by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin
Satire on Romantic Suicide (1839) by Leonardo Alenza y Nieto
(1807–1845)
“A man who desires to be solely head, is just as much a monster as one who desires to be only heart; the whole, healthy man is both. And that he is both, with each in its place, the heart not in the head and the head not in the heart, is precisely what makes him a human being.”
Johann Gottfried Herder
“We are slipping back from the age of reason into the mire of mystery, into
a world of gods and devils, ghouls and angels. The difference this time is that
we have chosen ignorance over knowledge, vapidity over insight, folly over
realism. Consequently, we only have ourselves to blame when the rich and
powerful take advantage of us.”
Andrew Davenport
Introduction
Why do we need to talk about Romanticism? What is Romanticism? And how does it
affect us in the 21st century? The fact is that we are so immersed in
Romanticism now that we cannot see the proverbial wood for the haunted-looking
trees. Romanticism has so saturated our culture that we need to stand back and
remind ourselves what it is, and examine how it has seeped into our thinking
processes to the extent that we are not even aware of its presence anymore. Or
why this is a problem. The Romanticist influence of intense emotion makes up a
large part of modern culture, for example, in much pop music, cinema, TV and
literature, e.g. genres such as Superheroes, Fantasy, Horror, Magical realism,
Saga, Westerns. I will look at the origins of Romanticism, and its negative
influence on culture and politics. I will show how Enlightenment ideas
originally emerged in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas
of the Church and led to the formation of a working class ideology and culture
of resistance.
Romanticism and the modern world
"The whole exuberance, anarchy and violence of modern art ... its
unrestrained, unsparing exhibitionism, is derived from [Romanticism]. And this
subjective, egocentric attitude has become so much a matter of course for us
... that we find it impossible to reproduce even an abstract train of thought
without talking about our own feelings."
Arnold Hauser
Romanticism arose out of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century as a
reaction to what was perceived as a rationalisation of life to the point of
being anti-nature. The Romantics were against the Industrial Revolution,
universalism and empiricism, emphasising instead heroic individualists and
artists, and the individual imagination as a critical authority rather than
classical ideals.
The Enlightenment itself had developed from the earlier Renaissance with a
renewed interest in the classical traditions and ideals of harmony, symmetry,
and order based on reason and science. On a political level the Enlightenment
promoted republicanism in opposition to monarchy which ultimately led to the
French revolution.
The worried conservatives of the time reacted to the ideas of the Enlightenment
and reason with a philosophy which was based on religious ideas and glorified
the past (especially Medieval times and the 'Golden Age') - times when things
were not so threatening to elites. This philosophy became known as Romanticism
and emphasised medieval ideas and society over the new ideas of democracy,
capitalism and science.
Romanticism originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in
most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1890. It was
initially marked by innovations in both content and literary style and by a
preoccupation with the subconscious, the mystical, and the supernatural. This
period was followed by the development of cultural nationalism and a new
attention to national origins, an interest in native folklore, folk ballads and
poetry, folk dance and music, and even previously ignored medieval and
Renaissance works.
The Romantic movement "emphasized intense emotion as an
authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions
as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that experienced in
confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of
nature." The importance of the medieval lay in the pre-capitalist
significance of its individual crafts and tradesmen, as well as its feudal
peasants and serfs.
Thus Romanticism was a reaction to the birth of the modern world: urbanisation,
secularisation, industrialisation, and consumerism. Romanticism emphasised
intense emotion and feelings which over the centuries came to be seen as one of
its most important characteristics, in opposition to 'cold', 'unfeeling'
Enlightenment rationalism.
Origins of Enlightenment emotion
"Whence this secret Chain between each Person and Mankind? How is my
Interest connected with the most distant Parts of it?"
Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746)
However, this 'cold', 'unfeeling' scenario is actually very far from the truth.
