Romantic Poetry and the Art System

Abstract

This paper is an attempt at connecting the emergence of second order observation in critical philosophy with the theory of aesthetic autonomy as developed by Early German Romanticism. In outlining the genesis of an autonomous art system from the reception of critical philosophy, my intention is to show how those apparently overly hermeneutical philosophical developments relate to the birth of a system of production and reproduction of artworks, which – as I will argue – are the very materialization of the system’s code.