The Enlightenment stimulated the idea of uniting a nation-state under a constitution versus a monarchy. These new ideas included nationalism, conservatism, and romanticism. Nationalism is the belief in the importance of one's nation stemming from its unique laws, language, traditions, and history. By this theory, everyone contributes and is important to the government, and all citizens work together for the betterment of the nation. Conservatism is the political philosophy emphasizing the continuation of traditional institutions and opposition to sudden change in the established order. It became popular after bloody revolutions, namely, the French Revolution, because people thought that monarchies were a better way to guarantee peace than new governments. See the video below for more on conservatism. Lastly, romanticism is a European philosophical movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that valued feeling over reason and glorified traditional customs, nature, and the imagination. Similar to conservatism, romanticism was also born of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, as people saw that the blunt reasoning of the Enlightenment had led to such bloodshed. They longed for more beauty in their life, and they found it not in strict law codes but rather the arts.
The definitions here were gathered from Crossroads and Cultures.
Are there any videos or other media that might help to illustrate this point?
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