1. Introduction
  2. Proceeding in the Finite Infinitely: Being Finite in the Infinite
  3. The Existential Draw and Dangers of the Infinite
  4. Infinite Passion without Measure: Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities)
  5. The Finite Turn within the Infinite of Nature: “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” (1799; The Metamorphosis of Plants)
  6. Conclusion
  7. Notes
  8. Works Cited and Further Reading

Introduction

As Alexandre Koyré (1892–1964) argued in From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957), beginning in the sixteenth century the notion of the universe as infinite starts to displace the traditional views of a cosmos contained within limited boundaries. With the invention of the telescope and microscope, the human scientific gaze revealed an unending series of beings extending into the infinitely large and the infinitesimally small. As Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) remarked: “It is not jest, but a firm conviction of mine, that there are animals in the world as much greater than ours as ours are greater than the animalcules of the microscope. Nature knows no limits. And so it is possible on the other hand—indeed it is necessary—that there should be worlds not inferior to our own in beauty and variety, in the smallest bits of dust, in fact, in atoms.”1 Blaise Pascal has an almost identical passage in one of his Pensées under the title “Disproportion.”2 Indeed, it is crucial that Leibniz was, with Newton, one of the co-founders of infinitesimal calculus, the field of mathematics that could calculate with the infinite and that proved to be the most powerful tool for grasping nature since Euclid’s geometry. By the late eighteenth century, the infinite was no longer an overwhelming attribute possessed by God alone (in comparison to which our finite world was insignificant—as in Pascal); rather, it came to be embraced, if not mastered, by major figures around Goethe. While Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was hesitant to endorse the ability of the human understanding to fully grasp the infinite—the attempt to do so leads to the first two “mathematical” antinomies of the Critique of Pure Reason—, Fichte (1762–1814) saw the very fate or meaning (Bestimmung) of mankind as the infinite striving toward moral perfection. The Romantics by and large reveled in the “intuition of the infinite,” to use Friedrich Schleiermacher’s definition of religion, whereby he further notes “daß die Religion nicht anders als in einer unendlichen Menge durchaus betimmter Formen vollständig gegeben werden kann” (that religion can only exist fully in an infinite set of thoroughly determined forms).3 And G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) emerged as arguably the philosopher of infinity, ending his Phenomenologie des Geistes (1807; Phenomenology of Spirit) on that word (in a modified quotation from Schiller) and presenting in his Logic extensive critiques of a “bad infinity” (the line extending without end), to be replaced by a dialectic in which the infinite embraces the finite and the finite contains the infinite (better represented by the geometrical shape of the circle).4

Goethe’s unique position plays out these versions of infinity in terms of possible avenues for modern human existence. For Goethe, while the infinite provides the necessary inner drive within humans and nature toward limitless transcendence and productivity, both humans and nature must also contain a counter-drive that draws them back into finitude. The failure to recognize the necessity of this fundamental ‘law’ (Gesetz) that gives measure (Maß) and shape (Gestalt, Bildung) to all living things, including an ethical human life and organically (teleologically) conceived aesthetic objects, leads to tragedy. If we recall the title of Erich Strich’s famous book, Deutsche Klassik und Romantik, oder Vollendung und Unendlichkeit (1922; German Classicism and Romanticism, or Completion and Infinity), one could summarize Goethe’s position as a dialectic between completion/perfection (Vollendung) and infinity.5

Proceeding in the Finite Infinitely: Being Finite in the Infinite

In one of his late maxim-like poems, which were published together under the title “Gott, Gemüt und Welt” (1827; God, Soul, and World), Goethe presents an approach to the world in terms of a moderated embrace of the infinite via the finite. He writes: “Willst du ins Unendliche schreiten, / Geh nur im Endlichen nach allen Seiten” (If you would take the step into the infinite, pursue the finite in all directions).6 This attitude goes to the heart of Goethe’s method of conducting scientific experiments. What he embraces is a “zarte Empirie” (tender/delicate empiricism) that involves a step-by-step process of painstaking observation (“schreiten”) that remains ever attentive to the series and nexus in which one thing leads us to another.7 The greatest danger for the scientist comes from leaping over the individual stages to an imagined end of the process, as if one could have the whole in view at once. In the maxim, one cannot step into the infinite, but must proceed without end through the finite. For this reason, Goethe did not so readily embrace the tools of modern science that led to the “discovery” of the infinite, writing in another maxim: “Mikroskope und Fernröhre verwirren eigentlich den reinen Menschensinn” (FA 1.13:342, #1.262; Microscopes and telescopes actually bring confusion into the realm of human senses). With this skepticism towards what we might consider a ‘God’s-eye view’ of any development within nature, not to mention of Nature itself as a whole, Goethe places himself much more in the Kantian corner of critical philosophy rather than in that of Fichte, Schelling, and the Romantics. After all, for Kant it is a flaw inherent within reason itself that it pushes itself ineluctably to consider a series of phenomena in its totality—at which point it ends up in contradiction; in his terms, this represents a “dialectical” use of reason that must be avoided. The most famous examples are the “cosmological antinomies” in which reason tries to answer questions about “the world as a whole,” e.g., whether it has a beginning and end in space and time. Rather than proceed ad infinitum, Kant says, we can only, and therefore must, proceed ad indefinitum—or, in Goethe’s formulation, “im Endlichen nach allen Seiten” (in the finite in all directions). Hegel will provide his own dialectical approach that will enable him to have his finite cake and eat an infinite one, too. He argues that so long as the finite and infinite are considered in opposition to each other, the finite must always find itself both inadequate and yet driven by a desire for the infinite posited outside of itself; and further, in this opposition the infinite is reduced to a finite. The result is “das unglückliche Bewusstsein” (unhappy or misfortunate consciousness) as described in the Phänomenologie des Geistes. Rather, the finite must already contain the infinite and the infinite must embrace the finite. And here we are closer to Goethe. For he, too, rejects both what Hegel came to call the “schlechte Unendlichkeit” (bad infinity) of endless longing and striving for an unattainable Absolute and the megalomania of “leaping over the ongoing series” to grasp the infinite in its totality.8

