 Briefly, this is how this explanation goes: in the aftermath of Kant’s philosophy, the romantics were concerned with the Absolute, understood as the unconditioned totality of all conditions. Like Kant, they believed that such an unconditioned totality is inaccessible to discursive reason and is, to that extent, unknowable to human beings. But reason’s natural drive towards this “Absolute” is nonetheless significant and valuable  (§3.1).  In aesthetics they found a mode of life that best approximates (even if never reaches or grasps) the Absolute, insofar as the aesthetic approach to artworks (a) includes indeterminate affective aspect  (§3.2),  (b) involves a sui generis normativity, constituting its own norms in attunement with the artwork it faces  (§3.3),  (c) is particularly suited to approach individual unities  (§3.4),  and (d) is open-ended  (§3.5).