Helmut Hühn
Two forms of thought are equally fundamental for Goethe the naturalist (‘Naturforscher’) and Goethe the poet: morphology and symbolism. They are both important patterns of orientation in the world and of interpretation of the world, whose role throughout the Goethean oeuvre can hardly be overestimated. The beginnings of Goethe’s morphology date back to his co-operation with Herder in the 1780s, while the first traces of his discovery and reflection of the symbolic may be found in his 1797 correspondence with Schiller. In what follows, I shall explore the relationship between these two fundamental forms of thought, their similarities and convergences as well as their differences and divergences. I will proceed in four steps. First, I shall outline Goethe’s morphological thinking as it presents itself in the mid-1790s, following a decade of intense study and practice on Goethe’s part. My focus will be on a note made in 1796 in which he develops the methodological principle (‘Grundsatz’)1 of his morphology. With this in mind, I shall secondly look at the epistemological ‘primal scene’ of Goethe’s theory of the symbol. In August 1797, on a journey to Switzerland, he made a stop in Frankfurt, his native town, where he suddenly became aware of a new form of object perception and object experience which so struck him that he immediately set to discussing it in a letter to Schiller. The central categories of his theory of the symbol, viz. intuition (‘Anschauung’), representation (‘Repräsentation’) and totality (‘Totalität’), appear as early as this Frankfurt letter, prefiguring the characteristic way in which Goethe was to conceive the relationship between the universal (‘das Allgemeine’) and the particular (‘das Besondere’) into his late work: as a dialectics, that is, not of nature but of history. For the symbolic objects mentioned by Goethe in this letter are genuinely historical: Frankfurt’s marketplace and the site (‘Raum’) where his grandfather Textor’s house had stood before being reduced to a pile of rubble (‘Schutthaufen’)2 by the French bombardment. Just as morphology allows us to orientate ourselves in nature and even to conceive creative Nature herself, symbolism provides us with a basic guide to human history. In a third step I shall explain Schiller’s critique of the Goethean conception of symbolic objects. It is not confined to the category of intuition, since Schiller makes it very clear that symbolic objects reveal themselves neither to immediate intuition nor, for that matter, to intuition alone but that they acquire their meaning only through an act of interpretation. Acknowledging the role of this interpretative act, and thereby of the fundamental contribution of the interpreting individual, did, however, entail serious problems not only for Goethe’s as-yet sketchy theory of the symbol; it subsequently also led to modifications (which can only be hinted at in the present paper) in his morphology. Fourthly and lastly, I propose to ask in which way the thought forms of morphology and symbolism can contribute to the cognizability and representation of totality and how they may become relevant for a reflection on the unity of historical events.
As we can see from his essay Der Versuch als Vermittler von Object und Subject (1793), Goethe’s study of nature entered a methodological phase in the 1790s. He was now able to explicate his intuitions by coining the word ‘morphology’ in 1796.3 With this new concept, he presented the results of a long thought process.4 ‘Morphology’ was the comparative study of the forms or shapes of organisms (‘Gestalten’), and in particular of their formation and transformation. Whereas in 1796 Goethe conceived it as a universal science of nature, he later reduced its scope within the field of natural history,5 while on the other hand extending it beyond that field to cover the history of literature, art and science. The conception of morphology as a universal science of nature figures in a letter to Schiller dated 12 November 1796, where Goethe, freshly returned from the Ilmenau mine, writes:
Durch die unmittelbare Berührung mit den Gebürgen und durch das Voigtische Mineralienkabinet bin ich diese Zeit her wieder in das Steinreich geführt worden. Es ist mir sehr lieb, daß ich so zufälligerweise diese Betrachtungen erneuert habe, ohne welche denn doch die berühmte Morphologie nicht vollständig werden würde. Ich habe diesmal diesen Naturen einige gute Ansichten abgewonnen, die ich gelegentlich mittheilen werde.6
[Thanks to the direct contact with the mountains and to Voigt’s mineral cabinet I have since been re-introduced to the realm of rocks. I am very glad that I have thus by chance been able to renew these reflections without which the famous morphology would, after all, not reach completion. This time, I have gained some good insights into these natures, which I shall impart to you in due course.]
Goethe’s reference to ‘the famous morphology’ makes it as clear as does Schiller’s prompt reply (‘Ich freue mich, wenn Sie mir Ihre neuen Entdeckungen für die Morphologie mittheilen’ [I am looking forward to receiving your news about the new discoveries you have made in morphology])7 that we are dealing here with a key word (‘Kennwort’)8 which evokes a whole context being discussed by the two authors. The compound noun ‘morphology’ hearkens back to the Greek language and philosophy. Aristotle had defined morphê as the shape of a sensible thing. In an oft-quoted example given in his Metaphysics, Aristotle explains the difference between morphê and eidos:9 a smith makes a brazen circle, where the brass is the matter, the geometrical figure of the circle the eidos and the circle the morphê.10 Morphê is thus the shape of the synholon, of the concrete thing or concrete whole. In the process of forging, according to Aristotle, the eidos or intelligible form, which pre-exists, emerges in a specific materiality.
Goethe conceived his morphology as a science of metamorphosis and of type. He thought that the Gestalten of organisms were modifications of the archetype (‘Urbild’) of each group or type of organisms, type being for him not merely a mental construct but a real principle adhered to by Nature when bringing about organisms. Type is apprehended by a specific form of intuition, viz. a constant interaction between empirical and ideating intuition.11
The process of formation of the organisms — paradigm of a dynamic whole — is characterized by continual transformation. Gestalt is a transitory, developing form. The naturalist must therefore aspire to a form of knowledge that can cope with this dynamics of formation through transformation. He must not cling to a single isolated Gestalt but ought to become aware of the succession of Gestalten as a whole. While the individual Gestalt is accessible to empirical intuition where, as Goethe puts it, we use our ‘bodily eyes’ (‘leibliche Augen’), the transition from one changeable Gestalt to another is captured by the ‘mind’s eyes’ (‘geistige Augen’)12 which operate genetically and at the same time synoptically and integratively. Only by detaching ourselves from the individual empirical Gestalten while simultaneously remaining sensually faithful to them can we productively intuit the idea which manifests itself in the process of formation; to know the idea means to comprehend its whole process of development. The idea in Goethe differs essentially from the Platonic idea in that it is not timeless: it appears in time as a sensibly perceptible shape. Goethe therefore changed the Platonic concept of idea in an important way.13 In the context of his morphology he also framed a particular conception of time, according to which time manifests itself sensually in the metamorphoses of the Gestalten.
