Romanticism and G.W.F. Hegel
I. Romanticism (c. 1790-1850)
A. Introduction:
1. The word “romantic” comes from “roman”, which came to mean “______written in the spoken dialect of southern ______”, which were often about ______and adventure.
2. Romanticism was a reaction to two features of life in the 18th and 19th Centuries:
a. the ______(= faith in individual human ______), especially its ______side, which prized certainty. The Romantics rejected rationalism because they believed that reason either ______or else analyzes (literally “______”), and thus ______and fragments, a person’s true ______.
b. the first Industrial Revolution (c. 1750-1871). The Romantics generally saw large ______and ______as bad for the human ______.
B. Romantics believed that
1. ______was more valuable than scientific knowledge;
2. an individual’s free ______and genuine ______should inspire all works of art;
3. that art is therefore an expression of a ______; and
4. to understand a work of art is therefore to understand the ______and ______of the artist who ______it.
C. Some major Romantics:
1. Britain:
a. the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822);
b. the poet William Wordsworth (1779-1850);
c. the poet John Keats (1795-1821);
d. the poet Lord Byron (1788-1824);
e. the poet, artist, and mystic William Blake (1757-1827): “We do not want either Greek or Roman models, but [should be] just and true to our own ______.” “Energy is the only life, and it is from the ______; and reason is the bound or outward circumference of ______” (1793). “The reasoning power in man is an incrustation over my immortal ______.” “To generalize is to be an ______. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit” (c. 1808).
2. France: Victor Hugo (1802-1885).
3. Germany:
a. the poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805);
b. the poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843);
c. the philosopher F.W.J. von Schelling (1775-1854);
d. the composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827);
e. the composer Richard Wagner (1818-1883).
D. Romanticism had both good and bad points.
1. Good points:
a. It encouraged personal ______and ______.
b. It showed that not just reason, but also ______, was a valid dimension of the human spirit.
2. Bad point: By glorifying _____-______feelings and the unique spirit of a ______, Romanticism paved the way for later blind ______(found in extreme forms in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy), which was based on the irrational ______of a nation’s spirit.
II. German Idealism:
A. René Descartes’ (1596-1650) approach in his Meditations on First Philosophy dominated philosophy from 1641 through 1781:
1. ______and ______are genuinely properties of physical matter, just as it is ______, i.e., independently of our ______.
2. ______: our minds can know physical matter, just as it is ______.
B. German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) made a significant move beyond Descartes:
1. Space and time are just imposed on the objects of our ______by the structures of the human ______.
2. ______(vs. realism): our possible experience of objects is limited by the structures of our ______.
3. Thus we can ______know objects as they are in themselves, but only as “phenomena”: as they ______to our minds.
4. Critique (from the Greek krinein: “______” or “delimiting”): showing the ______of our possible experience, imposed by the structure of our minds. ______is the main task of philosophy; Kant therefore called his most important books Critiques, including The Critique of Pure Reason (1781).
C. G.W.F. Hegel (1779-1831) made a significant move beyond Kant:
1. Hegel on 18th- and early 19th-Century movements:
a. agrees with Kant that the human mind helps shape ______;
b. agrees with the Romantics that subjective ______and the spirit of a ______are essential dimensions of human life;
c. but agrees with the Rationalists that philosophical ______is possible;
d. agrees with the philosophes that human society can be gradually ______, thus making people ______;
e. agrees with ______and the ______movement that freedom can be achieved only through the right forms of ______and the right ______.
2. Hegel on truth:
a. Hegel’s criticism of each of these five modern movements is that they are _____-______.
b. His solution: create an all-embracing philosophical system that shows the ______truth of each of these movements.
c. For Hegel:
i. truth ¹ ______
ii. truth = ______
(Whatever exists can be understood as part of a ______: “The real is the ______and the rational is the ______.”)
3. Hegel on Kant:
a. As mentioned above, Hegel agrees with Kant that the structure of the human ______helps shape reality.
b. Hegel is therefore also an ______, like Kant but unlike ______.
c. But Hegel disagrees with Kant that the structure of the human mind (Geist), or ______, is essentially the same at all ______.
d. Instead, Hegel maintains that the human mind, or spirit, ______– both in the lifetime of the ______and through human ______.
4. The real topic of Hegel’s philosophical system is thus the ______of spirit: any part of human ______.
a. There are three aspects of spirit:
i. ______spirit: the realm of an ______thoughts, ______, and desires.
ii. ______spirit: the ______world. Since objective spirit is an essential aspect of human ______, ______/ ______is an essential part of any human being. Human beings are through-and-through ______animals. Individuals are what they are in large part because of the social ______they belong to: ______, town, ______, team, club, ______, political party, ______, etc. A Volksgeist (= spirit of a ______) is the objective spirit of a culture or people; a Zeitgeist (= spirit of a ______) is the objective spirit at a given time. Examples of objective spirit:
a. Social ______(e.g., the ______or the corporation);
b. ______and governmental systems (e.g., ______, constitutional monarchy, republican democracy, ______, etc.), including ______;
γ. Social ______(e.g., the aristocracy, the ______, the peasantry);
δ. ______and customs of particular ______.
iii. ______spirit: the ______of objective and subjective spirit. This occurs when subjective spirit ______objective spirit:
a. ______: subjective spirit represents objective spirit in ______media (sculpture, painting, and music). Example: we can learn a lot about a ______(objective spirit) by looking at its art. For example, ancient Greek art glorified the perfect, harmonious ______. Roman art glorified the ______. Medieval art glorified ______religion;
b. ______: subjective spirit represents objective spirit in terms of powerful ______(such as those found in the ______) and ______. The ancient Greeks represented their values through stories about the ______. The Jews represented their understanding of themselves through stories about their ______: their oppression by the Egyptians and God giving them their freedom (the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, etc.). Christians represent their morality through stories about ______as the son of God, his good deeds, his sacrifice on the cross, and his resurrection. Americans have a sort of “______religion”: we tell stories about George Washington and the cherry tree, etc.
γ. ______: subjective spirit represents objective spirit ______, knowing spirit in all its aspects for what it ______.
b. Hegel believed that throughout human history, all three aspects of spirit (subjective, objective, and absolute) have been ______:
i. Subjective spirit progresses as people find expression for their ______and ______capacities.
ii. Objective spirit progresses as societies (=______and ______) gradually allow people to become ______. Human ______is the goal of objective spirit.
Freedom = ______allowing individuals to achieve their full ______. Whereas in the earliest societies, only the ______was free, in modern societies ______ought to be free.
iii. Absolute spirit progresses as people move from representing objective spirit in ______, to doing so in ______and finally in ______(not surprisingly, culminating in ______himself).
5. Since Hegel’s philosophical system strives to grasp reality as it has been shaped by the human ______, Hegel is an ______(like Kant but unlike Descartes). But since Hegel’s philosophical system also strives to grasp reality not just as it appears, but as it really is in itself, Hegel is an ______idealist (unlike either Descartes’ realism or Kant’s idealism).
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