The Beginning of the Hictorical-Critical
Method
--Lecture
Notes for Topic 2.2.1-
Religion 492
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2.2.1
Introduction
Assigned Readings for This Topic:
Gerald Bray, "The Beginning of the Historical-Critical Method,"
Biblical
Interpretation: Past and Present, pp. 225-269
Any discussion of this era of interpretive history is going to be complex,
simply
because the currents of influence that swirled around Christianity from
the time just after the Reformers until the middle of the 1800s were diverse,
often contradictory, and mostly subtle to the point of being unnoticeable.
To be certain, a few dominant cultural forces exerted a controlling influence,
that is, Classicism (1600 -1800) and Romanticism (late1700s - late 1800s).
These influences shaped European thinking profoundly in almost every area
of existence and Christianity was caught up in their influence. Enormous
diversity inside both these movements cannot be overemphasized. The Classical
Era is typically divided somewhat geographically between British Empiricism
and Contentinal Rationalism. The inheritantly contradictory nature of these
two forces created tensions and controversy of immence proportions as the
two spheres of influence overlapped one another in the late 1700s. North
America did not contribute much to this discussion during this period;
it mostly was shaped by what was taking place in Europe.
How Christianity responded is the larger contextual story for our concerns.
The interpretive strategies that evolved as a part of this response is
our primary target of exploration.
2.2.1.1
Classicism
Assigned Readings for This Topic:
Resource Materials to also be studied:
Nicholas Pioch, "Classicism," WebMuseum,
Paris at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/classicism/
Classicism
Aesthetic
attitudes and principles based on the culture, art and literature of ancient
Greece and Rome, and characterized by emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion,
and restrained emotion.
Classicism
and Neoclassicism, in the arts, historical tradition or aesthetic attitudes
based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity. In the context of the
tradition, Classicism refers either to the art produced in antiquity or
to later art inspired by that of antiquity; Neoclassicism always refers
to the art produced later but inspired by antiquity. Thus the terms Classicism
and Neoclassicism are often used interchangeably.
Term
that, with the related words 'classic' and 'Classical', is used in various
(and often confusing) ways in the history and criticism of the arts. In
its broadest sense, Classicism is used as the opposite of Romanticism,
characterizing art in which adherence to recognized aesthetic ideals is
accorded greater importance that individuality of expression. The word
often implies direct inspiration from antique art, but this is not a necessary
part of the concept, and according to context the word might be intended
to convey little more than the idea of clarity of expression, or alternatively
of conservatism. In the context of Greek art, the term 'Classical' has
a more precise meaning, referring to the period between the Archaic and
Hellenistic periods, when Greek culture is thought to have attained its
greatest splendor. The term `classic' is used to refer to the best or most
representative example of its kind in any field or period. This is what
Wölfflin meant when he gave the title Classic Art to his book on the
Italian High Renaissance. Thus, in this sense, it would be legitimate,
if wilfully confusing, to refer to Delacroix as the classic Romantic artist.
The three terms 'classic', 'Classical' and 'Classicism' are, then, often
not used with discrimination or exactness, the conflation of historical
term and value judgement reflecting the idea (dominant for centuries) that
the art of the Greeks and Romans set a standard for all future achievement.
To clear up (or perhaps add to) the confusion, the rather ungainly word
`classicistic' has also entered the lists--it conveys the idea of dependance
on ancient models but without any sense of qualitative judgement.
1825
(opposé à romantisme) Doctrine des partisans exclusifs de
la tradition classique dans la littérature et dans l'art.
Il
y a ici une recrudescence de classicisme, de siècle de Louis XIV,
de goût pour Esther et de dilettantisme académique.
--
SainteBeuve, Correspondance, t. II.
Et
si l'on a pu dire enfin que le romantisme avait pris en tout le contrepied
du classicisme, la grande raison en est que le classicisme avait fait de
l'impersonnalité de l'oeuvre d'art l'une des conditions de sa perfection.
--
Brunetière, Manuel de l'histoire de la littérature française,
III.
Ensemble
des caractères propres aux oeuvres littéraires et artistiques
de l'antiquité et du XVIIe siècle, telles qu'elles ont été
définies, jugées par les théoriciens de la fin du
XVIIe siècle (en France). L'union «du cartésianisme
et de l'art dans le classicisme» (Lanson).
C'est
par ce rationalisme (en littérature) que se définit essentiellement,
selon nous, le classicisme français. [...] Dans la littérature
et l'art le classicisme, qui a donné ses plus beaux fruits, se prolonge
encore (vers 1680). Véritable «Père de l'Église»,
Bossuet oppose aux ennemis du catholicisme la pure doctrine de la tradition.
Racine fait jouer Esther (1689) et Athalie (1691). La Fontaine publie son
XIIe livre de Fables (1694).
--
R. Jasinski, Histoire de la littérature française.
"Continental Rationalism," The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
at http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/rat-cont.htm
The
term "Continental Rationalism" traditionally refers to a 17th century philosophical
movement begun by Descartes. After Descartes, several dozen scientists
and philosophers continued his teachings throughout continental Europe
and, accordingly were titled "Cartesians." Some Cartesians strayed little
from Descartes' scientific and metaphysical theories. Others incorporated
his theories into Calvinistic theology. But a handful of philosopher s
influenced by Descartes were more original in developing their own views
and these people are included under the more general title "rationalists."
the principle rationalists include Benedict Spinoza , Nicholas Malebranche,
Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz, and Christian Wolff.
Continental
Rationalism is usually understood in relation to its rival 17th century
movement, British Empiricism, founded by John Locke. The radical division
between these two schools was first articulated by Thomas Reid in his Inquiry
Concerning the Human Mind; Reid's division was taken as the definitive
explanation, which has come down to the present time. Two key points distinguish
Rationalism from British Empiricists. The first involves differing theories
about the origin of ideas. Rationalists believed that an important group
of foundational concepts are known intuitively through reason, as opposed
to experience. Descartes describes such concepts as innate ideas, the most
important of these including the ideas of oneself, infinite perfection,
and causality. British Empiricists, as we will see, staunchly rejected
this view, and argued that all ideas trace ultimately trace back to experiences,
such as sense perceptions and emotions. The second distinguishing feature
between Rationalism and Empiricism concerns their differing methods of
investigating problems. Rationalists maintained that we could deduce truths
with absolute certainty from our innate ideas, much the way theorems in
geometry are deduced from axioms. Mathematical demonstration was seen as
the perfect type of demonstrating truth and, accordingly, mathematical
proof became the model for all other kinds of demonstration. Although empiricists
also used deductive reasoning, they put a greater emphasis on the inductive
method championed by fellow British countryman Francis Bacon.
