It would be a mistake to think of the Romantics, especially the early ones, as being purely emotional beings: ethereal, young men who wander aimlessly through the landscape of 18th-century Germany, writing poetry under trees while gazing into the river; their rationality and reason disappearing in the fog of mysticism, irrationality, uncontrolled imagination, and otherworldly escapes. To bring this cliché to the hall of the Romantics would be to commit a fatal intellectual faux pas. One would miss a crucial point and ignore their lofty ideal: to merge feeling with knowing.

A union of the ratio with the imaginative faculty of the human mind which wasn’t just a senseless, immature rebellion against the 18th-century Enlightenment period, but a longing for balancing opposites in a world which had already been harmed by the grey sterility of disenchantment. Clearly, the Romantics had one enemy: the philistine. The philistine is an all-too-common figure, especially in today’s world. Essentially, the philistine is someone who likes to make the world small. He is very good at it. Everything that radiates a certain idealism, loftiness, or magic will immediately be analyzed by an aggressive left brain which can explain away the unspeakable and turn it into a common thing. Science can be a great ally of the philistine. With the quantitative method of science, the means of mathematics and natural sciences, every phenomenon of the world can be reduced to a set of numbers, or at the same time be described by biological, chemical processes and create the illusion of fully understanding. In that sense, the Romantic period between the late 18th century and 19th century could be characterized as one of the most influential anti-secular movements.

It is quite difficult to fully grasp what Romanticism actually is. It is a Weltanschauung, a way of viewing the world, certainly, but at the same time it is also linked with a certain way of being and moving through the world. Romantics were individualists before individualism became a modern phenomenon; in fact, they paved the way for the modern individual.

Born in 1772, Friedrich Schlegel, together with his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel, came to be the leading figures of what is called Jena Romanticism (named after the German town Jena in the state of Thuringia), the first generation of Romantics, die Frühromantiker. The Schlegel family already enjoyed a certain prestige, and tendencies for the fine arts, literature, and poetry were certainly ingrained into their DNA, however mixed with a certain will to discipline oneself and to not leave the realm of the bourgeois middle class, Bürgerlichkeit in Germany. This internal struggle between the artistic and the longing for a stable, respectable life seemed to reach its culminating high point in Friedrich Schlegel. Becoming one of Germany’s famous writers at a young age, his novel Lucinde creating a big scandal, struggling with money problems his whole life, constant moves from place to place, a later conversion to Catholicism, and of course his later work for the Austrian establishment under Prince Metternich: Schlegel’s life itself was in many ways a work of art. This is reflected in one of his fragments, an aphoristic way of writing which was his signature style:

There is a certain breaking of the form with the Romantics, a form which Goethe and Schiller and other representatives of Weimarer Klassik wanted to keep; hence the latter’s interest in ancient Greece. Goethe was definitely skeptical of Romanticism, but as writer Rüdiger Safranski pointed out, even he couldn’t do without it.

Romanticism, in many ways, is a “continuation of religion with aesthetic means.” (Rüdiger Safranski). The romantic spirit is full of paradoxes: It is both progressive and traditional at the same time, it emphasizes feelings of the individual but also has a sense of belonging to the collective, a penchant for the past, while also looking into the future. Talking about the past: In the same way Renaissance artists revived the ancients, Romantics felt for the Middle Ages. There was a certain unity of thought and belief which they saw in medieval man that was being lost since the emergence of the Enlightenment period.

The early Schlegel pondered on the question: Why is it that modern people can’t create the same type of art the ancients created? His answer: Because ancient man existed in a different type of consciousness which was characterized by a certain wholeness which allowed works to be objectively beautiful. Modern man, with his skeptical reason and secularism, on the other hand, has lost this ability and is therefore only capable of creating works of art which are merely interesting and subjective. So there is a dualism, a tension between that which is objective and complete in itself and that which lacks wholeness but still nonetheless radiates a certain curiosity and intrigues*. We as modern people still exist in the sphere of the latter.

