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Moral Realism
Moral romanticism is the view of morality that overtook moral realism after the Great Depression and World War II. Eager for positivity and hope after decades of hardship, society adopted a line of positive thinking that urged people to trust their desires and think of themselves as inherently good. This eventually led to a full-blown meritocracy in which society downplayed the need for community, believing that each individual should follow their own moral code based on their personal feelings.
Moral Romanticism Quotes in The Road to Character
The The Road to Character quotes below are all either spoken by Moral Romanticism or refer to Moral Romanticism. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3: Self-Conquest
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Like the nation’s founders, [Eisenhower] built his politics on distrust of what people might do if they have unchecked power […] [He] felt in his bones that man is a problem to himself.
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Chapter 10: The Big Me
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The realists believed in cultivation, civilization, and artifice; the romanticists believed in nature, the individual, and sincerity.
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If you believe that the ultimate oracle is the True Self inside, then of course you become emotivist—you make moral judgements on the basis of feelings that burble up. Of course you become a relativist. One True Self has no basis to judge or argue with another True Self. Of course you become an individualist, since the ultimate arbiter is the authentic self within and not any community standard or external horizon of significance without.
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Moral Romanticism Term Timeline in The Road to Character
The timeline below shows where the term Moral Romanticism appears in The Road to Character. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 10: The Big Me
In the 18th century, moral romanticism emerged which emphasized human beings’ inner goodness. While the moral realists distrusted the self and...
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