Nietzsche and Early Romanticism, Judith Norman

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism Author(s): Judith Norman Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 63, No.
3 (Jul., 2002), pp. 501-519 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3654320 . Accessed: 04/03/2014 13:32
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the History of Ideas.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 131.104.62.10 on Tue, 4 Mar 2014 13:32:21 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Nietzsche
and
Early
Romanticism
JudithNorman
Nietzsche was in many ways a quintessentiallyromanticfigure, a lonely genius with a tragic love-life, wanderingendlessly (throughItaly,no less) before going dramatically mad, taken by his gods into the protectionof madness one of Nietzsche's childhood fa(to quote Heidegger's epithet on H61derlin, vorites).' But this is to be a romanticin an uncapitalizedmanner,and has nothing to do with the literarymovementof Romanticism,a movementfromwhich, as is well-known,Nietzsche distancedhimself loudly andvigorously.Nietzsche famously follows Goethe in his verdictthatRomanticismis a formof sickness and classicism a form of strength,and commentators,for the most part,have That is, they do not blithely identify Nietzsche accepted this self-description.2 with thatnineteenth-century includeVictor artistic movement,whose proponents Hugo, Eugene Delacroix, and RichardWagner.3 But Romanticismis a pluralphenomenon. WhenGoethemadehis famously he meant dismissive remark, he was clearlynot talkingaboutHugo andWagner; have been less reticent Romanticismin an earlierincarnation.Commentators aboutfinding all sortsof affinitiesbetween Nietzsche and some of these earlier movements. In particularNietzsche is frequentlyand positively comparedto Jena Romanticism (also known as early Romanticism), a movement whose principal figures included August and Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Tieck, Schleiermacher,and Schelling, and the writings they published in the 1790s, principallyin thejournal,Athenaeum.It is this romanticmovementthatwill be the focus of my paper. Jena romantics,while Grecophile, had nothing to do with Rousseaueanprimitivism(they were well aware that their image of the
Martin Heidegger, Schelling 's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, tr. Joan '1 Stambaugh(Athens, Ohio, 1985), 2. 2 JohannWolfgang von Goethe, Conversationswith Eckermann,tr. John Oxenford (San in Nietzsche Francisco,1984),248 (2 April 1829);Friedrich Nietzsche,Die Fr6hliche Wissenschaft Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe,ed. G. Colli and Mazzino Montinari(Berlin, 1968), part 5, # 370; The Gay Science (GS), tr. WalterKaufmann(New York, 1974). Three Metamorphoses"in Nietzsche as 3 See Robert Gooding-Williams,"Zarathustra's Postmodernist:Essays Pro and Contra ed. Clayton Koelb (Albany, 1990), and Heinrich von Staden, "Nietzsche and Marx on Greek Art," Daedalus (Winter, 1976); also Julian Young, Nietzsche'sPhilosophy of Art (New York, 1992), 140-47.
501
Inc. of Ideas, of theHistory 2002by Journal Copyright
502
JudithNorman
Greeksreflectedcontemporary fantasiesmore thanhistoricalreality),they had no cult of the genius, and they did not valorize emotion above reason.4What was centralto their movement was profoundskepticism about the viability of traditionalattitudestowardstruth,an intellectuallyrigoroustheory of art that gave particular weight to playfulness, fragmentedwriting, the notion of literary irony,a sense that the philosopherought to be or become more of an artist (though not a genius)-and, correlatively,that philosophy is or ought to become more artistic.All of which sounds decidedly Nietzschean. RomanticizingNietzsche While Nietzsche himself never makes the connection, he never explicitly distances himself from the authorsof Jena romanticismin the way he does from laterromanticfigures."Indeed,he barelymentionsthe Jenaromanticsby name andprobablynever readFriedrichSchlegel, the figure most closely associatedwith this romanticmovement.6 As such, thereis certainlyspace for commentatorsto arguefor a close if tacit intellectualconnectionbetweenNietzsche and Jena romanticism;indeed, one commentatorspeaks of a fundamentalaffinity,7anothercalls Nietzsche the last romanticist,and yet anotherclaims that "[Nietzsche's] story makes sense only when read in the largercontext of his Romanticpredecessors'history."8 It is undeniablethatNietzsche came out of a philological traditioninaugurated by the Schlegels (and developed by Schelling) which juxtaposed the Accordingto Lacoue-Labarthe, Dionysian andtheApollinianin Greektragedy. "an entire tradition of academic philosophy (which, on his own initiative, Nietzsche hadjoined) revolved aroundprecisely this opposition."'At least in
4Friedrich Schlegel,Kritische SchlegelAusgabe Fragmente,ed. E. Behler,KritischeFriedrich (Darmstadt, 1958-), II, ? 7. The English translationsof Schlegel's "CriticalFragments"CF, "Athenaeum AF and "Ideas" I, in FriedrichSchlegel, Lucindeand theFragments,tr. Fragments" Peter Firchow (Minneapolis, 1971). 5 See Young,Nietzsche's Philosophy' ofArt, 140. 6Nietzsche carefullyconsidersAugust Schlegel's ideas on the functionof the tragicchorus in The Birth of Tragedy-but in his capacity as a classical philologist, not specifically as a memberof Jena Romanticism.Novalis is quoted in Human,All TooHuman, 142 (but not after that)and FriedrichSchlegel is never mentioned.ErnstBehler suggests thatNietzsche never read FriedrichSchlegel in "Nietzsche'sAuffassung der Ironie"in NietzscheStudien,4 (1975), 10 as does Adrian del Caro in Nietzsche contra Nietzsche: Creativityand the Anti-Romantic(Baton Rouge, 1989), 56. 7Heinrich von Staden, "Nietzsche and Marx on Greek Art," Daedalus (1976), 86; cf., M. H. Abrams,NaturalSupernaturalism: and Revolutionin RomanticLiterature(New Tradition York, 1973), 316-18. 8 Del Caro, Nietzsche contra Nietzsche, 5-6, and Azade Seyhan, Representationand its Discontents (Berkeley, 1992), 19. Nietzsche," tr. TimothyD. Bent, from The Sub9PhillippeLacoue-Labarthe, "Apocryphal M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy ject of Philosophy (Minneapolis, 1993), 253;
Nietzsche and Early Romanticism
503