In fact, the Enlightenment itself had its origins in emotion. Enlightenment
philosophers of the eighteenth century tried to create a philosophy of feeling
that would allow them to solve the problem of the injustice in the unfeeling world
they saw all around them.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671 – 1713) believed that all
human beings had a ‘natural affection’ or natural sociability which bound them
together, Francis Hutcheson (1694 – 1746) wrote that “All Men have the same
Affections and Senses”, while David Hume (1711 – 1776) believed that human
beings extend their “imaginative identification with the feelings of others”
when it is required. Similarly, Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), the writer of Wealth
of Nations, believed in the power of the imagination to inform us and help us
understand the suffering of others.[1] In Italy, Cesare Beccaria (1738 – 1794) wrote his famous treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764), which "condemned torture and the death penalty, and was a founding work in the field of penology and the Classical School of criminology." Voltaire (1694 – 1778) was so incensed at the trial, torture and execution of Jean Calas for the murder of his son, despite his protestations of innocence, that he wrote his Treatise on Tolerance on the Occasion of the Death of Jean Calas from the Judgment Rendered in Toulouse (Traité sur la tolérance). Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) believed that individuals, both individual persons and individual groups of persons, are bearers of rights. His masterpiece De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625; On the Law of War and Peace) is considered one of the greatest contributions to the development of international law which Grotius wrote with the aim of minimizing bloodshed.
Portrait of Denis Diderot (1713-1784), by Louis-Michel van Loo,
1767
For the Enlightenment philosophers the relationship between feeling and reason
was of absolute importance. To develop ideas that would progress society for
the better, a sense of morality was essential. Denis Diderot (1713–1784) a
prominent French philosopher of the Enlightenment in France, for example, had
strong views on the importance of the passions. Henry Martyn Lloyd writes:
"Diderot
did believe in the utility of reason in the pursuit of truth – but he had an
acute enthusiasm for the passions, particularly when it came to morality and
aesthetics. With many of the key figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, such as
David Hume, he believed that morality was grounded in sense-experience. Ethical
judgment was closely aligned with, even indistinguishable from, aesthetic
judgments, he claimed. We judge the beauty of a painting, a landscape or our
lover’s face just as we judge the morality of a character in a novel, a play or
our own lives – that is, we judge the good and the beautiful directly and
without the need of reason. For Diderot, then, eliminating the passions could
produce only an abomination. A person without the ability to be affected,
either because of the absence of passions or the absence of senses, would be
morally monstrous."
As Diderot wrote in a letter to Sophie Volland:
"If the spectacle of injustice sometimes rouses me to so much indignation that I lose my judgement over it, and that I'd kill, I'd destroy, during this delirium; so the spectacle of equity fills me with a sweetness, inflames me with such ardor and enthusiasm that life would mean nothing to me if I had to yield it up."
Moreover, to remove the passions from science would lead to inhuman approaches
and methods that would divert and alienate science from its ultimate goal of
serving humanity, as Lloyd writes:
"That
the Enlightenment celebrated sensibility and feeling didn’t entail a rejection
of science, however. Quite the opposite: the most sensitive individual – the
person with the greatest sensibility – was considered to be the most acute
observer of nature. The archetypical example here was a doctor, attuned to the
bodily rhythms of patients and their particular symptoms. Instead, it was the
speculative system-builder who was the enemy of scientific progress – the
Cartesian physician who saw the body as a mere machine, or those who learned
medicine by reading Aristotle but not by observing the ill. So the philosophical
suspicion of reason was not a rejection of rationality per se; it was only a
rejection of reason in isolation from the senses, and alienated from the
impassioned body."
