Who's Who From Kant To Hegel II Art and The Absolute

Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.
Who’s Who from Kant to Hegel II: Art and the Absolute
Peter Graham Thielke*
Pomona College
Abstract
Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’, which began in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781 ⁄ 1787), had, by
the early 1790s, fundamentally altered the terrain of German philosophy – but not entirely in the
way that Kant had foreseen. Skeptical challenges to Kant’s discursive account of cognition, in
which experience arises from the separate faculties of sensibility and understanding, had led think-
ers such as K.L. Reinhold and J.G. Fichte to attempt to provide a first, foundational principle for
the critical philosophy. These efforts were enormously influential, but by the middle of the 1790s,
they too were facing a great deal of critical scrutiny. The central challenge to the Fichtean project
came from an unlikely quarter: a group of young thinkers and poets who are collectively known
as the early Romantics. For the Romantics, Fichte’s project remains too ‘subjectivist’, for it tries
to provide an account of the world by beginning with the conditions that govern subjectivity
alone. Rather, the Romantics argue that the world must be understood in terms of a monistic
Absolute, akin to Spinoza’s substance, in which all dualisms are overcome. It is with this step that
Absolute Idealism comes on the scene, and sets the stage for the development of Hegel’s system
in the early 1800s. This essay, which continues the story of ‘Who’s Who from Kant to Hegel I’,
examines the ways in which early Romanticism reacted to the Fichtean project, looks at a variety
of anti-foundationalist idealisms that the Romantics – in particular Hölderlin, Novalis, Schlegel,
and Schleiermacher – developed, and traces the role that Friedrich Schelling plays in offering the
first systematic account of Absolute Idealism.
Kant’s critical project of the 1780s and 1790s fundamentally changed the nature of Ger-
man philosophy, but far from bringing about its intended effect of quelling all metaphysi-
cal disputes, it instead precipitated in an intellectual crisis. Almost everyone agreed that
Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’ had vitiated any hope of continuing on with the standard
dogmatic metaphysics of the early part of the 1700s, but no consensus emerged about the
proper way forward – or, indeed, whether any progress in philosophy was possible at all.
Although Kant himself remained largely above the fray, content to allow his students and
epigones to defend his position, intense debates raged not only about the implications of
the critical system, but also about the methodological bases on which philosophy could
rest. It made, in short, for a very unsettled – yet also very exciting and interesting – intel-
lectual climate. This essay traces the emergence of a new Romantic philosophy out of
this critical crisis, from its suspicions of Kant’s and Fichte’s supposed subjectivism to its
emphasis on intellectual intuition and an esthetic grasp of the Absolute. I conclude with
Friedrich Schelling’s appropriation of this often inchoate Romantic conception of the
Absolute, and discuss how the ‘Identity Philosophy’ he develops marks the first truly sys-
tematic presentation of an Absolute Idealism.1
1. The Lay of the Land: From Kant to Fichte

In order to see how Romanticism arose in the late 1790s and early 1800s, we first need
to appreciate two related themes that characterize the period in the late 1780s and early
ª 2010 The Author

Journal Compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Who’s Who from Kant to Hegel II 399
1790s. The first concerns the variety of skeptical objections mounted against Kant’s posi-
tion; these took a number of different forms, ranging from F.H. Jacobi’s fideistic attacks
on reason to Salomon Maimon’s rationalistically minded charges that Kant failed to justify
his cognitive dualism between sensibility and understanding, but they all shared a convic-
tion that Kant’s system did not adequately respond to Humean-minded worries about the
foundations of necessity. The second – a professed desire to ‘complete’ Kant’s Copernican
turn by revealing the first principles of transcendental philosophy – can be understood as
a response to these skeptical attacks. Beginning with K.L. Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie
and then with J.G. Fichte’s Wissenschaftlehre (‘Science of Knowledge’), this foundationalist
project sought to inoculate philosophy against skepticism by providing an indubitable
ground on which to erect a truly critical philosophical edifice. For Reinhold, this took
the form of a first ‘principle of consciousness’, which holds that in cognition the repre-
sentation is related to the subject and object of experience, and is distinguished from
both; for Fichte, philosophy must begin with a primordial act of ‘positing’, in which the
subject asserts its identity with itself, and differentiates itself from the not-I. In each case,
this first principle serves as the point from which all further truths can be deduced in a
wholly systematic fashion.
Despite Kant’s antagonism toward all these attempts to ‘improve’ the critical philoso-
phy, the new foundationalist urge proved enormously influential. At the University of
Jena, Reinhold delivered a series of widely attended lectures disseminating his new sys-
tem, and Fichte, Reinhold’s immediate successor, proved even more popular: his lectures
drew large and enthusiastic crowds who were on edge to hear the latest developments of
the emerging Wissenshaftslehre. Even at the height of his popularity, however, critics were
beginning to turn their sights on Fichte’s system, and what might have initially seemed
like a victory for the ‘completed’ critical philosophy soon led to the emergence of an
Absolute Idealism that – although indebted to Fichte – offers a markedly different con-
ception of what the philosophical enterprise must involve.
2. Against Subjectivism
Although all of the German Idealists are, in one way or another, beholden to Kant, the
crucial distinction between their various positions can perhaps be best seen in light of the
reaction to Kant’s presumed subjectivism. Although Reinhold and Fichte sought to pro-
vide a secure foundation upon which a critical system could rest, their attempts to clear
this ground remained largely within the scope of consciousness. Reinhold’s principle and
Fichte’s account of positing each are taken to be constitutive of a cognitive subject’s
activity, and as a result, objectivity is understood in relation to the conditions that govern
subjectivity. Just as with Kant, for whom the conditions on cognition dictate the kinds of
objects that humans can know – and which as a consequence limit our knowledge to
things as they appear rather than as they are in themselves – Reinhold and Fichte advance
what might be called a ‘subjectivist’ account of knowledge.
It was precisely this subjectivism, however, that quickly became a target for the next
generation of idealists. An acceptance of subjectivism struck these thinkers as conceding
far too quickly that we can never grasp the real nature of the world. By beginning with
the subject’s activity of positing as the first principle of philosophy, for example, Fichte’s
system can account for objects only in relation to the subject’s act of positing – but this
means, the later idealists claim that we can only grasp objects as they appear to the sub-
ject, rather than the true nature of the Absolute or of substance that is taken to underlie
the particular objects we experience.2
ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

