The idea of romanticising the world goes back to the idea of creating a harmonious whole where the individual will feel at one with himself, others and nature.

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

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

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 romantics really did want to romanticise the world itself, and that meant re-creating the state, society and even nature so that it became a work of art.

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

The idea of romanticising the world goes back to the idea of creating a harmonious whole where the individual will feel at one with himself, others and nature.