Uncertainty in Early German Romanticism

Abstract

This introduction explores how uncertainty was used as a poetic and philosophical tool around 1800. It first sets up the historical context for the appropriation of uncertainty by underscoring the philosophical interest in challenging the foundations of knowledge. It then focuses on German Romanticism, using the writings of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel as its primary reference point for an analysis of the poetic and philosophical implications of uncertainty. The authors argue that the work of these two writers presents a philosophical engagement with uncertainty as a problem in its own right and a desire to connect uncertainty to important romantic concepts such as chaos and hypothesis. The introduction concludes with an emphasis on Schlegel’s contributions to the problem of uncertainty.