Contemporary
historians of philosophy challenge this traditional distinction between
rationalism and empiricism. Louis Loeb, for example, argues for an alternative
classification of 17th and 18th century philosophers which is more representative
of t he actual content of their metaphysical and epistemological positions.
In spite of Loeb's suggestions, the traditional division between rationalism
and empiricism offered by Reid has at least some foundation, and is convenient
for understanding the evolution of philosophical theories during the modern
period of philosophy.
"Descartes, René," The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy at http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/descarte.htm
René
Descartes (1596-1650) is one of the most important Western philosophers
of the past few centuries. During his lifetime, Descartes was just as famous
as an original physicist, physiologist and mathematician. But it is as
a highly original philosopher that he is most frequently read today. He
attempted to restart philosophy in a fresh direction. For example, his
philosophy refused to accept the Aristotelian and Scholastic traditions
that had dominated philosophical thought throughout the Medieval period;
it attempted to fully integrate philosophy with the 'new' sciences; and
Descartes changed the relationship between philosophy and theology. Such
new directions for philosophy made Descartes into a revolutionary figure.
The
two most widely known of Descartes' philosophical ideas are those of a
method of hyperbolic doubt, and the argument that, though he may doubt,
he cannot doubt that he exists. The first of these comprises a key aspect
of Descartes' philosophical method. As noted above, he refused to accept
the authority of previous philosophers - but he also refused to accept
the obviousness of his own senses. In the search for a foundation for philosophy,
whatever could be doubted must be rejected. He resolves to trust only that
which is clearly and distinctly seen to be beyond any doubt. In this manner,
Descartes peels away the layers of beliefs and opinions that clouded his
view of the truth. But, very little remains, only the simple fact of doubting
itself, and the inescapable inference that something exists doubting, namely
Descartes himself.
His
next task is to reconstruct our knowledge piece by piece, such that at
no stage is the possibility of doubt allowed to creep back in. In this
manner, Descartes proves that he himself must have the basic characterisitc
of thinking, and that this thinking thing (mind) is quite distinct from
his body; the existence of a God; the existence and nature of the external
world; and so on. What is important in this for Descartes is, first, that
he is showing that knowledge is genuinely possible (and thus that sceptics
must be mistaken), and, second, that, more particularly, a mathematically-based
scientific knowledge of the material world is possible.
Descartes'
work was influential, although his studies in physics and the other natural
sciences much less so than his mathematical and philosophical work. Throughout
the 17th and 18th Centuries, Descartes' philosophical ghost was always
present: Locke, Hume, Leibniz and even Kant felt compelled to philosophical
engage (often negatively, of course) with this philosophical giant. For
these reasons, Descartes is often called the 'father' of modern philosophy.
This
article provides an overview of Descartes' philosophical thought following
the order of his most famous and widely-studied book, the Meditations on
First Philosophy.
"Rene Descartes: 'I think therefore I am'," Outline
of Great Books at http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Outline_of_Great_Books_Volume_I/ithinkth_bga.html
Rene
Descartes: 'I think therefore I am'
['I
THINK, THEREFORE I AM' - DESCARTES - FROM DISCOURSE ON METHOD]
I
HAD long since remarked that in matters of conduct it is necessary sometimes
to follow opinions known to be uncertain, as if they were not subject to
doubt; but, because now I was desirous to devote myself to the search after
truth, I considered that I must do just the contrary, and reject as absolutely
false every-thing concerning which I could imagine the least doubt to exist.
Thus,
because our senses sometimes deceive us, I would suppose that nothing is
such as they make us to imagine it; and because I was as likely to err
as another in reasoning, I rejected as false all the reasons which I had
formerly accepted as demonstrative; and finally, considering that all the
thoughts we have when awake can come to us also when we sleep without any
of them being true, I resolved to feign that everything which had ever
entered my mind was no more truth than the illusion of my dreams.
But
I observed that, while I was thus resolved to feign that everything was
false, I who thought must of necessity be somewhat; and remarking this
truth--I think, therefore I am--was so firm and so assured that all the
most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were unable to shake it,
I judged that I could unhesitatingly accept it as the first principle of
the philosophy I was seeking. I could feign that there was no world, I
could not feign that I did not exist. And I judged that I might take it
as a general rule that the things which we conceive very clearly and very
distinctly are all true, and that the only difficulty lies in the way of
discerning which those things are that we conceive distinctly.
After
this, reflecting upon the fact that I doubted, and that consequently my
being was not quite perfected (for I saw that to know is a greater perfection
than to doubt), I bethought me to inquire whence I had learnt to think
of something more perfect than myself; and it was clear to me that this
must come from some nature which was in fact more perfect. For other things
I could regard as dependencies of my nature if they were real, and if they
were not real they might proceed from nothing--that is to say, they might
exist in me by way of defect.
But
it could not be the same with the idea of a being more perfect than my
own; for to derive it from nothing was manifestly impossible; and because
it is no less repugnant that the more perfect should follow and depend
upon the less perfect than that something should come forth out of nothing.
I could not derive it from myself.
It
remained, then, to conclude that it was put into me by a nature truly more
perfect than was I and possessing in itself all the perfections of what
I could form an idea--in a word, by God. To which I added that, since I
knew some perfections which I did not possess, I was not the only being
who existed, but that there must of necessity be some other being, more
perfect, on whom I depended, and from whom I had acquired all that I possessed;
for if I had existed alone and independent of all other, so that I had
of myself all this little whereby I participated in the Perfect Being,
I should have been able to have in myself all those other qualities which
I knew myself to lack, and so to be infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient,
almighty--in fine, to possess all the perfections which I could observe
in God.
PROPOSING
to myself the geometer's subject matter, and then turning again to examine
my idea of a Perfect Being, I found that existence was comprehended in
that idea just as in the idea of a triangle is comprehended the notion
that the sum of its angles is equal to two right angles; and that consequently
it is as certain that God, this Perfect Being is or exists, as any geometrical
demonstration could be.
