ROMANTICISM

Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education and the natural sciences. Its effect on politics was considerable and complex; while for much of the peak Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism, in the long term its effect on the growth of nationalism was probably more significant. The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and aweespecially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, made spontaneity a desirable characteristic (as in the musical impromptu), and argued for a "natural" epistemology of human activities as conditioned by nature in the form of language and customary usage. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate a revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl, and industrialism, and it also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar, and distant in modes more authentic than Rococo chinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape. Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which prized intuition and emotion over Enlightenment rationalism, the ideologies and events of the French Revolution laid the background from which both Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment emerged. The confines of the Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities; indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, "Realism" was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as heroic individualists and artists, whose pioneering examples would elevate society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. Philosophical romanticism, the editor states at the outset, is "a critical response to the Enlightenment interpretation of modernity," an endeavor by philosophy to make sense of its own historical conditions and forms of expressing itself. Identifying with the humanities and eschewing naturalism, philosophical romanticism is engaged in a normative critique of culture and itself at once. Its "primary task" is "to help enlarge the cultural conditions of intelligibility and possibility, and thereby open the horizon of the future" (4). Far from an artistic modernism, philosophical romanticism pursues this task by attaching normative primacy to receptivity and, in the process, significantly altering inherited notions of agency, the everyday, nature, and freedom. The formidable scope

of this project -- to the credit of the contributors to this masterful volume -- invites critical questions at every turn, e.g., what counts as "intelligible," "possible," "normative" and why? does the project require that argument be subordinated to self-expression and its rhetorical demands and, if so, can an argument be given for doing so? do novelty -- or authenticity, openness, feeling, irony, wonder, presence (to mention only a few romantic themes elaborated in the volume) -- and 83 cents get you more than a cup of coffee? does it matter? how could we know that the opaque or inexplicable is inherently so? is the notion that human beings in the end are left to themselves, i.e., to their historical condition, more than a presumption and, indeed, is it compatible with the German romantic tradition? This last question is significant since philosophical romanticism is supposed to reclaim German romanticism and idealism for our time. Several contributors (Frederick Beiser, J. M. Bernstein, Albert Borgmann, Richard Eldridge, Jane Kneller, and David Kolb) focus on ideas of seminal writers from that era. Others renew romanticism through meditation on the significance of the future and the past; for example, taking cues from Emerson, Stanley Cavell reflects on philosophy's difficulties with representing the future in the face of "a sense of exhaustion of human possibility"; Nikolas Kompridis explores the philosophical challenge of countenancing the normativity of the new, and Robert Pippin explains why Proust searches for lost time. Another set of contributions draws on Heideggerian themes, notably, Martin Seel on "letting oneself be determined," Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa on marginal practices, and Jeff Malpas on the wondrous opacity of the transparent. Even from this brief prcis, it should be apparent that the collection is eclectic. Nor are the contributions in lockstep with one another or in some cases, for that matter, with the editor's summaries of them. For example, Kompridis states that, for Beiser, romantic metaphysics failed to avoid the Spinozist trap of collapsing the individual into the world (13), yet one could hardly infer as much from Beiser's contribution, especially his concluding argument that the romantics develop a notion of freedom unthinkable for either Fichte or Spinoza. Kompridis also suggests that one implication of Dreyfus and Spinosa's piece is a "romantic image of dwelling in plural worlds" (15) but there is no evidence that Dreyfus and Spinosa construed this as "romantic" (they use the term pejoratively) and the very notion of a plurality of worlds conflicts with the monism (cosmic symmetry, homogeneity) that Beiser and Borgmann see in romantic thinking about nature. These discrepancies reflect the complicated business of subsuming the viewpoints expressed in the volume under the rubric of 'philosophical romanticism' (one of Morris Weitz's perennially debatable concepts, if there ever was one). Nevertheless, like the magical emergence of a medieval cathedral, the work of many different hands and generations, philosophical romanticism takes on a definite, if not always definable shape in this collection of remarkable essays, each of which -- along with the editor's valuable introduction -- deserves and rewards careful reading. In an insightful essay premised on the idea that modern subjectivity's fate is to face or evade the task of combining autonomous selfhood and social identity, Eldridge submits that Goethe's Werther, a victim of "self-proclaimed exceptionalism," epitomizes

