Goethe und Kant

Abstract

The University of Jena was the place where Kant’s philosophy began as a new intellectual movement, and from there spread throughout Germany. Goethe was in charge of state supervision of the university on behalf of his Weimar Duke Carl August and was one of the first to recognize the importance of Kant and to try to assimilate the results of his thinking. This applied above all to Goethe’s Natural Sciences and his teachings on the Metamorphosis of Plants. In his natural philosophy, the concept of primal polarity (Urpolarität) plays a key role, which Goethe finds again as the force of attraction and repulsion as conditions of material existence in Kant’s work Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. It is interesting that Goethe’s first reading of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment took place without the influence of Schiller, who was an expert of Kant’s philosophy. In conclusion, it should be emphasized that Goethe did not feel influenced by his studies of Kant, which at times outweighed his poetic work; he rather wanted it to confirm his scientific way of thinking.