The Quest of the Absolute

Louis Dupré

Description

This eagerly awaited study brings to completion Louis Dupré's planned trilogy on European culture during the modern epoch. Demonstrating remarkable erudition and sweeping breadth, The Quest of the Absolute analyzes Romanticism as a unique cultural phenomenon and a spiritual revolution. Dupré philosophically reflects on its attempts to recapture the past and transform the present in a movement that is partly a return to premodern culture and partly a violent protest against it.

Following an introduction on the historical origins of the Romantic Movement, Dupré examines the principal Romantic poets of England (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats), Germany (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Hölderlin), and France (Lamartine, de Vigny, Hugo), all of whom, from different perspectives, pursued an absolute ideal. In the chapters of the second part, he concentrates on the critical principles of Romantic aesthetics, the Romantic image of the person as reflected in the novel, and Romantic ethical and political theories. In the chapters of the third, more speculative, part, he investigates the comprehensive syntheses of romantic thought in history, philosophy, and theology.

The Quest of the Absolute is an important work both as the culmination of Dupré's ongoing project and as a classic in its own right. The book will meet the expectations of the specialist as well as appeal to more general readers with philosophical, cultural, and religious interests.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• Movements
• Modern
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Modern history
• General officer
• Romanticism
• General
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268077815
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

