Colloquia Germanica
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0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/91
2014
473
Who Cares About Society?: Sorge and Reification in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre
91
2014
Georg Lukács developed the concept of “reification” to characterize the ossification of social relations due to commodification and exchange under advanced capitalism. This claim is predicated on the idea that social relations and object relations can be structured in various ways. Throughout Lukács’s career, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister is invoked to illustrate the possibility of non-reified social integration. Goethe’s novel stands for “affirmative reification” and non-reified symbolic space. This essay argues on the basis of Goethe’s distinction between symbol and allegory that Goethe’s novel is fundamentally more ambivalent and gothic than Lukács admits, especially in its rendering of the material mediation of “human relations” in a world defined by the entanglement of objects, things, images, language and memory. In Goethe’s novel, human societies are essentially transitory, no matter how much care and aesthetic cultivation are invested in their stability and continuity. This does not refute Lukács’s conception, but finds in Goethe a theoretical supplement to it, which is able to undercut its implicit idealization of pre- or un-reified relations.
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Who Cares About Society? : “Sorge” and Reification in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” 243 Who Cares About Society? : Sorge and Reification in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Kirk Wetters Yale University Abstract: Georg Lukács developed the concept of “reification” to characterize the ossification of social relations due to commodification and exchange under advanced capitalism. This claim is predicated on the idea that social relations and object relations can be structured in various ways. Throughout Lukács’s career, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister is invoked to illustrate the possibility of non-reified social integration. Goethe’s novel stands for “affirmative reification” and non-reified symbolic space. This essay argues on the basis of Goethe’s distinction between symbol and allegory that Goethe’s novel is fundamentally more ambivalent and gothic than Lukács admits, especially in its rendering of the material mediation of “human relations” in a world defined by the entanglement of objects, things, images, language and memory. In Goethe’s novel, human societies are essentially transitory, no matter how much care and aesthetic cultivation are invested in their stability and continuity. This does not refute Lukács’s conception, but finds in Goethe a theoretical supplement to it, which is able to undercut its implicit idealization of preor un-reified relations. Keywords: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Georg Lukács, Care, Sorge, Reification, Society Georg Lukács, whose 1923 Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein developed the idea of reification ( Verdinglichung ), reads Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre as the privileged source of reification’s opposite—what I will call “affirmative reification” or “non-reified space.” In the chapter “Die Verdinglichung und das Bewußtsein des Proletariats,” Lukács famously defines and denounces reification, following Marx, as “gespenstige Gegenständlichkeit” (“spectral objectivity”) (171). This negative reification, accelerated by capitalism and “rationalization,” leads to an incipient universal alienation, to a dehumanization of human rela- 244 Kirk Wetters tions and an ossification of life itself—“unter dinglicher Hülle eine Beziehung zwischen Menschen, unter der quantifizierenden Kruste ein qualitativer, lebendiger Kern” (296). I invoke these formulations in passing, as a reminiscence of one of the greatest theoretical hits of the last century� 1 The plausibility of such a diagnosis and its limitations are not the main focus of the present essay—though this is not to say that the reality or unreality, historical validity and contemporary relevance of Lukács’s question are less pressing now than they were in 1923. The impressive track record of the concept of reification and the (cult) classic status of Lukács’s analysis are sufficient to suggest that, true or untrue, 2 they were able to resonate with a more general Unbehagen about capitalism and modernity. Lukács, throughout his long and tumultuous career, consistently reads Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre as a novel of social integration—as a Bildungsroman 3 — which is to say as a novel of the opposite of reification. The point can be illustrated concisely in a sentence from the concluding paragraph of Lukács’s 1936 essay on the Lehrjahre : “Die hohe Kultur der Gestaltungsweise Goethes beruht […] auf einer hohen Kultur des Lebens selbst, der Lebensführung, der Beziehungen der Menschen zueinander” (87). Lukács, ever the realist, cannot accept that the excellence of Goethe’s novel might be based solely on “technische Meisterschaft” (87). Instead, the high degree of cultivation of the novel must originate in and reflect ‘lifeworldly’ cultivation— Kultur , Lebensführung and interpersonal Beziehungen —which allow the novel to perform and produce the Bildung it depicts. 