Rousseau biography eveneces

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Rousseau and romanticism

Rousseau and romanticism

by IRVING

BABBITT

Meridian Books

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY Cleveland and

New York

A MERIDIAN BOOK Published by The World Publishing Company 2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44102

Meridian printing February 1955 Eighth printing October 1966 Copyright 191 9 by Irving Babbitt; copyright 1947 by Esther Babbitt Howe All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper or magazine. Reprinted by arrangement with Edward Babbitt First

and Esther Babbitt Howe Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55-5986 Printed in the United States of America. 8fdio66

Uimagination Le bon

dispose de tout,

pascal

sens est le maitre de la vie humaine.

L'homme

est

un

etre

immense, en quelque sorte, qui peut dont I'existence est d'autant plus plus entiere et plus pleine. joubert

exister partiellement, mais

delicieuse qu'elle est

bossuet

Contents

Introduction

$

1.

The

2.

Romantic genius

39

3.

Romantic imagination

67

4.

Romantic morality: the Ideal

99

5.

Romantic morality: the Real

152

6.

Romantic love

175

7.

Romantic irony

189

8.

Romanticism and nature

209

9.

Romantic melancholy

236

10.

terms Classic and Romantic

The

present outlook

16

268

Appendix: Chinese primitivism

297

Notes

301

Rousseau and romanticism

INTRODUCTION

will no doubt be tempted to exclaim on seeing my "Rousseau and no end!" The outpour of books on Rousseau had indeed in the period immediately preceding the war become somewhat portentous. 1 This preoccupation with Rous-

Many readers title:

is his somewhat formidable more fully than any other one person a great international movement. To attack Rousseau or to defend him is most often only a way of attacking

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Figures
Series Introduction Megan Jane Laverty and David T. Hansen
General Editors’ Acknowledgments
Volume Editors’ Acknowledgments
Timeline
Introduction: Enlightenment and Education Tal Gilead
1 Locke on Education Lisa McNulty
2 Rousseau’s Philosophy of Education Amos Hofman
3 Educational Legacies of the French Enlightenment Grace G. Roosevelt
4 German Educational Thought: Religion, Rationalism, Philanthropinism, and Bildung Rebekka Horlacher
5 Philosophies of Education “in Action”: Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Johann Friedrich Herbart, and Friedrich Fröbel Jürgen Oelkers
6 Mary Wollstonecraft and Harriet Taylor Mill on Women, Education, and Gender Socialization Katy Dineen
7 Teachings of Uncommon Schooling: American Transcendentalism and Education in Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller Naoko Saito
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION VOLUME 3

A History of Western Philosophy of Education General Editors: Megan Jane Laverty and David T. Hansen Volume 1 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in Antiquity Edited by Avi I. Mintz Volume 2 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Edited by Kevin Gary Volume 3 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Age of Enlightenment Edited by Tal Gilead Volume 4 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Modern Era Edited by Andrea R. English Volume 5 A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Contemporary Landscape Edited by Anna Pagès

A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT VOLUME 3 Edited by Tal Gilead

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the

"5. Rousseau's Moment Beyond History". Esthetics of the Moment: Literature and Art in the French Enlightenment, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, pp. 82-100. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812202441-009

(1996). 5. Rousseau's Moment Beyond History. In Esthetics of the Moment: Literature and Art in the French Enlightenment (pp. 82-100). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812202441-009

1996. 5. Rousseau's Moment Beyond History. Esthetics of the Moment: Literature and Art in the French Enlightenment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 82-100. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812202441-009

"5. Rousseau's Moment Beyond History" In Esthetics of the Moment: Literature and Art in the French Enlightenment, 82-100. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812202441-009

5. Rousseau's Moment Beyond History. In: Esthetics of the Moment: Literature and Art in the French Enlightenment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; 1996. p.82-100. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812202441-009

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"In telling the story of my travels," says Rousseau, "as in travelling, I never know how to stop" [167]. Applied reflexively to the text of the Confessions, the statement is revealing in a number of ways. The six hundred pages of the Confessions suggest an author who is either unable or unwilling to stop writing about himself. At the completion of the first section of the Confessions —the shorter, self-contained memoir written as a recollection of his first thirty years—Rousseau declares that it is time to stop writing. And yet less than two years later, he felt the need to devote a further three hundred and fifty pages to the events of his next twenty four years. "[I]n spite of my resolution I take up the pen once more" [261]. Why?

His own response —his justification for breaking his self-imposed vow of literary silence —provides one form of answer: "Since my name is fated to live, I must endeavour to transmit with it the memory of that unfortunate man who bore it, as he actually was and not as his unjust enemies unremittingly endeavour to paint him" [373]. Increasingly in his later years, Rousseau believed that he was the victim of a plot instigated against his reputation by Voltaire, Mme.d'Epinay, his erstwhile friend Diderot, and above all, by the loathsome Grimm, the ringleader of "the d'Holbach clique." At times he fears that the source of the evil transcends even Grimm, and that there is perhaps a supernatural origin for the dread conspiracy, a "Providence who summoned me to these great ordeals," and "removed with His own hand every obstacle that might have saved me from undergoing them" [19]. Faced with such opposition, any response has but the thinnest chance of succeeding, but clutching at the hope that his words might one day find a fair hearing, Rousseau attempts to leave to posterity what he calls a "witness" in his favour [525]. Th