The Influence of Critical Consciousness in the Aesthetics of he Romantic Era

Critical Consciousness is the intellectual point of departure of post-Kantian idealism in all its antagonistic ramifications. It has decisive influence upon the crystallization of the romantic theme -in aspects related to aesthetics, to the philosophy of Nature and to the theory of cognition as well. The Kantian “aesthetic idean”, that well-known representation of the imagination, inaccessible to determining thought, expressed but never completely exhausted by a work of art, is one of the key concepts of philosophical and literary romanticism. According to this conception of romanticism, art is the expression of the inexpressible, the intuitive cognition of what cannot be understood by pure reason. There is no language at all that might render this transcendental and ideal reality which we experience in the intuition of art. The poetic instance is the manifestation of the spirit, the faculty for aesthetic ideas, free and independent of the determination of Nature, but reconciled with her in artistic creation. The identity of subject and object is given in the works of art the very instant beauty is reveaIed in the vast infinity of the human spirit