the evasion (104). (An aside: Werther's narcissism notwithstanding, addressing "God directly and intimately, presuming to be his particular and special son" hardly implies salvation to the exclusion of others, as Eldridge suggests). Eldridge discusses how Wittgenstein, no less than Goethe, experiences what Werther does ("genius or suicide"), without following his suicidal path. Eldridge's account is compelling, but it leaves one wondering whose subjectivity is "romantic" (Werther's or Wittgenstein/Goethe's or both?) and why, i.e., on what conception of the 'romantic'. Eldridge characterizes Wittgenstein's version of the dilemma in terms of being caught between two anxieties: the anxiety of expressibility (as it dawns on a person that she can only express what is not uniquely hers, that "the only routes of expression are already laid down in surrounding practice") and inexpressibility (as it dawns on her that she cannot express "whatever-it-is in the ordinary"). If the dilemma seems contrived, it is perhaps because Eldridge is arguing that Wittgenstein, again like Goethe, avoids Werther's fate by the act of writing, achieving at once a social identity and some distance from the anxieties of the subject. This conclusion provides a perfect segue to Pippin's scintillating interpretation of Proust's anxiety about failing to become who he is as a writer -- as well as a lover, social entity, and the narrator of Remembrance of Things Past. What is presumably romantic about Proust's work is its intense disillusionment with the present (present beliefs about oneself, the present rapid and disorienting social change, present and thus all too familiar, habitual loves), the search for lost time that this very disillusionment calls for, and the celebration of art (suitably understood) as the only means of recovering that lost time and becoming who we are. Pippin accordingly contends that the novel, in addition to recounting those disappointments, shows a capacity for achieving independence while negotiating social dependence. Marcel in fact becomes a writer but precisely by giving up Platonic aspirations for art as an attempt to rescue truth from "the wholly temporal human world" (130). Nor does retrospection simply replace introspection; Marcel becomes who he is only by acting a certain way, i.e., without the pretension of being in control, "and even then what he intended to do and what he did are both subjects for much uncertain retrospective contestation" (133).. DEFINING ROMANTICISM Basic characteristics Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the starting point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on untrammelled feeling is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that "the artist's feeling is his law". To William Wordsworth poetry should be "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". In order to truly express these feelings, the content of the art must come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules dictating what a work should consist of. Coleridge was not alone in believing that there were natural laws governing these matters which the imagination, at least of a good creative artist, would freely and unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left

alone to do so. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works would impede the creator's own imagination, so originality was absolutely essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own original work through this process of "creation from nothingness", is key to Romanticism, and to be derivative was the worst sin.This idea is often called "romantic originality." Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature. However this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. In contrast to the usually very social art of the Enlightenment, Romantics were distrustful of the human world, and tended to believe that a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy. Romantic art addressed its audiences directly and personally with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist. So, in literature, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves". According to Isaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals." The period Unsurprisingly, given its rejection on principle of rules, Romanticism is not easily defined, and the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place "roughly between 1770 and 1848", and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, perhaps a little later than some other critics. In other fields and other countries the period denominated as Romantic can be considerably different; musical Romanticism, for example, is generally regarded as only having ceased as a major artistic force as late as 1910, but in an extreme extension the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss are described stylistically as "Late Romantic" and were composed in 194648. However in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier. The early period of the Romantic Era was a time of war, with the French Revolution (17891799) followed by the Napoleonic Wars until 1815. These wars, along with the political and social turmoil that went along with them, served as the background for Romanticism. The key generation of French Romantics born between 1795 1805 had, in the words of one of their number, Alfred de Vigny, been "conceived between battles, attended school to the rolling of drums".