Methodologically speaking, Goethe usually proceeds from the particular in his quest for the whole to which this particular belongs, or of which it is a part. He refuses to neglect the particular in favour of what philosophical tradition calls ‘abstraction’. As Schiller succinctly put it in an early characterization of Goethe’s thinking: ‘Sie nehmen die ganze Natur zusammen, um über das Einzelne Licht zu bekommen, in der Allheit ihrer Erscheinungsarten suchen Sie den Erklärungsgrund für das Individuum auf’ [You look at nature as a whole in order to illuminate its individual parts: within the fullness of nature’s manifestations you seek explanations for individual entities].14 The guiding hermeneutical principle of this morphological approach is that the individual empirical Gestalten that appear in the course of the process of formation are not contingent and that by their succession we can cognize the basic shape or idea (‘Idee’) — which Goethe in 1798 also termed the ‘pure phenomenon’ (‘reines Phänomen’)15 — thereby knowing the explanation for each transitory Gestalt. For Goethe, this research method of intuitive knowledge was a compromise between empiricist induction on the one hand and the deductive efforts of a speculative natural philosophy on the other. Schiller called this procedure a ‘rational empiricism’ (‘rationelle Empirie’);16 Hegel later spoke of a ‘sinnigere[s] Naturanschauen’ [more meaningful way of intuitively perceiving nature] and of a vivid contemplation of nature.17 It was Hegel, however, who also pointed out to Goethe that intuition must not be ranked above reflection: one cannot philosophize from intuition.18
The morphological approach in Goethe is an instrument with which to acquire knowledge of the wholeness or totality. Through it, the integrity of the organism’s process of formation becomes evident, as does the necessity of each specific appearance. At the same time, the metamorphic process imparts to us an intuitive perception of self-creative Nature (natura naturans): for Goethe meant not simply to describe the metamorphosis of plants but to demonstrate, on this basis, the metamorphosis of the whole of nature,19 its constant alteration, in which man himself, being a creature of nature as well as of knowledge, is involved.20 The morphological contemplation of nature as conceived by Goethe is therefore always, by implication, an attempt at human self-knowledge. The unity of nature is seen as a unity in time, as the evolution of an organic whole which comprises the human world. As his note from 1796 makes clear, Goethe at this time explicitly included man in nature’s succession of Gestalten. He describes an ontological principle which he has been following instinctively for a long time: all that is expresses itself, presents itself, explicates itself in such a way that the ‘inner’ becomes visible and takes shape in the ‘outer’. This ontological principle gives substance to Goethe’s concept of living intuition and illustrates his faith in the basic perceptibility of the world. It is one of his well-known tenets that there is nothing like contemplation with the living eye.
With his principle of morphology, Goethe affirms that it is the essence itself which appears and that, consequently, appearance is not a mere delusion but a manifestation of what is real for the ‘outer’ as well as the ‘inner sense’ (‘äußerer/innerer Sinn’).21 Goethe’s thinking in 1796 was primarily ontological, not transcendental. Nevertheless, he adopted the Kantian terminology according to which the ‘outer sense’ is that property of the mind whereby we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and all as in space, while the ‘inner sense’ enables us to represent inner states (which include the representation of external objects) in their temporal relations.22 In his note, Goethe envisages a peculiar interlocking of the inner and the outer, characteristic not only of his morphology but also later to be taken up — structurally, at least — in his conception of the symbol. He deliberately correlates the self-manifestation of that which is with the individual’s cognition of such self-manifestation. The morphological approach relies on the inner sense as a temporal sense, which in the dynamic succession of Gestalten is able to apprehend creative Nature herself. Morphology can thus be described as an attempt at understanding temporal Nature through a living participation in her creative spirit of productivity.
On the basis of this principle, Goethe established the possibility of a morphological semiotics of Nature: all things natural appear as what they are, while in this self-manifestation simultaneously referring to Nature as a whole. That is, roughly, where matters stood in morphology at the time when Goethe, in a discussion with Schiller, began to develop his concept of the symbolic.
