Abstract
Certain poetic and philosophic texts of the Romantic period respond to a subjectivism they perceive in the wake of Kant’s critiques. The philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie), particularly as it appears in Friedrich Schelling’s work of the 1790s, along with the notion of an idealized Greece that acts as a site of aesthetic and ontological wholeness, unite in the production of metaphors and figures of oneness that resist this subjectivism and solipsism. Nature and Hellenism join forces in the face of subjective anxiety.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Fichte claimed that only those of bold and independent mind could understand his system, the Wissenschaftslehre (generally translated as “Science of Knowledge”): “What sort of philosophy one chooses depends … on what sort of man one is … A man indolent by nature or dulled and distorted by mental servitude, learned luxury, and vanity will never raise himself to the level of Idealism.” Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, ed. J. H. Fichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965), 1:434–435. Regarding Fichte’s cultural impact, Friedrich Schlegel famously proclaimed the Wissenschaftslehre, along with the French Revolution and Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister , “one of the three great tendencies of the age.” Friedrich von Schlegel, Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler (Munich: Schöningh, 1979), 2:198.
- 2.
We will look more closely at Goethe’s relationship to German idealist philosophy in Chap. 3. For his argument with Schiller on Kant and idealism versus realism, see Goethe’s autobiographical essay, “Glückliches Ereignis” (“Fortunate Event”). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethes Werke, Herausgegeben im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen. 133 vols. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1887–1919), 2.11:13–20.
- 3.
More on Kleist’s “Kant crisis” in Chap. 3. See Heinrich Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Helmut Sembdner (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1984) 2:634–635.
- 4.
“Wie ist Emfindung in mir möglich?” From Ideas Toward a Philosophy of Nature (Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, 1797), a text derived from Schelling’s Jena lecture notes. Friedrich Schelling, Schellings Werke nach der Originalausgabe in neuer Ordnung, 12 vols, ed. Manfred Schröter (Munich: E. H. Beck and R. Oldenburg, 1927) 2:25.
- 5.
Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781–1801 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2002), 1.
- 6.
Percy Shelley, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat (New York: Norton, 2002), 406 (lines 573–574).
- 7.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture. Open Court Classics. [Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst. English and German], trans. Elfriede Heyer and Roger C. Norton (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987), 32, 33.
- 8.
Goethe, Werke, 1.47:12.
- 9.
For the term vibrant object , I look to Jane Bennet’s notion of “thing-power” and “vibrant materiality”—the ability objects have “to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own”—though her ideas differ from Schelling’s Naturphilosohie in significant respects. Contemporary new materialist theories, including Bennet’s, forcefully reject the notion that objects gain their vitality from some extraneous absolute spirit that permeates them. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), vii.
- 10.
Schelling, Werke, 3:18.
- 11.
Shelley, Poetry and Prose, 407 (lines 578–579).
- 12.
Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece, trans. Ross Benjamin (Brooklyn: Archipelago Books, 2008), 12. Friedrich Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe, ed. Friedrich Beissner and Adolf Beck (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1943–1985), 3:8–9.
- 13.
Schelling employs this term, allgemeiner Organismus, frequently in his works on the philosophy of nature. We will return to it a number of times in the ensuing study.
- 14.
Michael Vater, “Introduction: The Odyssey of Consciousness,” in Schelling, F. W. J. System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), trans. Peter Heath (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978) xi.
- 15.
Schelling, Werke, 2:347.
- 16.
I cite the poem as it appears in its original publication: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Martin Wieland, Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1804 (Tübingen: Cotta, 1803), 106 (line 23).
- 17.
“Was die Welt/Im Innersten zusammenhält” (Faust, Part I, lines 382–383). Goethe, Werke, 1.14:28.
- 18.
Goethe, Werke, 1.47:12.
- 19.
Schelling, Werke, 3:625.
- 20.
Schelling, Werke, 3:625.
- 21.
Shelley, Poetry and Prose, 392.
Bibliography
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781–1801. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2002.
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Goethes Werke, Herausgegeben im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen. 133 vols. (in 143). Weimar: Böhlau, 1887–1919.
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, and Martin Wieland. Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1804. Tübingen: Cotta, 1803.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Friedrich Beissner and Adolf Beck. Grosse Stuttgarter Ausgabe. 8 vols. (in 15). Stuttgart: Cotta; W. Kohlhammer, 1943–1985.
———. Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Brooklyn: Archipelago Books, 2008.
Kleist, Heinrich. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Edited by Helmut Sembdner. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1984.
Schelling, Friedrich. Schellings Werke nach der Originalausgabe in neuer Ordnung. 12 Vols. Edited by Manfred Schröter. Munich: E.H. Beck and R. Oldenburg, 1927.
Schlegel, Friedrich von. Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe. Edited by Ernst Behler. Munich: Schöningh, 1979.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Edited by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2002.
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim. Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture. Open Court Classics. [Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst. English and German]. Translated by Elfriede Heyer and Roger C. Norton. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987.
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Davis, W.S. (2018). Introduction: Romantic Hellenism, the Philosophy of Nature, and Subjective Anxiety. In: Romanticism, Hellenism, and the Philosophy of Nature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91292-9_1
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