Philosophy of Romanticism. Main ideas and representatives. The meaning of art. Romantic philosophy Philosophical romanticism in Russian literature

2. Russian romanticism and the problem of Islam With all the philippics addressed to Civilization ^ the “Christian world”, especially its European component) from a considerable number of representatives of Russian romanticism, for them it remained the personification of Order and Organization

Romanticism, which constituted an entire era in the history of philosophy (late 18th - early 19th centuries), unfortunately, is often considered only as a literary and artistic movement, although it is necessary to pay tribute to domestic philologists (A.N. Veselovsky, V.M. Zhirmunsky, N.Ya. Berkovsky), who in their works paid great attention to the philosophical and aesthetic problems of romanticism, emphasizing the national characteristics of romanticism. “Romanticism everywhere has a national coloring, there is no romanticism at all, but there is German, French, English romanticism - different everywhere.” V.M. Zhirmunsky emphasized the main feature of German romanticism - religious and mystical motifs, as “a living feeling of the presence of the infinite in the finite.” V.V. Zenkovsky noted in the works of Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov a unique philosophy of lyricism, an Orthodox perception of man and the world (religious understanding and transformation of culture), which denies individualism, narcissism and intoxication with one’s own feelings and experiences, growing to the point of hypertrophy of the soul. While highlighting the national characteristics of romanticism, at the same time, the cultural-philosophical approach that analyzes the worldview of the romantics, a type of consciousness that is significantly different, for example, from the Enlightenment, seems to be of interest, which characterizes it (romanticism) as an entire culture, diversely developed, preserving a single style in literature, art, in philosophy, in natural science, in theology.

The image of culture created by the romantics is correlated with many bright and profound discoveries that find their embodiment and recognition in subsequent eras. Before the romantics, man was interpreted as a natural or social being. Therefore, a person’s own existence was considered only within the framework of existing history, was identified with the social and was not considered in the context of culture. The Romantics defended the idea of ​​personal freedom, the creativity of other worlds (cultural worlds), because the spiritual world of the individual is much richer than the natural or social one. The deeply human basis of romanticism as an entire culture, opposing enlightenment rationalism and practicality in ethics, aesthetics, and art, did not accept the vulgarity and wretchedness of burgher reality. German romanticism, for example, “was one of the broadest, grandest experiments in the criticism of bourgeois culture.” The tradition of criticism of bourgeois culture under the symbolic name “The Decline of Europe” was continued in the 19th-20th centuries: V.F. Odoevsky, I. Kireevsky, Ap. Grigoriev, F. Dostoevsky, F. Nietzsche, O. Spengler, N. Berdyaev, A. Blok and others. In Russian romanticism, Gogol occupies a special place, who in his work revealed “all the amazing mud of little things that entangle our lives.” Gogol was a great master, penetrating the deepest secrets of the human soul, subtly noticing the mental movements of his heroes. The category of vulgarity, which “is a tragic sign of the devastation of human souls through the seduction of wealth, ambition, and lust for power.” (Zenkovsky), developed by Gogol, allowed him to reveal a whole gallery of types: a provincial official (Chichikov), a sentimental dreamer (Manilov), a stingy one (Plyushkin), a rude man and a boor (Sobakevich), etc. unsightly, tragic, terrible in their stupidity sides of life. By renouncing such reality, a romantic is able to transform the world through the prism of his own created existence, and here his possibilities are limitless.

The traditional idea of ​​romanticism, which preaches extreme subjectivism, individualism and contemplation, needs to be adjusted. The accusation of the (German) romantics of primitivism - of constructing a dualistic model of culture: culture - civilization, and accordingly “the will to culture” - “the will to live”, of exalting aristocratic culture (contemplation, decadence) over burgher, middle-class (mass) culture is clearly not fair, although it has some basis (by the way, one can just as easily accuse the Russian romantic of destructivism, N. Berdyaev, of primitivism, who argued that culture is the great loser of life). Romantic individualism in Germany certainly developed under the influence of Fichte's subjective philosophy, however, both Schelling and Novalis (who were directly influenced by his idealism and called Fichte their teacher), and many other romantics over time moved away from subjective idealism: Schelling created a system of objective idealism, which became the philosophical basis of Jena romanticism, and the Jena romantics themselves proclaimed the idea of ​​a synthesis of art and life, a new understanding of art that poeticizes life. Russian romantic poet - V.A. Zhukovsky expressed this apotheosis of romanticism in the poem “I am a young muse, it happened...”: “Life and poetry are one.” The greatest idea of ​​a comprehensive synthesis: man and nature, art and science, philosophy and literature (poetry), philosophy and religion, music and architecture, all types (genres) of art was embodied most fully and talentedly in the philosophy of culture (Schelling’s philosophy of art) and the aesthetics of the romantics .

