Empiricism would continue on to the present day. It would become increasingly materialistic in French philosophy, culminating in the reductionism of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), wherein all human experience is reduced to biology, chemistry, and ultimately physics. Rationalism, too, continues to the present day, reaching its peak in Georg Hegel's (1770-1831) idealism of the Absolute. Hegel held that all human activity is nothing more than the working of the universe as it slowly and inevitably progresses towards ultimate Godhood.
In both empiricism and rationalism (and materialism and idealism), the human, especially the individual human person, gets lost -- either in the eternal bumping of atoms or in the grand scheme of God-making. Our thoughts and feelings are nothing of any importance either way! We are just carbon molecules or the twitchings of eternity.
Some philosophers were taken aback by this tendency, both before and after Comte and Hegel. They felt that, for human beings, it was our own day-to-day living that was the center of our search for the truth. Reason and the evidence of our senses were important, no doubt, but they mean nothing to us unless they touch our needs, our feelings, our emotions. Only then do they acquire meaning. This "meaning" is what the Romantic movement is all about.
I will focus on several philosophers that I believe most influenced psychology. First is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who is often considered the father of Romanticism. And the last is Friedrich Nietzsche, who is sometimes considered the greatest Romantic. Afterwards, we will look at the commonalities among these philosophers that let us talk of a Romantic Movement.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712-1778
No history of psychology is complete without a look at Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He has influenced education to the present day, philosophy (Kant, Schopenhauer...), political theory (the French Revolution, Karl Marx...), and he inspired the Romantic Movement in Philosophy, which in turn influenced all these things, and psychology, once again.
Plus, he’s one of the most colorful characters we have and, as an added bonus, he has left a particularly revealing autobiography in The Confessions.
He was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1712 to the watchmaker Isaac Rousseau and his wife Suzanne Bernard Rousseau. Athough a Calvinist, Isaac was also a bit unstable, and left his wife and first son, returned to father Jean-Jacques, then left again. His mother died one week after Jean-Jacques was born, and he was raised by an aunt and uncle.
They sent him off to boarding school in the country where, he says, he learned “all the insignificant trash that has obtained the name of education.” The experience did, however, serve as the start of his love-affair with rural life.
At twelve years old, he returned to his aunt and uncle. There apprenticed to a watchmaker, he developed two other personal qualities: The constant beatings from his master (as well as at school) led him to lying and idleness; and adolescence led him to develop a rather bizarre romantic streak. He would spend much of his life falling in love.
At sixteen, he ran away from home with no money nor possessions. A priest led him to baroness Mme de Warens, a 29 year old beauty who apparently had a soft spot for losers and potential converts. Her influence led him to convert to Catholicism, though he was not yet ready to give up his exhibitionism nor his desire to be spanked by lovely ladies. He entered a seminary in 1729, but was promptly dismissed. He eventually developed an on-again, off-again physical relationship with the lovely Mme Warens.
In the meantime, he walked all over the countryside, often long distances. He loved the woods, mountains, and nature itself. He served as an occasional tutor and music teacher, but spent much of his time reading Enlightenment authors. Voltaire’s work turned him to a Nature worship quite congenial to his personality.
In 1742, when he was 30 years old, he left for Paris. He quickly befriended the political writer Diderot , who managed to help him get a job as a secretary at the French Embassy in Venice. He was dismissed because of his insolent nature.
In 1746 he met and fell in love with Therese Levasseur, a simple-minded laundress and seamstress. They together had four children, all of whom were send to orphanages. Keep in mind that that was a common response to poverty in those days (i.e. from the fall of Rome to World War II!). He did feel considerable remorse about it later, but admitted that he would have made a really lousy father! No one doubts him on that.