In 1797, Goethe made intense preparations for a journey that was meant again to take him to Italy but in the event, owing to Napoleon’s Italian campaign and the disturbances occasioned by it, had to be broken off in Switzerland. It was on this journey, stopping over in his native Frankfurt, that he developed a new form of object perception which can also be described as a new form of aesthetic perception (‘ästhetische Wahrnehmung’).23 Goethe had intended to appreciate through imme diate experience (‘unmittelbare Erfahrung’) the different natural-historical, geographical, economic and political conditions he encountered on his trip; he wanted to study and know the particular in its complex mediatedness. Nevertheless, his attitude towards empirical knowledge was at that time highly ambivalent. On the one hand, he feared the ‘millionenfache Hydra der Empirie’ [million-headed hydra of empiricism],24 the overkill of experience and the profusion of empirical data which, given their multiplicity, disorder and heterogeneity, threatened to make all perception of totality impossible, causing him to lose sight of the whole for the details. On the other hand, he sought, in an unprecedented manner, to empirically saturate sober observation, in the hope that this saturation would in itself provide a theory capable of organizing the wealth of phenomena.25 In his letter to Schiller, composed in Switzerland on 14 October 1797, he wrote: ‘Man erfährt wieder bey dieser Gelegenheit daß eine vollständige Erfahrung die Theorie in sich enthalten muß’ [On this occasion one observes again that a complete experience must contain its theory in itself].26 He therefore developed new forms of ‘diversification’ (‘Vermannichfaltigung’)27 as well as of collecting and filing his experimental procedures. Having returned to Frankfurt for the first time in many years, he was surprised to find that certain objects produced ‘sentimental’ experiences in him. The word ‘sentimental’ is used here by Goethe in the twofold sense of a ‘sentimental journey’ evoking feelings and sensations, and of Schiller’s ‘sentimental poet’ who is moved by certain objects to experience mental processes, ideas and reflections. Goethe says expressly that these symbolic objects had come to him in his ‘calm and cold manner of observing or mere watching’ (‘ruhigen und kalten Weg des Beobachtens, ja des bloßen Sehens’),28 that he had not been in a poetic mood (‘poetische Stimmung’)29 and that symbolic objects cannot by any means become poetic ones without prior transformation. He emphasizes that (I quote from a previous letter written in Frankfurt):
Für einen Reisenden geziemt sich ein skeptischer Realism; was noch idealistisch an mir ist, wird in einem Schatullchen, wohlverschlossen, mitgeführt wie jenes undenische Pygmäenweibchen.30
[For a traveller, a sceptical realism is fitting. Whatever idealism I still have is carried with me, locked in a little strongbox like the famous undine female pigmy.]
Now where do the affects evoked by these objects come from? Goethe, observing himself even as he observes the phenomena, explains to Schiller:
Ich habe daher die Gegenstände, die einen solchen Effect hervorbringen, genau betrachtet und zu meiner Verwunderung bemerkt daß sie eigentlich symbolisch sind, das heißt, wie ich kaum zu sagen brauche, es sind eminente Fälle, die, in einer charakteristischen Mannigfaltigkeit, als Repräsentanten von vielen andern dastehen, eine gewisse Totalität in sich schließen, eine gewisse Reihe fordern, ähnliches und fremdes in meinem Geiste aufregen und so von außen wie von innen an eine gewisse Einheit und Allheit Anspruch machen. Sie sind also, was ein glückliches Sujet dem Dichter ist, glückliche Gegenstände für den Menschen, und weil man, indem man sie mit sich selbst recapitulirt, ihnen keine poetische Form geben kann, so muß man ihnen doch eine ideale geben, eine menschliche im höhern Sinn, das man auch mit einem so sehr mißbrauchten Ausdruck sentimental nannte, und Sie werden also wohl nicht lachen, sondern nur lächeln, wenn ich Ihnen hiermit zu meiner eignen Verwunderung darlege, daß ich, wenn ich irgend von meinen Reisen etwas für Freunde oder für’s Publicum aufzeichnen soll, wahrscheinlich noch in Gefahr komme empfindsame Reisen zu schreiben.31
[I have therefore looked carefully at the objects which produce such an effect and noticed with amazement that they are really symbolic, i.e., as I barely need to mention, they are eminent cases which stand as representatives, in characteristic multiplicity, of many others and enclose within themselves a certain totality; they demand a certain sequence, excite in my mind similar and unfamiliar instances, and therefore lay claim to a certain unity and universality from the outside and the inside. They therefore constitute what is a fortunate subject matter for the poet, namely, fortunate objects for mankind. And since by recapitulating them with oneself, one cannot give them a poetic form, they must be given an ideal form, a human one in a higher sense — what one used to call with a much misused expression ‘sentimental’. You will therefore probably not laugh if I declare to you herewith my own amazement that I might run the danger of writing sentimental journeys, if I am to write anything of my travels for friends or the public.]
Symbolic objects, then, are ‘eminent cases’, standing out from others. In the same letter, Goethe gives two instructive examples of what he means:
Bis jetzt habe ich nur zwey solcher Gegenstände gefunden: den Platz auf dem ich wohne [sc. der Roßmarkt schräg gegenüber der Hauptwache], der in Absicht seiner Lage und alles dessen was darauf vorgeht in einem jeden Momente symbolisch ist, und den Raum meines großväterlichen Hauses, Hofes und Gartens, der aus dem beschränktesten, patriarchalischen Zustande, in welchem ein alter Schultheiß von Frankfurt lebte, durch klug unternehmende Menschen zum nützlichsten Waaren- und Marktplatz verändert wurde. Die Anstalt ging durch sonderbare Zufälle bey dem Bombardement zu Grunde und ist jetzt, größtentheils als Schutthaufen, noch immer das doppelte dessen werth was vor 11 Jahren von den gegenwärtigen Besitzern an die Meinigen bezahlt worden.32
[Up to now I have found only two such objects: the place where I am staying [i.e. Roßmarkt diagonally opposite Hauptwache], which is symbolic with regard to its location and everything that happens there every moment; and the site of my grandfather’s house with its yard and garden, which some intelligent and enterprising people transformed from the most limited patriarchal estate, in which an old mayor of Frankfurt had lived, to a very useful place for selling goods and food. The establishment went to pieces during the bombardment under strange circumstances, but even as a pile of rubble it is still twice as valuable as what the present owners paid to my family eleven years ago.]
Hence it emerges that, with symbolic objects, we are no longer in the sphere of nature but have entirely moved to the field of social and historical experience. Goethe lived with his mother at Roßmarkt (Horse Market), which presented him with the opportunity to experience a real metropolis (as compared with Weimar) as well as the deep historical change it had recently witnessed. The square itself did not belong to the historical centre of the city, which had evolved into a commercial hub. The circumstances of the time had strongly affected the city. The French bombardment that had taken place the year before33 had laid in ruins, among other buildings, the house of Goethe’s grandfather Textor (which is specifically paid tribute to as a lieu de mémoire in Dichtung und Wahrheit),34 although in economic terms, it was more valuable, having been converted into a marketplace. Goethe’s use of words such as ‘place’ and ‘site’ makes it clear that symbolic objects are not simply real objects at hand. They are objects of perception, i.e. constellations and configurations that can be experienced by the senses but cannot, by virtue of their characteristic multiplicity (‘charakteristische Mannigfaltigkeit’), be subsumed under a specific concept or category. Symbolic objects, being intuitive objects, obey the logic of part and whole; they do not, like discursive concepts, conform to the logic of subordination and superordination.
