British Romanticism and the Critique of Political Reason

Michael offers extraordinary insights into many other matters, including the philosophy of Shelley, Coleridge and Kant... Deserve[s] a place on the bookshelf on anyone interested in British politics, American history, the history of India, philosophy (both ancient and 18th/19th century), poetry, the development of ideas and much else. Sun News Miami This is a thoughtful, rigorous book written in a pleasingly clear manner. English Oxford Journals Michael's book effectively shows how, during the Enlightenment, the political was not a fixed point or concept. AmeriQuests This is a thoughtful, rigorous book written in a pleasing clear manner. English Not the least of the strengths of this work is the lucidity of its author's style: the clarity with which he presents and prosecutes his thesis, summarizes or elaborates particular intellectual positions and debates as he sets out their bearings on his discussion, adds considerably to the force of his insights. European Romantic Review

Timothy Michael is a Fellow of Lincoln College and an associate professor of English at the University of Oxford.

Acknowledgments Introduction The Discipline of Political Knowledge Context Cases of Romanticism Conceptual Orientations 1. Kant and the Revolutionary Settlement of Early Romanticism Revolutions, Copernican and French Prophetic History and Moral Terrorism Independence from Experience The Rhetoric of Hurly-Burly Innovation 2. Burke and the Critique of Political Metaphysics Hypotaxis Paradox 3. Wollstonecraft and the Vindication of Political Reason Ratiocinatio Stale Tropes and Cold Rodomontade Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful 4. The Government of the Tongue The Power of Mere Proposition Constructing a Form of Words Resisting "Incroachment" The Literature of Justice and Justification 5. Coleridge and the Principles of Political Knowledge Hume and the Highest Problem of Philosophy Structures of Mind and Government The Symptom of Empiricism 6. The State of Knowledge Rational Resistance The Limits of Experimental Philosophy Trying French Principles Poetry and Poetics of the Excursive and Unbound Mind 7. The Dwellers of the Dwelling Epistemic Hedonism Tranquil and Troubled Pleasure Building Social Freedom The Inner Citadel of the Spirit 8. P.B. Shelley and the Forms of Thought The Case for Skeptical Idealism Historical Epistemology The Atmosphere of Human Thought Afterword Notes Bibliography Index