John H. Zammito
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226520797
- eISBN:
- 9780226520827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226520827.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
To establish life science on a systematic basis required an integrating principle for the specific conception of organic form and its integration further into a general system of nature. The key ...
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To establish life science on a systematic basis required an integrating principle for the specific conception of organic form and its integration further into a general system of nature. The key ideas found their fullest articulation respectively in Goethe’s conception of developmental morphology as the principle of a science of life forms and in Schelling’s conception of Naturphilosophie, that is, nature as a whole conceived as a developmental, living organism. Both Goethe and Schelling self-consciously embarked on the “daring adventure of reason” against which Kant had warned. This chapter explores their respective theoretical constructions in terms of the intellectual development of their progenitors. Goethe conceived his ideas of developmental morphology in the mid-1790s. His encounter and collaboration with Schelling in 1798 brought about a dramatic fusion of their two trajectories in a conception of Polarität [polarity] and Steigerung [intensification] constituting the self-organization of nature. That energized the synthesis of life science under the new rubric of “biology” in the first years of the nineteenth century.Less
To establish life science on a systematic basis required an integrating principle for the specific conception of organic form and its integration further into a general system of nature. The key ideas found their fullest articulation respectively in Goethe’s conception of developmental morphology as the principle of a science of life forms and in Schelling’s conception of Naturphilosophie, that is, nature as a whole conceived as a developmental, living organism. Both Goethe and Schelling self-consciously embarked on the “daring adventure of reason” against which Kant had warned. This chapter explores their respective theoretical constructions in terms of the intellectual development of their progenitors. Goethe conceived his ideas of developmental morphology in the mid-1790s. His encounter and collaboration with Schelling in 1798 brought about a dramatic fusion of their two trajectories in a conception of Polarität [polarity] and Steigerung [intensification] constituting the self-organization of nature. That energized the synthesis of life science under the new rubric of “biology” in the first years of the nineteenth century.
HELEN FRONIUS
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199210923
- eISBN:
- 9780191705793
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199210923.003.02
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines the intersection of gender discourses and concepts of authorship in Germany. It asks three questions. First, how were definitions of femininity used in the criticism of women ...
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This chapter examines the intersection of gender discourses and concepts of authorship in Germany. It asks three questions. First, how were definitions of femininity used in the criticism of women authors? Second, to what extent was the discourse internally consistent? Third, to what extent was it challenged? The intellectual context in which women wrote influenced both their self-image, and their professional practices. Male writers and reviewers have been regarded by feminist scholarship as exerting a kind of ‘gender censorship’ through the construction of models of authorship, excluding women a priori. However, these restrictions were undermined by a continuing ambiguity in the debate about women writers, and by the increasing numbers of women who entered the literary market despite these prohibitions — not infrequently with the help of precisely those men keen to keep them out. The chapter also looks at the aesthetic objections of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller to female authorship.Less
This chapter examines the intersection of gender discourses and concepts of authorship in Germany. It asks three questions. First, how were definitions of femininity used in the criticism of women authors? Second, to what extent was the discourse internally consistent? Third, to what extent was it challenged? The intellectual context in which women wrote influenced both their self-image, and their professional practices. Male writers and reviewers have been regarded by feminist scholarship as exerting a kind of ‘gender censorship’ through the construction of models of authorship, excluding women a priori. However, these restrictions were undermined by a continuing ambiguity in the debate about women writers, and by the increasing numbers of women who entered the literary market despite these prohibitions — not infrequently with the help of precisely those men keen to keep them out. The chapter also looks at the aesthetic objections of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller to female authorship.
Lincoln Taiz and Lee Taiz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190490263
- eISBN:
- 9780190868673
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190490263.003.0016
- Subject:
- Biology, Ecology, Plant Sciences and Forestry
The resurgence of asexualism in Germany in the nineteenth century coincided with the Naturphilosophie movement associated with Romanticism which arose in reaction to mechanical models of the ...
