Is Romanticism the cause of world wars and dreams of Utopia leading to mass murder and tyranny? — Athena

Murder, tyranny and war predate the Romantics.

we seem on the brink of disintegration — Athena

All this "brink of disintegration" talk is overblown. Tragedians and pessimists of every stripe have been at this trope since Year Zero: "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."


On the other hand: Dreams of Utopia I connect to Karen Horney's analysis of neuroticism and the neurotic pursuit of glory. Certainly, Hitler was a Utopian, and a seeker of neurotic-psychotic glory.

See:
Horney's Neuroticism and Human Growth
Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
Wilhelm Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism

...et al.

:smile:

Is Romanticism the cause of world wars and dreams of Utopia leading to mass murder and tyranny? — Athena

It takes two to tangle. So idealistic liberal poetic Romantics might build their Utopias & cloud castles, if not for the obstruction of pragmatic conservative prosaic Realists, who prefer to build on a solid foundation. Pain & War result, not from Romanticism or Realism, but from the inability to compromise on a blend of poetry & prose. :smile:

Tragedians and pessimists of every stripe have been at this trope since Year Zero:

I think this phrase is quite contradictory. Tragedians need some background or stimulus to act in such way. I mean, pessimism is not inherent in our minds. You have to live different kinds of events which lead you to being pessimistic.
I think what @Athena is asking is if romanticism lead us to war, not backwards. I mean, we can debate here if romanticism itself works as propaganda to violence.

Tragedians need some background or stimulus to act in such way. — javi2541997

Yes, there's a background and a stimulus.

romanticism itself works as propaganda — javi2541997

Romantic notions may give rise to Romanticism-inspired propaganda. I don't think it's accurate to call an
-ism propaganda.

I assume that you are NOT suggesting that William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850), Romantic poet, was the cause of pain and war. So, some other sort of romantic.

YOUTH are romantic, by nature. They haven't yet come to terms with having to take care of themselves--grocery shopping; laundry; regular house cleaning; showing up for work every day, on time; changing the oil every 3,000 miles--all that stuff. Youth are pretty much wrapped up in themselves. How long does 'youth' last? In many cases, 25--about the time their brains finish forming. (this is biographical -- I'm not looking down my nose at today's youth.)

I entertained many romantic political and religious notions for many years, long past any definition of youth. It was a relief to flush out the system and get rid of the excess.

Naiveté isn't romanticism; viciousness (Hitler, Stalin) isn't romanticism either. In the psychological, non-poetic meaning, it's just delusional, and delusions can definitely lead to bad consequences when we act on them. (Delusion is a standard feature of human beings.) Romanticism, without analyzing the term closely, is about inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual, says the dictionary.

Here we sit with the ability to communicate with people around the world and we seem on the brink of disintegration and possibly another world war. Our reality is not the expectation of reason. Could Romanticism be the problem? — Athena

the problem of disintegration and war is perennial. Cohesion within and between nations is difficult to maintain over the long run. "The peaceable kingdom" is a romantic idea. We are always rubbing up against each other, individually and collectively, making invidious comparisons. Before long, we decide to just get rid of some inconvenient group of people, and heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to war we go.

Our reality is not the expectation of reason. Could Romanticism be the problem? — Athena

I think this is often the case and yes, we do tend to idealise people and institutions out of all proportion. A certain path to bitterness and cynicism is to have one's ideals and romantic notions trampled upon.

Naiveté isn't romanticism; viciousness (Hitler, Stalin) isn't romanticism either. — Bitter Crank

Interesting you chose them - two men who were obsessed with romantic imagery and music throughout their lives and who had the most cloying, sentimental outlooks. It seems often to be the case that the most brutal of men are also the most sentimental.

Alain de Botton has studied philosophy and he says the Ancient Greeks had a very different notion of love than we do today. The ancient Greek notion was that it is loving to help another be the best s/he can be by pointing out ways in which the other could improve. I can easily relate to this because it is how the family I grew up in expressed love. It would be easier for everyone to understand this point by watching the video that is the reason I made this post.

Not that it matters here, but I think the ancient Greek notion of love goes with the concept of democracy. It is the basic belief that we all can do better, and if we all do better, we create a better society. It is simply in the realm of what is possible. Unless...

