Goethe and Phenomenology

To most, Charles Darwin's story is simply the birth of the Theory of Evolution. In reality, the story of how Darwin came to this theory, and the many people who would shape his destiny, is itself a story that needs to be told. Like many superhero movies of the 21st century, Darwin has a " back story " , the tale of how Darwin became Darwin. Darwin's story can appeal to many readers on different levels. On the purely academic level the work traces the influence of Alexander von Humboldt, Goethe and Wordsworth, in addition to Erasmus Darwin, on the development of Charles Darwin's theory of natural and sexual selection. On another level is the story of the development of Darwin's imagination and how this enabled his theories to evolve during the Victorian era when it was difficult to express them, yet at the same time in an era which encouraged them. This was a very contradictory time in history indeed. Charles Darwin's Debt to the Romantics is an attempt to mirror Darwin's own narrative, in which, through his imagination, he engages in conversation with the reader on a journey to discover the laws behind the process in which life evolves. These traces in time, moving both backwards into the past and forwards into the future, are like footprints in the sand, some of which get washed away never to be seen again. What drew me to this research was the Romantic notion of the imagination in which the self is so very much a part of Nature. We try very hard to observe nature objectively, but we can never get away from being subjectively part of it at the same time, just through the very act of observing it through our senses or through the act of remembering what we have seen, or think we have seen. And these footprints, or recreated memories of our past, are there for us to see today in fossils or archaeological remains — a mental map of our descent. What makes all of this so Romantic is the almost terrifying or sublime notion that mind has come from matter — that mind evolved and originated from that which was not mind. This is surely one of the greatest mysteries of our very existence — that science, poetry, literature, language, thought and culture have all ultimately evolved from inorganic nature (and this, of course, is only part of the story, as inorganic nature evolved before this).

Poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s scientific studies grew out of a disenchantment with the reductionist science of his time. He believed a more accurate description of nature was possible. Goethe’s scientific method paralleled the methodology of art current in his era, and very likely arose, at least in part, from pre-existing traditions of knowledge in the visual arts. The study of similarities between Goethe’s scientific method and the methodology of art could provide insights into both disciplines, and insights into the intentions that drove Goethe’s scientific studies.

Karl Julius Schröer. "The Natural Scientific Writings of Goethe" (1884), translated by David W. Wood.
The following text is Schröer's Foreword to volume one of Rudolf Steiner's edition of Goethe's Natural Scientific Writings. The text is historically notable among others insofar as Schröer introduces  in it the young Steiner to the scholarly world. The German version was published in Kürschner’s Deutsche National-Litteratur = Goethes Werke, Volume 33, 1884, pp. I – XIV.
The following translation is a revised version of a text that originally appeared in Archetype, the journal of the Science Group of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain (ed. Dr. David J. Heaf), in September 1999, pp. 35-46.
https://sciencegroup.org.uk/journal/

Design’s attempts to address social, ethical and environmental concerns of our time have often been marred by theory generated by well-meaning scholars who have imposed hard-line definitions and models of what it means to be an ‘ethical designer’. These arguments abstract values and impose ideological and political positions that designers can find difficult to apply in their daily practices. It is not as simple as prescribing the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ values for designers to have and translate them through design. Whatever values there are, those values need to matter to people who care about them enough to translate them into action . Values are not impersonal. They cannot be detached and be subsumed under a more universal value or comparable importance. The paper opens with a critique of this prescriptive approach to highlight the reasons for why ethical design remains stuck in a rut. I then move to discuss more deeply, the close relationship between being ethical and being a human-centred practitioner in design. In doing so, I critique common notions of human-centred design that gives it an ergonomic, human-factors emphasis, or its ‘do-gooder’ side that is associated with humanitarian design. Instead, I offer an alternative framework for human-centred design based on the Japanese ethical concept woven into what it means to be human.

