I’m thinking about origins. Where does an idea, movement, or identity arise from? How is it possible to pinpoint and analyse a precise historical moment? Nietzsche used three words to describe different types of origin in history: Ursprung, Herkunft, & Entstehung. They all mean ‘origin’ but where ursprung is used neutrally, Herkunft usually refers to descent or group identity, whereas Entstehung is usually used to refer to a point of emergence, when competing interests stormily collide and something new arises.
My next video will be on this topic; Foucault’s 1977 text on Nietzsche and Genealogy. But I’m also researching the origins of a movement that has influenced not just my thought, but all of us: Romanticism. It too was the result of a stormy collision of powerful interests.
On the 14th August, my partner and I will be driving from London to the Lake District for a 10 day camping holiday. What better excuse to explore the origins of Romanticism, the influences of the Lake Poets – Wordsworth and Coleridge – and to attempt a new type of video – a philosophy/travelogue synthesis.
In preparation, I’ve been reading Isiah Berlin’s The Roots of Romanticism, a bold argument that maintains that the source of Romanticism was German disaffection in the face of French aristocratic and enlightenment ascendancy in the 17th and 18th centuries. This hegemony was met with the Pietist movement in Germany, a religious sect that turned inwards towards self-examination, imagination, and personal theological study. This – and I’m simplifying – leads to those Romantic ideals that found their expression all across Europe; individual freedom, the power of the imagination, the power of the personal relationship with nature. All of these things, of course, are very much a part of our collective consciousness today.
Of course, there is also the question of the origins of modernity – a suitable topic for a future incarnation of the Modernity series. Enlightenment, Reformation, Newton?
Finally, some news:
I’ve posted the Rawl’s Property-Owning Democracy episode in its podcast version.
And I’ve attempted something new this week: Another episode on Rawls that responds to your comments. I talk about critiques of utilitarianism, rights, Proudhon, and affirmative action. Let me know what you think: