This chapter reconstructs Schopenhauer’s complex discussion of human sociability. Schopenhauer thought that agents in the domains of politics and morality cannot conceive of human togetherness. For him, the areas of politics and morality correspond to the exercise of egoism and the spontaneous feeling of compassion, respectively. But he added that egoism is rooted in a form of practical solipsism, and compassion is rooted in a metaphysical insight into the inessential nature of individuals. It follows that neither egoistic nor compassionate individuals ultimately care about others as others. Yet Schopenhauer supplemented these treatments of others as reducible with his discussion of sociability. His analysis of social interaction exemplified by conversations, games, and other diversions includes accounts of interpersonal harmony and friction among individuals who remain distinct from one another. Even though Schopenhauer rejected sociable interaction as superficial and embraced misanthropy, his reflections on sociability contain a conception of human community.

This chapter contrasts the approach to nature taken by Alexander von Humboldt and Hegel. In particular, it focuses upon the notion of Naturphilosophie and how it is developed in the work of both thinkers. It gives details from the work of Schiller, Goethe, and Schelling in order to provide historical context to the discussion. To clarify some of the contrasts between Humboldt’s and Hegel’s approaches to nature, the chapter focuses upon their approaches to the landscape and people of America. The fate of natural beauty in the work of both thinkers is highlighted. It argues, by reference to Adorno’s critique of Hegel, that while Humboldt gives natural beauty autonomy by not limiting it to what the subject contributes to it, Hegel’s view of nature is as repressed natural beauty, eclipsing it with human reason and human subjectivity. Ultimately, Humboldt’s more empirical approach, balanced with a recognition of the role of freedom, allows nature to come into clearer focus than it does in Hegel’s work. Hegel’s more abstract, speculative approach keeps nature too far from the empirical realm. In the case of our understanding of nature, Hegel’s clean hands become a problem, resulting in a Naturphilosophie that does not bring us close enough to nature or its beauties.

Serving as an introduction to the collection, this chapter underscores the significance of Hegel’s philosophy of nature within his comprehensive philosophical system and its relevance to contemporary philosophical engagement with empirical sciences. It explores the reception history of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, discussing several efforts to revitalize it over the last century and highlighting significant instances of its positive reception despite prevailing skepticism. Tracing the theoretical roots of Hegel’s philosophical interest in the natural world, from post-Kantian thought and the Romantic science movement, the chapter highlights Hegel’s engagement with figures such as Goethe and Schiller, which shaped his organicist views of nature. It examines Hegel’s evolving approach to nature, tracing the emergence of his own natural philosophy and its subsequent refinement in the Dissertatio, the Jena System Drafts, the Phenomenology, and the Encyclopaedia, all of which constitute the important stages of its development. Through successive revisions in the Encyclopaedia, Hegel incorporated advancements in scientific understanding, emphasizing the interplay between empirical observation and philosophical inquiry. In its final section, this chapter outlines the objectives and structure of the volume, emphasizing the revitalization of Hegel’s philosophy of nature beyond its historical context. It argues that Hegel’s approach provides insights into the intricate interplay between humanity and nature, recognizing its depth beyond mere physical needs. Therefore, reassessing his concepts from a modern perspective could generate new viewpoints on the relationship between nature and human culture.

This chapter examines H.D.’s Helen in Egypt (1961). While H.D. reviews her own life’s (Greek) work in her long poem in ways that recall Pound’s gathered currents in Women of Trachis, the challenge she sets herself is the opposite of that discernible in Pound’s late cantos: not coherence, but the embrace of proliferating images. The whole poem is an extended “hatching” of the Greek word eidolon ‘image, phantom, idol.’ The importance of the eidolon for H.D. has been previously recognized; the argument here differs in the specificity with which the author traces its lexical and conceptual translation throughout the poem. She reads the first part of Helen in Egypt both as a faithful and programmatic translation of Euripides’s Helen and as a revision of H.D.’s own previous writings on Helen. As with H.D.’s earlier translations, this one too catalyzes new writing: Helen in Egypt’s next two parts in subsequent years, where the Euripidean play’s import and relevance, as well as its unresolved tensions, are teased out. Helen in Egypt thus both performs and argues for the kind of approach to Greek here termed modernist hellenism: balancing freedom and constraint, “philology” and poetry.

Chapter 12 introduces Goethe’s two Wilhelm Meister novels. It problematises the notion of the Bildungsroman which is often assigned to the first novel, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship), and proposes that the two novels exemplify the four modes proposed by Northrop Frye: satire, irony and comedy in the case of the Lehrjahre, and, in the case of the sequel, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meisters Journeyman Years), romance. The chapter argues that the supposed disjunctions within and between the two novels are in fact part of their unifying principle.

Chapter 30 examines Goethe’s relationship with America. The country was for him an imagined space full of possibility, a historical frontier which opened onto modernity. The chapter considers the transatlantic network which, in the post-Napoleonic period, linked Harvard, Göttingen and Weimar, and would prove particularly important for Goethe’s geological studies. It also describes the – at times ambivalent – perspectives on American democracy that reached Goethe from Prince Bernhard, the son of Carl August, during his American travels, before moving to an analysis of American influences on and representations of America in Goethe’s literary work.

Chapter 26 explores the role of the English language and the culture of Britain on Goethe’s development. The influences began in his childhood, and became particularly significant in his twenties, owing not least to his friendship with Herder and their shared enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Ossian. The chapter also emphasises the importance of visitors from Britain in furthering Goethe’s knowledge of a country to which he never travelled himself, and examines his relationship with contemporary British writers, above all Byron and Carlyle. It closes with an overview of the reception of Goethe in Britain.

