Rethinking Romanticism with Spinoza: Encounter and Individuation in Novalis, Ritter, and Baader.

Reconstructing the theories of encounter and individuation among Novalis and his contemporaries affiliated with the Freiberg Mining Academy, this article reconsiders German Romanticism through a Spinozan materialist tradition. Countering the reception of Novalis as a poet and an idealist philosopher...

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Published in:Germanic Review Vol. 94; no. 4; pp. 271 - 299
Main Author: Biareishyk, Siarhei
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd Oct-Dec2019
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        10.1080/00168890.2019.1659223
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        atl: Rethinking Romanticism with Spinoza: Encounter and Individuation in Novalis, Ritter, and Baader.
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        au: Biareishyk, Siarhei
      su:
        Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677
        Individuation (Philosophy)
        Romanticism
        Computer performance
        Electricity
        Individuation (Psychology)
        Animism
        Philosophers
        Novalis, 1772-1801
        Ritter, Johann Wilhelm, 1776-1810
        Baader, Franz von, 1765-1841
      sug:
        subj:
          Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677
          Individuation (Philosophy)
          Romanticism
          Computer performance
          Electricity
          Individuation (Psychology)
          Animism
          Philosophers
          Novalis, 1772-1801
          Ritter, Johann Wilhelm, 1776-1810
          Baader, Franz von, 1765-1841
      keyword:
        Franz Baader
        Johann Ritter
        materialism
        Novalis
        ontology
        Spinoza
      ab: Reconstructing the theories of encounter and individuation among Novalis and his contemporaries affiliated with the Freiberg Mining Academy, this article reconsiders German Romanticism through a Spinozan materialist tradition. Countering the reception of Novalis as a poet and an idealist philosopher of subjectivity belonging to Jena Romanticism, I advance an alternative constellation of his interlocutors that comprises an intellectual tendency around 1800, herein referred to as Freiberg Romanticism. This tradition is characterized by a materialist approach to the questions on forms of life, complexity, and power in the processes of emergence and becoming. In their respective theories of individuation, I show how Novalis, Johann Ritter, and Franz Baader share Spinoza's materialist ontology of immanence and transindividuality offered in recent interpretations of Spinoza in continental philosophy. In his engagement with Ritter's theory of Galvanism, Novalis develops a Spinozan logic of integration of individuals in nature. In his appropriation of Baader's theory of elementary physiology, Novalis articulates the immanent causality in the determination of individuals. Interrogating Novalis's, Ritter's, and Baader's respective epistemo-ontologies through Spinoza's thought, this article demarcates the limits of Freiberg Romanticism and its potential lapses into animism and vitalism. While Spinoza contributes a strong concept of substance to Freiberg Romanticism, regulating and problematizing the equivocations of Novalis and his contemporaries, Novalis contributes to the Spinozan tradition a strong concept of encounter.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
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    language: English
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