If we pick up from the Bible, then obviously we are wretched creatures and there is no hope for us because we can not help what we are, greedy, ignorant, lazy, basically incapable of controlling our impulses, so we need to tell our sins to the priest who tells us to do Hail Marys and with prayers, we might have God's grace and our immortality. The good thing is acceptance! We don't have to be perfect and how we are isn't our fault. Even if our spouse is hurt by our wrongs, tough, we are married for life and eternity. Suck it up and keep our own weaknesses in mind. Do not expect too much of anyone.

But the same mythology can flow into romanticism only now we are angels and finding our soul mate means happiness forever after. True love is unconditional and those who love us know what we need and want without us having to say anything about it. In fact, we should not talk too much and ruin everything with reason.

Some of this is a little unrealistic and ideas of Utopia are unrealistic and yet we are willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill our unrealistic goals and this brings us to suicide and war because we are willing to give our lives for what we want. I don't think that is what was behind wars in the past, but I think it may be behind the wars of modernization and romanticism?

Those thoughts were closer to what I am pondering.

I like the East Indian notion that when we speak of one thing we speak of its opposite as both are twos sides of the same coin.

Hitler's art reveals a 'decadent romantic' - CSMonitor.comhttps://www.csmonitor.com › ...
Dec 12, 1984 — As an artist, Hitler's taste and ability never rose above the level of a decadent romanticism. The 20 paintings now on view at the Palazzo ... — Harold Rogers

Could Romanticism be the problem? — Athena

When I look for synonyms of "Romanticism", most of the alternatives sound like innocent adolescent sentimental mawkishness. So, I suspect what you are actually referring to is "Extremism" in the form of unbridled Utopianism or Idealism. It's not the dreams of a perfect world that cause trouble, but the willingness to compel others to live in your dream-world. Obviously, enthusiastic & charismatic leaders have been able to persuade a significant portion of compatriots to join their Quixotic quest for an idealized reality : If not a perfect world, at least a better world for Us without Them.

So, the problem is not Hippie peace & love, or small-town conservatism, but all-or-nothing dreams enforced with spears & guns. Nazism was extreme Conservatism, that appealed to people humiliated & burdened in punishment for their Kaiser's WWI nationalism. Communism was extreme Liberalism, that appealed to the downtrodden serfs and lower classes of all nations. And the mass slaughters of the Crusades & Holy Wars were Christian & Islamic extremism, that spread the gospel at the point of a sword. Other, more accurate terms may be Zealotry, Fanaticism, Radicalism, or Chauvinism. :cool:

ROMANTIC FLOWER POWER vs PRAGMATIC GUN POWER

You got my attention from the beginning when you distinguished a difference between the live and let live attitude or the everyone has to live "this way" determination. Until you said it I didn't think of that. That is something I have to ponder because I know so many "nice" people who think the world would be a better place if everyone conformed to their notion of what should be. I think I might be one of those people :gasp: so I really have to ponder that difference because I value liberty but hate the ugliness that results from the liberties some people take. I hope others have more to say about this.

I absolutely love the picture you posted. I would like to enlarge it and put it on my wall.

I value liberty but hate the ugliness that results from the liberties some people take — Athena

Exactly where to place Limits on Liberty is an ancient philosophical conundrum. Supreme court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said something like "your freedom to swing your arm ends at my nose". :smile:

Here's a link to the Flower Power photo :
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Flower_Power_by_Bernie_Boston.jpg

Is Romanticism the cause of world wars and dreams of Utopia leading to mass murder and tyranny? — Athena

Yes. Yes it is.

Well, it may not be the only cause of such things. It's one of the causes.

I know that terrible things happened before Romanticism raised its self-absorbed, narcissistic, irrational, mystical, emotional head, but assume we refer to what took place after it did so. Unfortunately, it arose at a time when we had at our disposal tools by which we could be enormously more destructive than we had been in the past. So, as it encouraged us to indulge the more grotesque of our whims, dreams and desires, we had the means to inflict the harm caused by that indulgence on more people and did just that, extravagantly (of course).

