2 - Romanticism and political thought in the early nineteenth century

Summary

In the early decades of the nineteenth century European intellectual life was enriched by the works of composers, painters, poets and writers who were influenced in a variety of ways by the spirit of ‘romanticism’ (Porter and Teich 1988; Schenk 1979). Romantic ways of thinking had deep roots in early modern culture but between about 1800 and 1850 they played a particularly significant role in theoretically framed statements on fundamental political questions. Issues of definition and taxonomy bedevil the study of romanticism, but at the risk of some oversimplification it is possible to identify three concerns that were shared by a range of prominent exponents of political romanticism. These writers were all preoccupied with the epistemological and moral importance of feeling and imagination; they developed a distinctive notion of the individual; and they stressed ideas of community.