Goethe on cosmopolitanism and colonialism: Bildung and the dialectic of critical mobility

Eighteenth-Century Studies

Volumn 39, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 443-462

  Noyes, John K ^a,b  

^a Department of German ^*

^b UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950669926     PISSN: 00132586     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2006.0027     Document Type: Review

References (55)

1. See Christiani Wolfii jus naturae (Halae Magdeb: Officina Libraria Rengeriana 1740-1748), ed. Marcellus Thomannus (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1968)
2. Rousseau was interested in the legal issues surrounding land ownership and mobile societies (Du contrat social; ou Principes du droit politique, [Paris: M.-M. Rey, 1762])
3. see also Immanuel Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten Abgefaßt von Immanuel Kant Erster Theil. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre. Zweite mit einem Anhange erläuternder Bemerkungen und Zusätze vermehrte Auflage [1797] 2te Auflage 1798. Akademie Ausgabe 6.353
4. Russell Berman points to one possible way out of this conundrum in Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln and London: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1998), demonstrating the need to engage the critical discourse of Enlightenment responses to European world domination
5. Susanne Zantop treats the eighteenth century as fostering a discourse of proto-colonialism; Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 (Durham and London: Duke Univ. Press, 1997). Zantop claims that "it was precisely the lack of actual colonialism that created a pervasive desire for colonial possessions and a sense of entitlement to such possessions in the minds of many Germans" (1997: 7). Although Said glosses over the German situation, he is closer to the truth when he observes that what "German Oriental scholarship did was to refine and elaborate techniques whose application was to texts, myths, ideas, and languages almost literally gathered from the Orient by imperial Britain and France" (Orientalism, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), 19. He too, however, disregards the closeness of colonizing projects to everyday life in Germany, and the very real interests and investments that German intellectuals had in these projects. One exception, striking in its lacking resonance outside Germany, is Hans Christoph Buch, Die Nähe und die Ferne. Frankfurter Vorlesungen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991)
6. Susan Buck-Morss has argued convincingly that Hegel's readings on current events in St. Domingo (primarily in Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz's liberal journal Minerva) shaped his early published works; she cites the importance of the ongoing commentary on the Haitian revolution for the master/servant chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit (1806)
7. Susan Buck-Morss, "Hegel and Haiti," Critical Inquiry 26/4 (2000): 821-65. A recent and important contribution to this field is Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003)
8. Muthu provides an important exploration of the critique of imperialism in Diderot, Kant, and Herder. See also Karl S. Guthke, Goethes Weimar und "Die große Öffnung in die weite Welt", Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 93 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001)
9. See particularly his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Riga: Hartknoch, 1784-1791)
10. where, for example, he asks of European traders and conquerors: "What right did you inhuman beings (ihr Unmenschen) have, even to come close to the land of these unfortunate ones, not to mention tearing their land from them and they from it, through thievery, cunning, and cruelty?" Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, ed. Heinz Stolpe, 2 vols. (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1965), 1:256
11. also Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (Riga: Hartknoch, 1793-1797)
12. See Arthur Strum's comments on Kant in "What Enlightenment Is," New German Critique 79 (2000): 106-36
13. It is important to bear in mind that colonial projects appeared to eighteenth-century readers as a traumatic experience that probably served more to unite the displaced colonizers and the displaced colonized, rather than dividing them along the bipolar lines that define the discourse today. In Eastern Europe, the colonizers themselves were displaced populations of impoverished peasants, artisans, and ex-soldiers attempting to start a new life in Eastern Europe or Russia under conditions of considerable hardship. See Ulrich Enzensberger, Georg Forster. Ein Leben in Scherben (Frankfurt: Eichborn, 1996), 16-22
14. Goethe, Elective Affinities, trans. Judith Ryan, in Collected Works, 12 vols. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988), 11:212
15. This has been demonstrated convincingly by Michael Jaeger in Fausts Kolonie. Goethes kritische Phänomenologie der Moderne (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2004)