I think it's true, in a sense. The "general will" of Rousseau, and other collectivist musings, such as in Hegel and Fichte, could be read as justifying mass war and state power. I believe it is collectivism more so than romanticism that caused this, but collectivism could be said to be a product of romanticism.

Is Romanticism the cause of world wars and dreams of Utopia leading to mass murder and tyranny? — Athena

No, collectivism is.

Alain de Botton glides over the history that brings us to today's unrealistic expectations. — Athena

Unrealistic expectations is a failure of individual rational assessment, which is a requirement of long-term homeostasis. I don't go adopting orphans just because I read about Jean Valjean doing it.

Here we sit with the ability to communicate with people around the world and we seem on the brink of disintegration and possibly another world war. — Athena

Humans do not, by and large, desire information enough to pursue it. What they care about, by and large, is minimal effort for the minimal homeostatic state. There's even some research on this:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26762485/

Basically, once homeostasis is perceived by individuals, the hunt for new workable concepts fundamentally pulls back, and thus the data that is used to produce concepts, people just live. Unfortunately, this leaves people ignorant and vulnerable, thus surrendering their consciousness to collectivist manipulation and claims of divine support and other such immoral bullshit. Thus, stupid people and war as a result.

Could Romanticism be the problem? — Athena

No, Romanticism is needed now more than ever. If you haven't read Ayn Rand's Romantic Manifesto, you need to at least sample the first chapter, that's all you'll need, no kidding. It is, instead, the mixture of Existentialism with Christian self-hatred that has produced the issues you, and Alain, are highlighting. In other words, the absence of Romanticism is contributing to this.

Romanticism emphasizes: inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual.

There are 7 billion people on earth, almost all of which are actively religious, and those who are not religious are affected by their collectivist principles that have dominated the minds of individuals for thousands of years. There is NOTHING Romantic in todays culture, and that is at the heart of these issues, not Romanticism's presence. It is exactly the opposite.

Exactly where to place Limits on Liberty is an ancient philosophical conundrum. Supreme court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said something like "your freedom to swing your arm ends at my nose". :smile: — Gnomon

Unrealistic expectations is a failure of individual rational assessment, which is a requirement of long-term homeostasis. — Garrett Travers

I know that terrible things happened before Romanticism raised its self-absorbed, narcissistic, irrational, mystical, emotional head, but assume we refer to what took place after it did so. — Ciceronianus

The "general will" of Rousseau, and other collectivist musings, such as in Hegel and Fichte, could be read as justifying mass war and state power. — NOS4A2

Okay, I had to look up "homeostasis" and "general will". Homeostasis in the context of human behavior needs a better explanation. "General will" is explained like this

How is general will different from the will of all?
While the general will looks out for the common good, the will of all looks out for private interests and is simply the sum of these competing interests. ... When dealing with the general will, however, the overriding objective is the common good and everyone cooperates to achieve it. — Alexander Pfander

I think the United States educated "general will" until 1958 when education for good moral judgment and independent thinking was changed to leaving moral training to the church and "group think" with reliance on authority. Is it possible "how" we teach children to think makes a difference?

Right now we have so much unrealistic thinking and people not trained for democracy, demonstrate a will focused on private interests not what is best for the common good. I think technology has led to unrealistic expectations. We sure are not thinking of what global warming is doing to the rest of the world. This sure as blazes is a big problem "self-absorbed, narcissistic, irrational, mystical, emotional head,". Education for technology is not education for science. Do we have a mass thinking problem and could education resolve it?

The old textbooks in the US focused on the general good.

Okay, I had to look up "homeostasis" and "general will". Homeostasis in the context of human behavior needs a better explanation. — Athena

No, it actually doesn't. Homeostasis is a biological term that describes the sustained equilibrium of, not just all biological systems including humans, but all systems in the universe, which is itself a homeostatic system that produces systems inclined to regression toward the mean, or homeostasis as a universal law of operations. Your homeostasis is, an independent system, completely your rational responsibility. Your consciousness that is responsible for rationality, was developed evolutionarily in accordance with the increased facilitation of exactly homeostasis, specifically. The concept is far more sophisticated, and universally relavent than any non-philosophy you're going to hear from Rousseu, or Kant, or Nietszche, or any other pseudo-philosopher.

