ریشه‌های رومانتیسم

by Isaiah Berlin, عبدالله کوثری

آیزایا برلین در ریشه‌های رومانتیسم با بیانی دقیق و شیوا سرگذشت جنبش فکری و هنری رومانتیسم را از نخستین مراحل شکل‌گیری تا قرن بیستم دنبال می‌کند. به اعتقاد برلین «رومانتیسم صرفاً اهمیت تاریخی ندارد. بسیاری از پدیده‌های امروزی [۱۹۶۵] – ناسیونالیسم، اگزیستانسیالیسم، ستایش مردان بزرگ، ستایش نهادهای غیرشخصی، دموکراسی، توتالیتاریسم – جملگی از رومانتیسم تأثیر گرفته‌اند و این جنبش در همه‌ی آنها رخنه کرده است.» این کتاب بر اساس سخنرانی برلین با عنوان سرچشمه‌های تفکر رومانتیک در ۱۹۶۵ است. هنری هاردی، ویراستار آثار برلین، این سخنرانی را مکتوب و ویرایش کرده است. ترجمه‌ی فارسی ریشه‌های رومانتیسم به قلم عبدالله کوثری در سال ۱۳۸۶ برنده‌ی جایزه‌ی کتاب سال شده است.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Romanticism, Art, Literary Criticism, Politics

234 pages

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Sir Isaiah Berlin was a philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the twentieth century. He excelled as an essayist, lecturer and conversationalist; and as a brilliant speaker who delivered, rapidly and spontaneously, richly allusive and coherently structured material, whether for a lecture series at Oxford University or as a broadcaster on the BBC Third Programme, usually without a script. Many of his essays and lectures were later collected in book form.

Born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, he was the first person of Jewish descent to be elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From 1957 to 1967, he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964. In 1966, he helped to found Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its first President. He was knighted in 1957, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1971. He was President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. He also received the 1979 Jerusalem Prize for his writings on individual freedom. Berlin's work on liberal theory has had a lasting influence.

Berlin is best known for his essay Two Concepts of Liberty, delivered in 1958 as his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. He defined negative liberty as the absence of constraints on, or interference with, agents' possible action. Greater "negative freedom" meant fewer restrictions on possible action. Berlin associated positive liberty with the idea of self-mastery, or the capacity to determine oneself, to be in control of one's destiny. While Berlin granted that both concepts of liberty represent valid human ideals, as a matter of history the positive concept of liberty has proven particularly susceptible to political abuse.

Berlin contended that under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel (all committed to the positive concept of liberty), European political thinkers often equated liberty with forms of political discipline or constraint. This became politically dangerous when notions of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, self-determination and the Communist idea of collective rational control over human destiny. Berlin argued that, following this line of thought, demands for freedom paradoxically become demands for forms of collective control and discipline – those deemed necessary for the "self-mastery" or self-determination of nations, classes, democratic communities, and even humanity as a whole. There is thus an elective affinity, for Berlin, between positive liberty and political totalitarianism.

Conversely, negative liberty represents a different, perhaps safer, understanding of the concept of liberty. Its proponents (such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) insisted that constraint and discipline were the antithesis of liberty and so were (and are) less prone to confusing liberty and constraint in the manner of the philosophical harbingers of modern totalitarianism. It is this concept of Negative Liberty that Isaiah Berlin supported. It dominated heavily his early chapters in his third lecture.

This negative liberty is central to the claim for toleration due to incommensurability. This concept is mirrored in the work of Joseph Raz.

Berlin's espousal of negative liberty, his hatred of totalitarianism and his experience of Russia in the revolution and through his contact with the poet Anna Akhmatova made him an enemy of the Soviet Union and he was one of the leading public intellectuals in the ideological battle against Communism during the Cold War.

Reviews

[شاهین غمگسار · Rating 5 out of 5]

خواندن این کتاب مانند رصد کردن نهفته‌ترین (دورترین) ستاره‌ها در سپهر اندیشهٔ شخصی‌ام بود. حلقهٔ دیگری از حلقه‌های مفقودمانده در تفکرم، که همچون زنجیری به هم پیوست. کدام حلقه، کدام زنجیر؟! شرح مثنوی هفتاد من کاغذ است؛ نمی‌توان اینجا گفت.
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برلین متواضعانه کشف خود در این کتاب، یا به بیان دیگر، ریشه‌یابی‌اش را عرضه می‌کند. این تواضع در جای‌جای کتاب و پیش از شرح اندیشهٔ هر متفکر رومانتیک مشاهده‌کردنی‌ست. او چراغ‌قوهٔ اندیشه‌ٔ تیزپروازش را به پستوهای تاریخ اندیشهٔ آلمان سال‌های ۱۷۶۰ تا ۱۸۳۰ می‌اندازد و پنهان‌ترین زوایای سیر تفکری رومانتیسم را آشکار می‌کند. اگرچه در این میان از رومانتیک‌های نامیِ فرانسه و انگلستان هم یاد می‌کند، اما کانون توجه‌اش، آلمان است.
از «یوهان گئورگ هامان» گرفته که نه‌تنها ناشناخته‌ترین متفکر این کتاب برای من است، بلکه درخشان‌ترین آنها نیز هست، تا «ماکس اشتیرنر» که افراطی‌ترین آنهاست.
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کتاب سوای ریشه‌یابی اندیشه رومانتیسم و اثرات آن بر زندگی انسان معاصر، و اساسا به تعبیر برلین، اثرش بر تفکر غرب، حاوی بسیاری اندیشه‌های مغرب‌زمینیان است که همراه شدن آن در این ریشه‌یابی، کتاب را به‌گونه‌ای سیر تفکر غربی، البته در بازهٔ محدود، بدل کرده است. بی‌سبب نبوده است که ترجمهٔ کوثری از این کتاب، جایزهٔ کتاب سال ایران را برده است.

‌ضعف یا دامنهٔ دانش
کتاب در ابتدا آهنگی کند دارد و ظاهراً از چیزهای بی‌ربط با رومانتی‌سیزم صحبت می‌کند. اما در انتها زمانی که ارتباطش را با اگزیستانسیالیسم و لیبرالیسم در حد چند عبارت و جمله ذکر می‌کند، خواننده به قدر کافی علت این ارتباط را دانسته و یافته است و آن را به آسانی فهم می‌کند.
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سه نکته:
۱- این کتاب را باید درست پیش از آنکه هیبت و شکوه فرهنگ و اندیشه غرب بر آدمی استیلا یابد، خواند. شاید هنگام خواندنش پیش از بیست‌و‌پنج‌سالگی باشد! علت: شباهت برخی گفته‌های متفکرین رومانتیک به گفته‌های موجود در سنت عرفانی ایران. مثال: رومانتیک‌های ابتدایی هم، عقل را همهٔ ابزار بشر برای شناخت انسان و جهان نمی‌دانستند و در چیزهای دیگری می‌جستند. چیزی که برلین در انتهای کتاب از آن در مقام میراث رومانتیک‌ها برای امروزیان یاد می‌کند. مقابله کنید با این گفته مولانا: پای استدلالیان چوبین بُوَد.
۲- دو‌سوم کتاب به‌گونه‌ای است که گویی برلین به کلی رومانتیسم را اندیشه‌ای لغو و خطا می‌داند. آن توصیفی که ابتدا با تعبیر «ضربه مهلک» از رومانتیک‌ها می‌شود، این تصور را پیش می‌آورد که برلین به کلی رومانتیسم را اندیشه‌ای انحرافی می‌داند. اما در یک‌سوم انتهایی کتاب، به‌خصوص در انتهای آن، زوایای درخشانش هم بیرون می‌آید. شاید علت این تداعی غلط، جمع‌آوری کتاب از روی سخنرانی‌های برلین باشد.
۳- مخاطبان کتاب آنانی‌اند که حداقل آشنایی کوچکی با مکتب هنری رومانتیسم، فلسفه غرب و سیر تفکر غربی داشته باشند.
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ترجمه
به ترجمهٔ عبداله کوثری ایرادی می‌توان گرفت؟! من خوانندهٔ ایرادگیری‌ام. اما کتاب حتی ایراد ویرایشی بسیار بسیار اندک دارد، چه رسد به ترجمهٔ مغلق‌ و نامفهوم یا بد. کیف کردم از خواندنش.

