Philo-Sophie

Novalis’ Magical Idealism turns Max Demian’s famous phrase, “Wer geboren werden will, muß eine Welt zerstören” (whoever would be born, must destroy a world),* upside down.  Magical idealism calls us to create a world, in order to be born.

Sophie von Kühn—as she has come down to us—is a product of Magical Idealism.   In the poetically inspired, romanticized world of Novalis’ creation, this rather ordinary teenager who liked to play games and eat baked beans and sneak a smoke is transformed, through Magical Idealism, into a celestial being, the only light of the firmament, a heavenly guide.  Like the god who places the hero in the bright nocturnal sky as a burning constellation, Novalis fixes his beloved in the Hymnen an die Nacht, where she will forever be glorified by the children of mortals.  Sophie, like Beatrice, remains for posterity a fixed image: the angelic guardian, the divine messenger—and the prime example of Magical Idealist philosophy in practice.  

* Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend, Hermann Hesse