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Magnificent Rebels
- The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's Summary
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award ©
From the Costa Prize-winning author of The Invention of Nature, Magnificent Rebels is a riveting, eye-opening biography of the first Romantics: a revolutionary group of friends based in the small German town of Jena whose modern ideas transformed society and the way we lead our lives today.
In the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends changed the world. Disappointed by the French Revolution's rapid collapse into tyranny, what they wanted was nothing less than a revolution of the mind. The rulers of Europe had ordered their peoples how to think and act for too long. Based in the small German town of Jena, through poetry, drama, philosophy and science, they transformed the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. They were the first Romantics.
Their way of understanding the world still frames our lives and being. We're still empowered by their daring leap into the self. We still think with their minds, see with their imagination and feel with their emotions. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfilment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our role as a member of our community and our responsibilities towards future generations who will inhabit this planet. This extraordinary group of friends changed our world. It is impossible to imagine our lives, thoughts and understanding without the foundation of their ground-breaking ideas.
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- Hans-Joachim Stark
- 03-02-2023
Brilliant
Beautiful book and wish German writers would have honoured our great German writers so lovingly.
But they lack brilliance nowadays it seems .
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- Janet Walk
- 05-12-2022
Thesis
This book needs a good edit. There were several times where I wondered "have I already heard this chapter?". But no it is because the story describes the daily lives of a group of philosophers who's ideas may well have been radical - sadly the chores, pondering, seasonal descriptions and daily lives not so much. The book failed to capture the dramatic tension/social upheavel that was sweeping Europe in the aftermath of the Bourgeois Revolution in France in 1789. All characters remained one dimensional, and while they may well have been passionate about their ideas, we weren't let into their inner-world as readers. It reminded me of high school history teachers who were not interested in history so their lessons remained, superficial, dry, exceedingly dull and irrelevant. History and philosophy are anything but.
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