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) No history of psychology is complete without a look at Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He has influenced education to the present day, philosophy (Kant, Schopenhauer...), political theory (the French Revolution, Karl Marx...), and he inspired the Romantic Movement in Philosophy, which in turn influenced all these things, and psychology, once again. "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains" Rousseau wrote in 1762. He thought that civilisation fills "man" with unnatural wants and seduces him away from his true nature and original freedom. Rousseau is credited with the idea of the "Noble Savage" who is uncorrupted by artifice and society. In "mile" (1762) he describes the education of a free being who is encouraged to develop through self expression the natural nobility and liberty of the spirit. In the "Social Contract"(1762) he attempts to describe a society in which this natural nobility could flourish. The society would be based on a contract where each

individual would give all of his rights to the community, but all collective decisions would be based on a direct democracy (a democracy where each member has a chance to vote on every issue). As all are involved in decision making this contract is seen as legitimate. The state is seen to represent the common good or the general will. The general will is not to be confused with the "will of all": The "will of all" is what individuals think they may want and includes selfish motives. The "general will" however is what people would want if they were rational and is seen as necessarily good. If an individual does not want to obey the general will then he must be "forced to be free". Imagine a group of people attempting to cross a bridge that is, unknown to them, weak and dangerous. The gatekeeper refuses to let the group pass and they feel that their freedom is being curtailed as they do not have a full understanding of the situation. The gatekeeper is forcing them to be free; if they were not stopped then they may have perished on the weak bridge. Rousseau likens this situation to the person who does not understand why they should obey the general will. To obey what is best for all is to maximise the freedom for each. Rosseau is believed to be the equivellant to a modern day individual rights campaigner. He says that all men are born free. With regards to property he thought that there was too much emphisis put on it and that property was something that belonged to everyone and not one person deserves to have acres of property as everyone is equal. In this respect he goes against thinkers like Hobbes who believes strongly in the value of property. The right of the strongest is a section from Rosseaus book that talks about the idea of having one leader. He thought that the physically strongest man of one community does not deserve to lead and make all the descions, as this should be the job of what he calls the; general will. His words were thought to have greatly influenced the forthcoming French revolution; because he said that everyone deserves to be equal and have their opinion heard as part of a group. This was considered to be the defintion of freedom, however if you were in the minority and were part of the few who disagreed with the general will of the public you could be forced to be free. It was these words that were read by revolutionists in France and lead to a bloody uprise across the country. In summary I beleive that Rousseau was in a small way a hypocrite. He beleived in freedom and equal rights however if anyone were to go against the general will they were forced to agree thusly they were no longer free or equal. It could argue that this makes his logic very flawed and asinine.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe An iconic figure of the German poet, playwright, novelist, critic, journalist, painter, statesman, educator, scientist, philosopher; Goethe considered Weltliteratur (World Literature) to have the purpose of advancing civilization by promoting mutual understanding and respect; interest in the reconciliation of opposites, Romanticism and Classicism, mind and heart, reason and passion, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany on August 28, 1749. The multi talented Goethe, in addition to being a writer was also a theoretical physicist, biologist, polymath, pictorial artist and statesman. His services to poetry, pros and drama are an integral part of German literature. Goethe played a key role in the movement of Weimar Classicism, Sturm und Drang and Romanticism. He is credited for giving the Sturm und Drang movement its first major drama, Gtz von Berlichingen in 1733 and also its first main novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774, creating the classic archetype of a romantic hero. As a young boy Goethe was given lessons by his father and private tutors in all the usual subjects of his time and specially languages including Latin, Greek, French, Italian, English and Hebrew along with training in riding, fencing and dancing. Goethe enjoyed theatre and drawing and was deeply interested in literature, devoting a lot of his

time to reading works of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Homer. Although Goethe studied law from 1765 to 1768 in Leipzeg, he was more interested in learning about poetry and attended poetry lessons by Christian Frchtegott Gellert. He released his first collection of poems, Annette, published anonymously in 1770. By 1771, Goethe had become a licensed lawyer. In an attempt to humanize the jurisdiction, Goethe proceeded cases too vigorously and as a result was reprimanded. He shifted his focus to his literary side and created the colorful courtroom drama, Gtz von Berlichingen. He started practicing law again in 1772 and gave the world his masterpiece, The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. Following the success of The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe was invited to the court of Carl August. Goethe thus moved to Weimar where he would remain for the rest of his life holding a succession of offices moving up to becoming the Dukes chief advisor. During 1786 to 1788, Goethe made a journey to Italy which he put to writing in the Italian Journey, published 1816. He married his long time mistress, Christiane Vulpius in 1806 when Napoleons army invaded the town of Weimar and occupied Goethes house. 1793 onwards, Goethe devoted all of his time to his literary work. He fell in love with Ulrike von Levetzow, who inspired his famous, Marienbad Elegy. Goethe considered this to be his finest work. Some more of Goethes most famous works marked in history include Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship, the dramas Iphige nie auf Tauris, Egmont, Torquato Tasso, The Natural Daughter the fable Reineke Fuchs, Furthermore, Faust Part One, Elective Affinities, the West-Eastern Divan, his autobiographical Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit and Faust Part two which was finished and published posthumously. Although Goethe is best known for his literary work, he also held a keen interest in science and wrote quite a lot on color theory and plant morphology. He owned the largest collection of minerals in Europe and his works greatly influenced naturalists of the 19th century. His works, Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) and Theory of Colors (1810) are some of his important scientific endeavors. Leaving behind volumes of poetry, essays, criticisms, dramas, novels, linguistics and scientific works, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe passed away on March 22, 1832 in Weimar. MAIN WORKS The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) (1774), short novel; first popular success of Goethe; novel was very important in establishing the image of the introspective, self-pitying, melancholic Romantic hero; story of a young man who is gifted with sensitivity and intelligence, but is tormented by his own intellectual speculations and love for a girl, Charlotte, who is engaged to someone else;

