Romanticism, German

Abstract

Because Romanticism has many meanings which vary according to time and place, it is best to examine the movement in a specific culture and period. Of all the phases of Romanticism, early German Romanticism is the most important in the history of Western philosophy. The early German Romantics – Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich von Hardenberg, Schleiermacher, and Schelling – developed influential ideas in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and politics. The aim of their movement was essentially social and political: to overcome the alienation and disenchantment created by modernity, and to restore unity with oneself, others, and nature. In accord with this agenda, the Romantics advocated, in opposition to hedonism and the Kantian ethics of duty, an ethics of love and self-realisation. They championed an ideal of community against the competitive egoism of modern society, and, finally, they developed an organic concept of nature against the mechanistic worldview of Cartesian physics. Romantic ethics, politics, and aesthetics should all be seen in the light of their essential cultural goal: to cure humanity of homesickness and to make people feel at home in the world again.