Buddhist Romanticism

coherence of a character’s motivations as might be presented in a novel:
You can understand where the character is coming from, and what he or
she is trying to achieve by a particular action, even if the character can’t cite
logical first principles to justify that action. On the other hand, the
coherence of these doctrines of freedom resembles the coherence in the
author’s attitude when putting energy into the act of artistic creation: As
Schlegel said, a poet needs to believe in the power of the human spirit to
impress its laws on all things. Not to believe in that power would, for an
author, be debilitating.
These doctrines on the meaning of freedom, whatever their validity as
guidelines for aspiring artists, were totally inadequate as guidelines for
implementing a social program. That’s because, despite their differing
emphases, they shared one point in common: They teach freedom without
accountability. There is no discussion of the consequences of one’s actions,
or of how to resolve conflicts arising when one person’s exercise of his or
her freedom gets in the way of someone else’s. A social philosophy that
offers no means by which individuals would be held accountable for their
actions and no means for adjudicating conflicts is no social philosophy at
all. It’s a recipe for chaos.
The Romantics, of course, insisted that if all people were to exercise their
freedom from a direct intuition of the infinite organic unity of the cosmos,
there would be no abuse of freedom and no conflicts. A sense of fellowfeeling
would inspire everyone to treat one another with tenderness and
compassion. But the disturbing feature of their views on freedom is not
simply that issues of responsibility are not mentioned. The whole idea of
responsibility and accountability becomes impossible.
It might be argued that Novalis, Schlegel, and Hölderlin—with their
ironic, magical, novelistic approach to freedom and truth—were simply
embodying Schiller’s doctrine of the play drive: People find freedom and
learn about morality through play. To take an ironic stance toward the
world, or to look for the magical in the commonplace, is to exercise one’s
freedom to play. From play, comes morality. But this Romantic version of
Schiller’s idea, when regarded from Schiller’s overall viewpoint, is missing
an important step. The play drive, in his eyes, had to be trained to lead to a
sense of moral responsibility: the realization that, for play to be a long-term
activity, one had to act responsibly, in line with rules of reason, and that
one’s feelings had to be trained to love those rules. Otherwise, the game of
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