Embracing the Enemy: The Problem of Religion in Goethe’s “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul”
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Matthew Bell
Abstract
Book VI of Goethe’s WilhelmMeister’s Apprenticeship, the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,” occupies an unusual place in literary criticism: a work by a male author that according to feminist criticism is a paradigm of women’s autobiography. Adopting some elements of these feminist readings, but in opposition to crude psychoanalytical interpretations, this paper argues that the Beautiful Soul’s development occurs according to a set of psychological processes that are well attested in eighteenth-century thought. As Goethe wrote to Schiller in 1795, the Beautiful Soul transposes “the subjective and the objective”-or in the terms of Goethe’s poem “The Divine,” she creates a private God by projecting her own moral sense onto creation. In doing so she raises the expectation that God and the world will answer her demands of them. In this way she falls foul of Spinoza’s stricture that “he who loves God cannot demand that God should love him in return.” When creation and the creator fail to meet her demands of them, as they inevitably must, she pays a psychological price in the form of intense bouts of religious melancholy. In this way Goethe applies his own version of the psychologisation of religion such as was practised by e. g. Hume and Holbach, and had its roots in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. The “Confessions” are thus typical of Weimar Classicism’s treatment of religion: an ideological strategy of reframing whereby the (religious) enemy is re-described as a useful and congenial moral-psychological lesson.
Abstract
Book VI of Goethe’s WilhelmMeister’s Apprenticeship, the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,” occupies an unusual place in literary criticism: a work by a male author that according to feminist criticism is a paradigm of women’s autobiography. Adopting some elements of these feminist readings, but in opposition to crude psychoanalytical interpretations, this paper argues that the Beautiful Soul’s development occurs according to a set of psychological processes that are well attested in eighteenth-century thought. As Goethe wrote to Schiller in 1795, the Beautiful Soul transposes “the subjective and the objective”-or in the terms of Goethe’s poem “The Divine,” she creates a private God by projecting her own moral sense onto creation. In doing so she raises the expectation that God and the world will answer her demands of them. In this way she falls foul of Spinoza’s stricture that “he who loves God cannot demand that God should love him in return.” When creation and the creator fail to meet her demands of them, as they inevitably must, she pays a psychological price in the form of intense bouts of religious melancholy. In this way Goethe applies his own version of the psychologisation of religion such as was practised by e. g. Hume and Holbach, and had its roots in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. The “Confessions” are thus typical of Weimar Classicism’s treatment of religion: an ideological strategy of reframing whereby the (religious) enemy is re-described as a useful and congenial moral-psychological lesson.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Table of Contents VII
- Introduction 1
-
Goethe’s (Anti-)Classicism and Experientialism
- Embracing the Enemy: The Problem of Religion in Goethe’s “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul” 13
- “Meine Schwester Natalie ist hiervon ein lebhaftes Beispiel:” Bildung and Gender in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre 27
- Mediating Subjectivities: Anti-Classical and Anti-Ideal Impulses in Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre and Die Wahlverwandtschaften 49
- Reading Surfaces: Goethe and Benjamin 69
-
Kant-Critique and the Romanticist Movement
- Jakob Friedrich Fries as an Opponent of German Idealism 87
- Apparent Purposes. How Does the Purpose of Purposelessness Operate? 103
- Antecedents to Hegel’s Conception of Judaism in Kant’s Practical Philosophy 115
- “Diese Unwissenheit ist mir der unerträglichste Mangel, der gröste Widerspruch”: The Search for Pre-rational Knowledge in Karoline von Günderrode 131
- Romantic Anti-Idealism and Re-evaluations of Gender: Schlegel, Günderrode and Literary Gender Politics 147
- The Polymorphous Political Theology of Novalis and Marcuse 161
-
Hölderlin and Nietzsche: The Ecological Complication of Idealist Aesthetics
- Hölderlin’s Poetics of Zärtlichkeit: The Corporeal Turn of Transcendental Idealism 175
- Grund/Abgrund. On Kant and Hölderlin 187
- Nietzsche and Cognitive Ecology 209
- Overturning Philosophy: Classic and (Anti)-Classic Considerations on Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo 227
- Index 243
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Table of Contents VII
- Introduction 1
-
Goethe’s (Anti-)Classicism and Experientialism
- Embracing the Enemy: The Problem of Religion in Goethe’s “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul” 13
- “Meine Schwester Natalie ist hiervon ein lebhaftes Beispiel:” Bildung and Gender in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre 27
- Mediating Subjectivities: Anti-Classical and Anti-Ideal Impulses in Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre and Die Wahlverwandtschaften 49
- Reading Surfaces: Goethe and Benjamin 69
-
Kant-Critique and the Romanticist Movement
- Jakob Friedrich Fries as an Opponent of German Idealism 87
- Apparent Purposes. How Does the Purpose of Purposelessness Operate? 103
- Antecedents to Hegel’s Conception of Judaism in Kant’s Practical Philosophy 115
- “Diese Unwissenheit ist mir der unerträglichste Mangel, der gröste Widerspruch”: The Search for Pre-rational Knowledge in Karoline von Günderrode 131
- Romantic Anti-Idealism and Re-evaluations of Gender: Schlegel, Günderrode and Literary Gender Politics 147
- The Polymorphous Political Theology of Novalis and Marcuse 161
-
Hölderlin and Nietzsche: The Ecological Complication of Idealist Aesthetics
- Hölderlin’s Poetics of Zärtlichkeit: The Corporeal Turn of Transcendental Idealism 175
- Grund/Abgrund. On Kant and Hölderlin 187
- Nietzsche and Cognitive Ecology 209
- Overturning Philosophy: Classic and (Anti)-Classic Considerations on Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo 227
- Index 243
