Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts: Announcements

Publication: Fourth Installment (Vol. 4, 2024) now available

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2024-05-29

At long last, we are very pleased to announce the release of the fourth installment of the Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts, which includes eight fantastic entries on the following concepts: Allegorie/Symbol (Allegory/Symbol) by Jane K. Brown and Christian Weber; Dämonisch, das Dämonische (Daemonic, the Daemonic) by Angus Nicholls; Ding/Unding (Thing/No-Thing) by our own Clark Muenzer; Ethik (Ethics) by Michael Lipkin; Offenbares Geheimnis (Open Secret) by Alberto Merzari; Proteus (Proteus) by Benjamin Schluter; Trübe (Turbidity, Cloudiness, Gloominess) by our own Margaret Strair; and last but not least, Unendlichkeit (Infinity) by our own John H. Smith.

We look forward to your comments and suggestions on our latest installment, which you can send to goethe-lexicon@pitt.edu.

In preparation for our planned Fifth Installment, we encourage readers as well as previous contributors who are interesting in contributing future lexicon entries to contact us with submission proposals at goethe-lexicon@pitt.edu. The deadline for submissions for the next installment is September 1, 2024.

Finally, if you have not already done so, be sure to register an account on our website. Please also feel free to spread the word to friends and colleagues about our project and encourage them to register. The Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts is an online and open access publication. Everything we publish is available to anyone who is interested in Goethe and philosophy at no cost.

Sincerely,
The GLPC Editorial Team

Publication: Third Installment (Vol. 3, 2022) now available

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2022-12-20

We are very pleased to announce the release of the third installment of the Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts. We look forward to your comments and suggestions, which you can send to goethe-lexicon@pitt.edu.

In preparation for both our Third International Workshop, which will take place in Toronto on April 20-23, 2023, and our planned fourth installment, we encourage readers who are interesting in contributing future lexicon entries to contact us with submission proposals at goethe-lexicon@pitt.edu. Finally, if you haven't already, be sure to register on the website. And feel free to notify your friends and colleagues about our project and encourage them to register as well. The Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts is an online and open access publication. Everything we publish is available to anyone who is interested in Goethe and philosophy at no cost.

Call for Papers: Workshop: Third International Workshop of the Goethe-Lexicon (Toronto, April 20-23, 2023)

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2022-09-12

Now that we can begin to hope for something like “normal” academic exchanges, we invite contributions to the Third International Workshop of the Goethe Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts (GLPC), a collaborative research initiative investigating the central role played by concepts and their reinvention in Goethe’s development as a heterodox thinker. The lexicon is an online, open-access research tool that seeks to make Goethe available beyond the German-speaking world to a global readership and to offer a resource for scholars outside German Studies to connect their work to a thinker who, until recently, remained largely unacknowledged for his philosophical interests and achievements. We currently have published two installments and expect the third to appear by October 2022. The first two installments are available here: https://goethe-lexicon.pitt.edu/GL.

The workshop will take place in person at the University of Toronto on April 20-23, 2023. (Our appreciation to John Noyes for making local arrangements.) Its purpose will be to discuss drafts of future entries to the lexicon, esp. installments five and six which will be appearing at the end of late spring and summer, 2023.

We encourage you to consider a concept from the list available on the GLPC website: https://goethe-lexicon.pitt.edu/GL/information/authors. As we approach our first 40-50 entries, we particularly are interested in your consideration of what would be “indispensable” concepts (though the nature of our project is to depict Goethe as a “heterodox” thinker).

The format of the workshop will involve pairs of presenters and commenters, with ample time for discussion of the pre-submitted entries. Accommodations will be made for remote attendance and “auditors.”

If funding permits, there may be subventions for graduate students, junior faculty, and independent scholars to defray some expenses. Otherwise, meals will be provided (travel and hotel will not be covered).

Please submit your proposals of 300-500 words no later than March 1, 2023, to Clark Muenzer (muenzer@pitt.edu), John H. Smith (jhsmith@uci.edu), and John Noyes (john.noyes@utoronto.ca).

Completed papers should be between 2500 and 4000 words. They must be submitted by April 1, 2023. The workshop will be limited to 20-25 participants.

Submissions that cannot be accepted due to space limitations will still be considered as future lexicon entries.

