But the Romantic movement in literature, which was at that time gaining
ground, with its belief in a superhuman faculty called imagination, in
genius breaker of rules, found no such need for restraint. Schiller's
modest reserve was set aside, and with J.P. Richter we approach a
mythology of the imagination. Many of his observations are, however,
just, and his distinction between productive and reproductive
imagination is excellent. How could humanity appreciate works of genius,
he asks, were it without some common measure? All men who can go as far
as saying "this is beautiful" before a beautiful thing, are capable of
the latter. He then proceeds to establish to his own satisfaction
categories of the imagination, leading from simple talent to the supreme
form of male genius in which all faculties flourish together: a faculty
of faculties.
The Romantic conception of art is, in substance, that of idealist German
philosophy, where we find it in a more coherent and systematic form. It
is the conception of Schelling, Solger, and Hegel.
Fichte, Kant's first great pupil, cannot be included with these, for his
view of Aesthetic, largely influenced by Schiller, is transformed in the
Fichtian system to a moral activity, to a representation of the ethical
ideal. The subjective idealism of Fichte, however, generated an
Aesthetic: that of irony as the base of art.
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