Figuren der Endlichkeit in der Europäischen Romantik

Abstract

The volume examines figures of finitude in European Romanticism. The starting point is the observation that figures of the last - last people (J.-B Grainville: Le dernier homme (1805); M. Shelley: The Last Man (1826)), last things (I. Kant: The end of all things ( 1794) - articulate a specific awareness of finiteness in Romanticism. The emerging Romantic reflection of finiteness, which develops synchronously with contemporary discourses about the limitations of resources, represents the beginning of a genuinely modern experience. The temporalization is around 1800, according to the Basic thesis, primarily negotiated and reflected on poetological and philosophical figures of finitude, the ultimate and the consumable, in that the volume, for example, shows the fragment, the ruin or the “monuments of old times” (F. Schiller) as figurations of a reflection of finiteness He takes the view, sharpens it and complements classic elements of the epoch construction of Romanticism, which has so far been primarily associated with concepts such as delimitation, potentiation and infinity or with a focus on the present, now and the moment.