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ABSTRACT
Friedrich Hölderlin argued that consciousness requires division and unity. Consciousness emerges through the fundamental distancing of the subject from its surroundings, without which the subject-object distinction would collapse and both objectivity and consciousness would be lost. Nevertheless, insofar as conscious knowledge is unitary, division demands a ground for unity. Hölderlin calls this ground ‘Being [Seyn].’ However, once Being is affirmed, the question of how it is accessed arises. Hölderlin’s scholars disagreed on this issue. This disagreement gave rise to two camps: those who deny that Hölderlin accepts the idea of direct access to Being and believe that he proves Being through an act of reflection (Henrich); and those who argue that for Hölderlin, ‘Being’ is directly accessed. Those who hold the latter position can be further divided into those who conceive of this direct access as knowledge (Frank) and those who argue that this access does not have a cognoscitive character, but rather an aesthetic one (Waibel). This article considers these positions and shows that the direct apprehension of ‘Being’ is part of Hölderlin’s argument aimed at solving a fundamental problem; an argument that differs both from the postulate of access to Being as knowledge of transcendence and from the affirmation of a purely aesthetic mode of access.
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Notes
1 See for example: Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism — The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Dieter Henrich, ‘Hölderlin on Judgment and Being: A Study in the History of the Origins of Idealism’, in Dieter Henrich, The Course of Remembrance and Other Essays on Hölderlin, trans. Abraham Anderson and ed. Eckart Förster (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 71–89; Der Grund im Bewußtsein. Untersuchungen zu Hölderlins Denken (1794–1795) (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 2004); Manfred Frank, Eine Einführung in Schellings Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1995); ‘“Intellektuale Anschauung”. Drei Stellungnahmen zu einem Deutungsversuch von Selbstbewußtsein: Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin/Novalis’, in Die Aktualität der Frühromantik, ed. Ernst Behler and Jochen Hörisch (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöning Verlag, 1987), 96–126; Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity (Manchester and New York, NY: Manchester University Press, 2003), 83; Richard Thomas Eldridge, ‘“Doch sehnend stehst / Am Ufer du” (“But Longing You Stand On the Shore”): Hölderlin, Philosophy, Subjectivity, and Finitude’, in The Relevance of Romanticism: Essays on German Romantic Philosophy, ed. Dalia Nassar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 130–1; Stefanie Roth, Friedrich Hölderlin und die Deutsche Früromantik (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991), 123; Martin Bondeli, Im Gravitationsfeld nachkantischen Denkens: Reinhold und Hölderlin (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2019), 101; Wilhelm Dilthey, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung. Lessing, Goethe, Novalis, Hölderlin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), 259–60; Jürgen Stolzenberg, ‘Selbstbewußtsein. Ein Problem der Philosophie nach Kant. Zum Verhältnis Reinhold–Hölderlin–Fichte’, Daimon. Revista de Filosofía 9 (1994): 75, 77; Charles Larmore, ‘Hölderlin and Novalis’, in The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, ed. Karl Ameriks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 146–7, 151; Johannes Brachtendorf, ‘Hölderlins Eigene Philosophie? Zur Frage der Abhängigkeit seiner Gedanken von Fichtes System’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 52, no. 3 (1998): 384. On the relationship between Hölderlin and Schelling, see Michael Franz (‘Schelling und Hölderlin — ihre schwierige Freundschaft und der Unterschied ihrer philosophischen Position um 1796’, Hölderlin Jahrbuch 31 [1998–1999]: 75–98), Guido Schmidlin (‘“Die Psyche unter Freunden”. Hölderlins Gespräch mit Schelling’, Hölderlin–Jahrbuch 19–20 [1975–1977]: 303–27), Violetta Waibel (‘Kant, Fichte, Schelling’, in Hölderlin–Handbuch. Leben — Werk — Wirkung, ed. Johann Kreuzer [Stuttgart & Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2011], 103–6); with Hegel, see Herbert Anton (‘“Eleusis”. Hegel an Hölderlin’, Hölderlin–Jahrbuch 19–20 [1975–1977]: 285–302), Dieter Henrich (‘Hegel und Hölderlin’, in Hegel im Kontext, ed. Dieter Henrich [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981], 9–40); Henry Harris (‘Hegel und Hölderlin’, in Der Weg zum System: Materialien zum jungen Hegel, ed. Christoph Jamme and Helmut Schneider [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990], 236–66); Manfred Baum (‘Metaphysischer Monismus bei Hölderlin und Hegel’, Hegel–Studien 28 [1993]: 81–102); Peter Reisinger (‘Hölderlin zwischen Fichte und Spinoza oder der Weg zu Hegel’, in Poetische Autonomie? Zur Wechselwirkung von Dichtung und Philosophie in der Epoche Goethes und Hölderlin, ed. Helmut Bachmeier and Thomas Rentsch [Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1987], 15–69), Klaus Düsing (‘Ästhetischer Platonismus bei Hölderlin und Hegel’, in Homburg von der Höhe in der deutschen Geistesgeschichte. Studien zum Freundekreis um Hegel und Hölderlin, ed. Christoph Jamme and Otto Pöggeler [Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1981], 101–17); Sieglinde Grimm (‘Hölderlin und Hegel in Frankfurt: Hegels ‘Dissertatio’ über die Planetenbahn und Hölderlins Dichtungstheorie’, Hölderlin–Jahrbuch 31 [1998–1999]: 139–41); with Schelling and Hegel, see Johann Kreuzer (‘Hölderlin im Gespräch mit Hegel und Schelling’, Hölderlin – Jahrbuch 31 [1998–1999]: 51–74); Otto Pöggeler (‘Hegel, der Verfasser des ältesten Systemprogramms des deutschen Idealismus: Ein handschriftlicher Fund’, in Hegel–Tage–Urbino 1965, ed. Hans-Georg Gadamer [Bonn: Bouvier, 1969], 17–32), Eckart Förster (‘“To Lend Wings to Physics Once Again”: Hölderlin and the “Oldest System–Programme of German Idealism”’, European Journal of Philosophy 3, no. 2 [1995]: 190–3), Manfred Frank (Der kommende Gott: Vorlesungen über die neue Mythologie [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982], 153–87), Frank-Peter Hansen (‘Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus’. Rezeptionsgeschichte und Interpretation [Berlin & New York: Meiner, 1989]), Michael Franz (‘Hölderlin und das ‘Älteste Systemprogramm des Deutschen Idealismus’, Hölderlin Jahrbuch 19–20 [1975–1977]: 328–57).
