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February 15, 2003
Light relief
Here is a bit of light relief from all the war talk. Its about that old chestnut, 'Why are there no good men left?' And this unites the two big ones, truth and love. I reckon that it's romantic love that is the problem.
Many, of course, firmly believe that the rot set in with romanticism because it praised imagination over reason, emotions over logic, and intuition over science. This was the cancer within the liberal civilization and it had to be cut out of the social body through using the razor-sharp weapons of scientific reason.
Well, that's what I was taught at university. My counter understanding was that Romanticism was largely structured defined by its opposition to industrial capitalism in the name of pre-capitalist values.
Well romanticism lives on in a very diffuse way. My understanding of romanticism is that, it is a discourse with broadly cultural tendencies that are in flux and retain a recognizable consistency.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 15, 2003 02:16 PM