Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 1 CLARK MUENZER U NIVERSITY OF P ITTSBURGH Und was in schwankender Erscheinung schwebt, Befestiget mit dauernden Gedanken. Faust, Prolog im Himmel 2 Wie frisch leuchtet er im Morgenduftglanz mir entgegen, wie froh konnt ich ihm meine Arme entgegen strecken, schauen die großen, harmonischen Massen, zu unzählig kleinen Teilen belebt; wie in Werken der ewigen Natur, bis aufs geringste Zäserchen, alles Gestalt, und alles zweckend zum Ganzen; wie das festgegründete ungeheure Gebäude sich leicht in die Luft hebt; wie durchbrochen alles und doch für die Ewigkeit. «Von Deutscher Baukunst» (FA I, 18: 115) Aus dem Größten wie aus dem Kleinsten (nur durch künstliche Mittel dem Menschen zu vergegenwärtigen) geht die Metaphysik der Erscheinungen hervor; in der Mitte liegt das Besondere, unsern Sinnen Angemessene, worauf ich angewiesen bin, deshalb aber die Begabten von Herzen segne die jene Regionen zu mir heranbringen. «Über Naturwissenschaft im Allgemeinen» (FA I, 25: 100) In the opening paragraphs of the preface to the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781), 3 Kant laments the fate of metaphysics, which the «Modeton des Zeitalters» (11) has diminished to a term of derision. But if the modern descendants of this «Königin aller Wissenschaften» have become, like the children of Hecuba, mere passive witnesses to her abandonment and exile (11), the final paragraphs of Kant’s preface optimistically predict that with the publication of the critique, his own legacy as the last arbiter of this once venerable tradition will soon be secured: Nun ist Metaphysik, nach den Begriffen, die wir hier davon geben werden, die einzige aller Wissenschaften, die sich eine solche Vollendung und zwar in kurzer Zeit, und mit nur weniger, aber vereinigter Bemühung, versprechen darf, so daß nichts vor die Nachkommenschaft übrig bleibt, als in der didaktischen Manier alles nach ihren Absichten einzurichten, ohne darum den Inhalt im mindesten vermehren zu können. Denn es ist nichts als das Inventarium aller unserer Besitze durch reine Vernunft, systematisch geordnet. (18) With the challenging task of the first critique apparently met, its culminating moment in metaphysics will require no more than the systematic organization of everything we can properly own through pure reason, according to Kant, who promptly announces his intention to offer «ein solches System der reinen (spekulativen) Vernunft […] unter dem Titel: Metaphysik der Natur» (18). 2 Clark Muenzer Despite Kant’s confidence that the rehabilitation of metaphysics with his own crowning contribution is immanent, at the beginning of his preface he had laid out - in less optimistic language - the tragic destiny of speculative reason by elaborating the observation «daß sie durch Fragen belästigt wird, die sie nicht abweisen kann» (11). Clearly, absent the cathartic 4 self-examination to which it becomes subject in the first critique, reason would not have become so readily available for the systematic re-organization that had motivated the project of critical philosophy in the first place. For the relentless questions that reason asks about the underlying ground of all experience and the highest truths can never receive conclusive answers, Kant asserts. Even if its journey appears principled at first - «Sie fängt von Grundsätzen an, deren Gebrauch im Laufe der Erfahrung unvermeidlich und zugleich durch diese hinreichend bewährt ist» (11) - metaphysical speculation, he warns, has also repeatedly struck out in directions that have led, inexorably, to darkness and contradiction. By failing to test the foundations of its own cognitive edifice, the mind has overextended its grasp in a fateful act of intellectual hybris that has propelled it to reach for unachievable goals. In effect blinded by principle, Kant concludes, reason has continued to ascend, by its very nature, to ever loftier heights, but it has also thereby left the testing ground of experience behind and the illegitimacy of its claims to foundational truths unexposed: Da sie aber gewahr wird, daß auf diese Art ihr Geschäfte jederzeit unvollendet bleiben müsse, weil die Fragen niemals aufhören, so sieht sie sich genötigt, zu Grundsätzen ihre Zuflucht zu nehmen, die allen möglichen Erfahrungsgebrauch überschreiten und gleichwohl so unverdächtig scheinen, daß auch die gemeine Menschenvernunft damit im Einverständnisse steht. Dadurch aber stürzt sie sich in Dunkelheit und Widersprüche [....] (11) As Kant sees things, then, a transgressive desire to know, which is the essence of «metaphysics as a natural disposition,» 5 has left the field of philosophical speculation littered with the spoils of contradiction and irresolvable dispute. Accordingly, in order to rescue the intelligible self from the «Kampfplatz» (11) of endless controversy about foundational ideas, he undertook the crossexamination of reason by itself. If the «Überdruß und gänzlicher Indifferentism» of the day was to become «das Vorspiel einer nahen Umschaffung und Aufklärung derselben» (12), he asserts, he had to redeem reason from the dogmatic slumber of the Wolffians, as well as the skeptical uncertainty of the Humeans, by placing it before its own tribunal, or «Gerichtshof» (13). That is, in order to save «die menschliche Vernunft» (11) from itself, Kant’s first critique in effect stages a «tragic» drama of agonistic self-cognition and purification that strives - with reason as its protagonist - to inaugurate a strictly Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 3 principled regime of knowledge about the world, «unabhängig von aller Erfahrung» (13). With the publication in 1783 of the Prolegomenon zu einer jeden zukünftigen Metaphysik and in 1786 of the Metaphysichen Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, Kant would conclude his salvage operation on reason by reducing classical metaphysics, in Adorno’s formulation, to «no more than a residue» (40). But my purpose in this essay cannot be to rehearse the arguments in either of Kant’s tracts, the second of which Goethe found to reflect his own belief in the «Urpolarität aller Wesen» (FA I, 16: 520) when he read it in the midst of the French campaigns of 1792. Instead, I will sketch out the writer’s own increasingly self-reflexive metaphysical disposition, across a remarkable range of fields, during the decade following his return from Italy. A more extensive treatment of Goethe’s philosophical underpinnings, including the monistic and material foundations of his thinking, would have to begin with Spinoza, of course, and any of a number of pre-Italian and even pre- Weimar texts of Spinozan cast that are as diverse as the poem «Mailied,» the epistolary novel Werther, or the rhapsodic essays «Von deutscher Baukunst,» «Rede zum Shakespears-Tag,» and «Über den Granit.» 6 But I will largely limit my framing discussion here to the consolidating years surrounding the pivotal association with Schiller when, in addition to his renewed scientific work, Goethe completed a number of major literary projects, including the Faust-Fragment, for the Göschen edition of the first collected works. I will, however, return to the early 1770s with some concluding remarks about his configuration of Gothic architecture, because it offers a striking parallel to Kant’s own metaphysical construction project as described (in similar architectural terms) in the introduction to the last section of the first critique, the «Transzendentale Methodenlehre.» 