That
there are many who persuade themselves that there is a difficulty in knowing
Him is due to the scholastic maxim that there is nothing in the understanding
which has not first been in the senses; where the ideas of God and the
soul have never been.
Than
the existence of God all other things, even those which it seems to a man
extravagant to doubt, such as his having a body, are less certain. Nor
is there any reason sufficient to remove such doubt but such as presupposes
the existence of God. From His existence it follows that our ideas or notions,
being real things, and coming from God, cannot but be true in so far as
they are clear and distinct. In so far as they contain falsity, they are
confused and obscure, there is in them an element of mere negation (elles
participent du neant); that is to say, they are thus confused in us because
we ourselves are not all perfect. And it is evident that falsity or imperfection
can no more come forth from God than can perfection proceed from nothingness.
But, did we not know that all which is in us of the real and the true comes
from a perfect and infinite being, however clear and distinct our ideas
might be, we should have no reason for assurance that they possessed the
final perfection--truth.
Reason
instructs us that all our ideas must have some foundation of truth, for
it could not be that the All-Perfect and the All-True should otherwise
have put them into us; and because our reasonings are never so evident
or so complete when we sleep as when we wake, although sometimes during
sleep our imagination may be more vivid and positive, it also instructs
us that such truth as our thoughts have will be in our waking thoughts
rather than in our dreams.
[WHY
I DO NOT PUBLISH 'THE WORLD']
I
HAVE always remained firm in my resolve to assume no other principle than
that which I have used to demonstrate the existence of God and of the soul,
and to receive nothing which did not seem to me clearer and more certain
than the demonstrations of the philosophers had seemed before; yet not
only have I found means of satisfying myself with regard to the principal
difficulties which are usually treated of in philosophy, but also I have
remarked certain laws which God has so established in nature, and of which
He has implanted such notions in our souls, that we cannot doubt that they
are observed in all which happens in the world.
The
principal truths which flow from these I have tried to unfold in a treatise
(On the World, or on Light), which certain considerations prevent me from
publishing. This I concluded three years ago, and had begun to revise it
for the printer, when I learnt that certain persons to whom I defer had
disapproved an opinion on physics published a short time before by a certain
person (Galileo, condemned by the Roman Inquisition in 1633), in which
opinion I had noticed nothing prejudicial to religion; and this made me
fear that there might be some among my opinions in which I was mistaken.
I
now believe that I ought to continue to write all the things which I judge
of importance, but ought in no wise to consent to their publication during
my life. For my experience of the objections which might be made forbids
me to hope for any profit from them. I have tried both friends and enemies,
yet it has seldom happened that they have offered any objection which I
had not in some measure foreseen; so that I have never, I may say, found
a critic who did not seem to be either less rigorous or less fair-minded
than myself.
Whereupon
I gladly take this opportunity to beg those who shall come after us never
to believe that the things which they are told come from me unless I have
divulged them myself; and I am in nowise astonished at the extravagances
attributed to those old philosophers whose writings have not come down
to us. They were the greatest minds of their time, but have been ill reported.
Why,
I am sure that the most devoted of those who now follow Aristotle would
esteem themselves happy if they had as much knowledge of nature as he had,
even on the condition that they should never have more! They are like ivy,
which never mounts higher than the trees which support it, and which even
comes down again after it has attained their summit. So at least, it seems
to me, do they who, not content with knowing all that is explained by their
author, would find in him the solution also of many difficulties of which
he says nothing, and of which, perhaps, he never thought.
Yet
their method of philosophising is very convenient for those who have but
middling minds, for the obscurity of the distinctions and principles which
they employ enables them to speak of all things as boldly as if they had
knowledge of them, and sustain all they have to say against the most subtle
and skilful without there being any means of convincing them; wherein they
seem to me like a blind man who, in order to fight on equal terms with
a man who has his sight, invites him into the depths of a cavern.
And
I may say that it is to their interest that I should abstain from publishing
the principles of the philosophy which I employ, for so simple and so evident
are they that to publish them would be like opening windows into their
caverns and letting in the day. But if they prefer acquaintance with a
little truth, and desire to follow a plan like mine, there is no need for
me to say to them any more in this discourse than I have already said.
For
if they are capable of passing beyond what I have done, much rather will
they be able to discover for themselves whatever I believe myself to have
found out; besides which, the practice which they will acquire in seeking
out easy things and thence passing to others which are more difficult,
will stead them better than all my instructions.
But
if some of the matters spoken about at the beginning of the Dioptrics and
the Meteors [published with the Discourse on Method] should at first give
offence because I have called them 'suppositions,' and have shown no desire
to prove them, let the reader have patience to read the whole attentively,
and I have hope that he will be satisfied.
The
time remaining to me I have resolved to employ in trying to acquire some
knowledge of nature, such that we may be able to draw from it more certain
rules for medicine than those which we possess. And I hereby declare that
I shall always hold myself more obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy
my leisure undisturbed than I should be to any who should offer me the
most esteemed employments in the world.
"British Empiricism," The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
at http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/emp-brit.htm
"British
Empiricism" refers to the 18th century philosophical movement in Great
Britain which maintained that all knowledge comes from experience. Continental
Rationalists maintained that knowledge comes from foundational concepts
known intuitively through reason, such as innate ideas. Other concepts
are then deductively drawn from these. British Empiricists staunchly rejected
the theory of innate ideas and argued that knowledge is based on both sense
experience and internal mental experiences, such as emotions and self-reflection.
18th century British Empiricists took their cue from Francis Bacon who,
in the very first aphorism of his New Organon, hails the primacy of experience,
particularly the observation of nature:
Humans, who are the servants and interpreters of nature, can act and understand
no further than they have observed in either the operation or the contemplation
of the method and order of nature.
Although
British Empiricists disavowed innate ideas, in favor of ideas from experience,
it is important to note that the Empiricists did not reject the notion
of instinct or innateness in general. Indeed, we have inborn propensities
which regulate our bodily functions, produce emotions, and even direct
our thinking. What Empiricists deny, though, is that we are born with detailed,
picture-like, concepts of God, causality, and even mathematics.
Like
Bacon, British Empiricists also moved away from deductive proofs and used
an inductive method of arguing which was more conducive to the data of
experience. In spite of their advocacy of inductive argumentation, though,
British Empiricists still made wide use of deductive arguments. Commenting
on the use of induction in the history of philosophy, 19th century Scottish
philosopher James McCosh argues that induction is more representative of
later Scottish philosophy than it is of earlier British Empiricism, specifically
that of Locke:
It cannot be denied that Locke does proceed very largely in the way of
observation; but it is a curious circumstance that he nowhere professes
to follow the method of induction; and his great work may be summarily
represented as an attempt to establish by internal facts the preconceived
theory, that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection. To
the Scottish school belongs the merit of being the first, avowedly and
knowingly, to follow the inductive method, and to employ it systematically
in psychological investigation.
Three
principal philosophers are associated with British Empiricism: John Locke,
George Berkeley, and David Hume. Occasionally the 19th century philosopher
J.S. Mill is added to this list. But even restricting the British Empiricist
movement to the above figures is somewhat misleading. Until the rise of
English idealism around 1850, all British philosophy after Locke bears
the marks of his empiricism. More than any other philosopher, Locke was
cited as an authority by philosophers, philosophical theologians, and political
thinkers. Indeed, the lengthy article on "metaphysics" in the first edition
of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1773) is essentially a summary of Locke.
"Locke, John," The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy at http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/locke.html
John
Locke (1632-1704)
Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to that part
of this article)
* Life
* Writings
o Plan
of the Essay
+ Ideas
in General
+ Simple
and Complex Ideas
+ Primary
and Secondary Qualities
+ Knowledge
of Mathematics, Ethics, the Self, and God
+ Sensitive
Knowledge of the External World
+ Judgment
o Two
Treatises of Government
o Economic
Writings
o Letters
on Religious Toleration
o Theological
Writings
o Educational
Writings
* Sources
Life
John
Locke was born at Wrington, a village in Somerset, on August 29, 1632.
He was the son of a country solicitor and small landowner who, when the
civil war broke out, served as a captain of horse in the parliamentary
army. "I no sooner perceived myself in the world than I found myself in
a storm," he wrote long afterwards, during the lull in the storm which
followed the king's return. But political unrest does not seem to have
seriously disturbed the course of his education. He entered Westminster
school in 1646, and passed to Christ Church, Oxford, as a junior student,
in 1652; and he had a home there (though absent from it for long periods)
for more than thirty years -- till deprived of his studentship by royal
mandate in 1684. The official studies of the university were uncongenial
to him; he would have preferred to have learned philosophy from Descartes
instead of from Aristotle; but evidently he satisfied the authorities,
for he was elected to a senior studentship in 1659, and, in the three or
four years following, he took part in the tutorial work of the college.
At one time he seems to have thought of the clerical profession as a possible
career; but he declined an offer of preferment in 1666, and in the same
year obtained a dispensation which enabled him to hold his studentship
without taking orders. About the same time we hear of his interest in experimental
science, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1668. Little
is known of his early medical studies. He cannot have followed the regular
course, for he was unable to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine. It
was not till 1674 that he graduated as bachelor of medicine. In the following
January his position in Christ Church was regularized by his appointment
to one of the two medical studentships of the college.
His
knowledge of medicine and occasional practice of the art led, in 1666,
to an acquaintance with Lord Ashley (afterwards, from 1672, Earl of Shaftesbury).
The acquaintance, begun accidentally, had an immediate effect on Locke's
career. Without serving his connection with Oxford, he became a member
of Shaftesbury's household, and seems soon to have been looked upon as
indispensable in all matters domestic and political. He saved the statesman's
life by a skillful operation, arranged a suitable marriage for his heir,
attended the lady in her confinement, and directed the nursing and education
of her son -- afterwards famous as the author of Characteristics. He assisted
Shaftesbury also in public business, commercial and political, and followed
him into the government service. When Shaftesbury was made lord chancellor
in 1672, Locke became his secretary for presentations to benefices, and,
in the following year, was made secretary to the board of trade. In 1675
his official life came to an end for the time with the fall of his chief.
Locke's
health, always delicate, suffered from the London climate. When released
from the cares of office, he left England in search of health. Ten years
earlier he had his first experience of foreign travel and of public employment,
as secretary to Sir Walter Vane, ambassador to the Elector of Brandenburg
during the first Dutch war. On his return to England, early in 1666, he
declined an offer of further service in Spain, and settled again in Oxford,
but was soon induced by Shaftesbury to spend a great part of his time in
London. On his release from office in 1675 he sought milder air in the
south of France, made leisurely journeys, and settled down for many months
at Montpellier. The journal which he kept at this period is full of minute
descriptions of places and customs and institutions. It contains also a
record of many of the reflections that afterwards took shape in the Essay
concerning Human Understanding. he returned to England in 1679, when his
patron had again a short spell of office. He does not seem to have been
concerned in Shaftesbury's later schemes; but suspicion naturally fell
upon him, and he found it prudent to take refuge in Holland. This he did
in August 1683, less than a year after the flight and death of Shaftesbury.
Even in Holland for some time he was not safe from danger of arrest at
the instance of the English government; he moved from town to town, lived
under an assumed name, and visited his friends by stealth. His residence
in Holland brought political occupations with it, among the men who were
preparing the English revolution. it had at least equal value in the leisure
which it gave him for literary work and in the friendships which it offered.
In particular, he formed a close intimacy with Philip van Limbroch, the
leader of the Remonstrant clergy, and the scholar and liberal theologian
to whom Epistola de Tolerantia was dedicated. This letter was completed
in 1685, though not published at the time; and, before he left for England,
in February 1689, the Essay concerning Human Understanding seems to have
attained its final form, and an abstract of it was published in Leclerc's
Bibliotheque universelle in 1688.
The
new government recognized his services to the cause of freedom by the offer
of the post of ambassador either at Berlin or at Vienna. But Locke was
no place hunter; he was solicitous also on account of his health; his earlier
experience of Germany led him to fear the "cold air" and "warm drinking";
and the high office was declined. But he served less important offices
at home. He was made commissioner of appeals in May 1689, and, from 1696
to 1700, he was a commissioner of trade and plantations at a salary of
L1000 a year. Although official duties called him to town for protracted
periods, he was able to fix his residence in the country. In 1691 he was
persuaded to make his permanent home at Oates in Essex, in the house of
Francis and Lady Masham. Lady Masham was a daughter of Cudworth, the Cambridge
Platonist; Lock had manifested a growing sympathy with his type of liberal
theology; intellectual affinity increased his friendship with the family
at Oates; and he continued to live with them till his death on October
28, 1704.
