Conclusion

Romantic Theory: Forms of Reflexivity in the Revolutionary Era

Conclusion

At the end, we come back to history. For a study like the present one, that would imply a look at Romantic theory in terms of its relation to the Romantic period. Certainly, Romantic theory itself had from the outset an awareness of its historical moment. In his Preface to the Phenomenology, Hegel observes that “ours is a time of birth and of transition to a new era.” But if Romantic theory was fully aware of its historical moment, it could hardly fail to be aware of itself historically. In fact, its historical self-awareness is crucial. Because of that, we can say that all its activity, all its movement or development was informed by a perception of its period. So historical consciousness is equivalent to self-consciousness: in order for Romantic theory to know itself, it had to be equally aware of its historical or temporal position, of where it was in terms of historical time, and of how it was defined by that very fact. And so, by means of a historical perspective that focuses on the position of Romantic theory in relation to its historical moment, we might hope to get some sense of how it saw its own enterprise, and thus, ultimately, of what Romantic theory was really all about.

In order to grasp the position of Romantic theory historically, however, we need to consider first of all how it came to be. Once again, Hegel seems useful: “Spirit has broken with the former world of its existence and its representing, and is of a mind to submerge it in the past, and in the labor of its own transformation.” And, subsequently: “the gradual crumbling that doesn’t change the physiognomy of the whole will be cut short by a flash of lightning that in one instant will reveal the shape of the new world.” Out of the ruins of the present, then, a new world of theory was about to emerge. And that new theoretical consciousness, as Hegel saw it, would submerge the present in the past. Yet its motive wasn’t just iconoclastic. Instead, such a move seemed to constitute a necessary preliminary to the creation of theory. Thus Hegel speaks of how Spirit, or the force that produces theory, would assimilate the present not only to the past but to “the labor of its own transformation.” Here, then, we arrive at a sense of how theory perceived its position historically. Face to face with its own historical condition, the theoretical consciousness would internalize all of history into itself, and in that process theory would come to be.

But before it could transform the historical moment, Romantic theory had to immerse itself completely in external, material circumstances. In that respect, what the Romantic era produced wasn’t armchair theory. On the contrary, Romantic theory embraced the sheer materiality of its stuff. Recall Bichat’s final year, the 600 cadavers supposedly dissected, not to speak of the countless animals sacrificed earlier in an effort to identify the source of life from a physiological standpoint. Nor, apparently, were these careful experiments, designed to elicit the answer to some well-formulated question. Rather, Bichat seems to have worked almost haphazardly, without any preconceived plan. As if he believed a theory of vitality would somehow emerge merely from his engagement with the material itself. Nevertheless, it must have been essentially no different at the Hôtel-Dieu or any other Paris hospital. Here the brutal reality was that doctors often simply watched their patients die. As patients died, observations were collected of how they had gradually slipped out of life: a massive record of the minutiae of vitality, from which the new medical researchers expected to formulate a theory of the élan vital. What all of this betrays is the extent to which Romantic theory could become absorbed in pure materiality. Unlike its late eighteenth-century counterpart, it brought no theoretical preconceptions to its inquiry. Perhaps that was the Revolutionary legacy. Thus theory would go back to square one.

The fact that such a commencement didn’t cause any notable anxiety might well be due to the mixture of subjectivity and objectivity in the genesis of Romantic theory. Yes, in one respect Romantic theory looks as if it sprang from pure materiality. But, in another way, it never really did exactly that. Because from the outset there was always an element of subjectivity. It comes out most clearly, I think, in Friedrich Schlegel. Das höchste Schöne is complete objectivity. Yet objectivity of this kind isn’t incompatible with subjectivity. In fact, it turns out to have been produced by subjectivity. And if objectivity can be produced by subjectivity, the two aren’t really antithetical. At a stretch, we might even say that for Friedrich Schlegel and others objectivity is just a form of subjectivity. As Schlegel saw it, Greek culture created objectivity, the highest form of the beautiful, out of its desire for an objective embodiment of subjectivity. Its ability to do so meant in turn that objectivity was just a cultural viewpoint like any other, and that all of these, ultimately, were permeated by subjectivity. More broadly, it translated into a belief that materiality could always be transformed by the creative ferment of subjectivity. Or, on another level, that materiality would inevitably yield to the formative impulse of theory.

But even if the force that produced Romantic theory had transformed materiality, it still lacked a crucial element: the concept of theory. Romantic theory, in other words, wasn’t really Romantic theory until it arrived at this concept. From a Romantic standpoint, the concept of theory is the flash of lightning “that in one instant will reveal the shape of the new world.” And that new world was theory. What the concept of theory meant to the Romantic period was theoretical autonomy. Hegel’s quip (“If a theory doesn’t fit the facts, so much the worse for the facts”) is well known. But it does convey a point. By any measure, Romantic theory lavished plenty of attention on facts. But its attitude toward these was radically different from that of late eighteenth-century theory. Unlike earlier approaches, its primary relation wasn’t just to fact. That didn’t imply, pace Hegel, a disregard for it. What it did mean was that theory could no longer think of itself merely as an analysis of fact. For Romantic theory, it had become equally important to think about theory itself. In that respect, theory was no longer simply about the relation of concepts to external existences. Instead, what Romantic theory had finally realized was that its relation to fact would ultimately depend not on any sort of external necessity but rather on whatever use it opted to make of its own inner resources.

