Scholars are finally fully appreciating the philosophical significance of early German Romanticism. _Brill’s Companion to German Romantic Philosophy_ is a collection of original essays showcasing not only the philosophical achievements of romantic writers such as Schlegel and Novalis, but the sophistication, relevance, and influence of romanticism today.

Scholars are finally fully appreciating the philosophical significance of early German Romanticism. Brill’s Companion to German Romantic Philosophy is a collection of original essays showcasing not only the philosophical achievements of romantic writers such as Schlegel and Novalis, but the sophistication, relevance, and influence of romanticism today.

Recent interest in early German Romantic philosophy can be linked to other approaches, such as that of John Dewey, which are critical of the dominant direction of modern philosophy. The Romantics rethink the relationship between philosophy and art as a way of questioning modern philosophy’s focus on epistemology and scepticism that leads to a lack of attention to the diverse other ways in which human beings make sense of things.

The absolute was one of the most significant philosophical concepts in the early nineteenth century, particularly for the German romantics. Its exact meaning and its role within philosophical romanticism remain, however, a highly contested topic among contemporary scholars. In The Romantic Absolute, I offer a new assessment of the romantics and their understanding of the absolute, filling an important gap in the history of philosophy, especially with respect to the crucial period between Kant and Hegel.

Since the early 1990s, there has been a resurgence of interest in philosophy between “Kant and Hegel,” and in early German romanticism in particular. Philosophers have come to recognize that, in spite of significant differences between the contemporary and romantic contexts, romanticism continues to “persist,” and the questions which the Romantics raised remain relevant today. The Relevance of Romanticism: Essays on Early German Romantic Philosophy is the first collection of essays that offers an in-depth (...) analysis of the reasons why philosophers are (and should be) concerned with romanticism. Through historical and systematic reconstructions, the collection offers a deeper understanding and more encompassing picture of romanticism as a philosophical movement than has been presented thus far, and explicates the role that romanticism plays—or can play—in contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

An article publicising the philosophical contributions of German writer Karoline von Günderrode (1780–1806).

The Romantic Absolute does a spectacular job of reconstructing the main philosophical position of three very difficult figures. The more we know of Romanticism as a movement, the more questions we seem to have, and the more important it seems to be, both to the history of philosophy and to the philosophical questions that concern us today. Nassar’s book represents an important contribution to our understanding of Early German Romanticism and will undoubtedly become an important resource for (...) anyone considering the movement. (shrink)

The articles analyzes the original concept of immortality, presented by F.M. Dostoevsky in a handwritten sketch written on April 16, 1864, the day after the death of the writer’s first wife. The authors argue that this concept was created under the influence of the ideas of German romantic natural philosophy, in particular G.T. Fechner’s work of The Book of Life After Death (1836). According to the pantheistic ideas of Dostoevsky and Fechner, every person after death continues to (...) exist in the earthly world. Having lost a limited biological body in death, a person can get a more extensive “cosmic” body, covering significant areas of the material universe. His personal spirit continues to exist in mankind, and the degree of his influence depends on what kind of spiritual success he achieved during his lifetime. In the concept of Fechner and Dostoevsky, posthumous life can be very different: great personalities (Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, etc.) acquire an even more significant being than during life, and they continue to influence humankind, which, developing in history, strives for an absolute “synthesis” -the merger of all people into an organic whole and at the same time the merger with the universe. Individuals who, during their lifetime, confined themselves to their selfish interests can even disappear. In this concept, God is defined as “universal Synthesis,” i.e., the goal of the world process and the final merging of everything with everything. Jesus Christ is understood as an absolute, perfect man who, after death, does not resurrect in his previous bodily form, but completely dissolves in humankind and acts as a force guiding it toward unity and synthesis with the material world. (shrink)

Around 1800, print culture became a particularly rich source for metaphors about thinking as well as writing, nowhere more so than in the German tradition of _Dichter und Denker_. Goethe, Jean Paul, and Hegel used the _preface_ in order to reflect on the problems of writing itself, and its interpretation. If Sterne teaches us that a material book enables mind games as much as it gives expression to them, the Germans made these games more theoretical still. Weaving in authors (...) from Antiquity to Agamben, Williams shows how European–and, above all, German–Romanticism was a watershed in the history of the preface. The playful, paradoxical strategies that Romantic writers invented are later played out in continental philosophy, and in post-Structuralist literature. The preface is a prompt for playful thinking with texts, as much as it is conventionally the prosaic product of such an exercise. (shrink)