Michael L. Frazer describes the importance of Enlightenment justice and sympathy
in his book The Enlightenment of Sympathy. He writes:
"Reflective
sentimentalists recognize our commitment to justice as an outgrowth of our
sympathy for others. After our sympathetic sentiments undergo reflective
self-correction, the sympathy that emerges for all those who suffer injustice
poses no insult to those for whom it is felt. We do not see their suffering as
mere pain to be soothed away when and if we happen to share it. Instead under
Hume's account, we condemn injustice as a violation of rules that are vitally
important to us all. And under Smith's account, we condemn the sufferings of
the victims of injustice as injustice because we sympathetically share the
resentment that they feel toward their oppressors, endorsing such feelings as warranted
and acknowledging those who feel them deserve better treatment." [2]
Cooper, Hume and Smith were living in times, not only devoid of empathy, but
also even of basic sympathy. Robert C. Solomon writes of society then in A
Passion for Justice: "There have always been the very rich. And of
course there have always been the very poor. But even as late as the civilized
and sentimental eighteenth century, this disparity was not yet a cause for
public embarrassment or a cry of injustice. [...] Poverty was considered just
one more "act of God," impervious to any solution except
mollification through individual charity and government poorhouses to keep the
poor off the streets and away from crime." [3]
Enlightenment emotion eventually gave rise to social trends that emphasised
humanism and the heightened value of human life. These trends had their
complement in art, creating what became known as the 'sentimental novel'. While
today sentimentalism evokes maudlin self-pity, in the eighteenth century it was
revolutionary as sentimental literature
"focused
on weaker members of society, such as orphans and condemned criminals, and
allowed readers to identify and sympathize with them. This translated to
growing sentimentalism within society, and led to social movements calling for
change, such as the abolition of the death penalty and of slavery. Instead of
the death penalty, popular sentiment called for the rehabilitation of
criminals, rather than harsh punishment. Frederick Douglass himself was
inspired to stand against his own bondage and slavery in general in his famous
Narrative by the speech by the sentimentalist playwright Sheridan in The
Columbian Orator detailing a fictional dialogue between a master and
slave."
As Solomon notes: "What distinguishes us not just from animals but from
machines are our passions, and foremost among them our passion for justice.
Justice is, in a word, that set of passions, not mere theories, that bind us
and make us part of the social world."[4]
Title page from the first edition
Writers such as the Scottish
author Henry Mackenzie tried to highlight many things that he perceived were
wrong during his time and showed how many of the wrongs were ultimately caused
by the established pillars of society. In his book, The Man of Feeling (1771),
he has no qualms about showing how these pillars of society had, for example,
abused an intelligent woman causing her to become a prostitute (p44/45),
destroyed a school because it blocked the landowner's view (p72), and hired
assassins to remove a man who had refused to hand over his wife (p91), etc. [5]
Mackenzie shows again and again the injustices of British military and colonial
policy, and who is responsible. As Marilyn Butler writes:
"Henry
Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771), is pointedly topical when it
criticizes the consequences of a war policy - press-ganging, conscription, the
military punishment of flogging, and inadequate pensions - and when, like the
same author's Julia de Roubigné (1777), it attacks the principle of
colonialism. An interest in such causes was the logical outcome of art's
frequently reiterated dedication to humanity. It was a period when the cast of
villains was drawn from the proud men representing authority, downwards from
the House of Lords, the bench of bishops, judges, local magistrates, attorneys,
to the stern father; when readers were invited to empathize with life's
victims". [6]
It took a long time for the ideas of sentimentalism (emotions against
injustice) to filter down to the Realism (using facts to depict ordinary
everyday experiences) that Dickens used in the nineteenth century to finally
evoke some kind of empathy for people impoverished by society. As Solomon
notes: "It wasn't until the late nineteenth century that Dickens shook the
conscience of his compatriots with his riveting descriptions of poverty and
cruelty in contemporary London, [...] that the problem of poverty and
resistance to its solutions [e.g. poorhouses] has become the central question
of justice." [7]
Dickens's Dream by Robert William Buss, portraying Dickens at his
desk at Gads Hill Place surrounded by many of his characters
European literary sentimentalism arose during the Enlightenment, and partly as
a response to sentimentalism in philosophy. In England the period 1750–1798
became known as the Age of Sensibility as the sentimental novel or the novel of
sensibility became popular.
Romanticist emotionalism: the opposite of Enlightenment sentimentalism
"Classicism is health, romanticism is sickness."