[Szplug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps the singularly most impressive thing about this superb book is that the Mellon Lectures upon which they are based were delivered, for the most part, extemporaneously—a fact exceedingly difficult to comprehend when the breadth and depth of the material delivered to what was doubtless an enraptured audience is taken into consideration. In the introduction, Berlin advocate John Gray accedes that the latter herein is making a large claim, possibly exaggerated about the encompassing nature and influence of the (mostly) eighteenth-century Romantics upon the course of modern political and cultural progression—a powerful and resonant reaction of uncertainty and multitudinous willing against an Enlightenment-derived mechanistic and materialist society convinced that all could be answered and, ultimately, attended to, whose critiques were adopted and synthesized to the degree that twentieth-century stammering liberalism would be unrecognizable without them—and it does not take the reader many pages ere she becomes acutely aware of just how propulsive an engine Berlin deems this intellectual-spiritual development to have been. Yet the claims carry a heady ring of truth due to the persuasive combination of acumen and understanding of the (primarily German) Romantic exponents they are permeatively endowed with. What really tickled my reading tummy (forgiveness begged as regards any metaphorical creepiness inherent to that last) was how much Ernst Cassirer's analyses in regard to romanticism and its role in the historical evolution of the Myth of the State unfolded along a path copacetic to Berlin's more deeply-considered one as regards the perduring (and dialectical) normative influence of Romanticism upon modern political and societal structures; two great minds finding alignment with each other's interpretive thought in consideration of the historical and cultural influence of this impassioned inflation of the will's primacy and fond looks backwards as against the encompassing, systemic rationalism of progressive Enlightenment convention.

Berlin's basic postulation is that the epistemological conclusions of the Enlightenment, and the forward-thrusting, optimistic society that it powered, can be set forth within three axioms:

1. All genuine questions can be answered.

2. All such answers are knowable—they can be determined by reason, and the determinations subsequently taught and transmitted to others.

3. All of these answers must be compatible with each other, must exist as logical truths. If they are not or do not, then there exists an antinomy, a contradiction, and chaos will be the result.

In the author's presentation, the Romantics begin with Hamann, who found this attempt to delineate, measure, and order all things completely absurd. The simple truth, no matter how a burgeoning European optimistic consensus sought to surmount it, is that God cannot be limited by human reason and rationality; and it is within the irrational—art, emotions, passion, poetry, myth, symbols—where God thrives and lives. For Hamann, different peoples possess different beliefs and hold differing answers to the questions of the Enlightenment; and we cannot shoehorn the ancient Greeks in with the (then) modern French to enforce our ideals. Societies and cultures are historically determined—the German language was created by German people, and could be created by nobody else; it needs the German mindset to bring it into being.

As in so many of the books exploring philosophical modernity that I've read over the past years, the vital headwaters flow downwards from a Königsberg peak: (Mount) Kant's dutiful—but passionate—belief in a freedom that saw Man making values and choosing to uphold or negate them on his own terms led in a direct path to his philosophical succesors Schiller and Fichte taking this freedom and assigning it to the exercise of the creative will, that soteriological element of humanity which refused to buckle to Enlightenment knuckles. Those who worshipped science and/or nature were insensate, dead to life; those who did not, who knew that deed invoked cognition, and not vice versa, were the free men of the world. The indomitable will creates values, goals, ends—it does not seek knowledge of them; and it is ever the case that the act has primacy over the ideation, the doing over the thinking.

To such a kinetic ideology, it mattered not if your ideals were good or bad, but only that you committed yourself to them wholly and passionately—that you flung yourself at whatever obstacles barred one's progress to a desired end or goal. One created a teleology of their own, rather than submitting to that derived within history or nature or science. And after Fichte, this striving and will and belief could collect itself, congealing into a nation, or race, or class. Fichte proclaimed that one only discovered the self, found one's identity, in moments of resistance or struggle along a path of action; that overcoming gave, through its testing, a sense of the self and made the goal that much richer in both its pursuit and realization. The universe is neither static nor knowable—and life itself a pursuit without end, one inevitably bound up in a search for the unattainable—a nostalgic play undertaken in a theater of flow and change. It is a yearning that invokes expression, action, doing in the ineluctable effort to assuage its burning presence.

The free untrammeled will and the denial of the fact that there is a nature of things are the two vital elements of unbridled Romanticism. There is no structure of things in the universe: there is only endless flow and self-creativity. The universe is not a pattern of events, or a set of facts: it is a process of perpetual, forward-thrusting self-creation—of hostile bent, as per Schopenhauer, or beneficial one, as held by Fichte, Schlegel, Tieck. That Enlightenment thinkers believed it could be captured and reduced within the parameters of a system was a delusion sprung and nurtured from the envenomed seed of rationalism.

In what proved to be the postulation wherein Berlin most closely aligned his view with that of Cassirer—or, at least, as I so recollect it—the former expounds upon how Romanticism revealed itself as reliant on myth for capturing symbolically the infinite and inexpressible. Yet because, as per Herder, myths are of their time and culture, modern man must create his own myths that express streaming life and its unsolvable mystery: a Becoming that never resolves itself or settles into Being. What held for the individual also spread upward unto the state: written constitution, law, or legislation is dead, fragile, sterile, empirical contingency. What is vital in a state is the ineffable, perduring, customary; the essence, the soul of a people bound by culture and language, and which is felt inside, within the heart, as being true. The state cannot be analysed and compartmentalized and determined—this is enlightenment folly. It is an intimate and mystic thing with a personal and traditional connexion to its constituent beings. It flows in their veins; its roots are in darkness and its laws set forth within the mists of time. This is what makes it lasting and strong.

However, following from his outstanding opening salvo, wherein the author noted the apparent contradictions and paradoxes to be found in any effort towards delineating the properties which defined the popular consideration of Romanticism, Berlin explicates how it further eluded political pigeon-holing: there were reactionary romantics and progressive romantics; the point they might occupy upon the political compass was of far less importance than their shared essence in a state of opposition to static, empirical, stadial science. Further along, Berlin endeavors to reconcile those contradictory romantic examples with which he opened: on the one hand, the noble savage, the return to the primeval, the allure of wilderness over the city, peasant ways and their attendant simplicity as against the sipping of absinthe in gaudily-hued wigs, the immersion within the dandified airs and accentuated eccentricities of the urban salon. Berlin sees in both a desire to break the order of things. Anything which challenged and/or struck against the strict arrangement of organization in post-Enlightenment society was welcome; and that such provocations all were ultimately unattainable, a fantasy, was fully to the point: if they could be realized, they would be incorporated into the stultifying parameters and measures of society, just another civilized trope. It was the same with romantic themes ranging from the gothic invocation of ghosts and spirits to the pageantry of medieval jousting bliss—they all consisted in standing apart from modern society and its regimented ills. That there existed an incompatibility between romantic ideals—Berlin contrasts the belief of Macaulay in the possibility of societal and existential progress, even unto an utopian end, in opposition to the view of Scott that we are descended from a glorious but irrecoverable past as we inhabit our drab present and, no matter how attractive it appears in our rear-slung vision, it must perforce remain an unattainable dream—is worked to heighten Berlin's contention that romanticism, at its core, is an attempt to impose an aesthetic model upon reality—to demand that everything comprising the vast mystery of life should obey the rules of art.

As Berlin explains it, Existentialism is, in essence, an offshoot of romanticism—there is in the world nothing to lean on—one wherein human freedom of choice stands starkly over all such systems and doctrines and (meta)physical, chemical, sociological structures erected and determined as rigid in an effort to give a false sense of objective meaning and momentum to existence. We set these up so that we have something upon which to hang the dread weight of the fact that all our choices and life decisions are ours and ours alone to make. It is a romanticism taken to extremes, as is its offshoot of Fascism, with its focus upon the will of a leader and his people and the unpredictability of determining where that will shall lead them.

In the conclusion to these lectures, Berlin sets forth a view of Romanticism that is encompassing and of enduring import in that its opposition to the dominant strains of Enlightenment-derived liberalism developed within modern Western societies was potent to a degree that it effected a profound change upon its foe—an alteration that was, in Berlin's estimation, an entirely unforeseen result: that of a more tolerant and plurality-minded liberalism well-aware of the dangers and falsehoods of any single purpose or simplified determination of the correct way to live, to achieve goals and set purposes for human existence. It led to our acceptance of a multilateral world that recognizes there are different ways to conceive of, and to realize, the good life—a Hegelian antithesis/synthesis of which—this last perhaps delivered to his spellbound audience with twinkle enlivening the brilliant speaker's eye—life seems so wont to spring upon our idealized conceptions and dogmas about its very form and nature.

