The idea that unites everyone [is] the idea of beauty…I am now convinced that the highest act of reason, by encompassing all ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are siblings only in beauty. (Hölderlin, in Bernstein 2003: 186).

Knowledge [Erkennen] already denotes conditioned knowledge. The unknowability of the absolute is, therefore, an identical triviality. (F. Schlegel, KA 18: 511, #64)

We seek the unconditioned [Das Ubedingte] and always find only [conditioned] things [Dinge]. (Blüthenstaub, NS 2: 413, #1)

All good poetry [originates in] the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. (Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800), paragraph 26, in LB)

Third, the romantic elevation of aesthetic feeling and the creative imagination did not come at the price of their faith in and respect for reason. Even Friedrich Schlegel, who is often considered to be the most enthusiastically inclined romantic, opened his Lectures on Transcendental Philosophy by arguing that philosophy is “a striving towards a knowledge…of the whole person” (ITP: 241). In one of his fragments, he commanded: “Never tire of cultivating the intellect until you will have finally found what is original and essential” (Ideas: #124). And yet in another fragment, he claimed that one of the two centers of genuine philosophy is “the rule of reason” (Ideas: #117).