Chapter 35 examines Goethe’s awareness of the impact of human activity on the physical environment and his often prescient depictions of damage to natural systems. These are shaped by a range of perspectives and experiences, from Goethe’s work as a civil servant, to his scientific study, to his lifelong passion for nature. The chapter traces two themes in particular that run through his literary work: first, flooding, and second, fire and the destruction of forests. It also examines Goethe’s historical position, between the pre-industrial world and capitalist modernity.

Chapter 34 surveys Goethe’s extensive influence on the musical world. It considers his own musical background, his relations with contemporary composers, notably Carl Friedrich Zelter, and focuses especially on Goethe’s reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the nineteenth century, his influence was most evident in the Lied (art-song), most famously those of Franz Schubert, and in opera, where Faust proved especially powerful. Twentieth-century composers were less likely to set Goethe’s literary texts, but both Richard Strauss and Anton Webern engaged intensively with his thought in their own creative activity.

Chapter 7 examines Goethe’s unconventional attitudes to religion and religious authority, and their influence on his creative work. It emphasises that, despite his opposition to institutionalised Christianity, Goethe remained interested in Christian beliefs and convinced of the value of scriptural reading. The chapter details his engagement with Spinozist Pantheism (the view of God as embodied in the world), with Judaism and the Hebrew Bible, and with Islam. It argues that we should see in Goethe’s approach not the rejection of religious narratives, but their reframing and rewriting.

Chapter 20 reflects on Goethe’s unique way of thinking and his persistent challenges to orthodoxy. It builds on Goethe’s own assertion that he was ‘not naturally equipped to do philosophy in its proper sense’, and argues that his thought engages the figurative power of ‘improper’ (that is, poetic) language to do philosophical work. The chapter notes his criticism of the modes of, among others, Kant and Hegel, and highlights places in Goethe’s oeuvre, including in his literary works, where we can see new and unconventional pathways for thought being built.

Chapter 15 details Goethe’s commitment to Greek and Roman art, demonstrating that it pervades all his activity, including his literary work. His interest was primed by his years as a student in Leipzig, but his Italian journey of 1786–8 was the turning point, for it enabled him to connect the theory which he had learned with his own creative practice. Moreover, Italy gave him access to both Roman and Greek heritage. The chapter also examines neoclassical tenets in Goethe’s writing on art and closes with an analysis of his characterisation of Winckelmann.

In the fourth chapter, Sulovsky turns to the supposedly imperial saints’ cults of the 1160s: the Three Kings and Saint Charlemagne. The chapter demonstrates that the cult of the Magi was unconnected to the emperor. Rather, the agency of Rainald of Dassel in bringing the Magi to Cologne was related to his personal suffering from the Milanese while he was imperial legate in their city on the eve of Epiphany (= Three Kings’ Day). As this was liturgically already the vigils of Epiphany, and as Rainald was trapped in the imperial palace next to the saintly bodies before he barely escaped, he translated the Magi to honour his protectors. This debunks the Kulturkampf-inspired theory that the purpose of worshipping the holy kings who adored Christ long before the apostles were called would help achieve a sacral independence of the Empire from the Papacy. On the other hand, the cult of Saint Charlemagne is shown to have been accepted at the imperial court as a part of a plan to mend the Alexandrine schism by launching an Anglo-Franco-German crusade, which was thought of as an imitation of Charlemagne’s exploits in the east.

Chapter 29 centres on Goethe’s idea of China. Goethe was initially ambivalent, even condescending, about Chinese culture and aesthetics, but in later years, this attitude was replaced by a greater degree of interest in the country. This chapter explores the evolution of Goethe’s position on China, beginning with the eighteenth-century fashion for chinoiserie and Goethe’s disparagement of it; it then considers Goethe’s more open-minded engagement with Chinese literature in translation towards the end of his life, noting at the same time the gulf between Goethe’s source material and China’s most representative cultural outputs.

Chapter 27 emphasises the importance of French sources in shaping Goethe’s thinking on all fronts. The formative role of French began in his early years, owing not least to the French occupation of Frankfurt, evolved during his time as a student in Leipzig and Strasbourg, and was supported throughout Goethe’s adult life by his voracious reading. The chapter considers Goethe’s attitude, by turns admiring and ambivalent, to the Enlightenment philosophes, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, and highlights the significance of the liberal journal Le Globe for Goethe towards the end of his life.

Chapter 19 examines Goethe’s relationship to philosophy, which throughout his life was one of both interest and guarded distance. It considers the transformations which philosophy as a discipline underwent during his lifetime, details Goethe’s attitudes to intellectual developments in his own time, above all the work of Kant, and devotes particular attention to Spinoza, without whose inspiration Goethe’s work is unthinkable, even if it cannot be reduced to a Spinozist position. The chapter also emphasises the singularity of Goethe’s own thought, which was forever transforming any influences that it received, becoming a source of inspiration and critical reflection for contemporary and succeeding generations of philosophers.

This chapter offers a succinct introduction to Goethe and his work and gives an overview of the essays which make up the collection.