[Amir · Rating 3 out of 5]

باید روراست بود. کتاب افسارگسیخته تر از اونه که بتونه برای کسی که تازه می خواد در مورد رومانتیسم مطلبی بخونه مفید باشه. خود برلین هم در طول حیاتش اجازه ی چاپ این کتاب رو نداده بود. اون هم به یه دلیل. کتاب متن پیاده شده سخنرانی های برلین بوده و هنوز کار داشته تا تبدیل به کتاب بشه
کتاب برای کسایی ایده آل هست که یه ساختار ذهنی منسجم و مرتب راجع به بنیادهای رومانتیسم دارن تا از لا به لای ایده های جسته و گریخته ی برلین استفاده کنن.

[Mohammad Mirzaali · Rating 4 out of 5]

آیزایا برلین رمانتی‌سیزم را بزرگ‌ترین تحول فکری در حیات انسان غربی می‌داند. از نظر برلین خاستگاه این جنبش در اصل آلمان و شرایط اجتماعی و فکری این کشور، و هم‌چنین آرای هامان، کانت، شیلر و شلگل‌ها ست. رمانتیک‌ها به جای «عقلانیت»، «اصول و قواعد جهان‌شمول» و «تفکر و شناخت» بر «احساس»، «آزادی اراده» و «خلاقیت و آفرینش» تأکید می‌کنند. برلین در فصل پایانی کتاب سعی می‌کند تا از تأثیرات پایدار این جنبش نیز بگوید و نهایتا اگزیستانسیالیسم را اصیل‌ترین میراث آن می‌داند

[Bertrand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isaiah Berlin is probably still the world's most famous historian of ideas, and made his mark in history with his 'two concepts of freedom', as well as by retrieving, for the benefit of lay and academic audience alike, what is now called the 'counter-enlightenment'. After his retirement, we are told by Henry Hardy, the editor of the present book, he was planning on writing a large book on the closely related subject of romanticism, but passed before the project came to fruition. The present volume is instead a collection of six Mellon lectures he gave in the mid-sixties.
Given its origin, the book is atypical, and although carefully pruned by the editor, the reader can still sense a certain orality. This makes it both a very flowing and enjoyable read, but also, pushes the references at the back of the volume, making it maybe less useful for research, as Hardy traced many but not all of the quotes and references, and it is sometimes unclear what is an actual quotation, and what is mere paraphrase. This slight drawback however pales in comparison to the oratory qualities of the author, and the book reads very much like a novel, full, in good romantic fashion, of thunder, anguish and ideals.
Berlin's definition of romanticism, when he eventually ennunciates it, is simple and concise (maybe too much so): it consists of "two principles, the necessity of the will and the absence of a structure of things" (134). As his approach is largely chronological, I will sum up his narrative as it appears in the book:

The first lecture deals with the ever thorny question of the definition of romanticism, both pastoral and artificial, spartan and decadent, introspective and revolutionary. The diagnosis, advanced famously by Lovejoy, reminds me quite a bit of Jeffrey Schnapp's reading of fascism as 'oxymoronic', as striving to contrast or unite seemingly polar opposites. Berlin finds in radical, all-encompassing rebellion an overlap between romanticism's many strands.

He proceeds in the second lecture to analyse Romanticism's reaction and attack against the ideals of Enlightenment, namely the belief in the knowability, universality and unity of knowledge, itself the only form of virtue. Neoclassicism, for Berlin the artistic correlate of the Enlightenment, strives to represent, but to represent not the real itself, rather the perfected and purified ideal toward which nature itself strives – to prefigure, in a sense, what progress will bring about. The first, German, romantics reacts against both the largely French cult of mimesis and the naive belief in continuous progress, preferring bitterly "a kind of retreat in depth" (37).
He goes on to explore the specific reaction offered by J. G. Hamann, that 'magus of the North' to whom he elsewhere dedicated a whole book. For Berlin, Hamann starts with a radicalisation of empiricism, which leads him to reduce all knowledge to faith. Emphasising unmediated experience, he rejects classifications as deadening, and claim that the ultimate human aspiration is for a tumultuous and violent experience, in which creation plays the central part.

In the following lecture, we move onto 'the true fathers of romanticism'. Those share with Hamann, and Vico before him, a particular awareness of the power of myth to capture aspects of human experience that seemed timeless, precisely those that the deadening classificatory mania of the Englightenment could not but denigrate. The first of those true fathers we examine, is not German but British, and it is Blake. For him "Art is the Tree of Life" and "Science the Tree of Death." (50). Diderot is another, a kind of double-agent who admires the near-criminal hubris of the genial artist. Rousseau, however, does not really qualifies, because 'his doctrines still appealed to reason' (54). More to the point is Lenz, to whom "Action, action is the soul of the world, not pleasure, not abandonment to feeling, not abandonment to reasoning, only action" (55).
With Herder (and Hamann) the work of art moves from being a craft object produced by a relatively anonymous specialist, into being an organic extension of its author, "the expression of the attitude to life, conscious or unconscious, of its maker" (59). This leads on the one hand, to Herder's demand that the work of art be analysed in its original context, and thus to historicism. On the other, it fuels the cult of sincerity, and paves the way for expressionism. Of the mixture of those two aspects also arises nationalism, the idea of a cultural community within which a given work 'makes sense' spontaneously, while, lacking the universal qualities claimed by the Englightenment, it remains 'foreign' to another.

Moving on to the 'restrained romantics' in the fourth lecture, we encounter Kant, who fit even less the romantic mould than Rousseau, but contributed all the same to their rise. From his insistence on ethical decision, and concomitant emphasis on human dignity and autonomy, derived a new conception of nature as prima materia ready to be shaped by human will. This was picked up by Schiller, who places man's moral will in opposition to nature, titanic in its ambition and often tragic in its dénouement. He then propose art as a model for politics, for an autotelic society.

Next is 'unbridled romanticism', where we find Fichte, in whom the will, moral or else, become the organising principle of reality itself – yet this will is still a largely impersonal striving, because the self itself only appear when the real, the not-self, resists its transformation. Thus, in Berlin's words, 'volo ergo sum'. Since the will is not exclusively individual, the same process goes for collectives, in which a schmittian Other must be excluded to produce identity. Schelling takes up much of this vision but rejects the opposition between creative man and inert nature: the impersonal will participates, or is identical, with nature and its perpetual process of creative renewal, and then the artist's own authentic creative activity is but the expression of nature's general movement, manifested, we are told, through his unconscious. Follows a strange excursus that collapses allegories into symbols, the later taken to connect will and unconscious by capturing in images the deeper truths that must elude language.
Berlin then covers rapidly the German writers we would more precisely associate with romanticism: Schlegel (whose irony is, in de Gaultier's famous words, 'a weapon in the war against reality'), Hoffmann (whose fantastic, somewhat naively, he finds to echo the paranoid gnosticism of Schopenhauer) and Tieck (whose metafictive elements are reduced to solipsism).

As you can probably tell, as Berlin moves from philosophy proper to literature, he looses some credibility, not least because there is no consideration of the demands made by the medium itself: he only takes literature as an expression of philosophy and politics, something which it certainly is, but within the given context of form and its history. The problems only grow with the final chapter, with which I take issue, 'The lasting effects' - which reveals the underlying objectives of the previous narrative and somewhat discredit Berlin's interpretation. The book was never about 'The roots of romanticism' but rather about its alleged legacy:

