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.
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
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
A book that every student of 19th and 20th century art, history and philosophy must read:
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... more info
Illuminating:
I found this series of lectures an insightful and fascinating read. I knew nothing about the subject beforehand, but now I feel I have a solid understanding of the basic ideas of Romanticism, how they were a contrast to the Enlightenment, and how they evolved. I only wish I had been able to hear these lectures when they were presented.
Engaging and inspiring:
IB takes us on a tour of his mind as he negotiates the mean between the extremes in understanding the nature of romanticism. He clearly describes various points of view and from those builds a middle ground that seems a best interpretation. Most wonderful is the clearness of his vision as he lays out the collection of writers he spent a life time coming to know in depth. The complex is made relatively simple while not losing its richness in the process. You come away wanting to read more as his enthusiasm... more info
that last review sucks:
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... more info
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