Romantism, Amazement, Imagination—A trias religiosa

Abstract

To wonder is a gift of the romanticist in particular. Wonder seeks explanation. If reason doesn’t provide that, imagination provides a way out. One imagines a transcendental world of which the God-idea may become the central point and the explanatory model of that that invoked wonder. The God-idea implies wonder, wonder that live exists, that things exist at all. Wonder promotes religiosity—i.c., the need to provide life with a vertical dimension—and religiosity facilitates, in its turn, wonder. Thus the circle is closed: romanticism, wonder, imagination, religiosity, wonder. A circle providing life with an important bonus, i.e., sense, meaning with a supernatural signature. This augments the chance that hope will be preserved, even as dark clouds begin to hover above one’s life.