LOUIS DUPRÉ
The Quest of the Absolute
Birth and Decline of European Romanticism
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2013 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu -->
All Rights Reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-268-07781-5 Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dupré, Louis K., 1925- The quest of the absolute : birth and decline of European romanticism / Louis Dupré. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-268-02616-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 0-268-02616-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Romanticism. I. Title. B836.5.D87 2013 190.9'034—dc23 2013022545 ∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. -->
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CONTENTS
Preface
CHAPTER 1. What Was and What Is Romanticism?
PART I. Typology of Romantic Literature
CHAPTER 2. English Romantic Poetry
CHAPTER 3. German Romantic Poetry
CHAPTER 4. French Romantic Poetry
PART II. Systematic Discussion of Romantic Aesthetics, Psychology, and Ethics
CHAPTER 5. The Beautiful and the Sublime
CHAPTER 6. The Romantic Image of the Person as Reflected in the Novel
CHAPTER 7. Romantic Ethics
CHAPTER 8. Political Theories after the French Revolution
PART III. Syntheses of Romantic Thought
CHAPTER 9. The Romantic Idea of History
CHAPTER 10. Philosophical Foundations of Romantic Thought
CHAPTER 11. A New Religion?
Conclusion
Notes Index 361 -->
PREFACE
The ideas and artistic achievements of a culture reflect the mind’s light on being at a particular epoch. That light waxes and wanes. Ideas emerge, dominate public discourse for a while, and then fade away, only to be rediscovered later. They may be forgotten, but they have become an integral part of a living tradition. They are transitory and yet permanent. The intellectual revolution initiated by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo started a process that ever since has extended to more and more areas. We have learned what it means to live in a cosmos that has no mathematical center, that is virtually unlimited, and yet, even in its remote areas, is ruled by identical laws. As we no longer are at the physical center of the cosmos, we have come to realize that the mind must all the more assert its spiritual dominance and assume full responsibility for our personal destiny as well as for the world that surrounds us. Freedom has become an unconditional demand of human existence. Creative freedom has also transformed the nature of modern art and poetry. Artists should follow the creative impulse they experience in themselves. Expressiveness, not imitation of nature, has become the leading aesthetic norm. Such are some of the fundamental principles of the modern mind.
In two previous studies on modern culture, one about Renaissance Humanism and the other about the Enlightenment, I have traced the earlier stages of the process of modernity. The present work investigates its next major development. The French Revolution radicalized the principles of modernity. It opened a prospect of ever more extensive programs of emancipation. The drive toward personal and social freedom was too comprehensive to be contained within the restrictions of a political program. Indeed, all finite attempts to realize the new ideal proved to be no more than way stations in the pursuit of an unconditioned Idea. The two foremost Romantic philosophers, Fichte and Schelling, openly professed that they aimed at an unlimited absolute. Through the entire epoch we sense a desire for the unattainable: Novalis’s and Hölderlin’s Sehnsucht , Byron’s and Shelley’s defiance, Lamartine’s sadness, and de Vigny’s Stoic resignation all reveal an aspiration to surpass the limits of human capacity. The nature of this search as expressed in poetry, art, and philosophy, but also in political theory and in new modes of religious symbolization, forms the subject of this investigation.
Unquestionably, the present age enormously differs from the early nineteenth century. Yet the aspirations of the Romantic mind continue to resonate today. Even the frequent use of such terms as late Romantic or neo-Romantic points to the endurance of at least some of the Romantic ideals in our time. Our contemporaries, like the Romantics, typically resist political restrictions, social divisions, fixed moral rules, and dogmatic religion. They experience the same desire for global unity while fiercely resisting any attack on their regional autonomy. The seeds of the two powerful ideologies of the twentieth century, communist universalism and fascist nationalism, were buried deep in Romantic thought, waiting to germinate and overrun the entire twentieth century. Much in our social behavior we have inherited from the Romantic response to pressure in spontaneous outbursts of protest or exuberance, cultural rebellions, vociferous strikes, and street demonstrations. The Romantic cult of nature has survived in our present care for the earth, in our preservation of wilderness, and in our preference for all that is “natural.” A fascination with the mysterious, the esoteric, and the irrational, which is apparent in popular mysticism, in religious syncretism, and in efforts to attain instant ecstasy, testifies to a continuing spiritual unrest that can be traced back to the Romantic era.
I have limited this investigation to the cultures that played a leading part in this spiritual revolution: the German, the English, and the French. Those restrictions unfortunately have forced me to exclude great poets such as Mickiewicz, superb novelists such as Manzoni, and the entire contribution of such major North American writers as Whitman, Melville, Hawthorne, and Mark Twain. Some of the spiritual fathers of Romantic thought, such as Rousseau, Herder, and Jacobi, are only briefly mentioned, because I have discussed them at length in my book The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture. Much else has been omitted that could or perhaps should have been included. I have not tried to write a history of Romantic literature, philosophy, art, or religion, but rather to sketch what I consider characteristic of Romanticism as a cultural phenomenon. Nor do my translations of various poems or my commentaries on novels have any literary pretensions; they merely serve to support and illustrate the ideas active in this process. The nature of the discussion has largely determined my choice of writers, artists, and critics. A similar consideration has directed my selection of the area in which the discussion of a particular subject dominates. In philosophy and religion, my attention has mainly, though not exclusively, gone to Germany, in poetry and aesthetics to England, and in psychological, ethical, and social theories to France.
For reasons that will appear later, I have concentrated on the period between the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, when Romanticism developed from a literary trend into a comprehensive cultural movement. Even those who never belonged to any formal “Romantic Movement,” such as Jane Austen in England or Joseph de Maistre in France, display some of its characteristic traits. Following the introductory chapter, the three chapters of Part I are intended as a typology of the Romantic experience as expressed by representative poets of England, Germany, and France. It may seem paradoxical to choose poetry, “the most individual expression of the most individual emotion” according to one Romantic poet, to convey a general notion of the Romantic experience. Still, I have done so with some confidence, for poets alone are able to transfer the depth and comprehensiveness of this experience. I have devoted the chapters of Part II to more systematic discussions of specifically Romantic themes, such as aesthetics, psychology, ethics, and politics. I conclude in Part III with the more comprehensive syntheses of Romantic thought in philosophy, theology, and history. This third part is theoretical, even speculative, rather than analytic. The texts that I cite in the second and third parts are selected not for their outstanding aesthetic quality, but for their appropriateness as illustrations of the theory presented in them. My intention in this final part is to bring to a close the argument on the development and significance of modern culture that I began in two of my earlier works, Passage to Modernity and The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture.
Although neither the main principles of modern culture nor the critique to which they have been exposed have ceased to be valid, nevertheless, some obvious fundamental changes occurred during the twentieth century. The question is: Have we broken with the principles of modernity altogether? Only the future will tell. Certainly, since Nietzsche we have begun to question the foundations of modern thought. Yet is our questioning more than a fuller awareness of what it means to be modern? 1 What will the new period bring? So far, its critique of modernity has still been derived from modern sources in spite of a new prefix to the term modernity.
May this book be read as a memorial to the late Cyrus Hamlin, my colleague and friend, who encouraged my efforts and criticized some of the results, chapter by chapter. Without his assistance, it would not have been written. Other colleagues at Yale who directly or indirectly assisted me were Jeffrey Sammons, Geoffrey Hartman, and, indirectly, the late Henri Peyre. To all of them I remain grateful. My warmest thanks also to Roger Repohl, a generous friend and a thoughtful reader, who discussed parts of the text with me.