his earlier works Nietzsche's view of the Greeks was influenced by (if not theories of figures aspredicatedon) the scholarlyresearchand interpretative sociated with Jena romanticism.How profound and enduringthis influence might have been is an interestingquestion,butnot one I will exploreat present. I will not discuss the influence of the Jenaromanticsin theirscholarlycapacity as classical philologists, but ratherfocus on any impactthey may have had as philosophically minded literarycritics during the 1790s. Similarly,I will not look at TheBirth of Tragedybut ratherfocus on claims made concerningthe romantictendenciesof Nietzsche's laterwork.A body of scholarshiphas been building which claims that the critical theories of Jena romanticismimportantlyanticipatedmany of the greatideas fromNietzsche's maturephilosophy, and I would like to see if this is true.'1 The basic point of contact that commentatorsindicatebetween Nietzsche and Jenaromanticismis surprisinglyeasy to summarize.Both are supposedly motivatedby a post-Kantian philososkepticismas to the validityof traditional thatthe believe that and traditional of notions is, they truth; phy philosophical search for truthis no longer a viable projectand look to literarymethods that indicate, without baldly claiming, the illusory natureof reality.A version of this claim centerson problemsposed by language;Nietzsche andthe romantics supposedly agree that we cannot use language to indicate anything beyond language, and so the projectof representingsome sort of extra-linguisticreality is doomed to failure. Irony and fragmentedwriting in particularare apt artisticvehicles for suggestingthattruthis an illusion and our attemptto grasp somethinglike objective reality doomed to failure.To be sure, this new sort of arttakes up the mantle of philosophy and thus will be differentfrom an older, naively unselfconsciousart.It will encompassthe projectof philosophy andso representsa sort of synthesis between traditionalart and traditionalphilosophy. Thus, both Nietzsche and the romantics are pioneers of new forms of for a post-philosophicalage. artistryor creativityspecifically appropriate One critic describes this projectas follows: Like Schlegel, for whom "the absolute" [das H6chste] can only be expressed allegorically because it is inutterable....,Nietzsche looks beyond the categories of time, space, and causality into the impenetrablezone of essences only intuitableas an aestheticphenomenon....
(New York, 1981), 211; ErnstBehler, GermanRomanticLiterary Theory(Cambridge, 1993), Nietzsche:Philoso130; and Heinrichvon Staden,op. cit., 95, n. 33; and c.f. WalterKaufmann, pher, Psychologist, Antichrist(New York, 1974), 380, n. 27. "0I will be referringto the scholarshipof Ernst Behler, Azade Seyhan, Phillipe LacoueLabarthe,Jean-LucNancy, Adrian del Caro, Maurice Blanchot, Richard Rorty, and Andrew Bowie.
504
JudithNorman Nietzsche views artas a self-conscious illusion which excites an optic desire to look beyond appearanceto the abyss where comprehension faces total resistance and eventually comes to terms with the tragic vision of existence. Since art is always alertedto the non-conclusive natureof reality,it is redeemedby its self-reflexive and ironic sensibility, whereas reason and logic are trappedin what Nietzsche calls The persistent "metaphysicaldelusion" [metaphysischerWahnsinn]. art and with Nietzsche invests which aligns his thought irony mobility unmistakablywith that of the early Romantics."
Philosophy becomes art, or at least artistic. Hence one commentatorwrites: "[W]ithoutdoubt,afterSchelling we find the most pregnantexpressionof this [Romantic]aestheticizationof worldview in the philosophy of Nietzsche."l2 Similarly,in their seminal work on the literarytheories of Jena romanticism, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy write, "One sees all that Nietzsche could have taken from romanticism...,but it is surely the theme of the philosopher-artist Nietzsche thatis most fundamentally in his work.""Likethe romantics, romantic rather creative envisionsa formof philosophywhich becomesconsciousartistry, than descriptive,and orientedto aestheticratherthanepistemological criteria. Nietzsche frequently describes himself as an artist, and wrote in poetic or fictionalform.Similarly, the romantics conceivedof andtriedto raisephilosophy to the level of art;both their theoreticaland properlyartisticproductsreflect have this ambition.Accordingto Lacoue-Labarthe, Nietzsche andthe romantics in commonthe fact thatthey would pointto Plato,the greatliteraryphilosopher -in spite of himself-as a great precursorin this endeavor.14Writing about FriedrichSchlegel, Adriandel Carosays, "Poesie, unlike philosophy ... would liberatemodem man from his labyrinthof cognitive experimentation by using creativityas its primaryguiding force. Here we find ourselves directly in the neighborhoodof Nietzsche's non-traditional philosophizing."'5 Blanchot,too, creditsNietzsche andthe romanticsbothwith raisingliterary form as a philosophicalproblem,writing: "[L]iterature, beginning to become manifest to itself throughthe romanticdeclaration,will from now on bear in itself this question of discontinuity or difference as a question of form-a
" 75. and Jean-LucNancy, TheLiteraryAbsolute,tr. Philip Barnard 13 Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe and CherylLester (Albany,N.Y., 1988), 148, n. 25. 14Lacoue-Labarthe, Nietzsche." "Apocryphal " Adrian Del Caro, Nietzsche contra Nietzsche, 5, and cf. Seyhan, Representation,140, "Theunderstanding thatjoins Nietzsche with his Romanticforebearsis the realizationthatthere is no minotaurof dictatorialtruthat the centerof the labyrinth."
Seyhan, Representation,19, 138.
Art & Philosophy(Albany,N.Y., 1999), 8, 12 Jos de Mul, RomanticDesire in (Post)Modern
505
thatof theAthenaeum, andin particular romanticism, questionanda taskGerman not only sensed but already clearly proposed-before consigning them to Nietzsche and, beyond Nietzsche, to the future."'16Even Rorty points to Nietzsche's implicit romanticismin describing how, given the breakdownof traditional epistemologies, truth needs to be creatively willed, in a poetic manner-a manner,Rorty argues,which has everythingto do with irony.'7 There is some debate among those sympathetic to the Nietzsche / Jena connection as to whetherNietzsche develops or falls short of the insights of romanticism.AndrewBowie, while agreeingthat"itwas the workof Nietzsche ... which most obviously carriedon some of the romanticthemes,"arguesthat the romanticsdid a betterjobthanNietzsche would laterdo. Nietzsche is a pale reflection of romanticinsights, and his propensityto question the viability of the CretanLiar's paradox) truthreduces to certainparadoxes(fundamentally, that the romanticsmore deftly avoided.'" On the other hand, the majorityof commentators arguefor a morepositive assessmentofNietzsche's romanticism, for instance: "Theseeds of the Romanticdiscontentaboutphilosophical certainty between come to full fruitionin Nietzschewho embodiesthe textualinterlinkage statement last This expresses early GermanRomanticismandlate modernity."'9 anothertheme often found in authorsmaking positive comparisonsbetween Nietzsche and the romantics: the idea that the legacy continues into "late modernity"-in other words, primarily,Derrida(this is evident in the quote from Blanchotabove as well). Bowie agrees that"Nietzsche'squestioninghas had a decisive influence on subsequentdiscussions of the end of metaphysics in contemporary literarytheory,"but he feels that the credit really belongs to ErnstBehler has arguedat length Nietzsche's superiorromanticprecursors.20 for the three-way connection, writing that "A self-critical awareness of our linguistic embeddednesshas indeed been a characteristicmark of modernity since the romanticage and reacheda new intensitywith Nietzsche. The three authorschosen as representativesof this discourse, Schlegel, Nietzsche, and Derrida,thematizethe self-referentialimplicationsof their irony in their own