2 See Hölderlin, Hyperion and Selected Poems, ed. Eric L. Santner (New York, NY: Continuum Press), 1990.
3 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke (Grosse Stuttgarter Ausgabe), ed. Friedrich Beissner (Stuttgart: Wilhelm Kohlhammer Verlag, 1946–1985), III:236–237.
4 See Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, ed. and trans. Jeremy Adler and Charlie Louth (London: Penguin, 2009).
5 See Hölderlin, Essays and Letters.
6 See Frank, Eine Einführung in Schellings Philosophie, chap. IV.
7 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke VI/1:155. Hölderlin linked the notion of judgment (‘Urtheil’) with an act of primordial division, an ‘Ur-Theilung’. Judicative knowledge operates upon the basis of an inaugural division thanks to which ‘object and subject first become possible’; Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 231; Historisch–Kritische Ausgabe (Frankfurter Hölderlin–Ausgabe), ed. Michael Franz, Hans Gerhard Steimer, Wolfram Groddeck and Dietrich Eberhard Sattler (Frankfurt & Basel: Stroemfeld & Roter Stern, 1975–2008), XVII:156; see also Hölderlin’s letter to Niethammer, dated 24 February 1796, in Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke VI/1:202–3; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Nachgelassene Schriften. Zu Platners ‘Philosophischen Aphorismen’ 1794–1812. Gesamtausgabe, vol. I., ed. Reinhard Lauth and Hans Gliwitzky (Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt: Fromann–Holzboog, 1976), 182; Violetta Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte 1794–1800 (Padeborn: Schöningh, 2000), 140–62; Rüdiger Safranski, Hölderlin. Komm! ins Offene, Freund! — Biographie (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2019), 117. On the relationship between Hölderlin’s argument here with the earlier thought of Reinhold, see Jürgen Stolzenberg, ‘Selbstbewußtsein’, 71–2; Martin Bondeli, Reinhold und Hölderlin, 93–115.
8 Volker Rühle ‘Geschichtserfahrung und poetische Geschichtsschreibung’, in Hölderlin–Handbuch. Leben — Werk — Wirkung, ed. Johann Kreuzer (Stuttgart & Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2011), 129; see Manfred Frank, Eine Einführung in Schellings Philosophie, 63–6.
9 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 304; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:267–8.
10 ‘The concept of division itself contains the concept of a reciprocal relationship between object and subject, and the necessary premiss of a whole of which object and subject are the parts’; Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 231; Historisch–Kritische Ausgabe, XVII:156.
11 See Panajotis Kondylis, Die Entstehung der Dialektik — Eine Analyse der europäischen Aufklärung und der geistigen Entwicklung von Hölderlin, Schelling und Hegel bis 1802 (Heidelberg; dissertation, 1977), 753–4; Uwe Beyer and Ursula Brauer, ‘Streit und Frieden hat seine Zeit’. Hölderlins Entwicklung seiner Geschichtsphilosophie aus der Anschauung der Gegenwart: Fünf Zeitgedichte vor 1800 (Stuttgart & Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2000), 335–8; Michael Franz, ‘Hölderlin und das “Älteste Systemprogramm des Deutschen Idealismus”’, 351–2; Andrew Bowie, ‘Romantic Philosophy and Religion’, in The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism, ed. Nicholas Saul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 183.