he finally shoots himself; the novel caused a wave of suicides among young romantics throughout Europe. Iphigenia in Tauris (Iphigenie auf Tauris) (1787), play (based on the work of the ancient Greek tragedian Euripides) about Iphigenia, daughter of the Greek commander Agamemnon who wanted to sacrifice her in order to secure good weather for the Greeks' voyage to Troy; at the altar of sacrifice she is rescued by the goddess Artemis (Diana) and placed in Tauris as a priestess; eventually she is reunited with Orestes, her brother. Goethe emphasized in this play what he called "pure humanity" (the emotional link between all human beings). Faust, Part I (1808), Part II (1832), Goethe's most famous work; a play in which an old scholar, yearning for sensuous experience, makes a deal with a devil named Mephistopheles. The Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften) (1809), novel dealing with a married couple and their attraction for other people; exploration of the darker side of human nature and its instinctual affinities, animal magnetism. Poetry and Truth (Dichtung und Wahrheit) (1811-1833), autobiography, describes Goethe's happy childhood, his relationship with his sister Cornelia, and his infatuation with a barmaid named Gretchen; also describes changes in his thinking brought about by the Seven Years' War and the French occupation, as well as other experiences. The West-Eastern Divan (West-stlicher Divan) (1819), a book of poetry modeled after the work of the Persian poet Hafiz; exemplifies how the Orient was central to German Romanticism and its attempt to bring together East and West. Wilhelm Meister's Travels (Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre) (1821-1829), extended Bildungsroman on the education, disillusionment, and development of its hero; included the earlier Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre) (1795-96); life understood as a never-ending wandering where the road and the destination merge into one.

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) Arthur Schopenhauer was born February 22, 1788 in Danzig, Prussia (now Gdansk in Poland). His father was a successful businessman, and his mother a novelist. Young Arthur was moved around Europe quite a bit, which allowed him to become fluent in several languages, and to develop a deep love of nature. In 1805, his father died, and he tried a business career. He lived with his mother for a while in Weimar, and she introduced him to Goethe. He went on to study medicine at the University of Gttingen and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and ultimately received his doctorate from the University of Jena in 1813. Later, he worked with Goethe on Goethe's studies on color. In 1819, he published his greatest work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Idea). To Schopenhauer, the phenomenal world is basically an illusion. The true reality, Kant's "thing-in-itself," he refers to as Will. Will, perhaps an odd term to us today, is more like the Tao in Chinese philosophy: It is out of the Will that everything derives. But it has more the qualities of a force, and pushes or drives what we perceive as the phenomenal world. Will is, you could say, the inner nature of all things. So, if you want to understand something's -- or someone's -- inner nature, you need only look within yourself. So the

