Yet Another Romanticism of Nature: Steffens, Sibbern, and the Danish Ethos After Witoszek

Abstract

This article reconsiders the place of Denmark within the Scandinavian intellectual landscape traditionally described through Nina Witoszek’s concept of Norwegian «anti-romantic romanticism.» While Witoszek interprets nineteenth-century Norwegian Romanticism as a rational-pragmatic tradition associated with an «eco-humanist» outlook, the Danish case cannot be reduced to the metaphysical foil against which this trajectory defined itself. Through an analysis of Henrich Steffens and Frederik Christian Sibbern, the paper traces a distinctive anthropological reworking of German Naturphilosophie , centered on human individuality, temperament, and character. In particular, it examines how Steffens’ complementary notions of temperament and talent, and Sibbern’s subsequent elaboration of temperament, articulate the relationship between natural constitution and spiritual individuality. The study concludes that this philosophical trajectory offers a distinctive anthropological understanding of the human–nature bond, in which reflective human individuality emerges from, and remains grounded in, the natural processes that constitute individual existence.