The Japanese term for ‘human being’ is ningen (人間), composed of two characters for ‘person’ (人), and ‘between’ (間). The Japanese understanding of human as in-betweenness, etymologised by ‘between person’, situates it as a relational being. This is the central framework for my notions of ‘self’ and being ‘human’ . This concept of human is strikingly different from major Western philosophies that emphasises ‘anthropos’ or ‘homo’, denoting the individual. Being human-centred is criticised for perpetuating an anthropocentric position , further contributing to humanity’s self-centredness and environmentally destructive behaviour. The profound ethical difference of conceiving humans as detached and in isolation, compared to the Japanese concept of human as relational in-betweennes, is argued by one of the most significant Japanese philosophers of the twentieth century, Tetsuro Watsuji . He was influenced by hermeneutics, phenomenology, Zen Buddhism and the Japanese indigenous spirituality of Shinto. In his book Rinrigaku, ethics in Japan, Watsuji is critical of Western philosophy (Heidegger and many others ) that emphasises the individual concept of self and the locus of the ethical problem pertaining to the consciousness of the individual. The paper dives deeply into Watsuji’s ethical framework in explaining the ningen ‘between person’ that is significant to my definition of being human-centred. I attempt to combine the Eastern philosophy with the West by bringing in a selection of other philosophers such as Goethe, Bortoft and Merleau-Ponty that have resonance with the argument constructed. There is nothing to be gained from East-West dualism or exoticism, as it locks down discourse. Although these Eastern and Western philosophies that I draw upon have not, until now, directly engaged with each other in the discourse of design , they have many valuable overlaps that I would like to share in this paper.

The relational association located in the betweenness, Watsuji argues, to be human is to shift and change continually – it is undergoing a process of constant transformation. The transformation of a designer to being a human-centred practitioner is achieved in relation to others. This connection between self and others (including people, animals, objects and environment) is essential in positioning and embedding oneself in the world. The transformative process is more than cognitive learning or professional development – it is in fact a process of self-awareness that comes from continually reflecting on our activity, our behaviour and how we are with others. This is reflective practice. Though in contrast to reflection and reflective practice that is grounded in critical theory , I explore this by incorporating aspects of wholeness from Goethe’s phenomenology and embodied perception by Merleau-Ponty . I argue the importance of being a reflective practitioner as the first step in being able to fully understand ourselves, our relationship and our connection to others. This pursuit of self-awareness, through reflective practice, is the central argument of this paper of being a human-centred practitioner. Through weaving together these various frameworks, I discuss the cyclical journey of transformation of the self where reflection is experienced in an immersive, affective, embodied way.

True, long-term sustainable change towards building and creating an ethical practice cannot come from being told what to design or choosing the ‘right’ values to adopt. Neither does it come from simply undertaking community-based projects, taking up a social cause or deploying participatory methods. To manifest and practise human-centredness is not a switch one can flick ‘on’ when you are in the design studio at 9am and ‘off’ when you’re leaving work. Instead, I stress the importance of human-centredness manifesting through all facets of our lives that involves engaging in the in-betweenness with others. It requires active creation and the practising of practice that is truly human-centred and aware – aware of oneself, of others and the world we live in. It is a day-to-day application and manifestation, but it is not merely a mechanical repetition. The significance of this being a practice is that it is a transformation and evolution of ourselves in bringing an awareness and embedded-ness to what we do everyday. It is a path (Tao) we each carve our ‘way of being’ in the world.

Everyone has heard the name Niels Bohr. And everyone knows that he was one of the greatest physicists in modern times, and one of the founders of quantum theory (QT). But commonly that is also the limit of our knowledge. It is not everyman’s business to say what novel insights about the world we gain from the quantum theory. Does it change our worldview? If so, then how?

Not only was the story really all about Snape, and not about, say, Harry. It turns out Snape is a key to many things, as is typically the main character in the  Bildungsroman tradition. Snape is important because he helps us think about the limits of what we can know about the contradictions of liberal educational philosophy, including the politics of aesthetics.

The role of darkness has been overlooked by philosophical theories of color. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Theory of Colors gives a special metaphysical status to darkness, but his romantic-holistic phenomenology applies its principle to color phenomena perhaps too closely, and in the end he misses the opportunity to say anything ontological about metaphysical darkness. On the other hand, in his essay “Eye and Mind,” Maurice Merleau-Ponty critiques the prevailing Cartesian achromatic optics in favor of the aesthetic optics of Paul Cezanne, and goes so far as to introduce what he calls “the dimension of color” (Merleau-Ponty 141) to counter the primacy of the Cartesian res extensa, but misses the opportunity to ground it in the special phenomena of darkness. The place of darkness in Goethe’s Theory of Colors fulfills what was lacking in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of “the dimension of color” (141), and Merleau- Ponty contributes an ontology to Goethe’s Theory of Colors.

