Just as theories of writing, and on the multiplicity of the text, have gained hold in the field of literary studies over the last two decades, so also has the assumption that an inescapable fragmentation has always already gotten the best of the idea of totality associated with the book, theoeuvre, the opus, and so on. Undoubtedly, these theories aim at conceptually making sense of a destruction of the book that has not only been under way for some time but also has affected more domains than the merely literary. And yet, it is generally taken for granted that...

1. Many so-called artists are really products of nature’s art.

2. Every nation wants to see represented on stage only its own average and superficial aspects; unless you provide it with heroes, music, or fools.

3. When Diderot does something really brilliant in hisJacques, *he usually follows it up by telling us how happy he is that it turned out so brilliantly.

4. There is so much poetry and yet there is nothing more rare than a poem! This is due to the vast quantity of poetical sketches, studies, fragments, tendencies, ruins, and raw materials.

5. Many critical journals make the mistake which Mozart’s...

1. Even philosophy has blossoms. That is, its thoughts; but one can never decide if one should call them witty or beautiful.

2. If in communicating a thought, one fluctuates between absolute comprehension and absolute incomprehension, then this process might already be termed a philosophical friendship. For it’s no different with ourselves. Is the life of a thinking human being anything else than a continuous inner symphilosophy?

3. If one becomes infatuated with the absolute and simply can’t escape it, then the only way out is to contradict oneself continually and join opposite extremes together. The principle of contradiction is inevitably doomed, and...

1. Nothing is more rarely the subject of philosophy than philosophy itself.

2. Both in their origins and effects, boredom and stuffy air resemble each other. They are usually generated whenever a large number of people gather together in a closed room.

3. Kant introduced the concept of the negative into philosophy. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile trying now to introduce the concept of the positive into philosophy as well?

4. The frequent neglect of the subcategories of genres is a great detriment to a theory of poetical forms. So, for example, nature poetry is divided into natural and artificial kinds, and folk poetry into...

1. The calls for and even the beginnings of a morality that might be more than the practical part of philosophy are becoming increasingly obvious. Already there is talk even of religion. It’s time to tear away the veil of Isis and reveal the mystery. Whoever can’t endure the sight of the goddess, let him flee or perish.

2. A priest is someone who lives only in the invisible world and for whom everything visible possesses only the truth of an allegory.

3. Only in relation to the infinite is there meaning and purpose; whatever lacks such a relation is absolutely meaningless and...