INTRODUCTION.
Romanticism is a movement chiefly in European literature and the arts
featuring an emphasis on imagination and emotion rather than reason
and formal criteria. Beginning at the close of 18th century and
reaching its peak in the early decades of of the 19th century,
the movement was a revolt against the neo-Classicism of the late 17th
and 18th century. The romantic writers seldom used the term themselves,
and controversy has raged among critical and historical scholars of
Western culture ever since as to its precise meaning and interpretation.
Nevertheless, there are identifiable traits that distinguishes
romanticism from earlier cultural periods, and most contemporary
scholars, while disagreeing on details, recognize its descriptive
validity. Certainly it characterizes a "temperament" (Crane Brinton)
or personality, if not an epoch in cultural history as such.
The term came from the Old French romanz (to write), which in
the Middle Ages meant writing in the vernacular rather than in Latin.
It gradually came to be applied to works of fiction and then to the
untouched natural landscape. By the 18th century it referred to that
which was sentimental, full of expression, and melancholly.
The specific elements of romanticism are difficult to delineate
because they exist in differing combinations in various writers
and thinkers, depending upon their geograpical location, place
in time, and personal connections. While acknowledging that
there are exceptions, romanticism generally can be said to stress
emotioinalism, sensualism, fantasy, and imagination over rational
order and control. Reality is found not by rational thought but
through feeling, immediate experience, spiritual illumination,
brooding and listening to the inner voices. There is a subjectivism
that emphasizes self-consciousness, the activity of the ego,
introversion, and originality. A sense of mystery arises out
of an inner longing for that which is unexperienced and unknown.
Each personality should be allowed to unfold itself freely,
according to its own genius, individual impulses, and
idiosyncrasies. Romantics seek beauty, color, and adventure
in out-of-the-way places and events and among the common people.
The exotic is preferred over the familiar, rural life over that
of the city. Prescribed unities and forms are rejected for that
which is different, unconventional, novel, and spontaneous.
Romantics have a deep interest in the past, especially the
Middle Ages, as well as nonclassical (Nordic) mythology, folklore,
and primitivism, and they contributed greatly to the recovering
and publishing long-forgotten medieval historical records and
literature. Finally, romantic art seems on the one hand to be
sensuous, concrete, and down to the earth, yet simultaneosly
it is much more visionary and even mystical. As Novalis put
it, in the romantic view of life,
"world becomes dream, dream becomes world."
HISTORY OF ROMANTICISM.
The movement arose in the 1790s as a reaction to the classicism and
rationalism of the Enlightment, but elements of this revolt
could be seen in earlier writers like Vico, Rousseau, James Thomson,
and the Storm and Stress school in Germany (Klopstock, Herder,
and the young Goethe and Schiller). Among the major romantic
authors are Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Scott,
and Blake in Britain, Madame de Stael, Musset, George Sand, and
Victor Hugo in France; and Goethe, August and Friedrich von
Schlegel, Novalis, Eichendorff, Kleist, Tieck, the Grimm brothers,
and E. T. A. Hoffmann in Germany. There were also romantic music
composers like Chopin, Schubert, and Schumann, painters like
Delacroix and Turner, and philosophers like Fichte, Schelling,
Hegel, and Schopenhauer. The main romantic theologian was
Schleiermacher. The movement had run its course by the end of 1830s,
but some features continued even past midcentury.
In philosophy, the movement marked a reaction against the 18th
century Enlightment or
Age of Reason.
In a narrow sense, romanticism as a philosophical movement
can be viewed as occuring during the initial phase of German
absolute idealism, and as
including the German philosophers
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805),
Friedrich Von Schlegel (1772-1829),
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), and
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834).
This does not mean that German idealism was the philosophy
of romanticism. This interpretation of German idealism is open
to serious objections.
- In the first place, it suggests the idea of a one way
influence. That is to say, it suggests that the great idealist
systems were simply the ideological expression of the romantic
spirit, whereas in point of fact the philosophies of
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
(1775-1854) exercised a considerable influence on some of the romantics.
- In the second place, the leading idealist philosophers
stood in somewhat different relations to the romantics.
It can indeed be said that Schelling gave notable expression
to the spirit of the romantic movement. But Fichte indulged
in some sharp criticism of the romantics, even if the latter
had derived inspiration from some of his ideas. And
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel
(1770-1831) had scant sympathy with some aspects of romanticism.
- In the third place, it is arguable that the term "philosophy
of romanticism" would be better applied to the speculative ideas
of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis than to the great idealist systems.
At the same time there was undoubtably some spiritual
affinity between the idealist and romantic movements. The romantic
spirit as such was indeed an attitude towards life and the universe
rather than a systematic philosophy. And it is perfectly understandable
that Hegel saw a considerable difference between systematic
philosophical reflection and the utterances of the romantics.
But when we look back on the German scene in the first part of
19th century, we are naturally struck by affinities as well as by
differences. After all, metaphysical idealism and romanticism
were more or less contemporary German cultural phenomena, and
an undelying spiritual affinity is only what one expect to find.