It must be pointed out that the concept of the manifold, or of multiplicity, mentioned in the letter originates from Goethe’s morphology. There, the manifold Gestalten of natural organisms evolve from the unity of disposition.35 Put differently, their multiplicity is already present in the unity of disposition, which in its turn is present in the multiplicity of Gestalten. It must, however, be equally pointed out that no analogy exists between the morphological multiplicity of organisms and the multiplicity of symbolic objects. The latter, in their phenomenal individuality, render a certain state of affairs intuitively perceptible — they bring something to light which is the case. Being complex, specific objects, they do not directly refer to a universal idea. Their symbolic quality is, after all, not purely synecdochical but rather of a metonymic kind. They are therefore not representative in the way of pars pro toto, where an example is selected to stand for the whole, but act, as Goethe says, ‘as representatives of many others’, because in them some state of affairs of a higher universality shines through. A symbolic object, for Goethe, refers primarily to other ‘eminent cases’; it is the ‘Symbol vieler tausend ander[er] Fälle’ [symbol of many thousands of similar cases].36 This has not been sufficiently taken into account by students of Goethe’s conception of the symbol. It also presents a marked structural contrast to the metaphysical conception developed by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling in his Philosophie der Kunst.37 The referential structure outlined by Goethe in his letter is the following: a specific object, i.e. a meaningful individual entity, refers to a thousand other individuals, and it is only through their ‘neighbourly’ reciprocal way of referring that together they refer to some higher universality. In this sense, the symbolic representation can be said to be of an indirect nature, which also implies that the universal is not simply ‘enclosed’ in the particular. Like Kant’s ‘aesthetic idea’ (‘ästhetische Idee [...] die viel zu denken veranlaßt’), Goethe’s symbolic object occasions ‘much thought’38 and requires the use of reflective judgment (‘reflektierende Urteilskraft’). The ‘characteristic multiplicity’ of objects signifies wealth39 and complexity but explicitly rules out metaphysical totality. For Goethe, only conditioned totalities can be interpreted as symbols. What does this mean? We need to distinguish between a totality that forms part of a more comprehensive totality and a totality that cannot be conceived of as such a part because it is defined as comprehensiveness itself, or totality as such. The first might be called a relative or conditioned totality, while the latter would be absolute or unconditioned totality. Now unconditioned totality cannot become an object of consciousness in the same way as can the partial or conditioned totalities. For consciousness can position itself vis-à-vis a conditioned totality but not the unconditioned one of which it is itself a part.40 Goethe’s symbolism is rooted in the tradition of criticism of metaphysics. From the very outset, he kept the symbolic thought form apart from the idea of a metaphysical, universalistic manner of reference espoused by Schelling in Jena, who thought of art as a sensual representation of the Absolute.41 For Schelling, symbols are subject-objects: intuitive, or eidetic, images that, starting from an exemplary object of experience, reveal to the subject of cognition the Absolute as the experience-transcending identity of subject and object.
According to Goethe the subject, with the help of its inner sense, will recapitulate the meaning of the symbolic objects.42 This review of objects will always only lead to a certain limited totality, limited not least because of the subject involved. This limited totality is gradually constructed in the wake of the perceptual experience and is not itself an object of immediate intuition. ‘[D]aß ein “Schutthaufen” doppelt so viel wert ist wie “vor elf Jahren” ein vollständiges Haus, kann nur gegen alle Anschauung richtig sein’ [The idea that a ‘pile of rubble’ is twice as valuable as the intact house was ‘eleven years ago’ can only hold true against all intuition], Heinz Schlaffer rightly observes in his Marx-inspired critique of Goethean classical aesthetics.43 Yet the sequence-mediated synthesis of unity and multiplicity, described by Goethe as early as his Versuch of 1793 as a method of his science of nature, is not reconstructed accurately enough by Schlaffer. This is why Schlaffer fails to appreciate the specific process of experience triggered by the intuition of symbolic objects. As we have seen above, symbolic objects demand ‘a certain sequence’, they excite ‘similar and unfamiliar instances’ in the contemplating mind and ‘therefore lay claim to a certain unity and universality’. This means that the sequence of representations is more than a sequence of subjective, arbitrary associations. The subject, affected by the objects of perception, goes back to its own past experiences, remembers similar and dissimilar instances and can, through this work of reflection, muster and deepen its present experiences. That ‘a certain [...] universality’ is achieved by reflecting upon the object’s ‘characteristic multiplicity’ does, however, never imply a claim on the part of the contemplating subject to know the comprehensive totality.
To sum up the argument, the epistemological ‘primal scene’ of Goethe’s theory of the symbol makes clear three things. First, the meaning of symbolic objects is not simply given in their intuition, nor is their intuition wholly devoid of concepts, since Goethe tells us that he worked through his apodemic plan in Frankfurt,44 a catalogue of phenomena to observe he had drawn up in order to be able to systematically focus on complex relationships like those between nature and culture. Second, symbolic objects can exemplify (a certain) universality only indirectly and by way of mediation. Third, the universality thus re-presented commands only ‘a certain’ unity and ‘a certain’ totality. It is not the totality of an all-encompassing whole but the limited totality of a structure or relationship of which the intuiting and reflecting individual becomes aware. Reconstructing the relationship of the universal and the particular with a view to symbolic objects leads us to acknowledge the limits of symbolic visualization (‘Veranschaulichung’) as well as of symbolic re-presentation (‘Vergegenwärtigung’). Symbolic objects do not merely refer to some absent entity, they re-present what is through their specific Gestalt.45 In this way they do not simply mean something, they actually are what they mean. Still, the symbol and the symbolized, being and meaning do not entirely coincide for Goethe. Symbolic objects are ‘fortunate objects for mankind’46 in that subject and object co-operate, as it were, in the act of cognition. The subject draws from the object of perception whatever the latter exemplifies, and reflects upon it. The object therefore opens up the subject’s own world anew and helps the subject to have a new experience of itself. Hence, the experience of symbolic objects leads us not into the ‘empirical breadth of the world’ (‘empirische Weltbreite’)47 but deepens our understanding of the world.48 How did Schiller react to these views?
