 In this text, Schlegel argues in favor of a Modern (i.e., Romantic) art theory, in opposition to the representationalist and mimetic doctrines that go back to Aristotle’s Poetics and conceive the work of the artist as that of a craftsman copying the beauty of nature (Abrams 1953: 48). But his critique of the classicist formula ‘art imitates nature’ was accompanied by a careful analysis of the different meanings the term ‘nature’ had come to assume within aesthetic discourses. This philological and historical approach is distinctive of Schlegel’s writings and lends intelligibility and clarity to the texts without eroding their philosophical sharpness. Undoubtedly, the Romantic notion of art goes hand in hand with a reevaluation of the concept of nature. Similar to other authors who also were inspired by Spinoza’s distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata, Schlegel argues that, from a philosophical point of view, everything participates in an ongoing process of creation, whereas, from an empirical point of view, natural things are conceived as if they were dead, fixed and independent from the whole. This means that, in its purest and philosophical sense, nature is not perceptible in the same way the worldly objects are. However, unlike Schelling with his ‘intellectual intuition’ or intellektuelle Anschauung, Schlegel did not develop an elaborate theory to give account of this different form of perception; he succinctly argued that the comprehension of nature’s true essence is more like a presentiment (ahnen) or an aesthetic contemplation, than like scientific knowledge. In order to realize this ‘Romantic’ notion of nature, one needs to comprehend or rather feel oneself as an organic whole. One needs to achieve self-awareness and to recognize oneself as forming part of a larger unity. This resort to a non-theoretical or non-discursive plane as an essential constituent of human knowledge was also important in Schlegel’s philosophy of language, which he already expounded in his Letters on Poetry, Meter and Language (Briefe über Poesie, Sylbenmaß und Sprache) in 1795. 