Blackwell Reference Online

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German philosopher and literary critic; professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen. Frank's extensive writings, which address topics ranging from the A esthetics and philosophy of early German Romanticism to the contemporary debate between H ermeneutics and (post)STRUCTURALISM, are unified by a common thread: the attempt to vindicate the notion of the human S ubject by appealing to the hermeneutic conception of selfhood developed in early Romantic philosophy and poetry. Frank seeks to vindicate the notion of the subject by showing that it need not be conceived in terms of autonomous self-grounding and pure self-reflexivity, as it had been conceived by thinkers like K ant . Instead, Frank demonstrates, already in early Romanticism philosophy and P oetry had conceived and concretized the subject as a continuing process of interpretive individuation. This is the occasion for Frank's intensive focus on the Romantic era and its distinctive notion of temporality. Frank argues that a consistent conception of temporality underlies both philosophy and poetry in early German Romanticism, and through an appeal to specific authors of the period he shows how philosophy seized upon this notion and how poetry concretized it through language. Frank exhibits the idea of the temporality of self-consciousness through an examination of the philosophies of Schlegel, Solger, and Novalis, ... log in or subscribe to read full text