Romanticism asserts both the vitality of nature and its primitive and organic unities agaisnt the universalities of rationalism. It therefore either defies every principle of form and order (as in Nietzscheanism) or it emphasizes primitive and inadequate natural forms of unity (Blut und Boden) [Blood and Soil]. It thus becomes an instrument of decadence, hastening the destruction of bourgeois civilization without offering a way to a new order. Signficantly the lower middle classes (individuals who desparately flee from their isolation into unities of race and nation, and persons without a sense of history who rediscover history in terms of primitivve tribalism) are the instruments of this decadence.
The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation Vol. 1
Human Nature (1941) by Reinhold Niebuhr (50)
No comments:
Post a Comment