This thesis investigates the philosophical foundations of Novalis’ realistic idealism, as developed primarily in Fichte-Studien, Das Allgemeine Brouillon and Fragmente und Studien 1700–1800. It reconstructs how Novalis formulates an anti–dogmatic epistemology of the seemingly antithetical fusion of idealism and realism, grounded in his understanding of faith. Novalis’ philosophical development is primarily traced within the early post–Kantian context. The trajectory of his historic-philosophical method runs through Spinoza’s concept of nature, Fichte’s theory of the I, Kant’s critique of dogmatism and Jacobi’s concept of faith.For Novalis, faith is not the endpoint of reason, but its origin and condition. Knowledge — whether of self, world or God — is never immediate, but represented through images and signs. Drawing on this epistemic structure, Novalis presents a vision of philosophy as a dialectical process suspended between certainty and uncertainty, being and non-being — Schweben.