Nineteenth Century Thought

 

Much of contemporary literary theory, and indeed poetry, is built on nineteenth-century foundations.

Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Husserl and many others illustrate an honest working out of themes which are still important in current aesthetics and literary theory. Central today are the questions of knowledge, of grounding and of authority. On what do our judgements ultimately rest? On sense data and logic, say the materialists. On the principles and presuppositions that we acquire through living in society, say the idealists.

 

Already the cleavage is apparent, and the reader will appreciate the claims of each approach. To the first belong the Anglo-Saxon analytical schools and the early Wittgenstein. To the second belong the Existentialists, the hermeneutists, the later Wittgenstein and the schools of speech-acts and linguistic psychology. Structuralism and Poststructuralism crossed the divides. Structuralism sought a conceptual structure as comprehensive as Hegel's, but derived it from anthropology and linguistics, disregarding the assumptions inherent in these disciplines. Poststructuralism is a stance against tradition, authority and measurement. Stressing the individual and spontaneous response, it returns to the early thinkers of the nineteenth century who reacted against the shallow conformism of the Enlightenment. But its view of the world is darker. Wars, genocide and economic exploitation have destroyed any comforting faith in God, in man's inherent goodness, or in the healthy outcome of his passions.

 

Nineteenth century thinkers both developed from and reacted to the Enlightenment's notion of progress. Herder, Madame de Stael, Burke and Chateaubriand spoke vaguely of a Volk, a people — something that was not rationally grounded or justified, but grew from feelings and traditions previously overlooked. From Jean Jacques Rousseau they understood that the opposite of refinement need not be not crudity but simplicity, and that sensibility was not a product of cultivation but an intense expression of man's passionate nature. The unique, individual and spontaneous were more valuable than that which conformed to any intellectualized canon of taste. In place of enlightenment versus darkness came intensity versus superficiality.

 

Society was no longer to be based on the single hypothetical citizen. The social contract was abandoned, and states were viewed as natural growths with roots in the common nature of man. The life of a people was a unitary thing, springing out of traditions and needs, expressed in its laws, institutions and artistic accomplishments. Social life was indeed analogous to organic growth, and aspects of social life were related to each other like functions of a living body. Herder developed this notion, relating earth to the cosmos, man to earth, man as a social and historical being. History was the growth of a single, marvellous tree whose branches were the cultures of mankind.

 

If all reality is fundamentally one, and the Divine is present in all its manifestations, then what occurs in history is Revelation. Individual conscience may be fallible, but it is the role of man's moral sense to penetrate deeper into the nature of all that exists. The sense of the dark and hidden, the feeling of dependence and awe, and a worshipful acceptance of the fullness of being, are the attitudes which put religious man in touch with the Divine. German romanticists and idealists felt that the laws of physics were inadequate to comprehend the great World Spirit. Ultimate forces were living things, and every thing had its own value.

 

A greatly expanded article, with some 35 references, can be found on TextEtc.

 

 

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19th Century Thought

 
 

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