This paper will demonstrate the method of Goethean observation as a means of surveying and appraising landscape which allows a role for a schooled subjectivity.  Similarities between this method and phenomenological studies will be made.  To explore what Goethe’s scientific method is, the first section of this paper discusses the Goethean method as taught by the School of Life Science.  I then move on to the situation of attempting to apply the method as a means to understand the Genius Loci of a specific place.  The final section records what happens when the same place is then revisited.  The method, as negotiated by the group applying it, is examined by describing the experience and examining the intersubjective consistencies and discrepancies that arose within the group.  In conclusion I suggest the way in which this method could be used to approach landscape in an informed way that is also sensitive to the phenomenon of the place itself.

Abstract: From a previous discussion of Newton, Goethe and Kandinsky, Isaac Newton was less well presented, as he poses limits in the world of the arts. It was to be noted this brief statement on the three historical figures also opened in an art post not a science post. Art does contain science such as Euclid’s mathematical proportions, perspective, anatomy, biology and so on but Fine-Art is not a Science in of itself. So Newton’s scientific theory of color presents the spectrum of color just as Goethe does initially but Newton does not consider the whole dynamic functions of creativity which can be applied to fine-art.

This article investigates the intellectual history of the argument for the antiquity of Exodus 34,11–26. In the contemporary debate about pentateuchal theory, a question that remains insufficiently addressed is how and why the idea originally developed that the unit represents an ancient, independent, pre-Deuteronomic legal source. Wellhausen credited the idea to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Zwo bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen . . .” (1773). Like Goethe, Wellhausen regarded the unit as a “ritual Decalogue,” in contrast to the “ethical Decalogue” of Exodus 20. The distinction helped Wellhausen consolidate the classical model of the documentary hypothesis: he attributed the cultic Decalogue to the Yahwist and the ethical to the Elohist. Despite the importance of Goethe’s essay to the history of pentateuchal criticism, it is not clear that its arguments have previously been investigated.

Keywords: Julius Wellhausen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Baruch Spinoza, Zwo bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen, Dekalog, Decalogue, Pentateuch, Exodus, German Jewish history, Christian Jewish relations, Ten Commandments, history of biblical scholarship, German Romanticism, Pentateuchal theory, documentary hypothesis, German intellectual history, Old Testament, cultic Decalogue, ethical Decalogue, ritual Decalogue, Covenant Code, Elohistic source, Yahwistic source, Exod. 34:11-26, Romans 11

Timeless awareness is the essence of Dzogchen. Time experienced within timeless awareness is also an expression of the essence of Dzogchen. Dzogchen is an ancient form of Tibetan mystic humanism. Dzogchen makes the essential distinction between mind and awareness. A person can be located in mind alone and locked in time. As a person shifts from being located in mind alone (mindfulness) and goes beyond mind alone (mindfulness), one becomes aware of their own awareness. As we focus our awareness on our own innermost awareness, vast dimensions of awareness begin to open and self-reveal its nature to us. Awareness is a multidimensional experience and this awareness is infinite in its horizons. The innate qualities of awareness are spaciousness or openness or emptiness. Another quality of our awareness is luminous radiance and still another is awareness as energy. Awareness is alive and is both vast stillness and unceasing movement. The Union of Mind and Awareness When a person is able to experience the union of their mind and their awareness, then the person has a simultaneous experience of being in time and in timeless awareness. The mind is the place of thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and imagination and the mind is the mode of knowing singularity and difference in the world. This is the realm of ordinary knowingness and this is the realm of duality. Our mind is the realm of time. This time bound knowing is the knowing of you and I, us and them, this or that in time and place.

This essay posits that equanimous vision is an approach best suited to seeing objects of inquiry in their fullest reality. In its free-floating attending to what is, equanimity never tries to make sense out of things through fixed concepts/abstractions or single perspectives. Rather, it remains mobile, and describes a way of describing the enactive perception necessary for the insights supporting interpretations of natural, aesthetic, and economic phenomena. The essay will mobilize a few thinkers (e. g., Goethe, Alva Noë, Hilary Putnam) and a few narratives drawn from Zen Buddhism in order to reflect upon the ways in which equanimity may inform the process of knowledge itself—how it is we come to know.  It is precisely this encounter of Eastern and Western thought that allows us to appreciate the full extent to which the analytical intellect alone is inadequate to full, real, useful inquiry.