400 Who’s Who from Kant to Hegel II
One of the key motivations behind this rejection of subjectivism was the reemergence
of Spinoza’s monism.3 In the Ethics, a young generation of German philosophers discov-
ered not just an uncompromising rationalism, but also an account of Substance that was
resolutely anti-subjectivist.4 The challenge to subjectivism, however, was mounted in full
recognition of the Kantian restrictions on the limits of human cognition. The later ideal-
ists, in other words, were not simply trying to resurrect a dogmatic rationalism, but were
instead attempting the admittedly difficult task of defending monism in light of Kant’s
transcendental idealism.5 For these thinkers, the various dualisms in Kant were then only
apparent, and could be unified in a more basic ground in the Absolute.6
But, if Spinoza’s monism offered a compelling alternative to Kant’s subjectivism, it also
came with a rather steep price of denying any freedom in the world. This, in part, was
what had prevented both Kant and Fichte from embracing Spinozism, as they each
believed that doing so would undermine the possibility of moral action. Moreover, Spi-
noza denied any purpose or teleological causes that drive the development of substance.
This, however, would seem to preclude attaching meaning or aim to the Absolute, and
would threaten to make the world merely mechanical. In the face of these worries, as
Beiser (2002) shows, the new movement sought to augment Spinozism by incorporating
aspects of Platonism and Herder’s vitalism7 as well (350), and the central challenge was
managing to do justice to all three of these inspirations.
3. Romanticism and Anti-Foundational Idealism

It is a bit surprising that the first steps down this path were taken by thinkers more often
identified as poets than as philosophers – but the seeds of Absolute Idealism clearly lie in
early German Romanticism.8 Although the Romantics anticipate the full flowering of
Absolute Idealism in Hegel’s system,9 however, they differ from Hegel in several crucial
respects. The key issue concerns the possibility of philosophical foundations, for the early
Romantics largely abandon the project of finding an indubitable and rational first princi-
ple for philosophy.10 Instead, they focus on the approximation of the Absolute in art and
poetry: the Absolute becomes, in their hands, something that could be at least partially
expressed, if not conceptualized, through artistic activity. Where Hegel remains fully
committed to reason alone as a guide to revealing the Absolute, the Romantics reject this
wholly rationalistic project in favor of an esthetic grasp of the nature of the world.11
To say that the early Romantics were wary of reason’s presumed ability to alone reveal
the truths of the world, however, does not mean that they abandoned rationality in favor
of sentiment. Later Romanticism might have largely disdained reason, but the early
Romantics instead sought to supplement rationality with something like esthetic intui-
tion.12 In this respect, they were as much philosophers as they were poets. Friedrich Höl-
derlin had been Schelling’s and Hegel’s classmate in Tubingen, and had attended Fichte’s
lectures at Jena in 1794.13 Friedrich von Hardenburg (who wrote under the penname
Novalis) had also attended Reinhold’s and Fichte’s lectures, and he too maintained a keen
interest in philosophy. The same is true of August and Friedrich Schlegel, who edited the
short-lived but influential journal Athenaeum. Although their views sometimes diverge,
the common thread between all these thinkers concerns the relation between art and phi-
losophy. This interest largely arose from Kant’s discussion of esthetics in the Critique of
Judgment, from Goethe, and from the playwright Friedrich Schiller (1982), who had criti-
cized Kant’s moral theory for divorcing duty and feeling: for Schiller, Kant’s rigoristic
ethics wrongly precluded any element of moral feeling. Instead, Schiller urged that moral
dignity must be accompanied by grace. True virtue requires an esthetic dimension – the

beautiful soul does her duty with joy – and the early Romantics extend this sentiment to
philosophy more broadly. For them, it is not through ratiocination alone, but through
esthetic experience that we can begin to grasp the truths of the world.
The roots of this movement can be seen in Hölderlin’s (1988) fragment ‘The Oldest
System-Program of German Idealism’,14 which holds that philosophy and poetry must go
hand in hand, because ‘the highest act of reason … is an aesthetic act … truth and good-
ness are united as sisters only in beauty. The philosopher must possess as much aesthetic
capacity as the poet’. And, it continues,
We need a new mythology; however, this mythology must be at the service of ideas, it must
become a mythology of reason. Until we render the ideas aesthetic, that is mythological, they
will not be of interest to the populace, and vice versa. (155)
In large part, Hölderlin was reacting against Fichte. Growing criticism in Jena of Fichte’s
project15 had already begun to emerge, and in part Hölderlin followed suit. In the frag-
ment ‘Judgment and Being’, Hölderlin claims that where subject and object are com-
pletely united, ‘there and nowhere else can be spoken of Being proper, as is the case with
intellectual intuition’ (37). But Fichte’s first principles do allow for just this separation, and
as such they do not express the nature of Being. Instead, Hölderlin urges a more radical,
Spinozistic position: dualisms cannot be fully overcome until everything rests on the
Absolute. As Beiser (2002) claims, Hölderlin sees in the Absolute the overcoming of the
dualism of dogmatism and criticism, and aims to develop ‘a standpoint that encompasses
them both’ (389). The only way to gain an even partial grasp of the Absolute is through
esthetic sense, in which we approach something like an intellectual intuition. Pinkard
(2002) makes clear that this involves not any kind of transcendent or divine insight, but
rather an immediate apprehension of one’s own existence. In this awareness, consciousness
and being are one, yet as it precedes judgment, this unity cannot be discursively described;
rather, it must be intuited, or felt, immediately. But, as Pinkard continues, this does not
mean that there is no way at all to present this immediate grasp of self-consciousness, as
in art the self that is ‘neither nature nor freedom’ can be at least obliquely glimpsed.16
The full flowering of the Romantic movement shares with Hölderlin an emphasis on
the esthetic dimension of thought, and the conviction that only by means of artistic pre-
sentations can philosophical truths be grasped. As Frank (2004) points out, the basic con-
viction of all the Romantics lies in ‘the supposition that Being – as the simple seamless
sameness, in contrast to the identity of the Kantian–Fichtean cogito – cannot be under-
stood on the basis of the relations of judgment and reflection’ (125). And, this is reflected
in a common suspicion about Fichte’s foundationalism that underlies both Novalis’ and
Schlegel’s views.17
Novalis was also highly influenced by Fichte,18 but, like Hölderlin, he found Fichte’s
project too subjectivist. Novalis’ skepticism extended not just to its subjectivism, how-
ever, but to the more general goal of founding a philosophical system at all. Here, Nova-
lis adopts something like Kant’s critical methodology, but he draws a different conclusion
from it: if all knowledge is limited to experience, and if the Absolute transcends the limits
of knowledge, then there can be no systematic presentation of philosophy, as systematici-
ty demands a first – and hence absolute, unconditioned – principle. In Novalis’ hands,
the Absolute plays a role akin to that of a regulative idea in Kant: it is not something that
can be directly cognized, but rather guides our endeavors as an end that nonetheless can-
not be fully met. Novalis is then pessimistic about the prospects for wholly uncovering
the Absolute: in his famous phrase, ‘We seek the unconditioned, and always find only
things’ (Novalis 1997: 23).

