5 - Goethe, Islam, and the Orient: The Impetus for and Mode of Cultural Encounter in the West-östlicher Divan

Summary

THE THEME OF THE “ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM” leads us to reflect on a contemporary problem, the explosive nature of which is obvious enough. Since the 1990s, and more particularly since 11 September 2001, Samuel P. Huntington's formulation “The clash of civilizations,” a phrase seldom used discriminately, has continued to haunt both political and public discourse. The polemics that flared up around Pope Benedict's address, “Glaube, Vernunft und Universität,” at the University of Regensburg on 20 September 2006 have made one thing clear: anyone dealing nowadays with issues of “Orient” and “Occident,” with Islam and Christianity, is skating on thin ice. For these topoi and religions are rarely communicated with any sophistication, and their continued juxtaposition only really aids in the construction of essentialized images of mutual enemies. And so, in the midst of globalization, we seem to be experiencing not a positive process of the knitting together of our world but rather an increasingly stark polarization of cultures, as well as interpretations of cultural difference that tend toward the dogmatic. The challenge confronting us in cultural studies consists, therefore, in finding alternative models for thinking about the relationship between Occident and Orient — models that are designed to promote both “understanding” and “communication” (“Verstehen und Verständigung”) between these cultures.

More than most learned figures, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps the most prominent representative of German culture and literature, was actually ahead of us in this task. This explains the unanimous view in scholarship that Goethe’s engagement with the Islamic world remains groundbreaking to this day. On the one hand, Goethe’s writing on the topic highlights the urgency and the volatility of the cultural-political task of reflecting on intercultural encounters. On the other hand, it also exposes as absurd the assumption that encounters between cultures must necessarily lead to conflict.