text...."21
Effortsearlierin the centuryto arguefor the Nietzsche / Jenaromanticism connection were vigorously opposed by Walter Kaufmann.Despite certain superficial similarities, Kaufmannwrites, Nietzsche and the Jena romantics
16
Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation,tr. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis, 1993),
359. RichardRorty,Contingency,Irony and Solidarity(Cambridge,1989), 41. 17 to Critical Theory:ThePhilosophyof GermanLiter8 AndrewBowie, From Romanticism
ary Theory(New York, 1997), 136. 19 Seyhan, Representation,17-18. 20Bowie,From Romanticismto Critical Theory,73. 21 Ernst Behler, Irony and the Discourse of Modernity(Seattle, 1990), 112. See also del Caro,Nietzsche contra Nietzsche, 199: Heidegger "standsin relationto Nietzsche as Nietzsche stood in relationto the romanticists."
506
JudithNorman
"arebasically quite different,and the context usually reveals the superficiality of such parallels."22 As Kaufmannindicates, the romanticprogressive notion of historyis not particularly romanticnotion Nietzschean,andthe characteristic of longingis at oddswith theNietzscheanaffirmation of thepresent.23 Kaufmann furthernotes that Schelling and FriedrichSchlegel became devout Christians, as well as the fact thatNietzsche's greathero, Goethe, distancedhimself from romanticism,and, in the 1830s, wrote some harshindictmentsof the Schlegels romantic thatNietzsche apparently thinksthatthe correlative quoted.Kaufmann to the classicismNietzsche rejectionof Goetheconfirmsthe romanticantipathy championed. I think that Kaufmannis basically right in his contentionthatthere are no importantintellectualaffinities between the philosophicaland literarytheories of Nietzsche and those of the Jena romantics(although there might be with regardto their theories on classical Greece), but that he is right for the wrong reasons. For one thing, some of his claims seem frankly ad hominem: the romantics were Christiansand Goethe did not like them. In fact, neither of these claims are quitetrue:althoughSchelling and the Schlegels became rather conventional Christians,this only happeneddecades after the heyday of the movement, after their ideas had altered considerably. In general, much of Kaufmann'sevidence for un-Nietzscheanremarksmade by Jenaromanticsare culled from sources datedwell past 1800, when the movementcame to an end andmany of the principalfigures associatedwith romanticismbegan changing Goethe theirviews considerably. In the 1790s they were enormouslyirreverent: had to be called in (by August Schlegel) to persuadeFriedrichSchlegel not to publisha sharplyanti-religious,satiricalpoem by Schelling in the Athenaeum. They were indeed on friendly terms with Goethe, who had an amused and as brilliant decidedly avuncularattitudetowardsthis groupof whathe regarded young men; he felt "gratefulto know he [was] honoredby them"in the words of Blanchot.24 Goethe premieredFriedrichSchlegel's tragedy,Alarcos (and stoppedthe audiencefromjeering). The romantics(mainlythe Schlegels) were likewise enthusiasticabout Goethe and WilhelmMeister above all else; they wrote repeatedlythat it was the pinnacle and emblematicachievementof the age. Kaufmannis disingenuous in claiming that they eventually decided that they wanted to supplantGoethe. The Schlegels, at least, simply thought that there will be a new historicalage, with new emblematicachievements. Moreover, the sickness that Goethe claimed to find in (some strains of) romanticism is described more specifically by Nietzsche as a form of impoverishment,a lack of will, strengthor force as opposed to a Dionysian
Kaufmann,Philosopher,Psychologist, Antichrist,381, n. 29. 321-22; and J. Hillis Miller's review of Abrams'sNatural Supernatuand Difference,"Diacritics (1972), 6-13. ralism, "Tradition 24 Blanchot, TheInfinite Conversation,352.
23Kaufmann,ibid.,
22
507
overfulness.But the arch-romantic Novalis describes some of FriedrichSchleform intoxication,expressing"anover-saturated gel's writingsas a dithyrambic of life."25 Although Kaufmann is certain that attention to context will deromanticize some of Nietzsche's contentions (and "de-Nietzsche-cize" romanticism into the bargain), he fails to provide enough of the necessary theoretical to do so. In lightof the moresophisticated, recentliterary groundwork attempts of the authors I have been discussing (Behler, Blanchot, LacoueLabarthe,Seyhan, etc.) to find affinities between Nietzsche and Jena romanticism, I believe such groundworkis needed. In the remainderof this paper,I will attemptto provide it. Jena Romanticism A critiqueof conventionalphilosophicaltreatmentof the notion of truthis common to Nietzsche and the romantics,and as commentatorsindicate,this is a strikingsimilarity.It is tied to the theme of aestheticization,since doubtsas to the continuedviability of the notion of truthlead to the idea that philosophy ought to be replacedby art,or become itself artistic.Moreover,both Nietzsche andthe romanticsemploythe familiarstoryof the disciplesat Sais as an allegory for seeking truth:a story portrayingthe search for a truthbehind appearances as liftingthe veils of a goddess. Friedrich Schlegel writes"mysteriesarefemale; veil like to want to be seen and discovered."26 In one themselves but still they of his Logological Fragments, Novalis writes, "One person succeeded - he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais-But what did he see? he saw-wonder of wonders-himself."27 This is not simply an injunction to "know thyself." Examiningseveral(logological) fragmentsfromthe same time suggests a more metaphysically precisereadinginvolvingan epistemologyof reflexivity.Novalis writes "self equals nonself-the highest principle of all learning and art" followed by the even more bald statement. "I am You."28 This is no defamiliarizing Rimbaudian"je est un autre"but rather its reassuring, protoHegelian opposite, the otheris me. This franklyendogamousrelationwith the which Novalis had studied world is derivedfrom Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, closely and written about it in detail. According to Fichte, the I as absolute, transcendental firstprinciple(a successornotion to Kant'stranscendental unity