In retrospect, we might say that what the Romantic period really witnessed was the triumph of theory. We think of the period, of course, as defined by the Revolution. But much of what the Revolution sought to achieve was to be retracted by Napoleon, who represents, as he himself put it, the end of the Revolution and the Revolution itself. We could just as easily survey the period from a Napoleonic perspective. Yet even here we find much of what it tried to do erased by what followed: the Congress of Vienna, the Restoration, the Regency. What couldn’t be undone or retracted, however, was the revolution in theory. As Hegel had foreseen, Romantic theory marked the advent of a new era. And the reason its revolution couldn’t be reversed was that it brought theory to a new level of self-awareness. But what the Romantic era experienced from the standpoint of theory wasn’t just a revolution. What began as revolution would finally prove to be the triumph of theory. From marginal observer, theory now moved to center stage, as the new mode of discourse for all the arts and sciences. Yet it was more than just their lingua franca. In the last analysis, theory becomes for the arts and sciences the language of thought itself.

One clear indication of the ascendency theory acquired in the Romantic period appears in the way we find culture interpreted by theory. Unlike some forms of intellectual activity, culture didn’t need a lingua franca. On the contrary: the fact that it was culture implied its capacity to talk about itself. For that very reason, to see culture described not by itself but by theory marked a radical shift. Most of all, perhaps, in the field of classical philology. Antiquity, the precious repository of tradition, ought to be discussed only by a form of discourse authenticated by the nearly equal extent of its own antiquity. Hence the sensation caused by Friedrich Wolf when he brought a new kind of historical method to the study of Homer. Here Goethe comes to mind: the secret auditor, who supposedly hid behind a curtain to hear Wolf lecture. The image seems apt: Goethe, as representative of culture, afraid to offer homage publicly to the new philology, yet irresistibly drawn by a sort of Schadenfreude to the usurpation of his own field. What fascinated Goethe was theory. He could look skeptical when it came in the guise of Hegel and the attempt by philosophy to legislate the future development of all the other arts and sciences. But the kind of theory Wolf brought to classical philology was different. Because it came out of classical philology itself, theory about the development of the Homeric text couldn’t be so easily resisted. And that itself might indicate, as well as any other testimony, the degree of ascendency attained by theory.

For the Romantic period, theory was equally preeminent as universal theory. In fact, the possibility of universal theory had already been explored to some extent by a number of eighteenth-century sources. From an eighteenth-century perspective, however, universal theory simply meant an effort to explain theoretically all the different fields of human inquiry. At most, then, explanations of one or another field might be related in some way. What these sources could hardly have imagined was that a given theory might apply to all fields universally. Yet that was precisely what Romantic theory offered. Its proposal amounted to a very different form of universal theory. Its ascendency grew from the insight that a theory able to explain phenomena in one field possessed a distinct advantage when it turned to a new field over a theory that lacked such a capacity. And, by implication, a theory that could potentially explain phenomena in any field would have primacy over all other attempts at theory. Similarly, if you could explain, as Coleridge did, the relation between theory as defined for different fields of inquiry, that, too, would presumably have primacy over a theory that pertained to one field only. Thus the ascendency of Romantic theory didn’t necessarily imply its capacity to present a better explanation for a specific field. It came, rather, from what it could say about all of these collectively.

But perhaps the clearest indication of the ascendency of theory in the Romantic period lay in the fact that thought itself had come to be defined by theory. Theory, then, replaces philosophy as the paradigm by which thought is defined. And that in turn meant rationality was no longer the paramount concern. For thought, the shift from philosophy to theory is crucial. Philosophy had never pretended to speak for thought in its entirety. Rationality only delineated a particular mode of intellectual inquiry. Theory, on the other hand, wanted to embrace all of it. When the Phenomenology of Spirit undertook to describe the movement from Substance to Subject, what it really had in mind was the very movement of thought itself. For Hegel, the movement he traced wasn’t simply that of thought applied to a given field. Instead, what he hoped to specify was the kind of movement thought enacted regardless of field. Thus instead of the rational viewpoint demanded by earlier philosophy, the Phenomenology opted for a more holistic perspective. Through its effort to grasp thought as a totality, it hoped to arrive at perceptions that would be true for all fields of inquiry. Here, then, was the ultimate source of the ascendency of theory: by its use of a holistic perspective, it attempted to move beyond inferences about specific topics to a higher level of generality, one that earlier forms of thought hadn’t even been aware of.

