Religion and Early German Romanticism

Abstract

This chapter explores the reception of Kant’s understanding of consciousness by both romantics and idealists from 1785 to 1799, tracing its impact on the theory of religion. Kant’s understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique is analyzed, and two fundamental strategies in the reception of Kant regarding his understanding of consciousness and its relation to the Absolute are examined. The first is that of the early German Romantics: Novalis, Schlegel, Schleiermacher, and Holderlin, for whom the Absolute exceeds all possibility of conceptualization. The second is that of the German idealists: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, for whom the logic that makes possibility intelligible precedes actuality and thereby conditions the ground of Being itself. Lastly, the development of the first strategy by Friedrich Schleiermacher is explored.