7 Despite Goethe’s well-known hesitations about philosophical abstraction and abstruse theorizing - «Für Philosophie im eigentlichen Sinne hatte ich kein Organ» 8 - his ongoing engagement with topics that reconsider traditional metaphysical questions shares much with the Kantian undertaking of the previous decade and also draws heavily on the reception of Kant’s critical philosophy in Weimar and Jena during the 1790s. The preparatory steps for Faust’s journey through the small and then large worlds of Parts One and Two offer a case in point, and they will be the initial focus of my observations, as these early scenes in the play reveal a number of intriguing similarities with the prefaces and introductions to the first critique of 1781/ 1787. 9 «Nacht,» in particular, which transports the spectator from heaven back to the earth, is especially instructive in this regard, and I shall turn to its familiar territory shortly in order to offer a provisional mapping of Goethe’s metaphysics of immanence. 10 4 Clark Muenzer By way of introduction I would recall both the Vorspiel auf dem Theater (1799) and the Prolog im Himmel (1800), which with their humorous dialogue and blatant theatricality together initiate a process of ironic reduction reminiscent of Kant’s salvage operation on the ruins of speculative reason. 11 Thus, in the Vorspiel, Goethe undercuts the lofty cognitive passions of his insecure Dichter, whose «Drang nach Wahrheit» (193) has aged him prematurely, with the repartee of the down-to-earth Direktor and the sardonic Lustige Person. However earnest his poet’s drive toward the divine (63) 12 or sincere his wish for autonomy 13 or human his urge for posterity, 14 the truth of his visionary program - which evokes in its three lofty goals Kant’s famous trinity of metaphysical aspiration 15 - appears, paradoxically, to be guaranteed only by the reductive rhetoric of his two critical interlocutors. But beyond Goethe’s ironic undercutting of poetic ideals that have not yet become as fully self-reflexive as the «unvermeidlichen Aufgaben der reinen Vernunft» (49) in the first critique, his staging recalls yet another move from the second preface, where Kant considers the disproportion between the absolute, or «thing-initself,» as the goal of reason’s metaphysical urge, and reason’s restricted cognitive reach. This inescapable condition of human rationality, Kant puts forth, paradoxically means that we can think the absolute only to the extent that we cannot authentically know things in any absolute sense. Our challenge, in his words, is to understand «daß folglich das Unbedingte nicht an Dingen, so fern wir sie kennen (sie uns gegeben werden), wohl aber an ihnen, so fern wir sie nicht kennen, als Sachen an sich selbst, angetroffen werden müsse» (27). 16 And this insight into the unlikely bond that is forged in the first critique between the absolute and the consciously self-limiting, regulative rationality of the Kantian antinomies is repeated in the Prolog im Himmel, where Faust’s salvation is ironically tied to a bet between God and his facilitating antagonist in antinominal thinking, Mephistopheles. «Der kleine Gott der Welt bleibt stets von gleichem Schlag, / Und ist so wunderlich als wie am ersten Tag» (281-82), the Herr is reminded by the «Naysayer,» whose blatant materialism will also unwittingly sustain Faust’s metaphysical yearnings by perpetually redirecting his attentions to the world below. «Ein wenig besser würd’ er leben / Hätt’st du ihm nicht den Schein des Himmelslichts gegeben,» Mephisto continues in the spirit of Kant’s attack on the old metaphysics: Er nennt’s Vernunft und braucht’s allein, Nur tierischer als jedes Tier zu sein. Er scheint mir, mit Verlaub von Ew. Gnaden, Wie eine der langbeinigen Zikaden, Die immer fliegt und fliegend springt Und gleich im Gras ihr altes Liedchen singt; Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 5 Und läg’ er nur noch immer in dem Grase! In jeden Quark begräbt er seine Nase. (285-92) Already in the Prolog - as Goethe’s infernal accusation of metaphysical delusion here suggests - human reason requires a thorough cleansing, or what Kant called «Läuterung» (63) near the end of the «Einleitung» to the first critique. 17 Included among other Kantian arguments that are staged on the wooden scaffolding of Goethe’s «Himmel» in order to reconstruct the metaphysical edifice are the archangels’ cosmological reflections on the «unbegreiflich hohen Werke» (250) of creation - the dynamic essence of which is perpetual self-organization and change 18 - as well as the Lord’s concluding directive to embrace and secure his fluid work «mit dauernden Gedanken» (358). As a consequence of resituating metaphysics «in einen beharrlichen Zustand» (29), Kant’s first critique had, of course, already secured the borders of a cognitive realm that a properly cleansed and self-disciplined reason would no longer transgress. And subsequently, through the 1790s, Goethe appears to have laid a similar foundation for his Faust edifice, which would become a pivotal example of his own longstanding efforts to reinvent traditional metaphysics in terms of self-sustaining processes of emergence, or what he once called «Die Metaphysik der Erscheinungen» (FA I, 25: 100). What we find first in Kant and then in Goethe, in other words, is the challenge of constructing a temporally informed place, or dynamic architecture, that promises to redeem the irrepressible cognitive urge of traditional metaphysical speculation in enduring models of pure thought. 19 Very early in his play - which Hegel likened to an «absolute philosophical tragedy» 20 - Goethe offers two such models for consideration. The first of them is presented in the course of Faust’s opening monologue, following the famous tirade against philosophy and its universe of morbid knowledge, with his turn to the sign of the macrocosm, while the second appears in the guise of the Earth Spirit. When taken together, moreover, these models of thinking about the world and our place in it accord with the arguments of Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft, which similarly follow immediately upon a framing discussion about the crisis within metaphysics and the need to reestablish it as a foundational science. Interestingly, these formative encounters with modeling devices in the play’s trajectory toward salvation also reflect Goethe’s aforementioned observation regarding «die Metaphysik der Erscheinungen,» which he said become available to thought «nur durch künstliche Mittel» (FA I, 25: 100). Returning to «Nacht» in this context, we can initially observe Faust before he engages the cognitive technologies of the macrocosm and Erdgeist as he, too, struggles with the metaphysical urge to understand «was 6 Clark Muenzer die Welt/ Im Innersten zusammenhält» (382-83). Lambasting the dogmatic gibberish of all disciplinary knowledge to the point of skeptical despair, he would rid himself of his «Wissensqualm» (396), we learn, and actually thinks for a moment to have escaped the sterile interiority of his dark gothic study after entering the world through