Erly on Berlin claimed that romaticism is born from the pietistic inwardness of the German XVIIth century, which is itself but a consequence of Germany's 'delayed modernisation' (my term not his) – and in particular of its intelligentsia's resentment against french domination, both political and cultural. Here we already have, at the beginning of the book, an element that will return in his concluding assessment, namely that romanticism is resentment: resentment of men whose station in life does not match their expectations, resentment of a (German) culture which feels smothered by the claims to universality of French neoclassicism. Romanticism, Berlin writes, "was a very grand form of sour grapes" (37).
Resentment and late-modernisation: you probably can see already where this is going. Fascism, for Berlin, is but a genus of romanticism, and Voltaire's influence on Frederick acts as an early dolchstoss myth. This leaves out, of course, (as indeed most accounts of fascism did, until quite recently) the mussolinesque claims to universalism and 'humanism', as well as the polemics of Carl Schmitt, for example, against 'political romanticism'. Certainly however, the notion of organic state did derive from romanticism, and Berlin introduce Adam Heinrich Mueller, whom I'd never heard of, but who gives clear romantic credentials to political theology – but here Berlin overstates his case, limiting organic society to an oppositional notion, without taking into account for example, the influence that an empirical knowledge of pre-modern societies (as later visible in Ferdinand Toennies for example) might have brought to the table: his view of romanticism is, somewhat predictably for 1965, exclusively eurocentric.
Although he claimed to focus on "what occurred in the second third of the eighteenth century" (6) Berlin goes out of his way to unearth many conservative 'commentaries' of the 1900s on romanticism, from the likes of Brunetière or Babbitt, although somehow he must have forgotten to invite Chesterton to his party. One of Berlin's recurrent sources, which I'd have thought by the mid-60s to have been duly forgotten, is Ernest Seillère: a Belle Epoque French literary scholar, often rambling but celebrated in his day, who made it his life-work to tie Nietzsche, Gobineau and romanticism together in a neat little bundle of nefarious teutonism. With the First World War, many patriots in the allied countries would take up the mantle, from Santayana (Egotism in German Philosophy, 1916) to G. A. Borgese (La Guerra delle Idee, 1916, too), but in France, the defeat of 1871 meant that germanophobia flared much earlier. Seillère himself was close to the Action Francaise, whose thuggish royalist politics have been shown to prefigure and inspire the italian squadristi and the SA. However, the Action Française was vehemently anti-romantic, tracing much like Seillère—and like Berlin—romanticism to the Germans, and, orleanists that they were, to Rousseau. In a much puzzling turn of events (which shows how prevalent in the postwar climate the equation of fascism/romanticism/germanism still was) when the Académie Française was purged of collaborators after the liberation, none other than Ernest Seillère, the Action Française sympathiser, was elected to fill one of the seats! Such self-serving 'germanic' theory of fascism is mind-boggling given the evident origins of the word 'fascism' itself, and scholars like Sternhell or Ernst Nolte have since grounded the emerging field of fascism studies in the recognition of its Latin elements.
This brings us to what I think is the core issue of the Berlin thesis – an issue that has often been noted of course, and one I should add, that for most of the book does not distract from the author's in-depth understanding of European thought, nor of his outstanding skills as a story-teller. The problem, in fact, might even participates in his story being so clear and readily understandable, but I'll leave the issue of narratives and liberalism for another time. In his conclusion, Berlin traces to romanticism not only fascism, but also existentialism, and if we read between the lines, to Marxism too: the deadening conformity of rationality must be overcome by 'going to the past, or by going within oneself' (138)—two categories which for Berlin intersect in the notion of myth, which he takes as the organic outlook of 'class or nation or Church' (138).
There's already a problem here, because he had told us not long before that the romantic myth is a modern one, created by the artist for the purpose of capturing what in essence is the existential stalemate of his experience. Indeed the relationship of romanticism to tradition remain unclear, inasmuch as the shift from individual and artistic sovereignty, which Berlin makes a great job to show in his sources, to the collective and political form of romanticism he proposes, implies the surrender of at least part of the artist's authority. Hence, existentialism, with its rejection of tradition qua tradition, already does not fit the picture. A myth, say, that of Sisiphus, might capture the alienated condition of the free man, but it is an uprooted one, it ties no-one in a community. Furthermore, Berlin comes back, when discussing existentialism, to a point he made earlier: the essence of the romantic mindset is ultimately a form of relativism, inasmuch as it is not the ideas held by someone, but the strength with which he or she hold onto them, which is worthy of admiration.
Berlin writes: 'I do not believe that in the seventeenth century, if you had a religious conflict between a Protestant and a Catholic, it would have been possible for the Catholic to say, "the Protestant is a damnable heretic and leads souls to perdition, but the fact that he is sincere raises him in my estimation. The fact that he is sincere, that he's prepared to lay down his life for the nonsense in which he believes, is a morally noble fact"' (139, see also 10). Having just read some Dante, I must first ask, what about Saladin, whom even Dante, none to keen on 'schismatic' Islam, placed in Limbo (Inferno IV, 129)? Is not in fact the very notion of Limbo, rising to orthodoxy as it does to accommodate the virtuous pagans, the Catholic recognition of faith as such, aside from dogmatic considerations? Berlin would probably answer he never claimed that romanticism was free from the pervasive influence of Christianity: in fact according to Aidan Day, the very word 'romanticism' appears first to describe, at the dawn of the XVIIth century, the influence of the literary 'romance' trickling down history from Dante or Chretien de Troyes via Spenser or Cervantes. Yet I should point out that Limbo and its virtuous pagans were much defended by Aquinas, as a way to support his own Aristotelian influences. Then we are left with the puzzle of an Aristotelian 'realist' worldview, which ascribes specific values to specific objects, rather than in their relation to the subject, but one grounded in the encounter of a geographical (Islam) and historical (Aristotle) Other, with the burden of relativism needed to accommodate them as such carried by universal Reason.
This limited, 'bounded' relativism, I am sure, Berlin would find quite agreeable, whether we call it romantic or classicist: Vico, whom Berlin finds peripherally romantic, says nothing else. The real problem however would arise when the romantics extrapolate, from the existence of geographical or historical difference, into full-blown, metaphysical relativism (or so he claims) and retreat into solipsism. The core issue then, is not so much romanticism, as it is idealism: but because Berlin presents the whole movement as arising from the 'resentful' and aestheticised movements of the German XVIIIth century, rather than trace its philosophical genealogy, we hear not of Berkeley, for example, who was more in line with Pope than with Swift, and as such might have undermined the picture of romanticism as the return of the repressed.
But to return to the 'romantic roots' of existentialism, and Marxism, what all this shows us is that the tradition of engagement and authenticity runs deep within European (and, I would assume, global) history, as does the idealist tradition. The two had met before (I might suggest courtly love as a precursor) and when they did once more in the XVIIIth century, I'd wager it is rather particular economic conditions—namely the rise of bourgeois individualism—which allowed it to achieve unprecedented autonomy and authority. But Berlin is a historian of ideas of the old-school, and social factors play no major role in his narrative: for him, romantics rebel against natural laws or those perceived as such, among which he seems to count that of supply and demand.
Here again his focus on Europe fails to account for the western encounter with hunter-gatherers: 'Burke believed . . . that the laws of of commerce are the laws of nature, and therefore the laws of God, and deduced from this that nothing could be done about passing any radical reform, and the poor would have to starve . . . . Romantic economics is the precise opposite of this. All economic institutions must be bent towards some kind of ideal of living together in a spiritually progressive manner. Above all you must not make the mistake of supposing that there are external laws, that there are objective, given laws of economics which are beyond human control' (126). I actually think there is a point to be made in recognising a religious element or structure in actual communist regimes (or for that matter, in most regimes) but tracing it back to Marx I find more difficult. Leaving aside the apocalyptic teleology of progress, which Berlin leaves aside because his idea of romanticism is 'autotelic', an end in itself, Marx, whom I should say I know little of, does I think emphasise the 'relational' character of facts over their 'substance', as do the existential romantics in Berlin's thesis, but it is a relation between objects, rather than between object and a subject.
The recognition of the constructed and historical character of political economy, for Berlin, seems a romantic flight from objectivity—and yet he has also argued that the French revolution was the result of Enlightenment ideals rather than romantic one... Given that at the start of his book, the prevalence of action over contemplation was also given as foundational mistake of romanticism, it is easy to see what he is getting at: science should rather be the contemplation of the laws of nature, supply and demand included, than the tool for its transformation. This of courses leave out the instrumental drive of enlightenment science, and the question of why should one trust in supply and demand rather than in the Great Chain of Being, neither of which are strictly empirically testable.

[Mohammad Ranjbari · Rating 5 out of 5]

آیزایا برلین، مکتب رومانتیک را در برابر انسان و جامعه قرار می دهد. در واقع رویکرد نقد ادبی وی در اشاره به سرگذشت و پیدایش مکتب رومانتیسم، رویکرد نقد ادبی جامعه شناختی است که در آن رگه های انسان گرایی و اومانیسم نیز به چشم می خورد. با مطالعۀ هر چه بیشتر کتاب این نکته آشکار می شود که وی به شدت تحت تاثیر آثار هگل، هیوم و ویکو می باشد. طبیعت، عنصر والایی که قرن ها در موردش ستایش های فراوان شده، در تقابل با ماده و جسم قرار می گیرد. روح، یکسره خود را به آرامان و آرزوها و در یک کلام به هر چه غیر از جسم و ماده است می سپارد. اما سرنوشت ماده است که باعث بروز رفتار هنرمندان در قبال آن می شود و بدین ترتیب رومانتیسم خود را نشان می دهد. رومانتیسم بنا به تعریف برلین، مسلط کردن و اعمال شکل بر جسم و ماده است. این تسلط نیز ناشی از بلوغ فکری انسان و در یک کلام «آزادی» اوست.

نویسنده در ترسیم حدود آزادی هیچ بحثی را مطرح نمی کند و این را می توان یکی از نکات مبهم در آراء وی دانست. اما در سیاق کلام وی می توان متوجه شد که وی راوی و شاید ستایش گر آزادی ای است که بتواند به دور از هر نوع تسلط دیگر و یا اعمال سلیقه و کنترل باشد. «آزاد بودن هنر نیست، باید آزاد شدن را آموخت.».