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The resurgence of asexualism in Germany in the nineteenth century coincided with the Naturphilosophie movement associated with Romanticism which arose in reaction to mechanical models of the universe, among them Baron d’Holbach’s. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a Kant disciple, claimed that the “absolute ego” creates it’s own reality, which we mistake for the “real world”. Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, the “philosopher king” of the Romantics, attempted a balance between Fichte’s subjective idealism and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (relative) objectivism. In general, nature philosophers granted equal weight to reason and to the imagination, and adopted a pantheistic theology, influenced by Baruch Spinoza. Franz Joseph Schelver believed the production of seeds was a vegetative process. August Henschell dismissed Koelreuter’s hybrids as artifacts resulting from experimental damage. He thought the release of pollen freed the spiritual essence of the plant from base matter. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel also challenged the sexual theory of plants.Less
The resurgence of asexualism in Germany in the nineteenth century coincided with the Naturphilosophie movement associated with Romanticism which arose in reaction to mechanical models of the universe, among them Baron d’Holbach’s. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a Kant disciple, claimed that the “absolute ego” creates it’s own reality, which we mistake for the “real world”. Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, the “philosopher king” of the Romantics, attempted a balance between Fichte’s subjective idealism and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (relative) objectivism. In general, nature philosophers granted equal weight to reason and to the imagination, and adopted a pantheistic theology, influenced by Baruch Spinoza. Franz Joseph Schelver believed the production of seeds was a vegetative process. August Henschell dismissed Koelreuter’s hybrids as artifacts resulting from experimental damage. He thought the release of pollen freed the spiritual essence of the plant from base matter. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel also challenged the sexual theory of plants.
Helen Fronius
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199210923
- eISBN:
- 9780191705793
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199210923.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature, European Literature
German literature during the era of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1770-1820) was dominated by men. Women were discouraged from reading, and scorned as writers; Friedrich Schiller saw female writers as ...
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German literature during the era of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1770-1820) was dominated by men. Women were discouraged from reading, and scorned as writers; Friedrich Schiller saw female writers as typical ‘dilettantes’. But the attempt to exclude did not always succeed, and the growing literary market rewarded some women's determination. This interdisciplinary study takes as its starting point the presence (rather than absence) of women writers in German cultural life, combining archival research, literary analysis, and statistical evidence to give a sociological-historical overview of the conditions of women's literary production. Highlighting many authors who have fallen into obscurity, and examining women as authors, correspondents, and readers, this study tells the story of women who managed to write and publish at a time when their efforts were not welcomed in Germany. Although 18th-century gender ideology is an important pre-condition for women's literary production, it does not necessarily determine the praxis of their actual experiences, as this study makes clear. Using a range of examples from a variety of sources, the real story of women who read, wrote, and published in the shadow of Goethe emerges.Less
German literature during the era of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1770-1820) was dominated by men. Women were discouraged from reading, and scorned as writers; Friedrich Schiller saw female writers as typical ‘dilettantes’. But the attempt to exclude did not always succeed, and the growing literary market rewarded some women's determination. This interdisciplinary study takes as its starting point the presence (rather than absence) of women writers in German cultural life, combining archival research, literary analysis, and statistical evidence to give a sociological-historical overview of the conditions of women's literary production. Highlighting many authors who have fallen into obscurity, and examining women as authors, correspondents, and readers, this study tells the story of women who managed to write and publish at a time when their efforts were not welcomed in Germany. Although 18th-century gender ideology is an important pre-condition for women's literary production, it does not necessarily determine the praxis of their actual experiences, as this study makes clear. Using a range of examples from a variety of sources, the real story of women who read, wrote, and published in the shadow of Goethe emerges.
Dorothea von Mücke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231172462
- eISBN:
- 9780231539333
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172462.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Rethinking the relationship between eighteenth-century pietistic traditions and Enlightenment thought and practice, this book unravels the complex and often neglected religious origins of modern ...