The "general will" of Rousseau, and other collectivist musings, such as in Hegel and Fichte, could be read as justifying mass war and state power. — NOS4A2

No, they already have done so. Mass atrocities are specifically justified on those grounds, among many other non-philosophical that lead to the destruction of the entity that produces philosophy, and thereby philosophy itself. You know, like the Christians did in Greece because they couldn't debate them.

unrealistic expectations

@180 Proof How did you put it? Align expectations with reality? Please repeat what ya said for our collective benefit.

I quite like romanticism, if only because it gives me a glimpse of heaven, heaven itself being an ideal and thus romanticism's stock-in-trade. I know someone who would say that a false image of heaven is better than no idea (of heaven) at all (something's better than nothing). Yes, there are people like that and it's fun to be around them.

That said, the wrong idea is, sometimes, worse than being utterly ignorant (a little knowledge is dangerous).

I'm torn between these two views - I feel like an ass, Buridan's ass, fated to starve until death simply for being so god damned undecisive on matters, big and small.

Could Romanticism be the problem? — Athena

Sorry I come late to this discussion. I've gone through the other comments. Some of them touch on the point of view I see this from. First, I want to make sure we are clear on what we mean by "romanticism" and "romantic." It has several related meanings, but here is the one I think of when dealing with political and ideological issues:

Romanticism - A literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms.

Romantic - Marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.

When I think of romanticism in this context, I usually think of ideologies that focus on a mythical golden age that existed in an unspecified past.

These definitions indicate that romanticism in this sense originated in the 1700s, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the romantic impulse wasn't around earlier. By the definition above, I think Nazism, communism, jingoistic patriotism, and other similar ideologies can be defined as romanticism. So, yes. I think it is fair to say that romanticism is one of the major sources of, or at least excuses for, conflict.

180 Proof How did you put it? Align expectations with reality? — Agent Smith

Here's an excerpt from old post ...

I think a "good philosophy" consists in reflective exercises for aligning one's expectations - minimizing one's frustration/distress - with the real ... — 180 Proof

:fire:

Align expectations with the real!. You phrased it differently last time. I liked that one better. Anyway, beggars can't be choosers! :grin: I'll take it.

Just curious, if we always do as you advise, is progress possible? Progress has (always) been, in my humble opinion, a function of dissatisfaction (dukkha): we're dissatisfied, we wanna do something about it, and then so-called progress. We're living in relative comfort (air-con, central heating, etc.) precisely because we refused to accept what reality hadta offer us - scorching summer heat and frigid winters.

Of course you're not that stupid. My apologies. Good day!

Romanticism - A literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms. — T Clark

I have been thinking about what I saw in a documentary about art in that period, a kind of rebelliousness against established art standards and the elites who thought they rightly controlled the judgment of what is good art and what is not.

Wikipedia explains neoclassicism like this "The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism."

Is that a class struggle? I am quite distressed by what I perceive as foolish liberty today. A breaking of the social rules that gives us hope of overcoming racism and has meant the liberation of women, but destroys family order and may have negative social ramifications as well. I guess that makes me a conservative although many think I am liberal. I value the Greek and Roman classics and think they could benefit us and I am not so good with breaking rules.

Romantic - Marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized. — T Clark

That is what I am comfortable with. It marked past education in the US, but I do not see it as rebel or breaking rules. It is using classical literature to prepare the young for life and citizenship. It goes with preparing the young to make good wishes for our country, as one textbook explained education should do. That makes the democracy we were manifesting, a Romantic notion coming out of the Enlightenment. I don't think there are simple answers.

By the definition above, I think Nazism, communism, jingoistic patriotism, and other similar ideologies can be defined as romanticism. — T Clark

I think that is so but so was the democracy we were manifesting through education a Romantic notion.

Progress has (always) been, in my humble opinion, a function of dissatisfaction (dukkha): we're dissatisfied, we wanna do something about it, and then so-called progress. — Agent Smith

That goes with the American dream and the roaring 20s when we were very excited by mechanical breakthroughs and what technology can do for us. But our romantic dream of ourselves could be a nightmare as we face another terrible war and global warming.