Despite this pessimism, Novalis does not abandon philosophy, but he does recast its
aspirations. Novalis (1997) poignantly says that ‘Philosophy is actually homesickness – the
urge to be everywhere at home’ (135). But, given our limited natures, this quest cannot
be fulfilled. As Pinkard (2002) notes, for Novalis our fundamental being is something that
remains ultimately inaccessible to us – we search for an absolute foundation ‘only to find
such a ground continually receding from us’ (146). And as Frank (2007) points out, No-
valis views systematicity as a ‘necessary fiction’, which is not discovered but rather
invented or imagined – and this too must be understood in esthetic terms. But for Nova-
lis, unlike for Hölderlin, this esthetic dimension unmasks only an infinite task; the world
must be understood as an incomplete work of art, which is amenable to our striving to
comprehend it, but which can only be asymptotically approached. This involves what
Novalis termed ‘magical idealism’ – not in the sense of spells and occult practices, but
rather of thinking of nature as ‘marvelous’, as something animated and partly within our
control.19 The key lies in the relation between thought and object: Novalis urges that
if you cannot make your thoughts into external things, then make external things into thoughts.
If you could not make a thought into an independent soul…then do the reverse with outside
things – and transform them into thoughts. Both operations are idealistic. Whoever has them
perfectly in his power is the magical idealist. (126)
Despite its oddity, it is important to note that this stands as a normative, or regulative,
demand: we ought to treat the world as if it were open to magic idealism. And, this con-
ception of nature as wondrous and alive allowed Novalis to seek a reconciliation of realism
and idealism, since matter could be seen as an inchoate living force aligned with the
developed force of mind.20
Like his friend Novalis, Friedrich Schegel harbored suspicions of foundationalism, as
well as a commitment to the essentially esthetic grasp of the Absolute. For Schlegel
(1991), however, these commitments led to a more realist approach than his contempo-
raries, in which, as Beiser (2002) notes, nature exists ‘apart from and prior to any subject,
whether that subject is empirical or transcendental’ (442). Nature, however, is not
opposed to subjectivity, but rather incorporates it; the Absolute is both real and ideal, and
subjective and objective. But there cannot be any proof of this; Schlegel satirizes the phi-
losopher’s drive to define and prove as ‘demonstrations in the sense of military jargon’
(27). Schlegel’s ambivalence about systematicity is captured in his famous line that ‘It is
equally fatal for the mind to have a system and to have none. It will simply have to
decide to combine the two’ (24). The irony here is crucial, for Schlegel’s literary style –
a series of pithy aphorisms he titles ‘Fragments’ – is itself adopted with a philosophical
point in mind: if there can be no direct, systematic account of the Absolute, it must
instead be approached obliquely and ironically.21 But unlike some of the other Roman-
tics, who take the grasp of the Absolute to be something akin to an immediate esthetic
intuition, Schlegel sees philosophy as starting from a felt lack of knowledge: ‘whoever
desires the infinite’, Schlegel notes, ‘doesn’t know what he desires. But one can’t turn
this sentence around’ (6).
Schlegel’s embrace of irony – which he describes as ‘the form of paradox’ (6) – follows
not only from this felt need, but also from the obstacles that stand in the way of trying to
satisfy one’s philosophical ends. Our experience is at heart paradoxical, Schlegel suggests
‘Since nature and man contradict each other so often and so sharply, philosophy perhaps
can’t avoid doing the same’ (80), and a ‘worthy’ skepticism ‘would have to begin and
end with the assertion of and demand for an infinite number of contradictions’ (81).
Confronted by this fact, only an ironic approach to the world can hope to accommodate

