Liberals and leftists are not wrong in describing romanticism as reactionary, because it did indeed become that after 1810. The problem is that they make that description true of the movement as a whole, as if romanticism were essentially reactionary.

The aesthetic dimension of the ideal state comes out in the idea of harmony, which is the classical idea of beauty as "concinnitas" or "unity-in-variety".

All the spookiness comes from giving a contemporary anachronistic sense to terms whose historical meaning is lost to us.

Liberals and leftists are not wrong in describing romanticism as reactionary, because it did indeed become that after 1810. The problem is that they make that description true of the movement as a whole, as if romanticism were essentially reactionary.

To live well is to live in harmony with ourselves, others and nature, and that idea of harmony is, of course, an aesthetic one.

There was no Prussian bastion to stop the Scotsman's swift conquest of the territory once claimed by reason.

There is no comfortable middle path where we get to provide a rational justification for our basic moral, religious and common sense beliefs.