Stimulating, thought-provoking text by one of the 20th centurys most creative philosophers clearly and discerningly makes accessible such topics as probability, measurement and quantitative language, structure of space, causality and determinism, theoretical laws and concepts and much more. "...the best book available for the intelligent reader who wants to gain some insight into the nature of contemporary philosophy of science."Choice.

The Early Romantics met resistance from artists and academics alike in part because they defied the conventional wisdom that philosophy and the arts must be kept separate. Indeed, as the literary component of Romanticism has been studied and celebrated in recent years, its philosophical aspect has receded from view. This book, by one of the most respected scholars of the Romantic era, offers an explanation of Romanticism that not only restores but enhances understanding of the movement's origins, development, aims, (...) and accomplishments--and of its continuing relevance. Poetry is in fact the general ideal of the Romantics, Frederick Beiser tells us, but only if poetry is understood not just narrowly as poems but more broadly as things made by humans. Seen in this way, poetry becomes a revolutionary ideal that demanded--and still demands--that we transform not only literature and criticism but all the arts and sciences, that we break down the barriers between art and life, so that the world itself becomes "romanticized." Romanticism, in the view Beiser opens to us, does not conform to the contemporary division of labor in our universities and colleges; it requires a multifaceted approach of just the sort outlined in this book. (shrink)

Since economies are dynamic processes driven by creativity, social norms, and emotions as well as rational calculation, why do economists largely study them using static equilibrium models and narrow rationalistic assumptions? Economic activity is as much a function of imagination and social sentiments as of the rational optimisation of given preferences and goods. Richard Bronk argues that economists can best model and explain these creative and social aspects of markets by using new structuring assumptions and metaphors derived from the poetry (...) and philosophy of the Romantics. By bridging the divide between literature and science, and between Romanticism and narrow forms of Rationalism, economists can access grounding assumptions, models, and research methods suitable for comprehending the creativity and social dimensions of economic activity. This is a guide to how economists and other social scientists can broaden their analytical repertoire to encompass the vital role of sentiments, language, and imagination. (shrink)

In his new book, "The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe," Robert J. Richards argues that Charles Darwin's true evolutionary roots lie in the German Romantic biology that flourished around the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is argued that Richards is quite wrong in this claim and that Darwin's roots are in the British society within which he was born, educated, and lived.

Originally published in 1987, Colin Campbell’s classic treatise on the sociology of consumption has become one of the most widely cited texts in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and the history of ideas. In the thirty years since its publication, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism has lost none of its impact. If anything, the growing commodification of society, the increased attention to consumer studies and marketing, and the ever-proliferating range of purchasable goods and services have made Campbell’s (...) rereading of Weber more urgent still. As Campbell uncovers how and why a consumer-oriented society emerged from a Europe that once embodied Weber’s Protestant ethic, he delivers a rich theorization of the modern logics and values structuring consumer behavior. This new edition, featuring an extended Introduction from the author and an Afterword from researcher Karin M. Ekström, makes clear how this foundational work aligns with contemporary theory in cultural sociology, while also serving as major influence on consumer studies. (shrink)

"All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives of the people (...) who held it and the development of nineteenth-century science. Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an intimate knowledge of the individuals involved—from Goethe and the brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline Schelling—Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations—all tempered by personal relationships—altered scientific representations of nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology, culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's evolutionary theory. Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored, The Romantic Conception of Life alters how we look at Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology. (shrink)

In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned book, Ayn Rand throws a new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again Miss Rand eloquently demonstrates her refusal to let popular catchwords and conventional ideas stand between her and the truth as she has discovered it. The Romantic Manifesto takes its place beside The Fountainhead as one of the most important achievements of our time.

