
Clio the Romantic Muse: Historicizing the Faculties in Germany
Theodore Ziolkowski
"It is not sufficiently appreciated, I believe, how profoundly Clio, the muse of history, permeated every aspect of thought during the Romantic era: philosophy, theology, law, natural science, medicine, and all other fields of intellectual endeavor.... Thoughtful students of the period well understand that 'Romanticism' is not merely a literary or aesthetic movement but, rather, a general climate of opinion."—from the IntroductionIn a book certain to be of interest to readers in many disciplines, the distinguished scholar Theodore Ziolkowski shows how a strong impulse toward historical concerns was formalized in the four German academic faculties: philosophy, theology, law, and medicine/biology. In Clio the Romantic Muse, he focuses on representative figures in whose early work the sense of history was first manifested: G. W. F. Hegel, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Friedrich Karl von Savigny, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Through biographical treatments of these and other leading German scholars, Ziolkowski traces how the disciplines became historicized in the period 1790–1810. He goes on to suggest how powerfully the Romantic thinkers influenced their disciples in the twentieth century.
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About Theodore Ziolkowski
Reviews for Clio the Romantic Muse: Historicizing the Faculties in Germany
David L. Simmons
The Journal of Religion
In his conclusion, Ziolkowski shows how the Romantics, prompted by the crisis of their age, looked at the world in a new way and used a historical approach to counter its dangers. Considering their response could help us to cope with our present-day global problems. Regrettably, no brief summary can do justice to this valuable and learned book.
Hans Reiss
Modern Language Review
Ziolkowski's book is a highly readable account of how a 'new sense of history' restructured different academic disciplines in nineteenth-century Germany.
Catherine Grimm
German Quarterly