In art, and the art of romance was recognized as the highest form of spiritual activity, they looked for a universal form that would more fully correspond to the entire richness of human life and the diversity of natural existence. It is not knowledge of nature, but creative intuition, admiration and love for nature that helps a person to penetrate deeper into its secrets, to merge with nature in the One (God). And although philosophy is a “theory of knowledge” and “helps us to know the value of poetry,” it is poetry that is the heroine of philosophy and “the poet comprehends nature better than the mind of a scientist” (Novalis). Philosophy is capable of captivating a person to the very heights of the spirit, but it captivates only a particle of it. “Art allows an integral person to reach these heights” (Schelling). The essence of art lies in the fact that it harmonizes man’s relationship with the world (nature), bridges the gap between them, freedom and necessity. A person in his creativity (poet, artist) creates a spiritual world (culture, art, religion) and this intermediate sphere is the unity of the real and the ideal. Art and, above all, poetry, as a higher spiritual potency, flows directly from nature: “Poetry,” wrote Novalis in “Flower Pollen,” “in fact, is absolutely real, ... the more poetry, the closer to reality.” F. Schlegel defined the essence of romantic poetry: “Romantic is that which presents sentimental content in a fantastic form. Sentimental is what excites us, what awakens emotions in us, but not sensual, but spiritual. The source and soul of these impulses is love, and the spirit of love must hover invisibly everywhere in romantic poetry... And this inexplicable is the source of the fantastic, embodied in the poetic image.” So, only the “feeling of poetry,” which is akin to the “feeling of the mystical,” only genuine experience, “heartfelt imagination” (as P. Vyazemsky called the lyrical poetry of V. Zhukovsky, close to the German herzliche Phantasie by Novalis) is “a feeling of the special, personal, unknown , the hidden,” only it is capable of revealing the “necessary-accidental,” only it “represents the unimaginable, sees the invisible, feels the intangible” (Novalis). V. Zhukovsky created his own poetry of mood (suggestive), filled with a special meaning of the merging of man with the world. His poetic experience was comprehensively used by symbolist poets and existentialist philosophers in the twentieth century.

“Romanticism is the soul,” this definition of the essence of romanticism, probably the most concise, but also succinct, was given by V.A. Zhukovsky. Russian poets and philosophers wrote about the soul, frozen before the mysteries of human and natural existence: “Oh, my prophetic soul, // Oh, heart full of anxiety, // Oh, how you beat on the threshold // As if of a double existence” ( F. Tyutchev); “In the morning fog with unsteady steps // I walked towards the mysterious and wonderful shores...” (Vl. Solovyov); “Truth is only in the heart; where there is no living feeling, // There is no truth and no life...” (Ap. Grigoriev). Thus, the romantic worldview was not absolutely closed and self-centered. Within this type of feeling and experience, a special responsiveness arises. A romantic is able to grasp the most subtle state that is consonant with him. The soul, capable of “looking around at the whole enormously rushing life, looking at it through laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to him tears” (Gogol), is revealed in the works of the romantics in a variety of states - bitterness, melancholy, anxiety, sadness, sorrow, as no less more significant than the opposite states of the soul - joy, jubilation, optimism. The romantics were able to grasp the deepest, archetypal states of culture: life and death, eternity, time, space, the organic principles of the world, suffering as a feeling common to all living things. Not “I think - therefore I exist” - the statement of an intellectual, but “I suffer - therefore I exist” - the deep (unconscious, instinctive) confidence of all living things in nature. Thus, on the more ancient, archetypal basis of the “I” is not the mind, but the feeling - suffering, as one of the most elementary and primary feelings, close to all living things in nature.

Thus, the cultural-philosophical approach makes it possible to reveal the romantic type of culture and the type of romantic person, absorbing the unity (synthesis) and inconsistency of being (tragic perception of reality), the high ideals of freedom and creativity of the individual, denying the low aspects of life (vulgarity).

