Romanticism: The “Problem Child” of the Enlightenment
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Announcements:
(1) Bambi showing Thursday 7:30 pm in Fernow 14 (basement).
(2) First writing assignment due Monday—TURN IN TWO HARD COPIES
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[SLIDES]:
Understanding the Enlightenment is important for understanding Romanticism
From last lecture:
Galileo (d. 1642), Newton (b. 1642)
Material forces at work throughout nature and the universe
The “heroic” model of science
Influence of Locke, Hobbes, Montesqieu, and others
Where does civil authority come from?
Significance of the consent of the governed
IV. English Liberalism and Government
What is “liberal” about Liberalism?
George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are both Liberals
A. Liberalism in political theory
[SLIDE]:
* personal autonomy and individual dignity
* individual freedoms, and notions of human rights
* restrictions on the power of the state, especially as regards matters of morality and conscience
See especially numbers 10, 43, and number 51
Isaac Kramnick writes in his preface to The Federalist Papers:
“Government was, for Madison, much like it was for Locke, a neutral arbiter over competing interests. In Federalist No. 43 Madison described the legislative task as providing ‘umpires’; and in a letter to Washington he described government’s role as a “disinterested and dispassionate umpire in disputes.’ . . . . As it was for Locke—who wrote that ‘justice gives every man a title to the product of his honest industry’—so too for Madison and the Federalists, justice meant respecting private rights, especially property rights.”
Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1715) “Private vices, public virtues.”
C. Significance of Blackstone and natural law
See e.g., entry for “natural law” at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and see also class handout on Blackstone from 2/13/04.
Significance for concepts of private property rights and rights in natural resources such as wild animals
VI. The Enlightenment: A Conclusion
“A complete revolution took place in the field of values: the cult of self-denial was replaced by that of self-assertion; preoccupation with a future life in heaven by a concern for life on earth now; obsession with sin by the quest for progress; worship of age by the cult of youth and strength; the impenetrable mystery of the world by exact scientific knowledge; the obscurity of metaphysics the clarity of experimental physics.”
From Dr. Paul Tournier, Creative Suffering
Suggested additional reading:
Kramnick, Isaac. Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). See especially Chapter 4, “Children’s Literature and Bourgeois Ideology.”
VII. Romanticism: the “Problem Child”
The problem of defining romanticism
More to follow in subsequent lectures
VIII. Introduction to The Hudson River School
[SLIDES]
