The Age of Romanticism, with beginnings in the 18th century, was partly a reaction to the Enlightenment and Science. Its focus was on the individual and emotion. Its progenitor, Jean Jacques Rousseau, was a man of dubious character with an over-sized influence. In art and literature Romanticism engendered much to be admired, but not in politics. Its influence can be traced to the French Revolution, extreme nationalism in general, and Nazism in particular. I think we are seeing a recurrence. Bertrand Russell makes this comment:
“Cultivated people in eighteenth-century France greatly admired what they called la sensibilité, which meant a proneness to emotion, and more particularly to the emotion of sympathy. To be thoroughly satisfactory, the emotion must be direct and violent and quite uninformed by thought. The man of sensibility would be moved to tears by the sight of a single destitute peasant family, but would be cold to well-thought-out schemes for ameliorating the lot of peasants as a class.”
Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (p. 615). Touchstone. Kindle Edition.
Today there is a rush to find sympathy for an ever-increasing list of destitute classes, but little in the way of rational, effective solutions. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the plight of Black Americans, LGBTQ, illegal aliens, and the many who will surely suffer from Climate Change. The proffered solutions are ludicrous: defund the police, gender-questioning education for youngsters, wholesale language modification, open borders, castigation of whiteness, Green New Deal, and more. Rousseauian Maximilien Robespierre who began as a defender of the downtrodden, came to dominate the Committe for Public Safety during the Reign of Terror. How far will the current parallels extend?