The Roots of Romanticism [Paperback]

Isaiah Berlin (Author), Henry Hardy (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691086621 | ISBN-13: 978-0691086620 | Publication Date: April 1, 2001

The Roots of Romanticism at last makes available in printed form Isaiah Berlin's most celebrated lecture series, the Mellon lectures, delivered in Washington in 1965, recorded by the BBC, and broadcast several times. A published version has been keenly awaited ever since the lectures were given, and Berlin had always hoped to complete a book based on them. But despite extensive further work this hope was not fulfilled, and the present volume is an edited transcript of his spoken words.

For Berlin, the Romantics set in motion a vast, unparalleled revolution in humanity's view of itself. They destroyed the traditional notions of objective truth and validity in ethics with incalculable, all-pervasive results. As he said of the Romantics elsewhere: "The world has never been the same since, and our politics and morals have been deeply transformed by them. Certainly this has been the most radical, and indeed dramatic, not to say terrifying, change in men's outlook in modern times."

In these brilliant lectures Berlin surveys the myriad attempts to define Romanticism, distills its essence, traces its developments from its first stirrings to its apotheosis, and shows how its lasting legacy permeates our own outlook. Combining the freshness and immediacy of the spoken word with Berlin's inimitable eloquence and wit, the lectures range over a cast of the greatest thinkers and artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Kant, Rousseau, Diderot, Schiller, Schlegel, Novalis, Goethe, Blake, Byron, and Beethoven. Berlin argues that the ideas and attitudes held by these and other figures helped to shape twentieth-century nationalism, existentialism, democracy, totalitarianism, and our ideas about heroic individuals, individual self-fulfillment, and the exalted place of art. This is the record of an intellectual bravura performance--of one of the century's most influential philosophers dissecting and assessing a movement that changed the course of history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In these lectures, originally delivered at Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art in 1965, acclaimed historian of philosophy Isaiah Berlin addresses the origins of what he deems "the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West that has occurred." His focus, apart from some digressions into Montesquieu, Hume, and Rousseau, is on the German philosophers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and he runs through the contributions of Herder, Kant, Schiller, Fichte, Schlegel, and others in turn. He also shows how romanticism would later influence both the existentialists and the fascists, but paradoxically have its greatest influence upon the emergence of a liberalism that seems at complete odds with the romantic sensibility. Berlin's tone is informed but rarely obtuse, making The Roots of Romanticism as fun to read as it must have been to hear him deliver spoken. --Ron Hogan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In this posthumous volume, the British philosopher and historian of ideas quickly establishes his theory that GermanyAnot England or FranceAwas the birthplace of the romantic movement. A sense of provincial insignificance and ressentiment against the sophistication, prestige and military power of the French underwrote the movement's birth, he contends. Still, the territory covered by "Romanticism" seems so vast as to be contradictory, containing both "primitivism" and "dandyism," the worship both of the noble savage's simplicity and of "red waistcoats, blue hair, green wigs, absinthe, death, [and] suicide." While others have, understandably, thrown up their hands at the idea of uniting such disparate enthusiasms, Berlin sees contradiction itself as central to romanticism's legacy. Before romanticism, he argues, people believed that for any question there should be only one right answer, however difficult to discern. To a romantic, all beliefs, however incompatible, can be admired if they are held with real convictionAa notion from which both relativism and pluralism (like Berlin's own) are born. Further, the romantics sought to free the human will from all constraints: "the attempt to blow up and explode the very notion of a stable structure of anything," he asserts, is "the deepest and in a sense the most insane [element] in this extremely valuable and important movement." As if in illustration of the romantics' own principle, Berlin, despite his belief that the movement's ideals ultimately become dangerous, nonetheless gets inside the minds of the thinkers he analyzesAHerder, Kant, SchillerAand presents their ideas persuasively. Written for a lecture series in the early '60s and not originally intended as a book (Hardy is to be commended for a masterful editing job), Berlin's work here transcends these limits. It is thoroughly brilliant, often thrilling and yet always accessible.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (April 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691086621
• ISBN-13: 978-0691086620
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #125,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best and most important books I have ever read., June 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Roots of Romanticism (Hardcover)

"The Roots of Romanticism" is the 1999 edition of a series of six lectures given by Isaiah Berlin at the National Gallery, Washington DC, in 1965. Towards the end of his life, Berlin, who died in 1997, was working on a book on Romanticism. The book was never completed. Nevertheless, Berlin's extant writings on Romanticism can be found in any number of essays scattered throughout his various books. So,...why this book? This book brings everything together in a lively and intensive treatment of the subject--with many "new" things to say. The lectures are riveting, engrossing, mesmerizing to read. Indeed, the reading is so good that one listens for--and hears!--the voice of Isaiah Berlin delivering these spellbinding lectures.