the vision of a mountain landscape. But with no mechanism to sustain it, this imaginary place outside, which refreshes Faust’s senses, quickly evaporates, and he again finds himself locked in his prison of uncertain knowledge. After Kant had established the moment of critical philosophy as a similar point of crisis in the history of philosophical speculation, he began his own journey of cognitive cleansing in the «Transcendental Aesthetic,» where «space» is introduced as the outer, and «time» as the «inner» form, of «pure intuition.» All appearances («Erscheinungen»), Kant argues, and so, all immediate objects of sense experience (aesthetica) that are given to thought as «Anschauungen,» are exclusively grounded in these two «forms,» which are themselves a priori. Returning now to Faust, I want to suggest that Goethe sets the cathartic trajectory of his play in similar, spatio-temporal terms by staging his protagonist’s hope for cognitive redemption through formative encounters with a pair of interrelated technologies, or signs, each of which promises to secure knowledge about the world in a different way. The «Zeichen des Makrokosmos,» to which Faust first turns after his visionary stroll across moonlit meadows, is a pictorial rendering of divine immanence through the perfect form of a circle. It thus recalls Kant’s elaboration of the ideality of space in the «Transzendentale Ästhetik,» exemplified in the science of geometry, as «die Form aller Erscheinungen äußerer Sinne» (75). By contrast, Faust’s second encounter with the world comes through the verbal sign of the «Erdgeist,» whose «wechselnd Weben» (506) in turn suggests the Kantian ideality of time as «die Form des inneren Sinnes» (80). With these two «artful» signs of «Nacht» as our guide, then - which as space and as time together embrace the full range of what the mind can properly know - we can begin seeing what Faust cannot: Goethe’s provisional attempt to lay out the metaphysical ground of a cosmological-genetic approach to cognition. While the protagonist’s cognitive catharsis in his «tragedy of mind» can be more readily tied to the purifying flames and whirring loom of the Earth Spirit’s apparition, moreover, I would not as readily dismiss (as does Faust) his initial celebration of the «Zeichen des Makrokosmos,» which turns almost immediately into grandiose self-deception and disillusion. After all, despite its final characterization as «ein Schauspiel nur» (454), or mere spectacle, the iconic engraving, as a pictorial emblem, also involves the visual sense in a cognitive process. Indeed, as soon as it engages Faust’s outward Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 7 gaze, he feels the futility of his «trocknes Sinnen» (426) overcome, first in an experience of sensual renewal - «Ha! Welche Wonne fließt in diesem Blick / Auf einmal mir durch alle meine Sinnen» (430-31) - and then in a supreme moment of connection with the dynamic order of God’s world: War es ein Gott, der diese Zeichen schrieb, Die mir das inn’re Toben stillen, Das arme Herz mit Freude füllen, Und mit geheimnisvollem Trieb Die Kräfte der Natur rings um mich her enthüllen? (434-38) Despite Faust’s inflated self-understanding, his rhapsodic praise of the sign implies - in the spirit of the «Transcendental Aesthetic» - that any cognitive link with the totality of the natural world must ultimately be staged through the senses. But our knowledge of kosmos in turn happens only because the senses have been equipped to organize the stuff of sensation and collect it in pure intuitions for further, rational analysis. Hence, Goethe’s display of macrocosmic organization constructs the objects of Faust’s cognitive drive in full accord with Kant’s pure external form of intuition, or space, which reveals contour («Gestalt») and extension («Ausdehnung») (70). Yet space, or «outer sense,» cannot by itself make thought possible. Kant’s form of «inner sense,» or time, which he privileges as the necessary condition of possibility of all phenomenal experiences, i.e., «aller Erscheinungen überhaupt» (81), must also be in play, if the spectacle of the world is to become available for thought. «[A]lle Dinge als Erscheinungen (Gegenstände der sinnlichen Anschauung) sind in der Zeit» (82), Kant explains in a demonstration of the objective validity of time. And this is especially true where, as with movement (through space), the experience of change (in time) is at stake. 21 Consequently, even before Faust turns from the sign of the macrocosm to the more dynamic Earth Spirit, his verbal reinscription of the pictorial emblem, as well as the language that frames the picture, features a number of kinetic elements, including the verbs weben, leben, steigen, reichen, and durchdringen (447-53). And these elements, in turn, connect the macrocosmic display to the Erdgeist, which as a predominantly verbal sign, according to the famous formulation in chapter six of Lessing’s Laoköon (1766), features a temporal succession of constituent parts rather than their spatial contiguity, as is the case with the sign of the macrocosm. Hence the association of Earth Spirit’s fluid regime with the «sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit» (507), which also reflects Kant’s argument that movement, change, and opposition (as components of the conceptual apparatus) must be grounded in inner sense. With these two primary forms of Faustian intuition - the one predominantly spatial and the other temporal - I have reached a point in my discussion 8 Clark Muenzer where I can offer some preliminary reflections on a Goethean figure of metaphysical thought that inaugurated the synthesis of his own and the Kantian Schiller’s antipodal way of thinking. As famously memorialized in Goethe’s account of their first eventful conversation, or «Glückliches Ereigiß» (FA I, 24: 434-38), in Jena about the so-called Urpflanze, «das wunderlichste Geschöpf von der Welt» (FA I, 15.1: 346), this model of botanical self-production could be equally taken as an «idea» or an «experience.» And although Goethe did not actually find his Urpflanze, as he had hoped, in one of the botanical gardens in Italy, he would later render it with a picture in Schiller’s parlor and ultimately with a botanical poem about the metamorphosing leaf. 22 His discourse on plants, then - which can serve as an exemplary instance of any Goethean Urphänomen - fulfills one fundamental requirement of post-Kantian metaphysics, which is to reflect on the basic modeling activities that are required of the mind when it processes sense data and offers them to thought. Without the organizing power of pure forms of thinking (Schiller’s «Idee»), cognition would be short-circuited. But the cognitive process could never begin, if the mind had no sense data to gather in material intuitions (Goethe’s «Erfahrung»). When Goethe found himself looking for the Urpflanze among the verdant Italian flora, therefore, he was initially driven by the need to smell and to see and to touch an actual plant, even as he understood that in order to achieve this «experience,» he also had to be capable of thinking the «idea» plantness. The «Geheimnis der Pflanzenzeugung und -organisation,» he explained in a letter to Herder, requires a botanical model and an accompanying key to be unlocked. 