Goethe’s epistemological skepticism toward a knowledge of the infinite itself dates to the 1780s and is documented in a short text that has been published under the mistaken title “Studie nach Spinoza” (Study after Spinoza). The arguments that this text should no longer be read as a part of Goethe’s engagement with Spinoza’s Ethics before his journey to Italy in 1785 or that Goethe’s friend, Karl Philipp Moritz (1756–1793), who influenced him so much during that journey, might even be its primary author have been made convincingly by others.9 However, the core ideas do capture the spirit that Goethe embraced, namely, the importance of a modest and limited (eingeschränkt) approach to what can be known. I cite the text at length because of the many important points we can glean from it:

Der Begriff vom Dasein und der Vollkommenheit ist ein und eben derselbe; wenn wir diesen Begriff so weit verfolgen als es uns möglich ist so sagen wir daß wir uns das Unendliche denken.
Das Unendliche aber oder die vollständige Existenz kann von uns nicht gedacht werden;
Wir können nur Dinge denken die entweder beschränkt sind oder die sich unsre Seele beschränkt. Wir haben also in so fern einen Begriff vom Unendlichen als wir uns denken können daß es eine vollständige Existenz gebe welche außer der Fassungskraft eines beschränkten Geistes sind.
Man kann nicht sagen daß das Unendliche Teile habe.
Alle beschränkte Existenzen sind im Unendlichen, sind aber keine Teile des Unendlichen sie nehmen vielmehr Teil an der Unendlichkeit. [. . .]
In jedem lebendigen Wesen sind das was wir Teile nennen dergestalt unzertrennlich vom Ganzen daß sie nur in und mit denselben begriffen werden können, und es können weder die Teile zum Maß des Ganzen noch das Ganze zum Maß der Teile angewendet werden, und so nimmt wie wir oben gesagt haben ein eingeschränktes lebendiges Wesen Teil an der Unendlichkeit oder vielmehr es hat etwas Unendliches in sich, wenn wir nicht lieber sagen wollen daß wir den Begriff der Existenz und der Vollkommenheit des eingeschränktesten lebendigen Wesens nicht ganz fassen können und es also eben so wie das Ungeheure Ganze in dem alle Existenzen begriffen sind, für unendlich erklären können. (FA 1.18:188-89)
The concept of being and perfection is one and the same; if we pursue this concept as far as is possible for us then we say that we think the infinite.
But the infinite or the totality of existence cannot be thought by us.
We can only think things that are either limited or on which our soul imposes a limit. We thus have a concept of the infinite insofar as we can think that there is a totality of existence which is beyond the powers of comprehension of a limited spirit.
One cannot say that the infinite has parts.
All limited beings are in the infinite, but are not parts of the infinite; rather they participate in the infinite. [. . .]
In each organic being, that which we call parts are in such a way inseparable from the whole that they are only be grasped in and with [it], and neither can the parts be taken as the measure of the whole, nor the whole as the measure of the parts, and thus, as we said above, each limited organic being participates in the infinite or rather has something infinite in itself; or we might prefer to say that we cannot fully grasp the concept of existence or the perfection of the most limited organic being and thus we must consider such a being, just like the enormous/monstrous totality in which all beings are encompassed to be infinite.

We can highlight the following points: (1) Goethe’s epistemology is based on the relentless pursuit of phenomena within nature (finitude, Dasein); (2) this limitation is based on the limited status of human spirit; (3) while this limitation, which leaves the infinite as such beyond our grasp, might seem to be an echo of the Pascalian Baroque sense of being overwhelmed by the divinely infinite (Goethe does speak of “das Ungeheure Ganze” [the enormous/monstrous totality]), the fact that all finite beings participate in the infinite means that all beings, especially organic ones, “have something of the infinite in themselves”; (4) it is thus precisely and ironically in limiting our focus to the finite and recognizing the impossibility of grasping the infinite as such that we participate in the infinite appropriately. We have here a version of the infinite closer to Kant, whose ‘critiques’ aimed to map out the limits of (different forms of) human reason. The task for anyone seeking knowledge is to proceed step by step in the observation of ‘things’ (see the entry on Ding/Unding (Thing/No-Thing)) and to avoid any hubris that would grasp the totality.

Goethe is proposing neither an avoidance of the infinite nor a capitulation before its immensity but, rather, a modest approach where individuals stay within the finite as it draws them onward to an experience of the infinite, in which the finite things reflect (“participate in”) the infinite in its ungraspability. That is, to understand Goethe’s dialectical concept of the infinite is not to stop with seeing it as an unreachable beyond (as if all the steps in every direction would be ultimately frustrating) but, rather, to appreciate it as the very space within which one’s progress unfolds. It is at this point that we arrive at “pleasure” (Genuß) in our comprehension of nature (FA 1.18:189). As Goethe says in a conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann held on Monday, November 3, 1823: “[H]alten Sie immer an der Gegenwart fest. Jeder Zustand, ja jeder Augenblick ist von unendlichem Wert, denn er ist der Repräsentant einer ganzen Ewigkeit” (FA 2.12:67-68 and Fuller, 62; [H]old fast by the present. Each situation—nay, each moment—is of infinite worth; for each represents a whole eternity).