Finally, we come to the question of what theory meant to the Romantic period, and, more broadly, why its existence mattered. In many ways, it grew directly out of concrete, material circumstances. Despite the difficulties that beset its genesis, it rose to a position of ascendency within the period. All in all, the history of Romantic theory suggests that for those who developed it, and even for many who simply witnessed its development, theory was more than just the work of the dispassionate observer, that for those who formulated it, theory was meant to play a more vital role. Certainly its connection to its time was in many respects immediate and fraught with consequences. To those who cared for the sick at the Hôtel-Dieu and other Paris hospitals, to those who held responsibility for the lives of the patients there, what they came to know about the nature of vitality mattered. Similarly, for those who believed that new advances in chemical knowledge might make possible a radical improvement of human life, the relation of electrical to chemical forces and, more largely, the whole chemical theory of elemental substances mattered. What the Revolution brought was a sense of how the years that followed might prove the dawn of a new era. And, in the process by which that era gradually emerged, those engaged in the development of theory could see its capacity to shape the form that era assumed.

For the Romantic period, we might say that what theory meant, first of all, was the dream of a power over things. In his Introductory Discourse on chemistry from 1802, Humphry Davy announced the new ambition of the sciences. From now on, chemistry would no longer be simply a disinterested inquiry into the combination of elements or substances. Instead, Davy hoped that a knowledge of how different substances combined would enable chemistry to transform human life. It would lead to the perfection of various chemical and technical processes, the invention of new instruments, the improvement of conditions of labor. And these in turn would promote the birth of a new era. In the formation of that era, chemistry, he felt, had a significant function to fulfill. It would give humanity a new kind of power over things, greater than any it had known before. The key to its power would be its knowledge of what lay behind the chemical activity of different substances. Its knowledge would allow it to explain the inner dynamics of combustion or fire, the formation of new substances, the breakdown of others. But that knowledge, Davy argued, would become possible only by means of “an acquaintance with the fundamental and general chemical principles.” Which is to say: theory. Theory, then, would give its possessor a power over things. By means of theory, we could aspire to know what went on at the very heart of external nature. And once we knew its innermost secrets, we might hope to harness the energy of its basic processes. As a result, substances that had been inert or even resistant to our projects would take on a new plastic quality. And that, in turn, would make it possible to transform the conditions of human life.

In addition to whatever power it might convey over things, theory for the Romantic period is equally about creation. Perhaps the last place where we might think to look for it would be in the sphere of military tactics. For many, the battlefield epitomized the rule of necessity. Yet even here, a creative impulse can be felt. Napoleon once said that every engagement was like a theatrical piece, with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. And the sole aim of his tactics was to make its drama possible. His success over his opponents came from their lack of awareness of how they participated in that drama. All the elements of Napoleonic tactics could be found, more or less, in eighteenth-century sources. Nor were his opponents unaware of the theory of war. Some, like Jomini, had even served under him. Others, like Clausewitz, had fought against him in the field. What they failed to recognize, however, was the creative aspect of his tactical arrangements. From their standpoint, theory meant analysis: a calculation of the weight of numbers, cavalry, and artillery. To Napoleon, by contrast, theory meant creation: a fusion of all the elements of eighteenth-century strategy to form an original synthesis. In this way, we arrive at one of the basic insights of Romantic theory: that the essence of theory, in the end, isn’t really analysis at all but rather intellectual creativity.

Finally, what Romantic theory exemplified most of all, perhaps, was a sense of possibility. It hovers, so to speak, just on the threshold of our awareness. We find it beautifully figured in “The Triumph of Life,” as the “shape all light” that is the ultimate image at the heart of the poet’s obsessive dream sequence, the symbolic object of his quest. But we also find the sense of possibility that looms over the Romantic consciousness equally manifest in Galois theory. It was the great insight of the first memoir on the resolvability of equations by radicals that what we didn’t know could be formally expressed as if we knew it, and that by means of our treatment of its formal expression we could actually bring what was unknown closer to knowability. For Galois, that insight suggested a new perspective on the sciences in general. It amounted, for him, to a belief that if we could only manage to situate what we wanted to know within a framework of inquiry, that framework itself might then become a means to knowledge and hence an index of possibility for theory. Beyond what he has to say about a purely formal kind of solvability, however, Galois seemed to feel that any form of theory endowed with the capacity to think about what was possible would always be able to raise itself to a higher level. And from his standpoint, our ability to think about the possible is invariably connected to the creativity of theory. In that respect, his work might be said to reiterate that of an earlier Romantic author, who had written:

Our destiny, our nature, and our home

Is with infinitude, and only there;

With hope it is, hope that can never die,

Effort, and expectation, and desire,

And something evermore about to be.

For Romantic theory, perhaps it is this promise of “something evermore about to be” that best expresses its sense of possibility.