Abstract

If most curricula keep Art and Science in separate fields, history does not make such a distinction: Romanticism can be described as a scientific branch that grew to correct the mistakes and exceed the limitations of 18 th century sciences. In reaction against the old traditions, the sciences of the Enlightenment separated the factual from the moral, and represented man and nature in terms so general and abstract that the particular and the concrete were practically excluded. The scientific spirit also reduced man and nature to a simple duality, an active and a passive principle. To the romantic those exclusions and simplifications prevented the individual from experiencing the full potential of his relation with external things. Romantic philosophy emerged in part to correct the scientific worldview by conceiving of a more inclusive system that could take into account the 'true' depth of man and nature and their relationship. Revising by combining the diverse scientific movements, the romantic reinvented not only the world's metaphysical being but also the self's mental faculties, thus permitting the human subject---in theory---to associate with his environment, and himself, once again. In reality, however, the romantic performed exclusions similar to those of his scientific counterpart, for his poetry failed to perform the idealization of actuality by which the romantic subject was supposed to associate fully with his surroundings. Only through a trick of the gaze could the romantic make the world appear like the ideal which alone he thought worthy of his imagination.