THIS BOOK IS ENTITLED Reading Goethe, and it is our hope that, whatever it may not have achieved, it will have served to encourage the reading of Goethe's works, not as an adulatory act, but as an exercise in critical reflection. Surveying that oeuvre and our attempts to assist in the reading of it, we inevitably find ourselves looking for some summary definition of why Goethe still has urgent claims to make on us today. Three reflections suggest themselves.

One has to do with his ability to address and express what one might describe as a central philosophical concern in human living, namely the issue of self-consciousness, of the relationship between mind and body. Faust is a central text in this respect, of course; but throughout the oeuvre one senses Goethe reflecting on the human ability, and need, to reflect. Time and time again he conveys the ways in which, and the extent to which, consciousness both problematizes and intensifies human experience. Goethe is one of the greatest philosophical writers of modern Europe, not in the sense that he has a preordained philosophy that he wishes to put across, but rather in the multiple ways in which he anchors the process of thinking, of philosophizing, in the dynamic of living.

Our second consideration in respect of Goethe's immediacy derives from his ability to interrogate and thereby define modern culture. As we have seen, Faust is again a key text in this regard. And it is worth reminding ourselves that all the central projects which claimed Goethe's attention more or less throughout his creative life — Faust, Wilhelm Meister, and the scientific work — are germane to the understanding of the modern world with its secular, individualist, scientific mindset.

The third aspect of Goethe's art that brings him close to us is somewhat more difficult to define: it has to do with what one can perhaps best describe as his tone. On frequent occasions, and especially in respect of the poetry, we have sought to draw attention to the intimate connection between Goethe's diction and colloquial speech. And, strikingly, such moments are not just throw-away remarks, not just fleeting concessions to everyday, even banal, experience. Rather, they seem to come from the very heart of his literary and spiritual concerns. A line from the end of Faust II will illustrate what we mean.