This paper considers how women and gender are conceptualised within early German Romanticism and argues that work by early German Romantic women should be addressed in scholarship on this movement. The chapter addresses feminist critiques of early German Romanticism as exemplified by the work of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, concluding that an essentialist view of traditional gender characteristics informs central aspects of these writers’ work, including their view of the relationship between human (...) beings and nature and their theories of language and poetry. The paper argues that a thoroughgoing critique of gender categories and development of the implications of this critique are found in the early German Romantic writings, not of Schlegel and Novalis, but of Dorothea Veit-Schlegel and Karoline von Günderrode. (shrink)

This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

The word “romanticism” designates in German as in other European languages a broad movement in literature that originated at the beginning of the nineteenth century and has often been characterized as an opposition to the preceding age of rationalism and Enlightenment. Situated between the classicist schools of taste of the previous century and the realistic and naturalistic trends in literature of the later nineteenth century, Romanticism or romantic literature is the product of the creative power of the (...) imagination; it appeals to the emotions, has a preference for the mysterious aspects of nature, and shows a strong predilection for the past, the Middle Ages, and mythological traditions. With its strong affinity to the novel, romantic literature departs from the classical forms and the classicist canon of literature, but when these classical forms were nevertheless used by the authors of this movement, something new was created – the romantic tale, the romantic drama, and romantic poetry. The great romantic authors in Germany were E. T. A. Hoffmann, Eichendorff, Brentano, Arnim, and Fouqué. There is both a narrower and a broader notion of Romanticism in Germany, the broader also relating to painting (Friedrich, Runge) and music (Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bartholdy, Wagner). Romanticism had a great impact on the general view of the world and was influential in the rise of the historical consciousness, the revival of a religious spirit, and the emergence of a conservative political attitude. As far as philosophy and the sciences are concerned, Romanticism is associated with figures such as Schelling and Schopenhauer, the development of a philosophy of art, of nature, and of the subconscious. On the whole, Romanticism is one of those movements that shaped an entire age and manifested itself down to the most particular features of popular belief and scientific interest. (shrink)

Explores the philosophical contributions and contemporary relevance of early German Romanticism.

In this article I ask how fruitful the concept of alienation can be for thinking critically about the nature and causes of the contemporary environmental crisis. The concept of alienation enables us to claim that modern human beings have become alienated or estranged from nature and need to become reconciled with it. Yet reconciliation has often been understood—notably by Hegel and Marx—as the state of being ‘at-home-with-oneself-in-the-world’, in the name of which we are entitled, perhaps even obliged, to overcome anything (...) in nature that is alien to the human mind. This approach to alienation derives ultimately from the German Idealist philosopher J. G. Fichte. I explore an alternative conception of alienation and reconciliation to be found in the work of the Early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. The Romantics think of reconciliation as including a dimension of alienation, in the form of an awareness that nature is greater than and exceeds the understanding of human beings, insofar as we are merely limited parts of the all-encompassing whole that is nature. I argue that this is a more fruitful approach to alienation and reconciliation than that pursued by Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. (shrink)

_Explores the philosophical contributions and contemporary relevance of early German Romanticism._.

_Explores the philosophical contributions and contemporary relevance of early German Romanticism._.

This third 2021 issue of "SYMPHILOSOPHIE: International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism" contains a main dossier of new research articles guest edited by Leif Weatherby (New York University) and devoted to the topic of early German romanticism and science. In addition to the papers of this main section issue number 3 of SYMPHILOSOPHIE includes translations of primary sources and book reviews. All contents are freely available online.

In this study I have presented Early-German Romanticism as a philosophical movement and Friedrich Schlegel as its major philsopher. The central philosophical problem which concerned this movement was the problem of philosophy's beginning. Schlegel's skeptical view led him to reject both Reinhold's foundationalism and Jacobi's irrationalism. This skeptical position distinguishes Early-German Romanticism from Fichte's idealism. ;Schlegel's rejection of Fichte's solution to the problem of philosophy's beginning led to a unique solution: the Wechselerweis. This involves (...) the claim that philosophy cannot begin with any single principle, but only with the interaction between at least two principles. This interactive model involves an ever-changing dialogue between the knowing subject and the world. For Schlegel, philosophy cannot be understood without an understanding of change. Therefore, history becomes a central part of the activity of philosophizing. According to Schlegel's view, philosophy never begins with a point of absolute certainty but always in the middle. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to examine Giorgio Agamben’s important but underappreciated debts to the early German Romantics and to Hegel. While maintaining critical distance from these figures, Agamben develops crucial aspects of his approach to radical passivity with reference to them. The focus of this essay is on Agamben’s consideration of the early German Romantics’ notions of criticism and irony, Hegel’s notion of language, and the implications of this view of language for his notion (...) of community. (shrink)

