Nov 17, 2021
Philosophy and Romanticism
Only when thought and emotion are united do we encounter wisdom that resonates with totality of human experience.
When we immerse in immanence, that which creates us, we are nourished with the stuff of life.
Illuminated by the transformation that arises all around us, we sense, feel, intuit and think the immediacy of our relationship and connection with the world, a universe alive.
Unmediated spontaneity, diversity and evolution, empower us to create fulfillment in our lives.
Gilles Deleuze
Deleuze’s project is all about vitality. In his own words:
Thinking’s never just a theoretical matter. It has to do with vital problems.
A philosophy is vital if it promotes the force of life, the creation of life, broadly defined. Deleuze opens new worlds of thought in an attempt to draw our attention to the vital, once again.
Deleuze creates a philosophy that displaces transcendent authority and conformity in aid of experience, experimentation, and the power of life. While his project is within the realm of philosophy, he recognizes that the vibrancy of life can be restored through other means, eg., science or art.
Romanticism
The romantic movement of the early 19th century, with its emphasis on emotion, nature, individualism and aesthetic experience, was in large part a reaction to the rationalization of the universe. The romantic poets highlighted the power of nature, its sublimity, and the passion and imagination that arises via our experience in nature.
William Wordsworth in “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”:
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of thought,
And rolls through all things.
Romanticism, like Deleuze’s philosophy, is a vision to break free from the shackles of transcendent reason, the mechanization of the universe, and step into the power that affirms all that is alive and evolves. The Romantics sought a return to innocence, a return to nature, not as a means of going back in time, but as a method of exploring new possibilities for creating the new.
Deleuze’s vitalism is not the same as that of the Romantics, not the same approach whatsoever. But it has similarities with Romanticism insofar as it attempts to bring back to life something lost via reason and rationality. The Romantics used symbol and metaphor and passion to make their point. Deleuze creates concepts that inspire and affirm the natural in the universe.
Wisdom worthy of being sought out moves us directly into the creative flux from which we arise, and empowers us to transform, and become all that we can be.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
Please join my email list here or email me at tomas@tomasbyrne.com.
Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2021 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
