Social minds in Romanticism

Abstract

This essay examines how recoveries of Romantic sociability have led to a renewed focus on the social mind, a subject of intense interest in Romantic‐era politics and science. The essay first traces the shift from Romantic scholarship's recovery of “the social” to more recent approaches to social networks. The second section examines how studies of sensibility and affect have enabled new work on Romantic empiricism. The final section points to some recent work that reframes Romantic empiricism, and the very question of the social encounter, in ways that suggest future directions for philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic approaches to the social mind.