Sensibilität und Irritabilität als Gegenstände empirisch-medizinischer Forschung und frühromantischen Denkens: Von Albrecht von Haller zu Novalis

Abstract

This essay undertakes to examine how the concepts of irritability and sensibility operate in works of Novalis. His reflections on irritability and sensibility as a pivotal dichotomy of 18th-Century medicine are not systematic and do not influence the research of his time. But they mark the shift from Enlightenment to pre-romantic writing in German-speaking parts of Europe by emphasising the role of the subject as a sensible and fragile unit. In Novalis, irritability and sensibility are also strongly connected with notions of the self and artistic creativity. Thus, the precisely defined medical key terms are broadened by this author. We suggest that his discussion of irritability and sensibility might lead to an even modern understanding of the artist as it is later described by Lautréamont, Kafka, Hofmannsthal and Nietzsche.