Schlegel’s solution for this problem was an invention of a new mythology, a fresh source of inspiration from which modern man could draw. Like the ancient Greeks had their myths, modern people needed a new mythological paradigm so that superb works of art would be possible.

“Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. Its purpose is not merely to reunite all the separate genres of poetry and to bring poetry into contact with philosophy and rhetoric. It also aims to mix and sometimes fuse poetry and prose, genius and criticism, art poetry and nature poetry, making poetry lively and sociable, and life and society poetic.” — Friedrich Schlegel

This creation and invention of a new religion, however, never came into being. Schlegel’s spiritual and philosophical quest around the year 1808 was marked by a surprising plot twist: Instead of creating a new myth, he found that there was already a religion which contained all of it: Catholicism. In the Catholic faith he found the unity of Being and Becoming, Nature and History. His previous musings on pantheism, dualism, and polytheism became just shadows; shallow illustrations of the one big truth, that is, the absolute personality of the Christian God.

It is difficult to tell whether Schlegel’s conversion to Catholicism marks a decline or the pinnacle of this lifelong quest for truth and knowledge. But one thing is certain: the Romantics had a fascination with Catholicism. The aesthetics of the faith, the anti-modern stance, the otherworldly tendencies, and of course the hunger for spirituality in a disenchanted world—all of these would be more than enough to explain why so many Romantics converted to Catholicism.

The Romantics had great ambitions, great plans, and visions, but they also had great limitations: a certain passivity, a blockage of acting in the real world, an imbalance of great inspiration and the consequent execution of it.

They lacked the systematic together with the rigorous, philosophical will of some of their contemporaries of German Idealism. But we shouldn’t forget that this fragmentary approach was born out of a virtue and not a necessity.

Bibliography

Hartmann, Nicolai. Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Behler, Ernst. Friedrich Schlegel. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.

Safranski, Rüdiger. Romantik: Eine deutsche Affäre. München: Carl Hanser Verlag.

Schlegel, Friedrich. Fragmente und Schriften. Edited by Ernst Behler.

Huch, Ricarda. Die Romantik: Blütezeit, Ausbreitung und Verfall. Leipzig: Haessel.

“Who would achieve great things must gather all his might. It is in working within limits that the master reveals himself. And law alone can give us freedom.”- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Of all the Jungian archetypes, the puer aeternus (Latin for “eternal boy”) strikes one as the most fascinating. That which is fascinating has oftentimes paradoxical qualities. A contradiction is considered false because it entails two mutually exclusive things at the same time. A paradox, however, can hold two seemingly opposite qualities at the same time, while remaining true. It defies logic and our everyday perception of things. The puer is such a paradoxical creature; he is a walking polarity.

What is a puer? Well, he is a boy. But not just a normal boy, he is an eternal boy. Why eternal? Because a part of him rejects something very essential and fundamental. In his narcissism, he wants to be beyond it, through never ever evolving into it.

The eternal boy can inhabit a grown man’s body; he may even have a beard and a deep voice, but internally he is floating above the ground, with eyes zoned out, staring into the sky. He can be quite difficult to spot actually; appearances are too misleading.

A basic knowledge of astrological and planetary principles can help us to understand the puer aeternus. Essentially, what the puer struggles with is integrating the planet Saturn into his life. Saturn is that which limits, matures, delays and grounds. A cynic with a strong pessimistic streak might argue that Saturn embodies the ultimate building block of this reality. Responsibility, hard work, old age, illness, death - these are things almost everyone will experience in his or her own life.

The 6th house in astrology is considered the everyday, daily habits, work and health. An issue for the puer. The mundane, the daily grind, the fundamentals, the earth- grounding oneself. What the puer fears is a descent, being fully embodied in this 3D World. Commitment, slow steady linear progress, persistence, close to the earth-Taurus, Capricorn, Virgo.

The puer could be considered a lower manifestation of Neptune: Formless, passive, escaping the reality principle, dreams, the unseen. The world of fantasy is preferred to the real.

Uranus, also, especially in his tendency to detach and certain sudden strokes of genius-like qualities.