This article examines and elaborates the nature of subjective experience by drawing on a variety of perspectives in recent philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis. The question of subjectivity has been much debated in each of these disciplines. In contrast with postmodern thinkers who wish to discard subjectivity altogether, I discuss alternative ways to understand and conceptualize subjectivity, or self-consciousness. I consider a tradition of thinkers that includes Sartre, Fichte, and the early German Romantics, who conceptualize self-consciousness as a "being-familiar-with-oneself" (...) that is prior to all reflection. I argue that a developmental corollary to this approach can be found in the psychological research of Daniel Stern, who attributes to infants a "simple non-self-reflexive awareness," while Jacques Lacan's discussion of the specular misrecognitions of the self complicates any simply rendering of "mirroring." By thus combining epistemological, developmental, and phenomenological treatments of the self, I believe it is possible to achieve a conception of subjectivity that avoids the snares of Cartesian essentialism. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant Yearbook Jahrgang: 8 Heft: 1 Seiten: 117-142.

This book develops a philosophy of aesthetic experience through two socially significant philosophical movements: early German Romanticism and early critical theory. In examining the relationship between these two closely intertwined movements, we see that aesthetic experience is not merely a passive response to art-it is the capacity to cultivate true personal autonomy, and to critique the social and political context of our lives. Art is political for these thinkers, not only when it paints a picture of (...) society, but even more when it makes us aware of our deeply ingrained forms of experience in a transformative way. Ultimately, the book argues that we have to think of art as a form of truth that is not reducible to communicative rationality or scientific knowledge, and from which philosophy and politics can learn valuable lessons. (shrink)

This book offers a unique account of the development of thinking about nature from Early German Romanticism into the philosophies of nature of Schelling, Hegel, and beyond. Alison Stone explores the ethical and political implications of German Romantic and Idealist ideas about nature, including for gender, race, and environmentalism.

