The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism

frederick c. beiser

The Early Romantics met resistance from artists and academics alike in part because they defied the conventional wisdom that philosophy and the arts must be kept separate. Indeed, as the literary component of Romanticism has been studied and celebrated in recent years, its philosophical aspect has receded from view. This book, by one of the most respected scholars of the Romantic era, offers an explanation of Romanticism that not only restores but enhances understanding of the movement's origins, development, aims, and accomplishments--and of its continuing relevance.

Poetry is in fact the general ideal of the Romantics, Frederick Beiser tells us, but only if poetry is understood not just narrowly as poems but more broadly as things made by humans. Seen in this way, poetry becomes a revolutionary ideal that demanded--and still demands--that we transform not only literature and criticism but all the arts and sciences, that we break down the barriers between art and life, so that the world itself becomes "romanticized." Romanticism, in the view Beiser opens to us, does not conform to the contemporary division of labor in our universities and colleges; it requires a multifaceted approach of just the sort outlined in this book.

Genres philosophyromanticismnonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 22,2004

This edition

Format: 272 pages, Paperback
Published: April 28, 2006 by Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674019805
ASIN: 0674019806
Language: English

About the author

frederick c. beiser

Frederick C. Beiser, one of the leading scholars of German Idealism, is a Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. Prior to joining Syracuse, he was a member of the faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington where he received a 1999-2000 NEH Faculty Fellowship. He has also taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Harvard and Yale University. Beiser earned his DPhil. degree from Oxford University under the direction of Charles Taylor and Isaiah Berlin.

Beiser's first book, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Harvard, 1987) was widely influential in revising the commonly held, but notorious accounts of German Idealism. In this book, Beiser sought to reconstruct the background of German Idealism through the narration of the story of the Spinoza or Pantheism controversy. Consequently, a great many figures, whose importance was hardly recognized by the English speaking philosophers, were given their proper due.
Beiser has also written on the German Romantics and 19th century British philosophy.