23 As a Kantian reading of Faust’s cognitive encounter with the sign of the macrocosm and the Earth Spirit further suggests, moreover, models of this kind require both spatial and temporal elements, if they are to be adequate to dynamically complex systems, like plants. Hence a trajectory for Goethe’s botanical discourse that includes both pictures and words. When all has been said and done, insofar as Goethe’s metaphysics of immanence entails thinking holistically about reciprocally related parts, then, it is cosmological and, therefore, spatial. As a metaphysics more of process than of substance, 24 however, where totalizing systems sustain themselves through constant change, it is also and predominantly genetic, or temporal. Accordingly, in looking for other figures of Goethe’s metaphysical thinking, we need to identify similar spatio-temporal mechanisms that are both self-organizing and endure through change. In addition to the protean leaf of annual plants, I would count among these modeling structures (which are all part of an extensive Goethean discourse on monuments 25 ) the Strasbourg Cathedral, the rock granite, the vertebrate typus, and the color wheel of the Farbenlehre, as well as the classical stage of Iphigenie, Tasso and Die natürliche Tochter. By way of an Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 9 especially rich example, therefore, I will turn in conclusion to Goethe’s reflections on Gothic architecture in order to suggest just what a Gothic cathedral is in its Goethean rehabilitation and just what this kind of building might have to do with his subsequent Kant-like reconstruction of knowledge. That Goethe’s first formative encounter with a towering piece of sacred, medieval architecture offers an expression of the same «metaphysical urge» that Kant would subsequently analyze needs little explanation. For as conceived by its genial architect Erwin and reimagined in the poet’s architectural critique of 1773, the as yet unfinished building emerges from a bedrock foundation and surges toward heaven. Nor is it very surprising to find in the philosopher an analogous metaphorical gesture toward architecture when, some ten years later, he described his own reconstruction of the incomplete, or ruined, metaphysical edifice. Accordingly, Kant begins the final section of his first philosophical critique, the «Transzedentale Methodenlehre,» by likening the essence of his epistemology, or «den Inbegriff aller Erkenntnis der reinen und spekulativen Vernunft» (609), to a building, or «Gebäude,» the provisional idea of which is now in need of critical reflection and revision. As the architect of a newly restored metaphysical edifice, he suggests that the philosophical community of the day must now take his lead and learn to accommodate the originating ideas of traditional metaphysics to the materials («Bauzeug») at hand. «Freilich fand es sich,» Kant continues, daß, ob wir zwar einen Turm im Sinne hatten, der bis an den Himmel reichen sollte, der Vorrat der Materialien doch nur zu einem Wohnhause zureichte, welches zu unseren Geschäften auf der Ebene der Erfahrung gerade geräumig und hoch genug war, sie zu übersehen; daß aber jene kühne Unternehmung aus Mangel an Stoff fehlschlagen mußte, ohne einmal auf die Sprachverwirrung zu rechnen, welche die Arbeiter über den Plan unvermeidlich entzweien und sie in alle Welt zerstreuen mußte, um sich, ein jeder nach seinem Entwurfe, besonders anzubauen. Jetzt ist es uns nicht sowohl um die Materialien, als vielmehr um den Plan zu tun, und, indem wir gewarnet sind, es nicht auf einen beliebigen blinden Entwurf, der vielleicht unser ganzes Vermögen übersteigen könnte, zu wagen, gleichwohl doch von der Errichtung eines festen Wohnsitzes nicht wohl abstehen können, den Anschlag zu einem Gebäude in Verhältnis auf den Vorrat, der uns gegeben und zugleich unserem Bedürfnis angemessen ist, zu machen. (609) To dwell securely within philosophy, it seems, meant rethinking the Tower of Babel for Kant, which in turn meant accommodating its original and arrogant (cognitive) desire to connect heaven and earth with the more limited reach of the striving mind. The challenge of the first critique, in other words, required a new plan, or «Entwurf,» that promises to respect the limited means of knowledge production while still acknowledging the most basic and compelling of human needs: to know. 10 Clark Muenzer Kant’s plan for a more modest metaphysical dwelling place was not without its own Babel-like challenge, however. For if cognition is to succeed, then a mediation must be effected between the fundamentally distinct worlds of the senses and the mind. If we are to become capable of subsuming objects under concepts in judgments, that is, some mechanism, or technology, must be identified that can bridge the gap between the (sensible) world of appearances and the (intelligible) world of concepts. To solve this fundamental problem of uniting the otherwise heterogeneous structures of intuited phenomenon and category, which is laid out in the «Schematism» chapter of the «Transzendentale Analytik» (187-95), Kant turns to a special product of the synthesizing imagination («Einbildungskraft»). 26 «Nun ist es klar,» he suggests, by way of introduction, daß es ein Drittes geben müsse, was einerseits mit der Kategorie, andererseits mit der Erscheinung in Gleichartigkeit stehen muß, und die Anwendung der ersteren auf die letzte möglich macht. Diese vermittelnde Vorstellung muß rein (ohne alles Empirische) und doch einerseits intellektuell, andererseits sinnlich sein. Eine solche ist das transzendentale Schema. (187-88) The transcendental schema, which Kant famously describes a few pages later as «eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele» (190), accomplishes its mysterious synthesis, because like the Goethean Urphänomen of all architectural emergence («Bildung»), it is neither just an «idea» or an «experience,» but an enabling mechanism that makes the cognition of building as process possible in the first place. 27 As such, Kant reminds us, schematism does not work through visualized images in concreto or mere pictures, which are the work of the reproductive imagination. Instead, it serves judgment as a modeling device that exhibits the rules of the synthesizing imagination for producing an intuited object through all of its possible instantiations in accord with a determining concept. «Dem Begriffe von einem Triangel überhaupt würde gar kein Bild desselben jemals adäquat sein» (189), Kant explains by way of a geometric example. By contrast, the schema of a triangle kann niemals anderswo als in Gedanken existieren, und bedeutet eine Regel der Synthesis der Einbildungskraft, in Ansehung reiner Gestalten im Raume. Noch viel weniger erreicht ein Gegenstand der Erfahrung oder Bild desselben jemals den empirischen Begriff, sondern dieser bezieht sich jederzeit unmittelbar auf das Schema der Einbildungskraft, als eine Regel der Bestimmung unserer Anschauung, gemäß einem gewissen allgemeinen Begriffe. Der Begriff vom Hunde bedeutet eine Regel, nach welcher meine Einbildungskraft die Gestalt eines vierfüßigen Tieres allgemein verzeichnen kann, ohne auf irgend eine einzige besondere Gestalt, die mir die Erfahrung darbietet, oder auch ein jedes mögliche Bild, was ich in concreto darstellen