Romantics challenged mechanical worldview by celebrating imagination

Evidence

This view, broadly scientific but flavored with a Platonic sense of a world of order behind the chaos of sense impressions, was challenged by the Romantic poets (such as Blake and Wordsworth) and Romantic philosophers. They emphasized the plasticity of the world and especially the esemplastic power of the human imagination. Institutional constraints they despised along with all other limits on human aspiration, as merely contingent; science they found dreary; they celebrated potency — Richard A. Posner, What Has Pragmatism to Offer Law?, 23

Categorization

• SEED: The romantic-conservative tension here is a possible angle: how the romantic rejection of ‘contingent’ institutional constraints maps onto modern anti-formalist legal thought.
• XREF: connects to: Parallel creation myths reveal shared human imagination while differences reveal distinct values. — , A Year of World Stories, 15608; Enlightenment science and Romanticism both renewed medieval Muslim-monster fantasies rather than ending them; This view, broadly scientific but flavored with a Platonic sense of a world of order behind the chaos of sense impressions, was challenged by the Romantic poets (such as Blake and Wordsworth) and Romantic philosophers. They emphasized the plasticity of the world and especially the esemplastic power of the human imagination. (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• German idealism’s elevation of imagination grounded the Romantic artist as prophetic seer. #expands (0.85)
• Imagination remains active in the world despite being fragile and fallible. #expands (0.60) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 941