war. Terror contrasts strongly with the Western world's concept of freedom. Thus, an aggravation of this conflict is inevitable. In terms of technical equipment, we are prepared. Mentally, we are not. We know the mental treasures of mankind. We know examples of similar situations, which have happened before. We never wanted to meet them again. Thus, our awakening is even more terrifying. Referring to quite contrasting systems, eras, philosophers and (...) historical events, the volume shows what has to be taken into consideration. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

In the established space-time coordinate-transformation (STCT) interpretation of special relativity theory, relativistic changes are consequent upon the Lorentz transformation of coordinate clocks and rods between relatively moving systems. In the proposed alternative interpretation, relativistic changes occur only in association with physical interactions, and are direct alterations in the variables of the observed system. Since space-time and momentum-energy are conjugate four-vectors, transformation of a space or time variable of a system is to be expected only if there is a concomitant transformation (...) of the corresponding momentum or energy variable. The Lorentz invariance of the scalar entropy functionS supports the interaction interpretation; timet=f(S) of a macroscopic, entropy clock should give a Lorentz-invariant time measure, and an illustrative entropy clock is discussed. Noninteracting physical processes may be called Clausius processes, in contrast to Lorentz processes for which there is interaction and associated Lorentz transformation. Changes of energy and frequency, withE=hv, are instances of the parallel relativistic transformations. Likewise, the variation with velocity in decay time of mesons follows directly from the relativistic energy transformation of decay products; this relationship is shown for muons by a simple calculation with β-decay theory. (shrink)

Critic, poet and philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel was a leading figure of German Romanticism. In the two years before his untimely death, he wrote three cycles of lectures intended as part of a larger project to lay the foundations of a new general philosophy. Two of these cycles, 'Philosophie des Lebens' and 'Philosophie des Sprache und des Wortes', are reissued here in an 1847 English translation. The first presents Schlegel's understanding of philosophy as independent of theology or politics, concerned with (...) the 'inner spiritual life' of humankind. The second explores the nature of communication through language and art. Schlegel argues that full human consciousness cannot be restored by Enlightenment science, but only by divine revelation and redemption. He offers no ready-made solutions, but encourages his listeners to develop their own responses to these questions. (shrink)

Relative distance and velocity magnitudes between two arbitrarily moving particles are independent of an observer's reference frame, and may be used to construct theoretically a clock whose rate is Lorentz-invariant. This result is in accord with the principle of relativity, using the interaction interpretation: Relativistic changes arise in association with momentum-energy transfer, rather than in consequence of velocity-induced changes in measuring clocks and rods.

Despite widespread support for the idea of measuring EI as an ability based on Mayer and Salovey’s model, only a few performance-based EI tests have been developed. I argue that both the original and updated ability EI model provide little guidance for a theory-driven generation of items and their scoring, as the functions and processes associated with high and low EI are not specified in enough detail. One solution is to draw on theories from other fields when creating a measurement (...) rationale for a new EI test. I illustrate this approach by describing two new tests measuring emotional understanding and emotion management. (shrink)

Authenticity is often defined as the extent to which people feel that they know and express their true selves. Research in the psychological sciences suggests that people view true selves as more morally good than bad and that this “virtuous” true self may be a central component of authenticity. In fact, there may be reasons to suspect that authenticity serves as a cue that one’s behaviors are virtuous, and feelings of authenticity may help sustain virtuous actions. However, in previous research, (...) operationalizations of virtue may not clearly capture virtue as virtue theorists might recognize it. The possibility that feelings of authenticity keep people oriented toward virtuous activities is compatible with theorizing, but the precise ways that it might do so has not received direct conceptual or empirical scrutiny. We propose an interdisciplinary hypothesis of how feelings of authenticity could function to serve as a feedback mechanism for virtuous behavior. Feelings of authenticity could play a role in sustaining motivation to engage in virtuous activity insofar as the experience of subjective authenticity encourages one to approach that activity or environment in the future. Furthermore, virtuous behavior incorporates a few key elements that are predictive of experiencing subjective authenticity. We review emerging research that offers initial support for the idea that authenticity may guide sustained and virtuous civic action and develop a theoretical framework that positions authenticity as integral to sustained virtuous behavior. (shrink)

