The Roots Of Romanticism

One of the century's most influential philosophers assesses a movement that changed the course of history in this unedited transcript of his 1965 Mellon lecture series. "Exhilaratingly thought-provoking".--"Times London".

The Roots of Romanticism is the long-awaited text of Isaiah Berlin's most celebrated set of lectures, the Mellon Lectures, delivered in Washington in 1965 and heard since by a much wider audience on BBC radio. For Berli, the Romantics set in train a vast, unparalleled revolution in humanity's view of itself. They destroyed the traditional notion of objective truth in ethicsm with incalculable, all-pervasive results. In his unscripted tour de force Berlin surveys the myriad attempts to define romanticism, distils its essence, traces its development, and shows how its legacy permeates our outlook today.

The Roots of Romanticism is the long-awaited text of Isaiah Berlin's most celebrated set of lectures, the Mellon Lectures, delivered in Washington in 1965 and heard since by a much wider audience on BBC radio. For Berli, the Romantics set in train a vast, unparalleled revolution in humanity's view of itself. They destroyed the traditional notion of objective truth in ethicsm with incalculable, all-pervasive results. In his unscripted tour de force Berlin surveys the myriad attempts to define romanticism, distils its essence, traces its development, and shows how its legacy permeates our outlook today.

Philosophical Romanticism is one of the first books to address the relationship between philosophy and romanticism, an area which is currently undergoing a major revival. This collection of specially-written articles by world-class philosophers explores the contribution of romantic thought to topics such as freedom, autonomy, and subjectivity; memory and imagination; pluralism and practical reasoning; modernism, scepticism and irony; art and ethics; and cosmology, time and technology. While the roots of romanticism are to be found in early German idealism, Philosophical Romanticism shows that it is not a purely European phenomenon: the development of romanticism can be traced through to North American philosophy in the era of Emerson and Dewey, and up to the current work of Stanley Cavell and Richard Rorty. The articles in this collection suggest that philosophical romanticism offers a compelling alternative to both the reductionist tendencies of the naturalism in 'analytic' philosophy, and deconstruction and other forms of scepticism found in 'continental' philosophy. This outstanding collection will be of interest to those studying philosophy, literature and nineteenth and twentieth century thought.

“A splendidly pithy and provocative introduction to the culture of Romanticism.”—The Sunday Times “[Tim Blanning is] in a particularly good position to speak of the arrival of Romanticism on the Euorpean scene, and he does so with a verve, a breadth, and an authority that exceed every expectation.”—National Review From the preeminent historian of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries comes a superb, concise account of a cultural upheaval that still shapes sensibilities today. A rebellion against the rationality of the Enlightenment, Romanticism was a profound shift in expression that altered the arts and ushered in modernity, even as it championed a return to the intuitive and the primitive. Tim Blanning describes its beginnings in Rousseau’s novel La Nouvelle Héloïse, which placed the artistic creator at the center of aesthetic activity, and reveals how Goethe, Goya, Berlioz, and others began experimenting with themes of artistic madness, the role of sex as a psychological force, and the use of dreamlike imagery. Whether unearthing the origins of “sex appeal” or the celebration of accessible storytelling, The Romantic Revolution is a bold and brilliant introduction to an essential time whose influence would far outlast its age. “Anyone with an interest in cultural history will revel in the book’s range and insights. Specialists will savor the anecdotes, casual readers will enjoy the introduction to rich and exciting material. Brilliant artistic output during a time of transformative upheaval never gets old, and this book shows us why.”—The Washington Times “It’s a pleasure to read a relatively concise piece of scholarship of so high a caliber, especially expressed as well as in this fine book.”—Library Journal

"The fundamental concern of Romanticism, which brought about its inception, determined its development, and set its end, was the need to create a new language for religion"--

Using Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy's groundbreaking study of the persistence of German Idealist philosophy as his starting point, Justin Clemens presents a valuable study of the links between Romanticism and contemporary theory. The central contention of this book is that contemporary theory is still essentially Romantic - despite all its declarations to the contrary, and despite all its attempts to elude or exceed the limits bequeathed it by Romantic thought. The argument focuses on the ruses of 'Romanticism's indefinable character' under two main rubrics, 'Contexts' and 'Interventions'. The first three chapters investigate 'Contexts', examining some of the broad trends in the historical and institutional development of Romantic criticism; the second section, 'Interventions', comprises close readings of the work of Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Ian Hunter and Alain Badiou. In the first chapter Clemens identifies and traces the development of two interlocking recurrent themes in Romantic criticism: the Romantic desire to escape Romanticism, and the problem posed to aesthetico-philosophical thought by the modern domiciliation of philosophy in the university. He develops these themes in the second chapter by examining the link forged between aesthetics and the subject in the work of Immanuel Kant. In the third chapter, Clemens shows how the Romantic problems of the academic institution and aesthetics were effectively bound together by the philosophical diagnosis of nihilism. Chapter Four focuses on two key moments in the work of Jacques Lacan - his theory of the 'mirror stage' and his 'formulas of sexuation' - and demonstrates how Lacan returns to the grounding claims of Kantian aesthetics in such a way as to render him complicit with the Romantic thought he often seems to contest. In the following chapter, taking Deleuze and Guattari's notion of 'multiplicity' as a guiding thread, Clemens links their account to their professed 'anti-Platonism', showing how they find themselves forced back onto emblematically Romantic arguments. Chapter Six provides a close reading of Sedgwick's most influential text, Epistemology of the Closet. Clemens' reading localizes her practice both in the newly consolidated academic field of 'Queer Theory' and in a conceptual genealogy whose roots can be traced back to a particular anti-Enlightenment strain of Romanticism. Clemens next turns to the professedly anti-Romantic arguments of Ian Hunter, a major figure in the ongoing re-writing of modern histories of education. In the final chapter he examines the work of the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou. Clemens argues that, if Badiou's hostility to the diagnosis of nihilism, his return to Plato and mathematics, and his expulsion of poetry from philosophical method, all place him at a genuine distance from dominant Romantic trends, even this attempt admits ciphered Romantic elements. This study will be of interest to literary theorists, philosophers, political theorists, and cultural studies scholars.

Often portrayed as a movement of poets lost in swells of passion, early German Romanticism has been generally overlooked by scholars in favor of the great system-builders of the post-Kantian period, Schelling and Hegel. In the twelve lectures collected here, Manfred Frank redresses this oversight, offering an in-depth exploration of the philosophical contributions and contemporary relevance of early German Romanticism. Arguing that the early German Romantics initiated an original movement away from idealism, Frank brings the leading figures of the movement, Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), into concert with contemporary philosophical developments, and explores the role that Friedrich Hölderlin and other members of the Homburg Circle had upon the development of early German Romantic philosophy.