it. Schlegel dismisses the other Romantic option, mysticism, as a cheap ‘philosophical rav-
ing’ (81),22 but embraces the paradox of irony, which expresses something other than
what it literally says. Philosophy is the ‘homeland’ of irony (5), but this is unstable
ground: the ironist has no final position, and no absolute certainty. Instead, irony ‘con-
tains and arouses a feeling of indissoluble antagonism between the absolute and the rela-
tive, between the impossibility and the necessity of complete communication’ (13). It is
no accident that Schlegel sees art as the complement to philosophy; indeed, philosophy
must itself be a kind of ironic art.
Although the central focus of much of the Romantic movement remains on esthetic
experience, an additional dimension was explored by the theologian Friedrich Schleierm-
acher. For Schleiermacher (1986), the intuition that grounds our grasp of the Absolute is
best described in religious terms: as he puts it in On Religion,
the contemplation of the pious is the immediate consciousness of the universal existence of all
finite things, in and through the infinite, and of all temporal things in and through the Eternal.
Religion is to seek this and find it in all that lives and moves. (36)
But although his work offers a heartfelt defense of religion against its ‘cultured despisers’,
the type of religion that Schleiermacher describes is rather idiosyncratic. As Pinkard
(2002) points out, Schleiermacher grounds religious piety in an individual intuition of the
Absolute, rather than in any kind of orthodox religious practice; a religion that derives
from other people or depends on ‘dead writing’ is nothing more than a ‘wretched echo’
(91). Indeed, Schleiermacher (2002) goes so far as to claim that the doctrines of God and
the immortality of the soul belong to religion only insofar as they contain what ‘is feeling
and immediate consciousness’, and this bears out the fact that Schleiermacher allows for a
plurality of religions, each reflecting the specific piety of an individual.23
Schleiermacher’s influential hermeneutic theory can be seen as emerging from this
robust pluralism: in order to understand another’s piety – which remains rooted in an
individual intuition of the Absolute – we must in a sense ‘think our way in’ to her posi-
tion. This requires an interpretation not just of her specific avowals, but also of the whole
‘language’ in which such statements are made; this is the task of hermeneutics, which
seeks to provide a method for just this type of interpretation.
Although many of the seeds of Absolute Idealism were planted by the early Roman-
tics,24 they did not have a real chance to flourish for the thinkers who sowed them. No-
valis died very young in 1801,25 and, in 1802, Hölderlin began to betray the signs of
madness that would soon wholly incapacitate him. The Schegels’ influential journal Athe-
naeum had already folded by this time, and Friedrich Schegel started to move away from
philosophy and toward literary theory and cultural studies. And, in the wake of a roman-
tic scandal, Schleiermacher was forced to leave Berlin for Halle, where he began to con-
centrate on theology.
4. Schelling’s Idealism
The field cleared by the early Romantics was not entirely abandoned; however, for it
provided the foundation for the development of the first truly systematic account of Abso-
lute Idealism by Friedrich Schelling.26 Initially, Schelling was a committed Fichtean; his
early work ‘On the I as the Principle of Philosophy’ (1795) presented a thoroughgoing
Fichtean line.27 Soon thereafter, however, Schelling’s exposure to a variety of objections
to Fichte’s project – both from realists like Friedrich Niethammer, and from the Roman-
tics – led to worries about the viability of the Wissenschaftlehre. Like the Romantics,

Schelling began to view Fichte’s starting points as too subjective, but unlike his contem-
poraries, Schelling was much more a systematic thinker, who, rather than rejecting first
principles, sought a foundational account of the Absolute.28
Schelling’s first steps away from Fichte took the form of a Naturphilosophie, which
presents an alternative conception of nature than is found in Fichte. Where the latter
begins with the activity of the I, Schelling takes nature as the ultimate ground, and
attempts to find a way of discovering subjectivity within objectivity. Zoller (2000)
points out that ‘conceived as the systematic counterweight to Kantian–Fichtean tran-
scendental philosophy and its idealistic derivation of nature from mind, [Schelling’s] phi-
losophy of nature takes the realist approach of deducing mind from nature’ (208). At
this stage, as Beiser (2002) notes, Schelling is developing a naturalistic account of the
world, but it is a naturalism guided by Kant’s discussion of organism in both the Cri-
tique of Judgment and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. For Kant, organic
nature cannot be reduced to merely mechanical causes, and Schelling extends this claim
to include all of nature: the world itself is taken to be a kind of organism, and individ-
ual parts of nature reflect various stages of this organic whole. In Ideas for a Philosophy of
Nature (1797), Schelling asks ‘how a world outside us, how a Nature and with it expe-
rience, is possible’ (10), and his answer comes through an explanation of natural forces
in terms of the principles of attraction and repulsion.29 In a fascinating series of steps,
Schelling dialectically ‘deduces’ the phenomena of light, electricity, magnetism, and
chemical processes from the forces of attraction and repulsion; each stage adds a further
refinement and complexity, much in the way that an organism is arranged hierarchically
into various subordinate and superior systems. In so doing, Schelling follows Kant in
dispensing with the Newtonian conception of matter as mere extension, but he breaks
with the critical system in treating these dynamical principles of matter as not regulative
but constitutive.30
Despite his growing distance from Fichte, Schelling had hoped that his position would
complement the Wissenshaftslehre’s account of self-positing, by providing an objective
ground for the subject’s activity. But his critics were not convinced, and Schelling too
quickly came to realize that the Naturphilosophie alone could not do the work demanded
of it. The difficulties came on two related fronts: the need to reconcile the objective and
the subjective elements of the Absolute, and the vexed question on how freedom could
be squared with necessity.
In the System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), Schelling struggles to find a way of
melding the subjective and the objective, and his solution comes in taking the objects of
the natural world to be both objectively real and also ‘objects for a subject’. Things in
this latter sense arise ‘freely and without necessity in us’ (11) he claims, and as such, free-
dom can be preserved in the practical activity of the transcendental subject. The world
itself is determined according to natural laws, but it is also amenable to the conscious
actions of living beings, whose organic principle cannot be explained solely in terms of
mechanistic laws.31 The natural world exists apart from us, but its objects conform to our
representations, and our representations conform to the world (11). This is possible,
Schelling continues, because the world of objects is the product of an unconscious activ-
ity of thought; it is, to echo a line from Kant, purposive without a purpose. Moreover,
in this way, Schelling thinks that we can avoid the Kantian problem of things in them-
selves, as ‘the assumption that things are just what we take them to be, so that we are
acquainted with them as they are in themselves, underlies the possibility of all experience’
(10). The pressing question, however, is how exactly we are acquainted with these
objects, and Schelling’s answer to this challenge underscores a key break with Kant:

unlike in the Critical philosophy, which barred all cognition of things in themselves,
Schelling claims that the unconscious activity that gives rise to the world can be glimpsed
esthetically: art gives expression to the unconscious, and the ‘ideal world of art and the
real world of objects are therefore products of one and the same activity’ (12). And,
Schelling (1989) continues, the philosophy of art is the keystone that caps the two pillars
of practical and theoretical philosophy.
This is a grand vision, but shortly after the publication of the System of Transcendental
Idealism, Schelling grew dissatisfied with what he viewed as the insuperable divide
between subject and object.32 Soon thereafter, Schelling embarked on a fundamental
revision of his view: no longer could one attempt to derive the self from nature, or nat-
ure from the self, but rather, the subject and the object would be taken as two aspects
of a single Absolute. In this ‘Identity Philosophy’, the self does not posit a world
opposed to it; instead, the self is only one aspect of the totality, or substance, or the
Absolute.33 Here, Spinoza’s influence persists, but the guiding light now seems to be a
kind of neo-Platonic conception of the Absolute as an initially undifferentiated, infinite
One. Unlike before, we do not dialectically reveal the Absolute, by working back from
various conditions, but instead must begin with it: the foundation is ‘just the absolute
without further determination. In this absoluteness and in the eternal act, it is utterly
one, and yet, in this unity, again immediately a totality of three unities’.34 The One –
the identity of subject and object – is then further determined, Schelling proposes, by a
series of hierarchical ‘potencies’, in which the various stages of nature emerge from the
infinite, whereas the infinite in turn underlies all of the manifold expressions of particu-
lar beings.35
Although the Absolute provides the ground of unity, Schelling emphasizes that it
cannot itself be an object of discursive thought; rather, it can be grasped only through
an intellectual intuition, which immediately apprehends – in a roughly esthetic manner
– the identity of subject and object. All distinctions, Schelling argues, require a deeper
ground of unity, and he presents the Absolute as the fundamental or universal identity
that provides the connection between everything in nature. What exactly this identity
involves is by no means clear – Hegel later lampooned it as ‘the night in which all
cows are black’ – but as Pinkard (2002) points out, it is important to keep in mind
that by ‘identity’ Schelling does not mean ‘sameness’. His claim is not that all things
are at heart indistinguishable, but rather that differences can be manifested only if they
rest on a more fundamental comparative ground. That A differs from B, for example,
means that A and B must be comparable, but this in turn requires, Schelling thinks,
that there be a connection between them, which itself demands a deeper unity or iden-
tity; this is not something we deduce, but rather intellectually intuit.36 Unlike Hegel’s
explanation of how the Absolute emerges historically through a dialectical process,
Schelling begins with the Absolute as the starting point of all philosophy – and we can
grasp the nature of the Absolute only obliquely, through the lens of art and myth. In
this respect, Schelling’s system perhaps stands as the culmination of the grand – yet
wholly amorphous – project announced in the ‘Oldest System-Programme of German
Idealism’, since it attempts to develop systematically just the kind of ‘philosophical-
poem’ that Hölderlin had called for.37
5. Brief Conclusion
As the discussion of the early Romantics perhaps suggests, to describe them as ‘Absolute
Idealists’ might be something of a misnomer, because it is not clear in what sense they

remain idealists at all.38 Indeed, if their conception of the Absolute involves the reconcil-
iation of idealism and realism, then perhaps a better term might be ‘Absolute Monists’ –
as the apt title of Franks’ (2005) book makes clear, the Romantics, like Hegel, were
committed to the idea that philosophy must be a matter of ‘all or nothing’. Where
Kantian critical idealism limited cognition to the realm of possible experience, and dis-
tinguished between appearances and things as they are in themselves, the monists view
this distinction as intolerable; complete justification demands that everything be included
in the ground of the Absolute. And only a monism that overcomes all dualisms is capa-
ble of meeting this requirement – even the distinction between realism and idealism
must be folded into the Absolute. The differences between the various views then arise
not from this monistic commitment, but rather from the possibility of fulfilling its
demands.
There is a bit of irony here, as although the Monists are committed to the Absolute,
they also see themselves as inheritors of Kant’s idealism. But the more monism is
emphasized, the further from critical idealism we seem to get. Kant himself in his old
age struggled to resist the growing monistic tide, but by his death in 1804 the shift was
almost complete – the critical system had given way to Absolute Idealism, which would
become the dominant philosophical system in Germany for the next generation.39 But
in at least one respect, the early Romantics retained a deep connection to Kant: both
share a suspicion of foundationalism, and a recognition of the limits of experience.
Despite their claims about the need to grasp the Absolute, the early Romantics acceded
to Kant’s restriction of knowledge to possible experience; their calls for an esthetic intui-
tion of the Absolute can be seen not so much as a rejection of Kantian limitation, but
rather as an extension of what Kantian experience can include. Intuition, in other words,
still retains a central role for the Romantics, and, as it does for Kant, this intuition occu-
pies a place that remains inaccessible to wholly discursive description. The ties to Kant
were greatly strained by Schelling, but it is only with Hegel’s demand for a complete
conceptualization of the Absolute, in which intuition gives way to thought, that the con-
nection to Kant is finally severed.40 It is this move, I think, that really marks the break
with the critical philosophy, and inaugurates the next, Hegelian, phase in the story of
German Idealism.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Jim Kreines, Adam Plunkett, and especially, Eric Watkins for their
help on this essay, and its companion, ‘Who’s Who from Kant to Hegel I: In the Kantian
Wake’.
Short Biography
Peter Thielke is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at
Pomona College, in Claremont, California. He earned an AB in Philosophy at Stanford
University, an MA in Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD from the
University of California – San Diego, where he wrote a dissertation on Salomon Mai-
mon’s skeptical challenges to Kant. He has published articles on a variety of topics in the
history of philosophy and German idealism, including pieces on Kant, Maimon, and
Hume. He is currently at work on a book outlining Maimon’s ‘apostate rationalism’, and
its implications for Kant’s idealism in particular, and our understanding of the project of
German Idealism more generally.

