 Although the fragment, as a philosophical form, is often associated with the early Jena romantics, it was not invented by this group. Rather, the fragment has a long history, stretching back to the ancient Greeks, but also to modern writers such as Chamfort, La Rochefoucauld, and Lichtenberg. (Chamfort’s work was translated into German in the 1790s and eagerly read and discussed at the time.) Within circles closer to the romantics, Herder, from the late 1760s on, had been exploring the philosophical potential of the fragment. Herder’s turn to the fragment was motivated by a wide-spanning skepticism with regard to the idea of a totalizing or teleological system of reason. The young Herder leads this skepticism back to the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. Novalis makes frequent references to Herder’s work and person.