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
However, sensibility in an Enlightenment sense was very different from the
Romanticist understanding, as Butler notes: "It is, in fact, in a key
respect almost the opposite of Romanticism. Sensibility, like its near-synonym
sentiment, echoes eighteenth-century philosophy and psychology in focusing upon
the mental process by which impressions are received by the senses. But the
sentimental writer's interest in how the mind works and in how people behave is
very different from the Romantic writer's inwardness." [8]
She writes that 'neither Neoclassical theory nor contemporary practice in
various styles and genres put much emphasis on the individuality of the artist'
(p29). This is a far cry from the apolitical, inward-looking, self-centered
Romantic artists who saw themselves outside of a society that they had little
interest in participating in, let alone changing for the better. Butler again:
"Romantic
rebelliousness is more outrageous and total, the individual rejecting not just
his own society but the very principle of living in society - which means that
the Romantic and post Romantic often dismisses political activity of any kind,
as external to the self, literal and commonplace. Since it is relatively
uncommon for the eighteenth-century artist to complain directly on his own
behalf, he seldom achieves such emotional force as his nineteenth-century
successor. He is, on the other hand, much more inclined than the Romantic to
express sympathy for certain, well-defined social groups. Humanitarian feeling
for the real-life underdog is a strong vein from the 1760s to the 1790s, often
echoing real-life campaigns for reform." [9]
This movement over time towards the Romanticist inward-looking conception of
emotion and feelings has had knock-on negative effects on society's ability to
defend itself from elite oppression (through cultural styles of
self-absorption, escapism and diversion rather than exposure, criticism and resistance),
and retarded 'art's frequently reiterated dedication to humanity'. Solomon
describes this process:
"What
has come about in the past two centuries or so is the dramatic rise of what
Robert Stone has called "affective individualism," this new celebration
of the passions and other feelings of the autonomous individual. Yet,
ironically, it is an attitude that has become even further removed from our
sense of justice during that same period of time. We seem to have more inner
feelings and pay more attention to them, but we seem to have fewer feelings
about others and the state of the world and pay less attention to
them."[10]
Thus while Enlightenment
sentimentalism "depicted individuals as social beings whose sensibility
was stimulated and defined by their interactions with others", the
Romantic movement that followed it "tended to privilege individual
autonomy and subjectivity over sociability".
Romanticism as a philosophical movement of the nineteenth century had a
profound influence on culture which can still be seen right up to today. Its
main characteristics are the emphasis on the personal, dramatic contrasts,
emotional excess, a focus on the nocturnal, the ghostly and the frightful,
spontaneity, and extreme subjectivism. Romanticism in culture implies a turning
inward and encourages introspection. Romantic literature put more emphasis on
themes of isolation, loneliness, tragic events and the power of nature. A
heroic view of history and myth became the basis of much Romantic literature.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, painted by
Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier
It was in Germany that Romanticism took shape as a political ideology. The
German Romanticists felt threatened by the French Revolution and were forced to
move from inward-looking ideas to formulate conservative political answers
needed to oppose Enlightenment and republican ideals. According to Eugene N. Anderson:
"In
the succeeding years the danger became acutely political, and the German
Romanticists were compelled to subordinate their preoccupation with the
widening of art and the enrichment of individual experience to social and
political ideas and actions, particularly as formulated in nationalism and
conservatism. These three cultural ideals, Romanticism, nationalism and
conservatism, shared qualities evoked by the common situation of crisis. [...]
The Germans had to maintain against rationalism and the French a culture which
in its institutional structure was that of the ancien régime. German
Romanticism accepted it, wished to reform it somewhat, idealized it, and
defended the idealization as the supreme culture of the world. This was the
German counter-revolution. [...] They endowed their culture with universal
validity and asserted that it enjoyed the devotion of nature and God, that if
it were destroyed humanity would be vitally wounded." [11]
The reactionary nature of German Romanticism was demonstrated in its
hierarchical views of society, its chauvinist nationalism, and extreme
conservatism which would have serious implications for future generations of
the German populace.
Indeed, on May 29th 1945, the German
author Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Nobel Prize laureate in Literature,
gave a lecture at the Library of Congress titled “Germany and the
Germans” in which he stated:
"German Romanticism, what is it but an expression of this finest German quality, German inwardness? Much that is longingly pensive, fantastically spectral, and deeply scurrilous, a high artistic refinement and all-pervading irony combine in the concept of Romanticism. But these are not the things I think of primarily when I speak of Romanticism. It is rather a certain dark richness and piousness-I might say: antiquarianism-of soul that feels very close to the chthonian, irrational, and demonic forces of life, that is to say, the true sources of life; and it resists the purely rationalistic approach on the ground of its deeper knowledge, its deeper alliance with the holy. The Germans are the people of the romantic counter-revolution against the philosophical intellectualism and rationalism of enlightenment—a revolt of music against literature, of mysticism against clarity."
