Fragmentation and Beyond: Genesis of the Modern ‘alienation’ of the Self and Romanticism’s Response with Indic Overtones

Abstract

Fragmentation, in the contemporary sense of the term, points to the alienation of the self and the degradation of the environment, occurring simultaneously. The fragmentation of the self, experienced as alienation, manifests at different levels, including the psycho-spiritual domain. Tracing a history of fragmentation in the modern world locates its origins in Enlightenment Europe, where its many symptoms coalesce with the birth of ‘modernity’, when a theocentric worldview was replaced by an anthropocentric one. This study discusses the origins and impact of modernity and the manifestation of its symptoms globally, occurring most markedly in the isolation of individuals due to cultural and intellectual reasons – partly due to capitalism and ideologically set into motion by the concept of ‘freedom’ and the transformation of Nature into a ‘natural resource’. Colonisation, an aspect of modernity, caused the spread of these modernist trends globally. However, an intellectual and artistic response to this is seen in the rise of Romanticism in Europe. Arising as a “modern response to modernity”, Romantic poets strove to overturn Enlightenment ideas; theirs was a project of a creative ‘recovery’ of the integrity of the self from the rational essentialim of the Enlightenment. Their own phenomenological experiences of transcendence and unity as well as their exposure to foreign philosophies from the East – Indic, Chinese, Middle East et al led to a cultural and artistic rebellion. Their aim also comes through in their ‘rescue’ of the environment from rapacious materialism, initiated by the sciences and furthered by technological progress. Romanticism anticipated the crises of the Anthropocene and birthed a new narrative akin to an ‘ecological consciousness’, in which the influence of Indic philosophy cannot be denied.