PHILOSOPHY AS HOMESICKNESS: THE PROBLEM OF HOMELESSNESS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF ROMANTICISM
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Keywords:
romanticism, philosophy, art, hermeneutics, individuality, homelessness, Nietzsche, Heidegger, mythology, longing, secularization, modernity, modern age, poetry, languageAbstract
The article is dedicated to analyzing the theme of homelessness in the philosophy of Romanticism. In particular, it is based on a quote by Novalis, in which he says that “philosophy is, ultimately, a longing for home, a passionate desire to feel at home everywhere.” By analyzing this quote, the author concludes that the theme of longing for home is central to Romantic philosophy and continues into the 19th and 20th centuries. It is specifically shown that this theme not only reflected the general process of secularization in Europe but also demonstrated how the awareness of one’s own finitude can be perceived as an advantage. Novalis’s definition of philosophy as a “longing for home” is interpreted as an awareness of the problem of fundamental homelessness: being caught between the attempt to understand the world and the realization of the unattainability of this task. That is, between the attempt to know the world so deeply that one could unhesitatingly call it one’s own home, and the simultaneous impossibility of doing so. However, despite this interpretation of human life, the philosophy of Romanticism does not fall into the absolutization of fatalism. On the contrary, Romanticism sees uncertainty as a human advantage, the foundation of freedom: the ability to create new meanings, symbolic forms, and social practices, which makes historical movement possible at all. This is achieved through the specific interpretation of philosophy, poetry and language that is proposed by the romantic movement. In this sense, it anticipates many of the trends in the history of thought that became popular starting in the second half of the 19th century. In particular, the theme of homelessness in this interpretation played a significant role in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and partially resonates with the ideas of thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and Richard Rorty. This encourages a return to the origins of this issue and a closer examination of what Romantic philosophy had to offer to the history of philosophy.
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