ABSTRACT
The Romantic period, spanning the late 18th to the mid-19th century, was a reaction against the Enlightenment's strict rationalism, its stark empiricism, and its unflinching trust in progress. Instead, Romantics emphasised emotion, imagination, and individual experience as the primary sources of knowledge, often infusing these elements into their philosophical treatises (Abrams, 1992). The changing socio-political backdrop of the era, from the American Revolution to the Napoleonic Wars, mirrored the inner turbulence of the human psyche, as explored by its philosophers. This chapter offers a fresh perspective on how these tumultuous intellectual currents influenced the evolving conceptions of leadership.