One of Goethe’s most intriguing poems, “Eins und Alles” (1821; One and All) grapples with the paradoxes of the finite spirit’s relation to the infinite.10 If we read in the opening lines the lexeme “grenzenlos” (boundless) as a synonym for “unendlich” (infinite), as does Margaret Fuller in her translation (given below), then they capture in a particularly pointed way the paradoxical and ambivalent way that self-loss in the infinite can be at the same time a means of discovering or maintaining identity:

Im Grenzenlosen sich zu finden
Wird gern der Einzelne verschwinden,
Da löst sich aller Überdruß;
Statt heißem Wünschen, wildem Wollen,
Statt läst’gem Fordern, strengem Sollen,
Sich aufzugeben ist Genuß. (FA 1.2:494, ll. 1–6)
Within the infinite its place to find,
How longeth forth the Individual Mind!
Chagrin and grief can there disturb no more;
Forgetting all hot wishes, or wild Will,
Where sounds of daily duties may be still,
And thought, in freedom, float creation o’er.

Regine Sachers formulates the tension in the poem using Leibnizian language, which is appropriate given Leibniz’s influence on rethinking our relation to infinity: “the ambivalent and unbalanced role…of the individual trapped between the idea of the monad’s integrity and the call to renunciation of its own being.”11 However, as Sachers argues, placing the poem within the context of its original publication among the writings on natural science reveals an alternative, Goethean position beyond the Spinozistic and German Idealist elements. The second strophe reads:

Weltseele komm uns zu durchdringen!
Dann mit dem Weltgeist selbst zu ringen
Wird unsrer Kräfte Hochberuf.
Teilnehmend führen gute Geister,
Gelinde leitend höchste Meister,
Zu dem der alles schafft und schuf. (FA 1.2:494, ll. 7–12)
World-Soul, come, pierce through us! / Then it will be our lofty calling to wrestle with the World-Spirit itself. / Participating good spirits / and gently leading loftiest masters will guide us / to him of past and present creation. (my translation)

The “Hochberuf” (lofty occupation) referred to can be understood as a way of producing scientific knowledge, following the unforced lead of others, neither attempting to capture the infinite, nor losing oneself in it, nor insisting on one’s individuality, but instead, in the words of the saying quoted, exploring step-by-finite-step the infinite richness of nature-God.12

The Existential Draw and Dangers of the Infinite

Near the beginning of Goethe’s most famous and influential play, Faust, the main character, just before conjuring up the overwhelming “Erdgeist” (Earth Spirit) asks: “Wo fasse ich dich, unendliche Natur?” (FA 1.7:36, l. 455; Where can I grasp you, infinite nature?). To see the significance of this line we can inquire: Is this a rhetorical question? That is, does it mean: How could Faust, a mere mortal, ever embrace the infinite?—with the implied answer: He can’t. Or is it a ‘genuine’ question in search of an answer as to what techne would allow for the conceptual grasping of infinite nature? In this latter case, would it not be an act of hybris, for which he is rightfully rejected by the spirit. These questions make up the heart of the tragedy that is Faust—also according to David Wellbery’s reading of the play—as motivated by the conflict in human existence between a striving for the infinite and the recognition of finitude.13 This tension finds expression in the two souls in Faust’s breast, one drawing Faust toward a world of transcendence and one embracing the limited sphere of this very earth.14 Just before that famous passage, Faust describes to his assistant, Wagner, his frustration at being bound to the earth and thus not able to soar up to the heavens, but follows it with a dialectical reference to the counter drive: “Doch ist es jedem eingeboren, / Daß sein Gefühl hinauf und vorwärts dringt” (FA 1.7.1:57, ll. 1092–93; Yet innate in each of us / that our feelings drive us upward and onward).”15

Goethe depicts in the play the existential frustrations and dangers associated with the necessary or inherent longing for the infinite—what the Romantics called “unendliche Annäherung” (infinite approximation). Right after the deal with Mephistopheles has been sealed, Faust raises another question that fluctuates between genuine and rhetorical:

Was bin ich denn, wenn es nicht möglich ist
Der Menschheit Krone zu erringen,
Nach der sich alle Sinne dringen? (FA 1.7.1:79, ll. 1803–5)
What am I then, / if it is not possible to seize the crown of humanity, / which all my senses seek?

Indeed, what kind of an existence is it that strives for an impossible goal, that is stretched, so to speak, across a field of infinite possibility? Mephistopheles provides perhaps his most cynical line as an answer: “Du bist am Ende—was du bist” (FA 1.7.1:79, l. 1806; You are, in the end, what you are). Mephistopheles is both right and wrong with this answer to Faust’s “What am I then?”. The devil is correct to the extent that if one has the approach to the infinite as one’s goal, one is always left with an infinite distance from that goal, and so in a sense one is always where one was. As Faust says:

Ich bin nicht um ein Haar breit höher,
Bin dem Unendlichen nicht näher. (FA 1.7.1:80, ll. 1814–15)
I am not a hair’s breadth higher, / am not any closer to the infinite.

And Mephistopheles is further correct in his assessment that Faust’s drive for the infinite has led him to leave the pleasures of this world behind:

Ihm hat das Schicksal einen Geist gegeben,
Der ungebändigt immer vorwärts dringt,
Und dessen übereiltes Streben
Der Erde Freuden überspringt. (FA 1.7.1:81, ll. 1856–59)
Fate has granted him a spirit / that untethered always presses onward / and whose rash striving / jumps over the pleasures of the earth.