The world is disenchanted. Rationalization, intellectualization, and scientism rule the day. We used to see the world as a magical place, but now it's just a material space. How did we get here? The shift comes in part from the rise of a certain kind of secularism, one that reduces human experiences to whatever is explainable through observation. Love? It's just a biological drive. Joy, a rush of adrenaline. Beauty, an influx of dopamine. If you can't test it, it isn't (...) true; or so the thinking goes. The Romantic Life draws upon eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romanticism to provide five strategies to re-enchant the world, five ways to imbue the world with meaning, truth, and beauty. According to the Romantics, far from being useless, encounters with impractical things like the imagination, nature, symbolism, sincerity, and the sublime give our lives a richness and depth that cannot be attained on a purely material account of the world. By learning from their example, we can come to see into the life of things, as William Wordsworth called it. We can be re-enchanted" -- taken from back cover. (shrink)

[The Romantic Medicine of Oliver Sacks.].

contents: -/- 1. the Romantic fragment 2. life would want to die, a little 3. pain itself is the meaning, in Nietzsche 4. martyrs do not underrate the body 5. inwardly, an Actor prepares 5b. brother, bro: it's only you that overhears you 5c. J is like Hamlet / Herzog / Holden Caulfield / Raskolnikov 5d. they take him to a basement and they feed him METH 6. a surface is revealed / the depths are all inferred 6b. my Self (...) is all depth: a long internal vertical 6c. Joyce knows not the inside of ideas 6d. perception of depth is maladaptive 7. by knowing Death, humans are the Woken Ones 8. all as straw, or graphomania 8b. i tend to write thru / tho unless i'm imitating English 9. Finnegans Wake as Literature's endgame 10. Hard Realism: Hemingway, Knausgård 11. the cause of pain, in Buddhism 11b. duḥkha is uh-hukha: the gut's double throb. (shrink)

The Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha - A Translation of the Chinese Version of the Abhiniskramanasutra. S. Beal. Reprint, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1985. xii + 395 pp. Rs. 90.

I argue that the romantic notion of “understanding better,” as the ideal of interpretation according to Schleiermacher and Schlegel, is not a “meliorative” understanding, retrospectively situating the work in a broader conceptual or historical context and thus surpassing what the original author meant. The qualification “better” is ethical insofar as it indicates a future-oriented task of responding for the authors and contributing to the continued life of their work. What guides interpreters in such an ethical task is benevolence or love, (...) both toward the object of interpretation—the work—and the author of the work. Love is a hermeneutic imperative that has two sides: first, interpretation “augments” the work or brings it to its “second power;” and, second, interpreters need to put themselves in a certain attitude of non-understanding so that the work will not be constricted in pre-established categories and, instead, susceptible to challenge interpreters. (shrink)

The first publication of this major work by Isaiah Berlin, regarded by many as the twentieth century’s greatest thinker. It is the only text he ever wrote in which he laid out in one connected account most of his key insights about the “romantic age.”.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Michael Fischer ACCEPTING THE ROMANTICS AS PHILOSOPHERS The romanticsarenot widely regarded as philosophers, at least not in philosophy departments, where they are seldom taught.1 Some of the reasons behind this exclusion of the Romantics involve a general disdain for literature; other reasons suggest a more specific uneasiness with Romanticism itself—with its apparent interest in animism, its selfindulgence, its coolness toward reason, and, perhaps above all, its refusal (...) to abide by Kant's containment of skepticism. These complaints are not the invention of paranoid or obtuse academic philosophers (as some literary critics might like to think). In fact, some ofthese objections have dogged the Romantics from the beginning. There is something risky, or outlandish, about Romanticism that these criticisms bring out. I want here to pursue what is at stake in accepting the Romantics as philosophers. In discussing what may be threatening about Romanticism, I will be drawing on the work of Stanley Cavell. Unlike most professional philosophers, Cavell declares his indebtedness to the Romantics, but unlike some literary critics, he appreciates the dangers of the Romantic quest that he nevertheless joins. The Romantics often leave Cavell feeling nervous and wretched, as Thoreau left Emerson— and as Cavell leaves many of his own readers. Cavell affirms Romanticism while acknowledging the risks that have repelled some ofits critics: hence his usefulness to me here. The Romantics' quarrel with Kant perhaps best accounts for the contempt, or indifference, that Romanticism can inspire in academic philosophers. Cavell pictures Kant as arriving at a settlement with skepticism, a compromise that concedes the inaccessibility of things-inthemselves, while reassuring us of our right to say that "we do know the existence of the world, or rather, that what we understand as knowl179 180Philosophy and Literature edge is ofthe world."2 For Kant, again as Cavell portrays him, limiting knowledge—by relinquishing any claim to know things-in-themselves— is necessary to shoring up knowledge, to our still claiming that there is such a thing. By "knowledge" Kant, in effect, means science: he saves science by positioning it between skepticism (the denial of knowledge) and fanaticism or dogmatism (the expansion of knowledge beyond acceptable limits). By affirming the possibility of (scientific) knowledge, Kant thus contains skepticism, or at least curtails its damage. But by putting thingsin -themselves beyond knowledge, he also gives in to skepticism. According to Cavell, the Romantics balk at this trade-off, saying, in effect, "Thanks for nothing." 3 Knowledge of things-in-themselves is precisely the knowledge that the Romantics are most interested in. From this point ofview, Kant concedes too much to skepticism—and gets too little in return. Resisting Kant accordingly entails putting us back in touch with things, or bringing us face-to-face with them, which in turn means showing that we can face things or shy away from them, presumably as we can confront or avoid people. Cavell finds examples of Romantic writers facing things and even listening to them in Waiden, the "Intimations" ode, and other texts.4 But I want to focus here on a poem that Cavell does not mention, "Tintern Abbey," where Wordsworth speaks of that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In Body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power ofjoy, We see into the life of things. (11. 37-49) By "things" Wordsworth means nothing less than "all objects of all thought" (1. 101), "all that we behold / From this green earth"(11. 1045 ), "all the mighty world / Of eye, and ear" (U. 105-6). He specifically mentions "setting suns" (1. 97), "the round ocean and the living air, / Michael Fischer181 And the blue sky" (11. 97-98) and he declares himself "a lover of the meadows and the woods, / And mountains" (11. 103-4). In these lines—and others I need not cite—the world... (shrink)

