THE PROBLEM OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND POST-KANTIAN ROMANTICISM

Among the many clichés about Romanticism is that there is no definition of it since, as a movement of rebellion, it always immediately rebelled against any proposed definition of itself and was thus forever keeping itself out of reach of all those who would pin it down and catalog it. However, like all such clichés, it is a cliché precisely because it captures a central truth about its subject; and, although it means that all generalizations about Romanticism ought to be expressed with so many qualifying clauses as to make the generalization difficult to enforce, it does not rule out looking for at least some general family resemblances in the movement.

Romanticism effectively began in Germany in the late eighteenth century – the term was even coined there, in Jena, most likely by Friedrich Schlegel – and it was at first propagated and developed among a group of young men and women who knew each other and at least for one brief period lived next to each other in Jena or Berlin. It spread from there to England, France, and the rest of Europe (although – again, exceptions need to be noted – Wordsworth was a contemporary of the German Romantics, not their successor). One of the most well-known and often repeated characterizations was made by Hegel, who personally knew the individuals involved while he was in Jena, and who, while rejecting their approach, at the same time incorporated large chunks of it into his own system.