Introduction: thinking the unconscious Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher; 1. The unconscious from the Storm and Stress to Weimar classicism: the dialectic of time and pleasure Paul Bishop; 2. The philosophical significance of Schelling's conception of the unconscious Andrew Bowie; 3. The scientific unconscious: Goethe's post-Kantian epistemology Angus Nicholls; 4. The hidden agent of the self: towards an aesthetic theory of the non-conscious in German romanticism Rüdiger Görner; 5. The real essence of human beings: Schopenhauer and the unconscious will Christopher Janaway; 6. Carl Gustav Carus and the science of the unconscious Matthew Bell; 7. Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious Sebastian Gardner; 8. Gustav Theodor Fechner and the unconscious Michael Heidelberger; 9. Friedrich Nietzsche's perspectives on the unconscious Martin Liebscher; 10. Freud and nineteenth-century philosophical sources on the unconscious Günter Gödde; Epilogue: the 'optional' unconscious Sonu Shamdasani.