Chapter 24 offers an overview of Goethe’s geological output, a vast but somewhat understudied area of his work. It focuses in particular on Ilmenau, where between 1776 and 1796 Goethe supervised a mining project, and it argues that, despite the ultimate failure of the enterprise, the Ilmenau period was crucial in developing Goethe’s understanding of geological issues. The chapter also charts the course of Goethe’s geological work after the Ilmenau period, and it brings to light the geological references which pervade his literary work – including Faust and some of his best-loved poems.

Chapter 21 examines Goethe’s relationship to German Idealism. Although the speculative nature of the Idealist method appears alien to Goethe’s own thought, and he himself expressed reservations about it, his poetic and scientific works display a significant degree of sympathy with the concerns that motivated his contemporaries. The chapter highlights the importance of Spinoza in the alignment between Goethe and Idealist thought, before considering in detail the significance of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and above all Schelling, whose philosophy of nature and art is particularly resonant with Goethe’s own.

Chapter 1 details the major events in Goethe’s long and varied life, from its beginning to its end, and explains their significance for his development. The scope of the account ranges from intimate details of Goethe’s life to the impact of major political events on him and his work. It follows Goethe from location to location, examines the many strands of his career and considers particularly important relationships, professional, literary, intellectual and personal. The chapter also explains the circumstances of the composition of all his most significant works.

Chapter 17 considers Goethe’s extensive collections, which ranged in subject matter from art and ethnography to natural history and scientific instruments, and also included a vast library. It uses the period around his Italian journey (1786–8), when his involvement with art and art objects was particularly intense, to highlight tensions within his approach to collecting which apply throughout his career as a collector. The chapter also addresses the complexity of classifying Goethe’s collections, owing to their scale and diversity, and to the variety of his own collecting habits.

Chapter 18 explores Goethe’s influence on the development of the Weimar landscape, from the gardens of his own houses on the River Ilm and the Frauenplan, to the Ilm Park, grounds that belonged to Weimar’s ruler but were also made available for public leisure use. It also charts the reciprocal relationship between Goethe’s landscaping activity and his literary work, from the resonances of his Werther in his first garden on the Ilm, to those later pieces – especially Die Wahlverwandschaften (Elective Affinities) – which build on his own work with and study of gardens.

Chapter 3 explains the development of the court and society of Weimar, from the strategic decisions taken by Anna Amalia during her regency to the influence of her son, Carl August. The chapter considers the different forms of sociability that were cultivated, alongside the roles of particular institutions in the life of Weimar, above all the theatre and the university at nearby Jena. It addresses the paradox of a society that was at once conservative and progressive, a tension which was also reflected in Goethe’s own career in the town.

Chapter 16 examines the drawings that Goethe produced throughout his life and places his work in its art-historical context. Over the course of the eighteenth century, drawing had come to be seen as an essential artistic technique; Goethe received instruction in drawing in his early years, and from that time on, he drew wherever he was. The chapter analyses the evolution of his work and the shifting influences on it: Dutch art played an important early role, and the inspiration that he received in Italy, including from contemporaries based there, was crucial.

Chapter 36 reflects on the ways in which Goethe’s meaning and value have evolved. Analysis of Goethe’s legacy and reception demands that we attend to the historical situation of the readers too, and that we remain alert to the role of politics in shaping responses to and uses of his work. The chapter considers Goethe’s afterlife in a variety of contexts, from his prominence in German secondary education between 1871 and 1914 to the mixed feelings of German-Jewish readers in the 1930s. It also analyses Goethe’s own interventions in his reception.

Chapter 5 details the workings of social estates of eighteenth-century Germany. Many of Goethe’s works of prose and drama either directly depict his own society, or transpose significant features of that social world to a different historical setting. The chapter highlights the differences in the social organisation of rural areas on the one hand, and of towns and cities on the other. Further, it distinguishes between the social structure of Frankfurt, Goethe’s birthplace and a large city, and Weimar, a small residence town with the duke at the top of its hierarchy.

Chapter 22 introduces the concept of morphology, the study of form which attends to both the uniqueness of individual manifestations of life and the invariable laws which underpin them. Rather than forming a single theory, Goethe’s extensive reflections on morphology emerged in different contexts and run throughout his oeuvre. The chapter examines the most significant stages in Goethe’s engagement with morphology, from his search for the Urpflanze (primeval plant) in Sicily to his development of Anschauung (intuition) as a method, and positions him in relation to other thinkers, above all Wolff and Kant.

Chapter 9 explores Goethe’s development as a dramatist, from the works of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) era, through the classical period to his last plays, and the associated shifts in style. It considers both the dramas that have entered the canon and those – such as the fragments, masques and Singspiele – that have now largely been forgotten. The chapter also emphasises the importance of seeing Goethe not only as a playwright but also as a practitioner, whose involvement in the Weimar court theatre helped to shape his writing.

Chapter 35 examines Goethe’s awareness of the impact of human activity on the physical environment and his often prescient depictions of damage to natural systems. These are shaped by a range of perspectives and experiences, from Goethe’s work as a civil servant, to his scientific study, to his lifelong passion for nature. The chapter traces two themes in particular that run through his literary work: first, flooding, and second, fire and the destruction of forests. It also examines Goethe’s historical position, between the pre-industrial world and capitalist modernity.