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Rethinking the relationship between eighteenth-century pietistic traditions and Enlightenment thought and practice, this book unravels the complex and often neglected religious origins of modern secular discourse. Mapping surprising routes of exchange between the religious and aesthetic writings of the period and recentering concerns of authorship and audience, it revitalizes scholarship on the Enlightenment. It engages with three critical categories: aesthetics, authorship, and the public sphere, tracing the relationship between religious and aesthetic modes of reflective contemplation, autobiography and the hermeneutics of the self, and the discursive creation of the public sphere. Focusing largely on German intellectual life, the book also extends to France through Jean-Jacques Rousseau and to England through Shaftesbury. Rereading canonical works and lesser-known texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Johann Gottfried von Herder, the book challenges common narratives recounting the rise of empiricist philosophy, the idea of the “sensible” individual, and the notion of the modern author as celebrity, bringing new perspective to the Enlightenment concepts of instinct, drive, genius, and the public sphere.Less
Rethinking the relationship between eighteenth-century pietistic traditions and Enlightenment thought and practice, this book unravels the complex and often neglected religious origins of modern secular discourse. Mapping surprising routes of exchange between the religious and aesthetic writings of the period and recentering concerns of authorship and audience, it revitalizes scholarship on the Enlightenment. It engages with three critical categories: aesthetics, authorship, and the public sphere, tracing the relationship between religious and aesthetic modes of reflective contemplation, autobiography and the hermeneutics of the self, and the discursive creation of the public sphere. Focusing largely on German intellectual life, the book also extends to France through Jean-Jacques Rousseau and to England through Shaftesbury. Rereading canonical works and lesser-known texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Johann Gottfried von Herder, the book challenges common narratives recounting the rise of empiricist philosophy, the idea of the “sensible” individual, and the notion of the modern author as celebrity, bringing new perspective to the Enlightenment concepts of instinct, drive, genius, and the public sphere.
Charles Capper
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195092677
- eISBN:
- 9780199854264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195092677.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter examines the life and career of Margaret Fuller during the period from 1833 to 1835. When Fuller returned home her family relocated to Groton, which she resented because of the almost ...
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This chapter examines the life and career of Margaret Fuller during the period from 1833 to 1835. When Fuller returned home her family relocated to Groton, which she resented because of the almost isolated location of the house and because she had to work in the farm. However, she later accepted her situation and made the farmhouse her place of study and reflection. Her favorite author was Romantic Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who had a significant influence on her later career.Less
This chapter examines the life and career of Margaret Fuller during the period from 1833 to 1835. When Fuller returned home her family relocated to Groton, which she resented because of the almost isolated location of the house and because she had to work in the farm. However, she later accepted her situation and made the farmhouse her place of study and reflection. Her favorite author was Romantic Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who had a significant influence on her later career.
R. Larry Todd
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195180800
- eISBN:
- 9780199852635
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195180800.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
The concept of the demonic influence had figured prominently in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's works, especially in the closing sections of his autobiographical Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and ...
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The concept of the demonic influence had figured prominently in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's works, especially in the closing sections of his autobiographical Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth), where the poet wrestled with an irresistible, demonic Wesen (presence), inherently neither good nor evil, that had profound impact on human behavior. Goethe found the demonic in world events—the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the reigns of Frederick II and Napoleon Bonaparte, and the sweeping revolutionary forces that had fundamentally transfigured Europe during his long life. For Fanny Hensel, the demonic affected her private, musical world; like some poeticus furor, it evidently came over her when, following her brother's advice, she composed piano instead of choral music. To her mind, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was the source of this power, and the sibling bond could not be severed.Less
The concept of the demonic influence had figured prominently in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's works, especially in the closing sections of his autobiographical Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth), where the poet wrestled with an irresistible, demonic Wesen (presence), inherently neither good nor evil, that had profound impact on human behavior. Goethe found the demonic in world events—the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the reigns of Frederick II and Napoleon Bonaparte, and the sweeping revolutionary forces that had fundamentally transfigured Europe during his long life. For Fanny Hensel, the demonic affected her private, musical world; like some poeticus furor, it evidently came over her when, following her brother's advice, she composed piano instead of choral music. To her mind, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was the source of this power, and the sibling bond could not be severed.