But, of course, he’s mistaken to believe that the opposite will bring Faust down, that by dragging Faust through an empty finitude—what Mephistopheles calls “das wilde Leben” and “flache Unbedeutenheit” (FA 1.7.1:81, ll. 1860-61; wild life and shallow insignificance;)—he will in the end “doch zugrunde gehn” (FA 1.7.1:81, l. 1867; after all perish). For better and for worse, those two souls in Faust’s soul will continually propel him out of any finite moment.

But as we know, some 9500 lines later it is precisely Faust’s continued desire for the infinite that leads his “übereiltes Streben” (FA 1.7.1:81, l. 1858; rash striving) to another “ungeduldge Tat” (FA 1.7.1:437, l. 11341; impatient deed). For what is the motivation for the command to Mephistopheles to remove the idyllic couple Philemon and Baucis from their age-old cottage, linden trees, and chapel from what is now Faust’s property? He seems to have a moment of regret, or at least concern, when he hears his watchman describe the destruction that Mephistopheles has wrought, but then he forges on to infinity:

Mein Türmer jammert; mich, im Innern,
Verdrießt die ungeduld’ge Tat.
Doch sei der Lindenwuchs vernichtet
Zu halbverkohlter Stämme Graun,
Ein Luginsland ist bald errichtet,
Um ins Unendliche zu schaun. (FA 1.7.1:437-8, ll. 11340–45)
My tower-guard moans; the impatient deed / disturbs me deeply. / And yet, with the linden grove destroyed, / the trees reduced to coal, / a telescope tower can now be erected / to gaze off into infinity.

Here we can pause to contrast this seeing into the infinite, with all the damage it wreaks, to that of Lynkeus, the watchman, who casts his eyes far and near, but always directed to specific, finite things:

Ich blick’ in die Ferne,
Ich seh’ in der Näh’
Den Mond und die Sterne,
Den Wald und das Reh. (FA 1.7.1:436, ll. 11292–95)
I look in the distance, / look close by / and see moon and stars, / forest and deer.

A vision without limits not only leaps over “der Erde Freuden” (earthly pleasures), as Mephistopheles says, but in desiring to go beyond things into the infinite, destroys them. To summarize the critical message of Faust: The unadulterated striving for the infinite over-sees and even breaks things and individual people—Gretchen and Philemon and Baucis being the prime examples.

In his entry on Begriff (Concept), Clark Muenzer has made the point that the final word of Goethe’s Faust, i.e., after the famous line: “das Ewig-Weibliche / zieht uns hinan” (FA 1.7.1:464; ll. 12110–11; the eternal feminine / draws us forward), is: “Finis.” The word is used to mark the end of a work, and Goethe must have been particularly pleased to write it here to draw the limit, border, or boundary (the other meanings of finis) around this play that is not only about infinite striving but also itself seemed to go on and on and on. It is as if at the end of Faust’s and of his own life Goethe wanted to emphasize the ultimate significance of finite things—even as their souls are being drawn beyond them.

Infinite Passion without Measure: Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities)

If Faust revealed the existential drama of an individual drawn toward the infinite by a relentless striving that tragically undermines the dialectical relationship to the finite, Goethe’s novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities), reveals the tragic consequences of an “infinite” passion that, in Adelung’s words, is “über alle Maße” (beyond all measure).16 Thus, while many of the mentions of “unendlich” as an adjective or adverb in the novel might seem to correspond to Adelung’s definition of a merely exaggerated version of ‘very much,’ there is something more existentially tragic to “infinite” desire as well.

Structured around the concept of “elective affinity” borrowed from chemistry, according to which certain elements have a strong natural attraction to others, the novel follows the crossing passions of two couples. Eduard and Charlotte live on an aristocratic estate, to which they invite two of their friends, a captain named Otto and a young girl, Ottilie. While there is little action in the plot besides the planning and executing of multiple changes to the landscaping, the “chemical reaction” that this “experiment” brings about accounts for the novel’s exploration of the relation between reason and emotion, self-control, and unlimited passion. Namely, whereas Charlotte and the captain strive to keep their mutual attraction within the confines of social norms, Eduard’s all-consuming passion for Ottilie leads to her tragic death as she literally wastes away. It is not by chance that the lexeme “unendlich” (infinite) occurs most often in relation to Eduard and Ottilie and that they experience a self-loss in the “boundlessness” (recall the term “das Grenzenlose” from the poem “Eins und Alles”) of their desire.

In Chapter 13 of Part One, Eduard experiences a major turning point in his emotional composition, thereby shifting the “chemical” balance that controls the characters’ interactions. The narrator writes of the motivation behind his desire to move faster on the relandscaping of this estate grounds:

In Eduards Gesinnungen, wie in seinen Handlungen ist kein Maß mehr. Das Bewußtsein, zu lieben und geliebt zu werden, treibt ihn ins Unendliche. Wie verändert ist ihm die Ansicht von allen Zimmern, von allen Umgebungen! Er findet sich in seinem eigenen Hause nicht mehr. Ottiliens Gegenwart verschlingt ihm alles; er ist ganz in ihr versunken, keine andre Betrachtung steigt vor ihm auf, kein Gewissen spricht ihm zu; alles, was in seiner Natur gebändigt war, bricht los, sein ganzes Wesen strömt gegen Ottilien. (FA 1.8:360)
There was no more measure/self-control in Eduards emotions and actions. The consciousness that he loved and was loved in return drives him into the infinite. How changed was his perspective of every room, all his surroundings! He is no longer at home in his own house. Ottilie’s presence consumes him completely; he is lost in her, no other thoughts arise in him, no conscience speaks to him; everything that had been bound within him breaks free, his entire being streams toward Ottilie.