«انسانی که وجودش قائم به دیگری است، دیگر به هیچ روی انسان نیست، اعتبار خود را از دست داده و چیزی نیست مگر ما یملک آن دیگری.» ص 123

برلین نهضت رمانتیک را در کشورهای مختلف و در چهره های مختلف بررسی می کند ولی آلمان را کشوری یکته تاز در این مورد می بیند. او در خلال بسیاری از نمایشنامه های پروسی، روسی و آلمانی و ... تصویر انسان را مورد کنکاش قرار می دهد. انسان محور برجسته ای در مکتب رومانتیسم است که در تولید و زایایی این مکتب نقش مهم و اساسی را بر عهده گرفت.

از متن:

زندگی در اثر هنری چیزی است مشابه با آنچه در طبیعت می ستاییم، یعنی نوعی قدرت، نیرو، توان، زندگی و حیات فوران کننده. از این روست که نقاشی های ممتاز، مجسمه های ممتاز و موسیقی ممتاز، ممتاز خوانده می شود، چرا که ما در آنها صرفاً رویۀ ظاهری را نمی بینیم، صناعت را نمی بینیم، بلکه چیزی را می بینیم که شاید هنرمند کاملاً از آن آگاه نباشد، یعنی همان جوشش و تپش درون هنرمند، جوشش و تپش روحیه ای سرمدی که او دست بر قضا نمایندۀ گویا و آگاه آن است. تپش این روحیه، در مرتبه ای فروتر، تپش طبیعت نیز هست و بدین ترتیب تأثیر جانبخش اثر هنری بر آدمی که آن را تماشا می کند یا به آن گوش می کند مشابه تأثیر برخی پدیده های طبیعی است. ص 163

97/11/26

[Milad Jahani · Rating 5 out of 5]

یکی از بزرگترین تحولات در غرب، دوره رومانتیسم است.تحولی که نتایج و پیامدهای گسترده‌ای در حوزه‌ی علم، فلسفه،هنر و روانشناسی به همراه داشته است. آیزایا برلین با توجه به این دستاوردهای مهم در غرب به ریشه و مبنای فکری خاصه آراء و اندیشه‌های اندیشمندانی چون فیشته، کانت، هِردِر، هامان، مونتسکیو و آثار ادبی شاخصی چون ویلهام مایِستر اثر گوته و همچنین انقلاب کبیر فرانسه پرداخته است. این نظریات و تحولات بیشتر از هرچیز پُرسش را از درون انسان می‌آغازد و قائل به آزادی درونی انسان ، فارغ از هرگونه قیدو بندی است .
در کتاب "ریشه‌های رومانتیسم"، برلین تحولات را نه براساس تاریخ بلکه به صورت موردی و تحلیلی به بحث می‌نشاند.
میلاد جهانی

[Richard Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a fan of Berlin’s writing - it is both accessible and erudite. On top of this his writing is a pleasure to read. The combination is often not achieved in philosophical texts. I know a book is good when I think it is too short and I want the reading experience to continue.

The book contains many familiar themes for anyone who knows Berlin’s views or has read other books on his views on the history of ideas. It was not actually written as a book - this is an edited transcript of a series of talks Berlin gave in the 60s. But it reads extremely well as a book, and it does have that sense of listening to a brilliant person talking directly to you.

I am not (yet) well enough read on romanticism to determine if I agree with all of Berlin’s views. But they felt convincing. But my review and grading is as much about the pleasure of Berlin’s writing as it is about the philosophical and historical interpretation of the roots of romanticism.

[Taha Baghban Ronaghi · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب را به پیشنهاد دوست کتاب‌خوان ارجمندم کسرا علیزاده و با تاخیر تقریبا دوساله-آن هم به دلیل عنوان پرطمطراق‌اش که غیر مهم تلقی‌اش کرده بودم- خواندم.
کتاب و در واقع سخن‌رانی برلین بر خلاف عنوان آن، ساده‌فهم است. از رمانتیسم به عنوان جنبشی فکری در برابر روشنگری می‌گوید. از متفکران و هنرمندانی می‌گوید که از تکیه کردن بر قوانین از پیش تعیین شده‌ و پرهیز از آزادی نفرت داشته‌اند.
از انقلاب فکری‌ای می‌گوید که فاشیسم و اگزیستانسیالیسم از آن نشات می‌گیرد. تحولی که Cogito ergo sum دکارت را به Volo ergo sum تغییر می‌دهد: اراده می‌کنم پس هستم!
شاید بتوان گفت عرفای ما که با عقل‌گرایی کنار نمی‌آمدند نیز کم و بیش رمانتیک بوده‌اند: "هیچ آداب و ترتیبی مجو"، "تکیه بر تقوا و دانش در طریقت کافری‌ست"، "مفتی عقل در این مسئله لایعقل بود"

[Ralph Palm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few thoughts:
A great read if you're at all familiar with the figures discussed (18th and early 19th century philosophy types). If not, I imagine it might be hard to follow. I bet it would make an ideal teaching tool, though--as an accompaniment to a reading of the primary texts of the period. For example,
"Professor, WTF is Fichte and/or Schelling trying to say?"
"If you'd like further explanation, read Berlin's *Roots of Romanticism*, page X for next week."
--Next week--
"Oh, okay. That makes a lot more sense. But what about..."

I also love the fact that when one of these author's is obscure, he says so, rather than affect the more commonplace attitude of 'Of course, since I've spent 20 years studying this material, all the gibberish is perfectly clear.' Sort of question begging, if you think about it. As an added bonus, Berlin usually mocks the author in question when pointing this out, which must have driven specialists in the audience to distraction.

Berlin's ability to summarize extemporaneously is also quite extraordinary (the book is based on a lecture series, not a finished manuscript). I've spent years studying some of these people, but Berlin can summarize in a paragraph what might take me hours to explain. Of course, he glosses over certain details, which True Scholars Must Never Ever Do, but he knows which details to drop and keeps only the minimum necessary to make his point. This is a very effective rhetorical technique, but one I think he only gets away with due to the massive historical erudition he displayed elsewhere. If a grad student adopted this approach in class, he'd be eaten alive. Not that I have any firsthand knowledge of that or anything....

Lastly, I should point out that I have a reason that this bugs me: Berlin (and others who adopt this approach, elsewhere) are not really proving what they're saying. Instead, this rhetorical approach is an argument from authority. On the other hand, a grad student or other 'unproven' scholar would be rightly criticized for not demonstrating their claims. This contrast suggests (anecdotally, to me) a problem for academic discourse: young scholars might say something (i.e. prove something), but no one listens to them until they get older. But once they get older, and people start to listen to them, they no longer say anything.

Anyway, that last bit isn't really related to the book at all, which everybody should read all the time and stuff. Because of the oceans of books written on the period, there are precious few that are actually enjoyable to sit on a beach with and read. And this is one of them.

[Mostafa Nour · Rating 4 out of 5]

بعد نهاية كل كتاب أقرأه، أقوم بكتابة عبارة فيها أعبّر عن مُجمل الكتاب بصورة عامة، كأنها إطارًا تدور فكرة الكِتاب في فلكها. هذه المرة، مع "إشعيا برلين" في كتابه هذا: "جذور الرومانتيكية"، لم أجد عبارة مثل عبارة "تشوميسكي" لتحيط لا بالحركة الرومانتيكية وحدها، بل الوريث الفلسفي الغربي برمته، يقول "تشوميسكي":

"إنّ مابعد الحداثة ما هي إلا نتاج ثرثرة المثقفين الفارغين على مقاهي باريس"!

هي حقًا، أي الحركة الرومانتيكية، ثرثرة فارغة، ويتوبيا جامحة عن العالم والوجود. قد وُلدت من رحمها أعتى الحركات التاريخية تطرفًا كالفاشية والنازية، ولا تزال النظرة إلى الحياة، نظرة رومانتيكية حالمة، يُفضى إلينا بالحركات المُتطرفة وكل أشكال الأنظمة الشمولية.

هو كتاب هامّ لا شك، قد ذهب فيه "إ. برلين" لأصول الحركة الرومانتيكية، والتي يعتبرها "برلين" التحوّل الأعظم في الوعي الغربي منذ عصر التنوير. سواء نحو التأثيرات السلبية، والتي شكّلت وعي الحركات السياسية كالفاشية والنازية، أو نحو التأثيرات الإيجابية، كالتي نقدت مقولات عصر التنوير وقيم العقلانية التي تذهب بإمكانية فهم ظواهر الحياة المختلفة والأجابة على جميع الأسئلة.

