SOURCE: Wellek, René. “The Early Romantics in Germany.” In A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950: The Romantic Age, pp. 74-109. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955.

In the following excerpt, Wellek discusses the critical perspectives of Schelling, Novalis, Wackenroder, and Tieck.

Schelling

Kant is usually considered the fountainhead of German aesthetics, but one could argue that the German romanticists never adopted Kant's main position; certainly they do not share his cautious temper and his conservative taste. When in 1796 F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854) drew up his program of a new philosophy, he completely ignored Kant's distinction between epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. He put forward the grandiose claim that the idea of beauty, taken in the higher Platonic sense, “unites all other ideas.” “I am convinced,” he says, “that the highest act of reason is the aesthetic act embracing all ideas and that truth and goodness are made kindred only...