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Novalis's Magical Idealism Symphilosophie International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism Novalis’s Magical Idealism A Threefold Philosophy of the Imagination, Love and Medicine Laure Cahen-Maurel* ABSTRACT This article argues that Novalis’s philosophy of magical idealism essentially consists of three central elements: a theory of the creative or productive imagination, a conception of love, and a doctrine of transcendental medicine. In this regard, it synthesizes two adjacent, but divergent contemporary philosophical sources – J. G. Fichte’s idealism and Friedrich Schiller’s classicism – into a new and original philosophy. It demonstrates that Novalis’s views on both magic and idealism, not only prove to be perfectly rational and comprehensible, but even more philosophically coherent and innovative than have been recognised up to now. Keywords: magical idealism, productive imagination, love, medicine, Novalis, J. G. Fichte, Schiller RÉSUMÉ Cet article défend l’idée selon laquelle trois éléments centraux composent ce que Novalis nomme « idéalisme magique » pour désigner sa philosophie propre : la conception d’une imagination créatrice ou productrice, une doctrine de l’amour et une théorie de la médecine transcendantale. L’idéalisme magique est en cela la synthèse en une philosophie nouvelle et originale de deux sources philosophiques contemporaines, à la fois adjacentes et divergentes : l’idéalisme de J. G. Fichte et le classicisme de Friedrich Schiller. L’article montre que les vues de Novalis tant sur la magie que sur l’idéalisme sont non seulement réellement rationnelles et compréhensibles, mais philosophiquement plus cohérentes et novatrices qu’on ne l’a admis jusqu’à présent. Mots-clés : idéalisme magique, imagination productrice, amour, médecine, Novalis, J. G. Fichte, Schiller * Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Associate Member of the Centre Victor Basch, Université Paris- Sorbonne, 1 rue Victor Cousin, 75005 Paris, France – [email protected] Symphilosophie 1/2019, pp. 129-165 ISSN 2704-8152 LAURE CAHEN-MAUREL Introduction: The Modern Philosophical Underpinnings of “Magical Idealism” “Mysteries are a means of nourishment—inciting potencies. Explanations are digested mysteries.” – Novalis1 “Novalis”, the nom de plume or pen name with which Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801) signed Pollen, his first published collection of fragments in 1798, not only reflects the ancient Hardenberg family lineage of de novali, signifying “someone who opens up new land”. For this name also embodies the new philosophical programme that the poet-philosopher of early German romanticism began sketching out in 1798. Novalis called this programme “magical idealism”, and it too aimed at breaking fresh ground.2 Novalis’s contribution to the history of post-Kantian philosophy has long fuelled and continues to fuel prejudices against the romantics, as well as debates among the specialists.3 It is sometimes assumed by certain readers and commentators that by choosing the designation “magical” Novalis wished to underscore the irrational and inexplicable elements of his thought. The present article shows such an assumption to be uncritical and inaccurate. 1 Novalis, Das Allgemeine Brouillon (1798/99), entry 138, in Novalis, Schriften. Die Werke Friedrich von Hardenbergs (hereafter: HKA), ed. Paul Kluckhohn, Richard Samuel, Hans-Joachim Mähl, Gerhard Schulz et al. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1983), vol. 3, 267; Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia: Das Allgemeine Brouillon, trans. David W. Wood (Albany/N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2007), 23. 2 To be sure, in addition to “magical idealism”, Novalis also gives his conception of philosophy a number of other names. As this article will show, it is at times equated with the designation “realistic idealism”, at times with the operation of “romanticizing” the world, and at other times with the method of “encyclopaedistics”. Although they obviously carry different accentuations, I believe it can be shown that all these designations are synonymous at base. 3 For older and more recent philosophical studies directly treating the question of Novalis’s philosophy of magical idealism, see, among others, Heinrich Simon, Der magische Idealismus. Studien zur Philosophie des Novalis (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1906); Theodor Haering, Novalis als Philosoph (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1954); Manfred Frank, “Die Philosophie des sogenannten ‘magischen Idealismus’”, Euphorion 63 (1969): 88–116; Stephan Grätzel, Johannes Ullmaier, “Der magische Transzendentalismus von Novalis”, Kant-Studien 89/1 (1998): 59–67; Bernward Loheide, Fichte und Novalis, Transzendentalphilosophisches Denken im romantisierenden Diskurs (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000); Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Olivier Schefer, “L’‘idéalisme magique’ de Novalis”, Critique 59, no. 673–74 (June-July 2003): 514-527; Ives Rradizzani, “Philosophie transcendantale et idéalisme magique”, in Einbildungskraft und Reflexion. Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Novalis / Imagination et réflexion. Recherches philosophiques sur Novalis, ed. by Augustin Dumont and Alexander Schnell (LIT Verlag: Zurich, 2015), 103–113; Laurent Guyot, “Novalis et la question du prolongement poétique de la philosophie de Fichte”, Fichte- Studien 43 (2016): 277–89; and my monograph: Laure Cahen-Maurel, L’art de romantiser le monde. La peinture de Caspar David Friedrich et la philosophie romantique de Novalis (Zurich: LIT Verlag, 2017). 130 Symphilosophie 1/2019 MAGICAL IDEALISM In contrast, I argue that Novalis’s conception of magical idealism essentially combines or synthesizes two adjacent, but divergent contemporary philo- sophical sources – J. G. Fichte’s idealism and Friedrich Schiller’s classicism – into a new and original philosophy. In this way, I demonstrate that the syncretic method of Novalis’s thinking, his conceptions of magic as such and idealism and realism on the whole, not only prove to be perfectly rational and comprehensible, but even more philosophically coherent and innovative than have been recognised up to now.4 The present study builds on the work of scholars who have endeavoured to understand the rational strands of philosophical romanticism, and especially the extent to which it is embedded in post-Kantian debates. Manfred Frank’s 1969 article “Die Philosophie des sogenannten ‘magischen Idealismus’” is one such pioneering investigation that philosophically re- assessed the nature of Novalis’s romanticism within this tradition.5 Frank argued that the philosophy of magical idealism was not a mere whim of Novalis or a subjective trait of his fantasy, but the sensible and metaphysical expression of an unrealisable ideal of the absolute. In addition to Frank’s seminal research in German, scholarly progress in grasping the rationality of philosophical romanticism in the American-Anglophone world is greatly indebted to the voluminous writings of Frederick C. Beiser, whose 2002 book German Idealism included among others an extensive chapter on “Novalis’s Magical Idealism.”6 Over the past two decades, many other researchers have travelled this path of rationally understanding and situating the major stakes of philosophical romanticism within the context of German idealism. These studies have provided in turn a powerful corrective to the customary and now thoroughly outdated interpretation of early romanticism as a form of irrationalism or anti-rationalism. But the question still remains: how is it possible to critically understand Novalis’s project of “magical idealism” as a rational and non-contradictory theory, when this project apparently attempts to combine the domains of magic and philosophy? Magic belongs to an extremely old tradition, dating back to at least Zoroaster and the Persian magi, the Egyptian mysteries, to Pythagoreanism 4 Generally speaking, Novalis sought for a form of syncretism of various traditions, or as he also terms it, a form of “syncriticism”. See, for example, Novalis, Das Allgemeine Brouillon, entry no. 457, labelled “PHILOSOPHY”, HKA 3, 333; Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia, 75. On the importance of syncriticism in Novalis, see Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism, 431. 5 See Manfred Frank, “Die Philosophie des sogenannten ‘magischen Idealismus’”; reprinted in Manfred Frank, Auswege aus dem Deutschen Idealismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007), 27–66. 6 Beiser, German Idealism, 407-434. Cf. Beiser, The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 18-21, 50–55. Symphilosophie 1/2019 131 LAURE CAHEN-MAUREL and the Neoplatonist doctrine of theurgy.7 Novalis was well aware of all these older religious and philosophical traditions of magic, not to mention the many contemporary evocations of magic in prominent artistic works like Goethe’s 1790 play, Faust: A Fragment, or Mozart’s 1791 opera The Magic Flute. Hence, some of the key issues to be addressed in the present article are: what exactly did Novalis himself understand by magic? And what are the precise sources of magic for his conception of magical idealism – are they ancient or modern, religious or artistic, poetic or philosophical, or some combination of them all? For it is easy to see that any incorporation of magic into a serious philosophical programme could quickly devalue it, drawing it towards Schwärmerei or the deluded fantasies of a charlatan. Indeed, in The Republic Plato directly sets true philosophy against the charlatanry of the magicians.8
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