Steven Sych

Historically, Early German Romanticism has been viewed as a reaction against the science-oriented and rationalistic Enlightenment philosophies that preceded it; exemplary of such readings is that of G. W. F. Hegel, who accuses the Romantics of irrationalism and a retreat from community. The purpose of the following thesis is to refute Hegel's criticism and argue that Romantic philosophy presents us with a truth-oriented discourse. Although others have defended the Romantics against Hegel, the reading presented here is unique insofar as it foregrounds the importance of human sociability, discursive practices, and Immanuel Kant's conception of genius for Romantic philosophy. On my reading, Hegel's criticism can be divided into three parts: the accusation of the egoism of the Romantic genius, the charge of the elitism of the Romantic circle, and the claim that the Romantics give all authority to the individual. The first chapter explicates Hegel's criticisms of the Romantics, showing how they both parallel and expand on his understanding of the artistic genius. The second chapter takes up Hegel's charge of Romantic egoism, arguing with the help of Schleiermacher and Kant that the Romantic self comes to be communally constituted through its interactions with others. The third chapter explores Hegel's charge of elitism, analyzing Friedrich Schlegel's ironic discourse, along with the lectures of the later Fichte, to argue that the Romantics' epistemological fallibilism necessitates a populist expansion of philosophical truth-seeking. The fourth chapter concerns itself with the issue of the authority of the exceptional individual, arguing that the Romantic discourse conceives of its audience as ideal rather than actual, but that this idealization is a humble solicitation rather than an arrogant demand; that is, this chapter shows that the Romantics follow the Kantian account of genius in claiming that a social warrant is necessary for sorting sense from nonsense. The conclusion points out that this Romantic picture of the community as both responsive to individuals and capable of substantial change—a community of genius—acts as a corrective for a conservative tendency in Hegel's own account of ethical life. Accordingly, this thesis both refutes Hegel's historically important reading of the Early Romantics and develops a novel account of Romantic sociability that informs the Romantics' theories of the self, the community, and their discursive interplay.