2.2.1.2
Romanticism
Assigned Readings for This Topic:
Resource Materials to also be studied:
Nicholas Pioch, "Romanticism," WebMuseum,
Paris at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/romanticism/
Romanticism
Artistic
and intellectual movement that originated in the late 18th century and
stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from classical correctness
in art forms, and rebellion against social conventions.
Romanticism,
attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of literature,
painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western
civilization over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century.
Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm,
harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism
in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism in particular. It was also
to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century
rationalism and physical materialism in general. Romanticism emphasized
the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal,
the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.
Among
the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a deepened
appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion
over reason and of the senses over intellect; a turning in upon the self
and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and mental
potentialities; a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional
figure in general, and a focus on his passions and inner struggles; a new
view of the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit
is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional
procedures; an emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience
and spiritual truth; an obsessive interest in folk culture, national and
ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era; and a predilection for the
exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous,
the diseased, and even the satanic.
Il
a rendu à mes déserts quelque chose de leur beauté
heureuse, et du romantisme de leurs sites alpestres [...]
--
É. de Senancour, Oberman, LXXXVII (1804).
Cette
jeune critique [...] C'est elle qui [...] nous délivrera de deux
fléaux : le classicisme caduc, et le faux romantisme qui ose poindre
aux pieds du vrai.
--
Hugo, Préface de Cromwell, 1827.
Nom
donné à un mouvement de libération de l'art et du
moi, qui, en France, s'est développé sous la Restauration
et la monarchie de Juillet, par réaction contre la régularité
classique et le rationalisme philosophique des siècles précédents.
Les valeurs esthétiques et morales du romantisme. Le romantisme
français, anglais, allemand, italien, espagnol. Le romantisme dans
la littérature, la peinture, la musique.
Nous
crûmes d'abord, pendant deux ans, que le romantisme, en manière
d'écriture, ne s'appliquait qu'au théâtre, et qu'il
se distinguait du classique parce qu'il se passait des unités [...]
Mais on nous apprend tout à coup [...] qu'il y avait poésie
romantique et poésie classique, roman romantique et roman classique
[...] Quand nous reçumes cette nouvelle, nous ne pûmes fermer
l'oeil de la nuit [...] Heureusement, dans la même année,
parut une illustre préface [...] On y disait très nettement
que le romantisme n'était autre chose que l'alliance [...] du grotesque
et du terrible [...]
--
A. de Musset, Mélanges de littérature et de critique, «Lettres
de Dupuis et Cotonet», I.
Le
romantisme n'est précisément ni dans le choix des sujets
ni dans la vérité exacte, mais dans la manière de
sentir [...] Qui dit romantisme dit art moderne, --- c'estàdire
intimité, spiritualité, couleur, aspiration vers l'infini,
exprimées par tous les moyens que contiennent les arts.
--
Baudelaire, les Curiosités esthétiques, III, II.
Qu'étaitce,
après tout, que de choisir dans le romantisme [...] sinon faire
à l'égard des auteurs de la première moitié
du XIXe siècle ce que les hommes du temps de Louis XIV ont fait
à l'égard des auteurs du XVIe? Tout classicisme suppose un
romantisme antérieur [...]
Baudelaire,
au milieu du romantisme, fait songer à quelque classique [...] Les
romantiques avaient négligé tout, ou presque tout ce qui
demande à la pensée une attention et une suite un peu pénibles.
Ils recherchaient les effets de choc, d'entraînement et de contraste
[...] Ils répugnaient à la réflexion abstraite et
au raisonnement [...]
--
Valéry, Variété, Études littéraires,
OE., t. I.
Goya
ne doit rien à Phidias, sans doute; mais si l'on entend par romantisme
le déferlement d'orchestre qui donne au XIXe siècle une sonorité
si différente des grandes messes médiévales auxquelles
il croit se référer; si, parmi les admirations des romantiques,
nous choisissons MichelAnge et non la sculpture de Chartres qu'ils
ne connaissaient guère, alors, le romantisme commence au centaure
de Phidias, aux chevaux du Parthénon.
--
Malraux, la Métamorphose des dieux, p. 8788.
(1935).
Éléments ou traits propres au romantisme décelables
chez des artistes de toute époque. Le romantisme de Virgile, des
surréalistes.
Paul Brians, "Romanticism," at http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html
Romanticism
If
the Enlightenment was a movement which started among a tiny elite and slowly
spread to make its influence felt throughout society, Romanticism was more
widespread both in its origins and influence. No other intellectual/artistic
movement has had comparable variety, reach, and staying power since the
end of the Middle Ages.
Beginning
in Germany and England in the 1770s, by the 1820s it had swept through
Europe, conquering at last even its most stubborn foe, the French. It traveled
quickly to the Western Hemisphere, and in its musical form has triumphed
around the globe, so that from London to Boston to Mexico City to Tokyo
to Vladivostok to Oslo, the most popular orchestral music in the world
is that of the romantic era. After almost a century of being attacked by
the academic and professional world of Western formal concert music, the
style has reasserted itself as neoromanticism in the concert halls. When
John Williams created the sound of the future in Star Wars, it was the
sound of 19th-century Romanticism--still the most popular style for epic
film soundtracks.
Beginning
in the last decades of the 18th century, it transformed poetry, the novel,
drama, painting, sculpture, all forms of concert music (especially opera),
and ballet. It was deeply connected with the politics of the time, echoing
people's fears, hopes, and aspirations. It was the voice of revolution
at the beginning of the 19th century and the voice of the Establishment
at the end of it.
This
last shift was the result of the triumph of the class which invented, fostered,
and adopted as its own the romantic movement: the bourgeoisie. To understand
why this should have been so, we need to look more closely at the nature
of the style and its origins.
Origins:
Folklore
and Popular Art
Some
of the earliest stirrings of the Romantic movement are conventionally traced
back to the mid-18th-century interest in folklore which arose in Germany--with
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm collecting popular fairy tales and other scholars
like Johann Gottfried von Herder studying folk songs--and in England with
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele treating old ballads as if they were
high poetry. These activities set the tone for one aspect of Romanticism:
the belief that products of the uncultivated popular imagination could
equal or even surpass those of the educated court poets and composers who
had previously monopolized the attentions of scholars and connoisseurs.
