What is romantic idealism

In other words, I expect a needy and flawed human just like me. Romantic idealism Insta-filters reality and Photoshops love. It airbrushes away the demanding neediness, ugly blemishes, and inconvenient vices from a relational prospect, presenting a custom-crafted companion that meets all of your unrealistic expectations and fulfills all of your self-centered desires. This ideal offers you the giving of itself without the needing in return, a self-satisfaction without self-sacrifice.

Romantic idealism preaches that your relationship pursuits are personal quests for one-way consumeristic fulfillment and transforms precious souls into priced-out commodities. It depersonalizes the image-bearer right in front of you. The end product is something that resembles more of a build-your-own fantasy android than a flaws-and-all human person. You are looking for someone who will not require or demand significant change.

You are searching, therefore, for an ideal person—happy, healthy, interesting, content with life. Never before in history has there been a society filled with people so idealistic in what they are seeking in a spouse.

No, genuine love is demanding and draining and idol-dismantling. So I should expect an iron-sharpening-iron marriage set off with burning flames and flashing sparks, not just from lovey-dovey romance, but from two imperfect people ruggedly colliding in the grind of day-to-day existence.

I must expect a marriage relationship to press me and test me and stretch me in agonizing ways that I have yet to experience as a single man. I should anticipate life with a flawed person just like me, who has layered feelings and needs and anxieties just like me, and desperately needs grace every single day just like me.

And in the end, if we cling to Christ, even through intense pain, there will be a lasting, persevering love sweetened with an experiential knowledge that marriage to the other was designed to produce humble holiness and godly joy and a Spirit-wrought weight of glory beyond measure.

Hawaii born and raised. Kentucky residing. Recent Southern Seminary grad. Skip to main content. This service is more advanced with JavaScript available. Advertisement Hide. Authors Authors and affiliations Barry Stocker. Chapter First Online: 03 November Keywords Friedrich schlegel G.

Hegel F. Schelling Irony Subjectivity Idealism Romanticism. This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access. Fichte, J. The Science of Knowledge , trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs.

Google Scholar. Hegel, G. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art [2 vols] , trans. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Phenomenology of Spirit , trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elements of the Philosophy of Right , trans. At the same time, though, a key aspect of Romanticism is idealism, or the poetic emphasis on the imaginative ideas of beauty and form. The characteristic of idealizing the world spans the various themes common to Romantic poetry. Romantic poets idealize nature. They express awe of the natural world and the sublime in human connection to nature.

This inspiring aspect of the countryside comes out in Romantic poetry. John Keats offers an example in his "Ode to a Nightingale. In fact, Romantic poets often painted nature as a source of knowledge and spirituality as well as a refuge. Indeed, a look at the American Romantic-era poet Emily Dickinson shows this idealistic value of nature. One of her most famous poems equates hope as a bird, one that "never stops" and has never asked for anything. A central theme to Romantic literature is the idealization of the individual.

Romantic poets often celebrate the achievements not only of their individual selves, but also of the common man.