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Full Idea
Romantic poetry recognises as its first commandment that the free choice [Wilkür] of the poet can tolerate no law above itself.
Gist of Idea
For poets free choice is supreme
Source
Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Frag 116 p.32), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06
Book Ref
Pinkard,Terry: 'German Philosophy 1760-1860' [CUP 2002], p.161
A Reaction
This leads to Shelley's 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the race'. We should also take it as a response to Kant's categorical imperative, which leads to the Gauguin Problem (wickedness justified by the art it leads to).
| 16565 | Without the surface decoration, poetry shows only appearances and nothing of what is real [Plato] |
| 16566 | Poetry is more philosophic than history, as it concerns universals, not particulars [Aristotle] |
| 20873 | Tragedies are versified sufferings of people impressed by externals [Epictetus] |
| 23364 | Homer wrote to show that the most blessed men can be ruined by poor judgement [Epictetus] |
| 22030 | For poets free choice is supreme [Schlegel,F] |
| 22341 | Literature is the most important aspect of culture, because it teaches understanding of living [Murdoch] |
| 21939 | The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting] |
| 9814 | All great poetry is engaged in rivalry with mathematics [Badiou] |
| 21007 | Storytelling is never neutral; some features of the world must be emphasised [Nussbaum] |
| 20454 | Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley] |
| 20927 | The hermeneutic circle is between the reader's self-understanding, and the world of the text [Zimmermann,J] |