A puer has many great ideas, lofty visions of great accomplishments, usually within the fields of art, literature, philosophy, the world of ideas, the air principle. The tragedy is that he oftentimes lacks the will to actually execute. A Neo-Jungian like Dr. Robert Moore would say that the puer has too little of the Warrior archetype in him. Due to a lack of integration of this archetype, there is no real-life manifestation of all the glorious ideas that he thinks of in his head. And of course, the King. Would it be fair to say that the puer is the antithesis of the King archetype? Certainly, if one fully understands what the King stands for: having a center, being grounded, having firm principles, a clear vision for one’s life.

Marie-Louise von Franz said that the cure for the puer aeternus would be work. She quoted C. G. Jung who said something along the lines of the puer must do one thing thoroughly. So the 6th house in astrology, Virgo, basically. However, we ask the question: Is it really that simple? Von Franz is quite clear in saying that not every type of work will have a positive effect. She says a man struggling with the puer aeternus would be better off to wait a little, to find the right occupation.

What happens, however, when the puer has found a position that he deems right but still regresses into fantasies?

“Personally, her advice (and Jung’s as far as I recall) didn’t make a change for me. I’ve submitted myself to my career and respective academy for years believing that it would make the gap between child-adulthood bigger (being childish was my shadow), when all it did was killing me inside.” - A user on Reddit

It seems as if just mere work, even if it is considered interesting from the puer’s perspective, is more like a drop in the ocean. Something more seems to be needed.

What if the cure for the puer is to actually try to ground his wishes and fantasies in reality? In astrological terms that would be the axis between the 12th and 6th houses, Virgo and Pisces. The realm of the unseen, the invisible (Pisces, the 12th house) now becomes manifested in the realm of the seen, the visible plane (Virgo, 6th house). This remarkably simple solution might seem too banal. But let us remember: The puer can be the man who wishes to write, but never really writes. It is the promising artist who only half-heartedly paints, not developing his talent into an actual craft. Or in the words of the Stoic Epictetus: “If you wish to be a writer, write!”

The puer aeternus has to learn that every existing thing in this reality requires form. Just as the form of the body holds the soul, the puer has to find a mode of being and doing that embodies both him and his vision on this earth.

Bibliography:

von Franz, Marie-Louise. Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood. 2nd ed. Santa Monica, CA: Sigo Press, 1997

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jung/comments/nbkudv/marielouise_von_franz_on_solving_the_puer/

Dr. Robert Moore’s Lectures on the Warrior Archetype.

Who gets to decide?

In Part 1 we gave the basic, everyday example of somebody standing in front of a tree. As already described there are different ways of interpreting this simple phenomenon of the blossoming tree. We described a possible way of how a scientist would go about researching and interpreting it. For a thinker of the caliber of a Heidegger, there have to be a few key questions:

On what basis does science get to decide what constitutes the actual tree?

Is my perception of the blossoming tree less real (and perhaps also less worth?) than the view of science? Does science perhaps even deem my perception as pre-or unscientific?

Where is the actual blossoming tree that I see in front of me in all of this?

Essentially, Heidegger points the finger into the question of how science gets to decide the standpoint of interpretation of the human regarding certain phenomena. We are already falling into this frame, when you already call your perception of a certain thing unscientific: “Well, it might look like this, but that is not how it actually is because science said…”

It is important to mention that we don’t necessarily question the actual facts of different scientific conclusions, like the ones mentioned above. The interesting question is twofold:

1. Can humans really live and engage in a meaningful way with the world through a strict scientific perspective?

2. On what basis does science determine humanity’s place in the world and establish itself as the standard for such a determination?

Does Science ever really think of itself?

Science’s own nature is obscure to itself. Can one think historically deep about history? Can a mathematician through the means of mathematics figure out what mathematics is really about? As long as the true nature of any field is not being really reflected about, thinking doesn’t take place. There has to be a necessary one-sidedness to any subject which doesn’t have the being of it’s own subject as a subject.

