Early 19^th Century Romanticism & Classicism:

 Emmanuel Kant: Pre Romantic (Idealist)

The universe is incomprehensible to man.   Existence is dualistic, a relationship between the individual (ego) and the universe.   The universe contains an unknowable essence.   The duality extends top individuals in two realms, the senses (necessities), and reason (moral freedom).   Kant stresses the harmonization of those spheres and the autonomy of art to reveal those truths.   Utilitarian art is meaningless.   The arts are an idealization of the ego, revealing the universal, eternal truth hidden behind the mundane, but present with empirical reality.  

 Christian Freidrich Hebbel: Anti-Idealism

An extreme pessimist he resigned that man and the truth of the universe were both unresolved and would remain in an unresolved conflict.   He felt that the individual was similar to a lump of ice in a river eventually absorbed into the flow.

 Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Pre Romantic, Pro Classicist

Goethe examined the dialectic between Classicism and romanticism or plot versus character.   On one hand was the ancient classical pagan natural realistic necessity driven plays of destiny and on the other the modern romantic sentimental Christian idealistic freedom driven by will.   Developing the conflict of the ego and thew universe he goes on to defend the use of rational and flexible classicism to address the unknowable essence.

Mid 19^th Century Romanticism & Realism

 Aurthur Schopenhauer: Pre-Naturalist

Dualistic universe, ala Kant.   The Ego is separated into two spheres of Will and Determination (striving).   Saw tragedy as the negation of the will and determination through its presence in society.   Called for a new form of tragedy that addressed will and Determination (Strum Und Drang).

 Soren Kierkegaard: Romantic

Logic is finite, intuition is just as deterministic.

Aesthetic choice based on subjectivity lead to despair.   Objective choices based on moral duty lead to crisis.   Religious choice, by art or faith transcends both aesthetic and objective choice.   Art is a realized philosophy just as the world is a realized idea.   It is a creation of God and a reflection of Man.

 Georg Willhelm Freidrich Hegel: Idealist

Mono-egoism or Monogistic.   Man is egocentric, platonic in his abilty to process and evoke change.   Man uses a dialectical process to seek revelation.  The Hegelian Universe

In a triad of interaction the absolute (truth) reacts to both fate or the force of justice, and to individual and divine knowledge.   Where mans reconciliation to the universe is the absolute (truth).

Late 19^th Century Melodrama vs. Naturalism & Symbolism

Freidrich Nietzche: Romantic

Duality of existence is expressed as the Apollonian and Dionysian modes.   The Apollonian mode is based on the individual, the ego, and is a compilation of illusion and dreams.   It is nature, beauty, form, and balance.    Its artistic impetus resides in the plastic arts.   The Dionysian mode is the Id, the primordial unity of intoxication, and the duality of creation and destruction.   It is ritual and performance.

 Sigmund Freud: Naturalist & Pre-Symbolist

In the analysis of the Psyche, Freud splits the duality into an interaction between the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego.   The Id being the primordial nature of man, the ego the Apollonian ideal, and the Super Ego the self-regulating moral referee of the two.

 Carl Jung: Symbolist

Carl Jung’s work on Dream States and the subconscious are the benchmarks of the symbolist and surrealist movements in art.