25Novalis,Novalis Schriften,ed. RichardSamuel, Hans-JoachimMahl and GerhadSchulz ofNovalis's "MiscellaneousObservations" MO, (Stuttgart,1965-68), II, III.Englishtranslations I" "Logological Fragments (LF, I), "Logological FragmentsII" (LF, II) and "LastFragments" (LF) in Novalis: Philosophical Writings,tr. and ed. MargaretMahony Stoljar (Albany, N.Y., 1997); MO, 105. 26 Schlegel, I, 128 and 137. 27 Novalis, LF II, 29 28 Novalis, LF I, 59, and Philosophical Writings,173, n. 14.
508
JudithNorman
of apperception) posits a not-I(world). Thisact is responsiblefor the production of the empiricalego andthe empiricalworld. The I is no longer absolute,being limitedby the not-I, so it then begins the infinite task of assimilatingthis not-I, in short,is tryingto know itself by recognizingitself in the not-I. The structure, = that of thesis (I), antithesis(not-I), and projectedsynthesis (I not-I). Despite the apparentsuccess of Novalis's novice at Sais, the romantics generally stressed the infinite and ultimately impossible (for reasons specific to Fichte's philosophy)task of synthesis or self-knowledge. It is the goal of an infinite strivingor becoming. For this reason,the vocabularyof becoming and growth occurs frequently in romantic writings. In perhaps the most famous romantic self-declaration, Friedrich Schlegel writes: "Romantic poetry is progressive,universalpoetry....The romantickind of poetry is still in the state of becoming;that,in fact, is its real essence: thatit should foreverbe becoming and never be perfected...."29 Novalis expresses the notion of dynamic growth throughhis frequentuse of the imagery of seeds, germination,and vegetable growth. Even his assumed name "novalis"is derived from the Latin for one who opens up new land; and he calls some of his fragments"pollen"(Bliitenstaub). This vegetablevocabularyallows Novalis to suggest thateven natureis implicatedin this progressive,poetical longing for the absolute. The themes of Fichtean reflexivity and pollination are brought (albeit somewhatawkwardly)into contactin anotherone of Novalis's fragments:"We shall understandthe world when we understandourselves, because we and it are integralhalves. We are God's children,divine seeds. One day we shall be what ourFatheris."30 Here,Novalis makes it clearthatrecognitionis the key to knowledge, and it will be gradually(andhere, as least, he indicateseventually) attainedthroughprogressivegrowth. What is perhapsmost strikingabout this fragment,however,is the ease with which he refersit to theologicalvocabulary. Schlegel does the same in a fragmentwhere he writes, "Every good human being is always progressivelybecoming God. To become God, to be human,to cultivateoneself are all expressionsthatmean the same thing.""'Fichte's early philosophy (certainlybefore 1800) was not directly or conventionally translatableinto Christian theology,indeed,he was somewhatscandalouslyexpelled from his position at the University of Jenaon the accusationof atheism,and it mustbe remembered thatNovalis also wrotethat"Spinozismis a supersaturation with the divine," which would indicate a tendency on his part to overButNovalis is correctto pointto the genuinelytheologicalaffinities theologize.32 idealtranscendental subject implicitin Fichte'sI, a self-causing,world-creating,
29
Schlegel, AF, 116. AF, 262.
30 Schlegel, LF I, 71.
31 Schlegel,
32Bowie, From Romanticismto Critical Theory,73.
509
in which we live and breathe,whose projectof self-knowledge is carriedout throughour own progressiveendeavor. Perhapsmost tellingly theological is our relationto this I. Fichte struggled for many years with the epistemological issues of how to characterizeour cognitive relationto the I. In 1795 he admittedthatthe I has no name, never occurs in consciousness, and cannotbe graspedby means of concepts.... One enters my philosophy by means of what is absolutely incomprehensible.... Everything that is comprehensible andis therefore a higherspherein which it is comprehended presupposes not the highest thing, precisely because it is comprehensible.33 In 1800, he referredthe problemaway fromknowledgeto the notionof "faith." Novalis was dead by 1800; but he had anticipatedFichte's move. Novalis, it should be said was attracted primarilyby the mystical aspects of religion, and in particularthe notion of the via negativa. In his Fichte-Studienhe makes clear that this is how he believes Fichte's I should be approached,througha sort of negative theology.34This can be understood as a meditation on the inabilityof the finite mindand its languageto expressthe absoluteandperhaps, an attempt to craftnew resourcesto do so. Novalis and,in fact,the Jenaromantics generallydevotedthemselvesto the projectof doingjust this,using the resources of art. We cannote in passingthatthe notionof anartisticexpressionof the absolute was not exclusive to romanticismduringthis time: the Germanidealists, too, toyed with this idea, although Schelling was the only one to stick to it. The "Earliest of GermanIdealism"of 1796, authored, fragmentary System-Program or ambiguously, by Hegel, Schelling Hdlderlin-or perhaps all threeproclaims:"Lastof all, the Idea that unites all the rest [is] the Idea of beauty, takingthe wordin its higherPlatonicsense. I am now convincedthatthe highest act of Reason ... is an aestheticact ... [andso] the philosophermustpossess just as muchaestheticpoweras the poet.... The philosophyof the spiritis an aesthetic philosophy."35
ed. Hans Schulz (Leipzig, 1930), 33 J. G. Fichtes Briefivechsel:Kritische Gesamtausgabe, tr.and ed. Daniel Breazeale(Ithaca, 1988), no. 246; translation in Early Philosophical Writings, 399. 34 See Gaza von Molnir, Novalis: "FichteStudies": TheFoundationsofhis Aesthetics(The Hague, 1970), 26. 35 "Das ilteste Systemprogramm" in Hegel-Studien,Beiheft 9, ed. RiidigerBubner(Bonn, 263-65. 1973),
510 Ironic Philosophies
JudithNorman
FriedrichSchlegel writes,"Thewhole historyof modem poetryis a running commentaryon the following brief philosophicaltext: all art should become Here science and all science art;poetryand philosophyshouldbe made one."36 we see a clear statementof the romanticwill to aestheticize philosophy. It is to see the romanticsas precursors passages like this that inspirecommentators to Nietzsche's attempts to infuse an element of artistic creativity into the enterpriseof philosophy. But what is Schlegel really talking about? Which philosophers,and how are they to be poeticized? The main examples he has in mind are Plato and Fichte (althoughthereare allusions to the musicality of Kant).37Plato already represents a poetical philosophy,mainly because of his irony and dialogical form, but the projectof poeticizing Fichte had yet to be accomplished, and the romantics enjoyed works of art could come speculating about what it might entail. "Wonderful into being in this way" writes Novalis, "as soon as we have learntto Fichtecize What this means can be gleaned from both the theoretical artistically.""38 pronouncementsof the romantics and their attemptsto combine philosophy and poetry in their own works. The aestheticizationpretty