Whereas
during much of the 17th and 18th centuries learned allusions, complexity
and grandiosity were prized, the new romantic taste favored simplicity
and naturalness; and these were thought to flow most clearly and abundantly
from the "spontaneous" outpourings of the untutored common people. In Germany
in particular, the idea of a collective Volk (people) dominated a good
deal of thinking about the arts. Rather than paying attention to the individual
authors of popular works, these scholars celebrated the anonymous masses
who invented and transmuted these works as if from their very souls. All
of this fantasizing about the creative folk process reflected precious
little knowledge about the actual processes by which songs and stories
are created and passed on and created as well an ideology of the essence
of the German soul which was to be used to dire effect by the Nazis in
the 20th century.
Nationalism
The
natural consequence of dwelling on creative folk genius was a good deal
of nationalism. French Romantic painting is full of themes relating to
the tumultuous political events of the period and later Romantic music
often draws its inspiration from national folk musics. Goethe deliberately
places German folkloric themes and images on a par with Classical ones
in Faust.
Shakespeare
But
one of the early effects of this interest in the folk arts seems particularly
strange to us moderns: the rise and spread of the reputation of William
Shakespeare. Although he is regarded today as the epitome of the great
writer, his reputation was at first very different. Shakespeare was a popular
playwright who wrote for the commercial theater in London. He was not college-educated,
and although his company had the sponsorship of King James, his work was
not entirely "respectable."
Academic
critics at first scorned his indiscipline, his rejection of their concepts
of drama which were derived in part from ancient Roman and Greek patterns.
A good play should not mix comedy with tragedy, not proliferate plots and
subplots, not ramble through a wide variety of settings or drag out its
story over months or years of dramatic time; but Shakespeare's plays did
all these things. A proper serious drama should always be divided neatly
into five acts, but Shakespeare's plays simply flowed from one scene to
the next, with no attention paid to the academic rules of dramatic architecture
(the act divisions we are familiar with today were imposed on his plays
by editors after his death).
If
the English romantics exalted Shakespeare's works as the greatest of their
classics, his effect on the Germans was positively explosive. French classical
theater had been the preeminent model for drama in much of Europe; but
when the German Romantics began to explore and translate his works, they
were overwhelmed. His disregard for the classical rules which they found
so confining inspired them. Writers like Friedrich von Schiller and Goethe
created their own dramas inspired by Shakespeare. Faust contains many Shakespearian
allusions as well as imitating all of the nonclassical qualities enumerated
above.
Because
Shakespeare was a popular rather than a courtly writer, the Romantics exaggerated
his simple origins. In fact he had received an excellent education which,
although it fell short of what a university could offer, went far beyond
what the typical college student learns today about the classics. In an
age drunk on the printing and reading of books he had access to the Greek
myths, Roman and English history, tales by Italian humanists and a wide
variety of other materials. True, he used translations, digests, and popularizations;
but he was no ignoramus.
To
the Romantics, however, he was the essence of folk poetry, the ultimate
vindication of their faith in spontaneous creativity. Much of the drama
of the European 19th century is influenced by him, painters illustrated
scenes from his plays, and composers based orchestral tone poems and operas
on his narratives.
The
Gothic Romance
Another
quite distinct contribution to the Romantic movement was the Gothic romance.
The first was Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1765), set in a haunted
castle and containing various mysterious apparitions such as a gigantic
mailed fist. This sort of thing was popularized by writers like Ann Radcliffe
and M. L. Lewis (The Monk) and eventually spread abroad to influence writers
like Eugène Sue (France) and Edgar Allan Poe (the U.S.). Rejecting
the Enlightenment ideal of balance and rationalism, readers eagerly sought
out the hysterical, mystical, passionate adventures of terrified heroes
and heroines in the clutches of frightening, mysterious forces. The modern
horror novel and woman's romance are both descendants of the Gothic romance,
as transmuted through such masterworks as Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
and her sister Emily's Wuthering Heights. Another classic Gothic work,
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is often cited as a forerunner of modern science
fiction.
Medievalism
The
Gothic novel embraced the Medieval ("Gothic") culture so disdained by the
early 18th century. Whereas classical art looked back constantly to the
ancient Greeks and Romans, the Romantics celebrated for the first time
since the Renaissance the wilder aspects of the creativity of Western Europeans
from the 12th through the 14th centuries: stained glass in soaring cathedrals,
tales of Robin Hood and his merry men, and--above all--the old tales of
King Arthur and the knights of the round table. This influence was to spread
far beyond the Gothic romance to all artistic forms in Europe, and lives
on in the popular fantasy novels of today. Fairies, witches, angels--all
the fantastic creatures of the Medieval popular imagination came flooding
back into the European arts in the Romantic period (and all are present
in Faust).
The
longing for "simpler" eras not freighted with the weight of the Classical
world gave rise to a new form: the historical novel. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
was by far its most successful practitioner. Although credit for writing
the first historical novel should probably go to Madame de Lafayette for
her La Princess de Clèves (1678), Scott is generally considered
to have developed the form as we know it today. Almost forgotten now, his
novels like The Bride of Lammermoor and Ivanhoe nevertheless inspired writers,
painters, and composers in Germany, France, Italy, Russia and many other
lands.
Emotion
The
other influential characteristic of the Gothic romance was its evocation
of strong, irrational emotions--particularly horror. Whereas Voltaire and
his comrades had abhorred "enthusiasm" and strove to dispel the mists of
superstition; the Gothic writers evoked all manner of irrational scenes
designed to horrify and amaze. Romantic writers generally also prized the
more tender sentiments of affection, sorrow, and romantic longing. In this
they were inspired by certain currents contemporaneous with the Enlightenment,
in particular the writings of Voltaire's arch-rival, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Rousseau
Rousseau
was a moody, over-sensitive, even paranoid sort of fellow, much given to
musing on his own feelings. Like the Englishman Samuel Richardson, he explored
in his fiction the agonies of frustrated love--particularly in his sensationally
successful novel The New Heloise--and celebrated the peculiar refinement
of feeling the English called "sensibility" which we call "sensitivity."
