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Fritz Breithaupt, Richard Raatzsch, and Bettina Kremberg, eds., Goethe and Wittgenstein: seeing the World's Unity in its Variety. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2003.172 pp.
Goethe's influence on the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is subtle and indirect. In his status as "canonical classic" Goethe was certainly part of Wittgenstein's education, but paradoxically his most profound influence was mediated through other thinkers. It is possible to trace, for instance, the roles of Emerson and William James with regard to nature, on one hand, and of Schopenhauer, Otto Weininger, and Oswald Spengler with regard to morphology, on the other. "Thus, the point of looking at parallels between Goethe and Wittgenstein," writes Joachim Schulte, a leading authority and one of the contributors to this volume, "cannot really be the discovery of this or that identifiable influence Goethe may have had on Wittgenstein" (56). Rather, the elucidation of parallels is important for grasping the character of each,"expressions of certain types of attitude or temperament" (56). In this the contributors to this volume are very successful. While this volume is sponsored by WittgensteinStudien, contributors also underline the modernity in much of Goethe's thought.
The nine essays collected here grew out of a workshop hosted in Leipzig in Spring 2000, occasioned by the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth and the 50th anniversary of Wittgenstein's death.They build on the foundational work done by Schulte, especially in his Chor und Gesetz (Frankfurt, 1990), and by M. W. Rowe, now collected in his Philosophy and Literature (Aldershot, 2004).
James C. Klagge focuses directly on...