kann, eingeschränkt zu sein. (189-90, emphasis added) Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 11 When Goethe drew the Urpflanze for Schiller, then, he was - to speak in Kant’s language - offering up a monogram, or mold, 28 into which he could fit and through which he could recognize all possible plants according to the law of metamorphosis, rather than reproducing the concrete image of a particular plant. «Von deutscher Baukunst» (1773), 29 I want to argue, rehabilitates Gothic architecture along similar lines by enlisting the visual sense to rescue the Cathedral in Strasbourg from the curse of neo-classical architectural theory and then offer it to cognition. Dubbed a «Babelgedanken in der Seele» (FA I, 18: 110) in its original conception near the beginning of the essay, the building will itself be lyrically rethought, and finally reconstructed, by staging its hidden law, or Erwin’s secret, 30 through a number of informing tensions that the dogmatic system and false principles of certain French critics (like Laugier and Blondel) cannot accommodate and have, therefore, discarded as «barbaric»: So vermag keiner deiner Schlüsse sich zur Region der Wahrheit zu erheben, sie schweben alle in der Atmosphäre deines Systems. Du willst uns lehren, was wir brauchen sollen, weil das, was wir brauchen, sich nach deinen Grundsätzen nicht rechtfertigen läßt. (FA I, 18: 112) What we find in Goethe’s program, in this context, is an aesthetic call-to-arms that promises, in anticipation of Kant, to marshal a newly invigorated power of (artistic) judgment in the name of truth. And the affective style of his critique and poetic rehabilitation, which relies on and educates the senses, is especially effective in this regard, because it enables the inquisitive spectator to reconstruct the building schematically, in Kant’s sense, as a visual product of the imagination in several ways. Accordingly, Goethe’s speaker firstly stages the cathedral, in both its material and spiritual aspects of rocky foundation and airy tower respectively, as «Ein lebendiges Ganze [sic]» (FA I, 18: 116). This living totality, moreover, like the essay itself, has been shaped from entirely heterogeneous parts, and so both works foresee in the gradual emergence of their «Gestalt» 31 the edifice of Kantian knowledge, as well as the structure of Kant’s cognizing mind. That is to say, something like the philosopher’s double move of synthesis, which collects and organizes sense data through the pure forms of intuition (space and time) to produce a phenomenal object («Erscheinung») and then joins the synthesized object with the understanding for cognition seems to be at stake in Goethe’s project of Gothic architecture, which moves similarly between sense intuitions and concepts. As the writer would imply in the eighth book of his autobiography when recalling the Leipzig phase of his youthful education in the fine arts, or «bildende Künste,» even before he arrived in Strasbourg and first saw the sublime 12 Clark Muenzer cathedral, Lessing’s Laoköon had demonstrated the important reciprocity of these two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world: «Auf zweierlei Weise kann der Geist höchlich erfreut werden, durch Anschauung und Begriff» (FA I, 14: 345). Beyond this important reciprocity, however, which the essay renders as Erwin’s «himmlisch-irdische Freude» (FA I, 18: 114), Goethe’s emerging (verbal) schema of the cathedral carries on the work of the architect’s original (visual) concept by thinking about the building temporally, or through time, which is Kant’s crucial «inner sense.» This second of the two pure forms of intuition is doubly privileged, moreover, because time serves not only as Kant’s «formale Bedingung a priori aller Erscheinungen überhaupt» (81), but also as the determining moment of the enabling schema: Die Schemate sind daher nichts als Zeitbestimmungen a priori nach Regeln, und diese gehen, nach der Ordnung der Kategorien, auf die Zeitreihe, den Zeitinhalt, die Zeitordnung, endlich den Zeitinbegriff in Ansehung aller möglichen Gegenstände. (192-93) That is to say, the unity of the manifold in intuition, and consequently, the unity of the cognizing mind («Einheit der Apperzeption») both depend upon the temporalized schema to find themselves reciprocally engaged. Such schemata alone are responsible for uniting the two otherwise heterogeneous building materials («Bauzeug») of Kant’s epistemological edifice. It should not be surprising, therefore, that Goethe often thinks about a variety of selfsustaining and self-organizing processes of emergence, including Erwin’s «Babelgedanken,» through the temporalized place of the «Denkmal» (FA I, 18: 110). For with this metaphorical gesture, which in its most basic configuration is a stone with an intentional, or prescriptive, inscription, 32 he has - as a formidable Kantian in-the-making - linked all secure knowledge of the intuited object qua «Erscheinung» to the marking capacity of the mind. Finally, and in addition to the synthesizing function of the essay’s cathedral, as well as its temporally informed capacity to stage itself genetically by inscribing the rule of its own emergent reality as the reciprocity of endurance and change, 33 the building as schematized by the Goethean imagination through the tracery of its ornamented façade stages the infinitely extending surface of its western wall as a spatially informed cosmic reality. 34 With its infinitesimal parts, which stand in a precise and necessary relationship, or «stimmenden Verhältnis,» (FA I, 18: 114) not only to each other, but also to the soaring mass of both tower and wall, the searching and spectating mind thus finds itself empowered to understand the world through a sensual feast for its eyes: Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 13 Wie oft hat die Abenddämmerung mein durch forschendes Schauen ermattetes Aug’ mit freundlicher Ruhe geletzt, wenn durch sie die unzähligen Teile, zu ganzen Massen schmolzen, und nun diese, einfach und groß, vor meiner Seele standen, und meine Kraft sich wonnevoll entfaltete, zugleich zu genießen und zu erkennen. (FA I, 18: 114, emphasis added) When all has been said and done, then, Erwin’s building as provisionally schematized in Goethe’s essay unfolds in its fundamental reality as an object of cognition that has been given to the mind through a union with the senses. Furthermore, the schematic rendering of the cathedral in 1773, which understands the rule of all architecture as «bildend» rather than «schön,» implies a metaphysics of process rather than of substance. 