Of all aspects of Romantic fiction, the penchant for tearful sentimental
wallowing in the longings and disappointments of frustrated protagonists
is most alien to modern audiences. Only in opera and film where the power
of music is summoned to reinforce the emotions being evoked can most modern
audiences let themselves go entirely, and then only within limits.
The
great minds of the 20th century have generally rejected sentimentalism,
even defining its essence as false, exaggerated emotion; and we tend to
find mawkish or even comical much that the Romantic age prized as moving
and beautiful. Yet there was more than cheap self-indulgence and escapism
in this fevered emotionalism. Its proponents argued that one could be morally
and spiritually uplifted by cultivating a greater sensitivity to feelings.
The cultivation of empathy for the sufferings of others could even be a
vehicle for social change, as in the works of Charles Dickens. That this
emotionalism was sometimes exaggerated or artificial should not obscure
the fact that it also contained much that was genuine and inspiring. It
is not clear that we have gained so much by prizing in our modern literature
attitudes of cynicism, detachment, and ruthlessness.
Of
all the emotions celebrated by the Romantics, the most popular was love.
Although the great Romantic works often center on terror or rage, the motive
force behind these passions is most often a relationship between a pair
of lovers. In the classical world love had been more or less identical
with sex, the Romans treating it in a particularly cynical manner. The
Medieval troubadours had celebrated courtly adultery according to a highly
artificial code that little reflected the lives of real men and women while
agreeing with physicians that romantic passion was a potentially fatal
disease. It was the romantics who first celebrated romantic love as the
natural birthright of every human being, the most exalted of human sentiments,
and the necessary foundation of a successful marriage. Whether or not one
agrees that this change of attitude was a wise one, it must be admitted
to have been one of the most influential in the history of the world.
This
is not the place to trace the long and complex history of how the transcendent,
irrational, self-destructive passion of a Romeo and Juliet came to be considered
the birthright of every European citizen; but this conviction which continues
to shape much of our thinking about relationships, marriage, and the family
found its mature form during the Romantic age. So thoroughly has love become
identified with romance that the two are now generally taken as synonyms,
disregarding the earlier associations of "romance" with adventure, terror,
and mysticism.
Exoticism
Another
important aspect of Romanticism is the exotic. Just as Romantics responded
to the longing of people for a distant past, so they provided images of
distant places. The distances need not be terribly great: Spain was a favorite
"exotic" setting for French Romantics, for instance. North Africa and the
Middle East provided images of "Asia" to Europeans. Generally anywhere
south of the country where one was resided was considered more relaxed,
more colorful, more sensual.
Such
exoticism consisted largely of simple stereotypes endlessly repeated, but
the Romantic age was also a period in which Europeans traveled more than
ever to examine at first hand the far-off lands of which they had read.
Much of this tourism was heavily freighted with the attitudes fostered
by European colonialism, which flourished during this period. Most "natives"
were depicted as inevitably lazy, unable to govern themselves while those
who aspired to European sophistication were often derided as "spoiled."
Many male travelers viewed the women of almost any foreign land one could
name as more sexually desirable and available than the women at home, and
so they are depicted in fiction, drama, art, and opera.
Just
as Scott was the most influential force in popularizing the romantic historical
novel, exoticism in literature was inspired more by Lord Byron--especially
his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818)--than by any other single writer.
Whereas the Romantic lyric poetry of Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth
had a negligible influence outside of their native tongue, the sweep of
Byron's longer poems translated well into other languages and other artistic
media.
Romantic
exoticism is not always in tension with Romantic nationalism, for often
the latter focussed on obscure folk traditions which were in themselves
exotic to the audiences newly exposed to them. Goethe's witches were not
more familiar to his audience because they were Germanic, unlike, say,
the Scottish witches in Macbeth.
Religion
One
of the most complex developments during this period is the transformation
of religion into a subject for artistic treatment far removed from traditional
religious art. The Enlightenment had weakened, but hardly uprooted, established
religion in Europe. As time passed, sophisticated writers and artists were
less and less likely to be conventionally pious; but during the Romantic
era many of them were drawn to religious imagery in the same way they were
drawn to Arthurian or other ancient traditions in which they no longer
believed. Religion was estheticized, and writers felt free to draw on Biblical
themes with the same freedom as their predecessors had drawn on classical
mythology, and with as little reverence.
Faust
begins and ends in Heaven, has God and the devil as major characters, angels
and demons as supporting players, and draws on wide variety of Christian
materials, but it is not a Christian play. The Enlightenment had weakened
the hold of Christianity over society to the extent that some at least,
like Goethe, no longer felt the need to engage in the sort of fierce battles
with it Voltaire had fought, but felt instead free to play with it. A comparable
attitude can be seen in much of the work of the English Pre-Raphaelite
painters who began in mid-century to treat Christian subjects in the context
of charmingly "naive" Medievalism.
The
mixture of disbelief in and fascination with religion evident in such works
illustrates a general principal of intellectual history: artistic and social
movements almost never behave like rigid clock pendlums, swinging all the
way from one direction to another. A better metaphor for social change
is the movement of waves on a beach, in which an early wave is receding
while another advances over it, and elements of both become mixed together.
For all that many of its features were reactions against the rationalist
Enlightenment, Romanticism also incorporated much from the earlier movement,
or coexisted with the changes it had brought about.
Individualism
One
of the most important developments of this period is the rise in the importance
of individualism. Before the 18th Century, few Europeans concerned themselves
with discovering their own individual identities. They were what they had
been born: nobles, peasants, or merchants. As mercantalism and capitalism
gradually transformed Europe, however, it destablized the old patterns.
The new industrialists naturally liked to credit themselves for having
built their large fortunes and rejected the right of society to regulate
and tax their enterprises. Sometimes they tried to fit into the traditional
patterns by buying noble titles; but more and more often they developed
their own tastes in the arts and created new social and artistic movements
alien to the old aristocracy. This process can be seen operating as early
as the Renaissance in the Netherlands.
The
changing economy not only made individualism attractive to the newly rich,
it made possible a free market in the arts in which entrepreneurial painters,
composers, and writers could seek out sympathetic audiences to a pay them
for their works, no longer confined to handful of Church and aristocratic
patrons who largely shared the same values. They could now afford to pursue
their individual tastes in a way not possible even in the Renaissance.