16. Remarkably, the colonialism theme has been all but ignored in Faust. One exception is the forum contribution of Herbert Deinert in PMLA 110.5 (1995): 1051-2
17. Goethe, Faust. Eine Tragödie, in Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, ed. Erich Trunz, 14 vols. (München: Beck 1981), 3: 338, 339
18. Faust: A Tragedy, trans. Stuart Atkins, in Collected Works, 12 vols. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), 2: 282, 284. I have modified the translation of "Verderben mir den Weltbesitz."
19. I have modified the translation of "Mußt du nicht längst kolonisieren?"
20. Goethe, Werke. Weimarer Ausgabe (Weimar: Böhlau, 1887-1918) III/3: 155; all translations are my own unless otherwise noted
21. The verb bilden is used both for the formation of a nation and the improvement of its individual citizens. Goethe, Xenien und Votivtafeln, in Weimarer Ausgabe I/5.1: 218
22. This dual territoriality is well documented in Mack Walker, German Hometowns: Community, State, and General Estate 1648-1871 (Cornell and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1998)
23. Goethe vacillated about the importance of experience versus narrative mediation when it came to understanding the foreign and the unknown. The root of his uncertainty is epistemological and is clearly set out in the Novella, where Honorio speaks to the Princess, assuring her that the only purpose of acquiring knowledge through travel is to be able to provide the mediation of experience through story-telling: "Surely he who is fortunate enough to sit at your table, whom you honor with the privilege of entertaining your company, should have seen something of the world. Travelers come to us from all parts, and when the conversation turns to some city, some important place anywhere in the world, the question is certain to be asked of us whether we have been there. None are credited with any wisdom except those who have seen such sights; it is as if we had to inform ourselves mainly for the benefit of others." Novella, trans. Victor Lange and Judith Ryan, SE 11: 273-4
24. Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, in Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, vol. 7 (Hamburg: Christian Wegner 1955), 563, hereafter MWL in parenthetical references
25. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, trans. Eric A. Blackall, Suhrkamp Edition (New York: Suhrkamp, 1983) 9: 345, hereafter WMA in parenthetical references
26. Johann Gottfried Herder, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1967-68), 13: 264
27. On this count, Georg Lukács calls Wilhelm Meister a "great - if unpronounced - polemic against Kant's theory of morals." Goethe und seine Zeit (Bern: Francke, 1947), 38
28. "The Spirit is not a thing at rest, but more, it is absolute restlessness [das absolut Unruhige], pure activity, the negation or the ideality of all fixed determinations of understanding, - not abstractly simple, but in its simplicity at once a differentiation-of-self-from-itself, - not a being that is already complete prior to its appearance and that remains by itself behind the mountains of appearance, but in truth real only through the determinate forms of its necessary self-revelation, - and not (as psychology believes) a soul-thing whose relation to the body is only external, but intrinsically bound to the body through the unity of the concept." Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, para. 378, Zusatz
29. Nancy, Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative, trans. Jason Smith and Steven Miller (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2002), 6-7
30. "Kant confines himself deliberately within a given circle, and he continually points beyond it, ironically," Maximen und Reflexionen, Poetische Werke. Kunsttheoretische Schriften und Übersetzungen (Berliner Ausgabe), ed. Siegfried Seidel et al, 22 vols. (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1960-78), 18: 650
31. Guthke, Goethes Weimar, 36
32. Hans Jürgen Schings, "'Gedenke zu wandern': Wilhelm Meisters Lebensreise," "Der Buchstab todt - der Geist macht lebendig. " Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Hans-Gert Roloff, ed. James Hardin (Bern: Peter Lang, 1992)
33. Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, in Goethes Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe, vol. 8 (München: Christian Wegner 1955), 384, hereafter WMW in parenthetical references
34. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, trans. Krishna Wilson, in Collected Works, vol. 10 (1983): 364, hereafter WMJ in parenthetical references. Translation modified to conform more closely to the original
35. Geist der Goethezeit; Versuch einer ideellen Entwicklung der klassisch-romantischen Literaturgeschichte (Leipzig : Koehler & Amelang, 1964)
36. Korff's realization is reiterated by Nicholas Saul in "Goethe and Colonisation: the Wanderjahre and Cooper," in Goethe and the English-Speaking World, ed. John Guthrie (Woodbridge: Camden House, 2002), 85
