Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Romanticism, idealism and religious belief
- 2 Schleiermacher on the religious consciousness
- 3 Hegel and Christianity
- 4 The idea of God in the philosophy of Schelling
- 5 German Catholic theology in the Romantic era
- 6 Italian ontologism: Gioberti and Rosmini
- 7 Lamennais and Paroles d'un Croyant
- 8 Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity
- 9 Ernest Renan and the Religion of Science
- Notes
- Index
1 - Romanticism, idealism and religious belief
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Romanticism, idealism and religious belief
- 2 Schleiermacher on the religious consciousness
- 3 Hegel and Christianity
- 4 The idea of God in the philosophy of Schelling
- 5 German Catholic theology in the Romantic era
- 6 Italian ontologism: Gioberti and Rosmini
- 7 Lamennais and Paroles d'un Croyant
- 8 Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity
- 9 Ernest Renan and the Religion of Science
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Whoever sets out to discuss the Romantic movement will soon be faced with the problem of definition, for romanticism, like religion itself, is notoriously difficult to define. It has even been argued that the very word ‘romantic’ has come to mean so many things ‘that, by itself, it means nothing. It has ceased to perform the function of a verbal sign.’ This, no doubt, is an extreme view, and it has not gone unrefuted. Yet to discover any single principle of unity in romanticism still defies ingenuity. As Kierkegaard declared: ‘I must first protest against the notion that romanticism can be enclosed within a concept; for romantic means precisely that it oversteps all bounds.’ Negatively, it is opposed to classicism, but the essence of classicism likewise cannot easily be encapsulated in a phrase. On the other hand, as with many other things that tend to elude exact definition, classicism and romanticism are almost always clearly distinguishable in practice. To take some obvious instances in literature, we know that Dryden or Pope and Racine are ‘classicists’, whereas Shelley and Lamartine or Victor Hugo are ‘romanticists’. But when it comes to naming the special qualities shown by either pair of authors in contrast with the other we feel less sure about an answer.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Religion in the Age of RomanticismStudies in Early Nineteenth-Century Thought, pp. 1 - 28Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985