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10/22/2015 3:47 pm  #1


Goethe and the entelechy

So I'm currently reading Goethe's Faust Parts I and II in the Luke translation to be followed by the Conversations with Eckermann. I've known about his mystical and philosophical ideas for a while now, mostly through Wolfgang Smith and Carvalho, but this is the first time I've actually read his work beyond stray poems in anthologies.

Leaving aside questions of literary and aesthetic value qua metaphysician I'm interested in his accounts of activity (there's a remark somewhere about pure activity and pure contemplation being one and the same in the Godhead) and entelechy*.

To encapsulate a certain aspect of his personality: quintessential early 19th German thinker - delivers pompous satire on metaphysics, 'dogmatism', and trying to 'go beyond the limits of reason', and follows it up by constructing piece-meal a baroque panentheistic metaphysical edifice the likes of which most of the Scholastics would have blanched at. He also has the honour of being the first modern theorist of evolution by natural selection (and in a non-mechanist way to boot).

*Again we can see very clearly the origins of certain strands of Hegel's thought.

 

10/22/2015 6:00 pm  #2


Re: Goethe and the entelechy

The following articles are worth checking out - Carus was a nasty peace of work but the quotes and over-view he gives are decent (one just has to ignore the faux Orientalism).

Goethe's Soul Conception

Goethe's View of Immortality

Last edited by DanielCC (10/22/2015 6:46 pm)

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10/23/2015 2:00 am  #3


Re: Goethe and the entelechy

I was just reading Werther and Clavigo. Goethe has a special place in my heart. I'll read the articles and think about it. Though you didn't seem to be wondering about anything.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

10/23/2015 4:33 am  #4


Re: Goethe and the entelechy

iwpoe wrote:

I was just reading Werther and Clavigo. Goethe has a special place in my heart. I'll read the articles and think about it. Though you didn't seem to be wondering about anything.

Do let me know of any other articles or work about his concept of the entelechy. I think it would developed in such a way as to be preferable to Aristotle/Thomas’ since that latter’s is too world-bound, an after-thought to the body of which it is the form, whilst the Goethean idea points beyond the world.
 

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10/24/2015 12:09 am  #5


Re: Goethe and the entelechy

DanielCC wrote:

iwpoe wrote:

I was just reading Werther and Clavigo. Goethe has a special place in my heart. I'll read the articles and think about it. Though you didn't seem to be wondering about anything.

Do let me know of any other articles or work about his concept of the entelechy. I think it would developed in such a way as to be preferable to Aristotle/Thomas’ since that latter’s is too world-bound, an after-thought to the body of which it is the form, whilst the Goethean idea points beyond the world.
 

Well, I mean, I might suggest to you a metaphysically aware reading of Hegel. That's almost certainly where you would find such a development. Schelling is also possible, though I recommend him less. Goethe is difficult to take on as a philosophical mind, and you would need to read him alongside more explicit thinkers to suss him out. Schiller is a useful contrast. Fichte also in a different way. Holderlin in another.

Last edited by iwpoe (10/24/2015 12:09 am)


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

10/24/2015 5:11 am  #6


Re: Goethe and the entelechy

I've got a look of Schelling volumes actually - the SUNY series and odd things like the History - which I bought a few years ago with the intention of reading soon after though for some reason never came to do so. The aforementioned Carvalho considered him one of the greatest modern philosophers along with Leibniz and Husserl.
 
Do you know of any good overviews of his philosophies? I remember looking but couldn’t find much at all in English (most of it was essays or Zizek-inspired material). I was hoping Xavier Tilliette’s books on this would be translated one day (the French Jesuit also a Jaspers scholar which suites me fine).
 

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10/24/2015 5:41 am  #7


Re: Goethe and the entelechy

DanielCC wrote:

I've got a look of Schelling volumes actually - the SUNY series and odd things like the History - which I bought a few years ago with the intention of reading soon after though for some reason never came to do so. The aforementioned Carvalho considered him one of the greatest modern philosophers along with Leibniz and Husserl.
 
Do you know of any good overviews of his philosophies? I remember looking but couldn’t find much at all in English (most of it was essays or Zizek-inspired material). I was hoping Xavier Tilliette’s books on this would be translated one day (the French Jesuit also a Jaspers scholar which suites me fine).
 

On first thought, no. No one in English writes worthy scholarship of Schelling (they barely write good scholarship of Hegel).

On second thought all that comes to mind is:

Alan White:

http://www.amazon.com/Schelling-Introduction-Freedom-Alan-White/dp/0300028962/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445682531&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Absolute-Knowledge-Problem-Metaphysics-Continental/dp/082140718X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445682531&sr=1-1

An intro I own but am unsure about:

http://www.amazon.com/Schelling-Modern-European-Philosophy-Introduction/dp/0415103479/ref=sr_1_46?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445682675&sr=1-46&keywords=schelling+heidegger

Essays:

http://www.amazon.com/Interpreting-Schelling-Professor-Lara-Ostaric/dp/1107018927/ref=sr_1_19?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445682565&sr=1-19

http://www.amazon.com/New-Schelling-Judith-Norman/dp/0826469426/ref=sr_1_39?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445682607&sr=1-39

And down the path of reading hard people on other hard people:

http://www.amazon.com/Martin-Heidegger-Schellings-Treatise-Continental/dp/B00RWRHHCI/ref=sr_1_50?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445682687&sr=1-50

http://www.amazon.com/Difference-Between-Fichtes-Schellings-Philosophy/dp/0887068278/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445682565&sr=1-15

http://www.amazon.com/Soren-Kierkegaards-Journals-Notebooks-Vol/dp/0691138931/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=

http://www.amazon.com/Kierkegaards-Writings-Continual-Reference-Schellings-ebook/dp/B00BNY0S0E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445683179&sr=1-1


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

10/24/2015 6:11 am  #8


Re: Goethe and the entelechy

Thanks very much for those lines. Do you have any thoughts or opinion on:
 
Schelling's Organic Form of Philosophy: Life as the Schema of Freedom
 
(See, ideally I want something which just presents his varied and developing ideas rather than reading, or at least highlighting, them through relation with later philosophies e.g. those of the Existentialists, Heidegger or Bergson)

The only two secondary texts I have focus on specialist areas, so I doubt they’d be much good to me for this purpose:
 
The Potencies of God(s): Schelling's Philosophy of Mythology
 
The Dark Ground of Spirit: Schelling and the Unconscious
 

Last edited by DanielCC (10/24/2015 6:11 am)

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10/25/2015 1:44 am  #9


Re: Goethe and the entelechy

DanielCC wrote:

Thanks very much for those lines. Do you have any thoughts or opinion on:
 
Schelling's Organic Form of Philosophy: Life as the Schema of Freedom

I don't. Looking it over, however, I'm not put off by anything on the surface. The author seems well dug in to his subject at first glance, and he's translated a volume. Might be worth it.

DanielCC wrote:

(See, ideally I want something which just presents his varied and developing ideas rather than reading, or at least highlighting, them through relation with later philosophies e.g. those of the Existentialists, Heidegger or Bergson)

Alan White is *fairly* good for that- though he's got Schelling in direct conversation with Hegel (a sensible dialogue, at least).

DanielCC wrote:

The only two secondary texts I have focus on specialist areas, so I doubt they’d be much good to me for this purpose:
 
The Potencies of God(s): Schelling's Philosophy of Mythology
 
The Dark Ground of Spirit: Schelling and the Unconscious
 

I remember considering the first promising but then not pursuing it further. The second is in dialogue with psychoanalysis and I'm wary after long experience.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

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