From Romantic Tools to Technics: Heideggerian Questions in Novalis's Anthropology

As much as primitive tools extended the reach, capacity, and power of the human body, in the course of their development they have also threatened it with extinction. Heidegger realized that what was at stake in the technics of the modern world was the capacity for a loss that would extend beyond the body to include the very being of mankind. The potential tragedy underlying these reflections is mitigated, however, by an inherent ambivalence: just as the usefulness of the earliest tools cannot be denied, the same goes for their sophisticated modern counterparts. For all his criticisms about the dangers involved, Heidegger does not conclusively answer the question concerning the effect of industrialization on the human condition. The essay shows how concerns that are usually considered products of the twentieth-century discourse on technics are already raised by the Romantic anthropology of Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), and argues that the affinity between Novalis and Heidegger is greater than has been acknowledged. Prior scholarship has described a common interest in problems relating to being and language in aesthetic and philosophical contexts. The essay puts these topics in a new light by shifting the focus to their writing on technics and technology.