As I finished this, I again acknowledged just how difficult it is to try to compartmentalize positivism and romantic attitudes (as though it's possible to even conquer human categories of thought that say something about the world and our place in it). On the one hand, romantics, like Kant, might believe that we are freest when we have taken hold over nature—and then what truly separates him from being a victim of the enlightenment? On the other hand, as you wrote, Melville knows that nature is not at her peak if we can dominate her. We can't dominate her and, to address Thoreau, we cannot be unified with her either. High school me was actually inclined to believe Thoreau over Joyce Carol Oates...and the "romantic" in me still wants to.
But that irony, I think, is the true core of the argument about romanticism. It seems to me to be this untrammeled principle that one chooses to live by, regardless of what the belief system is. Whether it's Keats' devotion to love to the point of leaving his lover Fanny because he cannot write about love without feeling the pain of her absence, or Poe's satirical jab against the transcendentalists and the naive view that we can champion our individualism while enabling "science" to drag "Diana from her car" or being able to seek treasure in the cosmos as though this was novel without being afraid...romanticism has captured something more "real" in the human experience, making the individual a modest participant in his life.
However...not all romantics are "realists" as you'd call Poe and Melville. Romantics might also be individualists and relativists—I'd argue they are. And what happens when the romantic, contrary to the transcendentalist and positivist, seeks to validate his individuality? He just might impose it on others. So while the enlightenment created positivists, it also created romantics, both of whom have sought to dominate.
Of course, romanticism isn't completely bad. I believe it contains the seeds of a modest, prudent political philosophy. But what isn't used for tyranny?
As I finished this, I again acknowledged just how difficult it is to try to compartmentalize positivism and romantic attitudes (as though it's possible to even conquer human categories of thought that say something about the world and our place in it). On the one hand, romantics, like Kant, might believe that we are freest when we have taken hold over nature—and then what truly separates him from being a victim of the enlightenment? On the other hand, as you wrote, Melville knows that nature is not at her peak if we can dominate her. We can't dominate her and, to address Thoreau, we cannot be unified with her either. High school me was actually inclined to believe Thoreau over Joyce Carol Oates...and the "romantic" in me still wants to.
But that irony, I think, is the true core of the argument about romanticism. It seems to me to be this untrammeled principle that one chooses to live by, regardless of what the belief system is. Whether it's Keats' devotion to love to the point of leaving his lover Fanny because he cannot write about love without feeling the pain of her absence, or Poe's satirical jab against the transcendentalists and the naive view that we can champion our individualism while enabling "science" to drag "Diana from her car" or being able to seek treasure in the cosmos as though this was novel without being afraid...romanticism has captured something more "real" in the human experience, making the individual a modest participant in his life.
However...not all romantics are "realists" as you'd call Poe and Melville. Romantics might also be individualists and relativists—I'd argue they are. And what happens when the romantic, contrary to the transcendentalist and positivist, seeks to validate his individuality? He just might impose it on others. So while the enlightenment created positivists, it also created romantics, both of whom have sought to dominate.
Of course, romanticism isn't completely bad. I believe it contains the seeds of a modest, prudent political philosophy. But what isn't used for tyranny?