Abstract
The book is a synthetic interpretation of the philosophical foundations of Goethe's work in the connections of the German Enlightenment and modern thought in general. It brings a new interpretation of the roots and structures of Goethe's thought across the different fields of his work, from the poetry over the literary and aesthetic theory to the natural science.
It connects thereby philosophy with aesthetics, literary theory and history and with cultural, spiritual and intellectual history. It aims to explain just the universality and versatility of Goethe's approach and conception of man, of the intellectual (historical) and creative side of his self-formation.
The key element is shown in the dimension of creativity. The book contents detailed explanations of some specially systematical and historical areas, i. e.
Goethe's spiritual and personal contact with Herder, Lavater, Jacobi, Beethoven, Hegel, Schopenhauer etc. The stress on the integrality of Goethe's interconnection of the spiritual world of man (mankind) and of his practical existence leads to the concentration on general value coordinates of Goethe's (poetical) works, on the question of the relationship between art and moral and the social life of man.
A special attention pays to Goethe's political thought, his own activity in Weimar and ,,secod life" in the 19th and 20th century, including the Czech milieu (Masaryk's critics on Goethe). The book shows the negative approach of Goethe towards the French revolution and social movement at the beginning of the 19th century and compares him with the other Weimar classics and with the romantics.
In the sphere of the natural science, Goethe's critics of the mathematical and mechanical thought of the modern natural sciences is explained; he aims to establish a non-reductive, non-mechanical conception of nature and science and will be explained in the historical connections with the natural theology of the Christian as well as rationalist tradition and with the speculative philosophy of nature in the German Idealism.