As Anderson writes:
"The
low estimate of rationalism and the exaltation of custom, tradition, and
feeling, the conception of society as an alliance of the generations, the
belief in the abiding character of ideas as contrasted with the ephemeral
nature of concepts, these and many other romantic views bolstered up the
existing culture. The concern with relations led the Romanticists to praise the
hierarchical order of the Ständestaat and to regard everything and
every-one as an intermediary. The acceptance of the fact of inequality
harmonized with that of the ideals of service, duty, faithfulness, order,
sacrifice - admirable traits for serf or subject or soldier." [12]
Anderson also believes that the Romanticists remained swinging "between
individual freedom and initiative and group compulsion and authority" and
as such could not have brought in fundamental reforms, because: "By
reverencing tradition, they preserved the power of the backward-looking royalty
and aristocracy." [13]
Thus Romanticist self-centredness in philosophy translated into the most
conservative forms for maintaining the status quo in politics. Individual
freedoms were matched by authoritarianism for the masses. The individual was
king alright, as long as you weren't a 'serf or subject or soldier'.
Beyond morality: Working Class perspectives on Reason and Romanticism
"We have never intended to enlighten shoemakers and servants—this is up
to apostles."
Voltaire (1694–1778)
Around the same time of the early period of Romanticism, Karl Heinrich Marx
(1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) were born. They grew up in a very
different Germany. Capitalism had become established and was creating an even
more polarised society between extremely rich and extremely poor as factory
owners pushed their workers to their physical limits. On his way to work at his
father's firm in Manchester, Engels called into the offices of a paper he wrote
for in Cologne and met the editor, Marx, for the first time in 1842. They
formed a friendship based on shared values and beliefs regarding the working
class and socialist ideas. They saw a connection between the earlier
Enlightenment ideas and socialism. For example, as Engels writes in
Anti-Duhring: "in its theoretical form, modern socialism originally
appears ostensibly as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by
the great French philosophers of the eighteenth century. Like every new theory,
modern socialism had, at first, to connect itself with the intellectual
stock-in-trade ready to its hand, however deeply its roots lay in economic
facts." [14]
They were also critical of Romanticism. In a 'Letter from Marx to Engels In Manchester' Marx criticises the Romanticist obsessions with Medievalism and the 'Golden Age'. He writes: "The first reaction against the French Revolution and the period of Enlightenment bound up with it was naturally to see everything as mediaeval and romantic [...]. The second reaction is to look beyond the Middle Ages into the primitive age of each nation".
However, once Marx and Engels had connected themselves to the Enlightenment they soon saw
the limitations of Enlightenment concepts of reason and sentiment. As Krylov wrote in his Preface to On Literature and Art:
"Marx and Engels stripped away the romantic idealisation of the Middle Ages and, at the same time, demonstrated the inconsistency of the abstract view held by the Enlighteners that this was merely an age of social and cultural regression. They pointed out that the transition from slave-owning to feudal society was historically inevitable and showed that the establishment of the feudal mode of production was a step forward in the development of human society, compared to the reign of slavery which had preceded it. This enabled Marx and Engels to form a new approach to medieval culture and art and point out those features in them which reflected the progressive course of historical development."
Marx and Engels analysed West European romanticism in a way that gave credit for any progressive aspects despite its limitations:
"Considering romanticism a reflection of the age beginning after the Great French Revolution, of all its inherent social contradictions, they distinguished between revolutionary romanticism, which rejected capitalism and was striving towards the future, and romantic criticism of capitalism from the point of view of the past. They also differentiated between the romantic writers who idealised the pre-bourgeois social system: they valued those whose works concealed democratic and critical elements under a veneer of reactionary utopias and naive petty-bourgeois ideals, and criticised the reactionary romantics, whose sympathies for the past amounted to a defence of the interests of the nobility."
Similarly Krylov notes how Marx and Engels could see elements of class struggle in Enlightenment writing:
"Marx and Engels held in high esteem the heritage of the English and French 18th-century Enlighteners including their fiction and works on aesthetics. Their comprehensive analysis of the activity of the Enlighteners explains its close links with the life of society and the class struggle during the preparation for the French bourgeois revolution and draws a line between the moderately bourgeois and the democratic elements in their heritage."
