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The 18th century made human reason the guide and the authority in the sphere of knowledge and action. Its second half, however, was marked by a striking change in the value set upon the feelings, which was due particularly to the thought of Rousseau. Ecstasy, "Schwärmerei", which Kant considered objectionable, changed in the later stage of the age of enlightenment to a serious conception important for the imagination and the feelings and played its part in literature, art, science and philosophy, and as long it remained the pastime of minds, it was a refined game of educated men and women in social discussions and letters. In this atmosphere, stirred up by the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, new idealistic systems of philosophy sprang up, which combined rational criticism with the new movement of romantic irrationalism. In them the attitude of classical Antiquity changed too, which manifested itself in the birth of the so-called New Humanism or — perhaps more correctly — New Renaissance.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9704-2_24

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