Contrairement à une idée reçue, les religions fabriquent de nombreuses différences : c’est une façon de donner sens au monde. La difficulté vient de ce qu’elles ne coïncident pas avec les différenciations et les séparations modernes. Du coup, les différences religieuses du passé peuvent s’effacer, mais aussi s’exacerber dans des formes identitaires. Mais elles peuvent aussi rappeler à la modernité que le franchissement de certaines limites en certains domaines l’expose au risque de « déraillements » .Contrary to a received idea, (...) religions create a great many differences in their attempts to give meaning to the world. The difficulty arises from the fact that these differences do not coincide with the differentiations and separations of modern times. As a result, the religious differences of the past can fade away, but they can also become exacerbated through forms of identity-building. Nevertheless, they can also be a reminder to modern times that crossing over certain boundaries in certain areas can create risks of “derailment”. (shrink)

It can scarcely be said to be a self-contradictory property to be in two places at the same time any more than for an object to be at two times in the same place. The perplexities of the quantum theory of energy sometimes seem to suggest that the possibility ought not to be overlooked; …A. S. Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation, Cambridge, 1920There are three elements involved in physical time. The most primitive of the three is the fact of extension (...) in time. We express this fact by saying that things “endure” in time, or by saying that the universe is not an event of one moment only. Extension in time is such a fundamental and pervasive element of our experience, that we can hardly define it other than by denotatively indicating it. Time extension is basic to the other two elements of time. (shrink)

The experimental situation proposed by Fisk consists of a light source in a system S which sends a signal to two observers, one located at a distance x1 from the source and at rest in S, and the other moving away from the source at a speed v, in such a manner that its position coincides with the point x1 when the light signal reaches x1. The moving observer's coordinate system may be designated as S'. Further, it is assumed that (...) there is a half-silvered mirror associated with the moving observer, and that the light signal reaches the mirror so that part of the signal is received by the S' observer and part is received by the stationary S observer; each observer considers the light to reach him when he is at point x1. (shrink)

Wormald proposes to remove the anomalous absorption of photons in the light clock by making a relativistic correction for absorption frequencies in the mirrors. This would require different corrections for atoms in mirrors 1 and 2, even though both have the same velocity relative to the observer. A relativistic time transformation by direct velocity dependence of time rate is different from a transformation between clocks with Lorentz-invariant proper time readings. With ascription of an invariant proper time to the photon clock, (...) one loses its property of directly illustrating the relativistic time transformation. (shrink)

In two studies, we tested how the expression of civic hope in narratives and the perceived authenticity of civic/political actions relate to civic/political engagement. In a cross-sectional study of undergraduates (N = 230), the expression of civic hope predicted the perceived authenticity of civic actions (e.g., voting), which in turn predicted the motivation to engage in them. In a longitudinal on-line study that began 8 weeks prior to the 2020 U.S. Presidential election (N = 308 MTurk workers), overall expressions of (...) civic hope positively predicted the perceived authenticity of voting and the motivation to vote. In addition, expressions of civic hope positively predicted the perceived authenticity of voting, which in turn positively predicted the likelihood of reporting that one did vote. These findings indicate that a sense of civic hope and the experience of authenticity in political contexts may be important for democratic engagement. (shrink)

Eating locally continues to be promoted as an alternative to growing concerns related to industrialized, global, corporate agriculture. Buying from local famers and producers is seen as a way to promote a healthier diet, reduce environmental impacts, and sustain communities. The promotion of the local food movement presents the question: is it possible to feed a community primarily from the foods produced locally? We conducted a systematic analysis comparing the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) recommended dietary requirements for the (...) estimated 2008 population with annual local agricultural production for the years 2004–2008 within the counties of the Willamette Valley growing region. Our results indicate that current agricultural production in this highly fertile region does not meet the dietary needs of the local inhabitants for any of the USDA’s six food groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, meat and beans, and oils. In the most recent year of our analysis, 2008, Willamette Valley agriculture production met 67% of annual required grains, 10% of vegetable needs, 24% of fruits, 59% of dairy, 58% of meat and beans, and 0% of dietary oil requirements. Over the past 5 years there have been significant fluctuations in crop production, particularly in 2006 when grain yields dropped to 29% of needs met. Additionally, many of these commodities are exported as cash crops, thus not contributing to meeting local food needs. We discuss these results as well as areas of potential for increasing production of edible crops for local consumption in the region. (shrink)

Friedrich Schlegel er kendt som en af grundlæggerne af den tidlige tyske romantik og som den, der gennem sin konversion forsøgte at springe ud af dennes "ironiens ironi" 1) i en katolsk konservatisme.

This article begins from the assumption that what was once an integral dimension of progress—the development of literature and of art more generally—now lies outside its scope. The essay falls into three parts that juxtapose French with German intellectual history. The first part examines the notion of literary progress developed by Charles Perrault and Fontenelle, as well as the opposition to it by Boileau and other antiquarians, during the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes in the later seventeenth century. The (...) second part treats the reception of those arguments during the eighteenth century by J. C. Gottsched, J. J. Bodmer, and J. J. Breitinger. Special attention is given to the paradox that Gottsched, the leader of the German antiquarians, and Bodmer, the leader of the German progressives, were equally devoted to the Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophical system and thus that German Romanticism, heavily indebted to Bodmer's poetics, had roots in rationalist philosophy. The essay's third part discusses ideas of literary progress in the writings of the early Romantics J. G. Herder and Friedrich Schlegel. As these discussions show, the conception of general progress was formed in a field that has since dissociated itself from progress's march. (shrink)

“This book is the first authoritative analysis of the theory of translation in German Romanticism. In a systematic study of Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, and Hölderlin, Berman demonstrates the importance of the theory of translation for an understanding of German romantic culture, arguing that never before has the concept of translation been meditated in such detail and such depth. Indeed, fundamental questions that arise again today, such as the question concerning the proper versus the literal, of the Other (...) to a given culture, the essence of the work of art, and of language, all these issues, and many more, are shown to have been premeditated in a most important manner by these German Romantics. (shrink)

Carnap famously argued that metaphysics unavoidably involves a confusion between science and poetry. Unlike the lyric poet, who does not attempt to make an argument, the metaphysician attempts to make an argument while simultaneously lacking in musical talent. Carnap’s objection that metaphysics unavoidably involves a blend of philosophy and poetry is not a 20th century insight. Plato, in his beautifully crafted Phaedo, presents us with the imprisoned Socrates, who having been condemned to death for practicing philosophy in the Apology, has (...) a dream in which he realizes that he ought to make music. In this dialogue, however, Plato indicates no hint of the scorn that Carnap has for metaphysics—rather Socrates’ friends find him setting Aesop’s fables to verse. In the modern era, Nietzsche re-introduced the ‘music making Socrates’ in his Birth of Tragedy. But Nietzsche is not the first to revive the concept in modern philosophy. Before Nietzsche’s call for a new music-making Socrates, the early German Romantics, in particular Schlegel, explicitly called for the identification of poetry and science in the concept of Poesie. As Schlegel writes: ‘Alle Kunst soll Wissenschaft werden, und alle Wissenschaft Kunst werden; Poesie und Philosophie sollen vereinigt sein.’ On the one hand, in Ion Socrates is not wrong to critique Ion for not knowing the significance of his own work. On the other hand, Socrates himself recognizes in Phaedo that he is guilty of failing to heed the call to make music. Long misunderstood, the Romantic concept of Poesie is not mere irrationalism, for it offers an aesthetic metaphysics of the Absolute. Romanticism is indeed a philosophy of the Absolute, but one which cannot conceive of any solution to the profound impasses that confront philosophical knowing except by learning to make music. (shrink)

This paper investigates the new form of writing—the fragmentary project—that Friedrich Schlegel developed in response to Kant’s systematic philosophy.The fragments, I argue, are not anti-systematic; rather, they elucidate the idea that philosophy, like the modern work of art, no longer represents the unity of a closed system but a unity beyond the system. The fragmentary project is an ambitious attempt to find a form of philosophical coherence beyond the compulsion of a system. In contrast to the traditional view which regards (...) the fragment as expressing relativistic, skeptic, and at bottom, anarchic sentiments, this account views the fragment as a figure of writing that does not represent but itself enacts the movement toward greater coherence and communication. (shrink)

_Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde and the Fragments _ was first published in 1971. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. For the last century and a half, Friedrich Schlegel has enjoyed a reputation for being the critical grey eminence behind the coming to power of the Romantic Movement. It was Schlegel, in his three series of aphoristic fragments _, who actually first defined and (...) employed the word "romantic" in the present sense; and it was he who in a chaotic, fragmentary, and often mysterious but forceful manner first proclaimed the doctrine that was to usher in the modern age in literature. He too was among the first to put his new program into practice in the shape of his unfinished _Lucinde_,a work variously denounced as pornography and heralded as a forerunner of modern novelistic experimentation, and probably the most famous novel to come out of German Romanticism. Both the _Fragments _and _Lucinde_,along with a brilliant _tour de force_, the "Essay on Incomprehensibility," are available now for the first time in a complete English translation in this volume, together with a brief scholarly introduction. This translation will enable non-German readers to examine at first hand the work of a man whom Rene Wellck has called "one of the greatest critics of history." At a time when the function of criticism is coming once again under close skeptical scrutiny, Friedrich Schlegel's unorthodox, unsystematic but seminal critical mind—all of literature, philosophy, art, and history were grist to his mill—should find many sympathetic readers. The book will be of particular interest to theorists of literature and fiction, comparative literature scholars, and historians of the intellectual history of Germany, and it is appropriate for course use in German and comparative literature classes. (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)

We attempt to offer a new interpretation of Schlegel’s original solution for the problem of the new mythology. We claim that, while grasping the problem of the missing center as the structure of modern thought, Schlegel develops a theory of literature which implies an ontology of time. We advance that, by identifying myth with romantic literature, Schlegel’s argumentative economy leads him to apply the metaphysical predicates of myth to romantic literature as such. We propose then to read the status of (...) literary forms as constituting the substance which precedes them but, paradoxically, only exists through them. (shrink)

The term “irony” has always found itself caught up in philosophical discourse, yet this term has only been elevated to the status of a philosophical concept relatively recently along the trajectory of the movement of philosophy. In fact, the philosophical centrality of irony can be traced to the Romantics at the turn of the 19th century and, in particular, to the writings of Friedrich Schlegel, even though the topic of “Socratic irony” has been discussed from Plato’s time on. This is (...) to say that, although it has long been a pondered over that philosophical points can be made ironically, i.e., socratically, the notion that philosophical discourse, philosophy itself, might be essentially informed by irony is a relatively recent proposal. (shrink)

The term “irony” has always found itself caught up in philosophical discourse, yet this term has only been elevated to the status of a philosophical concept relatively recently along the trajectory of the movement of philosophy. In fact, the philosophical centrality of irony can be traced to the Romantics at the turn of the 19th century and, in particular, to the writings of Friedrich Schlegel, even though the topic of “Socratic irony” has been discussed from Plato’s time on. This is (...) to say that, although it has long been a pondered over that philosophical points can be made ironically, i.e., socratically, the notion that philosophical discourse, philosophy itself, might be essentially informed by irony is a relatively recent proposal. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Schlegel states “... the photon clock when interpreted as a device for showing the Lorentz transformation of time does actually involve a violation of basic relativity principles.” His conclusion is false, and is based on an incorrect analysis of the photon clock in two reference frames with relative motion. The purpose of this note is to present a corrected analysis and show that such an analysis is consistent with basic relativity principles.

This essay investigates what a nuanced and revisionary interpretation of Fichte’s Critical-idealist philosophy could reveal about its impact on the philosophic thought of Friedrich Schlegel. It argues that Schlegel sees the Wissenschaftslehre through the lens of the distinction Fichte famous draws between the “spirit” (Geist) and the “letter” (Buchstaben) of a philosophy. He considers the spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre to lie in its acute awareness of its own limitation as a work of art and its letter in the deductive or (...) demonstrative form it inevitably assumes upon being expounded. In the face of the discrepancy, Schlegel rejects the letter of the Wissenschaftslehre in favor of its spirit. (shrink)

This essay investigates what a nuanced and revisionary interpretation of Fichte’s Critical-idealist philosophy could reveal about its impact on the philosophic thought of Friedrich Schlegel. It argues that Schlegel sees the Wissenschaftslehre through the lens of the distinction Fichte famous draws between the “spirit” (Geist) and the “letter” (Buchstaben) of a philosophy. He considers the spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre to lie in its acute awareness of its own limitation as a work of art and its letter in the deductive or (...) demonstrative form it inevitably assumes upon being expounded. In the face of the discrepancy, Schlegel rejects the letter of the Wissenschaftslehre in favor of its spirit. (shrink)