However, Marx and Engels
realised that the new bourgeois rulers would be limited by their conceptions of
property, justice, and equality, which basically meant they only applied
universality to themselves and their own property. The new rulers were buoyed
up by the victory of their ideological fight over the aristocracy but incapable
of applying the same ideas to the masses who helped them to victory. Thus Marx
and Engels viewed the struggle for reason as important but limited to the new
ruling class' world view, just like the aristocracy before them:
"Every
form of society and government then existing, every old traditional notion was
flung into the lumber room as irrational; the world had hitherto allowed itself
to be led solely by prejudices; everything in the past deserved only pity and
contempt. Now, for the first time, appeared the light of day, henceforth
superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be superseded by
eternal truth, eternal Right, equality based on nature and the inalienable
rights of man. We know today that this kingdom of reason was nothing more than
the idealised kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal Right found its
realisation in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced itself to
bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as
one of the essential rights of man; and that the government of reason, the
Contrat Social of Rousseau, came into being, and only could come into being, as
a democratic bourgeois republic. The great thinkers of the eighteenth century
could, no more than their predecessors, go beyond the limits imposed upon them
by their epoch." [15]
As for sentiment, they were well aware of the Realist critical nature of modern
writers (the Realist movement rejected Romanticism) and indeed praised them
(e.g. G. Sand, E. Sue, and Boz [Dickens]), but limited themselves to offering
some advice. While recognising that progressive literature had a mainly middle
class audience (and were happy enough with these authors just 'shaking the
optimism' of their audience), they knew that this was not by any means a
socialist literature and were well aware of sentimentalist limitations. Engels
states:
"I
think however that the purpose must become manifest from the situation and the
action themselves without being expressly pointed out and that the author does
not have to serve the reader on a platter — the future historical resolution of
the social conflicts which he describes. To this must be added that under our
conditions novels are mostly addressed to readers from bourgeois circles, i.e.,
circles which are not directly ours. Thus the socialist problem novel in my
opinion fully carries out its mission if by a faithful portrayal of the real
conditions it dispels the dominant conventional illusions concerning them,
shakes the optimism of the bourgeois world, and inevitably instills doubt as to
the eternal validity of that which exists, without itself offering a direct
solution of the problem involved, even without at times ostensibly taking
sides." [16]
Sentimental literature focused on individual misfortune, and constant
repetition of such themes certainly appeared to universalise such suffering, so
that, as David Denby writes, "In this weeping mother, this
suffering father, we are to read also the sufferings of humanity." Thus,
"individualism and universalism appear to be two sides of the same
coin". Sentimental literature gives the reader the 'spectacle of
misfortune' and a representation of the reaction of a 'sentient and sensible
observer' who tries to help with 'alms, sympathy or indeed narrative
intervention.' Furthermore, the literature of sentiment "mirrors
eighteenth-century theories of sympathy, in which a spontaneous reaction to the
spectacle of suffering is gradually developed, by a process of generalisation
and combination of ideas, into broader and more abstract notions of humanity,
benevolence, justice." [17]
Workers in the fuse factory, Woolwich
Arsenal late 1800s
This brings us then to the problem of interpretation, as Denby suggests:
"should the sentimental portrayal of the poor and of action in their
favour be read as an attempt to give a voice to the voiceless, to include the
hitherto excluded? Or, alternatively, is the sentimentalisation of the poor to
be interpreted, more cynically, as a discursive strategy through which the
enlightened bourgeoisie states its commitment to values of humanity and justice,
and thereby seeks to strengthen its claims to universal domination?" [18]
While such ideas of giving a 'voice to the voiceless' was a far cry from
monarchical times, and claims of commitment to humanity and justice were
laudable, the concept of universality had a fundamental flaw: "The
universal claims of the French Revolution are opposed to a [aristocratic]
society based on distinctions of birth: it is in the name of humanity that the
Revolution challenges the established order. But for Sartre this does not
change the fact that the universal is a myth, an ideological construct, and an
obfuscation, since it articulates a notion of man which eliminates social
conflict and disguises the interests of a class behind a facade of universal
reference." [19]
Striking teamsters battling police
on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 1934
Thus for Marx and Engels defining concepts such as good and evil, right and
wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, that is, a universal moral theory,
could not be achieved while society is divided into classes:
"We
maintain [...] that all moral theories have been hitherto the product, in the
last analysis, of the economic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And
as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality has always been
class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the
ruling class, or ever since the oppressed class became powerful enough, it has
represented its indignation against this domination and the future interests of
the oppressed. That in this process there has on the whole been progress in
morality, as in all other branches of human knowledge, no one will doubt. But
we have not yet passed beyond class morality. A really human morality which
stands above class antagonisms and above any recollection of them becomes
possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class
antagonisms but has even forgotten them in practical life."
