Romanticism

Necessary ideal: to suffer is good.

Rousseau - father of romanticism – has thoughts on human nature: "mankind is born free but everywhere is in chains". Each person is impelled by inner desire to be free but civilisation constrains us all.

Rousseau's main idea: Social Contract in order to benefit from civilisation, we surrender our freedom for protection (an integrative idea). This is an unhappy condition to be in and a revolutionary way to consider civilisation. Classical Greek thought was that civilisation was Great. "Barbarian" literally meant 'dog person'. But Rousseau sees civilisation as constraining – it's the individual against society. Humans should be free.

Emile – novel where rational child destroyed by education system. Just another way that Roussea subverts the idea that to be civilised is good.

It was the late 18th century and France was beginning to expand as an empire.. France encountered undeveloped people, namely those of Tahiti. These are people in tune with nature, born free and living natural lives.

Another of Rousseau's big ideas was that of the General Will. He believed in small communities, that no country should be bigger than what you can walk in a day. But after the French Revolution, General Will is transformed into the Will of Nations, from which we get nationalism, and so nationalism and romanticism are philosophically linked in this way (nationalism also has connections to Hegellian theories I think)

Prometheus is a  Greek Titan who fashioned mankind from clay and stole fire from gods for mankind. In punishment he was chained to the side of a mountain where an eagle would come and eat his liver every day. Prometheus defied the Gods. This is a quintessentially romantic deed because he defies fate. The Cult of Prometheus grows around the creative class of this era, Beethoven dedicating his work to the Titan for example.

Byron was a romantic poet and possibly the first 'celeb' in the modern way. He was famous for his art and his poems printed all over Europe. He loved Venice, a romantic city, where he apparently fathered 700 bastards there alone. Venice, named after Venus, is also the city of casanova.

In Literature and Poetry you have Shelly, Byron and Keats, who states that "Beauty is Truth, Truth is Beauty / This is all we can know in this world". This is completely contrary view to that of empiricists. Truth is something subjective, not objective, according to the romantics. The debate between romantics and empiricists seems to be equivalent to the the form/function debate.