Von Baader zu Schubert. Zur Bedeutung der Geognosie Werners für die Entwicklung einer romantischen Naturphilosophie

The article discusses two different yet complementary aspects of German culture at the dawn of Romanticism. It focuses on two cities: Freiberg and Dresden. Freiburg is the starting point, mentioned by the author in order to throw light on some fundamental questions of the philosophy of nature at the time of early German Romanticism. Between nature observation and self-reflection, between experience and speculation there emerged in Freiburg ways of thinking that related to the “enlightened rationality”; from 1788 to 1800 those ways of thinking transformed themselves into a form of an early Romantic version of theory of nature, enriched by the elements of magic and theosophy. Dresden, in turn, is evoked as the place where literature, philosophy of nature and visual arts initiated the first serious deliberations on the human soul and its dark psychological aspects, and came to be understood as the core of “proper” cultural reflection.