Romanticism

According to Robert Solomon’s account, Romanticism did not LEAD to nationalism; it was nationalism. In particular, it was a German nationalist reaction to the perceived threat of French and English Enlightenment thought: “Cosmopolitan philosophers in London or Paris might pretend that they could speak for all humanity, but equally serious thinkers stuck in the small, fragmented, still largely feudal states of Germany could not easily do so. English and French culture ruled, or aspired to rule, the world. It was all the defensive Germans could do just to get their language and culture acknowledged in their own lands. Many of the princes of Germany considered themselves enlightened, and spoke mainly in French.” At the same time, Romanticism participated in the same “transcendental pretence” that was at the heart of the Enlightenment: Romantics “projected [their] provincial anxieties on to the universe itself.”