Fichte and Novalis on the Relationship between Ethics and Aesthetics

Abstract

Fichte's moral [theory] contains the most correct views of morality. Morality says absolutely nothing determinate - it is conscience - a mere judge without law. Morality commands immediately, but always individually. It is decision through and through. correct idea of conscience. Laws are thoroughly opposed to morality.1 As is well known, the relationship between Fichte and the early German Romantic writer Novalis has been broadly explored in the last century and a half, though with diametrically differing conclusions. Both the extent of Fichte's influence on Novalis as well as the quality of Novalis's interpretation of Fichte have been the subjects of fierce dispute.2 Most recent work on the relationship between Novalis and Fichte has been devoted to the early notebooks, written by Novalis in the years 1795-1796 and normally referred to as the Fichte-Studien, and has considered this early work almost exclusively in its relationship to the 1794 Wissenschafislehre, and, even more narrowly, to its beginning sections.3 In this essay, I will be exploring this relationship at the extreme opposite end of Novalis's albeit very short career, focusing primarily upon the last completed section of the second part of the unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen in relation to Fichte's later Jena writings, specifically the System of Ethics. This section of the novel is composed of a dialogue between the title figure, the burgeoning poet Heinrich, and an older man, introduced as Sylvester, the doctor, who, as I will demonstrate, enunciates a particular reading of the ethical views developed in the System of Ethics. This dialogue appears to be the place where Novalis attempts explicitly to come to terms with his philosophical influences, in particular, with Fichte's ethics, and to find a place for his poetic vocation in relation to it, which as I will suggest in the first half of my paper, remains problematic in Fichte's system. A close analysis of this final scene will form the second half of my essay. Sylvester passage, which fairly brims over with words such as Gewissen (conscience) and Tugend (virtue), has not been especially popular among advocates of what has been the prevailing interpretation of the early Romantics in the past few decades, as avatars of an ironic, deconstructive, and/or postmodern sensibility.4 As with any passage in Novalis, a number of possible influences come to mind, here including such figures as Hemsterhuis, Schleiermacher, and Baader. 5 Here, however, I will focus my reading of this passage on its parallels with SE, seeing the passage also as a commentary upon it. Following Beiser,6 1 will thus highlight the importance of the ethical project for Novalis and its direct relationship to his aesthetic aspirations. Fichte on Aesthetics and Ethics I thus begin with Fichte's views on the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. One of the central texts in Fichte's work explicitly addressing this topic is §31 of the System of Ethics, titled The Duties of the Aesthetic Artist.7 As Hartmut Traub notes,8 this section contains a variety of ideas which can only be understood against the backdrop of Fichte's earlier writings, especially the essay written in 1795, the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy,9 the subject of the famed dispute with Schiller, who refused to publish it in his journal. Because it appears in the System of Ethics, the fundamental question addressed by this section is the role which the fine arts have in the development of humanity toward its final goal, namely, the self-sufficiency of reason. At the beginning of the section, a certain resistance to the topic is palpable; Fichte discusses the theme if only for the sake of completeness and because such discussions must happen due to the necessities of our age.10 This latter comment is likely a reference to the claims that Schiller made in his On the Aesthetic Education of Humanity which posit the pedagogical effects of beauty as the only way to escape the dilemmas of modern society which have led, for example, to the failure of the French Revolution. …