As I will argue, one of the remarkable things about the equanimous approach to knowing is that, by seeing comprehensively, it engages a higher cognitive function than abstracting what is general. Equanimity, despite its broad and sweeping attention, is not primarily a search for commonality in the form of a common plan or general order for things. Rather, by also looking for the internal “spirit” (Goethe) or essence of the thing, it appreciates how parts and wholes intertwine. In this way, it challenges traditional ways of seeing/knowing by overcoming separation but not at the level of separation. In other words, if the mind looks for unity by removing differences, then it works abstractly by means of seeing generally. The equanimous mind, by not taking abstractions as ends, works by apprehending things comprehensively, understanding differences as a unity. In this way, it is free to travel in the opposite direction to knowing or thinking abstractly. Equanimity is well suited for attending to the ways things are internally related to each other as dynamic elements of an expansive, indivisible totality. To know such a totality demands more than safe, disengaged spectatorship, inviting instead involvement sometimes as shambolic as the world itself.

This thesis offers an interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of scientific knowledge, particularly as this is presented in the Posterior Analytics. The interpretation draws on the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science informing the scientific work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It is argued that the interpretation of Aristotle as a rational empiricist in the Goethean sense helps to resolve many central problems in Aristotle’s theory of scientific knowledge. The widely accepted view that Aristotle is torn between incompatible empiricist and rationalist tendencies is described; particularly in relation to the problems associated with the interpretation of epagoge as “induction,” and of nous as an a priori intellectual intuition. Aristotle’s position is shown to be fully coherent when interpreted in terms of a theory of knowledge that transcends the opposition between empiricism and rationalism. Goethe’s rational empiricism is described and is shown to be precisely the theory of knowledge needed to understand Aristotle. A Goethean account of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge is given, focusing on the nature and role of the archai that serve as the first principles of Aristotelian science. It is argued that Aristotle’s archai are best understood as Urphänomene in the Goethean sense. A detailed interpretation is provided of Aristotle’s concept of nous in relation to his theory of knowledge. Aristotle’s account of the cognitive process in Posterior Analytics 2.19 is analysed, the interpretation of epagoge as “induction” is criticised and an alternative account is offered. Finally, an account of Aristotle’s conception of scientific method is presented, and it is argued that, contrary to some interpretations, the Posterior Analytics does contain a general account of the method of scientific discovery.

Este artículo busca proporcionar nuevas perspectivas para una lectura reflexiva de la Teoría de los colores de Goethe, que permitan su puesta en valor más allá de la reconocida polémica con las ideas científicas de Newton, a partir del reconocimiento de la actitud proto-fenomenológica del poeta alemán y su interés en la experiencia directa y subjetiva del fenómeno cromático. Además se abordan otros aportes de la Teoría, fundamentales para comprender la importante influencia de Goethe en la configuración del conocimiento contemporáneo sobre color.

"My thesis explicates and defends what I term an implicit Goetheanism present in the philosophy of Walter Benjamin.

It begins by examining Benjamin’s early critique of the Kantian and neo-Kantian concept of experience and argues that a Goethean theory of the primal phenomenon provides the phenomenological model for Benjamin’s radical transformation of the neo-Kantian Idea. I analyse the importance of Goethe’s aesthetics of science for Benjamin’s critical development of Early German Romanticism and suggest that Goethe’s tender empiricism provides the intellectual backdrop to Benjamin’s later materialism. The chromatic-linguistic model of experience which informs Benjamin’s earliest writings is shown to develop into a dialectics of refractive expression, one that has important consequences for his concept of history and his unorthodox version of cultural materialism.

My final chapter examines the influence of Goethe upon what it argues is Benjamin’s quasi-Jungian criticism of Marxism, defending the importance of Jung’s semiotic critique of Freud’s theory of dream symbolism and its relevance for a materialist interpretation of ideology. The relationship between the Goethean and Jungian concepts of synthesis explains Benjamin’s proximity to a Jungian concept of the unconscious, it is argued, which is justified on the condition that a critique of Jung distinguishes the archaic image from Benjamin’s dialectical image. This is performed in the final chapter through a consideration of the allegorical and the technological in Jung and Benjamin’s differing receptions of Goethe’s Faust. The existential component of Goethe’s speculative concept of experience provides Benjamin with the resources for thinking of a dialectic of historical completion and incompletion, it is concluded, which is necessary for a philosophical informed cultural materialism."