This article puts forward a philosophical interpretation of Bettina von Arnim's epistolary bookDie Günderode, in the following stages. First I situate von Arnim's work in relation to women's participation in early German Romanticism and idealism. The ideal ofSymphilosophie, which was integral to Romantic epistemology, created possibilities for women to participate in philosophical discussion, albeit not on equal terms with men. This suggested that perhapsSymphilosophiebetween women could be more equal and reciprocal. However, interpreters have considered theSym-in Günderrode and von (...) Arnim'sSymphilosophiemore than the-philosophie, whereas here I foregroundDie Günderode's rich philosophical content. I trace the stages in the unfolding dialogue between Günderrode and von Arnim and identify von Arnim's philosophical standpoint as it emerges from this dialogue. For Günderrode, finite beings are attracted together and can only fully unite by dying and superseding their boundaries. This feeds into a gigantic cosmic process through which the earth spiritualizes itself, progressively transcending its own materiality. Von Arnim likewise thinks that all finite beings are dynamically interconnected within the earth's creative process. But, unlike Günderrode, von Arnim thinks that finite beings can realize their interconnectedness within life without needing to die, which means in turn that material nature can rise into successive levels of spirit without its materiality having to be superseded. This metaphysical difference orchestrates many other philosophical disagreements between the two women. I then conclude that on balance, and with significant qualifications,Die Günderodeembodies a successfulSymphilosophiebetween women, but that von Arnim is simultaneously pointing out the fragility ofSymphilosophie. The more independence dialogue partners have, the more liable they are to move away in new directions and abandon or outgrow the conversation, just as Günderrode turns away from von Arnim by the end of the book. (shrink)

Novalis was a central figure in early German Romantic philosophy. Whilst the importance of both Fichte and Spinoza for the development of Romanticism is well established, the vital influence of the Platonic tradition in allowing the Romantics to synthesise these divergent philosophies merits closer attention. Essential to the development of Novalis’ thought was his exposure to Plotinus. This examination first sets out the religious and philosophical problems in Germany at the close of the eighteenth century and situates (...) Novalis in relation to this intellectual environment. Following this, a brief survey of Plotinus-scholarship at the close of the eighteenth century in Germany frames how Novalis came into contact with Plotinus through Dieterich Tiedemann. The examination proceeds to consider how Tiedemann shaped Novalis reception of Plotinus and allowed him to develop a synthesis of Spinoza and Fichte. Finally, it briefly examines the poetic realisation of this synthesis through Novalis’ late poetic work. (shrink)

This article examines the role played by ‘feeling’ (Gefühl) and ‘love’ within the philosophy of German Romanticism. After an introduction (I) to the actual debate on German Romanticism, paragraph II sketches an analysis of the concept of Gefühl at the end of the eighteenth century and highlights the differences with its actual meaning. The successive three sections are dedicated to three pivotal figures of German Romanticism: F. Schlegel (III), Novalis (IV), and Baader (V). Similarities and differences (...) between these authors will be emphasized. It will be demonstrated that they deny the reason˗feeling opposition, and that ‘feeling’ and ‘love’ are at the heart of their ontology, epistemology, and conception of subjectivity, conditioning the Romantic human-nature relationship and Romantic political philosophy. In the concluding remarks (VI), this paper explains how German Romanticism can still help to better understand the role of feelings in politics. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the importance of the reception and development of Goethe’s metamorphosis of plants as a methodological and philosophical framework in the history of botanical theories. It proposes a focus on the textbooks written by the German botanist Ludwig Reichenbach and his first attempt to use Goethe’s idea of metamorphosis of plants as fundamental to his natural system of plants published under the title ‘Botany for Women’, in German Botanik für Damen. In this book, Reichenbach paid particular (...) attention to Goethe’s sensitive views on the essence of nature; he regarded Goethe’s idea of metamorphosis in the plant kingdom as an ideal model to interpret connections of natural phenomena, in particular as a conceptual frame for a natural system. Furthermore, he aimed to develop the philosophical statement of the metamorphosis, in which he called for nature-philosophical conceptions in order to materialize his representation of plant “affinities,” and of a kind of “ontogeny” of the whole plant kingdom. This paper demonstrates that, between speculative views and empirical attempts, the extent to which Reichenbach actually belonged to a new “school” of thought, which left its mark on the history and philosophy of botany. (shrink)