12 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke VI/1:155, 164. Referring to Fichte, Hölderlin writes: ‘[H]is absolute I […] contains all reality; it is everything, & outside it there is nothing; therefore, for this absolute I there is no object, for otherwise, all reality would not be in it; but a consciousness without an object is not conceivable […] [A]s an absolute I I have no consciousness, and insofar as I have no consciousness I am (for myself) nothing, therefore the absolute I is (for me) nothing’; Essays and Letters, 48; Sämtliche Werke VI/1:155; see Manfred Frank, Eine Einführung in Schellings Philosophie, chap. IV. For the relationship between Hölderlin and Fichte’s philosophy, besides Waibel, see Jeremy Tambling, Hölderlin and the Poetry of Tragedy — Readings in Sophocles, Shakespeare, Nietzsche and Benjamin (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2014), 63–4; Karin Schuiter, Narrating Community after Kant: Schiller, Goethe and Hölderlin (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 168; Jeffrey Barnow, ‘“Der Trieb, bestimmt zu werden”. Hölderlin, Schiller und Schelling als Antwort auf Fichte’, Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift 46 (1972): 248–93; Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, ‘Nature and Poetic Consciousness’, in Hölderlin’s Philosophy of Nature, ed. Rochelle Tobias (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 31–2; Wolfgang Wirth, ‘Transzendentalorthodoxie? Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis von Hölderlins Fichte–Rezeption und zur Kritik der Wissenschaftslehre des jungen Fichte anhand von Hölderlins Brief an Hegel vom 26.1.1795’, in Hölderlin. Lesarten seines Lebens, Dichtens und Denkens, ed. Uwe Beyer (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1998), 159–233; Rochelle Tobias, ‘Introduction’, in Hölderlin’s Philosophy of Nature, ed. Tobias Rochell (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 4–5; Frank Völkel, ‘Im Wechsel des Urteils und Seins — Zu Fichte und Hölderlin’, in Sein — Reflexion — Freiheit. Aspekte der Philosophie Johann Gottlieb Fichtes (Amsterdam: B. R. Gruner Publishing Company 1997), 95–113; Wolfgang Janke, ‘“Dieses Seyn muß nicht mit der Identität werwechselt werden”. Hölderlin im Jena der Fichtezeit’, in Entgegensetzungen. Studien zu Fichte – Konfrontationen von Rousseau bis Kierkegaard. Fichte – Studien – Supplementa 4, ed. Wolfgang Janke (Amsterdam: Brill, 1994), 119–33. On the text of Hölderlin, Andreas Graeser, ‘Hölderlin über Urteil und Sein’, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 38 (1991): 111–27; Reisinger, ‘Hölderlin zwischen Fichte und Spinoza’, 15–69.
13 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 231; Historisch–Kritische Ausgabe XVII:156.
14 See Dieter Henrich, Der Grund im Bewußtsein, 526, 670; ‘Hölderlin on Judgment and Being’, 86.
15 See Manfred Frank, ‘Unendliche Annäherung’. Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), 725–6, 751–2, 828; ‘Fragments of a History of the Theory of Self–Consciousness from Kant to Kierkegaard’, Critical Horizons 5, no. 1 (2004): 92–3.
16 See Violetta Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte.
17 Cf. Henrich, ‘Hölderlin on Judgment and Being’, 85, 87. ‘Hölderlin was the first to, as a result of his thought process and the seriousness of his poetic vocation, make a critical turn against Fichte and to establish his own philosophical system’; Henrich, ‘Hölderlin on Judgment and Being’, 88; see Der Grund im Bewußtsein; Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German Idealism, ed. David S. Pacini (Cambridge MA & London: Harvard University Press, 2003), 291–5. On Henrich’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s thought, see Luke Fischer, ‘Hölderlin’s Mythopoetics: From “Aesthetic Letters” to the “New Mythology”’, in Hölderlin’s Philosophy of Nature, ed. Rochelle Tobias (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 146; Rüdiger Görner Hölderlin und die Folgen (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 2016), 102–4; Tom Spencer, ‘Divine Difference: On the Theological Divide between Hölderlin and Hegel’, The German Quarterly 84, no. 4 (2011): 438; Andrzej Warminsky, Readings in Interpretation. Hölderlin, Hegel, Heidegger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 8–11; Hugo E. Herrera, ‘Knowledge of the Whole in Friedrich Hölderlin’s “Being Judgement Possibility”: Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank’s Interpretations’, Idealistic Studies 50, no. 3 (2020): 222–4; Beiser, German Idealism, 667 note 45.
18 See Henrich, ‘Hölderlin on Judgment and Being’, 85.
19 ‘[I]f philosophical reasons should arise to assume an absolute before all consciousness; one must then distinguish it from all consciousness. One would therefore do well not to misleadingly call it “I”’ (Henrich, ‘Hölderlin on Judgment and Being’, 86; cf. 76).
20 Henrich, ‘Hölderlin on Judgment and Being’, 75–6.
21 ‘Neither in the text nor in the theoretical system of Hölderlin’s draft [Henrich refers here to “Being Judgement Possibility”] does anything indicate such knowledge of “Being [Seyn]” lost in “judgment” [in the original division]. Rather, this knowledge seems to be excluded from Hölderlin’s conceptual system. In this respect, inasmuch as Hölderlin goes beyond the immanent-epistemological analysis of I-consciousness in the direction of an origin that is itself no longer epistemological, at the same time he nevertheless always has the Kantian critique in mind and, along with it, the grounds for determining the limits of knowledge and the conditions for responsible philosophizing with clarity concerning its own process’ (Henrich, Der Grund im Bewußtsein, 112–3).
