11.7.06
Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803)
The Christian theosopher Karl von Eckartshausen was an eminent and influential exponent of early German romanticism. His work in natural philosophy and Christian theosophy was read and discussed by some of the most well-known European writers and poets of his time. In Germany Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Gottfried Herder (who regarded him as the prophet of ‘Harmonie im Sittlichen und in der Natur’ – harmony in morality and in nature) and especially also Novalis knew his work. In Russia, where his works appeared in translation, he was mentioned in the novels of Nikolai Gogol (Dead Souls) and Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace). Tsar Alexander I was an avid reader of his work. In France, Eckartshausen influenced contemporary mystical thinkers and Böhmist theosophers such as Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (‘le Philosophe Inconnu’) (1743-1803) and members of various Martinist circles.
Eckartshausen lived and worked in the south of Germany, straddling the cultural divide between the German Aufklärung (Enlightenment) and the early Romantic period. He defended his own kind of religious philosophy against the new rationalism and materialism of what he considered the wrong sort of Enlightenment. Strongly involved in the social and legal developments in his society, he foresaw and warned against the political and religious unrest in the era of the French Revolution (1789-1801). He joined Adam Weishaupt’s masonic order of the Illuminaten (Illuminates) but withdrew his membership soon after discovering that this order only recognized enlightenment through human reason (‘Man cannot enlighten: the truth enlightens…’). His works have always confronted the turbulent political, social and religious reality of his times and thus caught the early romantic Zeitgeist. This holds true for his early legal studies, the didactic, political and polemic works (Über Religion, Freydenkerey und Aufklärung, 1785-86), the theatrical plays, the sentimental and romantic-theosophical narratives (Kostis Reise), and the later religious, theosophical and spiritual works from Aufschlüsse zur Magie onwards.
Antoine Faivre, who devoted his PhD thesis to Eckartshausen, has recognized a number of themes and motives in his work. First, Faivre distinguishes the principle of analogy or correspondence. This Hermetic principle allowed new insights attained by modern natural science to be interpreted as so many confirmations of long-existing theosophical intuitions. Another motive appearing in the major texts by both Ivan Lopuchin and Eckartshausen is the concept of the Inner Church.
http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl/c/p/h/bel_16.html
Eckartshausen lived and worked in the south of Germany, straddling the cultural divide between the German Aufklärung (Enlightenment) and the early Romantic period. He defended his own kind of religious philosophy against the new rationalism and materialism of what he considered the wrong sort of Enlightenment. Strongly involved in the social and legal developments in his society, he foresaw and warned against the political and religious unrest in the era of the French Revolution (1789-1801). He joined Adam Weishaupt’s masonic order of the Illuminaten (Illuminates) but withdrew his membership soon after discovering that this order only recognized enlightenment through human reason (‘Man cannot enlighten: the truth enlightens…’). His works have always confronted the turbulent political, social and religious reality of his times and thus caught the early romantic Zeitgeist. This holds true for his early legal studies, the didactic, political and polemic works (Über Religion, Freydenkerey und Aufklärung, 1785-86), the theatrical plays, the sentimental and romantic-theosophical narratives (Kostis Reise), and the later religious, theosophical and spiritual works from Aufschlüsse zur Magie onwards.
Antoine Faivre, who devoted his PhD thesis to Eckartshausen, has recognized a number of themes and motives in his work. First, Faivre distinguishes the principle of analogy or correspondence. This Hermetic principle allowed new insights attained by modern natural science to be interpreted as so many confirmations of long-existing theosophical intuitions. Another motive appearing in the major texts by both Ivan Lopuchin and Eckartshausen is the concept of the Inner Church.
http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl/c/p/h/bel_16.html
# posted by alvaro @ 12:36 a. m. 
