Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self

Why I Picked It Up / How It Read

I picked this up as part of a book club, and discovered by chance that I have read another book by the same author a few years back based on a friend's recommendation. The book reads more like a narrative than an academic history, which makes it easy to follow and a light read even though it's generally about philosophy. So far it’s been engaging, especially in how it connects personal relationships with philosophical developments.

What I Took Away

• My general reading of the German Romantic movement is that it was about replacing the purely inductive method of Francis Beacon prevalent at the time by an approach of appreciating beauty and being inspired by nature in coming up with theories to test rather than mindlessly collecting observations and experimenting till you can generalize
• I don't mind that approach as I'm not an inductivist, but I disagree that scientific theories must be elegant, sometimes they're not, and I can see how this approach could lead someone to great prejudice, Goethe and his colors theory is a case in point.
• The book is a refresher on how human the figures people usually idolize as intellectual giants. It shows how petty and ungrounded some of them are and shows that some intellectual debates are nothing but personal grudges