35 At the transitional moment of twilight, and hence in accord with the writer’s as yet unwritten theory of color, his cognitive apparatus appears fully engaged with his senses, and he finds himself able to understand the things of the world in terms of their genetic-cosmological structure. And as I hope to have shown, this way of understanding the whole of nature and the place of each thing in it, including our own - this Goethean «Metaphysik der Erscheinung» - can be profitably read with Kant’s critical project in mind. «Denn in dem Menschen ist eine bildende Natur, die gleich sich tätig beweist, wann seine Existenz gesichert ist,» we are reminded in the essay: Sobald er nichts zu sorgen und zu fürchten hat, greift der Halbgott, wirksam in seiner Ruhe, umher nach Stoff ihm seinen Geist einzuhauchen. Und so modelt der Wilde mit abenteuerlichen Zügen, gräßlichen Gestalten, hohen Farben, seine Cocos, seine Federn, und seinen Körper. Und laßt diese Bildnerei aus den willkürlichsten Formen bestehn, sie wird ohne Gestaltsverhältnis zusammenstimmen, denn Eine [sic] Empfindung schuf sie zum charakteristischem Ganzen. (FA I, 18: 116- 17) I can think of no more prescient statement regarding the archaic technology of the Kantian schema, «eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele» (190), that likewise enlists an innate and irrepressible modeling power to bring the characteristic totality of whatever reason properly claims as its knowledge to full cognitive light. As Goethe observed almost forty years later in his autobiographical account of the architectural miracle in Strasbourg, the monstrous cathedral, which the French critics had dismissed as «barbarisch» (FA I, 18: 114), had also, paradoxically, confronted him as a concept that had been worked out according to a rule and could, therefore, be schematized and known: Herabgestiegen von der Höhe verweilte ich noch eine Zeit lang vor dem Angesicht des ehrwürdigen Gebäudes; aber was ich mir weder das erste Mal, noch in der nächsten Zeit ganz deutlich machen konnte, war, daß ich dieses Wunderwerk als ein Un- 14 Clark Muenzer geheures gewahrte, das mich hätte erschrecken müssen, wenn es mir nicht zugleich als ein Geregeltes faßlich und als ein Ausgearbeitetes sogar angenehm vorgekommen wäre. Ich beschäftigte mich doch keineswegs diesem Widerspruch nachzudenken, sondern ließ ein so erstaunliches Denkmal durch seine Gegenwart ruhig auf mich fortwirken. (FA I, 14: 390) Even if the young law student was not yet equipped to reconcile the contradictory challenges that the building seemed to pose after his initial descent from its tower, his first essay on Gothic architecture had already begun to frame the terms of an ongoing consideration of the monument, which his subsequent engagement with Kant and his own methodological reflections as a scientist would only deepen and clarify. Notes 1 This essay is part of a monograph with the same title that is nearing completion. In addition to Goethe’s discourse on gothic architecture, it will examine Goethean geology, botany, optics and color theory, as well as his idea of the classical stage and globality, in order to explore the philosophical and metaphysical underpinnings of the writer’s reconstruction of knowledge, which I argue required a figure of enduring thought to be accomplished. This figure is the monument (Denkmal), which I introduce here through a brief discussion of Goethe’s poetic rehabilitation of the cathedral in Strasbourg. For more on the Goethean monument see my «Borders, Monuments, and Goethe’s Reconstruction of Knowledge,» Arcadia 38 (2003): 248-53, and «Wandering Among Obelisks: Goethe’s Idea of the Monument,» Modern Language Studies 31 (2001): 5-34. 2 I will cite Goethe’s Faust in parentheses immediately after the quotations by line number according to vol. I, 7/ 1, ed. Albrecht Schöne (1994), of the Frankfurt edition of his works (FA). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche, ed. Friedmar Apel, Hendrik Birus, Dieter Borchmeyer et al. 40 vols. (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1987-2000). I will cite all other Goethe works from this edition by division, volume, and page numbers. 3 I will cite Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft in parentheses immediately after the quotations by page number according to vol. III of the Theorie-Werkausgabe. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1968). 4 Kant thus calls for a cleansing, or purification, of reason in the «Einleitung» to B: «so können wir eine Wissenschaft der bloßen Beurteilung der reinen Vernunft, ihrer Quellen und Grenzen, als die Propädeutik zum System der reinen Vernunft ansehen. Eine solche würde nicht eine Doktrin, sondern nur Kritik der reinen Vernunft heißen müssen, und ihr Nutzen würde in Ansehung der Spekulation wirklich nur negativ sein, nicht zur Erweiterung, sondern nur zur Läuterung unserer Vernunft dienen, und sie von Irrtümern frei halten, welches schon sehr viel gewonnen ist» (62-63, emphasis added). 5 For an instructive overview of Kant and the problem of metaphysics see Theodor W. Adorno, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1959), ed. Rolf Tiedemann and trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford: Stanford U P, 2001) 34-56. Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 15 6 For treatments of the reception of Spinoza by Goethe and his contemporaries see Mathias Victorien Ntep II, Die pantheistische Naturauffassung Goethes (Sinzheim: Pro Universitate, 1999) 37-50; Albert Jungmann, Goethes Naturphilosophie zwischen Spinoza und Nietzsche (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1989); David Bell, Spinoza in Germany from 1670 to the Age of Goethe (London: Bithell, 1984); Momme Mommsen, «Spinoza und die deutsche Klassik,» Carelton Germanic Papers 2 (1974): 67-88; Martin Bollacher, Der junge Goethe und Spinoza. Studien zur Geschichte des Spinozismus in der Epoche des Sturm und Drang (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1969); and H. Lindner, Das Problem des Spinozismus im Schaffen Goethes und Herders (Weimar: Böhlau, 1960). For a philosophical analysis of Goethe’s color theory in terms of memory and monuments that frames its discussion with reference to Spinoza see my article, «Fugitive Images and Visual Memory in Goethe’s Discourse on Color,» The Enlightened Eye, ed. Evelyn K. Moore and Patricia Anne Simpson (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 219-37. 7 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 669. 8 See «Einwirkung der neueren Philosophie,» FA I, 24: 442. 9 The secondary literature on Goethe and Kant is substantial. Among the traditional treatments that have been useful to me are Karl Vorländer, «Goethe und Kant,» Kant. Schiller-Goethe: Gesammelte Aufsätze, 2 nd rev. ed. (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1923) 121-299; Gabriele Rabel, Goethe und Kant. (Vienna: Selbstverlag, 1927); Ferdinand Weinhandl, Die Metaphysik Goethes (Berlin: Athenäum Verlag, 1932) 136-261; and Ernst Cassirer, «Goethe and the Kantian Philosophy,» Rousseau, Kant and Goethe (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1963) 61-98. More recent contributions were pioneered by the late Géza von Molnar, both in his Goethes Kantstudien (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1994), which reproduces and provides a commentary on the annotated pages of Goethe’s personal copies of the first and third critiques, and in a series of articles including «Conceptual Affinities Between Kant’s Critique of Judgment and Goethe’s Faust,» Lessing Yearbook 14 (1982): 23-41 and, more recently, «Hidden in Plain View: Another Look at Goethe’s Faust,» Goethe Yearbook 11 (2002): 33-76. Recent German critics have focused most of their attention on Goethe’s reception of Kant’s third critique. See in this connection Jost Schieren, Anschauende Urteilskraft. Methodische und philosophische Grundlagen von Goethes naturwissenschaftlichem Erkennen (Düsseldorf and Bonn: Parerga, 1998) 29-80; Horst Folkers, «Ein Tag im Leben Goethes und sein Wort zur neueren Philosophie,» Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts (1998): 36-67; and Ursula Schuh, «Die Sinne trügen nicht.» Goethes Kritik der Wahrnehmung als Antwort auf virtuelle Welten (Berlin: Mayer, 1999). Finally, Nicholas Boyle discusses Goethe’s Kant reception in the poem «Vermächtnis» in «Kantian and Other Elements in Goethe’s ‹Vermächtnis›,» Modern Language Review 73 (1978): 532-49. 