Notes
* Correspondence: Peter Thielke, Philosophy Department, Pomona College, 551 N College Ave., Claremont,
CA, 91711, USA. Email: peter.thielke@pomona.edu
1
This essay focuses on the period from 1795–1805 – roughly, from the initial formulation of the Romantic project
by Hölderlin and Novalis, through Schelling’s early statements of his Identity Philosophy. For a discussion of the
earlier stages of German Idealism, from Kant to Fichte, see ‘Who’s Who from Kant to Hegel I: In the Kantian
Wake’ (Philosophy Compass), which stands as a companion to the present essay.
2
On this point, see Beiser (2002) and Bristow (2007).
3
The proximate cause for the rediscovery of Spinoza was the ‘Spinoza Controversy’ of 1783–1786. The Contro-
versy began with a shocking claim made by Jacobi in 1783: on his deathbed, G.E. Lessing – the towering figure of
late Enlightenment thought – had confessed that he was a Spinozist! At the time, Spinozism was tantamount to
atheism, and Lessing’s admission sent shock waves through the German intellectual landscape, because, as Jacobi
insinuated, this implied that the Enlightenment led inexorably to atheism and nihilism. Moses Mendelssohn quickly
responded, and by 1785 the Spinoza Controversy had gripped the philosophical community. Jacobi seemed to
emerge with the upper hand in his debate with Mendelssohn, but the Controversy also had the consequence of
sparking a new interest in monism and pantheism, and leading many of the younger thinkers to read Spinoza in a
more charitable light. Beiser (1987) has an excellent account of the various twists and turns of the Controversy.
4
For an excellent discussion of the revival of Spinoza in Germany, see Melamed (2004).
5
On this point, see Franks (2005).
6
Although there is no denying Spinoza’s influence in Germany in the mid-1790s, it is not always easy to see why
he was so attractive to Kant’s and Fichte’s immediate heirs, as Spinozism seems on its face to fall prey to Kant’s cri-
tique of speculative metaphysics. Although it cannot suffice as a complete answer, I think part of the puzzle can be
solved if we keep in mind that the idealists did not embrace all aspects of Spinozism, but only its general pantheistic
thrust, which they saw as a kind of counterbalance to – rather than a replacement of – Kant’s ‘subjective’ idealism.
But, although Spinoza’s pantheism and monism were inspirations for the idealists – the slogan ‘hen kai pan’, [‘one
and all’] served as a kind of rallying cry for the movement – they never endorsed Spinoza’s strict determinism, nor
his thoroughgoing anti-humanism. In this respect, the Romantics followed at most the spirit, but not the letter, of
Spinoza’s system, and their goals were to effect, if possible, a reconciliation of Kant, Fichte, and Spinoza. (See Mela-
med 2004; on the attempt to reconcile Fichte and Spinoza, see Millan-Zaibert 2007.)
7
Herder had argued in On Knowledge and Feeling of the Human Soul (1778) and Ideas for the Philosophy of the History
of Mankind (1784) (in Herder 2002) for a conception of nature in which mechanical causes were to be augmented,
and in some cases, replaced by teleological or vitalist principles: nature is understood not as a machine but as an
organism. This provides a means, Herder claims, of reconciling autonomy and determinism, as the mind is under-
stood to be the highest or most organized of the various natural forces and organisms that make up the world; this
allows for a nondualistic account of the mind, as human cognition is seen as continuous with other natural phe-
nomena, which are in turn understood teleologically. This vitalist conception of nature was extremely attractive to
the Absolute idealists, but was attacked by Kant in a 1785 review, in which he objected that Herder’s use of teleol-
ogy devolved into dogmatic metaphysics: instead of treating the purposiveness of nature as if it were teleological –
that is, as a regulative idea – Herder instead hypostatized such purposes, and illegitimately tried to pawn off meta-
physical claims as natural science [see Beiser (1987) for discussion of this point, and Beiser (2002) for an account of
Herder’s influence on the Idealists].
8
This is a point made by Beiser (2002, 2003), Frank (2004), and Ameriks (2006, Ch. 9). As Beiser (2002) notes,
there was no single early Romantic movement, but rather several distinct sets of thinkers who can all be classified
as ‘romantic’, but who had different interests and concerns. One group, centered in Jena and Berlin, included
Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Schelling, Ludwig Tieck, and the poet Novalis (the penname of Friedrich von Hard-
enberg); another group, in Frankfurt, included Friedrich Hölderlin, Hegel, Isaak von Sinclair, and Jacob Zwilling,
while a third group in Jena comprised August Hulsen, Johann Rist, and Johann Herbart, among others [see Part III
of Beiser (2002), and Frank (2004) for accounts of these various sets]. Despite their differences, there was a fair
amount of interaction between them (see Henrich 1997; Beiser 2002, 2003 on this point), and it is not implausible
to see them as all concerned with the issue of the Absolute; in this brief discussion I will focus on the general
themes of early Romanticism, rather than on the various groups. And, in the interests of space, I will unfortunately
only be able to discuss Hölderlin, Novalis, Schlegel, and Schleiermacher; for an excellent treatment of some of the
other figures, see Frank (2004).
9
Indeed, Beiser (2002) makes the contrarian claim that almost all of what we think of as distinctively Hegelian
themes – the historical unfolding of the Absolute, the centrality of dialectic in this process – was already to be
found in the Romantics. On Beiser’s reading, Hegel simply outlasted his contemporaries, and then claimed credit
for their advances!
10
See Frank (2004) for discussion of this point, and how this marks a clear difference from Hegel’s system.

