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English
10
European Humanities
Mr. Spragins
Romanticism
(1760-1830)
Introduction:
Characteristics of Romanticism
The
late eighteenth century was an Age or Revolution.
The
gradual transformation of the European economy, which had been underway since
Chaucer’s time, climaxed finally in a tumultuous political event that altered
the very structure of society. The French Revolution was not just a watershed
moment in our political history; it was a key moment in the history of
Western ideas. Although the leaders of the French Revolution used
Enlightenment principles of natural rights, social justice and universal
brotherhood to justify their overthrow of the Old Regime, the passion and
nationalist ferment, the terror and violence of the French Revolution helped
create not only a new political order based on capitalism but also a new era
in philosophy, art, music, and literature.
Romanticism
rebelled against reason, order, balance, rationality, and intellect, all the
sacred principles of the philosophes. At its core was a new conception of nature
and a new respect for the power of the human imagination. Romantics
elevated emotion over reason, creative freedom over logic. This was the age
that invented the idea of ‘genius’ and celebrated the heroic individual as
the moving force in history. It was the age of Napoleon, Beethoven, and
Byron. Romanticism was born in the German speaking parts of Europe that
had been conquered by Napoleon’s armies. German thinkers rejected the
worldview of the French Enlightenment and rethought the relationship between
man and nature. Out of this intellectual movement would grow a nationalist
ideology which would result in the creation of a new nation state. In England, six great poets came of age in
a single generation. In Russia, an Eastern culture came into contact with the
ferment of Western thought, and its writers would produce the greatest
narrative fiction of the century.
During the Romantic Era, poets, philosophers, musicians, and
artists rejected the notion that one universal, objective truth existed.
Truth was redefined as subjective: the individual created his own reality,
his own morality; a national culture created its own art, its own political
institutions. The Age of Romanticism inspired great art and helped
create new respect for diverse cultures and alternate lifestyles.
Paradoxically, Romanticism also nurtured the nationalist racism and
imperialist ambition that would tear civilization apart in thirty years of
World War during the 20th century.
Review of Central
Enlightenment Principles
(notes
from Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of
the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (1932))
The emotional subjectivism of Romantic inspiration seems
the polar opposite of Enlightenment reason, but it actually grew out of the
cool and rational principles of the philosphes.
By examining how our notions of natural law changed, we can trace the
evolution of the ideas that would form the basis for the Romantic rebellion
against reason.
The Enlightenment Redefinition of Natural
Law:
1. To
be enlightened meant to renounce traditional belief in Holy Writ and Holy
Church as “a fraud or at best an illusion born of ignorance perpetrated by
the priests in order to accentuate the fears of mankind and so hold it in
subjection.” (Becker, p. 52)
2. To
be enlightened meant believing that God had revealed his Law to mankind not
through revelation, but in a far less mysterious way, through nature itself.
In
the Middle Ages, when the Church’s vision of the cosmic drama of mankind’s
quest for salvation dominated intellectual thought, natural law had little to
do with the actual observation of nature itself. Natural law reflected a
concept above and outside the physical universe (transcendent truth). It
existed ideally, in the mind of God, and even the great theologians
acknowledged that they could only dimly deduce this truth.
During
the Enlightenment the notion of natural law had been transformed by
the scientific revolution. The study of nature became concerned with observing
the physical phenomena of nature itself. Natural philosophers (whom we would
call scientists) revealed an
intricate and delicate system of inter-related machines. Humans themselves
were conceived as machines, marvelous but largely passive recording devices
whose identity was shaped through interaction with the world (tabula rasa).
The
Enlightenment worldview had been inspired by the great ideas of Isaac Newton
in physics and John Locke in psychology and political philosophy. Newton’s laws of motion had made
nature into a mechanism that could be observed and controlled by anyone, even
common workers. People believed that the pursuit of reason would help them
achieve a better way of life. The study of nature revealed the force, wisdom
and harmony of God’s design. Nature was the new object of worship, and
science was the way to express this love. Locke’s great idea (epistemology) was that the
mind owes nothing to inheritance and everything to environment. This idea demolished
the Christian doctrine of original sin. The mind of man was merely a record
of the sensations and experiences of the outer world that would become, as
man used his reason to re-shape the world, the best of all possible worlds.
By the use of their faculties alone, mankind could bring their ideas and
behavior into harmony with the universal natural order.
Deism: the religion of the
Enlightenment:
1.
Man is not born in a sinful, depraved state.
2. The
end of life is life itself, the good life on earth, not life after death in
heaven.
3. Man
is capable, guided solely by the light of reason and experience, of
perfecting life on earth.