Cultural studies in England and North America were divided into two streams: cultural-philosophical and culturological.

The philosophy of culture set the task of penetrating the meaning of culture, comprehending it as a whole, determining its relationship with man, God, and the purpose of history. Culturology, or the science of culture, has not set itself such high goals. First of all, she rejected any teleology, the derivation of culture from metaphysical principles, limiting herself to establishing cause-and-effect relationships between individual cultural phenomena and considering them in development, in the transition from one evolutionary phase to another.

The romantic concepts of the philosophy of culture in England and America in the first half of the 19th century are similar to European philosophy, originating in the ideas of Kant, Schelling and Hegel. In the systems of Schelling and Hegel, the world was viewed as a process and product of the self-development of the spirit. Cognition was understood as the discovery of identity in opposites (spirit in its objective forms). Consequently, the method of knowledge of morality, art, law and other cultural phenomena could only be philosophical, for no other science, except speculative, is able to show in part the whole,

Those who set themselves the task of creating a science of culture that meets modern scientific requirements, were guided not by philosophy (metaphysics) or theology, but by natural science.

The term “culture” was used in the most general sense, equivalent to the concept of “civilization,” to designate the diversity of phenomena that is studied by various humanities. At the same time, cultural studies, drawing closer in this regard to ethnography and cultural anthropology, turned to the early stages of human civilization, emphasizing that knowledge of primitive forms of culture studied by other humanities in their mature stage is necessary to discover their genesis and hidden magical or mythological meaning .

The largest representative of the romantic philosophy of culture in England in the first half of the 19th century. was Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). At the same time, Ralph Emerson (1803-1882) developed the ideas of transcendentalism in America. The differences in their research are based only on the difference in the ideologies of the people of the Old and New Worlds.

Both thinkers professed a romantic philosophy of man, which deserves special mention. Romantic ideas about man stem from the teachings of the German classics about the “moral” and “aesthetic” man. Kant and Schiller understood this as a “man of culture,” i.e., an educated person who united in his activity in harmonious proportions the natural and spiritual principles, necessity and freedom, will (reason) and reasoning (cognition), who discerns the embodiment in nature itself the divine principle in the form of beauty and the sublime, the unity of the aesthetic and moral principles.

Such unity is shown in the appearance of the symbol. The symbol combines the finite and the infinite (nature and spirit), the obvious and the secret; nature is a symbolically encrypted text, and art concentrates and focuses in itself the same symbolism that is diffused throughout the universe.

The romantic consciousness, in contrast to medieval symbolism, was interested not only in the supersensible world, but also in the sensual. Although the romantics called for not limiting the horizon of one’s horizons to earthly problems, they by no means shunned them. They were characterized by an interest in natural science (this was especially characteristic of Emerson), they also took social problems to heart, and intervened in the life around them. It is known what role Emerson played in the struggle against slavery in America, and Carlyle in the struggle to improve the situation of the working class in England. But in everything they looked for transcendental foundations, in everything they saw symbols of the supersensible.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) acted as a true romantic in his philosophical substantiation of the importance of nature for man as a morally cleansing force, the only refuge among the noise, noise, soot of modern machine civilization and its ugly products. Nature serves as the starting point for Ruskin for the construction of sociology (or social philosophy of art). The attitude towards nature determines the moral state of society. And the nature of labor, art and political institutions depends on it. It is the depth of the artist’s penetration into nature (the idea of ​​truth) that shows the degree of his ability to approach God, and, consequently, his moral qualities.

In a major study of the “autumn of the Middle Ages” - the culture of Venice in the 13th-15th centuries.6 - Ruskin showed the dependence of grand style architecture on nature, as well as on the nature of the social, political, religious life of the people who created this architecture.

Ruskin is convinced that, in contrast to the modern state of society, where the incorrect organization of labor leads to contrasts of poverty and wealth, urban communities of the Middle Ages, inspired by religious and aesthetic values, embodied peace and harmony. In accordance with this social “myth of the Middle Ages,” life can be organized on the basis of cooperation, rather than the pursuit of profit, if it is based on religious ideas about the morally purifying nature of work.