much exclusively concerns aesthetic form-so it is not a matterof writing beautiful literature with philosophicalmorals(like Rousseau,for instance,althoughwith Fichtean in an content)-but ratherof formallymodulatinga philosophicalpresentation thatthe romanticsthemselves aestheticallyvalid manner.The formalstructures thought the most significant, which are at the same time the ones that commentatorshave thoughtpresagedNietzsche the most strikingly,are irony and the fragment.Both of these are prominentfeaturesof Plato's dialoguesprovided,of course,thatwe acceptFriedrichSchlegel's definitionof a dialogue as a "chainor garlandof fragments."39 The meaning of the notion of irony in romanticthoughtis a much debated issue, but for the purposes of setting up a comparisonwith Nietzsche I will discusswhatis generallyagreedupon.Schlegel definesironyas "logicalbeauty" and "transcendental buffoonery."40 This last definition in particularis quite can be seen as a sort of playful, artisticself-consciousness; suggestive; irony the text reflecting on itself. We can see how in the propercircumstancesirony can effect a unity of philosophy and art: it adds a philosophical element to a workof art(by providinga momentof self-consciousness)or an artisticelement to a work of philosophy (fictionalizing the text by calling into question the veracity of what is being stated).
36
Schlegel, CF, 115; see also I, 108. 37Schlegel, AF, 220, 322. 38Novalis, LF I, 11. 39 Schlegel, AF, 77. 40 Schlegel, CF, 42.
511
Schlegel's definition of irony in terms of transcendentalconditions is particularly telling. By reflecting on the conditions for the possibility of experience,Kant'stranscendental philosophyshowedthe (merely)phenomenal natureof the empiricalworld. And by reflectingcriticallyon the conditionsfor experiencethemselves, Fichte'sphilosophywas a reflectionon Kantat an even higher level, accordingto the romantics.The main reason FriedrichSchlegel it Meisterwas that,as a Bildungsroman, thoughtso highly of Goethe's Wilhelm presented a story of one man's educational development, and yet it simultaneously reflects philosophically on the conditions of educationaldevelopment.41 At the same time, it is importantto bear in mind that the aspect of Fichte's philosophy that the romantics thought so compelling was the impossibility of achieving any ultimate ground or absolute perspective. So although we can know experience to be merely phenomenal (illusory, subjective), we cannot achieve some decisive, epistemologically satisfactory We arecaughtbetween a realitywe know as illusoryandan ultimate standpoint. which is absolutebut unknowable. ground The idea of rising to ever higher levels of reflection is a favorite theme among the romantics (remember,Novalis uses the vocabulary of vegetable growth to express a more organicversion of this thought).In his most famous statementon the natureof romanticism,FriedrichSchlegel writesthatromantic poetry hovers "on the wings of poetic reflection, and can raise that reflection again and again to a higher power, can multiply it in an endless succession of mirrors...." And irony,which FriedrichSchlegel defines in terms of rising into finitely, higher and higher levels of reflection, is a key ingredientin this project.42 We can now understand the basic philosophicalcontext of romanticirony. It is a way in which a text indicates its illusory,provisional,limited character, while gesturingtowardsan unreachable, higherground.As such, andappealing to the theological character thatI discussed earlier,it is related of this argument to a sortof negativetheology.43Aquinas'svia negativa is an attemptto articulate the ineffable nature of God, not by attributingpositive qualities to him, but ratherby systematicallydenying that any such attributioncould ever convey the transcendentnature of the divine. Another useful way of understanding romanticirony is as a form of dialectics;even Hegel remarkson the similarity: ironynegatesone conceptfor the sake of pointingto a moreadequatesuccessor, although it can do no more than point.4 FriedrichSchlegel brings some of these themes togetherin his Dialogue on Poetry where he writes:
41Friedrich Schlegel,"Gespriich iiberdie Poesie," KritischeFriedrichSchlegel Ausgabe, II.
42 Schlegel, CF, 42.
and Nancy, TheLiteraryAbsolute, 84. 43See Lacoue-Labarthe iiber die Geschichte der Philosophie in Jubildumsausgabe,XVIII, 44 Hegel, Vorlesungen 62; "Alle Dialektik lii3t das gelten, was gelten soil, als ob es gelte, lii8t die innere Zerst6rung selbst sich daranentwickeln,-allgemeine Ironieder Welt."
512
JudithNorman Antonio:...Everypoem shouldbe genuinelyromantic, andevery [poem] shouldbe didacticin thatbroadersense of the word thatdesignatesthe tendency towarda deep and infinite meaning.Additionally,we make this demandeverywhere,withoutnecessarilyusing this name. Even in very populargenres-the theater,for example-we demandirony;we demandthatthe events, the people, in short,the whole game of life be taken up and presentedas really a game. This seems to us to be the most essential point and doesn't everythingdependon it? We are only concernedwith the meaning of the whole; anythingthat individually stirs,touches,engagesordelightsthe senses,the heart,theunderstanding or the imaginationseems to us to be only a sign, way of intuitingthe whole, at the momentwhen we raise ourselves to it. Lothario:All the sacredgames of artare only distantimitationsof the infinitegame of the world,the work of artthateternallyproducesitself. Ludovico:In otherwords:all beautyis allegory.Preciselybecause it is inexpressible,the highest can only be expressed allegorically.45
This passage neatly expresses a numberof the characteristicromanticideas. For one thing, rememberthatFriedrichSchlegel defined a dialogue as a "chain or garlandof fragments"-like irony, the fragmentis an aesthetic form that self-consciously proclaims its own partiality, thus obliquely indicating an (absent) totality and is therefore itself a form of negative theology, as commentatorshave pointed out.46 The passage indicates that beauty and art with its "holy games" (presumably irony-but allegory is also cited) are significantas means of indicatingin some way the whole, the "highest"or, as Lothario says, "the world." As de Man argues in his famous discussion of allegory and irony, both are literary figures which hover between the inauthenticity of the empirical and the impossibility of presenting some transcendentalfoundation.47 And so, as in the case in the passage from the dialogue, irony and allegory call into question the reality of what is presented empiricallyand refer it to some infinitely delayed point of closure. Schlegel's dialogue goes on to tie these themes explicitly to mysticism and the theosophy of the (negative) theologian, Jacob Bdhme, as well as to Plato (viewed in this context as a mystic-and whose discussion of beauty in the Symposiummust be one of the inspirationsbehind Ludovico's remark),and even Spinoza.
