 In response to these two extremes of universalism and radical individualism, the romantics sought after a golden mean—romantic ethics strived to preserve and strengthen social bonds and encouraged a pluralistic communal life while supporting rational criticism, autonomy, individual rights, liberties and freedom of expression: “Does not the universal gain from the individual, the individual from universal relations?” (Novalis, Faith and Love: #5). The romantics believed that individualism is not merely compatible with sociality and communitarianism, but that it actually depends on genuine forms of the latter: “The vocation of man is attainable only through human society” (F. Schlegel, TPL II: 144). Autonomy and Bildung, in particular, though nothing other than individual freedom and self-realization, can never be divorced from the social: 