But why bother? Why bother reading--or listening to--old lectures? by an old man? about old ideas? Who wants it? Who needs it? Who has time for all that stuff? The very act of reading dispels such foolish questions. This is one of the best and most important books I have ever read. The reading is enthralling. The ideas are dazzling. And the subject is vital. Romanticism--"the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the west"--is alive today: flowing through our times, our world, our selves.

But Berlin is no Romantic. He is an historian of ideas. Or, if you like, a sort of intellectual spy: one who goes behind enemy lines, probes, investigates, gets inside the skin of the foe--and almost takes his side! (but not quite). To open this book is to open the door to such a spy. To read it is to debrief him. His report is facinating:

"We are children of both worlds. On one hand, we are heirs to Romanticism, because Romanticism broke the great single mould [of] the 'philosophia perennis.' We are products of certain doubts--we cannot tell...we oscillate between the two." This is my favorite passage in the entire book. I like its dualism, its ambivalence, dynamism, doubt, willingness to live with question marks--without insisting upon periods, or even calling for complete sentences. This is Berlin at his best. Berlin at his worst is another matter, much more rare, as when he concludes that Romanticism arose from a feeling of "sour grapes." That is like saying Solzhenitsyn kept crying over "spilled milk." But this is no place to take up such a dispute. Instead, let me try to distill what Berlin is saying:

The roots of Romanticism are buried deep in German soil, in the Lutheran pietist movement, in the writings of its spokesman--J. G. Hamann (1730-88). It was Hamann who "struck the most violent blow against the Enlightenment and began the whole Romantic process, the whole process of revolt." Thus, Romanticism began as a rebellion against the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment preached that truth was universal, that knowledge was virtue, and that the only way to know the truth--about anything!--was to apply the methods of science and reason. Everything was knowable. Gaps in knowledge would be filled in--sooner or later--by the progress of science and reason. The laws of human nature could be discovered by these same methods. Such laws apply equally to all. They are the same for everyone--no matter who, no matter where, no matter when. They are universal, eternal, absolute. The right way to live was to find these hidden laws--by means of science and reason--and obey them. This is "the great single mould [of] the 'philosophia perennis,'" which Romanticism broke.

But what is Romanticism? It is will! One is not determined. One determines. Romanticism is not reasonable compliance with universal laws of human nature. It is bold forging through the external world--to make one's own way--according to the dictates of one's own free will. It is making free with whatever gets in one's way. It is not knowledge, but action. Not calculation, but desire. Not reason, but assertion. Not science, but self. And as for truth--scientific truths are of no moment; all that matters is that one be true to oneself.

But I oversimplify. To hear the whole story, to see the whole picture, you need to read the book: a crisp 150-page tour de force on the roots of Romanticism.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars that last review sucks, November 11, 2004

By 

Jared Wood (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Roots of Romanticism (Paperback)

This book may have its faults, but ambiguity and lack of conciseness are not among them. What the reviewer before me failed to realize is that the Isiah Berlin of 1965 was pulling against a strongly ahistorical approach to philosophy that had completely dominated the English-speaking scene for 30 or 40 years. Berlin's deliberate refusal to start out with a clearly defined conception of Romanticism strikes me as a brave and bracing move. To try to understand a philosophical movement by tracing out important moments in its intellectual history--this project marks an entirely different way of doing philosophy, one that Berlin himself helped reintroduce as a completely legitimate philosophical methodology.