The ‘sentimental phenomenon’ (‘sentimentale Phänomen’)49 acting on Goethe in Frankfurt was appraised very differently by Schiller, who in his reply strictly refers to the concept of sentimental poet framed by himself in his Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. According to this concept it is not the objects themselves which affect the subject in the way described by Goethe, nor is it emotion which gives rise to reflection but, on the contrary, reflection which engenders emotion:
Dieser [sc. der sentimentalische Dichter] reflektirt über den Eindruck, den die Gegenstände auf ihn machen und nur auf jene Reflexion ist die Rührung gegründet, in die er selbst versetzt wird, und uns versetzt. Der Gegenstand wird hier auf eine Idee bezogen, und nur auf dieser Beziehung beruht seine dichterische Kraft.50
[He (the sentimental poet) reflects on the impression which objects make on him, and the emotion into which he himself is transposed and into which he transposes us is based only on that reflection. The object is related here to an idea and its poetic strength rests only on this relationship.]
This is how Schiller had put it in his famous treatise from 1795. In his response to Goethe he explains that Goethe’s experience originates from the human need to appropriate the world in its depth through sentiment; it ultimately is
ein Effekt des poetischen Strebens, welches, sey es aus Gründen die in dem Gegenstand, oder solchen, die in dem Gemüth liegen, nicht ganz erfüllt wird. Eine solche poetische Forderung, ohne eine reine poetische Stimmung und ohne einen poetischen Gegenstand scheint Ihr Fall gewesen zu seyn [...].51
[an effect of poetic strivings which are not quite fulfilled, either for reasons that lie in the object or for those that lie in the mind. Such a poetic demand without a pure poetic mood and without a poetic object seems to have been your case.]
Schiller then turns to the crucial difference between Goethe and himself, viz. the issue of the generation of meaning. To him as a trained Kantian it was obvious that the object’s meaning is established by the subject. The object is not symbolic in itself: it becomes symbolic only when a subject apprehends it as a symbol by means of its faculty of ideas:
Nur eins muß ich dabei noch erinnern. Sie drücken sich so aus, als wenn es hier sehr auf den Gegenstand ankäme, was ich nicht zugeben kann. Freilich der Gegenstand muß etwas bedeuten, so wie der poetische etwas seyn muß; aber zulezt kommt es auf das Gemüth an, ob ihm ein Gegenstand etwas bedeuten soll, und so däucht mir das Leere und Gehaltreiche mehr im Subject als im Object zu liegen. Das Gemüth ist es, welches hier die Grenze steckt, und das Gemeine oder Geistreiche kann ich auch hier wie überal nur in der Behandlung nicht in der Wahl des Stoffes finden. Was Ihnen die zwey angeführten Plätze gewesen sind, würde Ihnen unter andern Umständen, bei einer mehr aufgeschloßenen poetischen Stimmung jede Strasse, Brücke, jedes Schiff, ein Pflug oder irgend ein anderes mechanisches Werkzeug vielleicht geleistet haben.52
[I must point out just one more thing. You express yourself in such a way that one must think that the important thing is the object. I cannot grant you that. Of course, the object must signify something, just as the poetic subject matter must be something. But ultimately it is a matter of the mind whether an object means something; thus methinks the empty or the substantial quality lies more in the mind than in the matter. It is the mind which creates the limit. As always, I can find the common or the substantial only in the treatment, not in the choice of subject matter. Those two places you mentioned which were so important to you could have been substituted, under other circumstances and in a more poetic mood, by any street, bridge, boat, plough or any other mechanical tool.]
Taken together, this points less to the subtle difference (‘zarte Differenz’) to which Goethe was to play it down later,53 than to a fundamental contrast between the two poets. In Goethe’s conception, the symbolic meaning falls on the side of the object. The contemplated object, in manifesting its meaning, allows us to capture a historical reality. The object reveals itself, its meaning and thereby a historical context that in a specific way becomes visible in it and, through this visibility, accessible to reflection as well. For Schiller, on the other hand, the symbolic meaning lies not in the object but is brought forth by the subject: ‘[d]er Bedeutungsreichtum des Objektes’ [the object’s richness in meaning] turns out to be ‘eine Funktion der Bedeutungsfülle des Subjektes’ [a function of the subject’s richness in meaning].54 For each object there is the possibility of being perceived in various different ways. Schiller’s critique has many implications which cannot be elaborated upon here. If, for example, meaning is ultimately assigned to objects by the subjects, then the problem of the intersubjective and cultural dimensions of symbolization immediately arises. Can every object become symbolic? Can an object be assigned totally different meanings by different subjects? How can subjects communicate about the meanings assigned by them, and what are the bases and conditions of their assignments?