Enlightenment - both the phenomenon specific to the eighteenth century and the continuing trend in Western thought - is an attempt to dispel ignorance, achieve mastery of a potentially hostile environment, and contain fear of the unknown by promoting science and rationality. Enlightenment is often accompanied and challenged by countercultures such as German Romanticism, which explored the nature of fear and deployed it as a corrective to the excesses of rationalism. The Aesthetics of Fear in German (...) class='Hi'>Romanticism uncovers the formative role this movement played in the development of dark or negative aesthetics. Recovering a missing chapter in the history of the aesthetics of fear, Paola Mayer illustrates that Romanticism was a crucial transitional phase between the eighteenth-century sublime and the early twentieth-century uncanny. Mayer puts literature and philosophy in dialogue, examining how German Romantic literature employed narratives of fear to radicalize and then subvert the status quo in society, culture, and science. She traces the development of this aesthetic from its inception with pre-Romantics such as Jean Paul Richter to its end in Joseph von Eichendorff's critical retrospective, and juxtaposes canonical authors such as E.T.A. Hoffmann - the father of the modern fantastic - with writers who have previously been ignored. Today, when the dark side of science looms in the foreground, The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism points to the power of a literary movement to construct competing currents of thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Enchantment of Art: Abstraction and Empathy from German Romanticism to ExpressionismDavid MorganA familiar tradition since the eighteenth century has invested art with the power to heal a decadent human condition. Inheriting this ability from religion—the romantic enthusiast Wilhelm Wackenroder considered artistic inspiration to originate in “divine inspiration” in the case of his hero, Raphael 1 —art eventually replaced institutionalized belief in an evolutionary schedule of cultural (...) development determined by German idealism. Hegel, for instance, theorized the evolution of spirit from religion to art as a qualitative advancement over time. Rejecting the metaphysics of German idealism, Friedrich Nietzsche nevertheless contended that “Art raises its head where religions decline.” By assuming the “feelings and moods” of religion which had been dismantled by enlightenment, Nietzsche claimed that art gave new form to the life of feeling and imbued human endeavors with a “loftier, darker coloration.” 2 In the early twentieth century Wassily Kandinsky believed that the “spiritual in art” was the historical manifestation of an “inner necessity” that was in itself timeless and universal. Kandinsky portrayed the “life of the spirit” as “a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts.” In a kind of “trickle down” aesthetic, the compartments of the triangle move slowly upward toward the apex, which is inhabited by the solitary genius of an age whose vision gradually elevates all those who occupy the lower stages. 3 [End Page 317]The point for proponents of the spiritual in art from romanticism to expressionism (and beyond) was to find in works of art what can best be described as an enchantment. 4 As the negotiation of the gaps or disjunctures separating human beings from complete power over their lives, enchantment conjoins the plane of immediate human experience to a desirable state of affairs through the mediation of such symbolic devices as rituals, incantations, or charms. Thus, evil can be warded off by the use of an apotropaic amulet, and fertility can be enhanced by the recitation of a suitable prayer or the performance of a certain ritual. In a modern analogy a sense of impotence is often alleviated by a trip to the mall where the bored therapeutically lose themselves in symbolic acts of self-renewing consumption. In the traditions of philosophy and science, systems of representation such as astrology, the microcosm, the harmony of the spheres, the great chain of being, the celestial hierarchies, or the mechanisms of theurgy and divination situate humanity within a cosmos that follows a particular order accessible to and in some degree manipulable by human beings. Enchantment consists of an apparatus of belief whose form of representation or enactment is thought to exert influence over the realities it configures.But enchantment is not limited to the spells and magic of premodern metaphysics (or modern consumerism). By means of religion, morality, and aesthetics, Nietzsche once averred, “man likes to believe that... he is touching the heart of the world.” 5 This study will focus on the manner in which art as constructed within the idealist tradition of German art theory functioned as an enchantment. Specifically, it will explore what the history of ideas about abstraction and empathy has to tell us about the spiritualization or enchantment of art. After identifying the philosophical and aesthetic wherewithal of enchantment in nineteenth-century Germany, attention focusses on Franz Marc’s early twentieth-century theorization of abstraction. It is certainly more customary to study Kandinsky, whose writings and early efforts at abstraction are much better known, but Marc’s ideas offer more immediate connections to German intellectual history and clarify the aims of his abstract art as a strategy of enchantment. Moreover, Marc was unusually articulate and wrote often, exploring ideas and artistic efforts with great insight. Focusing on Marc therefore offers a corrective to the historiography that has favored Kandinsky’s writings. Finally, Marc differed from his Russian friend over the cause of the war. Manifesting a difference that is portentous for this study, Kandinsky left Germany for Russia in 1914, while Marc enthusiastically took up arms for the fatherland. Given these circumstances and the unfortunate tendency of art historians to valorize expressionist art rather than situate it in the ideological context of... (shrink)

Early German Romanticism sought to respond to a comprehensive sense of spiritual crisis that characterised the late eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how the Romantics sought to bring together the new post-Kantian idealist philosophy with the inheritance of the realist Platonic-Christian tradition. With idealism they continued to champion the individual, while from Platonism they took the notion that all reality, including the self, participated in absolute being. This insight was expressed, not in the language of theology or (...) philosophy, but through aesthetics, which recognised the potentiality of all creation, including artistic creation, to disclose the divine. In explicating the religious vision of Romanticism, this study offers a new historical appreciation of the movement, and furthermore demonstrates its importance for our understanding of religion today. (shrink)

This volume of 23 previously unpublished essays explores the relationship between the philosophy of J.G. Fichte and that of other leading thinkers associated ...