—Clark, John N. and John S.

(A copy of the CFP can be downloaded as a Word document by clicking this link.)

Publication: Second Installment (Vol. 2, 2021) now available

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2021-11-08

We are very pleased to announce the release of the second installment of the Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts. We look forward to your comments and suggestions, which you can send to goethe-lexicon@pitt.edu. PDF versions of all the entries will soon be made available, at which point we will make another announcement.

In the mean time, work has already begun on the third installment of the GLPC, which will bring us to a total of thirty entries. Please contact the editors with proposals for any submissions you would like to make; there is no fixed submission deadline. Finally, if you haven't already, be sure to register on the website. And feel free to notify your friends and colleagues about our project and encourage them to register as well. The Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts is an online and open access publication. Everything we publish is available to anyone who is interested in Goethe and philosophy at no cost.

Publication: PDFs of inaugural installment now available; interface improvements

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2021-05-20

We are very pleased to announce the release of PDF versions of the first ten lexicon entries that comprise the inaugural installment of the Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts. To access the PDFs, simply click the link to the lexicon entry you wish to view and you will find a link to the corresponding PDF in the right-hand side bar under the title “Download.”

Coinciding with the release of the PDFs for the inaugural installment, we have also debuted several major quality-of-life improvements for the website with the aim of making it easier and more intuitive to use than ever, including perpetual navigation links, a table of contents button when viewing the lexicon entries, and a more straightforward interface for accessing the lexicon entries. If you experience any issues with the update, please feel free to report them to us.

Sincerely,
The GLPC Editorial Team

Publication: Inaugural Installment (Vol. 1, 2021) now available

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2021-02-10

We are very pleased to announce that our first installment of ten entries, which extend from A (Ach) to Z (Zusammenhang), is now available. We look forward to your comments and suggestions, which you can send to goethe-lexicon@pitt.edu. Work has already begun on the second installment, which will publish ten new entries at the end of April. Please contact the editors with proposals for any submissions you would like to make for the remaining three installments in April, July, and October 2021. Finally, if you haven't already, be sure to register on the website. And feel free to notify your friends and colleagues about our project and encourage them to register as well. The Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts is an online and open access publication. Everything we publish is available to anyone who is interested in Goethe and philosophy at no cost.

Events: Workshop: Second International Workshop of the Goethe-Lexicon (July 9-11, 2020)

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2020-04-19

Download the workshop brochure here.

Events: GSA Seminar: “Goethe as a Heterodox Thinker” (Portland, Oct. 3-6, 2019)

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2019-05-01

Co-Conveners: Clark Muenzer (University of Pittsburgh), Karin Schutjer (University of Oklahoma), John H. Smith (University of California, Irvine)

This seminar will explore Goethe’s unique contribution to philosophical discourse. During the 2018 GSA, four panels were dedicated to “Goethe’s Philosophical Concepts.” They launched a multi-year project, a Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts, that will provide an ongoing online and print-on-demand collection of entries highlighting the novelty of Goethe’s thought. The project is inspired in part by Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of philosophy as the “creation of concepts,” and in part by Goethe himself, who wrote: “Kein Wort steht still sondern es rückt durch den Gebrauch von seinem anfänglichen Platz eher hinab als hinauf, eher ins Schlechtere als ins Bessere, ins Engere als ins Weitere, und an der Wandelbarkeit des Worts läßt sich die Wandelbarkeit der Begriffe erkennen” (Max. und Reflex. 983). The success of the panels encourages us to gather Goethezeit scholars of all ranks to discuss Goethe as heterodox thinker against the background of philosophical doxa.

Each convener provides a short reading by Goethe or from the philosophical tradition, plus a brief explanation of the selection. Each participant writes a short position paper on one of the readings, distributed in advance. Each day of the seminar, one convener is responsible for moderating the discussion.