Schiller’s importance for the Romantic generation is discussed in relation to three writers and thinkers whose work arose in close connection—and by no means always consonance—with Schiller’s thought. The authors discussed—Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe—were writers of a broadly Romantic disposition who, nevertheless, often stood apart from the Romantic mainstream. Of the three, Hölderlin and Kleist give prominence to philosophical concerns, absorbing key influences from Kant as well as Schiller. Goethe, by contrast, drew (...) writerly influences from Schiller rather than philosophical ones, though it is also true that his acceptance of a philosophical objection Schiller had raised brought about the literary experiment that was to achieve fabled significance in German letters under the heading of Weimar Classicism. (shrink)

"All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives (...) of the people who held it and the development of nineteenth-century science. Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an intimate knowledge of the individuals involved—from Goethe and the brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline Schelling—Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations—all tempered by personal relationships—altered scientific representations of nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology, culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's evolutionary theory. Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored, The Romantic Conception of Life alters how we look at Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology. (shrink)

SummaryIn his doctoral dissertation—The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism, finished in 1919 and published as a book in 1920—Walter Benjamin explores the epistemological and aesthetic foundations of the concept of criticism expounded by the early German Romantics Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. Many of the themes in the dissertation recur in his later work, which has led scholars to believe that much of Benjamin's thought is directly influenced by the Romantics. However, a detailed investigation of the origins and (...) development of the dissertation reveals that the picture is much more complicated. Reading the dissertation alongside the biographical material now available, this article argues that the major themes which preoccupy Benjamin in The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism, including his theories of language and knowledge as well as his messianic philosophy of history, in fact predate his study of the Romantics. As well as being a potential entry ticket to an academic career, the dissertation constitutes Benjamin's first sustained attempt to develop and consolidate his own epistemology and aesthetics in a more or less systematic way. He does so through a series of ‘judicious interpretations’ of the Romantics, whose work he reads selectively, anachronistically and creatively to provide a vehicle for his own thought. (shrink)

Why was mythology of vital importance for the romantics? What role did mythology play in their philosophical and literary work? And what common sources of influence inspired these writers across Britain and Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century? In this wide-ranging study, Owen Ware argues that the romantics turned to mythology for its potential to transform how we see ourselves, others, and the world. Engaging with authors such as William Blake, Friedrich Schlegel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Friedrich von Hardenberg (...) (Novalis), and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ware shows why they believed that neither perception nor reason alone can sustain a vision of the unity of all things. A new mode of cognition is necessary, they claimed, one that revives the poetic origin of mythology and reveals our own mythmaking powers. _Return of the Gods_ investigates the rise of mythology in the British and German traditions and the romantics’ practices of reinterpreting old myths and inventing new ones. Their shared aim was nothing less than to elevate the human imagination to higher stages of self-development in which philosophy and poetry, as well as intellect and imagination, form an integrated whole. Far from calling us to return to the past, the romantics’ work on mythology points us to a future where we can live in harmony with the personal, social, and natural worlds we inhabit. Owen Ware combines intellectual history with philosophical analysis and literary criticism to offer a bold reflection on why mythology mattered for the romantics—and why it still matters today. (shrink)

The origins of early German Romanticism and the philosophical contributions of the movement’s most important philosopher.

The book also highlights the ideas of early German Romantic philosophy, including the works of Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Schleirmacher, and Schelling, ...

