The Doubter and the Discoverer. Novalis and the Scepticism

Abstract

The literary and philosophical productivity of Romanticism is not usually associated with scepticism. The various forms of relation to the absolute almost completely hide from us the genuine ways in which doubt operates. In comparison, according to Manfred Frank, early romanticism was more sceptical and modern than its reputation. In my text, I try to explore and demonstrate why and how it is relevant to read the early Romantic literary and philosophical tradition from the perspective of scepticism. Partly through Frank’s reflections, but largely through Matthias Löwe’s reconstruction of the concept of „Romantic scepticism”, I come to the conclusion that a kind of sceptical voice emerges in the works of the authors of the early Romantic period. This scepticism could be characterised and summarised in the aporia of Novalis’s thought, that it is through our inability to reach and know the absolute that we can have some kind of „possible absolute”, and moreover, it is only through this inability that we can find the absolute.