That being said, this is a difficult book, in certain ways. I can see why it might appear to be sprawling and slightly lacking in direction. It's not (I would probably even want to quarrel with Berlin over just how directly he thinks Romanticism points us towards liberalism, but that's not really important here). Berlin is a historical thinker (something very different than a historian of philosophy), and his references can be fairly difficult to keep up with (especially if you're really trying to pay attention to how they all fit together). But he's also a good enough writer that you can fake your way through any of the stuff you're not entirely grounded in yet.

Isiah Berlin is an important philosopher--one who gets glossed over all too often (and he's a philosopher who calls our attention to other philosophers who get glossed over all too often). He's fun to read, and that's more important than people tend to realize or admit. The previous reviewer ("I've Had Better") recommended Berlin's Three Critics of the Enlightenment as a work with a little more philosophical depth. I think that's probably right. But I'll also add my own recommendation, going in the other direction: Concepts and Categories is a wonderful collection of essays, each of which is entirely self-contained, completely unambiguous, and painstakingly precise. For the reader who likes things straight and simple.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that every student of 19th and 20th century art, history and philosophy must read, January 8, 2008

By 

Charles Gidley Wheeler (Kempsford, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Roots of Romanticism (Paperback)

Romanticism, `the largest recent movement to transform the lives and the thought of the Western world', was a reaction to the 18th century Enlightenment view that we could in some way stand apart from the world and analyse it, get to know it and ultimately control it through rational argument, logic, mathematics and science. This positivist view, held by the philosophes of 18th century France, was overturned by the French Revolution and the Lisbon earthquake, events that proved conclusively that this was not, after all, the best of all possible worlds, as Leibniz had claimed. In the Roots of Romanticism, which is a transcript of six lectures delivered in Washington in 1965, Isaiah Berlin traces the roots and fruits of a movement which gave rise to a way of viewing the world that many now take for granted.

The author's scholarship and grasp of his subject is masterful. This is a book that every student of 19th and 20th century art, history and philosophy must read. In the space of 118 pages, Isaiah Berlin knits together, in a readable and at times entertaining way, the complicated pattern of views held by the German and British romanticists, and shows the lasting effects of those views.

If the book has one fault it is the fact that Berlin gives so little weight to the influence of Spinoza's philosophy. In Spinoza, opponents of the Enlightenment found not merely a set of counter-arguments to the positivist view that the universe could be described in mathematical terms, but a comprehensive system that cohered with reason, logic and all the evidence of common sense and experience.

In Germany, the mechanistic world view was effectively eclipsed by the view, first expressed by Spinoza in his Ethics, that God and Nature were one and the same thing. Herder, Hegel, Goethe, Schlegel, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Novalis, Nietzsche--all these and many more admitted the influence of Spinoza on their thought, and reflected his monism in their works. Their influence continues to be felt to this day in the works of 20th century European philosophers, notably those of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Gadamer.

Hegel said Spinoza was the central point of modern philosophy: "either Spinoza or no philosophy." In The World as Will and Representation Schopenhauer acknowledged the influence of Spinoza, and in his Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy he pays homage to Spinoza as beginning "an entirely new epoch of free investigation, independent of all theological teaching."

Novalis, who referred to Spinoza as a "God-intoxicated man" said that "the true philosophy is realistic idealism--or Spinozism." Schelling admitted that "no one can hope to progress to the true and complete philosophy without having at least once in his life sunk himself in the abyss of Spinozism." And Goethe asserted: "Spinoza does not prove the existence of God; existence is God."

In 1798, Schlegel, who held that modern philosophy began with Spinoza, wrote excitedly to Novalis suggesting the establishment of a new religion based on the philosophy of infinite substance as God-or-Nature. In his letter he is confident that such a religion will have the backing of Schleiermacher, Goethe, Fichte and Schelling.

The pantheistic view was not limited to philosophers, artists and mystics. By the late eighteenth century the notion that the universe was a single plenum in which force and matter were intimately linked was taking hold among physicists. The Danish physicist Hans Oersted (1777-1851) declares in The Soul in Nature that Spirit and Nature are one, viewed under two different aspects. "This system [...] is a part of a more distant and higher system, an eternal whole created in infinite space, which embraces all the ideas realized in existence. [...] The complete idea is expressed in the totality of things. [...] Each individual is thus a particular realization of the fundamental Idea of Being."

In spite of this omission, The Roots of Romanticism is an outstanding work of scholarship.




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