Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (Novalis)
1772-1801 · Romanticism · Known
Novalis worked as a mining engineer in Saxony, wrote poems, and left his philosophy in notebooks. Against Fichte he argued that the self cannot found itself, because the identity of the one reflecting and the one reflected on rests on a feeling that thought can never reach. His magical idealism asks you to romanticise the world. Give the common thing a high meaning and you have done the whole operation. A person is a creator whose organs do not yet obey the will.
Signature
The position Novalis is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence
- Highest Good
- Love
Positions on the 5 axes the sources answer
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Mastery (25 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
15 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Novalis refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Monarchy / Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Love
What is the highest good? - Paradox
- Coincidentia Oppositorum
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death?