Summary of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis by John Vervaeke, Chapter 23: Romanticism
One of the problematic legacies of the Cartesian project was an isolation of self upon an atomic island of propositional certainty. In view of the contradiction between the nature of math as an arbitrary mental construct, and the apparently accurate portrayal of the world according to it, Kant made a radical proposal that it’s actually the mind that imposes a model onto reality (the Kantian revolution). That is, the mind filters and frames the world in a way that is intelligible, literally making sense.
This is an example of top-down processing where knowledge informs perception. In a reversal of the Platonic model, it is rationality that now stands between us and the “thing in itself”. Romanticism is the idea that getting in touch with reality means removing the rational filtering layers (one could argue that romantic love is a catalyst for this). Imagination therefore is structure, a mediator between reason and perception. (If we are reminded of Jung’s theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious, it is because Jung = Kant + Gnosticism).
Romanticism inspired a major cultural movement in the arts. In direct opposition to empiricism, it is not the mind but the world that is the empty canvas, upon which the mind expresses itself. Vervaeke believes we pay a heavy price for the revelry of Romanticism however, especially in our expectations of romantic partners. Without the gravity of tradition to ground us, we are left to rely only on words and imagination to know one another. Like spiritual junk food, it gives us satiation without nourishment. Naturally, it also gets perverted into ideological fuel for imperialist ambitions, exemplified by Napoleon.
Romanticism was a predecessor of Nihilism and Postmodernism. Schopenhauer identifies the Will to Live as the irrational spring of meaningless drives (e.g. sex), to which reason is beholden. Nietzsche then inverts that logic, claiming the Will to Power (the inherent drive towards mastery and self-transcendence) as the very source of meaning. However, his project was subverted by the fact that it sought self-transcendence while resisting the means of overcoming self-deception (that which rationality ultimately is).