This dissertation investigates the initial reception of the Bhagavad Gita in German intellectual circles, focusing in particular on the ways that the German Romantics who translated and anthologized the text constituted it as an object of European knowledge. By examining the intellectual debates and textual practices at play in early nineteenth century representations of Indian religious culture, this project contributes to the contemporary debate about Orientalism, which often lacks focus because of inattention to historical context. In addition, (...) by bringing this under-investigated topic to light, the dissertation adds an important chapter to the history of the study of religion and offers historical perspective on the comparative philosophy of religion. ;The works of Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and G. W. F. Hegel provide the matrix of this project. With these writings a German discourse on India took shape. Local intellectual preoccupations guided the Romantic presentation of the Gita, permeated its translations, and were thus enlisted to accommodate its difference. These preoccupations were thematized first in Herder's experimentations and then gained clarity in the work of the Schlegel brothers. Later exchanges between von Humboldt and Hegel illustrate the way that these preoccupations were reinterpreted after early Romantic enthusiasm had dissipated and conventions of academic discipline had evolved. ;The dissertation concludes by asserting that Romanticism leaves a legacy wherein broad cultural "myths" can dominate the "logos" of scholarship on India and Hindu religious sources. Reflection on the history of cross-cultural inquiry draws attention to such "myths" and thus enhances the self-consciousness of future scholarship. (shrink)

The absolute was one of the most significant philosophical concepts in the early nineteenth century, particularly for the German romantics. Its exact meaning and its role within philosophical romanticism remain, however, a highly contested topic among contemporary scholars. In The Romantic Absolute, I offer a new assessment of the romantics and their understanding of the absolute, filling an important gap in the history of philosophy, especially with respect to the crucial period between Kant and Hegel.

SummaryIn his doctoral dissertation—The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism, finished in 1919 and published as a book in 1920—Walter Benjamin explores the epistemological and aesthetic foundations of the concept of criticism expounded by the early German Romantics Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. Many of the themes in the dissertation recur in his later work, which has led scholars to believe that much of Benjamin's thought is directly influenced by the Romantics. However, a detailed investigation of the (...) origins and development of the dissertation reveals that the picture is much more complicated. Reading the dissertation alongside the biographical material now available, this article argues that the major themes which preoccupy Benjamin in The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism, including his theories of language and knowledge as well as his messianic philosophy of history, in fact predate his study of the Romantics. As well as being a potential entry ticket to an academic career, the dissertation constitutes Benjamin's first sustained attempt to develop and consolidate his own epistemology and aesthetics in a more or less systematic way. He does so through a series of ‘judicious interpretations’ of the Romantics, whose work he reads selectively, anachronistically and creatively to provide a vehicle for his own thought. (shrink)

For philosophers of German idealism and early German Romanticism, the imagination is central to issues ranging from hermeneutics to transcendental logic and from ethics to aesthetics. This volume of new essays brings together, for the first time, comprehensive and critical reflections on the significances of the imagination during this period, with essays on Kant and the imagination, the imagination in post-Kantian German idealism, and the imagination in early German romanticism. The essays explore (...) the many and varied uses of the imagination and discuss whether they form a coherent or shared notion or whether they embody points of philosophical divergence within these traditions. They shed new light on one of the most important and enigmatic aspects of human nature, as understood in the context of a profoundly influential era of western thought. (shrink)

Since the early 1990s, there has been a resurgence of interest in philosophy between “Kant and Hegel,” and in early German romanticism in particular. Philosophers have come to recognize that, in spite of significant differences between the contemporary and romantic contexts, romanticism continues to “persist,” and the questions which the Romantics raised remain relevant today. The Relevance of Romanticism: Essays on Early German Romantic Philosophy is the first collection of essays that offers (...) an in-depth analysis of the reasons why philosophers are (and should be) concerned with romanticism. Through historical and systematic reconstructions, the collection offers a deeper understanding and more encompassing picture of romanticism as a philosophical movement than has been presented thus far, and explicates the role that romanticism plays—or can play—in contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

The Romantic Absolute does a spectacular job of reconstructing the main philosophical position of three very difficult figures. The more we know of Romanticism as a movement, the more questions we seem to have, and the more important it seems to be, both to the history of philosophy and to the philosophical questions that concern us today. Nassar’s book represents an important contribution to our understanding of Early German Romanticism and will undoubtedly become an important resource (...) for anyone considering the movement. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the origins of Polish Romanticism as born partially out of German idealist philosophy. I examine the influence exerted by the ideas of the most significant thinkers, such as Kant, Fichte and Schelling on both professors and students living in Vilnius at the beginning of the nineteenth century (particularly Jan Śniadecki, Józef Gołuchowski and Adam Mickiewicz). As an adherent of Enlightenment and empirical epistemology Śniadecki was critical towards Kant as well as Romantic poetics. On the (...) contrary, in the works of young Gołuchowski, who was well acquainted with German ideas, there are frequent references to Kant, Fichte, and Schelling’s philosophy of life. The same ideas—such as vital nature, feeling, and faith as opposed to “dead” knowledge based on “pure terms”—can be found in Mickiewicz’s early works. This convergence of motifs is due to the fact that they both have the same source of inspiration: German idealism. (shrink)

