Title: Contagion
First published: 1998
Description: Although the Romantic Age is usually thought of as idealizing nature as the source of birth, life, and creativity, David Farrell Krell focuses on the preoccupation of three key German Romantic thinkers - Novalis, Schelling, and Hegel - with nature's destructive powers: contagion, disease, and death. Krell brings to light little-known texts by each writer that develop theories about the intertwined beneficent and maleficent aspects of nature.

Krell's investigations reveal that the forces of sexuality and life are also seen as the carriers of disease and death. The insights of Novalis, Schelling, and Hegel offer surprisingly relevant perspectives for contemporary science and for our own thinking - in an age of contagion.
Subjects: Philosophy of nature, History, Death, Contributions in philosophy of nature, Philosophy, Contribution à la philosophie de la nature, Cosmology, Sexuality, Philosophie de la nature, SCIENCE, Natural History, Philosophie, Philosophy, german
Places: Germany
People: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854), Novalis (1772-1801), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
Time periods: 19th century, 18th century
LC classification: B2748.N35 K74 1998