Marx and Engels worked towards that morality through their activism with
working class movements and culture. Their critical writing also formed an
essential part of working class ideology and culture of resistance and has
remained influential in resistance movements the world over.
The culture of resistance today still uses realism, documentary, and histories
of oppression to show the harsh realities of globalisation. Like during the
Enlightenment, empathy for those suffering injustice forms its foundation. And
unlike Romanticism, reason and science are deemed to be important tools in its
struggle for social emancipation and progress.
Conclusion: Enlightenment and Romanticism today
"When we are asked now: are we now living into an enlightened age?
Then the answer is: No, but in an age of Enlightenment."
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
There is no doubt that the influence of Romanticism has become ever stronger in
twentieth and twenty-first century culture. Romanticist-influenced TV shows on
Netflix are watched world wide. Love songs dominate the pop industry and
superheroes are now the mainstay of cinema. Even Romanticist nationalism is
making a comeback. Now and then calls for a new Enlightenment are heard, but
like the original advocates of the Enlightenment, they are limited to the
conservative world view of those making the call and whose view of the
Enlightenment could be compared to a form of Third Way politics, that is, they
avoid the issue of class conflict.
NOTES:
[1] Anthony Pagden, The Enlightenment: And Why it Still Matters (Oxford
Uni Press, 2015) p72/73
[2] Michael L Frazer, The Enlightenment of Sympathy: Justice and the Moral
Sentiments in the Eighteenth Century and Today (Oxford Uni Press, 2010) p126/127
[3] Robert C Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the
Social Contract (Rowman and Littlefield Pub., 1995) p13
[4] Robert C Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the
Social Contract (Rowman and Littlefield Pub., 1995) p45
[5] Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling ( Oxford World's Classics Oxford
Uni Press, 2009)
[6] Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature
and its Background 1760-1830 (Oxford Uni Press, 1981) p31
[7] Robert C Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the
Social Contract (Rowman and Littlefield Pub., 1995) p13
[8] Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature
and its Background 1760-1830 (Oxford Uni Press, 1981) p29/30
[9] Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English
Literature and its Background 1760-1830 (Oxford Uni Press, 1981) p30/31
[10] Robert C Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of
the Social Contract (Rowman and Littlefield Pub., 1995) p37
[11] Eugene N. Anderson, German Romanticism as an Ideology of Cultural
Crisis, p301-312. Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jun., 1941,
Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jun., 1941), pp. 301-317. Published by: University of
Pennsylvania Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2707133
[12] Eugene N. Anderson, German Romanticism as an Ideology of Cultural
Crisis, p313/314 Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jun., 1941, Vol.
2, No. 3 (Jun., 1941), pp. 301-317. Published by: University of Pennsylvania
Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2707133
[13] Eugene N. Anderson, German Romanticism as an Ideology of Cultural
Crisis. p316. Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jun., 1941, Vol. 2,
No. 3 (Jun., 1941), pp. 301-317. Published by: University of Pennsylvania
Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2707133
[14] Marx and Engels, On Literature and Art (Progress Publishers:
Moscow, 1978) p270
[15] Marx and Engels, On Literature and Art (Progress Publishers:
Moscow, 1978) p271
[16] Marx and Engels, On Literature and Art (Progress Publishers:
Moscow, 1978) p88
[17] David J. Denby, Individual, universal, national: a French revolutionary
trilogy? (Studies of Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 335, Voltaire
Foundation, 1996) p28/29
[18] David J. Denby Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France,
1760–1820 (Cambridge Studies in French, 1994) p117
[19] David J. Denby, Individual, universal, national: a French revolutionary
trilogy? (Studies of Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 335, Voltaire
Foundation, 1996) p27
Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin BA MA PhD is an Irish artist, lecturer and
writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on
contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of
Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along
with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the
world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research
Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
