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.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Re-Inheriting Romanticism
Nikolas Kompridis
I. Beginning Anew
The Future of Possibility
Stanley Cavell
The Idea of a New Beginning: A Romantic Source of Normativity and Freedom
Nikolas Kompridis
Authenticity with Teeth: Positing Process
David Kolb
II. Self-Determination and Self-Expression
Letting Oneself Be Determined: A Revised Concept of Self- Determination
Martin Seel
Romantic Subjectivity in Goethe and Wittgenstein
Richard Eldridge
On ‘Becoming Who One Is’ (and Failing): Proust’s Problematic Selves
Robert Pippin
III. Art and Irony
Poesy and the Arbitrariness of the Sign: Notes for a Critique of Jena Romanticism
Jay Bernstein
Irony and Romantic Subjectivity
Fred Rush
Novalis’s Other Way
Jane Kneller
IV. The Living Force of Things
The Unhappy Marriage of Romanticism and Metaphysics
Frederick Beiser
Broken Symmetries: The Romantic Search for a Moral Cosmology
Albert Borgmann
V. Returning the Everyday
Further Reflections on Heidegger, Technology, and the Everyday
Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa
Beginning in Wonder: Placing the Origin of Thinking
Jeff Malpas
Biography
Nikolas Kompridis is a Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy, University of Western Sydney, Australia
'Like the magical emergence of a medieval cathedral, the work of many different hands and generations, philosophical romanticism takes on a definite, if not always definable shape in this collection of remarkable essays, each of which - along with the editor's valuable introduction - deserves and rewards careful reading.' - Daniel Dahlstrom, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
'This volume reflects - and will no doubt intensify - the strong resurgence of interest in German Early Romanticism and the diverse philosophical approaches that have developed in its wake. Several of the thirteen essays are especially helpful because of the clear and insightful way that they lay out the main philosophical relations between key historical figures (e.g., Kant, Schelling, Novalis, Schlegel, Goethe). Other essays, by well-known authors such as Cavell, Pippin, and Dreyfus, elegantly shed light on philosophical topics (e.g., the task of a philosophy of the future, the nature of self-determination, the significance of the everyday) of contemporary interest. This is certainly one of the most interesting collections of its kind in English.' - Karl Ameriks, University of Notre Dame, USA
