Romanticism and knowledge/intellectualism

Question

What is the relationship between romanticism and (the importance of) knowledge, intellectualism?

For instance, the Enlightenment thinkers put great emphasis on the importance of knowledge. Voltaire said "The ignorance is the greastet illness of the human species" (my translation). Condorcet said ferocity is born in part of ignorance. The Enlightenment thinkers also produced the Encyclopédie, which aimed at gathering all the most advanced human knowledge, synthesized by the great contemporary savants.

On the other hand, to a romanticist like Rousseau, too much knowledge and theory, moves away the human being from their nature, and contributes to their decline. I do not recall a romanticist talking about the importance of knowledge. Rather, it seems to me they insist on (different forms of) mysticism and strong negative emotions. I know there was the movement "Naturphilosophie". Its scientific legitimacy is controversial, though.

Precision: My question concerns more "knowledge" in general (therefore including the humanities) than science, by which I mean "natural sciences". Of course discussion on the relation between romanticism and natural sciences are also welcomed, since it is indeed a part of the topic.

Answer 1

Most thinkers (and educated people) now consider science, philosophy and religion as separate domains; this is one of the accomplishments of the Enlightenment. The Romantics, however, tended to see these three domains as one. This was not because they rejected science but because they advocated a unity between subject and object, feeling and knowledge, and truth and beauty.

Contrary to a widespread view, the Romantics were not hostile to science (or "natural philosophy"). Michael Ferber gives several examples from English Romanticism (from pages 89–92, which discuss the Romantic attitude towards science; emphasis mine):

Coleridge was a close friend of the great chemist Humphry Davy and attended many of his celebrated scientific lectures and inhaled laughing gas with him; (…). Percy Shelley, sometimes taken as the most etherial and otherworldly of poets, carried a microscope and other instruments with him on his extensive travels, (…). His Prometheus Unbound, (…), is filled with references not only to electricity and magnetism, but to infra-red radiation (discovered by Herschel), the hydrogen cycle in decaying plants, volcanism, planetary orbits, and the evolution or improvement of life on earth. (…) Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818), informed by her reading of Humphry Davy and others, accepts the possibility of infusing the vital principle in dead body parts, but of course it has become a byword for two centuries for the dangers of scientific hubris.

Source: Ferber, Michael: Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2010.

The further reading section in Ferber's introduction lists a few books that are relevant to this question:

• Holmes, Richard: The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (2008).
• Richards, Robert J.: The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (2002).