if we think about it, the romantic were attempting to
solve a problem which faced them by say, the French Revolution…
the old order, the “ancient Regime” had fallen or was pushed to death,
depending on who is reporting… that ism’s and ideologies of the pre-revolution
before the French Revolution were no more… that there needed to be a new viewpoint
to assimilate was paramount to the minds of the writers, thinkers, poets,
artists after the French revolution… the old way was dead, what was to
replace it? that was the question faced by the writers and thinkers and poets
and artist after the French revolution…
if the old ways being the Enlightenment, then what was supposed to replace it?
the Enlightenment was rationalism and individualism rather then tradition…
to look outside beyond the word of the “authority” like the church, the state,
the society at large… in which we no longer bow down and take our queue
from the “authorities” about the important questions in life…
if the old order is dead, and we faced that with a couple of historical
facts, one was the French revolution and the second was the industrial
revolution…man was by economic necessity driven off of their traditional
land, off of their traditional occupation of farming into the city and into
the factory…so you have a political revolution and an economic revolution…
if you have a new environment, you must have a new response…
basic evolution… a new environment means you must react to
that new environment…
the 19th century has often been called the “age of ideology”
why? because in response to the loss of the old ism’s and ideologies,
the poets, writers, thinkers, artist, philosophers had to discover new
ism’s and ideologies to replace the old failed ism’s and ideologies……
we see the rise of Capitalism and socialism and communism as ism’s
and ideologies to replace the old failed ism’s and ideologies…
the 19the century had a problem and the rise of those ism’ and ideologies
like capitalism and communism and socialism is an attempt to solve
that problem…the Romantic poets and writers and authors and artist
were attempting to solve the problem of the failed ism’s and ideologies
of the previous century, the 18th century…
the Romantic era of the 19th century, of Bryon and Shelly and Blake
and Wordsworth and Coleridge among others, lasted from roughly
1800 to 1850… when the battle to overcome the failed ism’s and ideologies
was itself overtaken by the complete victory of the industrial revolution
and capitalism…
now let us take 1850 as a key year… we can see that the modern era
started shortly after this… remember that there is a time lapse between
the end of something and the start of something… it takes time for
a person, a people, artists and thinkers and philosophers to catch up
to the currents events…… so what happened a few years after 1850?
we see something interesting happening…by 1860 we see new art entering
Europe…we see new schools of art, of writing, of philosophy…….
we have a response to the victory of the industrial revolution
and the victory of capitalism…
we get various schools of art including the start of impressionism
and then (in no particular order) surrealism, cubism, realism, post-impressionism,
fauvism…no one school of art dominates the scene but many different schools
follow each other…
we have a divergent in philosophy… we see a wide diversity in philosophy
in various schools, logical positivism, analytic philosophy, phenomenology,
existentialism, post structuralism… among other schools of philosophy…
and we see the divergence of science into branches…
before 1850, it was call natural science, a person could understand
the basic understanding of what we now call science by simple reading…
in other words, before 1850, a learned man, could in theory, be
aware of all the major scientific advances in all the area’s of science…
thus Descartes was aware of as was Newton, all the relevant scientific
information that was being discovered… this was true about Kant…
Kant was aware of all the major scientific information and he could
intelligently write about it…Kant died around 1800…
but by 1850 science began to develop branches, areas of study like
physics and chemistry and biology and astronomy… it was too much information
for one man to be able to keep informed about…… science began to specialize
into certain branches…but that is in keeping with the changes in the art world…
so have also have a branching in the humanities… we get various disciplines
like philosophy and languages, literature, history, human geography,
law, politics, religion and the arts…
so in four distinct and separate area’s, we have a widespread
and distinct division of various area’s of study and all because
of a response to the fall of the old regime and the rise of the
new ism’s and ideologies of capitalism and communism
and the rise of the industrial revolution…
today, we are at the tail end of that part or phase of modern life…
modernism and postmodernism is a response to the response after
the enlightenment……
we see the divergence of art, science, philosophy and the humanities into
distinct and separate aspects after 1850…
we are now 2020 and the response of the arts, science, philosophy and the
humanities to the rise of capitalism and the completion of the industrial
revolution, has lost its way…
the response to the rise to capitalism and the industrial revolution
is now complete… we have no new schools of art or of science or
of philosophy or of the humanities… and we haven’t had a new school
in those area’s in decades… that means something… that we haven’t added
to the divergence of the arts or science or philosophy or the humanities
in over 50 years is a sign that this too has played out… there is nothing
more we can add to these area’s of art, science, philosophy and the humanities…
so the problem we face is a simple one… what is next?
we see how the artist and philosophers reacted to the fall of
the old regime by new art, new philosophy… think Kant, Hegel,
Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard… the rise of new branches of science like
physics and biology and chemistry and the rise of the various branches
of the humanities…like languages and art and politics………
the various area’s of human endeavor splinter and fractured after
the rise of the industrial revolution and the French revolution…
the question becomes, do we attempt to reunited the various factions
that we have now or do we attempt to find a new path?
that is the problem that us moderns face…
what is the next step?
if we are to reunite the various factions of art, science, philosophy
and the humanities into one or even 4 separate groups, then under
what banner shall we hold on high to reunite these diverse and separate
factions?
that is one of the many problems we face today as philosophers…
what is the next phase in philosophy that might be used to
reunite the various factions of art, science, philosophy and
the humanities?
do we even attempt to reunite the factions or do we simple accept
that fact of division and attempt to create a new understanding that accepts
the divisions within the various disciplines and move to get
past that?
BTW, we could have also used such disciplines as history, economics,
sociology, psychology… to prove our point of the various and widening of the disciplines
we study…there is no one concrete viewpoint that covers any of these area’s either…
each of them operates independently of each other and independently within
each branch of study…
so how do we solve this problem of our modern times?
that is certainly the question we face… among others…
Kropotkin