Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self

Magnificent Rebels
by Andrea Wulf
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9780525657118
Publication Date: September 13, 2022
Pages: 494
Genre: History
Publisher: Knopf

When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, How can I be free?

It all began in a quiet university town in Germany in the 1790s, when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, their writing, and their lives. This brilliant circle included the famous poets Goethe, Schiller, and Novalis; the visionary philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; the contentious Schlegel brothers; and, in a wonderful cameo, Alexander von Humboldt. And at the heart of this group was the formidable Caroline Schlegel, who sparked their dazzling conversations about the self, nature, identity, and freedom.

The French revolutionaries may have changed the political landscape of Europe, but the young Romantics incited a revolution of the mind that transformed our world forever. We are still empowered by their daring leap into the self, and by their radical notions of the creative potential of the individual, the highest aspirations of art and science, the unity of nature, and the true meaning of freedom. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfillment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our responsibilities toward our community and future generations. At the heart of this inspiring book is the extremely modern tension between the dangers of selfishness and the thrilling possibilities of free will.

What a ride that was, and, with a few exceptions, what a bunch of self-absorbed prima donnas.  I guess you’d have to be self absorbed to be the vanguard of the invention of self, but still, I liked almost none of these people.  If their first name was Friedrich, chances were good I didn’t like them.  (Spoiler alert: almost everybody was named Friedrich.)  My like list of these people is pretty much limited to those with the Humboldt and Goethe surnames.  Schiller was ok – I suspect his poor health made him a more complicated man than he had to be.  I also suspect Novalis – the melodramatic proto-goth man-child – would have turned out to have grown up into quite a distinguished gentleman, had he lived a full life.  Signs of maturity were apparent before he was struck down by illness.  As for the rest of them, I just wanted to box their ears.  Friedrich Schlegel was an out right selfish ass, and remained that way the rest of his life.

Yet these are the people who launched a revolution in philosophy with the idea of the inner-self and that self’s freedom in spite of the circumstances it is contained in.  I have a niggling argument about whether they truly ‘invented’ the idea of self, as the founding fathers of the United States were big on self-determination, which requires an acknowledgement of the inner self’s freedom, a full quarter of a century earlier, and the French revolution was certainly fuelled by a desire by the people to break away from the established monarch in order to find liberty and equality, neither of which is really possible without some awareness of self.  Still, the Jena set were unarguably the first to codify the philosophical implications of the self and how it fits in the whole of the natural world.

So why did I rate the book so highly?  Because Andrea Wulf’s writing was superb.  I mean, I liked almost none of these people, and yet, I kept reading with avid interest.  Only a talented writer can do that.  She brought everyone to life – for better or for worse – and placed them into the context of the times they lived in, giving the reader a very real sense of what Jena was like from 1794 through to the battle of Jena in 1806.  So highly do I think of Wulf’s writing, that I recently checked out the audiobook of another of her works, Chasing Venus about the race to measure the heavens, something about which I could not care less about.  Space holds no interest for me, but I am certain Wulf will make me care about the race to measure it, and the individuals who believed it was worth doing.

I read this as a buddy read with BrokenTune, Jaylia Reads and Lillelara.  I posted reading updates on our group site, which I’m appending below, under the ‘read more’ break.

5 March:  I’ve since finished Part III and this time, there really isn’t a lot to say beyond this: these people remind me of the popular cliques in high school.  They are all so very enamoured of their perceived importance and power, neither of which they really held, as Fichte’s ousting from Jena proved.  So much arrogance in the absence of any gravitas.  A perfect setting for the whole thing to go all Lord of the Flies.

3 March:  I finished Part II last weekend, but life has been busy and I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write up my thoughts.  Possibly because I don’t have a lot of thoughts about part II (turns out I do).  It felt like just as the Jena se came together, they all started to fall out with each other, and I was left wondering how they managed to make the impact they have while acting like the cast of a reality TV show.

This second section starts off strong: Alexander von Humboldt is in the house and brings with him all the insane energy he naturally possesses (just try to imagine this man on amphetamines for a second … ) and he and Goethe dive into a whirlwind 3 months of constant experimentation on the poor frogs, studying galvanism.  Insects, worms, snails and caterpillars all also fell under the dissection knife in the name of science.  For the record, I feel like a certain amount of masochism is required to dissect a snail.

During this period, the Friedrich-who-is-Schlegel proves he is the second-most immature of the Jena set by shredding Schiller’s journal Horen.  He doesn’t seem to do this out of any sense of conviction, but because he could, going so far as to criticise the inclusions of too many translations – even though they were all written by his older brother.  Obviously, he was having too much fun being a troll to consider the repercussions that would fall on August Wilhelm.  I do not like this Friedrich; if I was from Texas I’d say he was all hat and no cattle, but since I’m not, I’ll just say he’s a childish ass.