John L. Flood
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263952
- eISBN:
- 9780191734083
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263952.003.0018
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Medieval History
This chapter examines British scholarship with respect to German studies during the twentieth century. It explains that until 1925 the only work of modern German literature studied for the Modern and ...
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This chapter examines British scholarship with respect to German studies during the twentieth century. It explains that until 1925 the only work of modern German literature studied for the Modern and Medieval Languages Tripos at Cambridge was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. It also highlights the danger that medieval German studies may face an increasingly bleak future in British universities, where not only the larger subject of German studies itself has changed but consumerist philosophies and appeals to modernity have undermined traditional values.Less
This chapter examines British scholarship with respect to German studies during the twentieth century. It explains that until 1925 the only work of modern German literature studied for the Modern and Medieval Languages Tripos at Cambridge was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. It also highlights the danger that medieval German studies may face an increasingly bleak future in British universities, where not only the larger subject of German studies itself has changed but consumerist philosophies and appeals to modernity have undermined traditional values.
Dorothea E. von Mücke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231172462
- eISBN:
- 9780231539333
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172462.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter examines Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's presentation of “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul” in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and contrasts it with his Poetry and Truth. The primary focus ...
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This chapter examines Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's presentation of “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul” in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and contrasts it with his Poetry and Truth. The primary focus is on Goethe's autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit and how it provides a sustained reflection on what it takes to become a creative artist both from a historical perspective and in terms of an individual's talents. For authorship in Dichtung und Wahrheit is considered not primarily as the making public of one's own text or composition, but rather as involving an intervention in an entire cultural domain. More specifically, the chapter explores how Goethe arrives at a concept of his own artistic talent by focusing on various aspects of his relationship to religion, both natural religion and revealed or positive religion, to the figure of the prophet, as one eminent model of a radical cultural innovator. Finally, it considers Goethe's reflections on the role of religion in articulating both his position on the function of art he envisages as appropriate for his historical era and the future to come.Less
This chapter examines Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's presentation of “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul” in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and contrasts it with his Poetry and Truth. The primary focus is on Goethe's autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit and how it provides a sustained reflection on what it takes to become a creative artist both from a historical perspective and in terms of an individual's talents. For authorship in Dichtung und Wahrheit is considered not primarily as the making public of one's own text or composition, but rather as involving an intervention in an entire cultural domain. More specifically, the chapter explores how Goethe arrives at a concept of his own artistic talent by focusing on various aspects of his relationship to religion, both natural religion and revealed or positive religion, to the figure of the prophet, as one eminent model of a radical cultural innovator. Finally, it considers Goethe's reflections on the role of religion in articulating both his position on the function of art he envisages as appropriate for his historical era and the future to come.
R. Larry Todd
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195180800
- eISBN:
- 9780199852635
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195180800.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
By composing music for the first scene (H-U 389), Fanny effectively brought Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's verses out of the private library into the realm of “public” music making. To that end, she ...
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By composing music for the first scene (H-U 389), Fanny effectively brought Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's verses out of the private library into the realm of “public” music making. To that end, she sent a copy to Franz Hauser and asked him to consider performing her setting with his Singverein in Vienna, so that she might join his “league”. Fanny Hensel confessed that she had envisioned the work with orchestral accompaniment but, limited by her own “dilettantism”, had not orchestrated the piano part: “Actually the piece should be set with orchestra; it was so conceived, but there again you have the joys of dilettantism: first of all, I write very poorly for orchestra, and second, even if it were a masterpiece, I would always have to perform it from the piano-vocal version, and so I spared myself the effort, and the score belongs to many of my deeds that will remain unfinished”.Less
By composing music for the first scene (H-U 389), Fanny effectively brought Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's verses out of the private library into the realm of “public” music making. To that end, she sent a copy to Franz Hauser and asked him to consider performing her setting with his Singverein in Vienna, so that she might join his “league”. Fanny Hensel confessed that she had envisioned the work with orchestral accompaniment but, limited by her own “dilettantism”, had not orchestrated the piano part: “Actually the piece should be set with orchestra; it was so conceived, but there again you have the joys of dilettantism: first of all, I write very poorly for orchestra, and second, even if it were a masterpiece, I would always have to perform it from the piano-vocal version, and so I spared myself the effort, and the score belongs to many of my deeds that will remain unfinished”.