fictional work 45 FriedrichSchlegel, "Gesprich iiber die Poesie." The dialogue is a purely writtenby FriedrichSchlegel; Antonio is FriedrichSchlegel, Ludovicois Schelling,and Lothario is Novalis (see Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, TheLiteraryAbsolute, 89). 46 Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, TheLiteraryAbsolute, 47. 47 Paul de Man, "TheRhetoricof Temporality," Blindnessand Insight:Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism(Minneapolis,Minn., 1983), 222.
Nietzsche and Early Romanticism Nietzsche contraJena
513
The final, and what for my purposesis perhapsthe most strikingaspect of the passage fromthe Dialogue is thatLothario'sstatement,the world is a "work of art that eternallyproduces itself" (ewig sich selbst bildendenKunstwerk) has an almost direct correlatein Nietzsche's Nachlass. In a note (fragment?) from 1885-85, Nietzsche writes, "Theworld as a work of artthatgives birthto This remarkable itself."48 convergenceraises the questionmore urgently;how much was Nietzsche influenced by romantic thought? Or more generally (without implying direct influence), to what extent is his projectin sympathy with theirs? There are importantprima facie reasons for thinking that the tendency of Nietzsche's thought is fundamentally hostile to that of Jena romanticism.Romanticismderivedits principlephilosophicalinspirationfrom Fichte's idealism, as I have shown, and from the notions of transcendental in Kant'sfirstcritique. Accordingly, subjectivityandthe productiveimagination art functioned within an essentially idealist epistemological project of representing or somehow indicating a transcendentalground. Of course, this philosophical project provided no more than a general and sometimes quite loose frameworkin which the romanticsdeveloped a rich and variegatedset of aesthetic theories and techniques.All the same this project lies at the heartof Jena romanticismand its signaturetechniqueof irony. Nietzsche, on the otherhand,comes out of a differentline of descent from Kant, one that went through Schopenhauerratherthan Fichte. Ratherthan subjectivity,Schopenhauer focusing on the idealist problemof transcendental was much more interested in things-in-themselves, namely, the will as an immanent,energeticgroundand was little bothered(or at least unimpeded)by epistemological questions of access to this will. Nietzsche modified the Schopenhauerian lineagefurther away fromFichte,he subjectedboththe notion of subjectivity and the project of epistemology to devastating critique. Nietzsche's conception of the self is naturalisticand desubjectivized,writing: "thebody and physiology [are] the startingpoint."49 Althoughboth Nietzsche and Fichte critiquedthe notion thatthe ego is a doer ratherthan a deed, it was the I would imply for almostoppositereasons.Fichtethoughtthatsubstantiating that it is enmeshed in the empiricalrealm;that is, it would fail to do justice to the transcendent, originary qualityof the I. On the otherhand,Nietzsche thought that positing a substantialdoer (behind the deed) would wrongly imply that thereis an ego at some metaphysicalremovefromthe materialworldof material forces-that is, it would fail to do justice to the immanentnatureof the body and the will. Finally, in his discussions of artNietzsche concentratesprimarily
48 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, tr. WalterKaufmannand R. J. Hollingdale (New York, 1968) # 796. 49 Nietzsche, The Willto Power, # 492.
514
JudithNorman
on the expressive or affective aspects of art, its effect on the body, ratherthan its representational or allegorical capacity (which, given his critique of the efficacy of consciousness, would hardlybe of any significance for him).5" These differences are broughtstrongly into focus when we compare the romantictreatment of the storyof the disciples at Sais with thatof Nietzsche in the Gay Science, a passage that he liked well enough to importinto Nietzsche contra Wagner: ... one will hardlyfind us again on the paths of those Egyptianyouths who endanger templesby night,embracestatues,andwantby all means to unveil, uncover,andput into a brightlightwhateveris keptconcealed for good reasons. No, this bad taste, this will to truth,to truthat any price, this youthful madness in the love of truth,have lost their charm for us: for thatwe aretoo experienced,too serious,too gay, too burned, too deep. We no longer believe thattruthremainstruthwhen the veils are withdrawn.... The passage ends with Nietzsche's famous manifesto: What is required... is to stop courageouslyat the surface,the fold, the skin, to adore appearance,to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance.And is not this precisely what we are again coming back to, we daredevilsof the spiritwho have climbedthe highest andmost dangerouspeak of presentthoughtand looked around from up there-we who have looked down from there? Are we not, precisely in this respect,Greeks? Adorersof forms,of tones, of words? And thereforecartists?51 Probablythe most importantdifferencebetween Nietzsche's treatmentof the story and that of the romanticsis not what they think lies behind the veil but ratherwhat they take to be the interestof the story. Novalis identifies with the disciple approachingthe goddess and wanting to push back the veil; for him, the disciple's motives require no explanation-who wouldn't want a peek? Nietzsche on the otherhand, does not particularly care aboutthe goddess; the has for lost its charm him, and he has more refined epistemological striptease interests. In the famous preface to Beyond Good and Evil where Nietzsche discusses the attitudeof philosophersto the coy, feminized figure of truth,he directs his analysis at the philosopher,which is to say the disciple himself. That is, Nietzsche makes clear from the very startthat it is not the truthbut ratherthe will to truththatinterestshim. In the passage quotedabove from the
50 See Young,Nietzsche'sPhilosophy ofArt,
145.
GS; Preface, #4. 51
515