Will also drives us, through our instincts. This concept would influence a young Sigmund Freud a generation later. Schopenhauer, profoundly influenced by his reading of Buddhist literature, saw life as essentially painful. We are forced by our natures, our instincts, to live, to breed, to suffer, and to die. Schopenhauer is often described as "the great pessimist!" For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.... If you imagine... the sum total of distress, pain, and suffering of every kind which the sun shines upon in its course, you will have to admit it would have been much better if the sun had been able to call up the phenomenon of life as little on the earth as on the moon.... To our amazement we suddenly exist, after having for countless millennia not existed; in a short while we will again not exist, also for countless millennia. That cannot be right, says the heart. The question, of course, is how does one get past this suffering? One way he recommends is esthetic salvation -- seeing the beauty in something, or someone. When we do this, we are actually looking at the universal or essence behind the scene, which moves us in turn towards the universal subject within ourselves. This quiets the will that forces us into the phenomenal world. Schopenhauer believed that music was the purest art -- one step from will. A second way to transcend suffering is through ethical salvation -compassion. Here, too, it is the recognition of self-in-others and others-in-self that leads to a quieting of the will. But these are only partial answers. The full answer requires religious salvation -asceticism, the direct stilling of all desires by a life of self-denial and meditation. Without the will, only nothingness remains, which is Nirvana. Schopenhauer lived many years of his life a bitter and reclusive man, unable to deal with his lack of success in life. He began publishing his works again in 1836, and intellectuals all over Europe began to develop an interest in him. Sadly, Schopenhauer developed heart problems and on September 21, 1860, he died. After his death, he would powerfully influence such notables as the composer Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann and many other writers.

Sren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855) There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death. -- Kierkegaard Sren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen on May 5, 1813, the youngest of seven children. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, was in the hosiery business. He was a powerful man who held to a particularly gloomy Christianity, obsessed with guilt over having once cursed God. His mother was Ane Srensdatter Lund, a servant of the Kierkegaard's. Two of Sren's brothers and two of his sisters died. By 1834, his mother had died as well, and Kierkegaard became nearly as depressed as his father. He lost his faith and turned to a hedonistic life-style, but had a religious experience in 1838. He received his theology degree in 1840, and proposed to Regine Olsen, daughter of a prominent Copenhagen government official. No one knows precisely why, but in late 1841, he broke off the engagement, which lead to considerable negative social press. It seems to have been the pivotal crisis in his life, and he abruptly left to Berlin to study. When he returned, he finished a manuscript he had been working on, and in 1843 published Either/Or. It takes the form of an argument about how to live life

between an "aesthetic" man and an "ethical" man -- very probably reflecting two aspects of Kierkegaard's own soul. The aesthetic man is basically a hedonist and an atheist. Although he is portrayed as a refined gentleman, his sections of the book are rambling, suggesting that his life is likewise without focus. The ethical man is a judge, and his arguments are far more orderly and eloquent: He spends considerable time analyzing the ancient Roman emperor Nero and his mental states. Also in 1843, he published his famous book Fear and Trembling, which retells the story of Abraham and his near-sacrifice of his son. This time, Kierkegaard compares the ethical response -- it is clearly wrong to kill one's own son -- with a religious response, which is reflected in Abraham's faith in his God. In his various books, Kierkegaard develops his three "stages" or competing life philosophies: The aesthetic person, who lives in the moment and lacks commitment; the ethical person, who is in fact committed to his ideals; and the religious person, who recognizes the transcendent nature of true ideals. Notice the similarity to Schopenhauer, although for Schopenhauer "aesthetic" refers to a love of art and music, not hedonism. Throughout his work, he was concerned with passions. He defined anxiety, for example, as "the dizziness of freedom."Despair is what the hedonist feels when he finally recognized the emptiness of his life. Guilt is what the ethical man feels when he inevitably discovers his inability to forgive himself. These definitions would profoundly influence a number of later philosophers and writers. In 1849, he published Sickness unto Death, which was his strongest call to the conventional Christians of Copenhagen to take what Kierkegaard called "a leap of faith" into a more personal kind of religion. But his community is not quite ready for this passionate brand of Christianity, and he was severely criticized by the religious powers of Denmark. Kierkegaard is often considered the first existentialist, mostly because of the way he used the word existence. He said that God doesn't exist because he is eternal. Only people exist, because they are always an unfinished product. And the nature of existence is, first, that it is the domain of the individual, and second, that individual must take responsibility for his or her own creation. But Kierkegaard noted that his was not a "system" of philosophy. Human existence is an ongoing process of creation, and cannot be encompassed by any "system." This has been a central theme in existentialism ever since. Kierkegaard died on October 2, 1855, of spinal paralysis. He would not take communion, and he asked that no clergy participate in his funeral. His epitaph reads "The Individual."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 1900)I fear animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason-as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal. -- Nietzsche Second only to Rousseau in the impact he had on Psychology is Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. He was born in Rcken, in Prussia Saxony, on October 15, 1844, named after Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, who had the same birthday. Nietzsche's father was a minister -- one of many in the family -- who had tutored several members of the royal family. His mother was a puritanical housewife. When Friedrich was 18, he lost his faith -- which would remain a central issue for the rest of his life. And he said his life was changed as well by his reading of Schopenhauer a few years later while a student at the University of Leipzig. When he was 23, he was drafted into the Prussian army -- but he fell off a horse, hurt his chest, and was released. He received an appointment as professor of philology (classical languages and literature) at the University of Basel at the tender age of 24, a year before he received his Ph.D. Near Basel lived the famous Richard Wagner, and Nietzsche was invited to Christmas dinner in 1869. Wagners grandiose and romantic operas were to influence Nietzsches view of life for some time to come.