Scholars are finally fully appreciating the philosophical significance of early German Romanticism. Brill’s Companion to German Romantic Philosophy is a collection of original essays showcasing not only the philosophical achievements of romantic writers such as Schlegel and Novalis, but the sophistication, relevance, and influence of romanticism 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. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to examine Giorgio Agamben’s important but underappreciated debts to the early German Romantics and to Hegel. While maintaining critical distance from these figures, Agamben develops crucial aspects of his approach to radical passivity with reference to them. The focus of this essay is on Agamben’s consideration of the early German Romantics’ notions of criticism and irony, Hegel’s notion of language, and the implications of this view of language for his notion (...) of community. (shrink)

v. 1. The Enlightenment, Kant -- v. 2. Kant's immediate critics, Early German romanticism -- v. 3. General characterization, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel -- v. 4. New horizons, The legacy of German idealism.

Scholars are finally fully appreciating the philosophical significance of early German Romanticism. _Brill’s Companion to German Romantic Philosophy_ is a collection of original essays showcasing not only the philosophical achievements of romantic writers such as Schlegel and Novalis, but the sophistication, relevance, and influence of romanticism today.

The emphasis that the modernity gives to disengagement and beginning leads one to think that the modernity itself is in fact a culture that initiares crisis. Even if there is no initial crisis, it can be created through the ambivalent nature of modernity. Behind the concept of crisis lies the notion that history is a continuous process or movement that opens the door to nihilistic understanding which stems from the idea of contemporary life and thought alienation through the pessimistic meaning (...) of the word. There is a dialectical relationship between the ideas of modernity and progress, and the decadence, and the main theme of Nietzsche's philosophical career. Since the death of Hegel, who made the idea of crisis plausible, everything is nothing but a counter-movement not only in Germany, but also in Europe. The first of these counter-movements is romanticism with its objection to the mind which is liberated from the bonds of tradition. The main thesis of the present article is, between reactiveness of romanticism -on the surface- and the modernity; from one side romanticism's consuming modernity, which is its mirror image, while at the same time feeding from it and modernity's manipulating the ideas developed against it and monopolizing them thanks to its ambivalent nature. For this purpose, following an an anti-enlightenment thinker Nietzsche's, anti-romantic footsteps which at the same time feeds from the romantic heritage, an attempt will be made to analyze the relationship between modernity and romanticism. Another goal of this article is to allow a comparison of how the intellectual development in the West finds its response on the modernization process of our country by probing how the modernization experience of early period Islamist's who experienced this process in a feeling of "backwardness" and with a wounded consciousness and anxiety has led to a shallow romantic worldview. SummaryRomance and romanticism are the main topics of this article. Romanticism is a period, whereas romance is a spiritual attitude not limited to this period, therefore, even today it’s existence is felt. In other words, it is not specific to the Germans. This term is often used to correspond to certain aspects of European intellectual life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for instance between 1790 and 1850. In its extremely diverse definitions, the most "romantic" definition in our opinion, belongs to Novalis: “I'm romanticizing by giving a high meaning to ordinary things, a mysterious reputation to the ordinary, the honor of the unknown to the known, an infinite look to the finite.” The rejection of existing social reality, the experience of loss, the melancholic longing and the search for loss are the main components of the romantic motive. This study is based on the argument that there is a dialectical relation between romanticism and modernity, which is known as an opposing movement against enlightenment thought. The intellectual feature, which contains the opposite of modernity itself, makes this argument plausible. In addition, the view of modernity as a crisis culture due to the emphasis on disengament and beginnings offers us the possibility to establish a relationship between modernity, which accepts itself as decadence, and romance. Behind the concept of crisis lies the idea that history is a continuous process or movement opening the door to the nihilist understanding in which modern life and thought are alienated in a pessimistic sense. Thus, Allan Megill defines historicism as a prerequisite for nihilism. According to the author, Prophets of Extremity, if the history has no direction to be changed, maintained or lost when wandering in history, it also cannot have a "crisis". The suggestion of "God is dead" is