As for the ‘sceptical realism’ (‘skeptische Realism’) to which Goethe subscribed in 1797, it seems to lend itself to ontological hypostasizations. Goethe’s early conception of the symbol is certainly not without such hypostasizations, and it substantially lacks an intersubjective dimension. The morphological conception of reality on the one hand and the claim to visibleness on the other also formed the basis of that defining opposition of symbol and allegory which Goethe, upon his arrival in Switzerland, together with Johann Heinrich Meyer started developing in the field of the theory of representation in art.55 Had he by then already seen through Schiller’s critique with all its implications, he would probably not have been able to dismiss the allegorical form of representation in the fine arts with such conviction. Radicalizing Meyer’s ideas, Goethe in effect accused the allegorical forms of representation in the fine arts of ‘destroying whatever interest there is in the representation, driving the mind back, so to speak, into itself and depriving its eyes of that which is actually being represented’ (daß sie ‘das Interesse an der Darstellung selbst zerstören und den Geist gleichsam in sich selbst zurücktreiben und seinen Augen das, was wirklich dargestellt ist, entziehen’).56 The deprecation of the allegory and the appreciation of the symbol need to be seen against the backdrop of a fundamental crisis of the semiotic systems around 1800.57 It then becomes clear that the Goethean ‘sceptical realism’ with its assumption is by no means free of all idealization: for it is an idealization in all but name when objects are declared totalities in themselves whose meaning is self-evident. Herder’s ‘natural symbols’ (‘Natursymbole’),58 put forward against the Kantian conception of a faculty of imagination which symbolically represents the ideas of reason by means of an analogy, follow the same logic of idealization, though this cannot be pursued in any detail here. Schiller’s criticism did affect Goethe, who could not help noticing that the tension between ‘Natur und der unmittelbaren Erfahrung’ [nature and immediate experience],59 which he thought to have successfully overcome — with the help of symbolic objects — even in the field of human history, presented itself anew.
The morphological and the symbolic forms of thought embrace both art and nature. They belong closely together, given that Goethe developed the symbolic point of view from the morphological one. In 1796 he had found the basis of both thought forms in the principle that all that is shows and manifests itself in phenomena accessible to intuition. The poet and the naturalist alike in Goethe adhered to this principle right into his late years. Already in the ‘primal scene’ of his theory of the symbol, the natural context to which scholars have long restricted their interpretations was actually transcended: it was a genuinely historical experience that Goethe touched upon in 1797 with regard to Frankfurt’s Roßmarkt and the site of his grandfather’s estate. The historical changes identified by him in his native town did not follow an evolutionary growth pattern but were of a revolutionary origin, and so could not and cannot be reduced to a natural type of development. The symbolic ‘objects’, viewed as particularly telling cases, exemplify a general historical transformation that takes place in each moment of (contemporary) history and is, in all its complexity, conspicuous to any individual who is familiar with the sites in question and is at the same time able to look at them with fresh eyes — as if it were for the first time. Only one who is familiar with these objects can form a morphological sequence of development in his mind’s eye and detect a historical universality in this metamorphic process. The idea of ‘eminent cases’ points to the way in which Goethe conceived of the relationship of the individual, the particular and the universal. The individual in itself cannot illustrate (‘veranschaulichen’) a universal. What is individual becomes, symbolically conceived, a particular which thanks to its quality of ‘eminent case’ refers to many other cases: it is now a ‘symbol of many thousands of similar cases’. The universal establishes itself and becomes knowable via this very process whereby one case refers to a thousand others. Only through symbolic mediation will the particular entity reveal to us a supra-individual universal. This universal can be perceived only in the particular, in the ‘eminent cases’.
With his morphology and the symbolic, Goethe thus appreciated two forms of intuitive knowledge which allow us to explore relations and to search for ‘family resemblances’ (Wittgenstein) by starting from the particular. Goethe distrusted all abstracting, hypostasizing generalization and sought to keep faith with the individual phenomena, even when transcending them towards totality, by staying within the limits of experience. The two forms of thought, morphology and symbolism, have themselves been developed in the context of a historical situation, viz. the one characterized by the names of the two towns of Jena and Weimar.60 Could morphology and symbolism, if methodologically combined, help to conceive of the unity of this historical event?
Both forms of thought proceed from the empirical multiplicity and from thence search for unity and interrelatedness. The morphological approach, by a comparative procedure, joins together partial occurrences or events whose existence can be empirically proved. Speaking of partial events necessarily presupposes their integration into some process. The morphological approach enquires into their structural similarities and dissimilarities and also into their different relations and contexts. The symbolic approach helps to envisage the partial events as ‘eminent cases’ in a historical configuration, events which stand for themselves while at the same time referring to each other in the way of a metonymic symbolism. No partial event can claim an absolute meaning, but each has a specific meaning. If understood in the sense of Schiller’s critique, the symbolic approach also makes clear that even well-documented, verifiable historical events are not simply given but have to be established in the context of an interpretation of a superior whole. Schiller is acutely aware that the historian could not operate without the heuristic of a regulative idea.61 The subject of symbolic cognition is essentially involved in the realization of cognition. Morphological comparison too, when applied to complex historical events as suggested by Goethe, refers us to the subjects of cognition: the patterns of morphology must themselves be epistemically justified, for they depict the subjects’ attempts at organizing and interpreting the wealth of phenomena.62 The morphological and the symbolical order of things is not given but made, the cognition of reality an interminable process.
Translated by Katrin Grünepütt
1. ‘Morphologie. Ruht auf der Überzeugung daß alles was sey sich auch andeuten und zeigen müsse. [...] Das unorganische, das vegetative, das animale das menschliche deutet sich alles selbst an, es erscheint als was es ist unserm äussern und unserm inneren Sinn. Die Gestalt ist ein bewegliches, ein werdendes, ein vergehendes. Gestaltenlehre ist Verwandlungslehre. Die Lehre der Metamorphose ist der Schlüssel zu allen Zeichen der Natur’ [Morphology rests on the conviction that everything that is must also manifest and show itself. [...] The inorganic, the vegetable, the animal, the human, all manifests itself, appears as what it is, to our outer and inner sense. Form is something mobile, that comes into being and passes away. The science of form is the science of transformation. The doctrine of metamorphosis is the key to all of Nature’s signs]. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Morphologie [1796]. In Goethes Werke, ed. by commission of the Grand Duchess Sophie von Sachsen. Sections I–IV, 133 vols in 143 (Weimar, 1887–1919; photomechanical reprint Munich, 1987), II, 6, p. 446. All references to Goethe are to this edition, henceforth under the abbreviation WA (i.e. Weimarer-Ausgabe).