The problems involved in understanding the Aristotelian notion of an arche arise from the widely accepted view that Aristotle’s theory of knowledge is torn between irreconcilable empiricist and rationalist tendencies. I argue that several puzzling features of the Aristotelian arche are clarified when it is understood as akin to the Urphänomen, which plays a central role in the scientific thought of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. More broadly, I argue that the apparent conflict in Aristotle’s theory of knowledge is resolved by seeing that Aristotle is neither an empiricist, nor a rationalist, but a “rational empiricist” akin to Goethe.

This summer/fall 2018 issue of Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology includes the following items:
• A “book note” on the recently published 2nd edition of philosopher Jeff Malpas’ groundbreaking Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography, originally published in 1999. This expanded version includes a new chapter on place and technological modernity, “especially the seeming loss of place in the contemporary world.”
• A “book note” on EAP editor David Seamon’s recently published Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds and Place Making, which gives particular attention to the generative aspects of place and locates six place processes that Seamon identifies as place interaction, place identity, place release, place realization, place intensification, and place creation.
• An essay by the late philosopher and science educator Henri Bortoft, who focuses on ways of thinking holistically, including the conceptual efforts of proto-phenomenologist Wolfgang Johann von Goethe; physicists Niels Bohr and David Bohm; and philosophers J. G. Bennett, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
• An essay by retired environmental educator John Cameron, who begins a new series of essays on the lived relationship between interiority and exteriority, particularly as qualities of the natural world and place contribute to that relationship.

Part III of this series, subtitled Spiritualizing the Knowledge of Space, addresses the admonition given my Rudolf Steiner in his last address wherein he encourages us to take up the Michael Power and the Michael Will to penetrate the whole of life to meet the challenges of our time. The crux of the matter revolves around puzzling out the enigmatic statement of Gurnemanz to Parsifal taken from Wagner's opera libretto for Parsifal, in which he characterizes the environs of the grail castle: "You see, my son, here time becomes space." Penetrating to the meaning of time as it is used in this context we see that it refers to a quite particular disposition of knowledge to the aspiring inititiate that comes by way of an actual meeting with the Time Spirit himself, Archangel Michael.

Since Bill McKibben’s 1989 book, The End of Nature, it has become commonplace to pronounce the ‘end’ of that which, for many decades, we called nature. Although in many instances the reiterations of the end of nature do not agree with McKibben’s reasoning — instead, offering reasons quite contrary to his — they concur on the premise that nature is not a plausible or desirable concept for environmental thought or activism. Alongside this growing trend in environmental philosophy, a number of studies have recently appeared which reconsider the environmental significance of romanticism. While an environmental interest in romanticism is not surprising, it is very surprising given the increasingly pervasive critique of the idea of nature. After all, for the romantics, nature (not the environment, or ecology, or biodiversity) was the most significant and central concern. In this chapter, I offer an environmental reappraisal of romanticism, which takes account of the recent critiques of the idea of nature. My goals are historical and systematic. First, I seek to assess the validity of the environmentalist critique of the romantic conception of nature by distinguishing different traditions or strands within romantic thought. I argue that within romanticism, we find a tradition that emphasizes empirical experience, careful observation and methodological inquiry, and offers a conception of nature that cannot be criticized as an idealized or abstracted transcendental entity. Second, I consider the systematic significance of this “romantic empiricism,” and argue that while an abstract or idealized notion of nature is indeed problematic, a concrete conception that is achieved through the mutually supportive work of observation and reflection is essential for environmental thought. In particular, I contend that it is only on the basis of the kind of careful empirical observation and rigorous ontological account of nature that we find in the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that an environmental ethic is possible. In Goethe’s approach, we find a notion of epistemological responsibility or obligation that offers the first step toward developing a sustainable environmental ethic.

