 While the German, British and French romantics are all considered, the central protagonists in the following are the German romantics. Two reasons explain this focus: first, because it has paved the way for the other romanticisms, German romanticism has a pride of place among the different national romanticisms (cf. Lovejoy 1960 and Berlin 1999). Second, the aesthetic outlook that was developed in Germany roughly between 1796 and 1801–02—the period that corresponds to the heyday of what is known as “Early Romanticism”  [Frühromantik][1]—offers  the most philosophical expression of romanticism since it is grounded primarily in the epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and political concerns that the German romantics discerned in the aftermath of Kant’s  philosophy.[2]  The entry elaborates on these concerns and explains how they shed light on the romantic understanding of beauty and art as fundamental in human life.