The Early Romantics met resistance from artists and academics alike in part because they defied the conventional wisdom that philosophy and the arts must be kept separate. Indeed, as the literary component of Romanticism has been studied and celebrated in recent years, its philosophical aspect has receded from view. This book, by one of the most respected scholars of the Romantic era, offers an explanation of Romanticism that not only restores but enhances understanding of the movement's origins, development, (...) aims, and accomplishments--and of its continuing relevance. Poetry is in fact the general ideal of the Romantics, Frederick Beiser tells us, but only if poetry is understood not just narrowly as poems but more broadly as things made by humans. Seen in this way, poetry becomes a revolutionary ideal that demanded--and still demands--that we transform not only literature and criticism but all the arts and sciences, that we break down the barriers between art and life, so that the world itself becomes "romanticized." Romanticism, in the view Beiser opens to us, does not conform to the contemporary division of labor in our universities and colleges; it requires a multifaceted approach of just the sort outlined in this book. (shrink)

In his new book, "The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe," Robert J. Richards argues that Charles Darwin's true evolutionary roots lie in the German Romantic biology that flourished around the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is argued that Richards is quite wrong in this claim and that Darwin's roots are in the British society within which he was born, educated, and lived.

Over the last two decades, environmental theorists have repeatedly pronounced the “end” of nature, arguing that the idea of nature is neither plausible nor desirable. This chapter offers an environmental reappraisal of romanticism, in light of these critiques. Its goals are historical and systematic. First, the chapter assesses the validity of the environmentalist critique of the romantic conception of nature by distinguishing different strands within romanticism, and locating an empiricist strand in the natural-scientific work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. (...) Second, the chapter considers the systematic significance of Goethe’s “romantic empiricism,” and argues that while an abstract notion of nature is problematic, a concrete conception achieved through the mutually supportive work of observation and reflection is essential for environmental thought. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the origins of Polish Romanticism as born partially out of German idealist philosophy. I examine the influence exerted by the ideas of the most significant thinkers, such as Kant, Fichte and Schelling on both professors and students living in Vilnius at the beginning of the nineteenth century (particularly Jan Śniadecki, Józef Gołuchowski and Adam Mickiewicz). As an adherent of Enlightenment and empirical epistemology Śniadecki was critical towards Kant as well as Romantic poetics. On (...) the contrary, in the works of young Gołuchowski, who was well acquainted with German ideas, there are frequent references to Kant, Fichte, and Schelling’s philosophy of life. The same ideas—such as vital nature, feeling, and faith as opposed to “dead” knowledge based on “pure terms”—can be found in Mickiewicz’s early works. This convergence of motifs is due to the fact that they both have the same source of inspiration: German idealism. (shrink)

Part I. The golden age and primitivism -- The savages -- Prometheus and Orpheus -- Atlantis -- Part II. The blossoming and decline of culture -- The age of blossoming in Athens -- Alexandria -- Part III. The problem of a national golden age -- The Roman model: golden age as a modern disease -- From classicism to romanticism -- Part IV. Kingdom of God -- German tradition of chiliasm -- From eschatology to kairology -- The gospel of nature (...) -- Medievalism as the externalisation of the golden age -- Conclusion. (shrink)

