Such people certainly have nothing to do with romance. As a personality trait, romance is more inclined to fantasy and temporary emotional expression. For this purpose, he may not hesitate to pay the price of bad consequences. This is incomprehensible and even stupid for people who advocate rationality. However, there are few people who are extremely rational in the world, and there are few people who are completely addicted to fantasy and passion forever. The former may be paranoid, and the latter may be a madman in a mental hospital.
Rationality and romance are just two personality traits, and both of them may constitute a part of personality to varying degrees. However, if we look at them in a more primitive sense, that is, in the context of philosophy, rationality and romance may become two opposing concepts.
John Mill, a British liberal philosopher, was strictly educated by his father since he was a child. His father's education was extremely rational, and young John Mill was educated to advocate rationality and pursue science. His father doesn't even allow him to read poetry and religious and metaphysical works, which in his father's view are equivalent to the cancer of the human spirit and will only cause confusion and stupidity. As a result, the liberal thinker finally inherited his father's mantle and became a supporter of rationalism. However, he later read some poems by contemporary poets, but he was shocked, which shows that he is not a completely rational figure. At the time, this was not surprising. The western18th century is a rationalist era. With the unprecedented development of science and the decline of religious power, the Enlightenment brought the liberation of the western spirit and the world picture that thinkers yearned for. Under the precise description of the scientific system, nature has been exposed to human beings. We finally mastered nature and laws. The unprecedented gift of human rational efforts.
Faced with such brilliant scientific achievements, philosophers have no reason not to think that other problems in this world should also be answered by rational means. Just as scientists use mathematics and physics to find answers to nature, we should also use the same rigorous logical method to find answers to human life. How should human society operate, how should moral content be defined, and how should we live ... These questions should be answered strictly by geometric language. Ethics, psychology and sociology, including philosophy, should become a truly rigorous and clear theoretical system like natural science. This is the ultimate wish of the Enlightenment, a utopia of a rational kingdom.
In this utopia, there are no unanswered questions. As long as we use reason, we can get the correct answer. In other words, the objective truth about the world exists, and the way to reach the truth is rationality. Nature can be handed over to physics, human individuals to biology and psychology, and human society to politics and economics; As for art, it can also be answered rigorously like geometry, which is the direction of aesthetics. With this knowledge, people can get rid of ignorance and live a truly noble life. All the problems of human society can be solved. "Knowledge is virtue", an ancient creed from Socrates, has always influenced the beliefs of philosophers. Therefore, we can see that the western society in this period has been completely immersed in the sea of rationalism. Logic, inevitability and accuracy are what everyone pursues, while chaos represents fallacy and is an incorrect application of reason. Even artists, their works must pay attention to the nobility, elegance and symmetry of classical style. The characters in the writers' works are only heroes and modest gentlemen, and the painters' drawing boards are all bright colors, which all reflect the great men's passionate pursuit of peace and order at that time.
However, this lofty ideal is not completely without problems. Several figures who played an important role in the Enlightenment directly led to the rebellion of this movement-romanticism. Hume once pointed out that our inevitable conclusion about nature is not an absolute golden rule, and the law of cause and effect is not an inherent truth that rules the world, but just a "habitual expectation" in our hearts.
Hume's empiricism made the inevitability of natural science suspect, and the belief that the world itself has the law of inevitability began to show signs of weakening. However, the temperament of Hume's philosophy is still rationalism. He just doubts the necessity, but does not deny its usefulness to us. Here, reason uses its own characteristics to investigate, but finds its own limitations. Reason is a part of human spirit, which is internal and the world is external. They just found the bridge of communication through the so-called rationality. However, through this bridge, can we really exhaust the whole world and discover the truth of the world? At this time, Kant appeared, and Kant with classical temperament was still a fan of rationalism. However, he began to define rationality with his own philosophy: rationality recognizes phenomena, and only phenomena. Rational understanding is like a pair of colored glasses we wear; Therefore, what we know is no longer the thing itself. "The thing itself" is the other side that rational knowledge can never reach.
"Legislation for artificial nature" is a belief of Kant. The world itself has no operating rules, and such rules are not for us to discover. Rules are created by people. Naturally, such a concept can even be said to be the construction of human reason in the world. This is the instinctive need of human beings. People need to live in a regular world, a clear world, a world that can be explained by all kinds of knowledge. So this external world is ultimately defined by us, and the world runs in the rules we create.
It can be seen that Kant's thought is very different from that of the previous rationalists. Kant doesn't think that man is a part of nature at all. Human body parts may belong to nature and are dominated by physics and biology, while human feelings and emotions are dominated by psychology. However, the human spirit, the most essential transcendental part, is something other than nature. Otherwise, people are no different from animals. Natural things are completely governed by rules, but people are free. This view is revolutionary and directly sowed the seeds for the rise of romanticism. Therefore, isaiah berlin called Kant a "reserved romantic".
Rousseau, another influence on romanticism, is still the main figure of the Enlightenment. He believes that human nature is pure and kind, civilization can make people ugly, and the development of science and art makes human society worse. This idea was stolen from other thinkers of his time. To some extent, Rousseau is rebellious, and treason is an important feature of romanticism. Rousseau's writing is also perceptual, generative and even irrational, which makes him known as the "father of romanticism" by later generations. However, isaiah berlin pointed out that Rousseau's "romanticism" refers more to his personal temperament. At a deeper level, Rousseau is still a rationalist. He also yearns for the truth, but this truth is different from others. The society he yearns for is a primitive and natural society, not a modern civilized society. He is not a progressive, nor does he think that the development of history is necessarily perfect. Compared with the society of19th century, the society of 20th century will not have any advantages. In this respect, Rousseau also has the shadow of romanticism.
Romanticism is actually a natural product of the Enlightenment. From Kant and Fichte to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, we can see that rationality will inevitably prove its limitations to some extent. Reason cannot exhaust the world, nor can it completely define man himself. Man is an organic individual, not a machine. Even the world we live in is like a running river. The so-called logic and rules do not touch the essence. There shouldn't even be such a thing as essence. It is foolish to try to find the essence of things and act according to this so-called essence once and for all.
And life is not the product of a series of scientific rules. Life is mysterious and has unpredictable willpower. The value of life lies in creation, not living by a series of rules. As Fichte thinks, a man who no longer creates, a man who simply accepts what life and nature have given him, is actually dead. On the ontological level, romanticism and rationalism have been incompatible, and the latter has been attacked more and more. John Harman, regarded by isaiah berlin as the first person to attack the Enlightenment, now thinks that thinkers based on reason are just prisoners domesticated by concepts. "Paris fashionable philosophers and Berlin clergy who tried to reconcile religion and reason only belittled and humiliated what human beings cherish. Compared with them, thieves, prostitutes, criminals and hotel owners are closer to God. " Haman is a devout religious person. Obviously, in his view, God must be a poet, not a mathematician or physicist. This is the key difference between romanticism and rationalism.
Romanticism has had such a far-reaching influence on the whole modern western society that it has changed the concept of life of westerners to some extent. Of course, romanticism itself, as an ideological tendency, must exist in some little-known corners of various eras.