Poor Goethe just wants everyone to be happy and to avoid confrontations at all costs.  Schiller strikes me as a man who might be on the spectrum; he’s most comfortable in his contained environment, with his few friends, and when he snapped, it was a spectacular fit of temper that left August Wilhelm without his lucrative contributor fees and Friedrich-who-is-Schlegel exiled to Berlin.

And then there’s Novalis.  This man is the undisputed man-child of the bunch.  Nobody can outdo him in immaturity and melodrama, as he proves in this chapter.  I keep picturing him as a goth.  I can’t help it.

And we’re not done with Friedrich-who-is-Schlegel.  It wasn’t enough to tear a strip of Schiller, but from his exile in Berlin he decides to start his own journal and proceeds to nag and nag and nag all his friends until he has enough material to print.  When he’s not nagging he’s carousing with a married woman – although seeing as her marriage was arranged without her input, I’m not feeling particularly judgy about it.  All in all, there’s just not a lot of growth going on with Friedrich-who-is-Schlegel.

This is also the section where Schelling arrives, throwing me into a complete tail-spin because I thought Schiller was Schelling.  Or Schelling was Schiller.  Or something.  I had to scurry back to the Dramatis Personae and sort myself out.  Once I did that and assured myself that Schiller definitely wasn’t going to end up sleeping with the woman he called Lady Lucifer, I was able to calm down and keep reading.  While Schelling hasn’t left much of an impression on my as a person, his philosophy definitely did.  What was considered revolutionary in its day just seems like common sense to me, living in this time and place.  It’s the first philosophical theory that comes close to acknowledging that we aren’t above the natural world, but merely another cog in it.  Whenever Wulf touched on his teachings, I found myself nodding my head.

Under the category of useless trivia, I have to wonder what percentage of the male population of the German states were named Freidrich.  Based on the men in this book, it would have to be well more than half.

20 Feb:  I’m just pages away from finishing Part I, and I’m enjoying it so far.  Wulf has managed to introduce all the Friedrichs-whose-last-name-starts-with-Sch in such a way that, so far – finger’s crossed – has allowed me to keep them all straight.

Wulf kicks the story of the Jena set into high gear with Fichte’s philosophy of the Ich, which is based to a large extent to Kant’s philosophy involving the thing-in-itself.  On the surface of it, as Wulf presents it, both are valid, but I prefer Kant’s original take.  Kant stresses the responsibility inherent in free will, while Fichte prefers to pay such moral responsibility lip service by calling it, instead of an imperative, more a happy by-product of free will.  A truly free Ich is a morally responsible Ich, apparently; a small distinction.  So small it’s easily overlooked entirely as the last 200 years or so has proven.  Fichte strikes me as a man who was brilliant but immature, with enthusiasm unchecked by little, if any, humility.

I’m trying hard not to get squicked out by Novalis falling for a 12 year old and proposing to her when she hit the ripe old age of 13.  I don’t care if the marriage wouldn’t take place for years; I’m still utterly creeped out by a 22 year old man ‘falling in love’ with a 12 year old.  Also, I’m additionally creeped out by his apparent journaling of his daily instances of ‘lewdness’.  Still, it seems obvious to me at this point that if any one person put the love, hearts and angst in romanticism, it was Novalis.

I’m going to have to re-read the progress I’ve made in chapter 5 tonight; it’s the only part of the text thus far where I’m struggling to keep people straight.  Specifically the two brothers, August Wilhelm and … wait for it … another Friedrich!  (I’m imagining a party with all these people in attendance and a servant comes in with a message for Friedrich, and the ensuing chaos.)  Both of them being in love with Caroline is making them hard to keep apart, even if one isn’t named Friedrich.

14 Feb:  I came home today and picked up the book from the start, because I remembered almost nothing of the 4 pages I read last night.  Wulf starts off from an interesting angle, that at the start felt a little wtf-ish, but started to make sense in context of the Jena set’s focus on the self.  Getting to know the author a bit more was an interesting way to segue into the thumbnail history of the Jena set that the prologue finished up with.

Before I even started the book, I had a vague notion that it might be the by-product of all the research Wulf put into The Invention of Nature. After all, von Humboldt’s life intersected with the Jena set to a great extent, and it only made sense that she get as much out of the information she accumulated as she could.  But towards the end of the prologue, my feelings changed, and now I suspect that this book is as much, or more so, a … response?… to where humanity finds itself today – where there is arguably too much focus on the self and not nearly enough focus on the greater good – as it might be an extension of her Humboldt research.

As an aside, all the Friedrichs and last names starting with Sch are going to kill me.