I’ve been writing. The result is too long and analytical for an Internet forum: A failed epic in a space for a Haiku. A compromise of space, likely leading to flawed or superficial scholarship, or perhaps simply a conceit suggesting that I am capable of something better: Never the less, for what it’s worth:
Coleridge and Wordsworth wrote during the Romantic period of western culture. It was a counter-culture movement—a reaction against the relentless rationalism and the dominance of classicism and its abstract rational philosophies. Romanticism was the cold calculation of the mind replaced by heated music of the heart. It was the impressions of abstraction replaced by the texture of emotion. The words of romantic poets are of the heart, and they might be expected to last far longer than the words we are surrounded with today.
The Wikipedia entry for Romanticism is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
Above all, the Romantic period can be interpreted as a reaction to excesses of the industrial revolution, and the social destruction, misery and callous social policies that accompanied it.
The industrial revolution gave us our modern material prosperity, but the process wasn’t wonderful. The enclosures of medieval common lands to create sheep pastures that supplied wool to the newly arisen mill cities forced surfs off their lands and into the cities. They became the source of cheap labour that fueled industrialization. Possibly the reference in an above post to ‘excesses of men in our cities’ was a reference to the enclosures. Likewise, perhaps the reference to ‘common occupations’ referred to the shift from artisans to factory labour. It may be stretching a point, but perhaps the reference to ‘extraordinary spectacles’ referred to the Luddite riots. Not everybody was happy or prosperous.
I think a case can be made that philosophy drove the process of a transition to modern world views. Medieval society was static since there was a place for everything and everything was in its place through the concept of the ‘Chain of Being.’ A revolution would have been unlikely, but the chain of being was whittled away by several centuries of humanist philosophers who ‘invented’ the philosophic individual. That individual existed in its own right and conceptually was the purpose of government itself. Humanist philosophy severed the individual from the Chain of Being and allowed the transition to modern world views Following the humanists, liberal philosophers synthesized a philosophical basis for governance of the individual. Rebellions and revolutions were fought to establish those governments. ‘We the people’ was born.
My case is that philosophy was the driving cultural force that enabled the transition from the medieval to modern western culture. However, during medieval times, abstractive rational deductive epistemology from Aristotle became dominant over the earlier organic idealism from Plato. And, the abstractive philosophy, which perhaps enabled the industrial revolution, might also have contained the seeds of its excesses.
Abstractions are concepts about things rather than the things themselves. They are simplified and contain fewer details than the actual objects they refer to; and, there is there are no definite criteria for how much detail can be removed for the abstraction to still retain the meaning of the object. Abstractions can become hollowed out shells with skin deep meanings painted pn with a broad brush.
When humans are categorized by abstraction, it becomes easy to view some groups as a little less human and a little less deserving, or perhaps simply as the authors of their own miseries. The dehumanization of certain groups did serve the needs of the emerging industrial economies very well, but perhaps emptied our souls as well. Economic and social theories made the suffering and inequities seem inevitable, and all were justified by abstract philosophy couched as religious doctrine. This relative marginalization of groups would not have been likely in medieval times since everything had its ordained place in the chain, and feudal dues and obligations defined relationships among the links.
An adaptation of the original humanism was to place the newly emerged human individuals on a map of values—to differentiate their humanness and understand them in categories. A primary criterion of the categorization was along a continuum from virtue to corruption. Nature became a measurement device and scale. The deity was infallible, and so what the deity created was perfect and good. However, humans were given both a corruptible nature and free will. Therefore, things close to nature, or that which imitate nature, are more good than things closer to human organization. Country is better than cities. Other things being equal, a farmer is less corrupt than an aristocrat.
However, some of the other things to be equal are interesting. Hard work and industry are natural, so an industrious hardworking factory owner who requires cities and cheap labour to support production may be less corrupt than a lazy farmer. The poor came to be viewed as corrupt and deserving of their misery since they had free will and choose to depart from nature. Wealth came to be viewed as a virtue, or at least indicating a decent imitation of nature because wealth was the result of hard work and industry. And, since laziness is a preventable corruption, the duty of government was to instill less sinful behaviour among its free citizens and reward the wealthy, because wealth indicated virtue.
From the spectacle of liberalism during the industrial revolution biven our emerging post-modern perspective, we might have the view that systems of abstractions themselves are inherently corruptible. If not inherently corruptible, a system of abstraction certainly can be made general enough to support any interpretation that is in the interests of those with the power to declare what is right, and such has been done many times. However, we post-moderns should not feel superior at spectacles of historic excesses of self-interest. We too live in a western world that is governed according to abstract philosophies. We too dehumanize individuals by placing them into abstract categories.