Matt Erlin
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801453045
- eISBN:
- 9780801470431
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801453045.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter offers a reading of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1809 novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities) to elucidate its depiction of the Tausch-Rausch (frenzy of exchange) within the ...
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This chapter offers a reading of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1809 novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities) to elucidate its depiction of the Tausch-Rausch (frenzy of exchange) within the context of late eighteenth-century political economy. It also examines luxury and human needs in the novel in order to grasp the profundity of Goethe's engagement with the expansion of consumer culture during the period. The chapter recasts Die Wahlverwandtschaften's articulation of the disintegrative forces of modernity as a meditation on the emancipation of the ornamental and its consequences for the integrity of self and society. In terms of both its highly nuanced representation of consumer culture and its narrative structure, the chapter argues that the novel has rather surprising implications for thinking about how one might reembed the decorative within the essential, and the role that literature can play in this undertaking.Less
This chapter offers a reading of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1809 novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities) to elucidate its depiction of the Tausch-Rausch (frenzy of exchange) within the context of late eighteenth-century political economy. It also examines luxury and human needs in the novel in order to grasp the profundity of Goethe's engagement with the expansion of consumer culture during the period. The chapter recasts Die Wahlverwandtschaften's articulation of the disintegrative forces of modernity as a meditation on the emancipation of the ornamental and its consequences for the integrity of self and society. In terms of both its highly nuanced representation of consumer culture and its narrative structure, the chapter argues that the novel has rather surprising implications for thinking about how one might reembed the decorative within the essential, and the role that literature can play in this undertaking.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452369
- eISBN:
- 9780801469282
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452369.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines Theodor Adorno's arguments regarding the role of the concept of classicism in German literary history by focusing on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It considers Adorno's essay “On ...
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This chapter examines Theodor Adorno's arguments regarding the role of the concept of classicism in German literary history by focusing on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It considers Adorno's essay “On the Classicism of Goethe's Iphigenia,” delivered as a public lecture at the Free University in Berlin in 1967, in which he articulated his position in the complex postwar discussion about the function and value of the German literary tradition. It argues that Adorno's essay on Goethe's play Iphigenia in Tauris is anything but a polemic. It also explains how Adorno opens up a dimension of meaning that calls into question the notion of cultural superiority commonly associated with the concept of German classicism without dismissing it as pure ideology. Finally, the chapter discusses Adorno's critical assessment of the concept of realism through his two short essays on Honoré de Balzac, in which he explores the link between representation and social reality.Less
This chapter examines Theodor Adorno's arguments regarding the role of the concept of classicism in German literary history by focusing on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It considers Adorno's essay “On the Classicism of Goethe's Iphigenia,” delivered as a public lecture at the Free University in Berlin in 1967, in which he articulated his position in the complex postwar discussion about the function and value of the German literary tradition. It argues that Adorno's essay on Goethe's play Iphigenia in Tauris is anything but a polemic. It also explains how Adorno opens up a dimension of meaning that calls into question the notion of cultural superiority commonly associated with the concept of German classicism without dismissing it as pure ideology. Finally, the chapter discusses Adorno's critical assessment of the concept of realism through his two short essays on Honoré de Balzac, in which he explores the link between representation and social reality.
T.J. Reed
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226205106
- eISBN:
- 9780226205243
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226205243.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Religion was a major restriction of freedom of thought, hence a prime object of Enlightenment criticism. Speaking out still carried risks—to career, status, even one—s life. Gradually the pressure ...
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Religion was a major restriction of freedom of thought, hence a prime object of Enlightenment criticism. Speaking out still carried risks—to career, status, even one—s life. Gradually the pressure eased as writers and thinkers gained a sense of solidarity. Goethe, Kant, Lichtenberg, Lessing (only he concerned to rescue what Christian substance he could) moved independently of one another in a common direction: away from dogmatic belief and the intolerance it entailed and towards a secular ethics which reversed an ancient order. It became clear that true morality was not something merely prescribed by a god, and that the idea of god itself grew out of human moral aspiration.Less
Religion was a major restriction of freedom of thought, hence a prime object of Enlightenment criticism. Speaking out still carried risks—to career, status, even one—s life. Gradually the pressure eased as writers and thinkers gained a sense of solidarity. Goethe, Kant, Lichtenberg, Lessing (only he concerned to rescue what Christian substance he could) moved independently of one another in a common direction: away from dogmatic belief and the intolerance it entailed and towards a secular ethics which reversed an ancient order. It became clear that true morality was not something merely prescribed by a god, and that the idea of god itself grew out of human moral aspiration.
Amanda Jo Goldstein
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226458441
- eISBN:
- 9780226458588
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226458588.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter and the next focus on Goethe’s periodicals On Morphology for their paradigmatically neo-Lucretian treatment of biological life and its poetic documentation. In the morphology project, ...
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This chapter and the next focus on Goethe’s periodicals On Morphology for their paradigmatically neo-Lucretian treatment of biological life and its poetic documentation. In the morphology project, living beings are composite, equivocally generated forms whose vitality is coextensive with their transience; each “seeming individual”—not least the morphologist—is a fractious and plural “Being-Complex” whose incessant metamorphoses the science attempts to match with every available generic and figurative resource. This chapter argues that Goethe’s late work on metamorphosis shifts biology’s question from the problem of embryogenesis that drove its emergence as a science, toward neglected, late-life processes of senescence and decomposition. What might life look like, Goethe’s asks, from the perspective of the non-reproductive, but communicative, effluvia that mediate between beings in their transience? What arts of discomposure would be adequate to this view? Focusing on an experiment in which a mushroom draws its own image in spores, this chapter argues for the Romantic period credibility of nonhuman and non-verbal acts of semiosis and representation: “natural simulacra” that Goethe discovers in the botany of decay.Less
This chapter and the next focus on Goethe’s periodicals On Morphology for their paradigmatically neo-Lucretian treatment of biological life and its poetic documentation. In the morphology project, living beings are composite, equivocally generated forms whose vitality is coextensive with their transience; each “seeming individual”—not least the morphologist—is a fractious and plural “Being-Complex” whose incessant metamorphoses the science attempts to match with every available generic and figurative resource. This chapter argues that Goethe’s late work on metamorphosis shifts biology’s question from the problem of embryogenesis that drove its emergence as a science, toward neglected, late-life processes of senescence and decomposition. What might life look like, Goethe’s asks, from the perspective of the non-reproductive, but communicative, effluvia that mediate between beings in their transience? What arts of discomposure would be adequate to this view? Focusing on an experiment in which a mushroom draws its own image in spores, this chapter argues for the Romantic period credibility of nonhuman and non-verbal acts of semiosis and representation: “natural simulacra” that Goethe discovers in the botany of decay.
Jeremi Szaniawski
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231167352
- eISBN:
- 9780231850520
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231167352.003.0016
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter reviews the film Faust (2011). Faust, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is a free adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's eponymous book. The film, financed in ...
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This chapter reviews the film Faust (2011). Faust, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is a free adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's eponymous book. The film, financed in great part with Russian government funds and under the auspices of Vladimir Putin, was meant by its backers to promote the rapprochement and dialogue between German and Russian cultures. Such a grand project, rife with nationalistic and political implications, also closes Sokurov's tetralogy of power, ironically highly entwined with the historical echoes of this “dialogue” between the two cultures. With Faust, Sokurov not only crowns the tetralogy and its exploration of the nature of power and the price of the human soul, but also his career itself.Less
This chapter reviews the film Faust (2011). Faust, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is a free adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's eponymous book. The film, financed in great part with Russian government funds and under the auspices of Vladimir Putin, was meant by its backers to promote the rapprochement and dialogue between German and Russian cultures. Such a grand project, rife with nationalistic and political implications, also closes Sokurov's tetralogy of power, ironically highly entwined with the historical echoes of this “dialogue” between the two cultures. With Faust, Sokurov not only crowns the tetralogy and its exploration of the nature of power and the price of the human soul, but also his career itself.
