Romantics thrive on disappointments. Disappointments inspire them to weave laments through which they can exhibit their idealistic/romantic dispositions. They need to ‘feel’ to be able to do this. If an occasion isn’t able to get Romantics to emote, they are likely to ignore it. 

The Irish poet Oscar Wilde wrote, “A dreamer is one who can only find his way in moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees dawn before the rest of the world.” Yes, the much awaited dawn was a disappointment. This is a classic Romanticist dilemma, but one that is created by the Romantic himself to lament about or poetise. 

The Romantic disposition often enriches the talents of an artist, poet, novelist or musician. But in politics, Romanticism can spell disaster. It can also make one sound entirely naive, if not downright silly. According to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “No artist tolerates reality.” This was coming from the horse’s mouth, because Nietzsche was quintessentially a Romantic.

In 1986, the American social philosopher Guy Oakes wrote that political romantics reduce everything to “aesthetic contemplation.” The purpose of this is to trigger “elevating experiences.” For example, they poeticise conflicts. According to Oakes, they do this not to resolve conflicts. Instead, they see it as an occasion “for the evocation of an emotionally satisfying mood and an aesthetic opportunity.”

While politics is a pragmatic, amoral and Machiavellian ‘science’, political romantics tend to poeticise politics and use it as an occasion to exercise emotions

Oakes was echoing the thoughts of the controversial German political theorist Carl Schmitt. In his 1919 book Political Romanticism, Schmitt wrote that political romantics poeticise politics and therefore, to them, political issues become nothing more than an occasion to exercise emotions. 

All this is done to evoke a mood and a feeling. But outside these lie what politics really is: a pragmatic, amoral and Machiavellian ‘science’. This ‘science’ does not interest the Romantic, unless they poeticise it and give it an aesthetic/emotional meaning. It is either utopian or dystopian, to be longed for or lamented. All talk in this respect by the political romantic is basically for their own emotional satisfaction.

Whereas Schmitt categorically declared that politics and Romanticism were not compatible, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin applauded the political influence of the Romantics. In the book Roots of Romanticism, Berlin praised the Romantics for ending the hegemony of the Rationalists. He was enthused by the manner in which the Romantics embraced irrationalism.

However, the reasons furnished by Berlin behind the ascendency of Romantic ideas were not very complimentary. In fact, they were rather condescending. According to Berlin, Romanticism first emerged as a movement in 18th century Germany because the Germans were a “large collection of socially crushed and politically miserable human beings.” He wrote that the Germans failed to match the social, political and philosophical achievements of the French, and so they undermined their importance. According to Berlin, Romanticism was thus, a “grand form of sour grapes.” 

Romanticism was a rebellion against Rationalism and Modernism, and sometimes even against the modern sciences. As a movement, it peaked in Europe in the 19th century. It glorified emotion, intuition, ‘mysticism’, nature, and pre-modern pasts, which it imagined were pristine. It clashed with the Rationalist philosophies and with Modernity. However, on the one hand, the results of this clash were revolutionary; on the other hand, they produced a new form of conservatism. 

Therefore, whereas the 18th century French Revolution, which sought to destroy the monarchy, nobility and the clergy, was inspired by Romantic ideas, these ideas, ironically, also inspired the glorification of nationalism, traditionalism, the state and a past that was supposedly ‘better’ and more ‘organic’. 

The Romantic impulse of the French Revolution was about seeking a utopia (to break away from a corrupt present), while the same impulse left another batch of Romantics craving for the mitigation of revolutionary chaos through a return to established traditions, spirituality and authoritarianism. 

On the one hand, this contradictory nature of Romanticism birthed ‘utopian socialism’, which the founder of ‘scientific socialism’, Karl Marx, detested. On the other hand, the same Romanticism greatly influenced fascism in Italy and in Spain, and Nazism in Germany.

The last three were extreme forms of nationalism, in which the state was to be worshipped, a messianic leader was to be revered, and modernity attacked through glorified imaginings of a ‘pristine’ past. Conventional religion too was to be replaced by a ‘political religion’, or a sacralised ideology with its own rituals. 

Therefore, many forms of nationalism too are Romantic — especially those based on staunch racial, ethnic or religious ideologies. These may not always generate totalitarian states or revolutionary upheavals, but they do develop polities with Romantic dispositions. The Romantic impact in such nation-states is so strong that even people who fancy themselves as being critical thinkers can’t escape it, even though they might not be entirely conscious of it. 

Take Schmitt for example — an anti-Romantic, but one who ended up supporting Nazism, which was heavily inspired by the German Romantic Movement. Another, albeit lighter, example in this context includes many ‘rational’ commentators in Pakistan’s lawyer and activist communities, who have been exhibiting disappointment towards the current Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa. 

They had romanticised Isa’s battles with the controversial former CJP Umar Ata Bandial. They had turned Isa into a heroic figure that would eliminate the establishment’s role in politics. But since Romanticism is not interested in the large grey areas in which reality operates, Isa’s tenure has continued to be viewed through Romantic lenses, leaving many of his admirers ‘disappointed’.

This disappointment is an occasion for his admirers to weave laments, expressing their dismay and more so, exhibit their own ‘democratic’ and ‘anti-establishment’ credentials. Their positions on most political issues are inherently utopian and their laments dystopian. There are no grey areas in their ‘analyses’, in which reality actually exists. In fact, such areas are detested by them, because the image that they want to exhibit of themselves cannot exist in grey areas. 

Romantics on the religious right in Pakistan relish imagining or even shaping ‘saviours’. But those on the progressive or ‘liberal’ sides do so too. They didn’t imagine Isa as a judge who fought a long judicial battle with a CJP who wanted to oust him. They saw him as a judge who would ride in on a white horse to vanquish meddlesome generals. 

The disappointment in this respect is the outcome of a Romantic disposition. The disappointed will never be able to continue portraying themselves as gallant democrats and constitutionalists if they begin to view Justice Isa as a pragmatist or a realist. His performance is thus being ‘felt’ by them, not rationally analysed.

Published in Dawn, EOS, December 24th, 2023