10 «Aus dem Größten wie aus dem Kleinsten (nur durch künstliche Mittel dem Menschen zu vergegenwärtigen) geht die Metaphysik der Erscheinungen hervor; in der Mitte liegt das Besondere, unsern Sinnen Angemessene, worauf ich angewiesen bin, dehalb aber die Begabten von Herzen segne die jene Regionen zu mir heranbringen» (FA I, 25: 100). 11 According to Adorno, for «Kant metaphysics is actually no more than a residue» (40). 12 «Nein, führe mich zur stillen Himmelsenge, / Wo nur dem Dichter reine Freude blüht» (63-64). 13 «das höchste Recht, / Das Menschenrecht, das ihm Natur vergönnt» (135-36). 14 «Was glänzt ist für den Augenblick geboren; / Das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren» (73-74). 16 Clark Muenzer 15 See in this connection the introduction to the second edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (B), where Kant in effect scolds speculative reason for its dogmatic hybris: «Ich kann also Gott, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit zum Behuf des notwendigen praktischen Gebrauchs meiner Vernunft nicht einmal annehmen, wenn ich nicht der spekulativen Vernunft zugleich ihre Anmaßung überschwenglicher Einsichten benehme, weil sie sich, um zu diesen zu gelangen, solcher Grundsätze bedienen muß, die, indem sie in der Tat bloß auf Gegenstände möglicher Erfahrung reichen, wenn sie gleichwohl auf das angewandt werden, was nicht ein Gegenstand der Erfahrung sein kann, wirklich dieses jederzeit in Erscheinung verwandeln, und so alle praktische Erweiterung der reinen Vernunft für unmöglich erklären. Ich mußte also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen, und der Dogmatism der Metaphysik, d.i. das Vorurteil, in ihr ohne Kritik der reinen Vernunft fortzukommen, ist die wahre Quelle alles der Moralität widerstreitenden Unglaubens, der jederzeit gar sehr dogmatisch ist» (33). 16 Kant discusses the difference between thinking and knowing in the «Vorrede zur zweiten Auflage» (31). 17 See note 4 above. 18 See Michael’s description of the earth’s oceans as a self-organizing storm in the «Prolog im Himmel»: «Und Stürme brausen um die Wette, / Vom Meer auf’s Land, vom Land auf’s Meer, / Und bilden wütend eine Kette / Der tiefsten Wirkung rings umher» (259-62). 19 Goethan Bildung identifies processes of emergence that, like Kant’s phenomena, must first be intuited as the unified objects of sense experience («Anschauungen») in order to become available for rational cognition. For both Kant and Goethe, moreover, all such aestheticized objects are finally known, or cognized, as spatio-temporal constructions. See, in this connection, Uwe Pörksen,» Raumzeit. Goethes Zeitbegriff aufgrund seiner sprachlichen Darstellung geologischer Ideen und ihrer Visualierung,» Goethe und die Verzeitlichung der Natur, ed. Peter Matusek (Munich: Beck, 1998) 101-127. 20 Near the end of his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel describes Faust in terms that firmly situate Goethe within the new metaphysical tradition of Kant’s Copernican Revolution in philsophy: «In der ersten Rücksicht will ich nur an die absolute philosophische Tragödie, an Goethes Faust erinnern, in welcher einerseits die Befriedigungslosigkeit in der Wissenschaft, andererseits die Lebendigkeit des Weltlebens und irdischen Genusses, überhaupt die tragisch versuchte Vermittlung des subjektiven Wissens und Strebens mit dem Absoluten, in seinem Wesen und seiner Erscheinung, eine Weite des Inhalts gibt, wie sie in ein und demselben Werke zu umfassen zuvor kein anderer dramatischer Dichter gewagt hat.» G.W.F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1970) 15: 557. 21 Kant addresses the basis of these dynamic concepts in experience as follows: «Im Raum, an sich selbst betrachtet, ist aber nichts Bewegliches: Daher das Bewegliche etwas sein muß, was im Raume nur durch Erfahrung gefunden wird, mithin ein empirisches Datum. Eben so kann die transzendentale Ästhetik nicht den Begriff der Veränderung unter ihre Data a priori zählen: denn die Zeit selbst verändert sich nicht, sondern etwas, das in der Zeit ist. Also wird dazu die Wahrnehmung von irgend einem Dasein und der Sukzession seiner Bestimmungen, mithin Erfahrung erfordert» (86). 22 «Wir gelangten zu seinem Hause, das Gespräch lockte mich hinein; da trug ich die Metamorphose der Pflanzen lebhaft vor, und ließ, mit manchen charakteristischen Federstrichen, eine symbolische Pflanze vor seinen Augen entstehen. Er vernahm und schaute das alles mit großer Teilnahme, mit entschiedener Fassungskraft; als ich aber geendet, schüttelte er den Kopf und sagte: Das ist keine Erfahrung, das ist eine Idee. Ich stutzte, Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 17 verdrießlich einigermaßen: denn der Punkt, der uns trennte, war dadurch aufs strengste bezeichnet. Die Behauptung aus Anmut und Würde fiel mir wieder ein, der alte Groll wollte sich regen, ich nahm mich aber zusammen und versetzte: Das kann mir sehr lieb sein daß ich Ideen habe ohne es zu wissen, und sie sogar mit Augen sehe» (FA I, 24: 436-37). For a discussion of Goethe’s botanical discourse in the context of the plant’s configuration as a monument see my «Transplanting the Poem: Goethe, Ghosts, and The Metamorphosis of an Elegy,» Themes and Structures: Studies in German Literature from Goethe to the Present. Festschrift for Theodore Ziolkowski, ed. Alexander Stefan (Columbia S.C.: Camden House, 1997) 39-77. 23 See the entry of May 17, 1787 in the Italiensche Reise: «Ferner muß ich Dir vertrauen daß ich dem Geheimnis der Pflanzenzeugung und -Organisation ganz nahe bin und daß es das einfachste ist was nur gedacht werden kann. Unter diesem Himmel kann man die schönsten Beobachtungen machen. Den Hauptpunkt, wo der Keim steckt, habe ich ganz klar und zweifellos gefunden, alles Übrige seh’ ich auch schon im Ganzen und nur noch einige Punkte müssen bestimmter werden. Die Urpflanze wird das wunderlichste Geschöpf von der Welt, um welches mich die Natur selbst beneiden soll. Mit diesem Modell und dem Schlüssel dazu, kann man alsdann noch Pflanzen in’s Unendliche erfinden, die konsequent sein müssen, das heißt: die, wenn sie auch nicht existieren, doch existieren könnten und nicht etwa malerische oder dichterische Schatten und Scheine sind, sondern eine innerliche Wahrheit und Notwendigkeit haben. Dasselbe Gesetz wird sich auf alles übrige Lebendige anwenden lassen» (I, 15/ 1: 346). 24 According to Nicholas Rescher’s very informative and readable account, process (as opposed to substance) metaphysics prioritizes activity, process, change, and novelty over substance, product, persistence, and continuity respectively. Accordingly, «time and change are among the principle categories of metaphysical thinking» (31). For the history and basic ideas of process metaphysics, see Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996) 7-49. 