12 - Hegel and Goethe

Summary

I loathe this notorious ‘and’: for the Germans love to say ‘Goethe and Schiller’. … Yet there are even worse cases of ‘and’, for with my own ears I have heard speak, though only amongst academics, of ‘Schopenhauer and Hartmann’.

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Introductory Remarks

A certain feeling of embarrassment naturally descends on anyone who dares to tread on hallowed ground. And the rather arbitrary coupling of intellectual heroes, connected often enough by little more than ‘and’ in the title of some public lecture, rightly invites our scepticism. ‘Hegel and Goethe’ – could there be a more hackneyed sounding theme than this? It is certainly no easy matter to dispel such reservations. Yet this particular conjunction of names also exercises an obscure fascination of its own if we regard them as naming more than the actual historical characters they serve to designate. If we look beyond the classical pantheon, if we look beyond the prince of poets in Weimar and the absolute professor of philosophy in Berlin, we can see that Goethe and Hegel effectively serve to embody two fundamentally different conceptions of art. For this contrast ultimately represents the impossibility of reconciling the poetical and the philosophical approach to art itself.

The fascinating issue lies therefore beneath the obvious surface.