the most concise expression of this crisis. In this crisis state of nihilism, it is a completely forlorn condition of living in the present. Today, which is in the absolute forlorn state; the savior declares his belief that he is devoid of all sorts of features, things that let us reconcile with the current situation of things. In the face of this situation, when people see that the present becomes completely forlorn, they move in two opposite directions with a desire to regenerate culturally: They either have to go back to the past or head for the future. However, every attempt to determine what the future or the past posess will require them to be real, belonging to the present. This will return us to the forlorn state. Nietzsche embraces both opposing sides, but does not attempts choose between them. This is the place where Nietzsche dictates that today is corrupt taking a radical attitude against romanticism fed by the notion of crisis. The fact that modernity has given up its critique of reason, which is revealed by its dialectic, had a great influence on Nietzsche's putting distance between himself and romantics. That is to say, in response to enlightened thought, although romantics speak of unity, apparently, they could not prevent emergence of emotion against mind, local against the universal, individual against social, in other words, the emergence of the second values, which they believed that these were belittled and despised by Enlightenment. Therefore, romantics seem like they could not save themselves from being caught in the web of dialectics in the account they entered that is based on the subject-object distinction in cartesian thought. It is because modernity acts with the consciousness that the life is established on the occurrence and decadence. Based on this, we can say that decadence is inevitable. This decadence (distortion) from the outside may be through movements developed against it, or experienced within itself (even if no one attempts to destroy it). Modernity, with the awareness that it cannot escape from the decadence, wants to arbitrate itself by turning this decadence in its favor by manipulating it. In other words, the modernity dramatizes the feeling of crisis considering itself decadence and the seemingly contradictory ideas of avant-garde and decadence become almost synonymous. It must be the reason why Nietzsche identifies modernity with decadence Modernity manages to put the decadence in its body at the center of attraction by producing self-opposing movements, monopolizing and manipulating. In short, both romanticism and avant-garde movements are the movements that are emerged not against modernity but from itself. Just like an apple worm, they both consume modernity and feed on it. They act as a mirror. Although they seem to criticize, as movements that have emerged from it, they allow the modernity to complete and correct the deficiencies. As a result of this, we can say that romantic critical movements are developed against the world and are shaped by modernity, beginning with the idea of enlightenment, and moved forward in the track of modernity.While romanticism developed in the West as opposed to modernity, in Ottoman-Turkish thought, it was seen as the rhetoric of retardation and regretting of backwardness from civilization. It is inevitable that the experience of modernization in a sense of backwardness, with a wounded consciousness and urgency, will open up space for romance. In our modernization adventure starting with Tanzimat, it is a fact that there has not been a drastic reckoning due to Enlightenment on an intellectual basis, industrialization on an economic basis, programs of revolutionary and nationalist formations on a political basis. Therefore, in Turkish thought, it is not possible to talk about a critical tradition developed against modern paradigm. The status of being audience to what was being experienced in Europe, resulting from superiority was transformed into grudge due to the defeats in the military field. Due to the decadence experienced in the present, inability to find the solution to the problems of its age, melancholic state of mind because of being stuck in the golden age experienced in the past, in the case of a preference, led to a romantic world view because of the appeal of its simplicity to imitate what was once lived in the past. Thus, it is very natural that the direction of Namık Kemal, the cult personality of Islamist-Turkish thought, is towards the past even when talking about progress and civilization. Seeing the 19th century Europe as a re-implementation of ideas and institutions that are actually Islamic, Namık Kemal, in our opinion, showed us a clear example of a typical Islamist romanticism and an example of occidentalist approach regarding that the West learned the civilization from Muslims. In fact, the exact equivalent of this approach displayed in Turkish cogito without even knowing that it is romantic, emerging in the personality of Namık Kemal and in the feeling of backwardness,with a hectic and injured consciousness, is kitschization. So much so that, the state of being kitsch also explains the current situation of Islamic geography which is far from creating a tradition for at least a century, and it clearly tells the usual romantic end. (shrink)