In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned book, Ayn Rand throws a new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again Miss Rand eloquently demonstrates her refusal to let popular catchwords and conventional ideas stand between her and the truth as she has discovered it. The Romantic Manifesto takes its place beside The Fountainhead as one of the most important achievements of our time.

It is sometimes thought that the renowned essayist Isaiah Berlin was incapable of writing a big book. But in fact he developed some of his most important essays--including "Two Concepts of Liberty" and "Historical Inevitability"--from a book-length manuscript that he intended to publish but later set aside. Published here for the first time, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age is the only book in which Berlin lays out in one continuous account most of his key insights about the history of (...) ideas in the period that he made his own--the Romantic age. Distilling his formative early work in the history of ideas, the book also contains much that is not found elsewhere in his writings. The last of Berlin's posthumous books, it is of great interest both for his treatment of the subject and for what it reveals about his intellectual development. Written for a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr College in 1952, and heavily revised and expanded by Berlin afterward, the book argues that the political ideas of the Romantic age are still largely our own--down to the language and metaphors they are expressed in. Vividly expounding the central political ideas of leading European thinkers in the period 1760-1830, including Helvetius, Condorcet, Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, the book is written in Berlin's characteristically accessible style. The book has been carefully prepared by Berlin's longtime editor Henry Hardy, and Joshua L. Cherniss provides an illuminating introduction that sets it in the context of Berlin's life and work. (shrink)

Our romantic lives are influenced, to a large extent, by our perceptions of physical attractiveness – and the societal beauty standards that shape them. But what if we could free our desires from this fixation on looks? Science fiction writer Ted Chiang has explored this possibility in a fascinating short story – and scientific developments might, in the future, move it beyond the realm of fiction. In this paper, I lay out the prudential case for using “attraction-expanding technology,” and then (...) consider it from a moral point of view. Using the technology would, in one respect, be morally good: it would benefit those whom prevailing beauty standards marginalize. But attraction-expanding technology also raises a moral concern – one that can be cast in non-harm-based and harm-based terms. I argue that the non-harm-based objection should be rejected, because it is incompatible with a moral principle central to queer rights. And the harm-based objection, I argue, is outweighed by the benefits of attraction-expanding technology, and undermined by the prerogative you have over your personal romantic choices. I conclude by considering whether, from the perspective of society, the development of attraction-expanding technology would be desirable. (shrink)

The distinctive concept of the symbol, articulated by such writers as Goethe, Schelling, and Coleridge, is of the utmost significance in the literary, philosophical, and even scientific thought of the Romantic period. This interdisciplinary historical study examines the development of the concept in a jargon-free style that will appeal to a broad range of readers.