Abstract:In 1798, Friedrich Schlegel published a review of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, extolling Johann Wolfgang Goethe's book as a masterpiece. At the same time, he commenced work on Lucinde, which caused a moral scandal and was criticized widely. Here, I retrace several threads of Schlegel's novel that testify to the fact that his assessment of Goethe's work may not have been so unequivocally favorable as it might seem at first sight. When looking at Wilhelm Meister through Lucinde's eyes, we can see (...) that Schlegel challenges the Goethean philosophy of man, and his novel remains the only consistent record of this criticism. (shrink)

I consider Friedrich Schlegel as a philosopher, and argue that Schlegel’s philosophical views must be understood in relation to his emphasis on history and historical knowledge and his claim that philosophy must emerge from and in relation to life. Thus, in deep contrast to two influential interpretations of Schlegel--Hegel’s view of Schlegel’s philosophy as a poetic exaggeration of the Fichtean subject and the postmodern view of Schlegel as a deeply sceptical anti-idealist--I contend that Schlegel sough to develop a historically-informed philosophy (...) and maintained that it is only through concrete knowledge of political and social realities that we can understand the nature of morality and achieve moral progress. Furthermore, I argue that Schlegel did not entirely forgo the possibility of systematic knowledge, but developed a new conception of systematicity based on his understanding of living or organic beings. (shrink)

According to Friedrich Schlegel: “The Romantic imperative demands [that] all nature and science should become art [and] art should become nature and science”; “[P]oetry and philosophy should be made unified”, and “life and society [should be made] poetic”. The aim of this paper is to explain why Schlegel believes that this is an imperative that constrains philosophy and ordinary life. I argue that the answer to this question requires that we regard the Romantic imperative as a response to the skeptical (...) worry that was introduced by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi as nihilism. The aspect of nihilism that I discuss concerns the worry that we are incapable of experiencing individuals qua individuals. According to Schlegel, this skeptical threat requires a reorientation in thought and philosophical method, one that must be modeled on the aesthetic orientation towards the world. More precisely, the experience of individuals qua individuals, which is called into question by the nihilist, depends on the special normative structure of the creative and critical attitude towards art and beauty that Schlegel called Romantic Poesie. Kant failed to address nihilism because he failed to recognize that the normative structure that he himself ascribed to the judgment of taste is required also for experiencing individuals as individuals, and for being properly responsive to persons. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a rehabilitation of early German Romanticism in philosophy, including a renewed interest in Romantic ethics. Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) is acknowledged as a key figure in this movement. While significant work has been done on some aspects of his thought, his views on ethics have been surprisingly overlooked. This essay aims to redress this shortcoming in the literature by examining the core themes of Schlegel’s ethics during the early phase of his career (1793–1801). I argue that Schlegel’s (...) position stands out against both the dominant Kantianism of his era, as well as against some of fellow Romantics. I show how Schlegel anticipates contemporary philosophers such as Bernard Williams, Harry Frankfurt, John McDowell, and Stanley Cavell in both his criticisms of traditional moral theory and in his attempts to develop a positive position. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant Yearbook Jahrgang: 8 Heft: 1 Seiten: 63-86.

Goethe and Friedrich Schiller stand together immortalised in Ernst Rietschel's statue at the centre of Weimar. In their lifetime, Goethe and Schiller shaped the culture of German-speaking lands, not only through their poetry, plays, and novels, but also in their role as editors of journals that helped to set the intellectual tone of the period. Schiller's journalDie Horen and Goethe'sPropyläen, although short-lived, were important literary vehicles of the period and provided a forum that brought scientists, historians, philosophers, and poets into (...) conversation with one another. The late 1700s and early 1800s were years of intense intellectual development in Germanspeaking lands; the arts flourished and aesthetics developed as a serious branch of philosophy.During the ‘Age of Goethe and Schiller’, philosophy was dominated by Kant's philosophy and its post-Kantian variations. A problem with traditional philosophical histories of this period is the overwhelmingly Hegelian reading of it, a reading that subsumes all of the so-called minor figures under the shadows of the great system builder, Hegel. Richard Kroner's influentialVon Kant bis Hegelof 1921 set the tone for this reading. Silenced by such narratives are the voices of the early German Romantics, a group of thinkers whose impudence created problems for them, and whose work posed hermeneutical challenges that continue to plague a proper understanding of the movement and the worth of its contributions. As we shall see, Hegel himself began to prepare the ground for a history of philosophy that would dismiss the contributions of the early German Romantics, a dismissal that is unfair and unfortunate: unfair because it is based on false characterisations of the movement, and unfortunate because such misreadings lead us to overlook the wealth of insights offered by the early German Romantics. (shrink)