By the time of Coleridge and Wordsworth, I imagine that the blush had worn off the intoxication of the new culture. There were likely many persons who were appalled at the suffering created by these shells of abstraction which allowd some to treat others as somewhat less than human. Perhaps we live in similar times today. Then, and perhaps as now, it was time to seek meaning for our abstracted hollowed-out social institutions and emptied individual souls. An early draft of the U.S. Declaration of Independence cited inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of property. Perhaps money does buy happiness. However, creating conditions that deprive others of life in the course my own pursuit of property with the full support of governance I’m sure would empty my soul. The Romantics were right.
The Romantics turned to the older epistemologies of our culture to find their meaning. They rekindled the organic idealist philosophies from Plato. These philosophies had always provided the foundation of our arts, and they still do. The Romanists picked up the theme of nature as did the Classicists, and nature always is a strong theme in western culture. The Romantics formed an idealized naturalism, but a naturalism that differed from the classicists.
Whereas classicists abstracted nature and categorized accordingly, the romantics grasped nature in its entirety; they filled their hearts and souls with the full detail of the natural world and all that it contains. They wrote words, painted pictures and composed music that grasp nature organically and in great detail. Whereas the classicists wrote music according to mathematics that appealed to the mind, romantics wrote wild music for the heart. Whereas classicists intellectualized nature, the romantics formed rural utopias. They were the hippies of their day. They buttoned up their long black frock coats to the collar (supposedly to disguise their unclean shirts) and scandalized their parents. They must have been trying children. A late medieval parent may have tried to persuade a child. Rhetoric was honed, and support for arguments made with quotes from Tully, Seneca and Galen in Latin and Greek. The child perhaps responded: ‘Yes, but that doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t move me.’ The world was changing, and it still is. I wonder what we shall turn to in search of a context that provides satisfying meanings to our own lives.
The romantics did make their mark on western culture, but counter-cultures tend to be short-lived. Several decades after Coleridge and Wordsworth romanced the world with their words of nature, passion and their utopias that found unity with the natural world, Tennyson wrote ‘The Lady of Shalott’
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lady-of-shalott-1842/
Tennyson was still a romantic and wrote of nature, but his Lady was magic and viewed the world only in a mirror. She wove her tapestries of travelers that she never saw on their ways to Camelot. She destroyed herself by discarding the mirror and seeking a true glimpse of a true love. In Tennyson, a feeling of alienation between the individual and the natural world starts to creep in.
The words of Coleridge and Wordsworth are matters of the heart and of unity with nature. They still sing to us and fill our souls with textures of meaning and context. But what of us? Is the alienation between the individual and the natural world still felt? What will we post-modern individuals turn to when we discard our own stunned allegiance to the present empty abstractions and philosophies? After all, we in modern times likely greet the natural world as enemies, or with our hands extended expecting gifts.
Coleridge and Wordsworth wrote during the Romantic period of western culture. It was a counter-culture movement—a reaction against the relentless rationalism and the dominance of classicism and its abstract rational philosophies. Romanticism was the cold calculation of the mind replaced by heated music of the heart. It was the impressions of abstraction replaced by the texture of emotion. The words of romantic poets are of the heart, and they might be expected to last far longer than the words we are surrounded with today.
The Wikipedia entry for Romanticism is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
Above all, the Romantic period can be interpreted as a reaction to excesses of the industrial revolution, and the social destruction, misery and callous social policies that accompanied it.
The industrial revolution gave us our modern material prosperity, but the process wasn’t wonderful. The enclosures of medieval common lands to create sheep pastures that supplied wool to the newly arisen mill cities forced surfs off their lands and into the cities. They became the source of cheap labour that fueled industrialization. Possibly the reference in an above post to ‘excesses of men in our cities’ was a reference to the enclosures. Likewise, perhaps the reference to ‘common occupations’ referred to the shift from artisans to factory labour. It may be stretching a point, but perhaps the reference to ‘extraordinary spectacles’ referred to the Luddite riots. Not everybody was happy or prosperous.
I think a case can be made that philosophy drove the process of a transition to modern world views. Medieval society was static since there was a place for everything and everything was in its place through the concept of the ‘Chain of Being.’ A revolution would have been unlikely, but the chain of being was whittled away by several centuries of humanist philosophers who ‘invented’ the philosophic individual. That individual existed in its own right and conceptually was the purpose of government itself. Humanist philosophy severed the individual from the Chain of Being and allowed the transition to modern world views Following the humanists, liberal philosophers synthesized a philosophical basis for governance of the individual. Rebellions and revolutions were fought to establish those governments. ‘We the people’ was born.
My case is that philosophy was the driving cultural force that enabled the transition from the medieval to modern western culture. However, during medieval times, abstractive rational deductive epistemology from Aristotle became dominant over the earlier organic idealism from Plato. And, the abstractive philosophy, which perhaps enabled the industrial revolution, might also have contained the seeds of its excesses.
Abstractions are concepts about things rather than the things themselves. They are simplified and contain fewer details than the actual objects they refer to; and, there is there are no definite criteria for how much detail can be removed for the abstraction to still retain the meaning of the object. Abstractions can become hollowed out shells with skin deep meanings painted pn with a broad brush.
When humans are categorized by abstraction, it becomes easy to view some groups as a little less human and a little less deserving, or perhaps simply as the authors of their own miseries. The dehumanization of certain groups did serve the needs of the emerging industrial economies very well, but perhaps emptied our souls as well. Economic and social theories made the suffering and inequities seem inevitable, and all were justified by abstract philosophy couched as religious doctrine. This relative marginalization of groups would not have been likely in medieval times since everything had its ordained place in the chain, and feudal dues and obligations defined relationships among the links.
An adaptation of the original humanism was to place the newly emerged human individuals on a map of values—to differentiate their humanness and understand them in categories. A primary criterion of the categorization was along a continuum from virtue to corruption. Nature became a measurement device and scale. The deity was infallible, and so what the deity created was perfect and good. However, humans were given both a corruptible nature and free will. Therefore, things close to nature, or that which imitate nature, are more good than things closer to human organization. Country is better than cities. Other things being equal, a farmer is less corrupt than an aristocrat.
However, some of the other things to be equal are interesting. Hard work and industry are natural, so an industrious hardworking factory owner who requires cities and cheap labour to support production may be less corrupt than a lazy farmer. The poor came to be viewed as corrupt and deserving of their misery since they had free will and choose to depart from nature. Wealth came to be viewed as a virtue, or at least indicating a decent imitation of nature because wealth was the result of hard work and industry. And, since laziness is a preventable corruption, the duty of government was to instill less sinful behaviour among its free citizens and reward the wealthy, because wealth indicated virtue.
From the spectacle of liberalism during the industrial revolution biven our emerging post-modern perspective, we might have the view that systems of abstractions themselves are inherently corruptible. If not inherently corruptible, a system of abstraction certainly can be made general enough to support any interpretation that is in the interests of those with the power to declare what is right, and such has been done many times. However, we post-moderns should not feel superior at spectacles of historic excesses of self-interest. We too live in a western world that is governed according to abstract philosophies. We too dehumanize individuals by placing them into abstract categories.
By the time of Coleridge and Wordsworth, I imagine that the blush had worn off the intoxication of the new culture. There were likely many persons who were appalled at the suffering created by these shells of abstraction which allowd some to treat others as somewhat less than human. Perhaps we live in similar times today. Then, and perhaps as now, it was time to seek meaning for our abstracted hollowed-out social institutions and emptied individual souls. An early draft of the U.S. Declaration of Independence cited inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of property. Perhaps money does buy happiness. However, creating conditions that deprive others of life in the course my own pursuit of property with the full support of governance I’m sure would empty my soul. The Romantics were right.
The Romantics turned to the older epistemologies of our culture to find their meaning. They rekindled the organic idealist philosophies from Plato. These philosophies had always provided the foundation of our arts, and they still do. The Romanists picked up the theme of nature as did the Classicists, and nature always is a strong theme in western culture. The Romantics formed an idealized naturalism, but a naturalism that differed from the classicists.
Whereas classicists abstracted nature and categorized accordingly, the romantics grasped nature in its entirety; they filled their hearts and souls with the full detail of the natural world and all that it contains. They wrote words, painted pictures and composed music that grasp nature organically and in great detail. Whereas the classicists wrote music according to mathematics that appealed to the mind, romantics wrote wild music for the heart. Whereas classicists intellectualized nature, the romantics formed rural utopias. They were the hippies of their day. They buttoned up their long black frock coats to the collar (supposedly to disguise their unclean shirts) and scandalized their parents. They must have been trying children. A late medieval parent may have tried to persuade a child. Rhetoric was honed, and support for arguments made with quotes from Tully, Seneca and Galen in Latin and Greek. The child perhaps responded: ‘Yes, but that doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t move me.’ The world was changing, and it still is. I wonder what we shall turn to in search of a context that provides satisfying meanings to our own lives.
The romantics did make their mark on western culture, but counter-cultures tend to be short-lived. Several decades after Coleridge and Wordsworth romanced the world with their words of nature, passion and their utopias that found unity with the natural world, Tennyson wrote ‘The Lady of Shalott’
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lady-of-shalott-1842/
Tennyson was still a romantic and wrote of nature, but his Lady was magic and viewed the world only in a mirror. She wove her tapestries of travelers that she never saw on their ways to Camelot. She destroyed herself by discarding the mirror and seeking a true glimpse of a true love. In Tennyson, a feeling of alienation between the individual and the natural world starts to creep in.
The words of Coleridge and Wordsworth are matters of the heart and of unity with nature. They still sing to us and fill our souls with textures of meaning and context. But what of us? Is the alienation between the individual and the natural world still felt? What will we post-modern individuals turn to when we discard our own stunned allegiance to the present empty abstractions and philosophies? After all, we in modern times likely greet the natural world as enemies, or with our hands extended expecting gifts.
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