ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Romanticism in philosophy

Romanticism in philosophy is a way of thinking about the world that became popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was a reaction to a period of time called the Enlightenment, which emphasized using reason and logic to understand the world.

Think of it like this: Imagine you have a toy that you love to play with. You can spend hours building structures and making up stories with it. But one day, your parents tell you that you can only play with your toy if you use only logic and math to build with it. That might not be as fun, right?

Well, the Enlightenment was sort of like that. People were so focused on using reason and logic to understand the world that they forgot about things like emotions, intuition, and imagination. But the Romantic philosophers believed that these things were just as important as reason and logic.

They believed that we should trust our feelings and emotions more, and use them to understand the world around us. They believed in the power of imagination, and thought that it could help us see things in new and different ways.

So, instead of just thinking about things logically, they wanted us to think about things more deeply, and to use our whole selves to understand the world. This way, they thought, we could find a deeper meaning in our lives, and really connect with the world in a way that we couldn't if we just thought about things logically all the time.

In short, Romanticism in philosophy is all about embracing emotions, imagination, and intuition, along with reason and logic, to really understand the world and what it means to be human.