 Even a cursory glance through the writings of the romantics assures the reader that their interest in art and aesthetics is closely tied to their epistemological and metaphysical concerns. The primacy that the romantics attributed to aesthetics is explained by (but is not reduced to) the roles that art and beauty may play in the pursuits of epistemic and metaphysical goals. One such goal concerns what the German romantics, and following them, Coleridge, called the “Absolute” [das Absolute].