Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s Dream of the Book of Nature

Abstract

By emphasizing the intersecting roles of historically conditioned writing practices, recent Lichtenberg scholarship has expanded the frame of reference through which the author’s work is understood beyond the restrictive category of the philosophical aphorism. Setting out from this expanded frame of reference, this article interrogates a topos of central importance for Lichtenberg, the book of nature, in order to better understand the relationship between the author’s writing practice and his empiricist skepticism. By connecting Lichtenberg’s understanding of a “natural script” that cannot be fully deciphered by human beings to his suggestion that he would like to write a book that “no human being” could read, the article argues that Lichtenberg took the book of nature as a model for his own writing. A model for this illegible writing is found in Lichtenberg’s reflections on dreams and a fictional dream narrative that he published during his lifetime. The article thereby argues for an understanding of Lichtenberg as a key transitional figure who reveals the logical connections between Enlightenment skepticism and the dreams of Romanticism. (AH)