In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Goethe contra Hegel: The Question of the End of Art
  • Luke Fischer

Kein Mensch will begreifen, daß die höchste und einzige Operation der Natur u. Kunst die Gestaltung sei. . . .

(MA 20.1:197)

[No one is prepared to grasp that, both in nature and in art, the sole and supreme process is the creation of form. . . .]

—Goethe, letter to Zelter, October 30, 1808

In this essay I outline the basic ideas of Goethe’s mature aesthetics (from the time of his Italian journey and later) and argue that Goethe’s conception of art offers important alternatives and resistance to the Hegelian thesis of the “end of art.” My contribution is divided into three main parts. The first part consists of two sections devoted to articulating Goethe’s aesthetics; due to the intimate connection between nature (in particular, metamorphosis) and art in Goethe, one section sketches Goethe’s view of nature and scientific knowledge, while the second section articulates Goethe’s conception of art as a higher metamorphosis of nature. The second main part outlines the place of art in Hegel as a moment of Absolute Spirit. I argue that Hegel’s aesthetics is primarily a content aesthetics according to which art is basically a form of knowledge that is inferior to philosophy, as opposed to Goethe’s, which emphasizes the significance of the unique form of art’s sensual appearance. Given this difference, contrary to Goethe, Hegel does not envisage a truly unique vocation for art (for Goethe knowledge and art have two very distinct, though related, tasks). These factors play an important role in the dictum of the “end of art.” In the final part of the essay I show that the same characteristics are to be found in the more recent appropriations of the Hegelian thesis of the “end of art” (by Arthur C. Danto and others), and indicate some of the alternative perspectives that are opened up by a Goethean aesthetics. In my treatment of Goethe’s aesthetics I focus primarily on the visual arts, but I also indicate continuities in Goethe’s understanding of the other fine arts.

Before turning to Goethe’s understanding of plant metamorphosis I would like briefly to sketch Goethe’s broader view of nature. Goethe’s conception of nature is distant from much modern thought. For Goethe nature is a great interrelated whole, and each aspect of nature can only be understood in terms of its participation in the whole.1 His view of nature is irreducible [End Page 127] to the many varieties of modern dualism. Like modern naturalism Goethe regards the human being as a part of nature; it was for this reason that he sought to discover the intermaxillary bone in the human skull. However, his discovery was guided by his morphological conception of an “osteological type” or “idea” of the mammalian skeleton; it was informed by his empirical idealism, which is distinct from the materialistic and mechanistic approaches of much modern science.2 Goethe not only regards the human being as physiologically and organically involved in nature, for him there is also no opposition between nature and mind; he is distant from any Cartesian dualism. However, Goethe’s views are equally distant from reductive naturalism; his monism is not materialistic. “Nature,” for Goethe, is a comprehensive reality—a name for “the absolute” or “being”—which includes both the inner and outer world without being reducible to either.3 Goethe also does not hold to the dualism between the natural and the supernatural that is characteristic of much of the Judeo-Christian tradition. He often employs the words “nature” and “God” as synonyms and even uses the formulation “Gott-Natur”; nature for Goethe is a revelation of the divine.4 Many of Goethe’s views are united in his dynamic and creative conception of nature; it is his view of the creativity of nature that enables him to understand the natural, the human, and the divine as intertwined. As he states in his conversations with Eckermann: “Die Gottheit aber ist wirksam im Lebendigen, aber nicht im Toten; sie ist im Werdenden und sich Verwandelnden, aber nicht im Gewordenen und Erstarrten.” (“The Divinity works in the living not...

pdf

Share