22 See Henrich, Der Grund im Bewußtsein, 295–6; ‘Hölderlin on Judgment and Being’, 75–6; Gottfried Meinhold, ‘Die Deutung des Schönen — Zur Genese der intellectualen Anschauung bei Hölderlin’, in Evolution des Geistes: Jena um 1800 — Natur und Kunst, Philosophie und Wissenschaft im Spannungsfeld der Geschichte, ed. Friedrich Strack (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1994), 378; Franz, ‘Theoretische Schriften’, in Hölderlin–Handbuch. Leben — Werk — Wirkung, ed. Johann Kreuzer (Stuttgart and Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2011), 229.
23 ‘The central thesis in Hölderlin’s conception is that a ground for consciousness, which does not itself have the constitution of consciousness and is only accessible as a prerequisite, must be presupposed’; Henrich, Der Grund im Bewußtsein, 670.
24 ‘The ground is […] presupposed and can be known or deduced only as such a presupposition’; Henrich, Der Grund im Bewußtsein, 526; cf. 261, 296, 297, 526–7, 599–600, 670. Henrich’s interpretation is followed by other writers, including Gosetti-Ferencei and Larmore. See Gosetti-Ferencei, Heidegger, Hölderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language: Toward a New Poetics of Dasein (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2004), 118, 119; Larmore, ‘Hölderlin and Novalis’, 148. Larmore’s adherence to Henrich must be qualified, as he looks into the final draft Hyperion and admits that there Hölderlin alludes to an ‘Ahndung’ of Being, a term he translates as ‘“inkling”’ (Charles Larmore, ‘Hölderlin and Novalis’, 159 note 12). Henrich does not appear to be completely satisfied with his interpretation. He suggests that for Hölderlin ‘nature preserves a reminiscence of the original unity’ (Henrich, ‘Hölderlin on Judgment and Being’, 84). Man reaches a confirmation of the presupposed ground when he manages to ‘interpret’ the unitary meaning of the beautiful: ‘beauty brings unity to appearance’ (Henrich, Der Grund im Bewußtsein, 302). As ‘harmony without opposition’, it manifests a unitary meaning, which cannot be rationalized. Henrich limits however the scope of his interpretation. He argues that Hölderlin ultimately rejects an aesthetic grasping of unity (as the access sketched in the preface to the penultimate draft of Hyperion; see Der Grund im Bewußtsein, 301). Hölderlin’s statement would be a literary excess. For him, the unity of consciousness would not depend on ‘the presence of the unity in the form of the beautiful’ (Der Grund im Bewußtsein, 301).
25 See Frank, ‘Unendliche Annäherung’, 828. On intellectual intuition’s epistemic role in Hölderlin, see for example Adler and Louth, ‘Introduction’, in Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, xxxiii, xxxv–vi; Harmut Buchner, ‘Editorische Bericht zu Schellings “Briefen”’, in Philosophische Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kritizismus, Historisch–kritische Ausgabe, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann– Holzboog 1975), III:34, 37; Cia van Woezik, God — Beyond Me: From the I’s Absolute Ground in Hölderlin and Schelling to a Contemporary Model of Personal God (Leiden & Boston, MA: Brill, 2010), 13, 195, 305; Gunther Martens, Friedrich Hölderlin (Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 1996), 69–70; Michael Knaupp, ‘“Kommentar” to Friedrich Hölderlin’, in Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. 3 vols., ed. Michael Knaupp (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2019), III:385; Franz Gabriel Nauen, Schelling, Hölderlin and Hegel and the Crisis of Early German Romanticism. Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées no. 45 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), 63; Marion Hiller, “Harmonisch Entgegengesetzt”. Zur Darstellung und Darstellbarkeit in Hölderlins Poetik um 1800 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2008), 6.
26 See Frank, “Unendliche Annäherung”, 725–6, 751–2; ‘Fragments of a History of the Theory of Self–Consciousness’, 92–3.
27 Frank, “Unendliche Annäherung”, 828; cf. 725; Auswege aus dem Deutschen Idealismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007), 282.
28 Frank, ‘Fragments of a History of the Theory of Self–Consciousness’, 93.
29 Frank, “Unendliche Annäherung”, 751; see 726–8; ‘Fragments of a History of the Theory of Self–Consciousness’, 92. Frank writes of the ‘fact of self-sameness [Faktum der Selbigkeit]’ as the ‘actual and evident experience of “I am I”’ (“Unendliche Annäherung”, 751), as the experience of the original unity of the self, prior to the division, ‘which is inderivable from judicative relations’; “Unendliche Annäherung”, 751.
30 Frank, ‘Fragments of a History of the Theory of Self–Consciousness’, 92; see “Reduplikative Identität.” Der Schlüssel zu Schellings reifer Philosophie (Stuttgart & Bad Cannstatt: Fromman–Holzboog, 2018), 2, 128; “Unendliche Annäherung”, 751–2; Eine Einführung in Schellings Philosophie, 63, 65–6.
31 Frank, “Unendliche Annäherung”, 728.
32 On the scope of the reflexive model, see Dieter Henrich, Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1967), 12–31; Selbstverhältnisse (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982), 62–3; Manfred Frank, The Philosophical Foundations of Early German Romanticism, trans. Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008), 125; “Unendliche Annäherung”, 751–2; Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity, 72–3. Frederick Beiser adopts an interpretation close to that of Frank. He argues that, for Hölderlin, knowledge is not confined to discursive knowledge. Direct access to Being is, he remarks, ‘a necessary condition for the proper functioning of reason and the understanding’ (Beiser, German Idealism, 395; see 396). Reason and understanding are capacities that proceed ‘from the parts to the whole’ (German Idealism, 396). They presuppose the whole but cannot provide us with access to it by themselves. Needed, then, is ‘some prior knowledge of the whole’ (Beiser, German Idealism, 396; see 393; 666 note 37; 667 note 48).
