 Yet, for all his progress beyond the Kantian framework, Fichte had failed to address the more deep-seated problem of meaning that was part of the Kantian agenda: the possibility of there being a will or rationality behind the universe as such, a will or rationality that is prior to and constitutive of subjectivity, hence granting it a sense of meaning and purpose. Whereas Kant had framed this as a question of teleology and natural beauty, Novalis and his fellow romantics linked it to the experience of art and poetry in particular. I return to Novalis’s philosophy of art in the next section. What is important at this point, however, is to realize how Novalis develops his standpoint in critical response to the philosophical challenges posed by Kant and Fichte.