Gay Science, by contrast,he is more interestedin diagnosing his own artistic will to appearances.Truthfor Nietzsche is not itself the object of analysis; rather,he is interestedin the precise natureof our increasinglyrefined attitude (or will) to the truth,and how it finally overcomes itself and becomes a will to artisticappearance. It is interestingto note that, as in the first paragraphquoted above, the notion of immaturity often arises on those occasions when Nietzsche mentions the figures of Jenaromanticism.He called Schelling youthful in Beyond Good and Evil (11) and Novalis naive in Human,All TooHuman (142). Nietzsche believes thatthinkers(like the romantics)are immaturebecause they represent a naive phase of the will to truth;thatis, they still took it quite seriously even if like the romantics, they thought that the truth was ultimately unachievable. Nietzsche is more maturebecause he has reachedthe stage where the will to truthovercomes itself, and so he finds it more interestingto pose the question: why not untruthinstead?Which is to say, although perhapsnot this directly, why not art? This points to the crux of the difference: for Nietzsche, the ascendancy of art is the result of the irrelevance of truth-it has overcome itself-while for the romantics, art develops as an expression of and compensation for the inaccessibility of truth-it has withdrawn. This difference is crucial, because the resultingphilosophical art will be fundamentally different, even when it occasionally sounds the same. The philosophicalburdenof romanticartwill be to somehow indicatetranscendence, while Nietzschewill use artisticdevises to emphasizea philosophythatembraces full immanence. In other words romantic art functions within the terms of a sortof negativetheology, andNietzsche is no sortof theologian.I will elaborate this point with two examples, Nietzsche's Wagner critique and Nietzsche's alleged use of irony. Nietzsche's WagnerCritique Nietzsche is often compared to the romantics on a different but related issue: both were favorable to a renewed effort at myth-making.But Wagner tried to revivify mythology, too, and Nietzsche shied away from Wagner's indeed, we see in several elements of Nietzsche's mythologicalmusic-dramas; critiqueof Wagneran implicit critiqueof the sort of artisticvision championed by the JenaRomantics.I have been arguingthatthe philosophy of the German idealists was expressed artisticallyby the Jena romantics;Nietzsche, on the other hand, thinks that Wagner provided an artistic rendering of idealistic he writes,"merelyapplied[HegelandSchelling]to musicphilosophy. Wagner, he invented a style for himself charged with 'infinite meaning'-he became the heir ofHegel."52 Wagneruses both musical syntax and operaticsemantics
52
The Case of Wagner (CW),tr. WalterKaufmann (New York, 1967) #10.
516
JudithNorman
he uses to suggest this quasi-Hegeliannotion of infinitemeaning.Syntactically, the devise of the "infinite melody," a musical line which fails to resolve but ratherstretchesendlessly on, modulatingso as to avoid resolution,"harang[ing] the infinite" as Nietzsche says.53It is odd to see Nietzsche associating this musical device with Hegel ratherthan with Schopenhauer-Wagner used the devise of the infinite melody to greatest and most sustained effect in Tristan und Isolde, where it apparentlyserves to suggest a Schopenhauerianwill.54 But Nietzsche's association is entirely appropriate; he thinks that Wagnerhas an affinity with the transcendentaspects of Hegel's metaphysics,the fact that both the dialectic has an infinite destinationin the Absolute. For Schopenhauer music and the will are strictly immanent:"we mightjust as well call the world embodied music as embodied will," Schopenhauerstates. For the Hegelian Wagner,however, music suggests something beyond itself. Wagner's music does not serve to portrayan infinite drive so much as in infinite idea, heavy with inexpressiblemeaning. Thereis an operaticallysemanticaspectto Wagner's"infinitemeaning"as well. TheodorAdorno points to the crux of what Nietzsche found offensive here when he writes that"inWagnereverything,every sentence, every gesture, every motif and the overall interconnections-all are chargedwith meaning" which is to say, overburdened by deep significance." Nietzsche objects to the omnipresenceof the symbol in Wagner;Wagner'smusic is never mere music, Nietzsche says and adds "nomusicianwould thinkthatway"which is to say no role musicianwould give music this inferiorrole.56 It is notjust the subordinate to of music in the Gesamtkunstwerk thatNietzsche objects (his objectionapplies even to Tristan,which elevates the role of music above drama);rather,it is the symbolic characterthat each musical figure must assume; they are not free to be a beautifulpresence but, like the infinite melody, always point outside the work itself to some ultimatepoint of signification. Although many aspects of Nietzsche's Wagnercritiquecannot be applied to the romantics,Nietzsche's objectionto the idealistnotion of infinitemeaning can be. Nietzsche's descriptionof "the enigmatic characterof his [Wagner's] art,its playing hide-and-seekbehind a hundredsymbols ..." can be saidjust as well about the works of the Jena romantics."57 Again, the distinctionbetween andimmanenceis key; one of theprinciplereasonswhy Nietzsche transcendence to objected Wagnerwas that, in pointing to a meaning beyond itself, music loses its attractionas a beautiful surface, an affirmationof the immanenthere
53CW,#6. 54 For an excellent discussion of this see Brian Magee, "Schopenhauer andWagner"in The York, 1983). Philosophy of Schopenhauer(New Modern Music, tr. R. 55 "Fantasia sopra Carmen" in Quasi una fantasia: Essays on Livingstone (London, 1994), 62.
#10. 56CW,
57CW,#10.
517
and now. So Nietzsche compares this conception of art (unfavorably)to the Carmen Bizet himself calledthe opera"allclarityandvivacity."5" operaCarmen; has none of the Olympiansignificance of Wagnerian destiny,but ratherhas the blithe irresponsibilityof a burlesque refrain. Adorno elucidates the fundamentallyNietzschean point: In Bizet the inhumanityand hardness,even the violence of the form, has been used to obliteratethe last token of meaning, so as to forestall any illusion that anything in life could have any meaning over and above its obvious one.59 Artistically (and not just on the level of the plot), Carmen embraces full immanence.This is why Nietzsche is concernedto champion this type of art over the apparently more substantial andprofoundmusic dramasof Wagner,or indeed over any art,such as thatof the Jenaromantics,thatis not contentto be art but tries to point beyond itself to some ulteriormeaning. Carmen,on the other hand, does not use its musical surfaceto indicate some unspokendepth. Its profunditylies in the fact that it remainsa beautifulsurface. We artists... Nietzsche's idea that something might be superficialout of profundityis attractively paradoxical. But is it ironic? Naturallyit dependson whatwe take irony to mean. As I have argued, there is no connection to the specific and famous notion of romantic irony, since Nietzsche is not trying to get art to indicatehigherandinexpressiblemeanings-he is not using the surfaceto point to some unspeakable depth.But canwe look pastthe technicalnotionof romantic irony and attributeany sort of irony to Nietzsche? Perhapsthe thought that there is no meaningbeyond the surfaceis itself ironic ("Whatgods will rescue us from all these ironies?"FriedrichSchlegel once asked).60 It is becoming this type of ironyto Nietzsche. Babich, for increasinglyfashionableto attribute instance, writes, "The ironic trope is nothing less than what Nietzsche named the artistictruthof illusion in its subsistentunsaying of what it says."61Behler and Pippin make substantiallythe same claim, with Behler arguingthat it is In a nutshell,ironyis the way Nietzsche ultimatelyderivedfromromanticism.62