33 See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), A 67-68 /B 92-3; B 148-9; A 286-90/B 342-6; A 373-4; A 478-9/B 506-7 note; Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit III. Ernst Cassirer, Gesammelte Werke (Hamburger Ausgabe) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2000), vol. IV, 1–2; Richard Kröner, Von Kant bis Hegel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 56–7.
34 Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte, 144.
35 Ibid., 115. Kuzniar mentions along similar lines: ‘Hyperion calls this ultimate experience ‘beauty’ but in the next breath admits that he does not yet know it; he only intimates it’; Alice A. Kuzniar, Delayed Endings. Nonclosure in Novalis and Hölderlin (London: The University of Georgia Press, 1987), 152.
36 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 218.
37 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, 217; see Rudolf A. Makreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. The Hermeneutical Import of the Critique of Judgment (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 119–20; Robert Wicks, Kant on Judgment (London & New York: Routledge, 2007), 127–34.
38 Waibel draws connections between Hölderlin and Kant of the third critique, as interpreted in the sense mentioned above. She points out that in the Critique of Judgment, Kant notes aesthetic judgment as having a ‘non-objectifiable’ character, as being ‘founded in a feeling’. It is endowed with a ‘general validity’, it is, however, a merely ‘subjective generality’; Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte, 93, 96. In contrast with aesthetic judgment, Waibel argues, ‘objectifiable judgments […] are those founded in a principle that can be converted into a concept and whose acceptance can be demanded of every rational being capable of knowledge’; Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte, 93, 96. She thinks that: ‘To Hölderlin’s ‘Being as such’, which is present to us in beauty, there theoretically corresponds a subjective generality’, not, by contrast, a ‘general objective validity’; Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte, 96.
39 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke VI/1:181, 203; III:236–7; Historisch–Kritische Ausgabe XVII:156. In its original order, the text says: If such ‘Being in the unique sense of the word […] were not accessible [nicht vorhanden wäre] […], without an intuition [Ahndung] of it […], we would not think and we would not act; there would not even be anything at all (for us); we would ourselves be nothing (for us) […]. It [such Being] is accessible [vorhanden]—as beauty’; Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke III:236–7. Despite that Waibel does distance Hölderlin’s conception from Kant’s, and states that ‘for Hölderlin beauty is not […] thinkable merely as subjective form in the Kantian sense’ (Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte, 103; see 97), she sows confusion in affirming that access to ‘Being’ or ‘beauty’ ‘cannot be directly grounded in knowledge’ (Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte, 115). Without further clarification, this means that it cannot be grounded in any knowledge (objective and non-objective) or access to something independent of the subject (despite the fact that Hölderlin himself characterizes the ‘philosophical sceptic’ as someone who ‘knows the harmony of perfect beauty, which is never thought’; Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 66; Sämtliche Werke III:81). Waibel also misleads by turning to Fichte in determining the meaning of the notion of purely ‘subjective general validity’ and, from there, to the idea that the validity of a statement ultimately depends on an absolute subject (see Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte, 89–97), that is to say (though for reasons distinct from Kant’s), with no reference to a being independent of it. Finally, Waibel goes off course in arguing: ‘If Hölderlin believed that his proposal [of “Being Judgement Possibility”] was still compatible with Kant’s third critique, or if, by contrast, he consciously overstepped Kant’s boundary here, remains an open question in the text’ (Waibel, Hölderlin und Fichte, 145).