2. Letter to Schiller, 16 and 17 August 1797. WA IV, 12, pp. 243–47 (p. 246).
3. In his diary entry for 25 September 1796 (WA III, 2, p. 48), written during a stay in Jena, Goethe used the term for the first time.
4. Cf. Dorothea Kuhn, ‘Goethes Morphologie. Geschichte — Prinzipien — Folgen’, in Ty pus und Metamorphose. Goethe-Studien, ed. by Renate Grumach (Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1988), pp. 188–202 (p. 196).
5. Cf. Goethe, ‘Betrachtung über Morphologie überhaupt’. WA II, 6, pp. 292 f.
6. Letter to Schiller, 12 November 1796. WA IV, 11, p. 260.
7. Letter from Schiller to Goethe, 13 November 1796. In Werke. Begründet von Julius Petersen, fortgeführt von Lieselotte Blumenthal und Benno von Wiese, ed. by Norbert Oellers et al. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1943–), vol. 29, p. 4. All references to Schiller are to this edition, henceforth under the abbreviation NA (i.e. Nationalausgabe).
8. Kuhn, ‘Goethes Morphologie’, p. 197.
9. Aristotle, Metaphysics VII, 8, 1033 b.
10. Cf. Georg Picht, Aristoteles’ ‘De anima’ (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), pp. 274–77.
11. Cf. Joachim Schulte, ‘Chor und Gesetz. Zur “morphologischen Methode” bei Goethe und Wittgenstein’, in Joachim Schulte, Chor und Gesetz. Wittgenstein im Kontext (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990), pp. 11–42.
12. Goethe, Nacharbeiten und Sammlungen. WA II, 6, p. 172: the ‘mind’s eyes’ see ‘wie Gestalt in Gestalt sich wandelt’ [how Gestalt changes into Gestalt]; see also Letter to J. S. M. D. Boisserée, 24 November 1831 (WA IV, 49, p. 152); Letter to Schultz, 1 September 1820 (WA IV, 33, p. 185).
13. Cf. Helmut Hühn, ‘ “Epídosis eis hauto”. Zur morphologischen Geschichtsbetrachtung bei Johann Gustav Droysen’, in Morphologie und Moderne. Goethes ‘anschauliches Denken’ in den Geistesund Kulturwissenschaften seit 1800, ed. by Jonas Maatsch and Thorsten Valk (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2012).
14. Letter from Schiller to Goethe, 23 August 1794. NA 27, p. 25. Translations into English draw upon: Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller, 1794–1805, trans. by Liselotte Dieckmann (New York: Peter Lang, 1994). See Goethe, ‘Der Versuch als Vermittler von Object und Subject’. WA II, 11, p. 31: ‘In der lebendigen Natur geschieht nichts, was nicht in einer Verbindung mit dem Ganzen stehe’ [Nothing happens in living nature that does not bear some relation to the whole]; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Scientific Studies, ed. and trans. by Douglas Miller (New York: Suhrkamp, 1988), p. 15.
15. Goethe, Erfahrung und Wissenschaft (1798). WA II, 11. pp. 38–41 (p. 38).
16. See Goethe’s Letter to Schiller, 21 February 1798. WA IV, 13, p. 72.
17. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1830), Einleitung, in Werke, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, vol. 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), p. 9.
18. Enzyklopädie § 246. Werke vol. 9, p. 21; § 345, ibid., p. 392; cf. the Introduction to the present volume, p. 3.
19. Cf. Olaf Breidbach, Goethes Metamorphosenlehre (Munich: Fink, 2006), p. 122.
20. Cf. Goethe, ‘Ganymed’ (WA I, 2, p. 80): ‘Umfangend umfangen!’ [Embracing, embraced!].
21. ‘Paralipomena’. WA II, 6, p. 446.
22. See Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft B 37. Akademie-Ausgabe vol. 3, pp. 51 f.
23. Cf. Frauke Berndt and Heinz J. Drügh (eds.), ‘Einleitung’, Symbol. Grundtexte zur Ästhetik, Poetik und Kulturwissenschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009), pp. 21–37 (pp. 28 f.).
24. Letter to Schiller, 16 and 17 August 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 247.
25. For the changes that occurred in Goethe’s thinking in 1797 see Stefan Blechschmidt, Goethes lebendiges Archiv. Mensch — Morphologie — Geschichte (Heidelberg: Winter, 2010), pp. 11–24.
26. WA IV, 12, p. 326. Cf., however, his letter to Schiller from 12 August 1797, where he sets the ‘Sattheit der Empirie’ [richness of experience] against totality (‘Totalität’): WA IV 12, p. 234.
27. ‘Der Versuch als Vermittler von Object und Subject’. WA II, 11, p. 32 (where he speaks of following every single experiment through its variations); ‘Verbindung objectiver und subjectiver Versuche’. WA II, 1, p. 148.
28. Letter to Schiller, 16 and 17 August 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 243.
29. Ibid., pp. 243 f.
30. Letter to Schiller, 12 August 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 231.
31. Letter to Schiller, 16 and 17 August 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 244.
32. Ibid., pp. 245 f.
33. Cf. the draft (‘Concept’) of Goethe’s letter to K. A. Böttiger, 16 August 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 240.
34. Dichtung und Wahrheit, Erster Theil. WA I, 26, pp. 55 ff.
35. See Goethe’s elegy ‘Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen’. WA I, 1, pp. 290–92 (p. 291).
36. Letter to Schiller, 16 and 17 August 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 246.
37. For the notion of an absolute representation in art (‘absolute Kunstdarstellung’) see Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Philosophie der Kunst § 39. In Sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Karl Friedrich August Schelling (Stuttgart, Augsburg: Cotta, 1856–61), vol. I, 5, pp. 406–13 (p. 411); System des transscendentalen Idealismus, ibid., I, 3, p. 625.
38. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft § 49 (Akademie-Ausgabe vol. 5, p. 314): ‘unter einer ästhetischen Idee aber verstehe ich diejenige Vorstellung der Einbildungskraft, die viel zu denken veranlaßt, ohne daß ihr doch irgend ein bestimmter Gedanke, d.i. Begriff, adäquat sein kann, die folglich keine Sprache völlig erreicht und verständlich machen kann’ [By an aesthetic idea I understand that representation of the imagination which occasions much thought, without however any definite thought, i.e. any concept, being capable of being adequate to it; it consequently cannot be completely compassed and made intelligible by language]: Critique of Judgment, trans. by J. H. Bernard (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2000), B 192 f.
39. Goethe, like Kant, stands in the tradition of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s concept of perceptio praegnans.
40. For a discussion of this problem cf. Axel Hutter, ‘Hegels Philosophie des Geistes’, in Hegel-Studien, 42 (2007), 81–97 (p. 86).
41. For the problem of constructing a uniform concept of symbol see the Introduction to the present volume.
42. For Goethe’s methodology see his ‘Der Versuch als Vermittler von Object und Subject’. WA II, 11, p. 21: ‘Sobald der Mensch die Gegenstände um sich her gewahr wird, betrachtet er sie in Bezug auf sich selbst, und mit Recht’ [As soon as man becomes aware of objects in his environment he will relate them to himself, and rightly so].
43. Heinz Schlaffer, Faust Zweiter Teil. Die Allegorie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1989), pp. 18 f.
44. Cf. Goethe’s letter to Schiller, 9 August 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 216.
45. Cf. Gottfried Gabriel, ‘Bestimmte Unbestimmtheit — in der ästhetischen Erkenntnis und im ästhetischen Urteil’, in Das unendliche Kunstwerk. Von der Bestimmtheit des Unbestimmten in der ästhetischen Erfahrung, ed. by Gerhard Gamm and Eva Schürmann (Hamburg: Philo, 2007), pp. 141–56, esp. pp. 145 f.
46. Goethe, Letter to Schiller, 16 and 17 August 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 244.
47. Letter to Schiller, 29 July 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 209.
48. See Letter to Schiller, 16 and 17 August 1797. WA IV, 12, p. 246.
49. Schiller, Letter to Goethe, 7 and 8 September 1797. NA 29, p. 127.
50. Schiller, Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. NA 20, p. 441; for the English translation cf. On the Naive and Sentimental in Literature, trans. by Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly (Manchester: Carcanet, 1981).
51. Letter to Goethe, 7 and 8 September 1797. NA 29, p. 127.
52. Ibid.; cf. with respect to Schiller’s concept of poetical symbolization, letter to Goethe, 31 August 1794. NA 27, p. 32: ‘Mein Verstand wirkt eigentlich mehr symbolisierend, und so schwebe ich als eine ZwitterArt, zwischen dem Begriff und der Anschauung [...]’ [My understanding works more in a symbolizing way, and so I hover like a hybrid between concept and intuition].
53. Cf. Goethe, [Mein Verhältniß zu Schiller]. WA I, 42.2, p. 146; Bengt Algot Sørensen, Symbol und Symbolismus in den ästhetischen Theorien des 18. Jahrhunderts und der deutschen Romantik (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1963), p. 105.
54. Rüdiger Safranski, Goethe und Schiller. Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Munich: Hanser, 2009), p. 199.
55. See Johann Heinrich Meyer, ‘Über die Gegenstände der bildenden Kunst’, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens, ed. by Karl Richter et al., 20 vols in 33 (Munich: Hanser, 1985–98), vol. 6.2, pp. 27–68.
56. Goethe, ‘Über die Gegenstände der bildenden Kunst’. WA I, 47, p. 95.
57. See the Introduction to the present volume.
58. For Herder’s doctrine of the natural symbol which signifies by virtue of its inherent qualities cf. Herder, Kalligone, III, 4, in Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 8, ed. by Hans Dietrich Irmscher (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1998), p. 952; ibid., p. 956: ‘Jedes Ding bedeutet, d. i. es trägt die Gestalt dessen was es ist; die darstellendsten, ausdrückendsten, prägnantesten sind also die Natursymbole’ [Every thing signifies, i.e. it bears the Gestalt of that which it is; whence the natural symbols are those that represent most, express most and are the most meaningful].
59. Goethe, Letter to Schiller, 16 and 17 August 1797. WA IV, 12, pp. 246 f.
60. In a cross-disciplinary collaboration conbining approaches from the humanities, cultural studies and natural sciences, the special research project ‘SFB 482: The Weimar-Jena Phenomenon: Culture around 1800’ (finalized 2010) explored the uniquely productive and intensive communication and interaction that took place in and between Weimar and Jena around 1800. The aim of the research was to examine the interrelation of Enlightenment, Classicism, Idealism and Romanticism so characteristic for the phenomenon Weimar-Jena.
61. Cf. Friedrich Schiller, ‘Was heisst und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte?’ (1789), in NA 17, pp. 359–76 (p. 373).
62. Taking his lead from Goethe’s insight, Novalis develops the idea of a morphological order of knowledge: cf. Friedrich von Hardenberg [Novalis], Das Allgemeine Brouillon (1798/99), in Schriften, ed. by Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960), vol. 3, p. 452 (Nr. 967): ‘Göthische Behandlung der Wissenschaften — mein Project’ [Goethean treatment of the sciences — my project]. Cf. Jonas Maatsch, ‘Naturgeschichte der Philosopheme’. Frühromantische Wissensordnungen im Kontext (Heidelberg: Winter, 2008), pp. 219 ff.