Maurilio Lovatti
Notes of Philosophy Lessons
Edited by Paola Volonghi
(2006-07)
Romanticism
English Translation by Luca Trombetta
If we analyse Italian and foreign literature handbboks we can extract the following features of the European movement:
A) Polemic against rationalism typical of the Enlightenment. Reason is not any more the most important between human faculties: on the theoretical level it appears as the stream of an abstract and formal knowledge, which cannot catch the inner essence of reality; on the practical level it seems to disregard the real nature of man, which is not first of all rational. Reason is then opposed to feelings, which can catch intuitively what the rational analysis cannot; to instinct, which points out immediately to men the reason of the choice; and to passion, which is the indispensable motive of the actions and which represents the maximum value of men. "Man is a God when he dreams and a beggar when he thinks" said the poet Holderlin and "Thought is just a dream of feelings" stated Novalis. Actually the worth of feelings, instinct and passion had already been recognized by English philosophers like Hume, or by French Enlightenment thinkers. According to them however the emotional and sentimental dimension was not considered as opposite but as complementary to the rational one. In the romantic area instead it is mainly perceived as an alternative to the demonstrative reason, which is seen as an unequal form of knowledge.
B) Rediscovery of the worth of the subjectivity. Romantics do no consider it just as simple self-knowledge (as Descartes), but as an unfathomable stream of inner life. Subjectivity is the venue in which spiritual energy appears; it is totally irreducible to reason, which allows to catch immediately the truth and to perform heroic and magnanimous deeds. Rediscovery of subjectivity turns into a re-evaluation of individuality. The subject is something unique because of his particular way of feeling and intuiting, his particular passions and his particular and personal story which distinguishes him from all the others. Romantic subjectivity is strictly bound to the concept of infinity. Every subject, being unrepeatable, has an infinite worth and he can only achieve his fulfilment, by joining himself to the infinity. At the same time he cannot forget his limits, bound to his sensitivity and to his to his own material existence, so that his fundamental attitude will be the lack of the infinity. It consists in the aspiration of joining to what man feels as his real own nature.
C) New conception of Nature. It is not seen any more as a mechanism ruled by necessary laws, but as a huge organism, whose parts are finalized to the life of the whole body (developing the teachings of the "Critique of judgment" by Kant). Nature becomes idealized.
D) Re-evaluation of religion. Even the conception of God changes completely from the previous one of the Enlightenment age. Romantics are dissatisfied with the eighteenth-century deism, which considered God as an impersonal principle of order of the universe, knowable by reason. Romanticism opposes to it two different conceptions of divinity. On the one hand religious tradition is recovered, that is a conception of a living and personal God, of whom men are a suitable image, and with whom they can have a relationship of love. On the other hand, even after the rebirth of the interest towards Spinoza, romantic religiosity finds expression in Pantheism, that is the pursuit of a divine and immanent principle in nature.
E) Art is the highest between the forms of the human culture. Art becomes the main instrument by which men can catch infinity and divinity. The revaluation of subjectivity and individuality of man drives to attribute an absolute worth to the creative genius, which makes any artistic production possible. The romantic-artistic genius is absolutely original, because it comes from the peculiar subjectivity of the artist and obeys to the rules created by itself. The romantic genius sinks its roots into the very Nature, of which the artist becomes interpreter and spokesman. The originality and the nature of the genius allows it to express immediately that infinite content which is the essence of reality and which finds its sensitive expression in the powers of nature.
F) Revaluation of history. History had been neglected from the seventeenth-century culture, even because of Descartes's condemnation. The interest in history was re-born in the eighteenth century, with the Enlightenment, which however conceived the whole historical course as a path towards the rational progress, manipulating the previous historical ages to celebrate the present, in which the development of reason and the progress of arts and sciences are maximum. In this rationalist view of history, tradition appeared as a fake authority from which mankind should have been freed. Romanticism instead sees history as an organic and natural process, in which the collective individualities, that are people mainly emerge. Tradition loses any negative aspects, to become, instead, the essential instrument by which the temporal continuity of people is implemented. History appears, overall, as a unique process of growth of mankind; that is why none of the past ages appears useless or backward, but they all constitute the rings of a unique chain. Even the Middle Ages, in which romantics find values as solidarity or popular cohesion, naturalness, spontaneous religiosity preferable to the cold rationalism of the eighteenth century, is greatly re-evaluated, and for some aspects even mythologized. Tradition is the essential condition for the formation of nationality, that is that group of factors as language, religion, culture, habits and customs, which makes the peculiarity of a people.
From the philosophical point of view we could add some other considerations. German idealism has surely been influenced by the romantic mentality, by the cultural climate of the beginning of the nineteenth century, and even by the lifestyles of the romantic intellectuals. However we can say that just Schelling's philosophy can be qualified as romantic, at least where Schelling defines art as the supreme organ of philosophy. According to Schelling art represents a privileged way to access the Absolute, more suitable than philosophy; this way of thinking can be considered romantic: art is the richest and the highest form of human culture; it is the vertex of the expressive possibilities of human beings. According to Hegel art instead represents, in the Absolute Spirit, the thesis, while philosophy the synthesis: philosophy and rationality are much more important than artistic creation. Hegel declares himself as anti-romantic, even if he also had been influenced by the romantic style.
It could be interesting to deepen the critical argumentations of the Italian philosopher of the twentieth century Benedetto Croce, close to the neo-idealism, because his attitude, very severe towards romanticism, makes us understand this artistically-literary current better. Croce, in the concept of romanticism, did not include just the artistic and literary romanticism of the first half of the nineteenth century, but even Decadentism, Spiritualism and some forms of philosophical existentialism. According to Croce romantics have something wrong with their nerves; they are sadistic and perverse, even morbid.
According to Croce romanticism is based on four fundamental myths:
1) Fancy and dreams have a great worth for men, they are more important than reason; art, being able to express and communicate them, has much more importance than philosophy.
2) Loneliness,
the inner world, introspection, authenticity of feelings are better than
real world, composed of concrete and interpersonal relationships and
of
daily living.
3) Acting and working delude and impoverish men. Necessity takes him to compromises and to falseness, which compromise the "good" nature of man. Acting and working or being implied in politic, diminishes feelings and dreams, and damages fancy.
4) Youth is a value. Youths are pure, kinder, less compromised, and happier. According to Croce, a vision of life based on these myths, is irrational and dangerous, it helps in creating a fake vision of men.
According to Croce these myths do not consider some important aspects of the mankind condition:
a) Feelings and passions are modifiable and correctable by experience, education, personal relationships and by the use of reason. The romantic fidelity to feelings, the uncritical exaltation of feelings, of creativity of the artist, of heroic and desperate passions, presuppose that feelings, seen as bearers of the best values, are absolute. This theory is wrong because it forgets or neglects that feelings are modifiable.
b)Romantics are right when they claim the worth of feelings for the human being (it is thanks to them if everyone today is free to choose his/her husband/wife, while before their parents decided for them), but they are wrong when they exalt feelings and fancy, opposing them to reason, and devaluating it.
c) Feeding and cultivating too high, perfect, and hardly achievable ideals, contribute to induce us to devaluated and pessimistic judgements about reality. In any aspect of life, too high ideals deform reality. The girl, who hankers after the perfect prince or the perfect boy, will end up not appreciating concrete people, with their flaws and qualities. The politician, who pursues the perfect society, utopia, will devaluate any partial reform, every rationalization, which, for as useful and positive as it can be, will always be very far from the desired perfection.
N. B. The Notes were written during the lessons by Paola Volonghi and they were not revisioned.
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