The goal of this seminar is to gather potential participants in a new project entitled the Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts. The lexicon will present a digital, interactive exploration of the unique contributions that Goethe made to philosophy, i.e., how Goethe put his signature spin on both traditional philosophical concepts and those arising in the heady decades around 1800. One goal of the seminar is to develop an initial list of concepts that could be included in the lexicon. Beyond building upon the four panels on “Goethe’s Philosophical Concepts” offered during the 2018 GSA conference, the conveners plan a two-day workshop at the University of Pittsburgh in May of 2019 where, undoubtedly, some of the seminar participants will also be present. That is, we will be fostering an ever-expanding community of scholars across all academic ranks who will be able to contribute to this collective enterprise. Following the model of the 2015 GSA seminar on “Science, Nature, and Art: From the Age of Goethe to the Present,” the conveners will serve as discussion facilitators. There will not be formal presentations by the participants. Rather, there will be a genuine seminar format with common readings and shared Thesenpapiere.

Events: Workshop: First International Workshop of the Goethe-Lexicon (Pittsburgh, May 2-4, 2019)

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2019-05-01

G-LPC First Annual Workshop: Preliminary Program
University of Pittsburgh (May 2-5, 2019)

MAY 2

7-9pm: Opening Reception (40)

MAY 3

8:45am: Welcome (25)
9:00–10:40am: Presentation and discussion of entries 1-5 (20 minutes/entry)
11:00am–12:40pm: Presentation and discussion of entries 6-10 (20 minutes/entry)
2:00-3:15pm: 4 breakout sessions (with 5 participants each) to discuss the form and content of the entries
3:30-4:30pm: Reports from each group on results on the breakout sessions
5:00pm: Lecture Speaker: Gabriel Trop (Tat)

MAY 4

8:30–10:00am: Breakfast meeting of Board
10:30am–12:00pm: Panel discussion of other dictionaries and lexicon-projects (Goethe-Handbuch; Goethe-Wörterbuch; Dictionary of Untranslatables; Handbuch der philosophischen Begriffe; Keywords; SEP; Ästhetische Grundbegriffe; Eisler; Mauthner) (10 minutes each)
12:15–2:15pm: Lunch: Presentation of website and digital platform (Aaron Brenner, Timothy Deliyannides, Colin Allen, and Bryan Klausmayer)
2:30-3:45pm: 4 Breakout sessions (with 5 participants each) to discuss the functionalities of the entries: what users might want to do AND what entries to do first. (2 sessions for each question)
4:00-5:00pm: Reports from each group on results on the breakout sessions
6:30pm: Banquet

Events: GSA Panel Series: “Heterodox Thinking: Goethe and the Invention of Philosophical Concepts” (Pittsburgh, Sept. 27-30, 2018)

Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts — 2019-05-01

Call For Papers

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Richard Rorty gives prominent mention to Goethe as a philosophical contrarian who is situated “on the margins of the history of modern philosophy.” According to Rorty, Goethe, along with other heterodox thinkers (like Kierkegaard, Santayana, James, Dewey, and Heidegger) typically shocked systematic philosophy by waging war on its foundational principles, including the conceptual structures, or universals, that have traditionally supported it. Taking a cue from Rorty’s inclusion of Goethe in his lineage of “edifying” philosophers, this series of panels will consider the writer’s re-invention of philosophical concepts as part of his own philosophical edification (Bildung). If Goethe’s relation to the received opinions (doxa) of the professors of philosophy around 1800 was fraught, as he documents in “Einwirkung der neueren Philosophie” (1820), it also prompted him to pursue an alternative kind of philosophical method, “durch die ich die Meinungen der Philosophen, eben auch als wären es Gegenstände, zu fassen und mich daran auszubilden suchte.”

Each of the four panels focuses on conceptual investments in Goethe’s oeuvrethat are envisioned as possible “entries” in a Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts for Goethe. By exploring the semantic range of various linguistic markers, the panels include papers that identify and explore (1) concepts as they intersect with the philosophy of language, e.g., Geist and Buchstabe or Begriff; (2) signature words that Goethe coined or adapted for his own purposes: e.g., Urphänomen and Tätigkeit; (3) formal features (such as prosody) that resonate conceptually: e.g., the use of iambs in Iphigenieor the distich in the elegies; and (4) words that surprise, because at first glance they do not seem conceptually invested, eg., irrlichtilieren, Gipfel, or ungeheurlich.

This group of four panels, which is sponsored by the Goethe Society of North America, marks the start of work by an international team of scholars on a Lexicon of Goethe’s Philosophical Concepts.