40 Woezik, God — Beyond Me, 195. ‘Beauty is another term frequently used by Hölderlin for Being. The perfection of our ground, Being, “that which is One and All” […] is alive among us as Beauty’; Woezik, God — Beyond Me, 210–11. Since Being and Beauty coincide in the instance ‘Being’, we find ourselves on the point of admitting the reference of intellectual intuition to the real. The followers of this position, which we can call ‘realist’, include Wegenast (Hölderlins Spinoza–Rezeption und ihre Bedeutung für die Konzeption des “Hyperion” [Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1990], 192–4), Friedrich Strack (Ästhetik und Freiheit. Hölderlins Idee von Schönheit, Sittlichkeit und Geschichte in der Frühzeit [Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1976], 140), Nauen (Schelling, Hölderlin and Hegel, 62–3), Beyer and Brauer (‘Streit und Frieden hat seine Zeit’, 342), Uwe Beyer (Mythologie und Vernunft — Vier philosophische Studien zu Friedrich Hölderlin [Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993], 28), Pöggeler (‘Philosophy in the Wake of Hölderlin’, Man and World 7, no. 2 [1974]: 164), Johannes Heinrichs (Revolution aus Geist und Liebe. Hölderlins ‘Hyperion’ durchgehend kommentiert [München: Steno Verlag, 2007], 293), Fischer (‘Hölderlin’s Mythopoetics’, 146), Adler and Louth (‘Introduction’, xxxiii, xxxvi), Meinhold (‘Die Deutung des Schönen’, 390; on the notion of ‘the mantic’, to which he alludes here, see also Wolfram Hogrebe, ‘Hölderlin mantischer Empirismus’, in Ahnung und Erkenntnis. Brouillon zu einer Theorie des natürlichen Erkennens, ed. Hogrebe [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996], 102–23; Gideon Stiening, Epistolare Subjektivität. Das Erzählsystem in Friedrich Hölderlins Briefroman “Hyperion oder der Eremit in Griechenland” [Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2005], 285; Christoph Jamme, “Ein ungelehrtes Buch”. Die philosophische Gemeinschaft zwischen Hölderlin und Hegel in Frankfurt 1797–1800 [Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2016], 98; Priscilla A. Hayden-Roy, “A Foretaste of Heaven”. Friedrich Hölderlin in the Context of Württemberg Pietism [Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1994], 222–3; Bondeli, Reinhold und Hölderlin, 110–2; Sunao Otuska, ‘Nemesis–Begriff und Schicksalslied: Zu Kraft, Macht und Gewalt in der anthropologischen Systemtheorie im Zeitalter Hölderlins’, Keio — Germanistik Jahresschrift 18, no. 3 [2001]: 71; Johannes Epple, Transformationen schöpferischer Vernunft. Kant — Hölderlin — Nietzsche [Paderborn: Brill and Wilhelm Fink, 2021], 64). The following draw a distinction between the intellectual intuition of Hölderlin’s earlier works and the aesthetic intuition of his later works, complicating the relationship: Wegenast (Hölderlins Spinoza–Rezeption, 192), Roth (Friedrich Hölderlin, 138), Stiening (Epistolare Subjektivität, 286), Xavier Tiliette (Untersuchungen über die intellektuelle Anschauung von Kant bis Hegel [Stuttgart–Bad Canstatt: Frommann–Holzboog, 2015], 117; ‘Hölderlin und die intellektuale Anschauung’, in Philosophie und Poesie. Otto Pöggeler zum 60. Geburstag, ed. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert [Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1988], vol. I:231–3), Stephan Wackwitz (Friedrich Hölderlin [Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985], 75–6), David Farrell Krell (‘Three Ends of the Absolute: Schelling on Inhibition, Hölderlin on Separation, and Novalis on Density’, Research in Phenomenology 32 [2002]: 67–8), William Davis (‘One with Everything: Hölderlin on Acrocorinth’, European Romantic Review 26, no. 1 [2015]: 64–5), William Andrew Behun (The Historical Pivot: Philosophy of History in Hegel, Schelling and Hölderlin [Chicago, thesis, 2006], 128), Camilla Flodin (‘Hölderlin’s Higher Enlightenment’, in Beyond Autonomy in Eighteenth–Century British and German Aesthetics, ed. Karl Axelsson, Camilla Flodin and Mattias Pirholt [New York & London: Routledge, 2021], chap. 12). Franz argues (complicating his previous position) that the whole is ‘knowable, only thanks to the inspired poet’, in some way ‘taken possession of by God’; Franz, Tübinger Platonismus. Die gemeinsamen philosophischen Anfangsgründe von Hölderlin, Schelling und Hegel (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2012), 226.
41 Meinhold, ‘Die Deutung des Schönen’, 385.
42 Fischer, ‘Hölderlin’s Mythopoetics’, 147.
43 Ibid.
44 See Friedrich Strack, Ästhetik und Freiheit, 140; Meinhold, ‘Die Deutung des Schönen’, 385; Beiser, German Idealism, 375.
45 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke III:236–7; cf. Lawrence Ryan, ‘Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland’, in Hölderlin–Handbuch. Leben — Werk — Wirkung, ed. Johann Kreuzer (Stuttgart & Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2011), 179.
46 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 231–32; Historisch–Kritische Ausgabe XVII:156.
47 Frank, “Unendliche Annäherung”, 728, 751, 752.
48 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 231; Historisch–Kritische Ausgabe XVII:156.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Frank, ‘Fragments of a History of the Theory of Self–Consciousness’, 92.
52 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 231–2; Historisch–Kritische Ausgabe XVII:156.
53 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 231; Historisch–Kritische Ausgabe XVII:156.
54 Taking these considerations into account, the objection that might be made to Beiser’s affirmation that Hölderlin maintains the knowledge of a transcendent object has a force lacked by the objection to Frank’s affirmation that there is knowledge at the ground of the division of the I as a subject and the I as an object, as a condition of the experience of the identity or unity of the I. In the case of the division of the subject and the object in general, the knowledge of Being does not express itself through evident experience. This knowledge is not philosophically accreditable based on an analysis of the conditions and features of an evident experience, as occurs in the case of the experience of the self-sameness of the self.
55 Not among the texts upon which Frank focus his attention. The fragment dates from February-March of 1796, according to Knaupp (‘Kommentar’, III:385); or from 1796 to 1797, according to Groddeck and Sattler (in Hölderlin, Historisch–Kritische Ausgabe XIV:11–2); from between 1796 and 1800, according to Charlie Louth (‘“jene zarten Verhältnisse”: Überlegungen zu Hölderlins Aufsatzbruchstück’, “Über Religion/Fragment Philosophischer Briefe”. Hölderlin–Jahrbuch 39 [2014–2015]: 124–38). On the text, see Andreas Thomasberger, ‘Mythos — Religion — Mythe. Hölderlins Grundlegung einer neuen Mythologie in seinem “Fragment philosophischer Briefe”’, in “Frankfurt aber ist der Nebel dieser Erde”. Das Schicksal einer Generation der Goethezeit, ed. Christoph Jamme and Otto Pöggeler (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1983), 284–99; and though very briefly, Kuzniar, Delayed Endings, 154–5. Frank does not mention this text. Beiser does mention it once, but he does not consider the issue regarded here; cf. Beiser, German Idealism, 397.
