As we know though the roots of romanticism are to be found in early German idealism romanticism, which challenged the idea that philosophy and the arts must be kept separate. However, as the literary component of Romanticism has been studied and celebrated in recent years, its philosophical aspect has receded from view.This holds that we break down the barriers between art and life, so that the world itself becomes "romanticized." What we have inherited is the construction of an opposition between late Enlightenment and Romantic aesthetics that turns its back on any possibility of a radical potential in Romanticism.

Romanticism is not a purely European phenomenon: the development of romanticism can be traced through to North American philosophy in the era of Emerson and Dewey, and up to the current work of Stanley Cavell and Richard Rorty. Philosophical romanticism offers an alternative to both the reductionist tendencies of the naturalism in 'analytic' philosophy, and deconstruction and other forms of scepticism found in 'continental' philosophy. It is commonly understood to place an emphasis on art and imagination as a critical reaction to the mechanical view of some Enlightenment philosophers.

Philosophical romanticism is a critical response to the Enlightenment interpretation of modernity that involves an endeavor by philosophy to make sense of its own historical conditions and forms of expressing itself. The traces of philosophical romanticism can be found in the opposition to both the reductionist tendencies of the naturalism in 'analytic' philosophy, and deconstruction and other forms of scepticism found in 'continental' philosophy. It is often understood as representing a shift from the objective viewpoint of science ( the world understood from no particular viewpoint) to seeing it from a particular or subjective viewpoint; or through a number of categories.

We have alsos inherited the vierw that romanticism empower poetry to save philosophy from its inability to grasp conceptually its own ideals. Art, in playing this ideological role of disguising philosophy's "inability to grasp conceptually its own ideals", effaces social and political contradictions that should be made available for rigorous scientific critique. Thus we have Terry Eagleton's equation of the aesthetic with the ideological.