And in the next paragraph, Eduard’s plans for the relandscaping are described as being undertaken “mit einem einseitigen Triebe, übermäßig gefördert werden” (FA 1.8:360; excessively, with a one-sided drive). The dialectic between the infinite with measured boundaries has unraveled.

Eduard’s one-sided passion is an infinite desire that comes to consume the delicate and finite creature, Ottilie. When Eduard makes the decision to leave the estate because of the strength of his passion and the inability to be with its object, Ottilie, she is the one who now suffers. Her end is already inscribed in Chapter 17 of Part 1: the adjective “unendlich” (infinite) marks a degree of suffering that escapes even the narrator’s ability to describe: “Wir wagen nicht, ihren Schmerz, ihre Tränen zu schildern. Sie litt unendlich. Sie bat nur Gott, daß er ihr nur über diesen Tag weghelfen möchte; sie überstand den Tag und die Nacht, und als sie sich wiedergefunden, glaubte sie, ein anderes Wesen anzutreffen” (FA 1.8:379; We don’t dare to describe her pain, her tears. She suffered infinitely. She beseeched God to help her get through this one day; she did survive the day and the night, and when she came back to herself it was as if she encountered a different being). This infinite suffering is the black hole that displaces her from her own self. Indeed, a few paragraphs later, her experience is described as “in dem gegenwärtigen Zustande fühlte sie eine unendliche Leere, wovon sie früher kaum etwas geahnet hatte” (FA 1.8:384; in the present condition she felt an infinite emptiness that she previously could never have imagined possible).

It is not by chance that the gardener is also overwhelmed by the plants that are introduced in Chapter 9 of Part Two. We have seen that, for Goethe, the proper way to approach nature is to proceed slowly through its endless forms, never losing sight of the way the finite “participates” in the infinite. And the gardener is described as one who pursues such a patient path in engaging with nature, who knows that “der ruhige Gang [nicht] unterbrochen werden [darf], den die Pflanze zur dauernden oder zur vorübergehenden Vollendung nimmt” (FA 1.8:459; the calm course which a plant takes on its way toward a lasting or passing perfection/completion may not be interrupted). Indeed, what is demanded of a gardener is “ein ruhiger Blick, eine stille Konsequenz, in jeder Jahrszeit, in jeder Stunde das ganz Gehörige zu tun” (FA 1.8:460; a calm gaze, a quiet consistency, to do what is required in every season, in every hour). Thus he is upset by the introduction into his field, botany, of an “infinite” explosion of new plants by an age interested only in endless variety: “so waren ihm doch die neuen Zierbäume und Modeblumen einigermaßen fremd geblieben, und er hatte vor dem unendlichen Felde der Botanik, das sich nach der Zeit auftat, und den darin herumsummenden fremden Namen eine Art von Scheu, die ihn verdrießlich machte (FA 1.8:460; thus the new ornamental trees and fashionable flowers remained foreign to him, and he had a kind of bashfulness vis-à-vis the infinite field of botany that opened up in those days, with its foreign names buzzing around, which made him morose). It is as if the very realm of nature has been upset by a human drive to change it beyond measure. We will see Goethe’s alternative response to the “infinite field” of botany in the following section.

Finally, at Eduard’s death the condition that led to it is characterized as “unendlich” just four sentences before the novel’s conclusion: “Und so lag denn auch dieses vor kurzem zu unendlicher Bewegung aufgeregte Herz in unstörbarer Ruhe” (FA 1.8:529; And so this heart, that had so recently been driven to infinite feverishness, lay finally at undisturbed rest). The only response to the infinite movement can be the absolute peace of death.17 This is the philosophical work of the role of infinity in the novel. It pushes both poles of the dialectic to their tragic extremes. Life cannot be sustained given the disturbed balance between the finite and infinite introduced by a passion beyond measure.

The Finite Turn within the Infinite of Nature: “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” (1799; The Metamorphosis of Plants)

One of Goethe’s well-known aphorisms reads: “Jedes Existirende ist ein Analogon alles Existirenden; daher erscheint uns das Dasein immer zu gleicher Zeit gesondert und verknüpft. Folgt man der Analogie zu sehr, so fällt alles identisch zusammen; meidet man sie, so zerstreut sich alles in's Unendliche. In beiden Fällen stagnirt die Betrachtung, einmal als überlebendig, das anderemal als getödtet.” (FA 1.13:46, #1.293; Everything that exists is an analogy of everything that exists; hence being is always simultaneously separated and connected. Too much attention to analogies makes everything collapse into identity; too little attention to it and everything scatters into infinity. In both cases observation stagnates: now overactive, now killed).18 Goethe states here as a metaphysical principle what we have seen play out in his poetry, natural science, Faust, and novels, namely: In a world structured such that all things stand in dialectical—or “analogical”—relationships to all other things, there is a delicate balance in nature between the finite—the self-identical thing—and the infinite—with a corresponding loss of all form and self.19

To consider the metaphysical and ethical underpinnings of Goethe’s alternative understanding of finite and the infinite things, we can turn to a crucial turn in the elegy, “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” (1799; The Metamorphosis of Plants). The question of his day in the late 1790s, posed in some slight variation by Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Schelling, and Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), was: “How does the infinite come out of itself to become finite?”20 Or, in its Leibnizian formulation: Why is there something and not, rather, nothing? In this case the “nothing” is a “no-thing” in the sense: If there is only the infinite, there can be no differentiation, negation, determination, i.e., no finite things. After all, the other sentence that accompanied every thinker in the period was Spinoza’s famous line from his Ethics: “Omnes determinatio est negatio” (all determination is/arises from negation)—i.e., for there to exist some determinate thing, it must come to an end, reach the limit of its being, find its negation by some other equally determinate thing. (Hence Mephistopheles in Faust, the “Geist, der stets verneint” [FA 1.7.1:65, l. 1338; the spirit who always negates], is a necessary part of the Lord’s creation.) Goethe provides a unique answer to the question of the possibility of finitude in relation to the infinite. The Bildungstrieb (formative drive) of nature and life might contain infinite possibilities and may even tend toward them, but it contains within itself as well the necessary movement of turning back on itself—although that necessary turn has an element of contingency as the drive is affected ‘epigenetically,’ i.e., by the interplay of organisms and their environment. For plants, this necessary turn inward is brought about by the powerful hand of nature itself. In the elegy, it occurs dramatically almost exactly at the center of the poem.

