Editor's Note
Professor Luo Xiang, a professor and educator at the School of Criminal Justice of China University of Political Science and Law, has long been committed to popularizing legal education and constantly encouraging people to think and read: in this impetuous era, sink down to dialogue with the sages, use non-utilitarian reading to constantly explore the boundaries of their own thoughts, and climb the ladder of intellectual knowledge.
In this article, Mr. Luo Xiang introduces the book "The Roots of Romanticism" by Sir Isaiah Berlin, a prominent British liberal political philosopher and thinker of the 20th century. Romanticism was a counterattack to the rational ideas of the Enlightenment and a major change in the history of human thought. Its influence was not only limited to the field of literature and art, but also changed many political practices in later generations. To understand Romanticism is to understand an important history and the development of human nature itself.
Sir Isaiah Berlin
I am reading this month a book that I have recommended many times, The Roots of Romanticism, by Sir Isaiah Berlin, a prominent 20th-century British liberal political philosopher and thinker, 6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997.
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The Roots of Romanticism
The metaphor I often quote about the hedgehog and the fox comes from Isaiah Berlin.
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Inspired by the poem of the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, Berlin divides human thinkers into two categories: "hedgehogs" who believe in black and white and either/or, and "foxes" who advocate pluralism, insist on their own views, but also accept the relative rationality of opposing positions.
As a legal person, becoming a "fox", being vigilant against my own prejudices, hypocrisy and blindness, seeking the truth in opposing views, and finding balance is what I have always pursued. But what Berlin can teach us is not only "the hedgehog and the fox", but also a retrospective of "romanticism".
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The Hedgehog and the Fox
The Roots of Romanticism is a series of lectures berlin gave in March or April 1965 on "Romanticism," which he had been preparing to turn into text and complete a monograph on Romanticism. But perhaps because he had been "free" for too long, he ended up writing a single word about this elaborate treatise.
The book was eventually compiled by Henry Hardy, who kept as much of the style of Berlin's speeches as possible, so that the feeling of reading was indeed what its introduction describes—"Accompanied by Berlin's characteristic majestic improvisational style, it is a soul-sucking aria of thought." ”
As the name suggests, this book is a trace of romanticism. In the book, Berlin does not make a dictionary definition of Romanticism, but explores the influence of Romanticism by examining and comparing various factors related to Romanticism.
In fact, his inquiry process can also make us feel his emphasis on multiple perspectives more intuitively - he is not willing to make up his mind easily, and his evaluation and judgment of the same event may be different at different times and with different contents.
The German Confederacy, where Romanticism sprouted during the Industrial Revolution in 1790, was not only a counterattack to the Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, but also "the most significant change in Western consciousness to date."
The steam of the Industrial Revolution shrouded the world in the brilliance of reason, believing that science and knowledge would enable humanity to know the truth. "Enlightenment thinkers would accept three basic assumptions: that all true questions can be answered, that all answers are knowable, and that all answers must be compatible."
Although there were various small differences among the Enlightenment thinkers, they reached a consensus:
"Virtue ultimately consists in knowledge; we can live a happy, noble, just, free and satisfying life only if we know who we are, what we need, where we get what we need and how to use the best means at our disposal to achieve our ends; all virtues are compatible with each other."
That is to say, people at that time believed that everything had eternal rules in the end, that freedom and equality were compatible with each other, that fairness and forgiveness were compatible with each other, that mastering the truth would make everyone happy, and that science would allow us to grasp the truth of nature in a reliable way.
This view prevailed not only in the fields of science and morality, but also in the field of art. This can be seen in a life example that Berlin mentioned.
If you lived in the 18th century and were going to buy a beautiful silver bowl, the seller would tell you:
"The value of a work of art lies in its own characteristics, in the characteristics that make it what it is. These properties include: beauty, symmetry, symmetry, symmetry, and more. A silver bowl is beautiful because it is a beautiful bowl with a beautiful nature, and no matter how this beauty is defined, the beauty of the bowl has nothing to do with the maker, not with the reason for making the bowl".
So you don't have to look at the second one, because this bowl already has the beauty of all beautiful bowls.
This trend of thought, which emphasizes the essence, allows the painter to no longer reproduce the true state of things truthfully.
Sir Joshua Reynolds was one of the most representative mainstream aesthetic theorists of the 18th century. He said that "the painter corrects nature according to nature, and corrects the imperfections of nature according to the perfect paradigm of nature", so the characters he paints are perfect, and the characters in his paintings are all PS of the brush.
"If Alexander the Great happened to be a short man, we should not portray it as such. Bernini should not have let King David bite his lower lip, because it was a petty expression that was not in line with King David's status as king. If St. Paul was indecent in appearance—as far as we know, his appearance is true—Raphael was right not to portray it truthfully."