_A renowned scholar’s reflections on the romantic period, its disparate participants, and our unacknowledged debt to them_ With his usual wit and élan, esteemed historian Peter Gay enters the contentious, long-standing debates over the romantic period. Here, in this concise and inviting volume, he reformulates the definition of romanticism and provides a fresh account of the immense achievements of romantic writers and artists in all media. Gay’s scope is wide, his insights sharp. He takes on the recurring questions about how (...) to interpret romantic figures and their works. Who qualifies to be a romantic? What ties together romantic figures who practice in different countries, employ different media, even live in different centuries? How is modernism indebted to romanticism, if at all? Guiding readers through the history of the romantic movement across Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland, Gay argues that the best way to conceptualize romanticism is to accept its complicated nature and acknowledge that there is no “single basket” to contain it. Gay conceives of romantics in “families,” whose individual members share fundamental values but retain unique qualities. He concludes by demonstrating that romanticism extends well into the twentieth century, where its deep and lasting impact may be measured in the work of writers such as T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf. (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.

Paradoxes of Freedom is a study of the philosophical and historical concept of liberty. Centring his argument upon the Romantic exaltation of freedom, Thomas McFarland identifies freedom as one of the three chief transcendences, along with love and religion, by which humanity orientates itself. McFarland indicates, by an examination ranging from Shakespeare and Luther to the writings of Nietzsche and Wagner, both the reasons for the supreme valuation of freedom and the nature of the hindrances, in theory and fact, that (...) enmesh the actual realization of freedom. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the Early German Romantics understand the absolute, or being, to be an infinite whole encompassing all the things of the world and all their causal relations. The Romantics argue that we strive endlessly to know this whole but only acquire an expanding, increasingly systematic body of knowledge about finite things, a system of knowledge which can never be completed. We strive to know the whole, the Romantics claim, because we have an (...) original feeling of it that motivates our striving. I then examine two different Romantic accounts of this feeling. The first, given by Novalis, is that feeling gives us a kind of access to the absolute which logically precedes any conceptualisation. I argue that this account is problematic and that a second account, offered by Friedrich Schlegel, is preferable. On this account, we feel the absolute in that we intuit it aesthetically in certain natural phenomena. This form of intuition is partly cognitive and partly non-cognitive, and therefore it motivates us to strive to convert our intuition into full knowledge. (shrink)

Hybride der Romantik: Frankenstein, Olimpia und das künstliche Leben. Dieser Beitrag untersucht Vorstellungen über die Möglichkeit der Erzeugung künstlicher Lebewesen in der Zeit der Romantik und die damit verbundenen Ängste am Beispiel zweier fiktionaler Texte: Mary Shelleys Frankenstein und Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmanns Sandmann. Dr. Franksteins Monster und Dr. Spalanzanis Automat verkörpern – auf unterschiedliche Weise – die Möglichkeit einer Wendung wissenschaftlicher Produkte und insbesondere künstlicher Hybride ins Monströse. Ihre Geschichten thematisieren das Grauen, das vom drohenden Kontrollverlust ausgeht und als (...) der modernen Wissenschaft innewohnende Gefahr selbst nach der Zerstörung der monströsen Kreaturen bestehen bleibt. Der Begriff des Unheimlichen, von Ernst Jentsch und Sigmund Freud mit Bezug auf Hoffmanns Sandmann formuliert und 1970 von dem japanischen Robotiker Masahiro Mori als Phänomen „des unheimlichen Tals“ (Uncanny Valley) weiterentwickelt, erlaubt weitere Einblicke in die Frage nach künstlichen Lebewesen und ihre Interaktion mit Menschen. Summary: Hybrids of the Romantic: Frankenstein, Olimpia, and Artificial Life. This essay analyzes fantasies and fears related to the possible creation of artificial humans in two influential pieces of Romantic literature, namely E.T.A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Both the automaton Olimpia and Dr. Frankenstein's monster are hybrid creatures. These dystopian figures represent the Romantic fear of the loss of control over the outcome of human endeavour, they symbolize the dangers immanent in modern science and technology. As hybrids, Olimpia and Frankenstein's monster are capable of breaking apparently unpenetrable boundaries, such as those between human and non‐human, and between life and death. As such, these creatures become “unheimlich” (uncanny), a critical term developed by Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud, who directly referred to Hoffmann's Sandman. The term “uncanny” was further developed by the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in the 1970s. Mori's investigation of human responses to androids (“Uncanny Valley”), shows the persistence of doubts and fears surrounding artificial humans far beyond the Romantic times, and opens new questions related to the issues of creation, reproduction, hybrids, hubris and gender. (shrink)

