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How did Romanticism react against Enlightenment rationalism?
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Enlightenment
The search for knowledge never endsābut it started somewhere.
Romanticism emerged in the late 18th century as a direct reaction against the Enlightenment and its core reliance on rationalism and physical materialism. While the Enlightenment celebrated abstract reason, order, and the mechanical understanding of the universe, Romantics viewed these values as restrictive and insufficient for the human experience.1234
In contrast to the Enlightenment's focus on intellect and collective social progress, Romanticism emphasized the following shifts:
- Emotion over Reason: Romantics exalted emotion and the senses over intellect, believing that profound inner feeling was the primary source of truth and artistic creation.152
- Subjectivity and the Individual: The movement prioritized the individual, the subjective, and the personal, often pitting the independent creator against the constraints of society.152
- Imagination and Transcendence: Rather than relying solely on empirical methodology, Romantics viewed imagination as a gateway to spiritual truth and transcendent experience.12
- Nature and the Mysterious: Romantics turned away from the Enlightenment's mechanistic view of nature, instead finding beauty, mystery, and the divine in the natural world, the exotic, and the supernatural.156