Homeostasis — Garrett Travers

I think we need some homeostasis right now. It feels like things are flying out of control in many directions. Dreams are wonderful but we need to ground ourselves with reality so our dreams don't become nightmares?

Wikipedia explains neoclassicism like this "The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism." — Athena

As I noted in my post, I was referring to romanticism not as a movement in art but as a nationalistic impulse. I think that impulse can be reflected in art, which is fine, and in ideology, which may not be. It is the focus on "...an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy..." that I see as relevant to this discussion.

Is that a class struggle? I am quite distressed by what I perceive as foolish liberty today. A breaking of the social rules that gives us hope of overcoming racism and has meant the liberation of women, but destroys family order and may have negative social ramifications as well. I guess that makes me a conservative although many think I am liberal. — Athena

Romantic - Marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.
— T Clark

That is what I am comfortable with. — Athena

I don't know if you should be called liberal or conservative, but you sure seem to be a romantic in the sense we are talking about it here. I have thought that before reading your posts in previous threads.

By the definition above, I think Nazism, communism, jingoistic patriotism, and other similar ideologies can be defined as romanticism.
— T Clark

I think that is so but so was the democracy we were manifesting through education a Romantic notion. — Athena

Let me think about that... I don't think so, but I'm not certain. I'll think some more.

I certainly think support for our nation and government is often expressed in romantic terms, but I think democracy is a down-to-earth, practical way of governing. I don't think the founders of the US were romantics at all. You, on the other hand, seem to be. Is that something that might lead you to support risky policies in the name of national solidarity and tradition?

My two cents on Romanticism as I am pondering it now...
The Enlightenment of the 17-18th centuries sought out to understand the world using what they referred to as "Reason". This idea, borrowed from the Stoics but changed slightly to mean empirical reasoning and not necessarily some "Universal Reason" (though there was some of this too with Deism). It was simply the notion brought about from the New Science being explored by Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Huygens, Descartes, Boyle, et al.

However, the scientific worldview seemed to constantly focus on the empirical and even with that, Political Science was the main focus. The individual human condition was given short-shrift. The 19th century can be seen as a sort of backlash.. Existentialism started the trend of "the individual" and the existential questions of life. What does it mean to be a human consciousness, from the interior perspective, not just the empirical one. These types of human struggles are captured more in art, literature, feelings, personal observations and experiences, etc.. The individual was being more captured by people like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, etc.

But one can say Romanticism proper was this kind of middle ground in the early 1800s between the "political-oriented" 18th century and the personal oriented 19th century. It was from late 1700s-early 1800s and often turned politics into identity-politics.. Rousseau and his general "General Will", Herder, or Schelling and Fichte's emphasis on ethnic politics helped push movements that divided Europe less on Imperial or Universal lines and more on common cultural and historical ties. It was not universal in the Enlightenment sense of only worrying about the individual's rights and securities, but about cultural identity. Individualistic, but at the level of culture, not the person. That would be more emphasized with the Existentialists.

This makes sense to me. You know a lot more about 17th century cultural history than I do.

Thank you.. I am very keen to learn about historical developments in ideas an human culture. I think it also helps orient philosophical ideas and their origins from broader cultural trends.

I think we need some homeostasis right now. It feels like things are flying out of control in many directions. Dreams are wonderful but we need to ground ourselves with reality so our dreams don't become nightmares? — Athena

I cordially invite you to read and comment on my most recent post. I do the same for anyone else reading. I think it is important for you to.

I absolutely love the picture you posted. I would like to enlarge it and put it on my wall. — Athena

Here's a link to a YouTube video of a Ukrainian woman handing an invading Russian soldier some flower seeds to plant on her martyr's grave. Now isn't that a Romantic idea? :smile:

PS___Ooops! Apparently I misinterpreted the gesture. The seeds were intended to grow from his rotting corpse on Ukrainian soil. At least a romantic way to say "f*ck you, and the tank you rode in on". :angry:

https://www.newser.com/story/317392/ukrainian-hands-soldier-seeds-so-flowers-can-grow-from-corpse.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=earthlink&utm_campaign=rss_top

At least a romantic way to say "f*ck you, and the tank you rode in on". :angry: — Gnomon

A Romantic way to look a murderer in the eyes and say "I see you, motherfucker." I love it when people look evil in face like that, if only to simply let it know that we are still here, and not a god damn thing is gonna change it. I love this species.

borrowed from the Stoics — schopenhauer1

Well, empiricism is the legacy of Epicurus, from whose views Stoicism and Skepticism were emergent. Epicurus was the direct challenge to Platonism and Aristotelianism. But, I mean, yeah, you can get away with that. Stoics did have the "logos." But, it wasn't necessarily like a methodical application of logic or empiricism.