وهو كذلك يُعتبر هامّ في فهم نشوء ظواهر الحركات العنيفة في الواقع السياسي المعاصر، فكم كانت الثورة الرومانسية الحالمة ظاهرة لا بُد منها أن تسلك في النهاية مسار العنف، آملة من ذلك تحقيق اليوتيوبيا ونهاية التاريخ!

[Harry Croxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of lectures provides one of the most insightful and lucid overviews of Romanticism's emergence against and through Enlightenment thought. Berlin's expansive and eloquent way of speech translates perfectly into a compelling prose-style. Although lacking in conventional academic citation and taking great liberty with the accuracy of certain quotes in the style of Vico before him, this by no means detracts from the work. One should treat this book as an articulate overview of what Berlin deems to be the sources of Romanticism. Keeping this fact in mind, it serves as one of the best examples of a transcribed lecture series as well as a unique and deft exploration of Enlightenment ideas and their residual influence upon Romanticism.

Finally, it's worth looking online for the audio recordings of this same lecture series. Although it differs somewhat between the spoken word and its transcription, it is a wonderful counterpart to the book.

[علاء عبد · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب ممتع وسرد متصل وربط جيد بين الأفكار والانتاج لا يخلو أحيانا من بعض القفزات التي تقبلها على مضض أو تحتاج للتأمل فيها.

[Mauricio Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me encanta aprender sobre como funciona el mundo, como se originan y manifiestan las ideas que de cierta forma moldean y moldearon el mundo en el que vivimos. Encontré este libro entre las rebajas en una feria del libro, y conociendo al autor de nombre y sabiendo que tiene una forma muy interesante de analizar el mundo, me decidí por leerlo.
Las ideas, tienen un efecto que raramente se condice con los objetivos de quienes las idearon en primera instancia, o tienen ese erecto y muchos otros diferentes. Esto es algo que permea la obra de Berlín, el analizar ese espacio negativo, lo que las ideas dicen y no dicen y como entender sus efectos, repercusiones.
Este libro tiene mucho de esto. Nos pinta un retrato sobre como surge, porque, con que fines, como evoluciona y como se manifiesta hoy en día una de las corrientes de pensamiento más importantes que ha existido.
Una forma de pensar y ver el mundo que afecto no solo al arte en general, sino a la política, a nuestra forma de pensarnos como sociedad, como nos proyectamos a futuro, como entendemos el pasado.
Un libro que es fácil y ágil de leer, requiere conocimientos previos, pero algo básico, que cualquier persona suficientemente interesada como para estar leyendo esto, ya va a tener seguramente.

Me resultó interesante y útil.
La idea de que un movimiento puede alimentar tanto al facismo, como a la empatía, a el poder comprender al otro no solo como una generalización, sino íntegramente, pensar a las personas como seres íntegros que solo podemos entender mediante la comunicación... Es fascinante.

[Gary D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

After this book, I see Romanticism everywhere, within me, without me...

[ANNA fayard]

“The purpose of painting is to convey to the questing instinct or to the questing soul what it is nature seeks after. Nature seeks after beauty and perfection…Nature may not have attained these ideals; in particular, man has conspicuously not attained them. But by inspecting nature we observe the general lines upon which she proceeds. We see what it is that she strives to produce. We know the difference between a stunted oak and fully grown oak; we know, when we call it stunted, that it is an oak which has failed to become that which it was intended by itself, or by nature to be” (33-34).
“If you asked yourself what were men after, what did men really want, you would see that what they wanted was not at all what Voltaire supposed they wanted. Voltaire thought that they wanted happiness, contentment, peace, but this was not true. What men wanted was for all their faculties to play in the richest and most violent possible fashion. What men wanted was to create, what men wanted was to make, and if this making led to clashes, if it led to wars, if it led to struggles, then this was part of the human lot” (50).

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

In human life the pendulum seems to swing violently from one extreme to the other. These lectures clearly illustrate this phenomenon in the transition from Enlightenment thought, with its fixed rules and truths, to the wilder, freer views of the Romantics. The final chapter moves on to existentialism and other more modern phenomena/philosophies, proving how in Mr Berlin's view, Romanticism is still affecting our Weltanschauung. The lectures cover the work of many writers and philosophers but may be too detailed for readers who are looking for a simpler explanation of the beginnings of the Romantic movement.

[Felipe Costa · Rating 3 out of 5]

O livro é bom, mas certamente poderia ser melhor organizado. Acredito que o último capítulo deveria ser um dos primeiros, ou seja: deveria partir dos frutos para as raízes, porém, isso é apenas a opinião de um rapaz.

O Romantismo é um acontecimento interessantíssimo pois, como mostra o livro, tem duas características completamente distintas: o primitivismo e o dandismo. Além disso, o mesmo movimento que centraria-se na pessoa, algo que certamente é um dos pecados da modernidade (a filáucia, ou o amor por si mesmo), também geraria um movimento conservador com Joseph de Maistre e Edmund Burke, na França e na Inglaterra respectivamente, que buscaria justamente combater essa centralização.

As Raízes do Romantismo é um bom livro e deve ser lido por quem tenta entender um pouco das raízes da modernidade.

[Khulood Alqahtani · Rating 4 out of 5]

يناقش هذا الكتاب الحركة الثورية الأكثر تغييرًا للوعي الغربي منذ عصر التنوير؛ الحركة الرومانتيكية. جاءت هذه الحركة احتجاجًا ضد كل القوانين السابقة، إذ سعت لرفض السلطة بكافة أشكالها، ودعت لحرية الفرد قبل المجتمع ولحرية الفكر قبل الرأي. لقد جاءت هذه الحركة كثورة كاملة وشاملة لجميع جوانب الحياة لدى الشعوب الأوروبية. وفي وصف الكاتب للحركة الرومانتيكية يقول: "تكمن أهمية الرومانتيكية في كونها أحدث الحركات الكبرى والتي حوّلت الحياة والفكر في العالم الغربي. ويظهر لي أنها التحول الأعظم والفريد الذي حدث في وعي العرب، بحيث إن كافة الحولات التي حدثت في القرن التاسع عشر والعشرين هي أقل أهمية في نظري ومتأثرة بعمق بالحركة الرومانتيكية على أقل تقدير"

[Sergio Redondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tengo debilidad por Berlin. Me parece un pensador inmenso y con una cultura vastísima, y en este ensayo, que constituye la recopilación de una serie de conferencias radiofónicas que impartió en A. W. Mellon y grabadas por la BBC, lo vuelve a demostrar.
Un análisis propio y personal del romanticismo como corriente con un impacto decisivo en todas las corrientes de pensamiento y expresión posteriores, centrado principalmente en la rama alemana.
He de reconocer que la lectura de este libro me ha resultado bastante más densa que la de 'El erizo y el zorro', pero no por ello menos disfrutable.
100% recomendado.

[Domenico Fina · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Il risultato del Romanticismo è dunque il liberalismo, la tolleranza, la decenza e la consapevolezza delle proprie imperfezioni della vita; in una certa misura, un accrescimento dell'autocomprensione razionale."

[Brook Finlayson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Demands and rewards re-reading.

[Ea · Rating 3 out of 5]

    Romanticism is portrayed as an aesthetic movement in literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography. Nineteenth-century romanticism was characterised by the avoidance of classical forms and rules, it can also be seen as the rejection of  precepts of order, harmony, balance, and rationality that epitomised neoclassicism; it was to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment, rationalism, and physical materialism. Romanticism emphasised the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental. It placed value on imagination and emotion.

     Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism include an emphasis on emotions and inner world; celebration of nature, beauty, and imagination; rejection of industrialization, organised religion, rationalism, and social convention; idealisation of women, children, and rural life; inclusion of supernatural or mythological elements; interest in the past; frequent use of personification; experimental use of language and verse forms, including blank verse; and emphasis on individual experience of the "sublime." Charles Baudelaire—a French poet—quoth that  “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling." This quote, and Charles Baudelaire's description of it, emphasises individualism, freedom from rules, and  spontaneity; Baudelaire also suggests that Romanticism examines the inner feelings.

    Romanticists' attitudes included a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect; a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and mental potentialities; a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure in general, and a focus on his passions and inner struggles; a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator— Victor Hugo's phrase "liberalism in literature," meaning especially the freeing of the artist and writer from restrains and rules and suggesting that phase of individualism marked by the encouragement of revolutionary political ideas— whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures; an emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth; an obsessive interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era; and a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.