Carmen: Opera Guide (London, 58 Quoted in Lesley Wright,"A Musical Commentary," 1982), 19. 59Adorno, "Fantasiasopra Carmen," 62. 60 Schlegel, "On Incomprehensibility," Lucindeand the Fragments, 267. 61Babich, "Post-Nietzschean Nietzscheas Postmodernist,ed. Koelb, 253. Postmodernism," 62 Pippin, "Ironyand Affirmation"in Nietzsche's New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics, ed. Michael A. Gillespie and Tracy B. Strong (London, 1988), 56-57, 65; also Behler, "Nietzsche'sAuffassungder Ironie," 11.
518
JudithNorman
allows his apparently to self-consciously signify their paradoxicaltruth-claims illusory (or, linguistic, perspectival,historicallysituated,non-ultimate)status, and deny that there is anythingmore solid on which they can be founded. Although within the scope of this paperI will not have time to engage to any greatextent in the heated debate aboutrhetoricalstrategiesin Nietzsche, I will indicatebriefly why in general, irony is not a properway of understanding Nietzsche's texts. Nietzsche never called the playfulness of his style "irony," nor did he evince any discomfortwith the potentialparadoxesresulting from his challenge to the traditionalphilosophical notion of truthdespite the fact thathe hardlyshied from discussing eitherhis style or his variousdiscomforts. Despite Behler's contention that "Nietzsche seems to have avoided the term because of its connotationsof 'romanticsubjectivity,'"63 Nietzsche appearsto of the associate ironymostly with Socrates.64 In contrastto his characterization JenaRomanticsas young and naive, he thinksthat irony belongs to a decadent the man who wroteEcce thoughtthathas grownweary andcynical.65 Certainly, Homo hadno sympathyfor the excessive modestythatSocraticironywas made to serve; indeed, in Beyond Good and Evil (212), Nietzsche diagnoses Socratic irony as a form of ressentiment. Most significantly,the dialectical quality of irony,the fact that, as Babich points out, it unsays what it says while saying it, seems quite out of keeping with the general tenor of Nietzsche's thought. Nietzsche thinks that the philosophical concern for truthhas been overcome, but operating in a posttruthenvironment is not simply a matterof saying andunsayingeach statement. far Indeed, from overcoming the problemof truthin any meaningfulway, this shows an abiding,almostobsessional concernwith thatvery problem,with the absence of any Truth.And we do not find this sort of concern in Nietzsche, who, unlike the romantics,thinksthattruthis irrelevantratherthanmissing (in theological terms dead rather than hidden). Accordingly, Nietzsche wants philosophy to move on to something else, and one of the things he suggests it shouldmove on to is art.But if we see artas simply a set of rhetoricalstrategies and unavoidableproblem for dwelling on the simultaneouslyinsurmountable of truth,then this hardlycounts as moving on.66 Nietzsche cannotbe relied upon to cite the various sources and influences of not only the enormous for his texts. He was notoriouslyunder-appreciative roles would and positive play all his life but also of less Schopenhauer Wagner Oedipally invested figures: Spinoza, Lange, Emerson, for instance, are
Behler, "Nietzsche'sAuffassung der Ironie,"5 64See, for instance,Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, # 212, trans.J. Norman(Cambridge, 2002). 65 Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of Historyfor Life, # 7, trans. Peter Preuss (Indianapolis,Ind., 1988). Nietzsche as 66 See for instance Clayton Koelb's "Reading as a Philosophical Strategy," ed. 144-45. Postmodernist, Koelb,
63
519
mentionedwith disproportionate infrequency,given theirenormousinfluence. But, as I have argued,Nietzsche's relationto Germanromanticismcannot be put into the category of the repressedor occluded (or intellectuallydishonest, if we believe Bowie). In this case at least the influence simply is not there.If he did adopt phrases and ideas current in romanticism (itself not evidence of influence, since these ideas might have had some thirdsource),he alteredthem so considerably,put them to work in such a different context, that they can the same. TheJenaromantics were in intellectual proximity hardlybe considered to Germanidealism, and their ideas are fundamentally anchoredin the project of exploring or giving expression to an a priori transcendental ground of all knowing andbeing. They do so in an interestingand intellectuallyprovocative fashion, and one with considerablesignificance for contemporary thought;in particularly, they can be (andhave often been) insertedinto a historicallineage since both thatculminatesin Heideggeror deconstruction.67 This is appropriate concern themselves with the residually Heideggeriansand deconstructionists idealist problemof ontological or transcendental difference. But Nietzsche does not belong to this historical lineage. The idea of an a prioritranscendental groundis foreign to him, as is (a fortiori)any epistemological concern of how to access it for thought, or interest (no matter how playful) in the fact of its absence or inaccessibility.This is why he gives little mentionto Schlegel, Novalis, Schelling or Fichte,andrarelyengages with their ideas. His history (and future)lie elsewhere. TrinityUniversity.
67 See Lacoue-Labarthe andNancy's TheLiteraryAbsolute,as well as David FarrellKrells's works.

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism, Judith Norman

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism, Judith Norman

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism Author(s): Judith Norman Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 63, No.

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism

Seyhan, Representation,19, 138.

Art & Philosophy(Albany,N.Y., 1999), 8, 12 Jos de Mul, RomanticDesire in (Post)Modern

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism

Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation,tr. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis, 1993),

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism

Schlegel, AF, 116. AF, 262.

32Bowie, From Romanticismto Critical Theory,73.

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism

510 Ironic Philosophies

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism Nietzsche contraJena

GS; Preface, #4. 51

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism

The Case of Wagner (CW),tr. WalterKaufmann (New York, 1967) #10.

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism

Nietzsche and Early Romanticism

67 See Lacoue-Labarthe andNancy's TheLiteraryAbsolute,as well as David FarrellKrells's works.

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi