Whereas Kant’s philosophical project is structured around the discursive operation of “conditioning” inasmuch as it claims to have discovered various conditions of possibility—of knowledge, morality, and judgment, for example—romantic poetry and science comprise two strategic discursive domains that uncover a counterforce to this project, namely the “unconditioning” of transcendentalizing gestures by attending to whatever is external to such conditions. The shift from philosophical projects that elaborated epistemological conditions to those that thematized material and semiotic forces of “unconditioning” culminates in the romantic notion of a new mythology. This talk will explore the contours of this “new mythology” (Schlegel, Novalis, Schelling) inasmuch as it weaves the scientific, material, and physical operations of an absolute of nature beyond the human into the folds of the destiny of the human. However, the poetry of this period does not merely celebrate the emancipatory potential of the new mythology, but also foregrounds its limitations, as will be demonstrated in the work of Karoline von Günderrode.