It
was in the Romantic period--not coincidentally also the period of the industrial
revolution--that such concern with individualism became much more widespread.
Byron in literature and Beethoven in music are both examples of romantic
individualism taken to extremes. But the most influential exemplar of individualism
for the 19th century was not a creative artist at all, but a military man:
Napoleon Bonaparte. The dramatic way in which he rose to the head of France
in the chaotic wake of its bloody revolution, led his army to a series
of triumphs in Europe to build a brief but influential Empire, and created
new styles, tastes, and even laws with disregard for public opinion fascinated
the people of the time. He was both loved and hated; and even fifty years
after his death he was still stimulating authors like Dostoyevsky, who
saw in him the ultimate corrosive force which celebrated individual striving
and freedom at the expense of responsibility and tradition.
We
call the reckless character who seeks to remold the world to his own desires
with little regard for morality or tradition "Faustian," after Goethe's
character, but he might as well be called "Napoleanic."
The
modern fascination with self-definition and self-invention, the notion
that adolescence is naturally a time of rebellion in which one "finds oneself,"
the idea that the best path to faith is through individual choice, the
idea that government exists to serve the individuals who have created it:
all of these are products of the romantic celebration of the individual
at the expense of society and tradition.
Nature
The
subject of the relationship of Romanticism to nature is a vast one which
can only be touched on here. There has hardly been a time since the earliest
antiquity that Europeans did not celebrate nature in some form or other,
but the attitudes toward nature common in the Western world today emerged
mostly during the Romantic period. The Enlightenment had talked of "natural
law" as the source of truth, but such law was manifest in human society
and related principally to civic behavior. Unlike the Chinese and Japanese,
Europeans had traditionally had little interest in natural landscapes for
their own sake. Paintings of rural settings were usually extremely idealized:
either well-tended gardens or tidy versions of the Arcadian myth of ancient
Greece and Rome.
Here
again, Rousseau is an important figure. He loved to go for long walks,
climb mountains, and generally "commune with nature." His last work is
called Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (Reveries of a Solitary
Walker). Europe had become more civilized, safer, and its citizens now
felt freer to travel for the simple pleasure of it. Mountain passes and
deep woods were no longer merely perilous hazards to be traversed, but
awesome views to be enjoyed and pondered. The violence of ocean storms
came to be appreciated as an esthetic object in any number of paintings,
musical tone poems, and written descriptions, as in the opening of Goethe's
Faust.
None
of this had been true of earlier generations, who had tended to view the
human and the natural as opposite poles, with the natural sometimes exercising
an evil power to degrade and dehumanize those who were to drawn to it.
The Romantics, just as they cultivated sensitivity to emotion generally,
especially cultivated sensitivity to nature. It came to be felt that to
muse by a stream, to view a thundering waterfall or even confront a rolling
desert could be morally improving. Much of the nature writing of the 19th
century has a religious quality to it absent in any other period. This
shift in attitude was to prove extremely powerful and long-lasting, as
we see today in the love of Germans, Britons and Americans for wilderness.
It
may seem paradoxical that it was just at the moment when the industrial
revolution was destroying large tracts of woods and fields and creating
an unprecedentedly artificial environment in Europe that this taste arose;
but in fact it could probably have arisen in no other time. It is precisely
people in urban environments aware of the stark contrast between their
daily lives and the existence of the inhabitants of the wild who romanticise
nature. They are attracted to it precisely because they are no longer unselfconsciously
part of it. Faust, for instance, is powerfully drawn to the moonlit landscape
outside his study at the beginning of Goethe's play largely because he
is so discontented with the artificial world of learning in which he has
so far lived.
Victorianism
Scholars
of English literature are prone to make much of the distinction between
the Romantic and Victorian Ages, but for our purposes the latter is best
viewed as merely a later stage of the former. The prudish attitudes popularly
associated with Queen Victoria's reign are manifest in Germany and--to
a lesser extent--in France as well. Victoria did not create Victorianism,
she merely exemplified the temper of the time. But throughout the Victorian
period the wild, passionate, erotic, even destructive aspects of Romanticism
continue in evidence in all the arts.
Reactions
Like
the Enlightenment, Romanticism calls forth numerous counter-movements,
like Realism, Impressionism, Neo-classicism, etc.; but like the Enlightenment,
it also keeps on going. None of these were entirely to replace the Romantic
impulse. Hard-bitten naturalism in fiction and film coexists today with
sweeping romanticism; there are large audiences for both. The contemporary
vogue for "Victorian" designs is just one of many examples of the frequent
revivals of Romantic tastes and styles that have recurred throughout the
twentieth century.
Looking
back over the list of characteristics discussed above one can readily see
that despite the fact that Romanticism was not nearly as coherent a movement
as the Enlightenment, and lacked the sort of programmatic aims the latter
professed, it was even more successful in changing history--changing the
definition of what it means to be human.
2.2.1.3
Impact on Christianity
Assigned Readings for This Topic:
Resource Materials to also be studied:
Trying to measure the full extent of the impact of both the classical and
romantic periods on Christianity is an exceedingly mammoth task. The influence
of both streams of thinking has been substantial and very diverse. One
way of getting at this is perhaps through the use of modern word pictures:
there were the 'envelope pushers' and there were those trying to 'keep
a lid on things.' Often the terms, 'liberal' and 'conservative' are the
labels of choice, but those terms especialy at the beginning of the twenty-first
century have significantly different meaning and are very inadequate.
The 'envelope pushers' were a varied group of people. The issue of supernaturalism
surfaced explosively. In an appeal to experience the miraculous which now
had been redefined within the framework of a closed universe perspective
was typically denied. This would impact interpretive approaches to the
Bible. Supernatural elements would largely be eliminated or else relegated
to useless status of ancient myth no longer relevant to contemporary Christian
experience. When the existence of deity was acknowledged, it tended to
take on the shape of the "Unmoved Mover" or else a God sitting above and
outside this closed university occasionally intervening and momentarily
setting aside the forces of nature when it suited His purposes. Historical
investigation into the text of the Bible began taking shape.
Bibliography
Check Bray's bibliography in appropriate chapter of the textbook.
Check the appropriate Bibliography section
in Cranfordville.com
Elizabeth Whitney, "English Romanticism," at http://www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/
"Romanticism," Internet Modern History Sourcebook at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook15.html