It was a reaction against the Enlightenment and yet akin in that they both assumed life was designed for human happiness. However the Enlightenment placed reason at the center of human acheivement. Romanticismm distrusted the human intellect and placed its value on the emotions and intutive qualities. The natural and spontaneous was deemed good. The highest truths would be derived from the instantaneous of the individual. It gloried in the unlimited potential of the individual. There was an overall feeling of optimism and belief of a utopia.
Romanticism reinforced the emotionalism of the period and its philosophies nfluenced the Transcendental movement. Romanticism began in the early 19th century and radically changed the way people perceived themselves and the state of nature around them. Unlike Classicism, which stood for order and established the foundation for architecture, literature, painting and music, Romanticism allowed people to get away from the constricted, rational views of life and concentrate on an emotional and sentimental side of humanity.
This not only influenced political doctrines and ideology, but was also a sharp contrast from ideas and harmony featured during the Enlightenment. The Romantic era grew longside the Enlightenment, but concentrated on human diversity and looking at life in a new way. It was the combination of modern Science and Classicism that gave birth to Romanticism and introduced a new outlook on life that embraced emotion before rationality. Romanticism began to show the people that the Enlightenment had overstayed its welcome by leading the people to a future that offered a vision of mankind as being part of a group rather than an individual. G. W. F. Hegel, a German philosopher, rejected the rational philosophy of the 18th century because he believed in “Idealism”. This involved looking at life in terms of the importance of ideas, not thought the narrow tunnel of materialism and wealth.
By advocating Idealism, Hegel concluded that mankind could be led by his spirit, his soul, rather than the establishment or the status quo. Although Romanticism was perhaps conservative in nature, every participant of this swift and silent movement could relish in his own free and glorious vision of nature. Romanticism was not a political movement or a reformist package offered by a group of dissidents; Romanticism was a time when mankind could estructure his outlook on life so that he was able to reach new heights of intellectual and political awareness.
In the process of doing so, he found answers to practical problems by simply using his heart and searching his soul. Romanticism is an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and is characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on an individual’s expression of emotion and imagination, a departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions.