ABSTRACT
The moral world of moderns is significantly different from that of previous civilizations. To talk of universal, natural, or human rights is to connect respect for human life and integrity with the notion of autonomy. Expressivism was the basis for a new and fuller individuation. This is the idea which grows in the late eighteenth century that each individual is different and original, and that this originality determines how he or she ought to live. This radical individuation was obviously facilitated by expressivism and the notion of nature as a source. Among the great aspirations which come down to us from the Romantic era are those towards reunification: bringing us back in contact with nature, healing the divisions within between reason and sensibility, overcoming the divisions between people, and creating community. This concept of an inexhaustible inner domain is the correlative of the power of expressive self-articulation.