Marilyn Butler
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129684
- eISBN:
- 9780191671838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129684.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The leading spirits behind The Anti-Jacobin of 1797–1798 were George Canning, William Gifford, and Hookham Frere, intelligent men who liked at least to claim that their targets were ideas rather than ...
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The leading spirits behind The Anti-Jacobin of 1797–1798 were George Canning, William Gifford, and Hookham Frere, intelligent men who liked at least to claim that their targets were ideas rather than personalities. When they did single out individuals for attack, these were as a rule offenders by conservative lights: among creative writers, Robert Southey and, less prominently, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Charles Lloyd; the didactic poets Richard Payne Knight and Erasmus Darwin; and the German dramatists Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and August von Kotzebue. Since modern readers do not look at these writers primarily in terms of their ideology, we are inclined to consider perverse the repeated attacks on them (and, later, on William Wordsworth) by conservative critics. However, an examination of The Anti-Jacobins's charges shows that, whatever else the magazine may have been, it was at least consistent in applying its own principles.Less
The leading spirits behind The Anti-Jacobin of 1797–1798 were George Canning, William Gifford, and Hookham Frere, intelligent men who liked at least to claim that their targets were ideas rather than personalities. When they did single out individuals for attack, these were as a rule offenders by conservative lights: among creative writers, Robert Southey and, less prominently, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Charles Lloyd; the didactic poets Richard Payne Knight and Erasmus Darwin; and the German dramatists Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and August von Kotzebue. Since modern readers do not look at these writers primarily in terms of their ideology, we are inclined to consider perverse the repeated attacks on them (and, later, on William Wordsworth) by conservative critics. However, an examination of The Anti-Jacobins's charges shows that, whatever else the magazine may have been, it was at least consistent in applying its own principles.
T.J. Reed
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226205106
- eISBN:
- 9780226205243
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226205243.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Undermining religion’s message did not entail gloom. The world when secularised still inspires wonder and delight, life deserves celebration. It duly receives it from the most powerful lyrical genius ...
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Undermining religion’s message did not entail gloom. The world when secularised still inspires wonder and delight, life deserves celebration. It duly receives it from the most powerful lyrical genius Germany has seen. Goethe’s tireless poetic productivity shows a way of seeing and being in which the ideals of the Enlightenment—the independent mind of the individual, the life of the senses and the emotions, freedom from outside direction, fulfilment in earthly activity—are lived out in exemplary fashion. Those ideals would hardly count if they were not capable of such realisation. And beyond all philosophical claims, the writing of this outstanding artist (dramatist and novelist too, but above all lyrical poet) has an unequalled richness and formal perfection. The account of the Enlightenment ends on a literary high.Less
Undermining religion’s message did not entail gloom. The world when secularised still inspires wonder and delight, life deserves celebration. It duly receives it from the most powerful lyrical genius Germany has seen. Goethe’s tireless poetic productivity shows a way of seeing and being in which the ideals of the Enlightenment—the independent mind of the individual, the life of the senses and the emotions, freedom from outside direction, fulfilment in earthly activity—are lived out in exemplary fashion. Those ideals would hardly count if they were not capable of such realisation. And beyond all philosophical claims, the writing of this outstanding artist (dramatist and novelist too, but above all lyrical poet) has an unequalled richness and formal perfection. The account of the Enlightenment ends on a literary high.
Matt Erlin
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801453045
- eISBN:
- 9780801470431
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801453045.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter provides a conceptual map of luxury in Germany during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It examines the particularities of the German discourse of luxury through a ...