During the late eighteenth century the Bible underwent a shift in interpretation so radical as to make it virtually a different book from what it had been a hundred years earlier. Even as its text was being revealed as neither stable nor original, the new notion of the Bible as a cultural artefact became a paradigm for all literature. In Origins of Narrative one of the world's leading scholars in biblical interpretation, criticism and theory describes how, while formal religion declined, (...) the prestige of the Bible as a literary and aesthetic model rose to new heights: not merely was English, German and French Romanticism steeped in biblical references of a new kind, but hermeneutics and, increasingly, theories of literature and criticism were biblically derived. Professor Prickett reveals how the Romantic Bible became simultaneously a novel-like narrative work, an on-going site of re-interpretation, and an all-embracing literary form giving meaning to all other writing. (shrink)

The Romantic Irony of Semiotics: Friedrich Schlegel and the Crisis of Representation (Approaches to Semiotics [As]).

A central idea of Romanticism in the arts is the idea that art or the aesthetic experience of nature reveals truth or insight about the human condition and relation to nature. What kind of truth could this be and how could perceptual objects reveal it?

Beatrice Han argues that the theories of subjection (determinism: structure) and subjectivation (freedom: agency) are the “the blind spot of Foucault's work:” to the very end of his life, in being transcendental and historical theories, respectively, they were in irresolvable conflict. In part I, I have argued that Foucault encourages us to situate the theories of the subject in an un-thematized reach for a metaphysics of realism which, in effect, was to ground his uncertain complementary reach for a naturalist conduct (...) of research. In part II I also argue that it is this fundamental feature of Foucault's Foucault that drives his returns to Kant, the purpose of which is to resolve the conflicting theories of the subject, and thus to solve his Giddensian problem of structure and creativity. Locating the returns and their purpose in my context of Science for Humanism and the recovery of human agency, I ultimately argue that Foucault's two special returns to Kant in order to solve his structure/agency problem led to two unfortunate solutions. The resort to Baudelair's aesthetic subject is a failed solution in so far as it regresses to being a pre-noumenal conception of the subject. The subsequent mere reinstatement of Kant's subject as causally empowered, minus the noumenalism, is nothing more than a reclamation of Kant's conception. Only the reconstruction of Foucault's realism permits us to assert that he could have moved beyond the reclamation of human agency to its recovery. (shrink)

