The Miracle and Mystery of Nature

Millán Brusslan situates her discussion of the world soul in debates about the limits of reason and the domain of faith in the post-Kantian period. She focuses upon Schlegel’s critique of Jacobi’s foundationalist notion of reason grounded in faith. Jacobi and Fichte’s central roles in the development of Romantic thought are highlighted. The Jacobi-Mendelssohn Debate was a powerful philosophical springboard for Schlegel, who developed some of his central Romantic views in response to the debate. Schlegel’s critique of Jacobi’s salto mortale and of Fichte’s “world soul of cognition” gave rise to the German Romantic conception of a world soul of nature, which was part of a project to lend freedom to nature itself as part of the humble acceptance of the limits of human domination and mastery of the natural world. The manifestation of the divine in nature became a key element in the Romantic conception of the world soul.