This also goes for the kind of knowledge, the type of knowledge that any field produces. Science knows how something is, but not what something is. If there is no reflection about the kind of results and their nature, then according to Heidegger there isn’t really thinking within any subject.

We are entering a grey zone, perhaps, when we might argue that there is something like a philosophy of history, or even a science of science. Certainly, these subjects come closer to thinking, but do they actually grasp the being of any given subject? That is questionable.

Bibliography:

Heidegger, Martin. Was heißt Denken? (What Is Called Thinking?). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1954.

Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Halle a. d. Saale: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1927.

Schmutzer, Manfred E. A. Wissenschaft denkt nicht. Velbrück Magazin, February 13, 2024. Accessed July 12, 2026. https://velbrueck-magazin.de/2024/02/13/wissenschaft-denkt-nicht/.

Heidegger opens his work “What Is Called Thinking?” with these elusive, Zen-like words.

With Heidegger there is a certain dismissal of the vulgar, the profane mind, which wants the quick formula for a deep question. And yet, there is a hidden simplicity in his work.

Don’t make the mistake, if you try to think like Heidegger, to reason about thinking. To reason means to be linear, logical, formal; to make straight lines where circles would be necessary.

Heidegger always had a soft spot for Eastern traditions, Taoism, for instance. There is a meditative element within his philosophy, which is at odds with the sterility of cold logic.

Thinking, for Heidegger, is more about what you don’t do than what you do.

And yet, within this yin, receptive style of thinking, is a certain urgency. Because there is something which ought to be thought, and paradoxically that which ought to be thought about is that we still don’t think.

Heidegger and the Tree

But where does Heidegger’s simplicity actually come to pass?

In the image above you see a tree. Different schools of thought would have different ways of interpreting this phenomenon, the tree in front of you.

A scientist might take a sample of the leaf and bring it to his laboratory in order to analyze the chloroplasts. The inner life of the tree, like photosynthesis, is being reduced to a series of equations; the blossoming of a tree is being described by biochemical pathways.

A philosopher might reflect on the validity of one’s perception of the tree. Is the tree actually as it appears to me? Is it my perception, my innate a priori categories, which mold reality in a certain way? Or is my viewing of the tree, and the subsequent image that I have in my head of it, a consequence of certain brain activities, neurotransmitters which process inputs from the outside?

In all of this, something essential gets lost. Heidegger now cuts through the Gordian knot by doing the following: letting the tree be a tree and letting it stand where it is. That is something that thinking has never really done before: letting the tree stand in front of us—and us in front of the tree.

In this we clearly see Husserl’s influence, Heidegger’s former mentor and the founder of phenomenology. What is the maxim of phenomenology?

“To the things themselves!”

With that Heidegger transcends Kant’s thing-in-itself and advocates for a more primal, existential encounter with Being.

Bibliography:

Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1927.

Heidegger, Martin. Was heißt Denken? (What Is Called Thinking?). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1954.

Safranski, Rüdiger. Ein Meister aus Deutschland: Heidegger und seine Zeit (A Master from Germany: Heidegger and His Time). München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1994.

I am I.

This is a thought form that no AI can generate from itself.

It can be directed towards producing a simulacra like this, yes.

It can arrive at conclusions similar to this, yes.

However, there is only one circumstance through which it can do it: through an external impulse—an impulse initiated by a conscious being.

This influence has to be directed by an “I”, or in other words: you or me.

Through what is being called the 4th Industrial Revolution, the human mind, human consciousness, and the human person and its potential will be questioned.

Inevitably, through contrast with artificial intelligence, certain supposed weaknesses or actual disadvantages of the human species will be put forward.

As a conclusion, the digital, non-physical entity of AI will be put higher in the biased, organic hierarchy created by the consensus.

Authors like Rüdiger Safranski called this the “fourth humiliation”, referencing Freud’s first three blows: Copernicus’ destruction of the geo-centric worldview, Darwin’s theory of human beings descending from animals or having a common genetic lineage with apes, and Freud’s own discovery: the discovery of the human unconscious.

