Rethinking of the dichotomy «mind-body»: from the Enlightenment the German Romanticism

Abstract

Being under the powerful impact of Romanticism, the Western «Theory» tries to solve the challenges of Romanticism; Nowadays the most paradoxical one is expressed in the sentence: «The only cure for postmodernism is the incurable illness of romanticism». The German Romanticism is very important especially in its inter connection with different movements, schools and styles such as Renaissance, the Enlightenment or postmodernism.

 With its focus on the mind, the Enlightenment accentuates such binary oppositions as «mind-emotions», «mind-imagination», «mind-intuition». In Romanticism, the sensitive aspects of human beings are in the focus of philosophers, poets and writers. It is important that sensual part of being comes out on the first plan in Romantism, making reverse in educational dichotomy focusing its attention on emotionality, contemplation, passivity, imagination and fantasy which according to definition corresponds to feministic origin. Thus, the reverse bias is made with the accentualization of emotions, passivity, contemplation, imagination, – which is traditionally linked with femininity. At the same time the ideal of the independent woman created in German Romanticism made a strike on the essentialism and gave the possibility to represent woman as a human being with her own specific features and qualities.