Since 1850, the arts and sciences have been concerned with the problem that knowledge loses certainty when the cognitive apparatus is examined empirically. The destinies of the subject in the long 19th century are varied and changeable. If it is declared by Kant to be the transcendental presupposition of all experience, empirical sciences have since 1850 increasingly subjected the former a priori to an empirical investigation. If, however, the form of knowledge is considered as a function of sensory-physiological, cultural and linguistic modes of experience, the "conditions of the possibility of knowledge" are in the end as contingent as these impressions themselves. Art and literature play an active role in this epistemological problem. They work with his formulation and analysis, playing through possible consequences and sometimes reflecting on his fundamental insolubility. But you also try evasive movements and possibilities of an arrangement. The volume brings together contributions from innovators of German literature, philosophy, linguistics and the history of science and art. Together, they explore the questions: how do art and science negotiate the problem of the empiricization of the transcendental, and how is it related to the emergence of aesthetic modernity?