3.14 Free Response Essay

To what extent did Romanticism challenge Enlightenment views of human beings and the natural world and how did this challenge illustrate changes between the Enlightenment and Romantic views of the relationship between God and the individual?

The Romantic period that occurred was a spark that changed the way human thought is processed, and has rippled down into the current era, affecting the way things are looked at today. The Romantic period created a view that separated humans from God, no longer requiring the need for a higher deity. This change allowed humans to deviate from societies rules, with no threat of a punishment from a higher power, unlocking past potential that was deemed sacrilegious prior to this.

During the Enlightenment period, humans began to rationalize the way the world was, with a strong affiliation with mathematics and sciences. This period of thinkers looked at the world from a scientific and analyzed viewpoint. When the Romantic period came around, people began to think in a different variation, specifically illustrated through the artists and poets and musicians of the time. This movement was a revolt against the creations of norms for society, and the coherent thought put into nature, rather than abstract and new ideas. These people were much more free-minded, not tied down by past moral laws or beliefs, but rather separated themselves from them. This was a revolt against classical order. The Romantic period focused more on human emotion, instead of intellect, with artists of all variations expressing their emotions through their work.

One specific aspect of the many portions of the Romantic period is the newly embraced view on God. These thinkers believed that with the advancement of society, God was no longer necessary in human’s lives. Religion was grouped together with the other old-world ideas and viewed as obsolete by these thinkers, and left behind by them. They thought that if they separated themselves from God, they were no longer held back by laws that were associated with religion. This new outlook on life allowed them to create masterpieces that would not have been possible without this movement and separation from religion. Instead of looking towards God for inspiration for works, people now looked into themselves, allowing for pure inspiration to create their works, ranging from paintings to poems, to symphonies, and so on. Without the belief in an afterlife, these people would want to be remembered, and their way of doing so was to create works of art that would be cherished through generations, still alive once they were no longer here.

This entire movement can be seen as a new-age group of thinkers revolting against past ideas and trains of thought, replacing them with their own variations of such They removed the rational and planned-out way of looking at things and changed it one more focused on emotion and feeling, a person’s true self. They accused the Enlightenment thinkers as being illogical themselves by not involving human emotion in their works.

This Romanticism movement away from Enlightenment thought was a key factor to the change in the way of thought that has been passed down since that time. These thinkers dared to rebel against prior thought, and succeeded. They separated themselves from those in the past, creating a new sense and order, one that not only moved away from God, but moved away from all things they viewed as obsolete. In doing this, the Romantics released an entire new type of thought to humans, one that was blocked off before.