Institut für deutsche Literatur

Siarhei Biareishyk (Philadelphia): Novalis–Spinoza Encounter: Ontology and the Political

In his book Novalis, Spinoza, and the Materialist Individuations of German Romanticism (Northwestern University Press 2026), Siarhei Biareishyk argues that, beyond the reception history of Spinoza around 1800, a systematic Spinozan materialist strain runs through Novalis’ thought. Biareishyk articulates this strain in the following three domains: ontology and the conception of nature, theories of singularity and individuation, and the concept of the political. Running contrary to the assumptions of idealist philosophies of the time and Western metaphysics more generally, processes of individuation take precedence over stable individuals for both Novalis and Spinoza. In the polemic with Carl Schmitt—and his critiques of both Novalis and Spinoza—this talk will address specifically how Novalis’ and Spinoza’s respective theories of individuation and transindividuality manifest themselves in the concept of the political, which, with the focus on affectivity, circumvents the dominant oppositions of Western political thought, such as individual-collectivity, voluntarism-determinism, and sovereign decisionism-normativity.