When romanticism is understood broadly, as referring to a major development in European thought and culture since the turn of the nineteenth century that shows itself distinctly in the spheres of art, historical writing, and political thought, the concept has only a limited role to play in the history of philosophy: Certain very general notions—an emphasis on agency, expression, the cognitive dimension of affect, and the potential of human beings to become genuine wholes—can be described as manifestations of romanticism in philosophy, but the term does not serve to pick out any more determinate set of philosophical commitments.

Here, as with modernism, is a category that is indispensable for general intellectual history, but lacks equivalent value in the history of philosophy. Where the concept does achieve significant purpose in the history of philosophy is in its much narrower application to the group of thinkers...