 The self understands itself as part of a given community, but also as the product of a historical development that spans the arts and the sciences alike. Only in this way can the I, in Novalis’s paradoxical formulation, be the I of its I (MO #28). In order to see oneself as situated within a given historical and intersubjective context, history cannot be fully objectivized: “[w]e are related to all parts of the universe—as we are to the future and to times past” (MO #91). The understanding of history is thus a matter of self-understanding. However, in the enlightenment celebration of novelty and progress, history is reduced to a catalogue of mistakes that are left behind in favor of a more mature comprehension of reality past and present. In Novalis’s view, philosophical romanticism must take on the responsibility of overthrowing—at a meta-philosophical as well as historical-empirical level—such an ahistorical concept of history. Thus the emphasis on Bildung involves a reassessment not only of the self (it involves recognizing that the self is fundamentally situated in tradition), but also of the tradition. This implies, first, the view that tradition extends into the present and, second, the claim that in order to gain understanding of history, hence also of the interpreter’s own time, historical expressions should not be judged by the criteria of the present but be seen within their own context, be it cultural, political, religious, or all of the above.