Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Special Section on What Goethe Heard, edited by Mary Helen Dupree
- What Goethe Heard: Special Section on Hearing and Listening in the Long Eighteenth Century
- Behind Herder's Tympanum: Sound and Physiological Aesthetics, 1800/1900
- Becoming the Listener: Goethe's “Der Fischer”
- Of Barks and Bird Song: Listening in on the Forgotten in Ludwig Tieck's Der blonde Eckbert
- Garden Empire or the Sublime Politics of the Chinese-Gothic Style
- Die Austreibung des Populären: Schillers Bürger-Kritik
- Goethe and the Uncontrollable Business of Appropriative Stage Sequels
- Repetition and Textual Transmission: The Gothic Motif in Goethe's Faust and “Von deutscher Baukunst”
- “Die gewalt'ge Heldenbrust”: Gender and Violence in Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris
- Literary Form and International World Order in Goethe: From Iphigenie to Pandora
- Two Gifts from Goethe: Charlotte von Stein's and Charlotte Schiller's Writing Tables
- Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and the Refusal to Grow Up: The Dialectics of Bildung
- “So steh' ich denn hier wehrlos gegen dich?”— Figures of Armament and Disarmament in German Drama before and after the French Revolution
- Goethe, Maimon, and Spinoza's Third Kind of Cognition
- Die Neuvermessung von Lyrik und Prosa in Goethes Novelle
- Book Reviews
Goethe, Maimon, and Spinoza's Third Kind of Cognition
from Special Section on What Goethe Heard, edited by Mary Helen Dupree
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Special Section on What Goethe Heard, edited by Mary Helen Dupree
- What Goethe Heard: Special Section on Hearing and Listening in the Long Eighteenth Century
- Behind Herder's Tympanum: Sound and Physiological Aesthetics, 1800/1900
- Becoming the Listener: Goethe's “Der Fischer”
- Of Barks and Bird Song: Listening in on the Forgotten in Ludwig Tieck's Der blonde Eckbert
- Garden Empire or the Sublime Politics of the Chinese-Gothic Style
- Die Austreibung des Populären: Schillers Bürger-Kritik
- Goethe and the Uncontrollable Business of Appropriative Stage Sequels
- Repetition and Textual Transmission: The Gothic Motif in Goethe's Faust and “Von deutscher Baukunst”
- “Die gewalt'ge Heldenbrust”: Gender and Violence in Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris
- Literary Form and International World Order in Goethe: From Iphigenie to Pandora
- Two Gifts from Goethe: Charlotte von Stein's and Charlotte Schiller's Writing Tables
- Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and the Refusal to Grow Up: The Dialectics of Bildung
- “So steh' ich denn hier wehrlos gegen dich?”— Figures of Armament and Disarmament in German Drama before and after the French Revolution
- Goethe, Maimon, and Spinoza's Third Kind of Cognition
- Die Neuvermessung von Lyrik und Prosa in Goethes Novelle
- Book Reviews
Summary
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN Goethe and Salomon Maimon has only been touched on once in the literature, and further clarification of the link between them remains a desideratum. Below I propose that the way to grasp their seeing eye to eye is through Spinoza, and specifically Spinoza's notion of scientia intuitiva. Initially I provide some context in order to illustrate what makes Maimon's role here rather unique. Then I sketch the relationship Maimon and Goethe had both to Spinoza and each other while emphasizing what is at stake. I conclude with various new findings.
Preface
It is widely known that Goethe was dissatisfied with the reception of his Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären (Attempt to Clarify the Metamorphosis of Plants, 1790). For Goethe, such struggles came as an unfortunate surprise. Some of this we know because twenty-seven years after its initial publication Goethe publishes the Metamorphosis again within the collection Zur Morphologie (On Morphology I, 1817), and reflects there on the earlier edition of this work within a set of short pieces. He discusses the Metamorphosis in its status as a manuscript, a printed work, and a pivotal step in his study of plants—namely in the “Geschichte seiner botanischen Studien” (“History of the Author's Botanical Studies”). Regarding the manuscript, Goethe tells us retrospectively:
Mit Herrn Göschen, dem Herausgeber meiner gesammelten Schriften, hatte ich alle Ursache zufrieden zu sein […] ich glaubte [aber] zu bemerken, mein Verleger finde den Absatz nicht ganz nach seinen Wünschen. Indessen hatte ich versprochen, meine künftigen Arbeiten ihm vor andern anzubieten, eine Bedingung, die ich immer für billig gehalten habe. Ich meldete ihm daher, daß eine kleine Schrift fertig liege, wissenschaftlichen Inhalts, deren Abdruck ich wünsche. Ob er sich nun überhaupt von meinen Arbeiten nicht mehr sonderlich viel versprochen, oder ob er in diesem Falle, wie ich vermuten kann, bei Sachverständigen Erkundigung eingezogen habe, was von einem solchen Übersprung in ein anderes Feld zu halten sein möchte, will ich nicht untersuchen, genug, ich konnte schwer begreifen, warum er mein Heft zu drucken ablehnte, da er, im schlimmsten Falle, durch ein so geringes Opfer von sechs Bogen Makulatur einen fruchtbaren, frisch wieder auftretenden, zuverlässigen, genügsamen Autor sich erhalten hätte. (WA II, 6:133–34)
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- Information
- Goethe Yearbook 25Publications of the Goethe Society of North America, pp. 267 - 288Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018