German Romanticism is commonly associated with nationalism rather than cosmopolitanism. Against this standard picture, I argue that the early German romantic author, Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772–1801) holds a decidedly cosmopolitan view. Novalis’s essay “Christianity or Europe” has been the subject of much dispute and puzzlement ever since he presented it to the Jena romantic circle in the fall of 1799. On the basis of an account of the philosophical background of Novalis’s romanticism, I (...) show that the image of the Middle Ages sketched in “Christianity or Europe” plays a symbolic role and should not be taken as a literal description of the historical past or as a blueprint for the future. Rather, the romantic picture of medieval Europe serves to evoke poetically the ideal of a cosmopolitan re-unification of humanity. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the Early German Romantics understand the absolute, or being, to be an infinite whole encompassing all the things of the world and all their causal relations. The Romantics argue that we strive endlessly to know this whole but only acquire an expanding, increasingly systematic body of knowledge about finite things, a system of knowledge which can never be completed. We strive to know the whole, the Romantics claim, because we have an original feeling (...) of it that motivates our striving. I then examine two different Romantic accounts of this feeling. The first, given by Novalis, is that feeling gives us a kind of access to the absolute which logically precedes any conceptualisation. I argue that this account is problematic and that a second account, offered by Friedrich Schlegel, is preferable. On this account, we feel the absolute in that we intuit it aesthetically in certain natural phenomena. This form of intuition is partly cognitive and partly non-cognitive, and therefore it motivates us to strive to convert our intuition into full knowledge. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin’s theoretical apparatus and ideas of the immediate precursors of the Jena Romantik school of German Romanticism: Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). In doing so, it examines the themes and treatments that are common to these two thinkers and Bakhtin, tracing the tradition of anti-systematic thought through Hamann, Nietzsche and Bakhtin, and the transmission of Herder’s philosophy of Bildung through the Russian cultural milieu and (...) Goethe. Initially, the paper briefly outlines the early German Romantic ‘school’ of philosophy as a prelude to a more detailed examination of the ways in which Bakhtin assimilated German philosophy in general. The paper’s section on Hamann commences with a review of his background, using this as a basis for establishing connections between Hamann’s approach to communication and that of Bakhtin, based on a common epistemology focused on the self. The section on Herder is centred on his concept of Bildung and his historicist approach to literature, both of which interests Bakhtin shared. The paper then examines a number of conduits for Herder’s thought to Bakhtin, including Kant and Goethe. The paper concludes by examining Isaiah Berlin’s notion of the ‘Counter-Enlightenment’—in which movement he includes both Hamann and Herder—and the extent to which Bakhtin could be said to form part of this tradition. (shrink)

This study represents a comparison between two radical gestures of literary self-reflexivity: romantic irony and postmodernist metafiction. It examines the impact of early German romantic theory and its central concept of irony on German and English romantic narrative fiction and relates the same to postmodernist self-reflexive novels, including its British and American variants. A primary objective of this comparison is to account for the radical skepticism that postmodernist metafiction voices with respect to the paramount philosophical (...) question of truth and reality. The immanent tension between an absolute idealistic and a radically skeptic position which romantic irony articulates and enacts is conceived of as an important and instructive link to the understanding of postmodernism. (shrink)

This 2002 volume brings together major works by German thinkers, writing just prior to and after Kant, who were enormously influential in this crucial period of aesthetics. These texts include the first translation into English of Schiller's Kallias Letters and Moritz's On the Artistic Imitation of the Beautiful, together with translations of some of Hölderlin's most important theoretical writings and works by Hamann, Lessing, Novalis and Schlegel. In a philosophical introduction J. M. Bernstein traces the development of aesthetics from (...) its still rationalist and mimetic construction in Lessing, through the optimistic construal of art and/or beauty as the appearance of human freedom in the work of Schiller, to Hölderlin's darker vision of art as the memory of a lost unity, and the variations of that theme - of an impossible striving after the lost ideal - which are found in the work of Schlegel and Novalis. (shrink)

Nassar distinguishes an understudied philosophical tradition that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, traces its development, and argues for its continued significance. She shows how four key thinkers, whom she calls the 'romantic empiricists', developed a distinctive approach to the study of nature, which culminated in an ecological understanding of nature and the human place within it. Nassar contends that the romantic empiricist insights and approaches remain crucial for us today, as we seek (...) to address the environmental crisis.--. (shrink)

Hegel's critique of the Early German Romantic figures of Fr. Schlegel, Novalis and Schleiermacher resonates to the very core of his work and is as essential to understanding his vision of Science as Plato's polemic against the Sophists is to comprehending his philosophy. Hegel's presentation of romantic irony may not be faithful to its Romantic conception but it is deeply insightful in apprehending irony's postmodern threat to systematic philosophy.

German Idealism began with Leibniz and lasted until Schopenhauer, with a few central European after-shocks in the work of Husserl and his followers. That great epoch in German philosophy coincided with a great epoch in German music. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that Idealist philosophers should have paid special attention to this art form. Looking back on it, is there anything of this prolonged encounter between music and philosophy that we can consider to be a (...) real advance, and one that we should draw on? Many have thought so, not least because Idealism, as it matured in the post-Kantian period, inherited the adulation for art in general, and music in particular, that we find in the writings of the German Romantics, notably in Schiller, Tieck and Wackenroder. The post-Kantian Idealists connected aesthetic experience with their claims to reveal the secret meaning of things, in the infinite, the absolute, the transcendental, the ineffable or some other such object of a quasi-religious devotion. Such we find in the writings of Schelling, Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer, the last of whom made music not only an object of philosophy, but a prime example of it. Music, Schopenhauer wrote, is not unconscious arithmetic, as Leibniz had claimed, but unconscious philosophy, since in music the inner essence of the world, which is will, is made directly present to the intellect. (shrink)

