Goethe's immediate response to the problem of unlimited subjectivity exemplified by Werther was to emphasize the objective existence of external objects. In this connection, it is no coincidence that Goethe's first journey to Italy was roughly contemporaneous with the revisions that he made to Werther for the Göschen edition of his works. For the Goethe of the mid- to late 1780s, the objective world effectively means nature: a concept that represents not only discrete, individual organisms, but also, after the examples of Spinoza and Herder, a natural order infused with the presence of an indwelling God. Werther's mistake was to succumb to the hubris of believing that he could reconceive this natural order on his own particular, subjective terms, without giving rise to tragic consequences. As this chapter will demonstrate, the post-Werther Goethe travels to Italy with this knowledge in his memory, and with a new program in mind: the “objective” and sensuous contemplation, observation, and recording of external objects, particularly plant life and geological formations.

But by the early 1790s, following Goethe's first encounters with the critical philosophy of Kant, the question as to what exactly constitutes objectivity, and whether indeed objectivity is possible at all, became increasingly important for Goethe's writings on scientific method. Goethe's consideration of these questions was then further intensified by his philosophical correspondence with Schiller during the mid- to late 1790s, as part of what Simon Richter has referred to as the project of Weimar Classicism: “an ambitious attempt not only to imagine but also to achieve a new quality of wholeness in human life and culture at a time when fragmentation, division, and alienation appeared to be the norm.”