56 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke VI/1:299–301.
57 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 289–93; in German: ‘Wenn der Dichter einmal des Geistes mächtig ist … ’, in the Stuttgart ed. “Über die Verfahrungsweise des poëtischen Geistes”; Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:241–65, with regard to the sphere: 255–9. Kreuzer situates this last text in the first half of 1800 (see Kreuzer, in Hölderlin, Theoretische Schriften, ed. Johann Kreuzer [Hamburg, Felix Meiner Verlag, 1998], 122).
58 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke II/2:675, lines 31 and 32. Beissner dates this last text to the end of 1799; cf. Beissner in: Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke II:667. On the antecedents of this notion in Herder, see Helmut Hühn Mnemosyne: Zeit und Erinnerung in Hölderlins Denken (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler Verlag, 1997), 84, 91; Ulrich Gaier, ‘Rousseau, Schiller, Herder, Heinse’, in Hölderlin–Handbuch. Leben — Werk — Wirkung, ed. Johann Kreuzer (Stuttgart & Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2011), 84.
59 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:275, 277–8.
60 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 234–5; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:275–80; see Helmut Hühn, ‘Hölderlins Briefe ‘Über Religion’ — theologische und religionsphilosophische Fragen’, Hölderlin Jahrbuch 31 (1998–1999): 126–8.
61 Nicolai Hartmann, Die Philosophie des Deutschen Idealismus (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1960), 185–6.
62 Bowie, ‘Romantic Philosophy and Religion’, 183; see Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 271; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:282; Anja Lemke, ‘The Transition Between the Possible and the Real: Nature as Contingency in Hölderlin’s “The declining fatherland … ”’, in Hölderlin’s Philosophy of Nature, ed. Tobias Rochelle (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 165.
63 Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:267–8; see Fred Lönker, Welt in der Welt. Eine Untersuchung zu Hölderlins “Verfahrungsweise des poetischen Geistes”. Palaestra: Untersuchungen aus der Deutschen, Englischen und Skandinavischen Philologie, ed. Dieter Cherubim, Armin Paul Frank, Walther Killy, Fritz Paul, Hans Schabram, Albrecht Schöne, Karl Stackmann, Horst Turk, Christian Wagenknecht, Theodor Wolpers (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), 52. I translate ‘Ahndung’ as ‘intuition’ and ‘ahnden’ as ‘to intuit’. I follow here Thomas Pfau’s ‘Glossary of Terms’ (Pfau, in Hölderlin, Essays and Letters on Theory [Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988], 183). With respect to the notion, Eldridge notes: ‘“Ahndung” is Hölderlin’s archaic Swabian spelling of Ahnung—presentiment, foreshadowing, or intuitiveness’; ‘“Doch sehnend stehst / Am Ufer du”’, 135; see also Eldridge, ‘Poetry and Emphatic Truth: Walter Benjamin’s Reading of Hölderlin’, Análisis. Revista de investigación filosófica 2, no. 2 (2015): 303 note 8. ‘Clue’ could also be a suitable translation. The German expression ‘Keine Ahnung’ is frequently used to indicate that the speaker admits to having ‘no clue’. The sense of ‘clue’ highlights the ineffability of being. Thus, it becomes possible to underline that, in the case of Being, aesthetics is more closely related to mystical apprehension than to knowledge in the strict sense. On the meaning of the expression as praesensio or Vorempfindung and its origin in Kant, see Rainer Nägele, Text, Geschichte und Subjektivität in Hölderlins Dichtung. “Unerfaßarer Schrift gleich” (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1985), 157–8 and Johann Kreuzer, ‘Einleitung’, in Friedrich Hölderlin. Theoretische Schriften, ed. Johann Kreuzer (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1998), XXXII note 36. In ‘The lyric, in appearance idealic poem … ’, Hölderlin advances the claim that all works of tragic character ‘must be based on one intellectual intuition, which can be no other than that unity with all that lives’ (Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 303; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:267). One reaches this unity by dwelling upon ‘the impossibility of an absolute division’ (Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 304). Yet, in addition, this unity can ‘be intuited [geahndet]’ (Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:268; Essays and Letters, 304). Also note Larmore’s translation of ‘Ahndung’ as ‘“inkling”’: see Larmore, ‘Hölderlin and Novalis’, 159 note 12.
64 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 234; cf. 234–8; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:275–80.
65 Frank’s interpretation lacks sufficient clarification of the question of man’s recognition in the field of intuited objects. He affirmed that, for Hölderlin, there is a necessary reflective division between an I-subject and an I-object, as well as a knowledge of the unity at the basis of that division. In addition, he dwells on the fact that the conscious subject has a sphere of intuited objects before it. He also dwells upon the need Hölderlin posits for an intellectual intuition of man for he to be able to recognize himself amid intuitable objects. By contrast, his explanation does not yet clarify how, for Hölderlin, the emergence of the sphere of intuited objects and the identification of man therein are possible.