25 Kant’s example of a synthetic judgment a priori in the Prolegomenon is of special relevance for Goethe’s cognitive schema of the monument: «So ist z.B. der Satz: alles, was in den Dingen Substanz ist, ist beharrlich, ein synthetischer und eigentümlich metaphysischer Satz» (Theorie-Werkausgabe 5: 133). See also the «Einleitung» to the second edition of the first critique: «Denn in dem Begriffe der Materie denke ich mir nicht die Beharrlichkeit, sondern bloß ihre Gegenwart im Raume durch die Erfüllung desselben. Also gehe ich wirklich über den Begriff von der Materie hinaus, um etwas a priori zu ihm hinzuzudenken, was ich in ihm nicht dachte. Der Satz ist also nicht analytisch, sondern synthetisch und dennoch a priori gedacht, und so in den übrigen Sätzen des reinen Teils der Naturwissenschaft» (58). 26 «Das Schema ist an sich selbst jederzeit nur ein Produkt der Einbildungskraft» (189). 27 Kant’s schematism chapter has confounded Kant scholars, who have often disagreed about its meaning and even its relevance for the overall project of critical philosophy. There are, however, a number of helpful commentaries and overviews of the Kantian schema (as well as the second kind of hypotyposis, the symbol), among which I would recommend the chapter in Adorno (128-37), as well as the relevant chapters in H.J. Paton’s Kant’s Metaphysics of Experience: A Commentary on the First Half of the «Kritik der reinen Vernunft» (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1936) II: 17-78; and the entry «schema(tism)» in Howard Caygil, A Kant Dictionary (Blackwell: Oxford, 1995) 360-62. Among philosophers, see Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, 4 th rev. ed. (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1973) 89-109, for an important, if not 18 Clark Muenzer always transparent, discussion. For an enlightening discussion of Kant’s schematism, especially in the third critique, where it is contrasted with symbolism, see the last chapter in Rodolphe Gasché, The Idea of Form: Rethinking Kant’s Aesthetics (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003) 202-18. To my knowledge, only two Goethe critics have discussed the schematism chapter. They are Peter Schmidt, «Goethes schematische Kreise,» Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts (1965): 168-85 and Helmut Schanze, Goethes Dramatik: Theater der Erinnerung (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1989) 123-41. In accord with my own thinking, Schanze connects the Goethean schema with memory, but he sees a more meaningful divide between Kant’s and Goethe’s understanding of the «Bild» (132ff.) than do I. 28 Kant describes «das Schema sinnlicher Begriffe» as «ein Produkt und gleichsam ein Monogramm der reinen Enbildungskraft a priori» (190). The schemtaized concept here is intuitable in appearances and, therefore, a proper object of cognition. Understood as a monogram, it suggests both a visual and verbal display, which literally means a single (engraved) line. See, in this connection, Gasché, who connects the Kantian schema with its meaning in the rhetorical tradition of form, shape, and figure (214). Gasché also affiliates the more general rhetorical term of hypotyposis, which includes both schema and symbol, with the «hollow molds, or engravings that provide the general outline, the prescribed form, the model for any particular (cognitive and practical) realization» (215). 29 FA I, 18: 110-18. I will not rehearse the secondary literature on Goethe’s famous essay, which has most frequently been treated as either an art historical or an autobiographical document. By contrast, theoretically informed or philosophical treatments have been more rare. Two recent articles in this vein deserve note, however. They are Susan Bernstein, «Goethe’s Architectonic Bildung and Building in Weimar,» Modern Language Notes 114 (1999): 1014-36 and Kenneth S. Calhoun, «The Gothic Imaginary,» Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 75 (2001): 5-14. Calhoun’s discussion uses a Lacanian lens to read Goethe’s reconstruction of the cathedral as a symptom, whereas Bernstein reads Goethe’s two cathedral essays, primarily through Kant and Heidegger, and in a way sympathetic to the treatment here, as the gradual transformation of Bild into Bildung over a fifty-year period. 30 Thus, in Goethe’s final attempt, some fifty years later, to configure Gothic architecture as a cognitive challenge, the 1823 essay «Von deutscher Baukunst» pays homage to the forthcoming volume of views and architectural drawings from the Boisserée brothers by featuring these «visual aids» as a tool for understanding, along with other adepts, the secrets of the (architectural) lodge: «Jetzt aber, da die Boissereesche Arbeit sich ihrem Ende naht, Abbildung und Erklärung in die Hände aller Liebhaber gelangen werden, jetzt hat der wahre Kunstfreund auch in der Ferne Gelegenheit, sich von dem höchsten Gipfel, wozu sich diese Bauweise erhoben, völlig zu überzeugen; da er denn, wenn er gelegentlich sich als Reisender jener wundersamen Stätte nähert, nicht mehr der persönlichen Empfindung, dem trüben Vorurtheil, oder, im Gegensatz, einer übereilten Abneigung sich hingeben, sondern als ein Wissender und in die Hüttengeheimnisse Eingeweihter das Vorhandene betrachten und das Vermißte in Gedanken ersetzen wird. Ich wenigstens wünsche mir Glück zu dieser Klarheit, nach funfzigjährigem Streben, durch die Bemühungen patriotisch gesinnter, geistreicher, emsiger, unermüdeter junger Männer gelangt zu seyn» (FA I, 21: 483, emphasis added). 31 «alles Gestalt, und alles zweckend zum Ganzen» (FA I, 18: 115). 32 In this context it seems appropriate that Goethe’s tourist and art critic begins his cognitive journey by looking for Erwin von Steinbach’s missing grave marker amidst the Goethe’s Metaphysics of Immanence 19 rubble of the construction site, where major renovations of the building were underway: «Als ich auf deinem Grabe herumwandelte, edler Erwin, und den Stein suchte, der mir deuten sollte: Anno domini 1318. XVI. Kal. Febr. obiit Magister Ervinus, Gubernator Fabricae Ecclesiae Argentinensis, und ich ihn nicht finden, keiner deiner Landsleute mir ihn zeigen konnte, daß sich meine Verehrung deiner an der heiligen Stätte ergossen hätte; da ward ich tief in die Seele betrübt, und mein Herz, jünger, wärmer, töriger und besser als jetzt, gelobte dir ein Denkmal, wenn ich zum ruhigen Genuß meiner Besitztümer gelangen würde, von Marmor oder Sandsteinen, wie ichs vermögte» (FA I, 18: 110). 33 According to Kant in the schematism chapter, «Das Schema der Substanz ist die Beharrlichkeit des Realen in der Zeit, d.i. die Vorstellung desselben, als eines Substratum der empirischen Zeitbestimmung überhaupt, welches also bleibt, indem alles andre wechselt. (Die Zeit verläuft sich nicht, sondern in ihr verläuft sich das Dasein des Wandelbaren. Der Zeit also, die selbst unwandelbar und bleibend ist, correspondirt in der Erscheinung das Unwandelbare im Dasein, d.i. die Substanz, und blos an ihr kann die Folge und das Zugleichsein der Erscheinungen der Zeit nach bestimmet werden)» (191-92). 34 The Greek word kosmos means ornament. 35 «Die Kunst ist lange bildend, eh sie schön ist,» Goethe proclaims (FA I, 18: 116). For a detailed discussion of this distinction within the history of metaphysical thinking, see Rescher.