Novalis

Quotes from Novalis, aka Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801, who was an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.

(from Wikipedia)

Novalis, who had great knowledge in science, law, philosophy, politics and political economy, started writing quite early. He left an astonishing abundance of notes on these fields of knowledge and his early work shows that he was very educated and well read. His later works are closely connected to his studies and his profession. Novalis collected everything that he had learned, reflected upon it and drew connections in the sense of an encyclopaedic overview on art, religion and science. These notes from the years 1798 and 1799 are called Das allgemeine Brouillon, and are now available in English under the title Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia.

Together with Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis developed the fragment as a literary form of art. The core of Hardenberg’s literary works is the quest for the connection of science and poetry, and the result was supposed to be a "progressive universal poesy” (fragment no. 116 of the Athenaum journal). Novalis was convinced that philosophy and the higher-ranking poetry have to be continually related to each other.

Novalis’ whole works are based upon an idea of education: "We are on a mission: we are called upon to educate the earth." It has to be made clear that everything is in a continual process. It is the same with humanity, which forever strives towards and tries to recreate a new Golden Age – a paradisical Age of harmony between man and nature that was assumed to have existed in earlier times. This Age was recounted by Plato, Plotinus, and Franz Hemsterhuis – the latter being an extremely important figure for the German Romantics.

[JLJ - you have to have a lot of respect for a guy who attempted to write an encyclopedia, and to try to determine the connection of everything to everything else. ]

Imagination alone reveals to me what this present world is

All talents spring from intellect. Intellect sets the task, imagination chalks out the design, but intellect carries it out.

The imagination is the marvelous sense that can replace all senses for us - and which already is so much directed by our will.

The creative power of the imagination is divided into reason, judgment, and sensory power. Every conception (utterance of the productive imagination) is made up of all three - certainly in different relations - types and sizes. [JLJ another translation] The productive imagination is divided into reason, judgment, and the power of the senses. Every representation (expression of the productive imagination) is composed of all three - clearly in different relations - types and quantities. (NFARE p. 142)

Perception, imagination, judgment, are the poverty-stricken classifications of the inner universe of man.

"Character is fate" - quoted by Thomas Hardy in The Mayor of Casterbridge

George MacDonald references:

"Novalis says, 'The imagination is the stuff of the intellect' -affords, that is, the material upon which the intellect works."

All internal faculties and forces - as well as all external faculties and forces, must be deduced from the productive imagination. (Notes for a Romantic Encyclopedia, p.138)

Fichte's productive imagination is none other than a sense stimulated by reason - by the idea, and by faith and the will. (NFARE p.156)

Imagination is the effective principle - It is called fantasy while working on the memory - and the power of thought while working on the intellect. The imagination will become simultaneously an (outward) direct sense, and an (inward) indirect sense. (NFARE p.48)

Material motion... is the intermediate member between chemistry and mechanics as it were - and since it is imagination itself, it can therefore only be comprehended using imagination. (NFARE p. 137)

Whatever one will not or cannot grasp and do all at once, one grasps and achieves gradually, and step by step. (NFARE p.5)

Concerning Novalis:

The strength and clearness of his imagination was his most conspicuous quality, and this made it easy for him to perceive rapidly the scope and bearing of any subject. He called it the chief element of existence

He was gifted with very clear reasoning powers, as well as with strong imagination. How else could he have fathomed all the depths of speculative philosophy?

Novalis chiefly differentiates the imagination as an active power... He argues for the need to ground the sciences in a 'theory of intuition' (217) which would include theories of feeling and imagination (211)

The striking range of interests displayed in his notes, philosophical fragments, and short essays reveals Novalis to be one of the most comprehensive thinkers of his generation...There is an exhilarating vigor in Novalis's philosophical writings... Novalis can be seen as a thinker who points forward to the new century [JLJ - the 19th century, that is] with its massive social and scientific change, and to kinds of innovation in intellectual and artistic fields that he could not have foreseen, but that are implicit in the open-endedness of his thought. [Novalis: Philosophical Writings, M. Stoljar, p.1,21]

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