He served a brief stint as a volunteer medical orderly during the Franco-Prussian War, during which he contracted diphtheria and dysentery, which damaged his health permanently. After returning to Basel, he published his first book in 1872 -- inspired by Wagner -- called The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. It was in this book that he introduced the contrast of the Dionysian and Apollonian. Dionysus was the god of wine and revelry, living for the moment. Apollo was the god of peace, order, and art. The one lacks discipline, but the other lacks, as we would say today, soul. In 1879, because of his seriously deteriorating health, he was forced to retire from teaching. He published Human, All Too Human -- an analysis of emotion -- in parts from 1878 through 1880. During this time also, he fell in love, although briefly, with the famous Lou Salom (later a confident of Sigmund Freuds!). Heartbroken, and perhaps recognizing that he was destined for bachelorhood, he retired high into the Alps to write his master work, Thus Spake Zarathustra, published in 1883 through 1885. Here, he made a heroic effort at addressing the pessimism of Schopenhauer. Nietzsche felt that religion had failed miserably to provide man with meaning. So now that God was dead, we needed to stop looking to the skies and start providing that missing meaning ourselves. The people he saw as having accomplished this transition he called ber-menschen, usually translated as supermen. But, he notes, supermen have not arrived as yet, and we must be satisfied to serve as a bridge to that future. The book is a masterpiece by any standard, yet Nietzsche remained an unknown. His health continuing to deteriorate, he was cared for by his sister, Lisbeth Frster-Nietzsche. She, however, married an anti-semite who Nietzsche abhorred and moved to a commune in Paraguay! Nietzsche then lived in various rooming houses all over Italy and Switzerland. His eyesight went from bad to worse, and his headaches overwhelmed him. He stopped writing books and instead wrote aphorisms (short comment), which he then collected into books. Beyond Good and Evil (the best introduction to his ideas) came out in 1886, and The Geneology of Morals in 1887. In these books, he makes clear his great distinction between Herren-Moral and Herden-Moral, that is, the morality of lords and the morality of the herd. The morality of the herd is what he calls traditional Judeo-Christian morality: It is, he says, an ethic of helplessness and fear. With this morality, we keep the powerful and talented under control by appealing to virtues such as altruism and egalitarianism. Secretly, it is, like all motives, a will to power -- but a sly, manipulative one. We cry I am weaker than you, but I am still better than you!

The morality of lords, on the other hand, is based on the manly virtues of courage, honor, power, and the love of danger. It is pagan, western, teutonic. The only rule, he said, is do not betray a friend. Although he was not anti-semitic, his choice of words would lead the Nazis to use some of them in ways he never intended many years after his death. Ask yourself if the masses of people shouting Heil Hitler! and the acts of rounding up minority civilians for work camps and slaughter in any way make you think of courage and honor! The contrast between these two moralities is in fact a very productive one:

Nietzsche become increasingly ill and bitter, blind and paranoid. In Turin in January of 1889 he had attempted to protect a horse that was being whipped when he suffered an apoplectic stroke (just like Rousseau) which sent him to an asylum. Some believe his collapse was the result of syphilis, but it could just as well have been due to years of medication. His mother claimed him and took care of him until she died in 1897, when his sister, now back in Germany, took him in. He was seldom lucid after that. He died August 25, 1900 at the age of 55, of stroke and pneumonia. A number of his works were published after his collapse, including The Will to Power in 1889, which is a collection of aphorisms found in his notebooks, and his autobiography Ecce Homo in 1908. Ecce Homo illustrates both his brilliance and his insanity very dramatically. Freud called him the most brilliant psychologist who ever lived. ROMANTICISM IN GENERAL Beneath all the variety represented by the Romantics lies a common theme: Passion. While the empiricists were concerned with sensory data, and the rationalists were concerned with reason, the romantics looked at consciousness and saw first and foremost its dynamics, purposefulness, striving, desire... passion! Goethe has Faust say, ''Geflte is Alles." Feeling is everything!