66 See Herrera, ‘Knowledge of the Whole’, 226–8.
67 See Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 67; Sämtliche Werke III:82. The manifold rests on the limitations of the previous totality. Hölderlin’s ‘sphere’ operates in a way strikingly similar to that of Kant’s time: as totum, as a context prior to the encounter between subject and object. The spherical totum is comprehensible (as time must be comprehensible) and operates as the substratum of the encounter between subject and object. As the totum-time is individual, but it remains open to the other, Hölderlin’s spherical totum is also at once individual and open to the other (see Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:275–80, and his 24 December 1798 letter to Isaak von Sinclair, Sämtliche Werke VI/1:299–301. See also: David Constantine, Hölderlin [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988], 117). ‘Totum’, argues Kant, is a whole whose ‘parts are possible only in the whole, and not the whole through the parts’ (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 439/B 467). ‘The manifold in it […] rests merely on limitations’ of the previous totality (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 25/B 39). The definition applies to both space and time. A point in space and an instant in time are not properly speaking parts of space or time, but rather the result of the setting of limits. The totum ‘is essentially single; the manifold in it, thus also the general concept of space [and time] in general, rests merely on limitations’ (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 25/B39). The compositum, by contrast, is ‘a contingent unity of a manifold that, given as separated […] is posited in a reciprocal combination and thereby constitutes one entity’ (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 439/B 467). These parts are prior to and independent of the totality.
68 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:275–80; III:82.
69 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 67; Sämtliche Werke, 81–2.
70 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:275–80, and his 24 December 1798 letter to Isaak von Sinclair, Sämtliche Werke VI/1:299–301; Constantine, Hölderlin, 117.
71 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 234; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:278.
72 Ibid.
73 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:267–68, 278.
74 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:282.
75 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 236; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:276.
76 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 236–7; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:276–7.
77 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 234; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:278; see Dieter Jähnig, Dichtung und Geschichte: Beiträge Hölderlins zur Geschichtsphilosophie und zur Philosophie der Künste (Hildesheim, Olms, 2019), 256; Martin Endres, ‘Lektüre / Lesen am Beispiel von Hölderlins “Seyn … / Urtheil … Wirklichkeit … ”’, Textologie 1 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 100; Volker Rühle, ‘Geschichtserfahrung und poetische Geschichtsschreibung’, in Hölderlin–Handbuch. Leben — Werk — Wirkung, ed. Johann Kreuzer (Stuttgart & Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2011), 132; ‘Tragische Erfahrung und poetische Darstellung des Tragischen’, in Hölderlin–Handbuch. Leben — Werk — Wirkung, ed. Johann Kreuzer (Stuttgart & Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2011), 138–46.
78 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:275–80; Hühn, Mnemosyne, 72–91, 95; Jakob Helmut Deibl, Abschied und Offenbarung. Eine poetisch–theologische Kritik am Motiv der Totalität im Ausgang von Hölderlin (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2019), 114–9; Lönker, Welt in der Welt, 49–52. Hühn argues that this concerns ‘pre-reflexive experiences of lived life’, which are only later expressed through ‘representation’ (Hühn, Mnemosyne, 95). On Hölderlin’s notion of the sphere, see in addition: Lawrence Ryan, Friedrich Hölderlin (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1967), 7, 57; Gerhard Kurz, Mittelbarkeit und Vereinigung. Zum Verhältnis von Poesie, Reflexion und Revolution bei Hölderlin (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1975), 14, 55, 86; Ulrich Gaier, “So wäre alle Religion ihrem Wesen nach poetisch”. Ästhetik – Religion – Säkularisierung I. Von der Renaissance zur Romantik, ed. Herbert Uerlings and Silvio Vietta (München: Brill, 2008), 75–92; Helmut Bachmeier, ‘Der Mythos als Gesellschaftsvertrag. Zur Semantik von Erinnerung, Sphäre und Mythos in Hölderlins Religions–Fragment’, in Poetische Autonomie? — Zur Wechselwirkung von Dichtung und Philosophie in der Epoche Goethes und Hölderlins, ed. Helmut Bachmeier and Thomas Rentsch (Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 1987), 152–53; Bruno Liebrucks, “Und”. Die Sprache Hölderlins in der Spannweite von Mythos und Logos. Wirklichkeit und Realität (Bern, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1979), 296–312.
79 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:277–8; cf. Kurz, Mittelbarkeit und Vereinigung, 64–5.
80 See Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke IV/1:278.
81 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 66, 67; Sämtliche Werke III:81, 82; cf. IV/1:275–80; III:236–7.
82 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 235–6; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:275–6.
83 Hölderlin, Essays and Letters, 235, 238; Sämtliche Werke IV/1:275, 280.
84 E.g. Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, III:237.
85 Hühn, Mnemosyne, 92; see Hartmann, Die Philosophie des Deutschen Idealismus, 186.
Research for this paper was partly funded by Fondecyt-Project no. 1230072 from the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID, Chile). I would like to thank Rebecca West for her translation work and the two anonymous reviewers who commented the text in detail.