ROMANTIC versus ENLIGHTENMENT
Emotional/
Individualistic/
Revolutionary/
Loves Solitude & Nature/
Fantasy/Introspection/
The Particular/
Subjective Perception/
Right Brain/
Satisfaction of Desire/
Organic/
Creative Energy-Power/
Exotic/
"Noble Savage"-Outcasts/
Idealist Philosophy/
Reasonable and Practical
Public Responsibility
Conservative
Loves Public, Urban Life
External Reality
The Universal
Objective Science
Left Brain
Desire Repressed
Mechanical
Form
Mundane
Bourgeois Family
Materialist-Empirical Philosophy
ENLIGHTENMENT OR AGE OF REASON (1689-1780): ITS VALUES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
1) TRIUMPH OF RATIONALITY AND SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE
--1687: Newton's Principia Mathematica explains laws of physics. Nature can be understood rationally
and controlled.
--Leads to Deism: philosophy that sees nature as vast mechanism (world like super-complex clock).
Design in nature means there is a creator. Understand God by looking at marvelously ordered cosmos-all is interconnected.
--Also leads to use value of nature being emphasized (remember Locke's "rationally and industriously").
--1717 Robinson Crusoe published : Lockian man, ingeniously transforms island. Does not see island
life as picturesque.
--Drive to understand nature as system: thus knowledge accumulated and organized:
--Linnaeus in System of Nature (1735) catalogues plants: emphasis on order/classification
--scholars in France/ Encyclopediasts 1751-1766
--Encyclopedia Britannica first published in 1771
--Historical overall consequence: Science pragmatically applied = technological development = industrial
revolution over the next century.
2) RATIONAL FREE-THINKING/SPECULATION ABOUT IMPROVING SOCIAL MECHANISM
--Laws of government, like Newtonian laws of nature, can be understood and rationally implemented.
American Constitution adopted after rational discussion/public debate (Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers).
--Human nature can be perfected if we are in right social environment.
--Locke's 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding: tabula rasa. Knowledge gained through
sensory imput=hence environment/education important.
--Proto-anthropology via "discoveries" (Captain Cook in Polynesian islands, etc.) emphasizes "progress"
of societies from "savage" to "barbarian" to "civilized".
--Eventually, leads to French Revolution/ envisioning utopias = Marx (part of Enlightenment tradition)
3) RISE OF MIDDLE-CLASS AND COMMERCIAL/MIDDLE-CLASS VALUES
--Locke emphasizes the centrality of property (and powers that secure property).
--Individual increasingly known in economic terms than spiritual terms
--Franklin: "a penny saved is a penny earned"--good ole Protestant work ethic
--Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations (1776) calls England an "island of shop-keepers"
ROMANTIC REBELLION (1780-1830, with Queen Victorian becoming queen in 1837, ushering in the
Victorian era). The trajectory of Enlightenment continues into our era: only poets and writers and artists
are really rebelling against some of the negative consequences of Englightenment. Romantics tend to
be anti-establishment.
1) DETACHED RATIONALITY/SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE SEPARATES US FROM NATURE (AND MAY
LEAD TO DANGEROUS ASSUMPTION OF PROGRESS--SCIENCE CANNOT FIX EVERYTHING!)
--Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German "Idealist" philosopher: Basic philosophical premise is that we
cannot absolutely know external "reality" because it is always shaped, a priori, by the mind's faculties.
--nature not just an extrinsic mechanism to be rationally understood/manipulated:
--nature evokes emotion/ our emotion may shape landscape
--landscape valued over land per se
--what is beauty? does it exist in subject or object--reality is in fusion not in inside/outside, or
subject/object dichtomy
--natural/organic process valued over the technology or mechanical artifice
--Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1818) demonstrates failure of mechanical to imitate nature
--John Keats: "poetry should come as naturally as leaves to a tree"
2) INDIVIDUAL (ENERGY/PERCEPTION/FREEDOM) MORE IMPORTANT THAN SOCIAL SELF OR
SOCIAL STABILITY OR SOCIAL ENGINEERING
--subjective, unique experience celebrated over public or objective values.
--"noble savage"/ rural or "primitive" cultures valued for simplicity and naturalness
--urban life deadens perception: walk in a field, not in a street (hang out by a pond like Thoreau, an
American Romantic)
--society corrupts: children and childlike innocence celebrated
--Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "We are born free, but everywhere are in chains"
3) ROMANTIC ARTIST TYPICALLY ALIENATED FROM MIDDLE-CLASS AND MIDDLE-CLASS
VALUES
--Romantic artist alienated because poetry doesn't sell very well (no longer a patronage system: Locke
had a patron)
--Romantic artist tends to be fascinated by
--his/her own psyche
--the exotic (the Orient, altered states of consciousness) or forbidden
--the heroic (Napoleon)
--with visionary thinking/ with subconscious processes/dreams
--Romantic artist celebrates spontaneity over convention, the routine
--Romantic artist likely to value spiritual intuitions over dogmas of established religion
--Romantic artist likely to be radically egalitarian
--keep in mind that all of society is not engaged in what could be called the “Romantic Rebellion”. It is
mostly an aesthetic/philosophical counter-culture, with much variation in whether the writers/artists were
accepted/appreciated in their own age or not and the extent of revolt in their personal lives (Shelley and
Byron pushed beyond the edge; Wordsworth became the consummate Victorian gentleman in his later
years, quite stodgy).