This paper argues that Cassirer's thinking about the relationship between the different symbolic forms is best elucidated via the paradigm of "organic harmony." Although Cassirer did not use the term himself, the harmonious cooperation between the parts found in the organic world provided him with a welcome alternative to traditional accounts of order (i.e. identity or hierarchy). This paper will give three examples of "organic harmony": Goethe and his idealistic morphology, Wilhelm von Humboldt's account of language, Herder's account of history. The thought of all three example key characteristics of "organic harmony": holism, particularism/perspectivism, and subjective judgment. This paper will show that Cassirer's own "organic harmony" is indebted to these thinkers. From the perspective of "organic harmony" we can make better sense of the pluralistic spirit of Cassirer's PSF as well as providing it with greater theoretical articulation. This paper also shows how the motif of organic harmony is the normative moment in his own challenge to 20 th c. fascism. Finally, this paper argues that the Cassirerian emphasis on finding a coherence which does justice to the uniqueness of particulars-i.e. harmony-is an ethical injunction relevant for our times.

Physicist, philosopher, and science educator Henri Bortoft died on December 29, 2012, at his home in England. He was 74 years old. Bortoft’s work has an important conceptual and applied connection to this special issue of Phenomenology + Practice because it speaks to a particular mode of environmental encounter that might be called a “phenomenology of the natural world.” His work is central to “environmental practice” because he presents an empathetic way of engaging the phenomena of nature whereby they “reveal” themselves in an accurate and comprehensive way. Here, I offer my recollections of the man and his work. My aim is to describe some first-hand encounters with Bortoft and to suggest some of the ways that his work offers fruitful possibilities for “environmental phenomenology and environmental practice.”

Empirical science is not a mere collection of facts. It builds theories and frames hypotheses within those theories. Empirical theories are stated as plausible answers to questions we pose to nature. According to the Galilean-Baconian tradition within science, these questions should basically explore the causes of observed phenomena, and further be restricted to the measurable and quantitative realm. Thus, the answers are generally expected to explain the effective causes behind the actual phenomena. By framing falsifiable hypotheses, the theories are tested against the empirical foundation on which they rest. In this way we try to relieve science from false theories. Thus, we have two epistemological levels: First, the theoretical level; the scientific theory explaining the phenomena, and second, the empirical level; the phenomena or facts verifying or falsifying those theories. According to the poet and multi-scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), there is however another way of science, namely an approach where these two levels fuse and become one. Goethe intended this approach to be a complementation of the Galilean-Baconian method, more than an alternative. He considered his "hypothesis-free method" to be a more comprehensive and secure way to understand nature. Whereas the Galilean-Baconian method aimed at explaining the effective causes of natural phenomena, in order to control and exploit nature for technical and industrial purposes, Goethe aimed at an exposition of the inherent meaning of the phenomena.We will explore, exemplify and discuss this approach with reference to the inherently Goethean phenomenology of evolution credited to the Dutch anatomist Louis Bolk (1866-1930), later commented and complemented by Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) and Jos Verhulst (1949 ). In the course of this presentation we will outline the Goethean approach as a method representing a juvenilization or in Bolk's terms, a fetalization of science.

Concepts slides from a lecture for designers on Goethean Science. It asked the question 'can Goethe's approach to understanding the wholeness of natural organisms be applied to design process in order to design more appropriately and responsibly?'.

Goethe, le mythe et la science : Regards croisés dans les littératures européennes
COLLOQUE INTERNATIONAL
14-15-16 novembre 2018
Université de Haute-Alsace
Alors que la récente exposition de la Fondation Martin Bodmer  – Genève –  a mis
l’accent sur la place de la France dans le travail de Goethe et que l’attention s’attache de nouveau à la pensée goethéenne de façon insistante en ce début de XXIe siècle, il s’agit, dans le cadre transfrontalier et transdisciplinaire du laboratoire ILLE, de réévaluer ce que donne à penser aujourd’hui cette grande figure européenne qui a développé la notion de Weltliteratur. Goethe relève du domaine du mythe par son caractère fondateur et son immense retentissement : de Balzac – qui place La Comédie humaine sous l’autorité du «grand Goethe » – à  Valéry – avec Mon Faust, le Discours sur Goethe (1932) ou l’introduction au Poésies de Goethe (1946), avec Thomas Mann et Doktor Faustus  (1947), Giono et le Faust au village (1949) ou Butor et l’opéra Votre Faust (1969). Le cinéma n’est pas absent si l’on pense au Faust, une légende allemande, réalisé par Murnau en 1926 ou au Lion d’or de la Mostra de Venise en 2012 : le Faust, d’Alexandre Sokourov. On sait aussi que Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx ou Dilthey ont lu l’écrivain avec enthousiasme.