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This chapter provides a conceptual map of luxury in Germany during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It examines the particularities of the German discourse of luxury through a careful consideration of its entwinement with questions of social evolution, the society of orders, Enlightenment anthropology, and the legitimacy of the fine arts. It also considers the link between the conceptual fields of luxury and the emerging culture of consumption and concludes with a discussion of two short texts: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's essay “Kunst und Handwerk” (Art and Handicraft), written around 1800. Rousseau vigorously condemned the fine arts as luxury, whereas Goethe insisted on their distinction, haunted by the notion that they are actually inseparable.Less
This chapter provides a conceptual map of luxury in Germany during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It examines the particularities of the German discourse of luxury through a careful consideration of its entwinement with questions of social evolution, the society of orders, Enlightenment anthropology, and the legitimacy of the fine arts. It also considers the link between the conceptual fields of luxury and the emerging culture of consumption and concludes with a discussion of two short texts: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's essay “Kunst und Handwerk” (Art and Handicraft), written around 1800. Rousseau vigorously condemned the fine arts as luxury, whereas Goethe insisted on their distinction, haunted by the notion that they are actually inseparable.
Dorothea E. von Mücke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231172462
- eISBN:
- 9780231539333
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172462.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter offers a close reading of one of the key programmatic texts promoting the new model of original genius: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's early pamphlet “On German Architecture” (1772). ...
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This chapter offers a close reading of one of the key programmatic texts promoting the new model of original genius: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's early pamphlet “On German Architecture” (1772). Goethe's text sheds light on the Enlightenment discourse on original genius. For, especially in its performative dimension, “On German Architecture” engages with the spiritual, religious aspect of genius as Goethe stages his text as the record of a pilgrimage and models the aesthetic experience of coming to terms with the facade of the Strasbourg Cathedral as the product of a contemplative practice. This chapter examines the contribution of “On German Architecture” to aesthetic theory through a performance, the mise-en-scène of a new attitude toward the Strasbourg Cathedral as a work of art and toward the genius of its architect, Erwin von Steinbach. It argues that Goethe turns to architecture as the model object of art when art is no longer to be considered primarily a matter of representation.Less
This chapter offers a close reading of one of the key programmatic texts promoting the new model of original genius: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's early pamphlet “On German Architecture” (1772). Goethe's text sheds light on the Enlightenment discourse on original genius. For, especially in its performative dimension, “On German Architecture” engages with the spiritual, religious aspect of genius as Goethe stages his text as the record of a pilgrimage and models the aesthetic experience of coming to terms with the facade of the Strasbourg Cathedral as the product of a contemplative practice. This chapter examines the contribution of “On German Architecture” to aesthetic theory through a performance, the mise-en-scène of a new attitude toward the Strasbourg Cathedral as a work of art and toward the genius of its architect, Erwin von Steinbach. It argues that Goethe turns to architecture as the model object of art when art is no longer to be considered primarily a matter of representation.
Jennifer Radden
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.003.0016
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter presents an excerpt from Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe's novel about melancholy. Goethe was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1749 and died in 1832. He was one of the greatest geniuses of ...
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This chapter presents an excerpt from Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe's novel about melancholy. Goethe was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1749 and died in 1832. He was one of the greatest geniuses of modern times, a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist whose literary and artistic output was remarkable. His most popular work, The Sorrows of Young Werther, was published in 1774. Goethe wrote this novel out of despair over a broken heart. It tells the tragic tale of an unrequited attachment that ends in a graphically described suicide. The book brought Goethe enormous fame and was much translated. Its effect on the public was intense: it inspired a condition of exaggerated sensibility that came to be known as Wertherism. Werther's frustration, grief, and despair, elaborated in this work, captured and celebrated the Romantic notion of melancholy.Less
This chapter presents an excerpt from Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe's novel about melancholy. Goethe was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1749 and died in 1832. He was one of the greatest geniuses of modern times, a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist whose literary and artistic output was remarkable. His most popular work, The Sorrows of Young Werther, was published in 1774. Goethe wrote this novel out of despair over a broken heart. It tells the tragic tale of an unrequited attachment that ends in a graphically described suicide. The book brought Goethe enormous fame and was much translated. Its effect on the public was intense: it inspired a condition of exaggerated sensibility that came to be known as Wertherism. Werther's frustration, grief, and despair, elaborated in this work, captured and celebrated the Romantic notion of melancholy.