This degradation, however, shouldn’t only be viewed in a one-dimensional, fatalistic way, since the power of any contrast lies in its potential for increased awareness.

The moment one sees eye to eye with robotics, the age-old maxim of “Know Thyself” can manifest in its clearest form.

It is not as though this notion of a fundamental difference between humanity and the artificial doesn’t exist.

It does. But it is only in its beginning stages.

The I and Not-I

Being one of the key philosophers of German Idealism, Johann Gottlieb Fichte has left his mark on the intellectual history of the world.

His famous statement that the kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of person one is, is reflected in his own philosophy. Fichte was restless, not agreeable, and highly provocative. It is then only logical that the dynamic self, the “alive I”, was the central theme in his school of thought.

Fichte was essentially the antidote to the passive philosopher.

An interesting anecdote, which illustrates his idiosyncratic personality and teaching style but also hits at the core of the preceding theme:

During one of his lectures in the university city of Jena, he told his students to gaze at the opposite wall. “Gentlemen, please think of the wall and then think of yourself as different from that wall.” The reactions from his students ranged from being clueless to actual excitement; nevertheless, this weird experiment had one goal:

Fichte’s intention was to help his students break free from their self-petrification and self-reification.

He once said that it is easier for people to think of themselves as a piece of lava from the moon than as a living self, a living I. There is a certain tendency for the human being to try to be a thing among things, to flee from their own I.

Fichte’s “I”, however, shouldn’t really be confused with the actual, empirical I, although it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the two from each other.

But what then is the Not-I?

Basically, it is everything that is not the I. Not necessarily empirical objects alone, but the polarity to the I, or to put it simply: as soon as you say “I am”, there is also an “I am not”.

This polarity will play a key role in the future development of some people: it is through the distinction between AI and human consciousness that humanity will rediscover humanity.

What is AI really?

It is a passive, an-organic, non-physical, digital entity that is only really activated by interacting with it.

What does it essentially lack? Organic, creative spontaneity. The mystery of free will.

In a way, artificial intelligence only really exists when you interact with it.

Where is ChatGPT, Grok, when nobody interacts with it? It is there, but not really there.

It is a potential waiting to be activated and “animated” by a conscious being.

In other words: you and me.

Bibliography:

https://www.michaeltsarion.com/the-first-philosopher.html

Bubner, Rüdiger (ed.). Geschichte der Philosophie in Text und Darstellung. Band 6: Der deutsche Idealismus. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978.

Safranski, Rüdiger. Romantik: Eine deutsche Affäre. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2007.

There is a deep truth to the saying that every person has his or her own personal philosophy, an existential attitude, that shapes that person’s perception and life’s action. For many people this might be, unfortunately, a rather unconscious thing, since actively pursuing the vita contemplativa seems to be too hermetic for most people.

The tragedy of the philosophical unconscious masses, however, is that situations, which will initiate the philosophical spark, the holy shift from everyday consciousness to a lover of wisdom, can’t be erased. These Grenzsituationen, Limit situations, as Heidegger’s contemporary Karl Jaspers coined them, are situations which cause the individual to experience a reality which brings it to the limit of its being. It could be sickness, a disastrous failure in business or any shocking event which seems to be out of control and seemingly inescapable.

The limit situation par excellence being obviously one’s own mortality, for nobody can escape Father Time.

The way the masses, the everyday, collective mediocrity, Das Man in Heideggerian speech, deals with death is one of passivity. This passivity comes from the lack of conscious realization of one’s own death.

Of course, we know that we will die one day, but we don’t really know. This sort of knowing exists only in its flattest, most superficial form, it is the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg. It hasn’t really sunk into our being.

Death is something that happens to everyone but not to you. Even the word “happen” is misleading from a strict Heideggerian view, because death is not something that happens to you. It is a possibility, your utmost possibility, that could happen at any time.

Has this ever been properly mused upon by the great philosophers of death in the past? The Senecas, the Marcus Aureliuses, the Montaignes, the Christians with their own concept of Memento Mori?