Ruskin's denial of the contemporary economic organization of society continued with an attempt to create his own economic doctrine. In the spirit of Carlyle, the doctrine of the wealth of society is taken as a basis not as accumulated property, but as the moral dignity of the creators of material wealth. The essence of labor, according to Ruskin, in contrast to A. Smith and the classics of political economy of the Manchester School, is not in the creation of value, but in the expression of creative human abilities. Ruskin believed that if respect for work spread throughout society, and workers and employers recognized mutual authority, then the ills of poverty and social contrasts would be ended. In order to remake the consciousness of the working and managerial class, Ruskin preached in the form of lectures and books (in the 70-80s), almost abandoning his studies in art. But as a social theorist and public preacher he was much less original and interesting than as an artistic ideologist. His political economy turns out to be a departure from Proudhon’s “philosophy of poverty,” which has spread throughout all European countries, but cannot offer anything other than moneyless exchange, the replacement of commodity production with natural exchange, and the reduction of large private property to small property.

The decline of romanticism and the emergence of scientific theories of society and culture were associated with a change in the view of man.

theoretical understanding and mastery of the most complex phenomenon of Western European culture - romanticism and awareness of the typological features of Russian. romanticism. R. arose as a literary, philosophical and aesthetic movement, covering wide areas of spiritual life (literature, philosophy, economics, history, law). In the 1820s. XIX century were marked by the widespread dissemination of Schelling's philosophy in Russia (see Schelling in Russia), the formation and formation of the main. principles of Russian R. A profound characterization of R. was given by the poet Grigoriev, who called himself the last romantic in an era when R. as a philosophical and aesthetic movement had already exhausted itself. “Romanticism, and moreover ours, Russian, developed and molded into our original forms, romanticism was not a simple literary, but a life phenomenon, an entire era of moral development... which had its own special color, carrying out a special view in life... Let the romantic spirit came from the outside, from Western life and Western literature, it found soil in Russian nature ready for its perception, and therefore was reflected in completely original phenomena" (Literary Criticism. M., 1967. pp. 233-234). Typological features of both Western European and Russian. R. had three premises: nationalism, individualism and universalism. Historically, the birth of R. was associated with the formation of self-awareness in the German language. nation. R. gave his own interpretation of antiquity and the Middle Ages, drawing from the depths of history not only themes and plots, but also the characteristics of the national soul. Individualism as a constructive principle of the romantic worldview was formed from opposition to the aesthetics of classicism with its idea of ​​universality 1 and the cult of reason of the Enlightenment. Exactly

in R., the individual began to recognize himself as an independent and unique personality, opposing the world, and not being its blind and soulless particle. The principle of universalism embodied the metaphysics of R., which goes back to the philosophical foundations of Platonism and Schellingism. This does not mean that all of the above principles were understood by representatives of the Russian Federation. R. or were contained in full in their theoretical reasoning. As a rule, the attention of Russians. the romantics were focused on one of the principles. As a result of this, in Russian. R. can be distinguished, with a certain degree of convention, by the nationalism of M. N. Zagoskin, the individualism of A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, the universalism of Odoevsky, the greatest influence on Russian. R. provided ideas to him. romantics, actively promoted in Russian. romantic magazines "Mnemosyne", "Moskovsky Vestnik", "Athenaeus". Philosophical and aesthetic positions of German. R. was shared by such romantics as Zhukovsky, Galich, I. N. Sredny-Kamashev, I. Ya. Kroneberg, Venevitinov, Odoevsky. Popularization of the ideas of French R. studied the Moscow Telegraph of Polevoy, an ardent supporter and follower of the philosophical ideas of V. Cousin. Philosophy Russian R., both in form and content, developed within the framework of philosophical aesthetics. Ontological problems did not receive wide elaboration in R., but epistemological problems, in connection with the understanding of the process of artistic creativity, occupied a place in the work. rus. It's quite a big place for romantics. The fact that the basis of philosophical aesthetics is Russian. R. was based on the philosophy of identity and the philosophy of revelation of Schelling, as well as the philosophical principles of R., which determined his interest in the problem of intellectual intuition, in the irrationalistic justification of the nature of the artistic process and the nature of the creativity of genius, in the symbolism of artistic forms (the principle of the fragmentation of the world and life), in the concept "art for art's sake." All these problems of romantic aesthetics were considered through the prism of the above-mentioned initial premises specific to R. In the future, Russian R. emphasized the main attention to nations as the initial principle of philosophizing, which manifested itself, in particular, in the philosophical concepts of the Slavophiles and Pochvenniks.