In a broader sense, the classification of romanticism as a
philosophical movement might range back
to the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
with his stress on nature, and forward to the German philosopher
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), and even Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling.
The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854)
was known as the philosopher of the Romantic movement and was friends
with Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Schlegel, and other luminaries of
Romanticism. For a time he edited a journal with Hegel who was
initially regarded as his disciple. Schelling was born in Leonberg,
Wuttemberg, educated at Tubingen where Hegel and Holderlin were
fellow students. He taught at Jena, Wurzburg, Munich, Erlangen,
and Berlin.
Schelling's philosophy developed through five stages:
-
Subjective Idealism.
Schelling's earlest important writings appeared while he was at
Jena, where first he studied under Fichte and in 1798 became a
member of the faculty. In this stage, he followed
Fichte's thought
which is apparent in the title of a work published 1795,
Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism,
where Dogmatism being represented by Spinoza and Criticism by Fichte.
Also the same year there appeared his
On the Ego as Principle of Philosophy.
He insisted that the ultimate ground of our knowledge can lie only
in the Ego; so he tried to deduce nature from the essence of the Ego.
Soon, however, he began to oppose mind and matter, and to regard
the Ego as having first produced matter and late become conscious
of itself in mind. He then viewed the various forms of organic life
beneath man as successive stages in which development takes place.
- The Philosophy of Nature. In this stage, beginning after Fichte
left Jena in 1799, Schelling began to be more independent in his
thinking. Although Fichte's thought formed a point of departure
for his reflections, Schelling very soon showed the independence
of mind. In particular, he was dissatisfied with Fichte's view of
Nature as being simply an instrument for moral action. And his
own view of Nature as an immediate manifestation of the Absolute,
as a self-organizing dynamic and teleological system which moves
upward to the emergence of consciousness and to Nature's knowledge
of herself in and through men. This view found expression in his
works on the philosophy of Nature. Thus in 1797, he published
Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature, in 1798
On the World-Soul and in 1799 a First Sketch of a System
of a Philosophy of Nature and an Introduction to the Sketch
of a Philosophy of Nature or On the Concept of Speculative
Physics. Nature and mind now become more sharply contrasted.
These are two different sides of philosophy. All knowledge rests
upon the agreement of a subject with an object, the union of the Ego,
or intelligence, and nature. We may either study nature first and
show how mind arises from it ("philosophy of nature"), or we may
take intelligence first and ask how objects proceed from it
("transcendental philosophy"). In his "philosophy of nature,"
Schelling attempts to show how mind arises in it and to indicate
in an a priori manner the successive stages of an ascending
evolution, without sufficient knowledge of science to make his account
plausible and to show that the later and higher species have
descended from earlier ones, as Lamarck was affirming and
Darwin was later to try to establish. The term "speculative physics"
appears in the full title of Schelling's earlier work
On the World-Soul, the world-soul being said to be a
hypothesis of "the higher physics." He applies the principles
of attraction and repulsion to many philosophical and scientific
problems. Nature is viewed as vitalistic, self-creative, and
motivated by a dialectical process.
- Objective or Transcendental Idealism. The Philosophy of Nature
is supplemented by an absolute awareness whose development is the
revelation of the Absolute in history. In his "transcendental
philosophy" of idealism, he tries to portray the different stages
of evolution as the development of the observing mind, and
in imitation of Kant he distinguishes between theoretical philosophy,
practical philosophy, and the philosophy of Art. Art is the
higher of the three, because in the intuition of the artist
the Ego beholds itself, and the teleology that hitherto had been
hidden becomes revealed to the Ego. Here Schelling is the
interpreter of the Romantic movement. God is no longer for him,
as for Kant and largely for Fichte, a postulate necessary for the
justification of moral faith; He has become the known object of
the immediate intellectual intuition of the artist. His philosophy of art,
introduced at this point, finds art to be a unification of subject
and object, spirit and nature. Tragedy is viewed as a collision of
freedom with necessity, reconciled by the tragic hero's acceptance
of punishment, bringing together the real and the ideal.
- The Philosophy of Identity. The Absolute becomes in this stage
still more important, standing as the identity of all differences.
In this stage, Spinoza and Bruno are influential. Mind and matter
are at bottom identical. Even what we suppose to be dead matter
is only a sleeping world which the Absolute Identity (God) may
raise to life. In knowledge, truth is the form of matter;
in the good, form is given to matter; in beautiful works of art,
the two are absolutely blended together in a higher synthesis.
Schelling for a time tried to deduce this "philosophy of identity"
by mathematical method imitative of Spinoza; later he sought
to work a more immediate method of intellectual intuition called
"construction," by which the Absolute is seen to be in all,
and all in the Absolute; the whole is expressed in every relation
and object. Schelling was as unable as Spinoza has been to make
clear how an Absolute that is pure identity can be related to a
world of diverse persons and things.