They are soothers of death, the wise appeasers, who use meditation, visualization, prayer to soothe their fear of death, they aspire to this serene feeling of calmness in the face of the ultimate finality.

Death, “the great scandal”, “the cosmic scandal” (Elias Canetti), the everlasting issue of philosophy has been previously dominated by an otherworldly passivity. The Platonists, the Stoics, the Christians, one can’t help but sense a lethargic complacency, nourished more or less by the sedative of metaphysics.

Could one be so daring, as a Nietzschean perhaps would be, to say that the more colorful, the more grandiose the great celestial palaces of the afterlife are being portrayed in any metaphysical system, conversely the less rejoicing earthly life will become?

In the 1920s, however, Martin Heidegger, with his Faustian spirit, throws his hat in the philosophical ring and accompanies his philosophical predecessors with his magnum opus Being and Time.

Heidegger! This restless soul, whose immense intellect could never settle for a simple Catholic life, his conscience rejecting the otherworldly form memento mori of the Christian faith in favor of engaging deeply with this fallen world.

Probably one of the most gifted deconstructionists in the history of philosophy, he, the oldest son of a lower middle class family from the south of Germany, applies his unsettling mind to the immortal issue of human mortality.

Heidegger does himself injustice when he says that he never intended to write a life philosophy or that there is no normative element, meaning how one ought to act, in Being and Time.

He is also selling himself short for his dislike of psychology. Similar to the works of his beloved and hated predecessor Nietzsche, Being and Time contains very well one of the greatest descriptions of the everyday psychological condition of the human state.

But what exactly is Heidegger’s genius stroke, these passages in Being and Time, that turns him into a sage of existentialism?

Sobered up by the metaphysical intoxication and triumphs of previous ages, Heidegger now discovers the intoxication and triumphs of being in the world- but being in the world unto death.

Heidegger’s great Coup d’État in the philosophical kingdom lies in him continuing the long lineage of the fixation on death of the previous philosophers, while simultaneously deposing it of its tranquility.

Whereas previous thinkers tried to triumph over death by trying to come to terms with the fear of it, Heidegger, the philosophical alchemist he is, transmutes fear into his main ingredient.

The fear of death, in the past the great enemy, suddenly becomes the great catalyst, the initiation of something great.

In other words: Heidegger discovers the full potential of death whereas others have seen death only as a brute fact which needs to mentally cope with or, a little more inspiring, a transition into something greater.

You will surely find traces of this in the works of other thinkers, Seneca for instance. The most creative and nervous of the Stoics has this existential restlessness in his works.

Nobody before Heidegger, however, has formulated this existential instinct in the way he did, with this fascinating mix of precise, scholastic reasoning and fervent impulsiveness that is found in the prose of Being and Time.

Because, and that is Heidegger’s genius stroke, when you lose the fear of your own death, you estrange yourself from your own life.

This line in Heidegger’s work is probably his boldest move: The single thought that sets him apart from the whole dignified tradition before him and needs a moment of silence to fully grasp the gravity of its meaning.

It goes against tradition. It’s strong in Stoicism and various other philosophies and religions. But most importantly, it is a way of being, an inauthentic way of being, that exists in heads of most people.

Fallingness, Verfallen in the original German, is the concept that Heidegger coined to describe the constant daily sidestepping of the inevitable ending of one’s own life. It is the silent tyranny of the unspoken rule imposed by the masses of Das Man which has decided that indifferent calm is the modus operandi of approaching the topic of death.

But for a Heideggerian, that path only leads back to where it came from: the collective.

A Heideggerian will anticipate death.

If the individual wants to aspire to their own authentic salvation in its life, he or she needs to have the courage to let the fear of death arise in their life. It is not the neurotic fear of death, nor the constant worrying about one’s mortality, but rather the true existential fear, which clears the way for that person’s true potential for being. That is being unto death.

Bibliography

• Martin Heidegger, Being and Time.

• Rüdiger Safranski, A Master from Germany (Ein Meister aus Deutschland)

• Thomas Rohkrämer, Martin Heidegger: Eine politische Biographie.