37. See Schings, "'Gedenke zu wandern'", 1029-30
38. Blumenbach formulated some of the founding principles of physical anthropology, proposing in his doctoral dissertation in 1775 a five-fold division of humanity into various races (although like Herder, he regarded humanity as belonging to a single species, and the notion of race was intended solely as a classificatory tool). J. F. Blumenbach, De generis humani varietate nativa liber (Gottingae: Vandenhoeck, 1775). This study was written under the supervision of Christian W. Büttner (1716-1801), whose reports of travels and discoveries in the far-flung corners of the world proved particularly inspiring to his student. Büttner lived in Weimar in the 1780's, where he was one of Goethe's important interlocutors on matters of scientific theory
39. Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäft (Güttingen: Dietrich, 1981), 12-3
40. cit. Robert J. Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2002), 218-9
41. For example, in his article on James Cook (1789) Georg Forster uses the term Bildungstrieb to compare the diverse physical constitutions of humans in various climatic regions. Georg Christian Lichtenberg, Georg Forster, Cook der Entdecker: Schriften über James Cook (Leipzig: Reclam Verlag, 1991), 133
42. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988), 47
43. In his notes on the campaign against the French in 1792, he comments on the relocation in Thuringen of refugees from the French troops, observing how the flight of refugees converts to settlement and then to the spread of higher cultural values. See Campaign in France 1792, trans. Thomas P. Saine and Jeffrey L. Sammons, SE 5: 746-7
44. Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, in Werke, vol. 9/II
45. Pädagogische Schriften, ed. Rainer Wisbert (Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1997), 29
46. "Most of all the author of the present poems would prefer to be seen as a traveler, for whom it is sufficient praise to have conformed adequately to the foreign customs of the country, to have strived to adopt its turns of speech, to understand how to share attitudes and adopt manners." West-östlicher Divan, in Berliner Ausgabe, 3:164
47. "But in order to make everything the traveler brings back with him more agreeable for his own people, he takes on the role of a merchant, spreading out his wares in a pleasing manner, attempting to make them pleasant; one does not begrudge him the speech that announces, describes, and praises." West-östlicher Divan, 164
48. Novalis, Schriften, (1960) 3:646; emphasis in original
49. For Novalis nature does not unfold in human activity, but is invented as humanity's opposite. For an eloquent explanation, see Wm. Arctander O'Brien, Novalis: Signs of Revolution (Durham and London: Duke Univ. Press, 1995), 209
50. See Helmut J. Schneider, "Wahllandschaften: Mobilisierung der Natur und das Darstellungsproblem der Moderne in Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften," Rereading Romanticism, ed. Martha Helfer (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000)
51. See my discussion in "Die blinde Wahl. Symbol, Wahl und Verwandtschaft in Goethes Die Wahlverwandtschaften." Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 65/1 (1991): 132-51
52. Thus, for example, the mobile theater must become sedentary if it is to express a national artistic will that can stand in for a national political institution. Goethe was later to lament that the German theater had reached a kind of end-phase, since "general Bildung is so widely disseminated that it no longer belongs to a single location and can no longer issue from a single position." Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, in Berliner Ausgabe, 18: 593. This single location and institution would have been the sedentary institution of the national theater
53. The ambiguous effects of commerce on cosmopolitanism are clearly laid out by Kant in the Third Definitive Article on Perpetual Peace, entitled "Cosmopolitan right shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality." Zum ewigen Frieden, Akademie Ausgabe (Berlin: Reimer, 1912), 8:357-60
54. Kant sees commerce as a motivating force in bringing people together to assert the common ownership of the earth; but he is highly critical of what today we would call human rights violations perpetuated by the commercial nations when they take possession of other parts of the world. It is also striking that Friedrich Schlegel's reading of Kant's essay (1796) tends to skew this ambiguity toward a positive view of the spirit of commerce, claiming that it provides the foundation for cosmopolitan hospitality. "Versuch über den Begriff des Republikanismus," Kritische und theoretische Schriften, (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978), 17
55. "The novel must move slowly and the sentiments of the main personage must, in some way or another, hold up the progression of the whole toward its resolution. " Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, 185