Wanderlust World Wanderlust World The intellectual landscape immediately preceding Romanticism (late 17th to late 18th century) was dominated by the Enlightenment (Age of Reason). Its core values stood in stark contrast to the emotion, individualism, and nature-worship that would define the Romantic movement.
The supreme belief that human reason, logic, and scientific inquiry are the primary tools for understanding the world, solving problems, and improving society. Superstition, tradition, and blind faith were rejected.
Reflected in Neoclassical art, architecture, and music. The universe was seen as a rational, ordered mechanism (the "Clockwork Universe"), and human creations should mirror that harmony, proportion, and restraint.
Philosophers like Kant argued for objective, universal ethical principles derived from reason, applicable to all humans regardless of culture, religion, or circumstance—contrasting with Romantic emphasis on cultural uniqueness and subjective feeling.
An optimistic faith that history follows a linear trajectory of improvement. Through reason, science, and education, society could be perfected, poverty eliminated, and human nature itself improved.
The dominant philosophical stance held that reality consists solely of matter in motion. The mind/soul was seen as a product of physical processes, not a separate spiritual entity. This mechanistic view left little room for the mystical or transcendent.
Romanticism arose as a reaction against these constraints—elevating emotion over reason, the organic over the mechanical, the individual over the universal, the sublime over the orderly, and the spiritual over the material.