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Goethe's Faustian Life

Goethe is, perhaps more than anybody who ever lived, the outstanding example of what it is possible to do and be with a single human life.

This range and manic level of productivity can lead to occasional sloppiness, but it also makes him well-equipped to grasp the contours of Goethe: inspired poet; original man of science; rigorous philosopher; prophetic visionary; stern believer in order, tradition, and realpolitik; and sui generis freethinking mystic. Goethe poured his vast range of interests and activities into Faust, and in so doing, Wilson writes, created “a myth of modern humanity, the intellect who has broken loose from religion, who will pursue truth through self-analysis on the one hand, and on the other, through scientific observation of Nature and the universe.” Leaving behind the prospective writer’s hermetic via contemplativa, he pursued a via activa: attending Privy Council meetings, supervising road-building, helping reopen mines (which fired his scientist’s passion for geology), managing forests, administering the nearby University of Jena (which duly became the center of the nineteenth-century revolution in German thought and culture), and acting as paymaster for Weimar’s tiny army.

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