The first half of “Die Metamorphose der Pflanze” follows the unfolding of the plant out of the seed, pushed first by a “Kraft” (FA 1.1:639, l. 15; force) and then, thanks to “ein folgender Trieb” (l. 23; a pursuant drive), the first forms of stems and leaves emerge and rise higher and higher, “Knoten auf Knoten getürmt” (l. 24; nodes towered upon nodes). It was Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis that all plant parts are developmental variations of the single form of a leaf.21 It seems to reach a veritable frenzy as the shapes build, expand, multiply:

Zwar nicht immer das gleiche; denn mannigfaltig erzeugt sich,
Ausgebildet, du siehst’s, immer das folgende Blatt,
Ausgedehnter, gekerbter, getrennter in Spitzen und Teile,
Die verwachsen vorher ruhten im untern Organ.
Und so erreicht es zuerst die höchst bestimmte Vollendung,
Die bei manchem Geschlecht dich zum Erstaunen bewegt.
Viel gerippt und gezackt, auf mastig strotzender Fläche,
Scheinet die Fülle des Triebs frei und unendlich zu sein. (FA 1.1:639, ll.25–32)
To be sure, not always the same, for manifold is the production, / always unfolding, you see, each following leaf. / What earlier had been intertwined within the inner organ / grows more expansive, more notched, more differentiated in points and parts. / And thus it attains initially a highly particular perfection / that in some species can move you to amazement. / With multiple ribs and jagged edges upon rich abounding surfaces / the fullness of the drive seems to be free and infinite.

Crucially, however, the drive to infinity is only apparent. And it is here that Goethe presents nature itself as making a turn away from the temptation of the infinite with a decisive doch (and yet). He continues:

Doch hier hält die Natur, mit mächtigen Händen, die Bildung
An und lenket sie sanft in das Vollkommnere hin. (FA 1.1:640, ll. 33–34)22
And yet here nature, with powerful hands, halts its formative unfolding / guiding it toward a more perfect/complete form.

Goethe’s philosophical project is not plagued by the infinite, in terms of either a longing for an “unendliche Annäherung” (infinite approximation) or by the question of an inexplicable leap out of the transcendent infinite into the finite world. Rather, to use terms from Spinoza of which Goethe was well aware, nature itself as naturans, as the creative force with a drive toward the infinite, possesses an equally powerful drive to give shape and form—and thereby greater perfection—to its finite creations, naturata. The self-reflexive and self-containing arc turning the drive back onto itself to give shape to things is itself shaped from within the drive itself.

And yet, there arises a second “doch” (and yet) in the poem, at the start of line 60, this time slightly buried at the beginning of a pentameter: The process of reproduction captures the crucial duality that makes up Goethe’s conception of the infinite. While the production of “unzählige Keime” (uncountable [infinite] seeds) is contained within an enclosed ring of nature—“Und hier schließt die Natur den Ring der ewigen Kräfte” (FA 1.1:640, l. 5; Here nature closes the ring of eternal forces)—reproduction also opens up a new infinite series of “rings” that makes up life:

Doch ein neuer [Ring] sogleich fasset den vorigen an,
Daß die Kette sich fort durch alle Zeiten verlänge
Und das Ganze belebt, so wie das Einzelne, sei. (FA I:1, 640, ll. 60–62)
And yet a new [ring] immediately seizes upon the first / so that the chain extends on and on through all ages / and the whole, as well as the individual, is full of life.

We find a similar dual law of expansion to the infinite (immeasurable) and withdrawal in the related poem, “Metamorphose der Tiere”:

Denn zweifach bestimmte
Sie [die Natur] das höchste Gesetz, beschränkte jegliches Leben,
Gab ihm gemeßnes Bedürfnis, und ungemessene Gaben. (FA 1.2:498, ll. 6–8)
For with two aspects / she [nature] has determined her highest law, limited each living thing / gave life a measured need/drive, and, at the same time unmeasured gifts.

Goethe captures this duality in the middle of the poem by repeating three times the dialectical conjunction, “doch” (and yet), thereby depicting structures that take the reader from the necessary law of limitation, through the driving internal urge to break out of the enclosing circle of form, and then back to a harmonious balancing which is the source of beauty:

Doch im Innern befindet die Kraft der edlern Geschöpfe
Sich im heiligen Kreise lebendiger Bildung beschlossen.
Diese Grenzen erweitert kein Gott, es ehrt die Natur sie:
Denn nur also beschränkt war je das Vollkommene möglich.
Doch im Innern scheint ein Geist gewaltig zu ringen,
Wie er durchbräche den Kreis, Willkür zu schaffen den Formen
Wie dem Wollen; doch was er beginnt, beginnt er vergebens.
Denn zwar drängt er sich vor zu diesen Gliedern, zu jenen,
Stattet mächtig sie aus, jedoch schon darben dagegen
Andere Glieder, die Last des Übergewichtes vernichtet
Alle Schöne der Form und alle reine Bewegung. (FA 1.2:499, ll. 29–39)
And yet, within the more noble creatures there is a force / contained within the circle of organic formation. / No god can expand these limits, nature herself respects them: / For only as limited is a perfect thing possible. / And yet, within [life] it seems that a spirit wrestles mightily / to break through the circle, to introduce the random into forms / and will; and yet, what this spirit begins, it begins in vain. / For as much as it drives these or those appendages forward, / powerfully adorning them, at the same time / other appendages wither, and beauty of form and pure formative movement / destroys the imbalanced weight.

Conclusion

The adjective and adverb unendlich (infinite, infinitely) and the substantive Unendlichkeit (infinity) experienced an explosion in the modern era, indeed, they can be considered defining concepts of Western modernity itself. As we can see in the entry by Adelung in his dictionary, the key transition was taking place in the decades spanning 1800, namely, “infinite” was no longer an attribute associated only with God. Nature and the human spirit came to be defined by an infinite drive toward self-transcendence without end. Indeed, “the infinite” was so much a part of the world that it could also apply to the mundane in the sense of ‘very much.’ While some, like the German Romantics, embraced this possibility of endless striving and development, and others, like Kant, called for a ‘critical’ philosophy that would limit reason’s attempts to address transcendent (though not “transcendental”) questions (see the Prolegomena), Goethe expounded a dialectic of the finite and the infinite which was grounded in human behavior within a wider natural order.23 It is a kind of natural and ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical “law” (Gesetz) that drives each (living) being beyond itself while also necessitating a return to measure and limitation so that it might take form and be grasped conceptually. The infinite can be experienced and intuited, but only within the confines of finite existence in which it participates. To attempt to go beyond that law and attain a sense of the infinite itself might be an inherent drive, but without its dialectical counterpart of ‘measure,’ can lead to tragedy.

  1. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, edited by Leroy E. Loemker (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 504. ↩
  2. Pascal writes: “For in fact, what is man in nature? A nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret” (cited in Karl Löwith, “Man between Infinities,” Measure 1 [1950]: 297–310, here 305). While Pascal still expresses a Baroque sense of being overwhelmed by the infinite, by the end of the eighteenth century a different sense of human mastery of the infinite was on the rise. ↩
  3. Schleiermacher. KGA 2:299. See Pollack-Milgate and Smith for examples of the Romantics’ fascination with the mathematics of the infinite. Goethe was far more skeptical of the role of mathematics in general. ↩
  4. The concluding lines from Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes read: “nur—aus dem Kelche dieses Geisterreiches / schäumt ihm seine Unendlichkeit.” (only—out of the chalice of this realm of spirits foams forth to him [spirit] his infinity). See G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (Surkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 591. The longest “Remark” (Anmerkung) in the Wissenschaft der Logik (1812/16/30; Science of Logic) deals with infinitesimal calculus and extends some seventy pages. ↩
  5. While the lexeme “unendlich” can be translated in other ways, for example, as “without end” or “endless,” I have consistently translated it as “infinite” (and its substantive form, “das Unendliche,” as infinity) to make its occurrence recognizable in English (even if, on occasion, stylistically infelicitous). ↩
  6. Unless otherwise noted, works by Goethe are cited according to the Frankfurt edition (FA): Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche, eds. Hendrik Birus, Dieter Borchmeyer, Karl Eibl, et. al., 40 vols. (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1987–2013), 1.24:448. Hereafter cited as FA in the body of the text. Here FA 1.2:380. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the German are my own. ↩
  7. “Es gibt eine zarte Empirie, die sich mit dem Gegenstand innigst identisch macht, und dadurch zur eigentlichen Theorie wird. Diese Steigerung des geistigen Vermögens aber gehört einer hochgebildeten Zeit an” (FA 1.25:113, #110; There is a tender/delicate empiricism that arrives at a most intimate identity with its object and thereby becomes proper theory. But this intensification of the mental capacity belongs to a highly developed/educated age.) ↩
  8. For his main discussion of “bad infinity,” see Georg Wilhlem Friedrich Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik I (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 149–71. ↩
  9. I largely agree with Alessandro Costazza and Horst Lange that this short text cannot be read as an example of Goethe’s close reading of Spinoza. However, it can represent Goethe’s version (and transformation) of ideas he drew from Spinoza. ↩
  10. Sacher and Carranza have demonstrated the importance of the poem for the American Transcendentalists. Emerson likely changed the title of one of his poems from “One in All” to “One and All” after reading Margaret Fuller’s translation of Goethe’s poem. ↩
  11. Regina Sachers, “Goethe’s Legacy? ‘Eins und Alles’ and its Career in Scholarship,” German Life and Letters 61.2 (2008): 187–201, here 200. ↩
  12. Chad Wellmon has pointed out that Goethe grappled with the issue of the tension between staying with the (finite) confines of a particular field or pursuing multiple approaches giving the infinite variety of nature and human activity. It was a particular issue for Goethe once he, the famous poet, ventured into the sciences. Thus he writes with some irony in Hefte zur Morphologie, erster Band (1817–22; Notebooks on Morphology, volume 1): “[D]enn nach seinem [the public's] Wunsch sich gut und gleichförmig bedient zu sehen, verlangt es an jeden daß er in seinem Fache bleibe und dieses Ansinnen hat auch guten Grund: denn wer das Vortreffliche leisten will, welches nach allen Seiten hin unendlich ist, soll es nicht, wie Gott und die Natur wohl tun dürfen, auf mancherlei Wegen versuchen. Daher will man daß ein Talent das sich in einem gewissen Feld hervortrat, dessen Art und Weise allgemein anerkannt und beliebt ist, aus seinem Kreise sich nicht entfernte, oder wohl gar in einen weit abgelegenen hinüberspringe. Wagt es einer, so weiß man ihm keinen Dank, ja man gewährt ihm, wenn er auch recht macht, keinen besonderen Beifall.” (FA 1.24:417; For according to the public’s desire to see itself served in a good and uniform way, it demands of each [scientist] to stay in one discipline and this attitude has its good reasons: for whoever wants to achieve something great that stretches in all directions ad infinitum, should not, as God and nature might, strike out on multiple paths. Therefore, people don’t want to see a talent, that was developed in one discipline and whose methods are generally recognized, removed from its particular sphere or jumping over to a distant one.) ↩