In fact, they saw passion in all life, as a basic category... life as a Darwinian struggle, not just to survive, but to overcome. As such, it could be called instinct; but in humanity, it goes further, and involves an overcoming of nature itself. "The only reality is this: The will of every center of power to become stronger -not self-preservation, but the desire to appropriate, to become master, to become more, to become stronger," said Nietzsche. Along with their love of passion came an impatience with, even disgust at, the mediocre, the weak, the irresponsible, the unpassionate. The romantic's view of the world is a reflection of their view of humanity: The world is rich, full of qualities -- color, sound, flavor, feeling -- thick, you might say, and not the thin, gray, empty thing as pictured by modern science. They tended to ignore metaphysical speculation as an intellectual game. And for Schopenhauer, passion became the basic form of all reality: a universe pressing to be realized. A passionate metaphysics requires a passionate epistemology (as opposed to an intellectual or empirical one). First, there is a preference for intuition or insight: As Pascal put it, "the heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of." A holistic understanding is more satisfying than logical, analytical, or experimental explanations. The world is too big for those and has to be embraced rather than picked apart. And the importance of the subjective is emphasized. All experience is subjective as well as objective. This is a sort of "uncertainty principle" that applies to all sciences, and philosophy, and certainly psychology. Objectivity is simply a meaningless goal. So subjectivity is not something to eliminate, but to understand. Hence we must go back to life as it is lived, the Lebenswelt. We must study whole, meaningful experiences. We might want to go back to ordinary people, perhaps children or primitives, to understand the lived world before it is tainted by our perpetual intellectualization. These tendencies would eventually lead to phenomenology and related methodologies. Last (and far from least), we must have a passionate morality. The romantics tend to admire the heroic, taking a stand against nature, against the mediocre, against nothingness or meaninglessness. To some extent, the heroic is closely tied to futility: It is often Quixotic, or picaresque. There is an affection for the foolish or unconventional. Romantic morality is more stoic than epicurean. Meaning, as expressed by virtue, purpose, and courage, is the highest value, not pleasure or happiness as we usually conceive of them. Some romantics are suspicious of Asian philosophy to the extent that it represents surrender. Nietzsche, among them, considers even the Judeo-Christian

tradition "Asian" and weak. Their suspicion is not entirely well-founded: In traditions such as Taoism and Zen Buddhism, for example, "surrender" is valued precisely for the strength it imparts, as demonstrated physically in judo ("gentle way"). Schopenhauer understood this, and his work is clearly colored by Buddhism in particular. A passionate morality requires freedom, which Goethe considered the greatest happiness, and which was quickly disappearing from empiricist, rationalist, and even religious philosophy. I have to be free to take that courageous stand; to be determined is to be nothing at all. A little Buddhism sneaks in when Nietzsche speaks of amor fati, love of fate: When choices are taken from you, you can still conquer the moment with your attitude. Nietzsche said "God is dead!" Now, anything goes. You don't have to do anything. Be nice? Why? Be selfish? Why? As Sartre put it, we are "condemned" to freedom. Even when we choose to allow ourselves to be determined, it is our choice. Even Kierkegaard asks us to take a leap of faith that has no justification. So, we have nothing to lean on, no crutch, no "opiate," no excuses. Freedom means responsibility. We create ourselves, or better, we overcome ourselves, or at least we should. Others just play out their "programs." Freedom requires that we be truly aware, fully conscious. It requires that we be fully feeling, that we not deny but experience our passion. It requires that we be active, involved. Freedom means creativity, and the romantic prefers the artist over the scientist. These ideas are the foundation for the concept of self-actualization. The heirs of the romantics are the phenomenologists, existentialists, and humanists of today.