     Romanticism in literature can best be described as a large system of sometimes competing philosophies, agendas, and points of interest. No other period in English literature exhibits more variety in style, theme, and content than the Romantic Movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Withal, no period has been the topic of so much disagreement and confusion over its defining principles and aesthetics. Romanticism was introduced by several related developments from the mid-18th century. Romanticism characterised a new appreciation of the medieval romance— from which the romantic movement’s name came into the possession of. The romance was a tale or ballad of chivalric adventure whose emphasis on individual heroism and on the exotic and the mysterious was in clear contrast to the elegant formality and artificiality of prevailing Classical forms of literature, such as the French Neoclassical tragedy or the English heroic couplet in poetry.

      There are two phases of Romanticism in literature. The first phase of the Romantic movement was marked by innovations in both content and literary style and by a preoccupation with the mystical, the subconscious, the idiosyncratic, and the supernatural. A wealth of talents, including Friedrich Hölderlin, the early Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jean Paul, Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, A.W. and Friedrich Schlegel, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Friedrich Schelling, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, belong to this first phase. In Revolutionary France, the vicomte de Chateaubriand and Mme de Staël were the chief initiators of Romanticism, by virtue of their influential historical and theoretical writings. Romanticism in literature began in the 1790’s with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth’s “Preface” to the second edition (1800) of Lyrical Ballads, in which he described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” became the manifesto of the English Romantic movement in poetry. William Blake was the third principal poet of the movement’s early phase in England.

     The second phase of Romanticism, comprehending the period from about 1805 to the 1830s, was marked by a quickening of cultural nationalism and a new attention to national origins, as attested by the collection and imitation of native folklore, folk ballads and poetry, folk dance and music, and even previously ignored medieval and Renaissance works. The revived historical appreciation was translated into imaginative writing by Sir Walter Scott, who is often considered to have invented the historical novel. At about this same time English Romantic poetry had reached its zenith in the works of John Keats, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

     Early Romanticism was shaped largely by Baron Antoine Jean Gros, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. This blurring of stylistic boundaries is best expressed in Ingres’ Apotheosis of Homer and Eugène Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus which polarized the public at the Salon of 1827 in Paris. While Ingres’ work seemingly embodied the ordered classicism of the David in contrast to the disorder and tumult of the Delacroix, in fact both works draw from the Davidian tradition but each ultimately subverts that model, asserting the originality of the artist. In the mid-18th century a number of artists including James Barry, Henry Fuseli, John Hamilton Mortimer, and John Flaxman, began to paint subjects that were at odds with the strict decorum and classical historical and mythological subject matter of conventional figurative art. These artists preferred themes that were bizarre, pathetic, eerie, unusual, or extravagantly heroic. William Blake, the other principal early Romantic painter in England, evolved his own powerful and unique visionary images. In Romantic art, nature— with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes—offered an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. The violent and terrifying images of nature conjured by Romantic artists recall the eighteenth-century aesthetic of the Sublime.

     In the next generation the great genre of English Romantic landscape painting emerged in the works of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable— whose art expresses his response to his native English countryside—These artists emphasized transient and dramatic effects of light, atmosphere, and colour to portray a dynamic natural world capable of evoking awe and grandeur. As in a view of Salisbury Cathedral; he quoth that a sketch represents “nothing but one state of mind—that which you were in at the time.” Constable's subjective, highly personal view of nature accords with the individuality that is a central tenet of Romanticism.

     This interest in the individual and subjective is mirrored in the Romantic approach to portraiture. Typically, records of individual likeness, portraits became vehicles for expressing a range of psychological and emotional states in the hands of Romantic painters.

     Romanticism expressed itself in architecture primarily through emulations of the older and ancient architectural styles and through eccentric buildings known as “follies.” Medieval Gothic architecture appealed to the Romantic imagination in England and Germany, and this renewed interest led to the Gothic Revival. Wyatt's preposterous, mock medieval Fonthill Abbey displayed the romantic building style in extreme form.


           Romanticism in music was characterized by an emphasis on emotion and great freedom of form. The elements of music reached its zenith in the works of Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. Many romantic composers, including Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, and Brahms, worked in small forms that are flexible in structure, such as prelude, intermezzo, nocturne, ballad, and cappriccio, especially in solo music for the piano. Another romantic contribution was the art song for voice and piano. Romantic composers, particularly Liszt, in combining music and literature, created the symphonic poem. Berlioz also made use of literature; much of his work. Romantic opera began with Weber, included the works of the Italians Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, and culminated in the work of Wagner, who aimed at a complete synthesis of the arts in his idea of Gesamtkunstwerk.


     In conclusion, Romanticism have played a major role in our history. Its values were based on transcendentalism, imagination, individualism, and emotions. The Romantic movement had broadened to embrace the literatures of almost all of Europe. Moreover, romanticism has also appealed to music, painting, and architecture. It has influenced the world both artistically and aesthetically.

[Álvaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Siempre he querido leer más en profundidad sobre el romanticismo, y ya había abordado dos obras sobre este tema que más o menos me habían hablado del "qué" o del "por qué" del romanticismo, pero no del "desde dónde", y en este breve libro de título tan certero se aborda precisamente la influencia de kant, fichte, Rousseau, y el porqué el romanticismo es el hijo bastardo de la ilustración, y a su vez el padre (no tan) lejano del existencialismo y del fascismo.

Al ser una transcripción de unas conferencias se lee ágil, con un ritmo oral, pero no es un libro de lectura general, por lo que si no estáis interesados en EXACTAMENTE lo que dice el título, no os aportará nada.
A mi me ha ayudado a entender mejor este movimiento en el contexto de una asignatura del siglo XIX, y aún así, ya tengo en casa el abordaje que hace al romanticismo aleman (¿hay otro?) Safranski (del que ya leí su "Nietzsche" y me encantó) para seguir completando conocimiento sobre ese fascinante y crucial siglo XIX, y este tan mal entendido movimiento romántico.

[Thomas Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historian and philosopher Isaiah Berlin traces what one might regard as a more traditional account of the development of Romanticism in Europe, connecting the movement with a series of important developments in European history and literature, such as the French Revolution and the writings of Goethe. Berlin does not take on the task of offering a precise definition of Romanticism; he instead circumscribes the movement within a more general trend of philosophical, political, and economic discourses that resist Enlightenment notions of universality.

For Berlin, examples of this resistance can be seen in a diverse corpus of writing, ranging from Montesquieu, whose ideas of relativity in Persian Letters challenged the idea of absolute human values, to Hume's metaphysics, which posited that the existence of the external world as we know it is beyond mathematical or deductive proofs.

The nucleus of the Romantic movement, for Berlin, resides in Germany. Germany's economic and cultural development in the 17th and 18th centuries lagged far behind that of France, and for Berlin, this sowed the seeds of an inferiority complex that would evolve into a full-blown attack on French Enlightenment discourses of rationality, science, and human happiness. In addition, widespread Lutheran Pietism in Germany, which stressed an intense, de-intellectualized relationship with God, underscored a sense of cultural and spiritual difference between Germans and their French neighbors that many saw as irreconcilable.

It is not surprising, then, that Berlin trumpets working-class figures such as Johann Hamann, Kant, Herder, Schelling, Schiller, and Holderlin as Romanticism's pioneers. Berlin stresses that these thinkers and writers worked within assumptions that the universe was fundamentally not knowable; that man's ultimate purpose was not to discover, but to create. Art represents the great achievement of humankind's collective energy, expressing itself through the exertion of individual wills and spirits, and eventually raising the consciousness of the species.

Berlin's analysis provides a key discussion of the concept of movement that transposes to a transatlantic perspective on Romanticism. Berlin explains that Sehnsucht, a German term of searching and yearning, "is the reason why we must go to distant countries...this is why we travel" (105). The universe, to Berlin's romantic thinkers, is not a closed, perfected entity, but an infinite vector of energy and creation, "in movement and not at rest". The human spirit, in the same fashion, resists the static, and embraces the dynamic, engaging itself in an endless process of striving forward, often without knowledge of why it does so.

With the engine of colonialism still running at high speeds in the 17th and 18th centuries, the trope of movement, and its obverse, uprootedness, develop into central themes of the Romantic movement. Movement creates what Mary Louise Pratt calls "contact zones" - places of engagement between local and foreign populations - that become breeding grounds (both literally and figuratively) for discourses of identity and morality that resist traditional European conceptions

[Mohammad Ali Shamekhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

سرانجام بعد از مدت ها این کتاب را خواندم - صد صفحه اش را خواندم بعد مدت ها فاصله افتاد، بعد دوباره مقداری را خواندم، بعد فاصله افتاد، تا اینکه سرانجام خواندمش! کتاب اثری است خواندنی.

زاویه ی نگاه برلین به رومانتیسم قابل تأمل است. از نظر او رومانتیسم از حیث اجتماعی زائیده ی فقر و سرخوردگی اجتماعی رومانتیک ها - به دلیل سیاست های حکومتی و اشرافی حکومت فردریک کبیر - و از حیث فلسفی زائیده ی قرائت فیشته ای از فلسفه ی کانت است - به دلیل تأکید آن بر خودقانون گذاری ( اتونومی ) و خودبنیادی و آزادی. در آغاز برلین همچنین از خصومت رایج در قبال تهاجم فرهنگی فرانسوی ها - که خود را به صورت آداب اشرافی و رسوم و قواعد آن نشان می دهد - ، به عنوان محرک جهت گیری های ملی گرایانه ی رومانتیک ها یاد می کند. البته فرانسه علاوه بر این تأثیر سلبی، تأثیری ایجابی نیز دارد: انقلاب فرانسه. انقلاب فرانسه فریاد امکان رهایی از نظم موجود و زیر پا گذاشتن ارزش های به رسمیت شناخته پیشین بود - البته نباید فراموش کرد که بعدتر که این انقلاب به تهاجم های ناپلئونی رسید دیگر آن خوشبینی ها در ملل دیگر کمتر ظاهر می شد.

از نظر برلین بنیاد تفکر رومانتیک تأکید بر اراده و نفی هر گونه ساختار ثابت و معین در جهان است. به عبارت دیگر رومانتیسم اعمال دیدگاه زیباشناسانه بر عرصه ی واقعیت انضمامی است. اما برلین معتقد است از آنجا که بخشی از انسانیت آدمی ارتباط با دیگری است و ارتباط با دیگری جز از طریق افق های فهم مشترک ممکن نمی شود، رویکرد ساختارشکن رومانتیک در نهایت باعث در هم شکستن آدمی و جنون او می گردد - مثال این جنون از نظر برلین ماکس اشتیرنر و تاحدی نیچه است. او معتقد است نمی توان با پس زدن هر گونه ساختار از جهان زندگی را به پیش برد.

او همچنین تأثیر رومانتیسم را بر دو جریان معاصر پی می گیرد: اگزیستانسیالیسم و فاشیسم. البته در نهایت معتقد است رومانتیسم در عمل موجب پدید آمدن نوعی تساهل و هم زیستی گردیده است - ��یرا هر کس دریافته قادر نیست دیگری را در محدوده ی مطلوب خود در بند کند و چاره ای جز نوعی موافقت و همراهی وجود ندارد ( البته این نتیجه نیت خود رومانتیکرها نبود )

البته در پایان ذکر این نکته ضروری است که قرائت برلین یکی از قرائت های موجود است. مثلا بیزر قرائت برلین را نادرست می شمارد.

[Melika Khoshnezhad · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب در واقع سخنرانی‌های آیزایا برلین درباره‌ی جریان رمانتیسیسم و خاستگاه‌شه. مخصوصاً برای کسی مثل من که شیفته‌ی هنر رمانتیک و فلسفه‌ی آلمان قرن هجدهم و نوزدهمه خیلی جذاب بود. آیزایا برلین اول سعی می‌کنه تا تعریفی برای جریان رمانتیسیم پیدا کنه که خب مشخصاً اصلاً کار ساده‌ای نیست با توجه به گستردگی معنایی این جریان. بعدش سعی می‌کنه دلایل به وجود اومدنش رو در خاستگاه اصلی‌اش که به نظرش آلمانه بررسی کنه. به نظر برلین رمانتیسیم منتقد پروپاقرصِ روشنگری و این باوره که جهان داره پیشرفت می‌کنه و فهم انسان ازش روز به روز بیشتر می‌شه و پاسخی برای تمام پرسش‌های بشر وجود داره. علاوه‌براین، چون در اون زمان اوضاع اجتماعی و سیاسی آلمان به‌ویژه بعد از جنگ‌های سی‌ساله خیلی خوب نبوده و از مذهب هم ناامید بودن و به صورت خاص از فرانسه و روشنفکران فرانسوی متنفر بودن، روی به سوی نوعی درون‌گرایی اورده بودن که بعدتر در آثار رمانتیک‌ها عمق بیشتری پیدا می‌کنه. به نظر برلین پدران اصلی رمانتیسیسم هامان و کانت و هردر هستند. هردر به شخصه برای من بی‌نهایت جذابه و خیلی دوست دارم بیشتر درباره‌ش بخونم. خیلی جالبه که برخلاف باور عمومی روسو رو حساب نمی‌کنه و حتی معتقده که باورهای روسو در واقع هم‌راستا با اصول روشنگری بودن که بر اساس اونا پاسخی برای مشکلات بشر وجود داره و اونم بازگشت به دوران پیش از تمدنه. و باز جالب‌تر این‌که کانت که در واقع از مدافعان پروپاقرص روشنگری بوده با فلسفه‌ی اخلاقش و تأکیدی که بر آزادی اراده و خودآیینی می‌کنه روی افرادی مثل فیشته تأثیرگذار می‌شه و خب فیشته و شلینگ و شلایرماخر و شوپنهاور و برادران شلگل هم تحت تأثیر این مفهوم رمانتیسیسم رو پروبال می‌دن.
رمانتیسیسم به صورت کلی با تأکیدی که بر آزادی و آفرینش ارزش‌ها داره، باور به هر نوع ارزش مطلقی رو رد می‌کنه و به هیچ‌وجه این دیدگاه رو درست نمی‌دونه که جهان متناهی است و انسان می‌تونه به دانشی کامل از اون دست پیدا کنه. برای یک رمانتیک جهان همیشه نامتناهی و رازآلوده و همواره بخشی از آن بر ما پوشیده باقی می‌مونه اما ما در تلاش برای رسیدن به‌ش هستیم. نه این‌که ممکن باشه روزی به‌ش برسیم، مهم خودِ تلاشه.
در نهایت برلین به تأثیرات پایدار رمانتیسیم روی باورهای مدرن و جریان اگزیستانسیالیسم و حتی فاشیسم اشاره می‌کنه.

[Nikos Gouliaros · Rating 4 out of 5]

This erudite book brilliantly unveils currents in the evolution of (western) thought and sensibility from the 18th through the 20th century. The fact that, consisting of lectures, it just cannot offer an all-encompassing narrative of romanticism might be an actual blessing, making it more concise and to-the-point. My 'problem' with such histories of thought though is that they are just practically impossible to 'prove', that they can feel a bit constructed; how can one prove that fascism would not have been what it was but for romanticism? Fuzziness in the theories of some of the thinkers analyzed (Schiller comes to mind) does not make things easier. I admit, however, that the majority of Berlin's arguments are readily believable, and his narrative on how romanticism came to be and how it still takes part in shaping our worldview does not fail to convince.

(Αγορασμένο το 2007 από το Περιβόλι του Βιβλίου στο Μοναστηράκι - πολύ λυπήθηκα όταν έκλεισε - τώρα βρήκε τον καιρό του να διαβαστεί).

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

No suelo comentar los libros sobre ciencias sociales o pólitica que leo, pero en este caso creo que vale la pena para que quien se acerque a ver referencias de este libro, no dude en tomarlo.

Isaiah Berlin es un gran pensador liberal del siglo XX, pero que no sea un impedimento para el que no sea liberal (yo me considero marxista) acercarse a este libro, y autor. Berlin, con su gran conocimiento y buena escritura, nos introduce al movimiento romantico de una manera muy simple, más no sencilla. El libro está escrito y sistematizado con una claridad increible, por lo que cualquiera que no sea gran conocedor de la filosofia en general, podría leerlo y entenderlo. Ademas, el tema es tan transversal, que podemos acercarnos a este libro por cualquier interés: filosófico, político, literario, histórico, sociologico, etc.

Muy recomendado, para los amantes de la filosofía y politica, y para los que quieran introducirse a ella.

[Bruno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Geweldig! In geen tijden, misschien wel nooit, een beter boek gelezen over de strijd tussen de klassieke en de moderne traditie, over rationalisme versus emotie, empirie versus kunst, apollo versus bacchus, wetenschap versus waanzin, dood versus leven, koud versus warm, eindig versus oneindig, enzovoort, enzovoort. Een introductie tot de romantiek die leest als een thriller en in feite kan dienen als een naslagwerk voor de moderne filosofie. Ik ben gepassioneerd zou Berlin waarschijnlijk zeggen en ik laat dit boek nooit meer van mijn zijde. Wie de wereld beter wil begrijpen, of juist wil inzien dat het allemaal een vrij onbegrijpelijk geheel is, kan maar beter naar de Scheltema fietsen (andere boekhandels hebben het niet op voorraad).