In this paper I reconstruct Schlegel's idea that romantic poetry can re-enchant nature in a way that is uniquely compatible with modernity's epistemic and political values of criticism, self-criticism, and freedom. I trace several stages in Schlegel's early thinking concerning nature. First, he criticises modern culture for its analytic, reflective form of rationality which encourages a disenchanting view of nature. Second, he re-evaluates this modern form of rationality as making possible an ironic, romantic, poetry, which portrays natural phenomena as mysterious (...) indications of an underlying reality that transcends knowledge. Yet Schlegel relies here on a contrast between human freedom and natural necessity that reinstates a disenchanting view of nature as fully intelligible and predictable. Third, therefore, he reconceives nature as inherently creative and poetic, rethinking human creativity as consisting in participation in natural creative processes. He replaces his earlier "idealist" view that reality is in itself unknowable with the "idealist realist" view that reality is knowable as creative nature, yet, in its spontaneous creativity, still eludes full comprehension. I argue that Schlegel's third approach to the re-enchantment of nature is his most consistent and satisfactory, and is important for contemporary environmental philosophy in showing how re-enchantment is compatible with modernity. (shrink)

In its relationship with that which might be considered to exist beyond the perceived limits of philosophical discourse—for the sake of brevity let us call it the Absolute—Early German Romanticism tends to be presented either as mystically positivistic and therefore wholly unphilosophical, or as philosophically informed and committed to a sort of critical antifoundationalism that offers, at best, a negative non-relation to the Absolute. Naturally enough, these two opposing positions give rise to opposing reconstructions of Romantic aesthetics. Whilst broadly in (...) agreement with the latter interpretation, this article argues, in relation to Friedrich Schlegel, that in the rush to establish the philosophical credentials of Frühromantik, some of its complexity has been jettisoned and along with it a more accurate understanding of the guiding spirit of Romantic aesthetics. Drawing on Fichte and Walter Benjamin, it will be argued that Schlegel's notion of the Wechselerweis is intended to bridge the ideal and the real in a positive experience of negation and that his much-vaunted aesthetics amounts to an attempt to develop a philosophico-literary form that would be able to express or, rather, perform precisely this. (shrink)

Schlegel’s irony, which is the main author along with Solger, of irony in German romanticism, becomes a reinterpretation of the figure of the ironic Plato’s Socrates . Nevertheless, his proposal of a pragmatic irony was rejected in a violent way by Hegel and Kierkegaard, that reread Socrates and his irony in a different sense of Schlegel. For these the proposal of the romantic author was a challenge to the society that would end up destroying it, but, from our perspective such (...) semantic reading of the schlegelian irony is very weak and, rather, the proposal of the German writer can be understood like a way of a constructive critic of the political community and we can learn much of Schlegel today.La ironía de Schlegel, máximo representante, junto con Solger, de la ironía en el romanticismo alemán supuso una reinterpretación de la figura del Sócrates irónico de Platón. Sin embargo, su propuesta de una ironía pragmática fue rechazada de manera violenta por Hegel y Kierkegaard, que releyeron a Sócrates y su ironía enfrentándola a la de Schlegel. Para estos la propuesta del autor romántico era un reto a la sociedad que acabaría destruyéndola, pero, desde nuestra perspectiva tal lectura semántica de la ironía schlegeliana no se sostiene y, más bien, la propuesta del escritor alemán puede entenderse como un modo de crítica constructiva de la comunidad política de la que todavía hoy podemos aprender mucho. (shrink)