However, the scientific worldview seemed to constantly focus on the empirical and even with that, Political Science was the main focus. The individual human condition was given short-shrift. The 19th century can be seen as a sort of backlash.. Existentialism started the trend of "the individual" and the existential questions of life. What does it mean to be a human consciousness, from the interior perspective, not just the empirical one. These types of human struggles are captured more in art, literature, feelings, personal observations and experiences, etc.. The individual was being more captured by people like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, etc.

But one can say Romanticism proper was this kind of middle ground in the early 1800s between the "political-oriented" 18th century and the personal oriented 19th century. It was from late 1700s-early 1800s and often turned politics into identity-politics.. Rousseau and his general "General Will", Herder, or Schelling and Fichte's emphasis on ethnic politics helped push movements that divided Europe less on Imperial or Universal lines and more on common cultural and historical ties. It was not universal in the Enlightenment sense of only worrying about the individual's rights and securities, but about cultural identity. Individualistic, but at the level of culture, not the person. That would be more emphasized with the Existentialists. — schopenhauer1

Beautifully reported, my friend. I have nothing to add.

I certainly think support for our nation and government is often expressed in romantic terms, but I think democracy is a down-to-earth, practical way of governing. I don't think the founders of the US were romantics at all. You, on the other hand, seem to be. Is that something that might lead you to support risky policies in the name of national solidarity and tradition? — T Clark

I think many of the US founding fathers were romantics.

The history for this begins with the crusades and the discovery of Greek and Roman classics revealing ancient civilizations that were more advanced than rural, agrarian Europe under Christianity and kings. This was an embarrassment for the church and to maintain its authority, it claimed that knowledge as its own. Classical information was the core of scholasticism. At this time the Church relied heavily on Plato and Aristotle. The classics became the foundation of liberal education and were secularized, giving us the Age of Reason.

The "liberal arts" were originally those disciplines deemed by the Ancient Greeks to be essential preparation for effective participation in public life. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were regarded as the core liberal arts, with arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy playing a secondary, if important, role. This model inspired the early European universities (though the grammar taught was Latin, not Greek) and by the end of the Renaissance other subjects had been added to this core—Greek grammar, history, moral philosophy and poetry. Even as specialization at the undergraduate level was embraced in some countries from the 19th century onwards, some vestige of a liberal arts idea persisted: well into the second half of the 20th century competence in Latin and Greek was an admissions requirements for matriculation of all students at some elite universities (e.g. Oxford and Cambridge). — Harry Brighouse

That education led to the enlightenment.

The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment)[note 2] was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects.[2][3] The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.[4][5] — wikipedia

Johannes Gutenberg's printing press and figuring out how to make paper made books relatively cheaply, plus the demand for books, but not having a lot of authors, lead to printing the Greek and Roman classics provided the foundation of a literate society.

So I would say Romanticism compted with religion and well-educated men at the time of Thomas Jefferson were apt to be Romantics. I would say the literature and education back in the day lead to
an idealized view of reality, and in the US we maintained that until 1958 when it was replaced 100% by education for technology. The Prussians centralized education and focused Germany on education for technology for military and industrial purposes and became what we defended our democracy against. The ideal manifest by education for technology being very different from the ideal manifested by liberal education. Yet religion and the classics are core to either ideal. There, did I make that as clear as the water in a mud hole?

Let us grapple over what you think is more down-to-earth? Oh, this is such a juice debate of what is so. :grin: Is that "something that might lead you to support risky policies in the name of national solidarity and tradition?" I don't know? I don't think so but I would appreciate probing this possibility? I think every cell in my body favors liberty, but that goes with washing the unwashed masses and dressing them in fine clothes. Oh, dear. I don't know if I am evil or good?