In this carefully crafted volume, Michael Kort describes the wartime circumstances and thinking that form the context for the decision to use these weapons, surveys the major debates related to that decision, and provides a comprehensive ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wuthering Heights: The Romantic AscentMartha NussbaumI“If I were in heaven, Nelly,” she said, “I should be extremely miserable.”“I dreamt, once, that I was there.... [H]eaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I (...) woke sobbing for joy.” 1Cathy’s soul cannot live in the Christian heaven. For her soul, she explains, is the same as Heathcliff’s soul, and the heavenly soul of Linton is as different from theirs “as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire” (p. 95). Much later, as she lies on her deathbed, now the wife of Edgar Linton, thinking the Linton thought that what she wants is an escape into “that glorious world” of paradise and peace, Heathcliff watches her with burning eyes. At last she calls to him:In her eagerness she rose and supported herself on the arm of the chair. At that earnest appeal he turned to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes, wide and wet, at last flashed fiercely on her; his breast heaved convulsively. An instant they held asunder, and then how they met I hardly saw, but Catherine made a spring, and he caught her, and they were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released alive: in fact, to my eyes, she seemed directly insensible. He flung himself into the nearest seat, and on my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species: it appeared that he would not understand, though I spoke to him; so I stood off, and held my tongue, in great perplexity.(pp. 188–89) [End Page 362]Brontë’s description alludes to the imagery of the Christian ascent tradition. As in Augustine and Dante, love is a flame that animates the eyes, a lightning bolt that pierces the fog of our obtuse daily condition; as in that tradition, love’s energy causes the lover to leap away from the petty egoism of the daily into an ecstatic and mutually loving embrace. But we know we are far from the world of the Christian ascent, even its erotic Augustinian form. Cathy’s spring is not an upward, but a horizontal movement—not toward heaven, but toward her beloved moors and winds, severed from which she would find heaven miserable; not toward God but toward Heathcliff, the lover of her soul. Nor is there redemption into heaven in this work; there is, if anything, a redemption from a world dominated by the imagination of heaven, into a world that the pious Ellen Dean can recognize only as an animal world, a world inhabited by creatures of a different species, who probably do not understand language, so thoroughly are they identified with the energy of the body. A few hours after Cathy’s death Heathcliff, as Ellen Dean tells us, in a sudden “paroxysm of ungovernable passion,” dashes his head against the knotted trunk of a tree, splashing the bark with blood, “and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast being goaded to death with knives and spears” (p. 197). It is in his world alone, it would seem, that flame is truly found. As Cathy said to Edgar Linton, “Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever: your veins are full of ice-water; but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.”Brontë’s novel situates itself within a long tradition of writing about love and its ascent or purification. This tradition, inaugurated by Socrates’ description of the ladder of love in Plato’s Symposium, is continued by later Platonists, and radically reformulated by Christian thinkers, who stress, against Plato, the soul’s receptivity and vulnerability to the inscrutable operations of grace. In both the Platonic and... (shrink)

An exciting attempt to establish and elaborate in some detail a method which will achieve the proper compromise between "scientific precision" and "humanistic significance" in cultural anthropology and the history of ideas. The author begins by distinguishing theoretical from overt behavior; the former is his concern, and is defined to encompass the higher products of a given culture: poetry, painting, politics, and metaphysics are the chief examples utilized. A set of seven linear and bi-polar "axes-of-bias" are then detailed as a (...) schematic tool for arriving at the common denominator which may be said to characterize each of these cultural expressions. Sample axes are the Continuity/discreteness axis-bias, Static/dynamic axis-bias, and Order/disorder axis-bias. In addition, the claim is made that the question of whether or not the works of a given personality coincide with a previously determined syndrome can be significantly decided through a content analysis of his works, which results in a profile drawn from his placement on each of these axes. The title of the book is taken from the fact that Romanticism is the chief phenomenon by which the method is tested. The author is careful to guard himself against claiming "objective truth" for any of his analyses, let alone for any of the syndromes he has detailed; and it is this, namely his heuristic theory of theories, that the philosopher will find most interesting, and, perhaps, most debatable.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Respect for language, as everyone acknowledges, is a constant of French culture. It is no less clear, however, that the appraisal of language and of its powers and the notion formed of its essential nature vary from epoch to epoch. Intense philosophical, scientific and literary preoccupation with language and the age-old problems it raises is undoubtedly one of the most significant characteristics of pre-romanticism. The traditional respect for language, manifest İn discussions of inversion and of the importance of signs in (...) the formation of ideas, is gradually transformed, when these discussions have run their course, into a cult of language in general and of the word in particular. Indeed, by much insistence on the primordial importance of language in the act of knowledge, thinkers such as Locke and Condillac, and after them Voltaire, Diderot, Maupertuis, Rousseau, Garat, and many others, eventually endow the instrument of thought with an autonomy that thought itself, subjugated by matter, was in danger of losing. “ Ah! Monsieur “, exclaims Diderot, combien notre entendement est modifi・ par les signes.” Minds seem to pass, at this critical moment of European reflection, from a purely intellectual conception of language—which, moreover, the Grammaire de Port-Royal barely distinguished from logic—to a mythological conception of its principal functions. (shrink)