Nature, Art, and Politics after Kant / Colorado State University / Summer 2001

This Institute functioned as an interdisciplinary workshop meant to bring together a wide range of scholars interested in the rich and diverse phenomenon of Early German Romanticism, a movement that has gained prominence recently in the wake of a series of influential new interpretations. The Institute was co-directed by two philosophers, but was designed to attract the participation of scholars from all the different fields (literature, history, art, government, religion, cultural studies, and philosophy) concerned with issues central to the Early Romantic treatment of nature, aesthetics, and politics.

Applicants needed by no means already to have been specialists in Early German Romanticism; some background in areas such as German Idealism, Kant, or Romanticism in general was sufficient. The site of the Institute (Fort Collins, Colorado), at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, provided an extremely attractive working environment and an appropriate setting for the study of a group of writers who are well known for their special emphasis on the aesthetic and philosophical significance of nature.

From an English-speaking perspective, the ideas of German Idealism and Romanticism have long been associated with irrational, other-worldly, and authoritarian doctrines. Nonetheless, extensive recent research has shown that the Early Romantic movement in Germany had a character that differs strikingly from some common images of Romanticism. It was founded on a philosophy of freedom — the thought of Rousseau and Kant — and directly inspired by the rational ideals of the French Revolution. Rather than being self-centered or lost in mysticism, its original goal was to develop a concrete and balanced vision of humans as creative and imaginative beings, beings capable of combining political autonomy with innovative forms of aesthetic expression and social organization.

The Institute began with sessions reviewing some of the relevant philosophical fundamentals of the Kantian background of the period, and then moved on to sessions focusing on historical and thematic aspects of the Early Romantic effort to improve on Kant's ideas on nature, art, and autonomy. Rather than dwelling at length on the most familiar philosophical systems of the period after Kant — namely, those of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel — the Institute treated Early Romanticism as a significant force worth studying in its own right. The movement is defined by a group of philosopher-poets and brilliant but relatively marginalized (within Anglophone history of philosophy) figures: Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), and their friends, e.g., the young Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Jena Kantians such as Johann Benjamin Erhard and Friedrich von Herbert.

The disciplined (but intentionally fragmentary and anti-systematic) orientation of this Romantic "Jena Circle" is precisely what makes this group so relevant to contemporary thought. The Jena Circle anticipated a major trend in late twentieth century philosophy (e.g., in the work of the late Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Cavell, and Rorty), namely, an appreciation of the fact that in the contemporary world philosophy can no longer sensibly aspire to the play the central foundational role, analogous to traditional theology or modern physics, that its great systematic founders (from Descartes to Fichte) had assumed.

Instead of retreating to skepticism or relativism, the Early Romantics developed a productive and ironic style of writing that aims to combine the insights and deflate the pretensions of modern philosophy, science, and literature. Hence, it is no wonder that in recent years the movement of Early German Romanticism has become the focus of a number of widely influential studies.

A list of appropriate background reading for the Institute included books such as Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism (1988); Theodore Ziolkowski, The Institutions of German Romanticism (1990); Ernst Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory (1993); Frederick Beiser, ed., The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (1996); Jochen Schulte-Sasse, ed., Theory as Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German Romantic Writings (1997); Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Art of the Modern Age (2000); Manfred Frank, Unendliche Annäherung: Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik (1997, trans. forthcoming); A. Bowie, From Romanticism to Critical Theory: the Philosophy of German Literary Theory (2000); as well as many other important recent books that approach Romanticism from a broader perspective (e.g., by Berlin; de Man; Eagleton; Eldridge; Larmore; Rosen; and Todorov).

In English, an overview of many topics central to the period can be found in three recent books edited by the co-directors of the Institute: Autonomy and Community: Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Theory, ed. Kneller & Axinn (1998); The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy, ed. Ameriks & Sturma (1995); and The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, ed. Ameriks (2000).