Self-portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds
The 18th century was undoubtedly the century of brilliant triumphs for science, and at the same time, "excessive rationalism hindered human emotions." In this case, people's emotions will always explode in some other form."
The father of Romanticism in Berlin's mind came into being, one was Johann Gottfried Herder and the other was Immanuel Kant. They brought about a new revolution and subversion for the "eternal philosophy" of "there is a common ideal for which all mankind will strive" and "there is an ultimate answer to mankind's problems".
Johann Gottfried Herder
German philosopher, Lutheran theologian, poet.
Immanuel Kant
German philosopher, writer, founder of German classical philosophy.
Berlin's speech is full of emotion, the finished text is also quite literary, many metaphors and examples are exquisite, such as the above story of buying a silver bowl, if you meet the German romantic Herder, he may tell you another way of looking at the work of art:
"A work of art is a confession of someone, and a work of art is a person expressing his own voice to others."
"A silver bowl is, in a sense, a confession of the creator's attitude toward life."
"When we appreciate a work of art, we are in some kind of contact with the Creator, and it is speaking to us."
So we have to imagine the way the ancient Greeks lived in order to truly appreciate the beauty of ancient Greek art.
Interestingly, Kant, who hated romanticism, indulgence and fantasy, and exaggeration and chaos, was regarded by Berlin as the father of romanticism, which is still somewhat ironic. What even Kant himself did not realize was that his moral philosophy made him a restrained romantic.
He advocated the concern for man's inner and moral life, emphasized that man has the will to choose freely, and even the first person to propose that "exploitation is a sin", he let us see concrete people from abstract people, and also saw the differences and differences of each individual. I'm short is very short, you don't need to draw me as a standard height, even this "standard" is questionable, how tall is tall, who will decide the standard.
This Romantic revolution was closely related to "art", "we can be sure that the Romantic movement was not only a movement about art, or an artistic movement, but also the first movement in Western history in which art dominated other aspects of life, a movement in which art reigned supreme." In a sense, this is the essence of the Romantic movement. ”
And this change is not only related to art, "Romanticism" liberates mankind from the confinement of a single eternal thought, "many of today's phenomena – nationalism, existentialism, admiration for great men, the promotion of inhuman institutions, democracy, totalitarianism – are deeply influenced by the romantic current, which is widespread. As such, it is not a subject that has nothing to do with our time. ”
In Berlin's view, the idea of Romanticism is to believe that the rules must be broken, and only by breaking through the tights of the rules can people gain the ultimate liberation and freedom. Nor is it enough to simply reject a rule, because rejection brings another kind of conservatism, and the rejection rule itself becomes a new rule. But the rules must be broken once and for all.
Romanticism can be said to be a rebellion against the rationalist tradition that has been the mainstream of thought since the Age of Enlightenment, but these seemingly monotheistic, more and more liberal claims, when it reached its peak, began to enter extremes and madness, just like its later political heir, fascism.
After all, romanticism does end in some kind of insanity, from the point of view of logical conclusions.
Berlin's investigation of Romanticism is always a profound reminder of:
There are always some basic values in people and society that cannot be subverted by ideas and ideas, and these values will inevitably exist in the world together, often those good wishes and the pursuit of "optimal choice", which bring disastrous consequences.
The development of romanticism, which advocates freedom and opposes all bondage and despotism, not only logically leads itself to a dead end, but the rules it destroys in the name of freedom create greater unfreedom.
Of course, The Roots of Romanticism is not a critique of Romanticism, and in Berlin's insight, Romanticism destroys traditional monistic values, recognizes ideological incompatibilities, and has disastrous consequences for any attempt to propose a "single solution" to a concept... All are important gifts of Romanticism to future generations.
You may often wonder which philosophy we should choose to guide our lives, and is Romanticism more advanced than Enlightenment ideas?
I think there's a passage from the book that might inspire you:
"We are the descendants of two worlds. On the one hand, we are the heirs of Romanticism, which breaks down the single pattern that humanity has so far pursued in various ways, namely, the eternal wisdom of love. We are the product of some kind of doubt — we can't say it clearly. We value results as well as motivation, and we hesitate between the two. However, nothing can be excessive. At the same time, "we are still members of some unity of tradition, but we are now free to wander into it, and we can tolerate things that are more extensive than ever."
We in the 21st century are the product of several worlds, enjoying the gifts of several doctrines, and may face many more temptations than the people of the 18th century.
I don't think we need to be too scared and too entangled, whether to choose to be a "fox" or a "hedgehog", maybe there is no so-called "optimal choice", but I advise you like Berlin that "everything can not be excessive".
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