Romantic Organicism attempts to reassess the much maligned and misunderstood notion of organic unity. Following organicism from its crucial radicalisation in German Idealism, it shows how both Coleridge and Wordsworth developed some of their most profound ideas and poetry on its basis. Armstrong shows how the tenets and ideals of organicism - despite much criticism - remain an insistent, if ambivalent, backdrop for much of our current thought, including the work of Derrida amongst others.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Rhetoric of Romantic ProphecySara GuyerThe Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy. Ian BalfourStanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. Pp. 368. $70.00, cloth; $29.95, paperback.Not insignificantly, Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot are the first two names to appear in Ian Balfour's excellent study The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy. Benjamin and Blanchot are authors of two of the most influential essays on romanticism, essays that, it just so happens, (...) Ian Balfour is responsible for introducing to an English-reading audience. 1 Thus, The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy is not only a long awaited, prize-winning book by a major theorist of romanticism, it is also a book written by the first English translator of Benjamin's and Blanchot's essays. Both Blanchot's "The Athenaeum" and Benjamin's "On the Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism" expose the incompletion of the romantic project and unsettle the relation between the past and the present. They also provide a context for understanding the kind of book that Ian Balfour has written. Like its eminent predecessors, this book focuses on local phenomena, yet its force far exceeds the field that it so thoughtfully treats. In it, Balfour shows how a turn to the past (to a set of historical texts) has the effect of unsettling the present, and he argues that an apparent turn to the future (prophecy) has as its issue the present.The book's introduction, entitled "The Call of Prophecy and the Future (After Benjamin)," alerts us to the fact that Benjamin and Blanchot, who have written extensively on language, also have written compellingly on the prophetic. While the prophetic today most often seems to signify religion's naive or violent claims on the future (and by implication on the present), in Benjamin's and Blanchot's work—and in Balfour's work—"the prophetic" (by which Balfour means not a genre, but a "mode") poses problems of referentiality and interpretation. Benjamin's treatment of messianism and allegory in the "Theses on the Philosophy of History" offers Balfour a clear framework for undertaking this examination. And, in style and approach, Benjamin is the thinker with whom Balfour has the closest kinship. Like Benjamin's The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Balfour's The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy is a historical study that is not historicist, that is, it does not aim to account for a historical phenomenon, but is a philosophical and rhetorical investigation into language.However, it is Blanchot's brief essay "Prophetic Speech"—a review of André Neher's L'essence du prophétisme—that informs Balfour's thinking about the prophetic. Indeed, Balfour's book can be read as a meditation on the rhetorical implications of Blanchot's suggestion that: [End Page 257]Prophetic speech announces an impossible future, or makes the future it announces, because it announces it, something impossible, a future one would not know how to live and that must upset all the sure givens of existence. When speech becomes prophetic it is not the future that is given, it is the present that is taken away, and with it any possibility of a firm, stable, lasting presence. 2With this passage, Blanchot not only recasts the conventional account of prophecy (and, implicitly, the symbolic reading upon which prophecy relies), but also shows that if prophecy turns the future into a referent—and hence becomes history—the present is lost. Balfour's transfer of Blanchot's account of the prophetic to romanticism is broadly explained by the debates within romanticism (and contemporary criticism of romanticism) about referentiality and the primacy of symbol over allegory, debates that today are most well-known to non-romanticists through Paul de Man's "The Rhetoric of Temporality."Balfour offers a lucid account of his project—and its relation to history and historicist criticism—when he explains:If there is a historical force to the analysis here, it lies not in the attempt to show how representative these texts were of some larger, pervasive phenomenon—although they sometimes are—but rather to mark what was possible to be thought and done at a given moment. More than that, the analysis implicitly and sometimes explicitly confronts... (shrink)