ABSTRACT
The early romanticism is the great unknown in the archives of intellectual history, and not only in its 'official' archives. Professional philosophers choose to avoid it, because they feel an insurmountable suspicion against philosophers who think in fragments and who, are able to obtain their laurels in the literary genre as well. Novalis establishes a well-explicated connection between the conception that being is beyond consciousness and the conception of philosophy as an infinite, never-ending approximation At the beginning of Novalis's thought experiment stands a consideration of the etymology of the word reflection. Novalis's attempt at a solution is unusual even in the context of the reflection on self-consciousness at the time. For Novalis, the formula of philosophy as "nostalgia for the infinite" becomes the indication of philosophy's inconcludability. Once one has convinced oneself of the impossibility of completing the search, so Novalis continues, one will "freely renounce the Absolute".
