Abstract

Aremarkable revival of interest in Romanticism has taken place among some philosophers in recent years. Why should this be so? Romanticism has had a bad reputation among literary critics of a variety of persuasions throughout most of the twentieth century, when it was not even a topic for analytical philosophy in the English-speaking world. The philosophical movement most associated with Romanticism—German idealism—had been shunned by the curricula of a majority of the most prestigious British and American universities by the mid-twentieth century. Literary modernism and then various strains of postmodernism had a self-image of having overcome Romantic illusions. (Of course, Romanticism and Romantic philosophy...