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Romantics. Wordsworth and Coleridge in particular
take their, their opposition to utilitarianism.
And, and that's something that I, I maybe should say a word about.
And it's a handy way of thinking in intellectual history, is to, to figure out
who the enemies of your figure, your point of focus, are.
So we, the scientist call this the[UNKNOWN] against whom are you
situating your thought. And the romantics their enemy and they
needed an enemy. Most thinkers do.
Their enemy is the utilitarian philosophy. For the, for the romantics in the, in the,
in the 1790s. Their, their point is that we don't just
receive impressions from the world. I mean in most general terms they are
rejecting this, this enlightenment Lockean notion in England that we are passive
receptors of the world and that we deal with the world through our sensation.
For the romantics, we make the world as we live in it.
The romantics have an activist notion of the intellect, even of the senses.
And then so where as the, where as the Utilitarians and Lockeans they're, they're
interested in what we receive. The Romantics are interested in how, in
the act of perception itself we, we make the world.
Now you may hear, if you're remembering from an earlier lecture, you may hear some
Kant in here right? Remember Kant said that you only know what
you make. Kant said that if you're wearing your
space time glasses you can have can have knowledge because when you have your space
time glasses on you're constructing the world as a rational place and so you can
know it because you've made it rational. You've made it knowable.
That too is an activist notion of the mind.
The mind makes the world available for knowledge.
The romantics go further than this, they have a [laugh] a mushier, less systematic
as if you make the world a poetic notion of what it means to make the world.
And they're so excited by the French revolution because, because the French
Revolutionists say we're making the world right now.
We're not just passively receiving the world.
We revolutionize a change in the world and we can know the world when we act on it.
This is the activist creed, right? I don't know the world by sitting back and
pondering it, letting it come at me. I know the world when I go out and do
stuff. And that's the romantic charge, not
calculating pleasure but making [laugh] making new forms of pleasure.
So Wordsworth who lived from seventeen seventy to eighteen fifty.
He saw the revolution taking place and was, in France, and was just head over
hills. He thought this is was the coolest thing.
He went over to France and was wildly enthusiastic about the people seizing the
initiative to remake the world. But by 1791 you start to see that, that
remaking of the world can get pretty ugly and that it gets pretty violent.
And for Wordsworth, there's this moment of disillusion.
After 1791 roughly as, when the revolution begins to spin out of control and then by
1793, you have the reign of terror. Wordsworth has makes out of this
dissolution of form of art, a romantic dissolution, a notion of loss that the
activist mind feels very deeply. A, a notion of being wounded by ones own
efforts to make the world a better place but then feeling wounded and making art
out of the wound of the failure to make the world a better place.
Wordsworth wrote in this prelude some of the most important poetry reflecting on
the revolution. And, and let me just read you, let me just
read you a little bit. Twas in truth and hour of universal
ferment. He's thinking back on the revolution.
Twas in truth an hour of universal ferment.
Mildest men were agitated and commotion, strife of passion and opinion, filled the
wall of peaceful houses with unique sounds.
The soil of common life, was at that time too hot to tread upon, The soil of common
life was at that time too hot to tread upon.
A revolutionary time. Everything, even the ground is, is
seething has, with heat, with change. I mean now that we've just kind of pointed
at Wordsworth's romanticism. Let me remind you of another key figure,
very briefly Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who lived from 1772 to 1834.
His notion of romanticism included some, much of what, what I was talking about
with Wordsworth. But Coleridge goes on to write political
essays. And I just want to underscore one concept
from those, and that is the concept of the organic community.
The organic community. Coleridge goes to Germany as Wordsworth
went to France. And what Coleridge learns in Germany is
that the enemy of authentic thought and creativity, the enemy of those things is
what he called the egocentric universe. That is the individual, which is so key
for British thought, for English thought, the individual is vastly overrated.
For Coleridge, the medieval community offers an important alternative to modern
individualism and Coleridge emphasizes that religion is the path to community.
Religion is the path to community. Because religion still reminds us that
we're not just an ego in the world. And not just an individual in the world.
That we're part of something greater than ourselves.
That's really important because it goes very much against Bentham's utilitarian
notion, to the individualism in Locke. This, this romantic appeal to community
and religion remains strong in England. In, in ways that keep alive a, a, avenue
for talking about history community. Poetry and religion as, as alternatives to
the status quo of industrialism, utilitarianism and individualism.
Now, as we're getting closer to Darwin, I know [laugh] you keep probably thinking,
isn't this week about Darwin? We're getting closer.
But we have another figure just to talk about a little bit, and that's John Stuart
Mill. John Stuart Mill who in some other
versions of this class we would read on liberty or on the subjection of women to
really key texts of Mills. Mill is a fascinating figure because he,
he is the son of a great utilitarian philosopher, a friend of Bentham's.
James Mill. That's his father.
