Call for Papers: Hegel and Goethe: On their Relationship between Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Political Theory

The Journal Estudos Hegelianos welcomes submissions of original papers until December 1, 2024 for the publication of a special issue on the philosophical, aesthetic and political relations between Hegel and Goethe. In addition to a focus on Hegel and Goethe themselves, contributions that expand the relationship to further figures and constellations of their shared epoch (the Age of Goethe, Weimar Classicism, and Classical German Philosophy) or that investigate them in terms of pertinent later (post-classical, post-idealist) reception are also very welcome.

“The Urphänomen”—as it says on the drinking glass that Goethe gave Hegel in April 1821—“very humbly begs the Absolute to give it a cordial welcome.” On the one hand, the relationship between Hegel and Goethe (as this present attests) is marked by a deep mutual acknowledgement or even veneration. On the other hand, central concepts in both of their thinking—such as we see in the Goethean Urphänomen or the Hegelian Absolute—demonstrate deep tensions. While Goethe’s Urphänomen emphasizes an immediate intuition of nature, for Hegel’s speculative thinking the mediation of conceptual reflection proves constitutive. These tensions do not, however, negate the significant closeness of their interests: the question of the mediation of the singular, particular, and general, that stands at the center of Hegel’s speculative logic is also continually determinative for Goethe’s poetic production and—both aesthetic and political-ethical—thinking. Thus Goethe writes in conjunction with his completion of the first part of Faust—whose structural and thematic proximity to Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit has been frequently noted—that there are no individuals, who are not related to something general: “All individuals are also general: that is, this one or that one, whichever you wish, is the representative of an entire genre.” And here, for Goethe just as for Hegel, the individual can only become not only a general but also an actual individual when it acts and realizes itself in the concrete fullness of the real world, in order to arrive at itself. Similarly, for both the reality that opens up through this world-relation connected to activity is essentially characterized by contradiction and conflict, by the critical development of reshaping and transformation: the concrete fullness of the universe shapes itself not only for Hegel but also for Goethe only in passing through the “regulated, methodically cultivated spirit of contradiction” as Hegel summarizes the dialectic in conversation with Goethe. Such an inherently contradictory and tension-filled reality thus contains, for both Hegel and Goethe, a focus on the political and social present in the midst of the French Revolution and its consequences: how the upheavals and crises of the Revolution could lead—in the Age of Napoleon—to the founding of a new social order proves to be, for both, a central task of not just theoretical but also practical importance. Both Hegel and Goethe emphatically experience their time as a time of deep contradictions and tensions, characterized by the ongoing transition to a new epoch—modernity—, to an epoch whose outlines are still open and uncertain—and both of them reflect this historical experience in their work. This aspect is not least responsible for the enduring modernity of Hegel and Goethe and it inscribes itself in the leading question (for both) of the conditions and possibilities of classical art in the modern age.

The aim of the proposed thematic focus is to college original contributions that investigate and discuss both the commonalities and differences in the relationship between Hegel and Goethe across the field of philosophy, aesthetics, political theory, and their complex interactions. Although many aspects of the relationship between the two thinkers have been thoroughly studied in classical research, the importance and timeliness of the perspectives addressed here still represent a desideratum in both contemporary Hegel and Goethe studies. It is particularly the intriguing connection between philosophical, aesthetic, and socio-political aspects involved in this constellation that deserves a careful reconsideration and re-actualization.

Confirmed contributors:

Francesca Iannelli (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)

Elizabeth Millán (DePaul University)

John H. Smith (University of California, Irvine)

 

Contributions should be submitted via OJS according to the publication guidelines (https://ojs.hegelbrasil.org/index.php/reh/about/submissions)

We accept texts in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English and German.

Contributions should be submitted by December 1, 2024

The essays selected after peer review will be published in the first half of 2025

Contact: Gregor Schäfer gregor.schaefer@unibas.ch