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The Master and His Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

Chapter 11: Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution

Romanticism is difficult to define. It is concerned with a whole disposition towards the world, with the ‘how’, rather than the ‘what’. The transition from The Enlightenment to Romanticism was almost invisible and seamless; an evolution rather than a revolution. Romanticism is inclusive, so Enlightenment values were not negated, but when attention was turned to elements beyond the left hemisphere’s closed system, its weaknesses were exposed. There was a dawning awareness that differences are as important as generalities. The idea of individual difference, and that a thing and its opposite may both be true, is central to Romanticism. Thus some elements of a certain kind of idealism can be found in both The Enlightenment and Romanticism.

In this chapter, McGilchrist develops the view that Romanticism is a manifestation of right hemisphere dominance, and suggests that the trigger points for moving away from the left hemisphere dominance of The Enlightenment era were a growing awareness that:

• a thing and its opposite can both be true;
• reason itself proclaimed the fact that reason was insufficient;
• every logical system leads to conclusions that cannot be accommodated within it; and
• theory is not compatible with experience.

The post Enlightenment world was reinvigorated by its recursion to the Renaissance, particularly by the rediscovery of Shakespeare. In Shakespeare, tragedy is in fact the result of the coming together of opposites.

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Link to: Chapter 11 Commentary

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