11
In what follows, I will concentrate almost entirely on the philosophical aspects of Romanticism, and even in this
context limit the discussion to issues arising in metaphysics and epistemology. The demands of space require this
brief treatment, but it unfortunately means neglecting some other crucial elements of the Romantic movement, par-
ticularly its account of literary theory and its communitarian political commitments. See Henrich (1997) for a good
treatment of the ‘Jena Constellation’ in which Hölderlin held sway, and Beiser (2003) for an excellent broader
account of Romanticism, in particular its political aspects. Beiser’s (2003) argument is largely directed against older
interpretations of early Romanticism, which see it largely as an anticipation of post-modernist thought (see Behler
1982, for representatives of this view).
12
The actual ‘early’ Romantic period was very short – Beiser (2003) dates it from 1797–1801. At least initially,
the thinkers associated with early Romanticism did not describe themselves as such; the term seems to have arisen
only as a pejorative term in 1804, and was then more widely applied to a growing literary and cultural movement
that culminated in late Romanticism; see Ameriks (2006) for discussion of the difference between early and late
stages. Figures such as E.T.A. Hoffmann and Franz Baader, as well as the later incarnations of Schelling and Fried-
rich Schlegel, tended to move into the mystical, and saw this as opposed to reason; as Ameriks (2000) describes it,
Late Romanticism ‘flees into the cherishing of the irrational for its own sake, or – just as dangerously – for the sake
of something that it regards as so much higher than reason alone that reason itself becomes the major enemy’
(216).
13
See Henrich (1997) and Henrich (2003), for an excellent account of Hölderlin’s development, as well as his
broader views, and the ‘Constellations’ that had formed in Jena at the time.
14
The fragment likely dates from 1796, and is a collaboration of Schelling, Hegel and Hölderlin. It is in Hegel’s
handwriting, but the consensus is that Hölderlin is the motive force behind it. For the sake of convenience, I will
speak of it as Hölderlin’s fragment. It is reprinted in Hölderlin (1988).
15
For instance, F.I. Niethammer, a former student of Reinhold’s, had begun to call it ‘transcendentism’, as it pre-
sumed to remove itself from all connection to the lived world.
16
Also, see Larmore (2000) for discussion of this point.
17
On its face, it might seem difficult to reconcile a commitment to Platonism with a suspicion about philosophical
foundations, but as Beiser (2003) points out, for the early Romantics these two threads in fact can be closely woven
together: while the Romantics’ Platonism held ‘‘that the world is in principle intelligible, they did not think that
our finite human intellects could grasp the eternal forms, except through a glass darkly. Like Socrates, they held
both that there is a realm of pure being and that the wise man knows that he knows nothing. It is a mistake to
conflate their skepticism about our capacity to grasp this order with an affirmation of the irrationality of the world’’
(5). See also Larmore (1996).
18
Indeed, one of his works is titled Fichte Studies (2003).
19
Here, it seems that Novalis and the other early Romantics were influenced by Herder’s vitalism, which pro-
posed that organic life cannot be reduced to mere mechanism.
20
This is a point made in Beiser (2002).
21
See Millan-Zaibert (2007) and Frank (2004) for discussion of this issue.
22
Beiser (2002) notes, however, that later in his career Schlegel has a much more positive attitude toward the mys-
tical, and by the 1820s had evolved into a Late Romantic. See also Speight (2007).
23
As Pinkard (2002) emphasizes, however, despite his pluralism, Schleiermacher remains committed to the view
that Christianity is a ‘higher’ religion than other faiths, and he struggles to find a justification for this view. See also
Forster (2002) and Marina (2005).
24
As noted above, Beiser (2002) argues that almost all of Hegel’s key claims were anticipated in the 1790s.
Although this is a minority view, it does make the important point that much of our understanding of Absolute
Idealism is filtered through Hegel’s own description of his project, and his failure to acknowledge his debts to his
contemporaries.
25
After Novalis’ death, his friends began to mythologize his life, treating him as a visionary esthete and poet who
fully embodied the Romantic notion of striving after the Absolute (See O’Brien (1995) for a good account of
Novalis’ life.). Hegel’s growing antipathy toward Romanticism – which he viewed as perniciously inward-looking
– found an easy target in this mythological Novalis, whom Hegel likely scorned in the Phenomenology as a ‘beautiful
soul’ that seeks to stand above the ordinary run of life. Gjesdal (2009) provides a very good discussion of this point,
as well as noting that Hegel did not appreciate the views held by the actual Novalis.
26
Schelling was friends with Hölderlin, Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, and many of the other early Romantics, and
he is, in many ways, best described as a Romantic himself. He quarreled with Hölderlin in the late 1790s (see Hen-
rich 1997, on this point), and his relations with the other Romantics were severely tested when in 1800 he took
up an affair with August Schlegel’s wife Karoline, whom Schelling would marry after her divorce.
27
In 1794, Schelling had begun a correspondence with Fichte, who quickly recognized the talents of the young
man. Indeed, it seems that Fichte hoped that Schelling would become the leading interpreter of the Wis-
senschaftslehre (see Beiser 2002, for discussion of Schelling’s early Fichtean allegiances).
28
Schelling is almost always described as ‘protean’, as his system seemed to be constantly changing and evolving.
As such, it is hard to pin down a definitive Schellingian view, as this shifted depending on the season. Put very

