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Tag Archives: Romanticism
Love Follies
At askphilosophy.org punters get to ask question that get answered by a panel of philosophers. It is an excellent idea.
Every now and again, somebody who really knows about philosophy lobs in a seemingly innocuous question to see what happens, like this entry:
Update and Happiness
Delay in Posting
I am sorry for yesterday’s posting drought and the delay in the next part of the Mansfield Park essay. This is partly due to outside factors but mainly due to the length of time it is taking to write the main section of the essay. That I should over-estimate my preparedness and underestimate [...]
Posted in commentary, topical Also tagged classical philosophy, ethics, happiness, Jane Austen, philosophy, rationalism, reason, scientism Leave a comment
Seeing Red
[Reminder: The blog is going onto a light posting schedule to accommodate a busy weekend; the next instalment in the Mansfield Park essay should be posted around Tuesday next week.]
Why is Maria at Crooked Timber writing about a letter about a review of a Chris de Burgh concert I was asking myself. Indeed, why am [...]
Sapere aude!
Over at TPM, Craig Nelson, has written a paen to the enlightenment, To cry “Sapere aude!” once again, finishing with a lament on how scientifically illiterate our culture is.
There is, however, a dark side to this history, and it has nothing to do with Foucault. The entire Enlightenment revolution in thinking centred around one key [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, topical Also tagged classical philosophy, David Hume, Enlightenment, ethics, irrationalism, Kant, reason, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Mansfield Park: Method
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
2. Method
As for Mansfield Park, the first work of the mature period, it quite matches Emma in point of [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy Also tagged Emma, Enlightenment, ethics, irrationalism, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, philosophy, reason, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Mark Vernon on Love
I and some other readers have been challenging Mark Vernon in his Plato in his series on Plato at the Guardian, I being critical of his Romantic interpretation of Platonic love (see The Heart of Philosophy).
His article this week is Love and the perception of forms, and he was clearly braced for some more rocks, [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, topical Also tagged ethics, love, mystical, philosophy, Plato, poetical, reason Leave a comment
The Invention of Autonomy
In my quest to define what I mean by moral philosophy I will, again, contrast it with something that it is not: The Invention of Autonomy, J.B. Schneewind’s great historical account of modern moral philosophy culminating in the moral philosophy of Kant. I will do this by way of commenting on some key passages from [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy Also tagged Christianity, David Hume, Enlightenment, ethics, irrationalism, Jane Austen, Kant, Mansfield Park, Rousseau, sentimentalism Leave a comment
The Post-rational Civilization
In many of my posts now I have been stating that we live in an age of unreason, and that this was an innovation of the Enlightenment. Nearly all of the recent posts reflect this theme but these recent posts have been quite explicit:
The Great Evolution Debate
Appleyard on the Great American Health Debate
The Heart of [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy Also tagged conservatism, David Hume, Enlightenment, ethics, evolution, irrationalism, Kant, progessives, reason Leave a comment
The Heart of Philosophy
The comment thread on Mark Vernon’s fourth instalment of his Plato series has taken a most interesting turn. (My earlier post True Love discussed this article, arguing that it reflects a modern propensity to take a wilfully irrational approach to love and other related concepts.)
Mark has responded to criticism in the comment thread to argue [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, topical Also tagged David Hume, Enlightenment, ethics, irrationalism, Jane Austen, Kant, moralist, philosophy, rationalism, Rousseau Leave a comment
Free Will, etc
Madeleine Bunting has an article in yesterday’s Guardian, In control? Think again. Our ideas of brain and human nature are myths, where she ponders the rising tide of books on consciousness ‘radically challenging the most fundamental assumptions on which human beings operate’.
Perhaps that sounds a little overblown, but it’s not. Who, dear reader, do you [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, topical Also tagged autonomy, Buddhism, causation, free will, materialism, physicalism Leave a comment
Why religion is valuable
In my previous post, The problem with the Enlightenment, I set out my conviction that the Enlightenment had established a false view of the self, that I labelled Romantic, and that this false view had insinuated itself into modern religion as well as its discontents. (See The romantic Austen (IV) for a taster of [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, commentary Also tagged Christianity, David Hume, Enlightenment, ethics, Jane Austen, Kant, original sin, philosophy, Rousseau Leave a comment
The romantic Austen (IV)
[This is a lightly edited post I put out on on Janites in response to a post by Ellen Moody, asking for a definition of 'romantic' and pronouncing the discussion 'muddled'. My earlier posts in the series, The romantic Austen (especially) and The romantic Austen (III) may provide some useful context.]
I think everyone senses that [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, Janites Also tagged causation, Coleridge, Enlightenment, ethics, Goethe, Jane Austen, Kant, Schelling, Shelley, Wordsworth Leave a comment
The romantic Austen (III)
[I posted this on the Austen-L list in response to Ellen Moody's request 'someone should define what he or she means by romantic'. See also the first and second posts on in the The romantic Austen.]
Sometimes a bit of haziness in definitions is useful and necessary, and I certainly would think it is useful for [...]
The romantic Austen (II)
I have been reflecting on what have been calling the anti-Romantic romantic Austen, and how clearly Mansfield Park shows us both aspects. As I said in my previous post, the Mansfield Park narrator suggests that Henry and Fanny and Edmund and Mary could have paired up, and here we see the Austen that [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, Austen-L Also tagged ethics, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility Leave a comment
The romantic Austen
Anyone familiar with the full range of Jane Austen’s writing—the juvenilia, the letters and novels—should have little difficulty agreeing with the conclusion of Donald Greene’s essay on Jane Austen and the Peerage, that Jane Austen did not lack romantic sensibility.
So much has been said about Jane Austen’s “limitations” that it is important not to misinterpret [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy Also tagged causation, Enlightenment, ethics, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, philosophy, Sense and Sensibility Leave a comment
Moralist or Moraliser (III)
[This post was sent out to the Janeites group and the Austen-L mailing list, clarifying what I mean by claiming Austen was a moralist.]
Various examples of moralising, such as Mr Collin’s advice to Mr Bennett have been cited on Janeites and Sylwia reminded us that there ‘is a difference between Christian morality and social mores.’
Indeed [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, Austen-L Also tagged Emma, Enlightenment, ethics, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, moraliser, moralist, philosophy, Pride and Prejudice Leave a comment
Love Follies Postscript