And, and yet he is a, is a key figure in utilitarianism.
He has a, a crisis, he calls it. It's really a nervous breakdown.
And, and what's saves him, he says, is romanticism.
Mill was Joshua Mill was also an experiment of sorts as what brought by his
father. He, he was a prodigy.
I think he, as I recall, he learned Greek by the age of three.
He was doing higher level mathematics than I can do in my dotage at the, by four or
five, I mean, he had learned various languages.
He was James Mill wanted to show that our education system was, had a lot of wasted
time. And so that a, a young boy could learn a
ton of stuff if you just taught him all the time, new things.
And John Stuart Mills was a prodigy. He, he was a incredibly proficient and he
then had a nervous break down. >> [laugh] It wasn't really, it's not
really exciting. He wrote a book about it, his
autobiography. It's this beautiful account, unsentimental
in some ways. And the he has his crisis that he writes
about. Because you had been brought into this
utalitarian home where you know, that you just want to calculate what's going to
work well? And what's not going to work well and, and
you know what he was glad to work, right? He was working all the time.
So, John Stewart Mill, you have [laugh] no body really and he's own mind.
You have this combination utilitarianism. And, and, and romanticism.
John Stuart Mill he, was is most famous for developing a political philosophy in
which a liberty, justice, and toleration are fundamental.
He's his notion of freedom extending as far as another person's zone, of, of, of,
of, of freedom, that is that, you can, you can do what you want as long as it doesn't
hurt someone else. This notion of liberty is, is key for
modern political thought, but at some point and Mill I should say one, John
Stuart Mill was, was a uh,uh, project for his father, James Mill.
That is John Stuart Mill started his education in infancy and by three it was,
he knew Greek and, and he was calculating advanced mathematics at a horribly [laugh]
young age for those of us who have trouble doing it as adults.
He was the poster child for, how much you can learn how much you could be crammed,
in how much you could be crammed with an education in a utilitarian way.
And then as a young adult, Bill suffers this nervous breakdown because he asks
himself, if I had all this pleasure I thought I wanted, would I be happy would I
really be at peace with a, passive deep happiness?
And well he puts it this way. Suppose that all your object in life were
realized. Said John Stuart Mill in his
autobiography. Would this be a joy and happiness to you?
And irrepressible self-consciousness distincly answered no.
At this, my heart sank within me; the whole foundation on which my life was
constructed fell down. The whole foundation on which my life was
constructed fell down. And John Stuart Mill turns to the
romantics to understand his depression, to understand his crisis.
And what Mill begins to do then is to turn to the romantic poets.
He has, he said basically so I looked at utalitarianism and said what do you do
when you're depressed? And he said well don't be depressed, get
some pleasure. He said well yeah that's the problem,
that's what being depressed means, you know.
>> [laugh] I'm not getting pleasure. I said yeah, well you should.
Yeah, you need more pleasure. Okay you know, he asked another
utilitarian and he said well, have you tried flipping a coin?
I get a lot of pleasure out of that. Or wear funny shoes.
Or, you know or, and, and he kept getting and people kept or, you know, study more
because study always brought you pleasure. Well right now I, I, I don't have the
energy to study and I don't know what I'm doing with my life.
Okay. Why don't you take up the piano?
My brother, George plays the piano. It brings him great pleasure.
I don't want to. And so he went on and on and on, he kept
talking to people who talked about the calculus of pleasure, suffering, and he
kept talking to them. And they kept telling him, yeah, you need
more pleasure. And he kept sinking further and further
into sadness into isolation and, and of course since he was pretty well known,
came from a very fat famous family, and was, and was brilliant.
People kept saying, so what's wrong with you?
Why don't you get more, why don't you perk up?
You got everything going for you. Isn't that's a great phrase,when your
feeling down and someone says to you, gosh I wish that I was you at Wesleyan.
You should be happy. That, that usually makes somebody happy,
if he goes. You should be happy.
>> [laugh] What do you got to worry about? My mother said that to James Will.
>> [laugh] What do you got to worry about? And so Joshua Mill turns to the, he's a,
he's gasped by this. Because he, he really thought these people
had all the answers. Because they, they had a lot of answers.
They were very good at figuring stuff out and then he turns to Wordsworth.
And the turns to [unknown] He reads about dejection and melancholy.
And he says, these people know about life. They don't say oh, you should, you know
flip a coin, or, you should go and take a class.
Take another class. These people actually explore their
experience of sadness as a way of deepening their lives and creating art.
And Mill says, I have got to somehow create a bridge between this crude
utilitarianism and this romanticism. Which has produced these extraordinary
achievements in English poetry. And the rest of his life he focuses on
building a philosophy that combines attention to utility, attention to
calculation, but also attention to organic community, attention to the, the whole.
And it is that kind of combination that really is the most important background.
The most important context for the development of Darwin's work.