  13. David E. Wellbery. Goethes Faust I: Reflexion der tragischen Form. Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung: Munich, 2015. For example, developing a conception of subjectivity from Fichte, Wellbery argues: “Aber die unendlich/endliche Erfahrungsstruktur [des Subjekts] birgt in sich auch das Potenial der Überschreitung ins Maßlose und Ungeheure. Daher bildet sie die Grundlage einer historisch innovativen Tragödienkonzeption” (But the infinite/finite experiential structure [of the subject] harbors within itself the potential for transgression into the measureless and monstrous. It therefore forms the foundation of a historically innovative structure of tragedy; 67). ↩
  14. “Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, / Die eine will sich von der andern trennen; / Die eine hält, in derber Liebeslust, / Sich an die Welt, mit klammernden Organen; / Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust / Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen” (FA 1.7.1:57, ll. 1112–17; Two souls live, alas, in my breast / the one would divorce itself from the other; / the one binds itself, with course desire, / to the world with clutching organs; / the other rises forcefully from the dust / to fields of golden grain). ↩
  15. Another version of Goethe’s skepticism concerning a drive to the infinite in the realm of politics can be seen in the maxim: “Es ist nichts trauriger anzusehn als das unvermittelte Streben ins Unbedingte in dieser bedingten Welt; es erscheint im Jahre 1830 vielleicht ungehöriger als je” (FA 1.13:83, #1.568; There is nothing sadder that the unmediated striving for the absolute/limitless in this conditioned/limited world; this appears to be the case in 1830 more than ever). John Noyes, in his entry to the GLPC on “Welt,” points out that Goethe opposes this striving toward the infinite without measure: “Against this way of being unlimited in a limited world, he [Goethe] offers the idea of various practices associated with Welt.” ↩
  16. See the GLPC entry on “Maß” (Moderation, Measure). ↩
  17. A different kind of peace can be found for humans and nature when the infinite is contained within a circle, as in the late poem:
    Wenn im Unendlichen dasselbe
    Sich wiederholend ewig fließt,
    Das tausendfältige Gewölbe
    Sich kräftig in einander schließt;
    Strömt Lebenslust aus allen Dingen,
    Dem kleinsten wie dem größten Stern,
    Und alles Drängen, alles Ringen
    Ist ewige Ruh' in Gott dem Herrn. (FA 1.2:680)
    When within the infinite the ever same / flows in eternal repetition, / and the thousandfold firmament / powerfully closes in upon itself; / then a love of life flows out of all things, / the smallest and the grandest star alike, / and all urgency and all struggle / is eternal calm in the Lord God.
    ↩
  18. See GLPC entries on “Ach” (Ah, Alas) and “Allegorie/Symbol.” ↩
  19. As Jane K. Brown and Christian Weber summarize this principle in their entry on “Allegorie/Symbol”: “Here we have stated a principle that operates on all philosophical levels: it offers a metaphysics of a dynamic world driven by forces of attraction and repulsion, union and dispersal; it governs an epistemology that sees the need to balance the opposing desires to recognize identities and differences; as an ethics, it provides the basic guidelines for a life of in harmony with the world, even as it recognizes the danger and draw of infinite differentiation; and under the master concept of ‘analogy,’ it signals an aesthetics that underlies relations between things as well as between subjects and objects.” ↩
  20. For Hegel’s response to this question, which echoes the earlier “Studie nach Spinoza,” see the Wissenschaft der Logik (Science of Logic), 168–70. ↩
  21. Goethe writes in the 1790 essay, “Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären” (Attempt to explain the metamorphosis of plants), of “die innere Identität der verschiedenen, nach einander entwickelten Pflanzenteile bei der größten Abwicklung der äußeren Gestalt” (FA 1.24:131, §67; the inner identity of the differing plant parts that unfold out of each other with the greatest variety of external form) ↩
  22. In his 1790 essay, “Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären” (Attempt to explain the metamorphosis of plants), Goethe describes this process prosaically: “Und so zeigen uns den beide Fälle [Rose und Nelke, JHS], daß die Natur gewöhnlich in den Blumen ihren Wachstum schließe und gleichsam eine Summe ziehe, daß sie der Möglichkeit ins Unendliche mit einzelnene Schritten fortzugehen Einhalt tue, um durch die Ausbildung der Samen schneller zum Ziel zu gelangen” (FA 1.24:145, §106; And so both cases [of the rose and the carnation, JHS] demonstrate that in flowers nature normally closes off its/her growth and so to speak draws the bottom line, thereby after a few steps putting a stop to the possibility of proceeding infinitely, so that it can achieve its goal more quickly by developing seeds). ↩
  23. Kant makes the distinction between “transcendent” (reason overstepping its bounds) and “transcendental” (the conditions of possibility for knowledge) in a footnote ironically responding to a critic of his Critique of Pure Reason. Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik (Hamburg, Felix Meiner Verlag, 1969), 144. ↩

Works Cited and Further Reading