roughly, from his early Fichtean days, Schelling in order proposed a kind of ‘Nature Philosophy’ (from 1796 to
1800), a version of transcendental idealism (1800–1801), an ‘Identity Philosophy’ of Absolute Idealism (circa 1801–
1806), and a focus on the role of history and mythology centered around his work The Ages of the World (culminat-
ing in 1811), which extended into his later years. I will concentrate on the period from the Naturphilosophie to the
Identity Philosophy; for an interesting discussion of his later work, see Goudeli (2002).
29
Although these are explicitly drawn from Kant’s discussion of nature in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science, Herder’s vitalism is important here too; see Beiser (2002) on this issue.
30
This is a point emphasized by Robert Stern in his Introduction to Schelling (1988).
31
Indeed, as Pinkard (2002) points out, in this period, Schelling understands nature as a whole in organic terms:
presaging a point made by John McDowell, nature must become ‘re-enchanted’ to allow a place for freedom.
32
This was also when Hegel’s break with Schelling came about. They had been friends and rivals at Tubingen,
and early on Hegel had been outshone by his younger colleague. In the late 1790s, Hegel’s own views largely mir-
rored Schelling’s, and although the two began to diverge, both were attempting to move beyond Fichtean accounts
of the self, and to develop a system in which the Absolute incorporated subjective and objective elements. In 1801,
Hegel joined Schelling in Jena, where they co-edited a journal, and he soon thereafter published ‘On the Difference
Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy’ (Hegal (1998)), in which, as Redding (2006) notes, he
argues that ‘Schelling succeeded where Fichte had failed in the project of systematizng and thereby completing
Kant’s transcendental idealism’. Hegel’s (1977b) Glauben und Wissen (‘Faith and Knowledge’) of 1802 offered a fur-
ther defense of Schelling’s nascent Identity Philosophy, but the rift between the two was becoming more pro-
nounced, as Schelling moved closer to his fully developed account of the Absolute as the beginning point of all
philosophy. Schelling left Jena in 1803, and by 1807, prompted by the publication of Hegel’s (1977a) Phenomenology
– including the infamous suggestion that Schelling’s absolute is like ‘the night in which all cows are black – their
friendship had come to an end. [Bowie (2001) notes that there is some dispute about whether in fact Hegel
intended this as an insult to Schelling, but in any event it led to a break between them.]
33
The precise term to be used is a bit slippery in Schelling; sometimes he also refers to the Absolute as the
‘World-Soul’.
34
Schelling (1988: 48). The passage is from Schelling’s ‘Supplement’ that was added to the second edition of the
Ideas, which was published in 1803, when Schelling was fully in the grips of his Identity Philosophy.
35
Although this again echoes Spinozistic monism, Beiser (1993) emphasizes that Schelling conceives of nature not
in mechanistic terms (as Spinoza seems to do), but rather organically: Schelling ‘conceived of the single infinite sub-
stance in vitalistic and teleological terms. Following Herder, who insisted on breathing life into Spinoza’s dead and
frozen universe, Schelling saw substance as living force’ (5). This ‘organicist’ conception of nature was also some-
thing that Hegel adopted. See also Baum (2000).
36
Bowie (2001) points out, however, that Schelling still faces a serious problem in trying to explain how it is that
the finite emerges from the infinite. Ultimately, Bowie notes, Schelling follows Jacobi in holding that ‘that there is
no way of mediating between conditioned and unconditioned, and already makes the distinction between ‘negative’
and ‘positive’ philosophy, which will form the heart of his late work. Explicating the structure of the finite world
leads to ‘negative philosophy, but much has already been gained by the fact that the negative, the realm of nothing-
ness, has been separated by a sharp limit from the realm of reality and of what alone is positive’. The question
which comes to concern Schelling is how philosophy can come to terms with a ground which cannot be regarded
as the rational explanation of the finite world’.
37
This is, unfortunately, a very cursory account of Schelling’s system, which, as noted above, was in a constant
state of flux. For a more sustained treatment of Schelling, see Snow (1996) and, especially, Bowie (1993).
38
On this point, see Frank (2004), who suggests that the early Romantics are not really idealists at all. In contrast,
Beiser (2002) stresses that despite the monistic thrust of Schelling and Hegel, they remain idealists both in the
respect that (i) ‘absolute idealism maintains that everything is a manifestation or appearance of the idea or reason.
Idealism in this sense is the doctrine that everything is ideal because it is a part, aspect or appearance of the absolute
idea’, and (ii) that the ‘appearance of an independent reality outside the absolute exists only for reflection, or only
for the intellect as an artificial and arbitrary abstraction’ (353).
39
For a good treatment of Kant’s response to Absolute Idealism, see Forster (2000).
40
See Franks (2005) and Bristow (2007) for excellent discussions of this point.
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Appendix:
Dramatis Personae in Early German Romanticism
JENA AND BERLIN
Friedrich von Hardenburg (‘Novalis’) (1772–1801): Poet, and advocate of ‘magical ideal-
ism’.
Friedrich Niethammer (1766–1848): A student of Reinhold’s, and a professor at Jena,
as well as a collaborator – and realist-minded critic – of Fichte.
F. W. J. Schelling (1775–1854): The first systematic Absolute Idealist.
August Schlegel (1767–1845): Poet and critic; co-founder of Athenaeum.
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829): Co-founder of Athenaeum; literary critic, aphorist and
advocate of philosophical irony.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834): Theologian, and a key influence on F. Schlegel
and Novalis.
Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853): Poet, critic, and collaborator with the Schlegels.
FRANKFURT
G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831): The pivotal Absolute Idealist.

Friedrich Hölderlin (1774–1843): Poet, and perhaps the first Absolute Idealist; went
mad in 1802.
Isaak von Sinclair (1775–1815): Friend of Hölderlin; claims that the Absolute must
stand behind reflection, as its unity.
Jacob Zwilling (1776–1809): Friend of Hölderlin and Sinclair, who seeks a reflective
(and not aesthetic) path to the Absolute.
WEIMAR
Johann von Goethe (1749–1832): The towering figure in German intellectual circles; not
quite a Romantic, but an influence on them.
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805): Poet, playwright, and the author of On Grace and Dig-
nity (1793) and Aesthetic Letters on the Education of Man (1794), both influential works on
Romanticism; later in life, a close collaborator with Goethe.


Who's Who From Kant To Hegel II Art and The Absolute

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Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.

1. The Lay of the Land: From Kant to Fichte

ª 2010 The Author

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

3. Romanticism and Anti-Foundational Idealism

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ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

JENA AND BERLIN

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831): The pivotal Absolute Idealist.

ª 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/5 (2010): 398–411, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00284.x

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