The ambiguities in Schelling's ever-changing philosophy led to his
repudiation by Hegel, who had been his disciple and for whom he
had secured a position as a colleague at Jena. Hegel stayed on
at Jena after Schelling left for the university at Wurzberg in 1803.
Hegel appropriated various features in Shelling's view of the
Abslute and its gradual development in nature and history, and
worked them over into a more coherent and systematic account
which he defended by a better logical method (the dialetic).
In the Phenomenology of Mind, which Hegel published in
1807, exposed the vagaries and inconsistencies in the philosophy
of Schelling in a manner logically justified, but discourteous
and unkind. It was evident that Hegel was far more profound
and systematic thinker than Schelling. Hegel soon superseded
Schelling in influence, and remained the recognized leader of
philosophical thought in Germany until his own death in 1831.
- The Positive Philosophy. In the final stage of his thought,
beginning in 1809 when he had gone to Munich, he stresses the value
of mythology, and recognizes in contrast between God and the universe,
and within God himself, the presence of basic polarities.
In this stage, he follows in part the thought of the German Christian
mystic, Jacob Boehme and Neo-platonism. Schelling now thinks of God
as the primal Absolute Identity, who differentiates Himself into the
world of particular beings and then returns to Himself in a higher unity.
The final end of man is liberation from sin and return to God, to be
accomplished through love and forgiveness. The different religions
of the world are progressive stages in the revelation of God to man.
So there is a certain truth even in early mythology. The highest
revelation is embodied in Christianity. which has already passed
through the successive stages of Catholicism and Protestantism
corresponding to the apostles Peter and Paul, and
is approaching the third and final stage, that of John.
Schelling had the satisfaction of being called to Berlin in 1841
to counteract the followers of Hegel, who after the death of Hegel
ten years before had fallen out among themselves, and were
beginning to be viewed with disfavor. Schelling was unable to
regain the position of renown which he had lost thirty years
before, and the philosophy of his last period made little
impression. Historically, Schelling earlier thought was an
essential connecting link between Fichte and Hegel, while
some of his evolutionary ideas helped to prepare the way for
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Bergson.
Despite the shifting phases of his thought, much of the content
is common throughout. Following
Fichte's
triadic logic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, which he applied
both to nature and history, Schelling found a three-stage
development in history:
- the primitive age was characterized by the predominance of fate.
- the age of the Romans, still continuing, is characterized by a
reaction of the active and voluntary aspect of man to the age of fate.
- the future will witness the inauguration of the third stage in
which a synthesis of the two principles will occur in the balance
of life in which the actual and the ideal will blend together.
In his philosophy of mythology, Schelling holds that myth is to be
understood from within, having its own laws, necessity, and reality.
Futhermore, he holds that the history of a people is determined by
its mythology. An accepted mythology shapes the pure creative
potencies of a people. Nature as well as man, however, undergoes
a mythological development.
In his final period, the Absolute becomes "primitive will." God
evolves through the persons of the Trinity, adding another instance
of triadic development. The source of evil is traced to a desire
for existence present in God and all else that antecedes even God,
and is a first principle of all existence. Merged indissolubly
in God's love, the principle becomes dissociated in men, so that
the quality making possible man's freedom and creativity is also
the source of his fall and his sin. Schelling affirms finally,
a polarity in God, which does not disturb God's essential unity.
It involves a merging of absolute and relative, necessary and
contingent, eternal and temporal, potential and actual aspects.
At this point God, the "Eternal Contrariety," evolves by means
of the opposition between the void of nothingness and the
plentitude of being, an opposition internalized in the divine
nature itself.
- Friedrich Von Schlegel.
The German philosopher and literateur Friedrich Von Schlegel
(1772-1829), the leader of the Romantic movement in Germany,
defined Romanticism as the spirit of subjectivity.
Distinguishing between the spirit of objectivity, where one's
personality is dominated by his material, and what one feels
impelled to call the spirit of subjectivity (although the phrase
seems not to have used in Schlegel), where the dominating force
is the free expression of personality, Schlegel identified the
first attitude with the classical period and with the enlightenment.
The second attitude is that of Romanticism where genius is given
free rein, dominating the objective material.
In 1798, Schlegel underwent what appeared to be a conversion
experience, and religion, God, mysticism, and the ohterworld
began to fill his writings. He was attracted by the shimmering
vision of reality beyond this world whose gates are not opened
by critical analysis, and which one does not understand until
he has experienced it. Schlegel saw fantasy or the imagination
as the point of contact between within and without, as the point
of contact between, the self and God. The poet is the one who
illuminates and awakens man to the spark of divine within him.
But in order to find one's way into the higher sphere, he must
negate the earthly and finite. This requires self-scarifice,
that is, death, because only from the perspective of the
realm beyond does the purpose of the whole become clear.
The flame of eternal life is kindled in death.
- Hippolyte Taine.
The French critic and philosopher Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) opposed
Romanticism, standing as one of the chief spokesman for Positivism
in the latter half of the 19th century.