4. To
accomplish this great goal, we must free their minds from the bonds of
ignorance and superstition and their bodies from the oppression of corrupt
social authorities.
Vive
le revolution!
The
Myth of Progress
What
an intoxicating vision! What a powerful myth! The Enlightenment philosophers
had replaced the Christian myth with a new myth that would prove just as
attractive to the masses of common men during the Romantic era! The Christian
story suggested an ancient paradise could be regained through salvation. The
enlightenment philosophers suggested instead that a new heaven could be
manifested here on earth, a utopia. Man himself (not God, not a philosopher king) could
engineer this good society through the progressive improvements made by
successive generations of rational social scientists. The Myth of
Progress replaced the Myth of Salvation.
The
Logical Flaw in Enlightenment Optimism
Unfortunately,
the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment had already discovered logical
flaws in this utopian plan, and it is from these flaws that the Romantic
Movement would grow. In Candide Voltaire satirized the optimism of these blithe social
engineers. He was insulted by their affront to his common sense: evil is
rampant in this the best of all possible worlds! Voltaire argued that
asking metaphysical questions was finally a pointless, dangerous exercise.
I
guess you won’t be surprised to learn that his advice went unheeded.
David
Hume, the Scottish philosopher, explored the logical flaw in optimistic
determinism in a systematic fashion. He believed that it was futile to use reason to establish
either the existence of God or the goodness of God.
His
logic runs like this:
If
nature is the work of God, and man the product of nature, then all that man
does, thinks, all that he has ever done or thought,
is natural too. How, then, can we possibly not be in harmony with nature? Hume asks us to
consider the questions of the Hellenistic philosopher Epicurus:
1.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent.
2.
Is God able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
3.
Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?
Hume
never published his Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion. He quietly left his subversive document
concealed in his desk. For to resolve this dilemma, he would have had to
renounce the optimism of his age and move backwards towards faith or forward
into atheism. The Romantic philosophers who followed Hume exploited the
logical flaw at the heart of the Enlightenment’s Myth of Progress and
revolutionized our way of seeing the world.
Romanticism’s
New Ideas: (from Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (1965))
Rejection
of the Quest for Universal Truth
The Romantic movement broke forever the West's ancient quest to realize a
single, absolute and perfect understanding of the truth. More specifically, the
Romantics assaulted the logical propositions at the base of the
Enlightenment's plan for a rational Utopia: the idea that all true questions
have knowable and compatible answers. Hume had also demonstrated the
impossibility of this proposition. (You’ll read about how tonight.) So much
for the belief in social engineering!
The
New Quest for Personal Freedom
The Romantics sought truth instead
in expression of the individual will.
Only the freedom to choose a personal ideal offered dignity and identity to
the human experience. Only by refusing to de defined by external codes of
conduct, logical systems, even natural forces themselves could the true
nature of the life force be experienced. Furthermore, the Romantic quest for
sincere or authentic experience must be never ending, for to pause or rest in
any single formulation of self, no matter how unique, would be to cease to be
free. It is only in the pursuit of an essence that can never be defined that
true experience can be had- and we must make the pursuit or surrender our
freedom.
The
Varieties of Romantic Expression
The anti-logic of
Romanticism inspired the creation of a diverse variety of aesthetic theories,
artistic forms, political movements and individual philosophies. Yet all these contradictory impulses are "Romantic" in that they
reflect an unwillingness to accept a single, defining notion of truth or
reality. Even though
Romanticism led to the creation of bizarre and destructive movements, even
broached the limits of sanity in some individual cases, it did have a
beneficent effect on Western Civilization.
The
Impact of Romanticism
We no longer believe that any one political, philosophical, religious or
cultural system can claim the right to be applied universally. Instead we
have learned to tolerate and celebrate those who are different. We have reached consensus on
notions of civility in a diverse society which accepts alternate lifestyles
and cultures as long as their adherents do not seek to impose their values on
others. We recognize that tragedy is an inevitable fact of life because our
most cherished ideals are incompatible: Knowledge will not necessarily make
us happy. Perfect freedom cannot be reconciled with equality. Justice and
mercy do not always coincide.
In short, Romanticism
broke the West's long dream of realizing a single Utopian vision of the true
society: Plato's Republic, Augustine's City of God, or the philosophe's crystal palace of reason. Romanticism paved the way for
modern liberalism whose tenets are freedom (as long as your actions do not
interfere with another's freedom), toleration of diversity (even those
beliefs which run counter to your own) and pragmatic compromise (seeking
solutions but tempering expectations with the understanding that ideal
solutions are impossible).
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