THE ROMANTIC THEORY OF UNDERSTANDING AND THE AESTHETICS OF FRAGMENTARY WRITING.

Despite its short life in Jena, Early German Romanticism provided a productive theory of Aesthetics, which still remains a subject of discussion and even controversy in contemporary thought. What is most remarkable about these young thinkers is their radical attitude toward crucial problems such as the role of language in human knowledge, limits of understanding and also the form of philosophical writing. By discussing the problem of language and its position in romantic philosophical aesthetics, this article emphasizes the important role of "incomprehensibility" as a crucial concept in early German romantics view, which besides their Antifoundationalist philosophy, provides the basis of their fragmentary writing as a new manner of reflection. Drawing on Blanchot and Critchley, it will be argued that the self-consciousness of fragmentary text of its own failure and unworking is the very key to its infinity, and positive reaction toward the existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]