From the Reformation to the present, German political philosophy has done much to shape the contours of theoretical debate on politics, law, and the conditions of political legitimacy; many of the most decisive and influential theoretical impulses in European political history have originated in Germany. Until now, there has been no thorough history of German political philosophy available in English. This book offers a synoptic account of the main debates in its evolution. Commencing with the formal reception of (...) Roman law and the constitutional reforms in the Holy Roman Empire in the late fifteenth century, German Political Philosophy includes chapters on: · the political ideas of Luther, Zwingli and Melanchthon in the Reformation; · the natural-law theories of the early German Enlightenment; · Kant, Hegel and the age of German idealism; · romanticism and historicism; the Young Hegelians and Karl Marx; · legal positivism and organic theory; · Nietzsche, Weber and early sociology; · neo-Kantianism in the late nineteenth century; · constitutional theory in the Weimar Republic; · the critical theories of the Frankfurt School; · post-1945 sociological functionalism; · Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. At the heart of this book is the claim that, despite - or perhaps because of - the great upheavals and ruptures in the history of state-formation in Germany, there are certain recurrent themes and concerns which persist through these discontinuities to give a distinctive character to German political reflection. This valuable book will be of great interest to political philosophers, intellectual historians, lawyers, and historical sociologists.'. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 443-455 [Access article in PDF] Romanticism's Gray Matter Nancy Easterlin British Romanticism and the Science of Mind, by Alan Richardson; xx & 243 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, $55.00. THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN science and the humanities is an old story, one whose basic themes were inspired by a new understanding of the utility of science that emerged from the Enlightenment. If (...) faith in the efficacy of human reason to renew human society was no longer quite so robust after Robespierre's Reign of Terror, science itself did not suffer but instead assumed the central place in intellectual inquiry. Half a century later, the opposition between humanistic inquiry and science not only carried over into the conception of literary studies in its embryonic phase as an academic discipline; the rise of science provided, ironically, a primary impetus for the institutionalization of English studies, since the study of language and literature was envisioned as an arena of spiritual values and social polish. But according to Gerald Graff, the picture is even more complicated than this: the oppositions between literature and science are largely matched by those within English/literary studies from the very beginning. If English was envisioned as a repository of value and cultivation on the one hand, it was driven, under the influence of science, to professionalize and develop a research industry on the other—which itself fostered a divide between criticism and academic research, areas that have only recently come together. 1 [End Page 443]Since conflicted attitudes toward science were thus at the heart of literary studies from the very beginning, it is hardly surprising that debates about the relevance of science to literary theory and criticism are vital today. These debates are the healthy result of the twentieth century's attempts to apply scientific research and models to literature, for early efforts at scientific criticism help locate both the potential benefits and possible drawbacks of interdisciplinary approaches. Yet some humanistic research paradigms have remained largely immune to the influence of science, maintaining the two-cultures tradition by virtue of the body of knowledge they adopt—and therefore by what they implicitly exclude—to frame our understanding of written works. Chief among these are literary history and the history of ideas, which have drawn principally on the fellow humanities of philosophy and history, and only superficially or sporadically on the history and philosophy of science. (Interestingly, despite differences in theory, method, and values, recent projects like the new historicism are in this respect generally continuous with traditional literary historical practice.) In British Romanticism and the Science of Mind, Alan Richardson expands the parameters of the history-of-ideas approach within literary criticism, rendering it more fully congenial to developments within scientific thought. With great diplomacy, Richardson points to the limited conception of context that has informed historical accounts of British literary romanticism, and proceeds to demonstrate what a knowledge of romantic-era brain science can bring to our understanding of the ideas and works of a selection of romantic-era writers. The result is a book that, in providing a detailed account of the major theories of brain-mind and in constructing the plausible grounds of influence on several major literary figures, largely succeeds in the difficult task of appealing to an interdisciplinary audience.As Richardson notes in his preface and first chapter, the overlap between literary and scientific representations of mind has been generally neglected in romantic scholarship. Work on the romantic mind has, for the most part, drawn selectively on Hartleyan associationism, psychoanalysis, and the German idealist tradition within epistemology, even though the historical period of British literary romanticism (roughly 1789-1832) corresponds with an unprecedented development of theories of the brain and nervous system, many of which were vigorously discussed—in no small part for their ideologically inflammatory implications—in the major literary periodicals of the day. To [End Page 444] remedy the neglect of contemporaneous science, Richardson supplies a discussion of the major brain scientists in his first chapter, following this with four chapters on major figures and works of literary romanticism (Coleridge... (shrink)