4 As a consequence, Goethe’s novel is imagined not as a work of art, nor as a case of art imitating life, but as an extension of life, as a self-amplifying instance of genuine sociability—and thus as an expression and institution of non-reified human relations and consciousness. Of course, Lukács does not go so far—as this would amount to idolizing an ideal that presented itself in the same historical moment when reification began to threaten this ideal. Nevertheless, precisely because of the historico-philosophical status that Lukács attributes to the Lehrjahre —at the turning point between the epochs—he cannot understand it only as a fiction. He attributes a moment of reality to a conception that might otherwise appear to be utopian or counterfactual or fictional. He further postulates that the novel is more than a representation: it is itself an aspect of the very possibility of the progressive harmonization of general and particular, character and action, individual and society. Looking back from the twentieth century, Goethe’s epochal novel is the testament and palimpsest of a social transformation that remains to be reactualized in literature and society. Given this conception, the motif of social integration—as content and form—lends a specific progressive orientation toward the past ideal, which, for Lukács, is thus definitive of non-reified space. Who Cares About Society? : “Sorge” and Reification in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” 245 Twenty years earlier, in Die Theorie des Romans , he makes the same argument in a somewhat different way: “Aber es gibt [in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre ] solche Wege [der individuellen Rettung], und man sieht eine ganze Gemeinschaft von Menschen - einander helfend, wenn auch dabei mitunter Irrtümer und Verwirrungen stiftend - diese Wege siegreich zu Ende gehen. Und was für viele wirklich geworden ist, muß für alle, wenigstens der Möglichkeit nach, offenstehen” (120-21). And in the even denser reprise: “So stark auch die bloß potentielle und subjektive Wesensart des Sinnesdurchdringens für die gesellschaftliche Sphäre des Ankommens betont wird, der Gemeinschaftsgedanke, der den ganzen Bau trägt, erfordert, daß die Gebilde hier eine größere, objektivere Substantialität und damit eine echtere Angemessenheit an die seinsollenden Subjekte besitzen, als es den überwundenen Sphären gegeben war” (126). The point for the young Lukács is that the Lehrjahre may be limited insofar as, in retrospect, this novel only appears to be a subjectively construed model that is ultimately unrealistic and unrealizable. The model is false insofar as it is forced or romanticized with respect to reality in which it partakes and on the basis of which it articulates itself. But despite these limitations—so Lukács claims with increasing insistence—ultimately it is able to provide enduring orientation toward a (non-reified) socialist society. Much later, for the post-Stalinist Lukács of Die Gegenwartsbedeutung des kritischen Realismus (1957), the Lehrjahre remain as the privileged point of orientation, even after the revolution and within an actually existing socialist society: Es handelt sich vielmehr darum [in contrast to the bourgeois Erziehungsroman ], daß der bürgerliche Individualismus, der nur unbewußt und ungewollt das Gesellschaftliche in sich aufnimmt, vom Leben selbst zu einer bewußten Gesellschaftlichkeit umerzogen wird. Darum ist sein Endpunkt keineswegs eine Resignation; im Gegenteil: der Weg geht von einem allgemein auf Resignation intentionierten Verhalten zu dem Grundsteinlegen der menschlichen Basis einer gesellschaftlichen Aktivität. Es ist also […] [ein Weg], der aus der Einsamkeit in die beginnende Verwachsenheit mit den gesellschaftlichen Kräften, mit den gleichstrebenden Mitmenschen führt, den Weg zu einer neuen, höheren Form der Persönlichkeit. (574-75) Lukács goes on to suggest that in comparison to its bourgeois precursor, the critical-realist socialist Bildungsroman will be a novel of re-education; its narration will focus on the crises “von erwachsenen Menschen” of bourgeois origins, which are provoked by the onset of socialism (575). This uniformly affirmative-progressive conception of the social directly opposes its alienated form, characterized by reification. It is doubtful, however, that such an idealized understanding of a non-reified Gesellschaft can be justified based on the Lehrjahre � 5 246 Kirk Wetters Before addressing these questions within the novel itself, I risk asking in a more general way: is it possible to locate Lukács’s concept of reification in Goethe? Such a question is excessively vast—but I would suggest that something like a “theory of materiality” may be discerned at the intersection between Goethe’s morphological writings, on the one hand, and his theory of the symbol on the other. Morphology, which I have discussed elsewhere, 6 is the philosophy of Goethe’s natural scientific thought. This philosophy posits the transformational interrelatedness of all things. Morphology is also a holism, an anti-differentiation hypothesis, as well as a theory of metamorphosis that is not based on the differentiation of subjects and objects. The symbol, on the other hand, is the imprint of the spiritual within the material, of the eternal within the ephemeral, which received its most wellknown short formulation at the end of Faust II : “Alles Vergängliche / Ist nur ein Gleichniß” (351). In Goethe’s so-called “symbol theory,” the difference between reified and non-reified might be located in the difference between symbol and allegory as formulated in the Maximen und Reflexionen : Die Allegorie verwandelt die Erscheinung in einen Begriff, den Begriff in ein Bild, doch so, daß der Begriff im Bilde immer noch begrenzt und vollständig zu halten und zu haben und an demselben auszusprechen sei. Die Symbolik verwandelt die Erscheinung in Idee, die Idee in ein Bild, und so, daß die Idee im Bild immer unendlich wirksam und unerreichbar bleibt und, selbst in allen Sprachen ausgesprochen, doch unaussprechlich bliebe. (904) Based on this distinction, allegory is a para-conceptual function, in which an image fully substitutes for a concept and may therefore be treated as defined and stable. Allegory is characterized by fixed exchanges and one-to-one substitutions. The non-reified (or only partially reified) function of the symbol, on the other hand, uses appearance to substitute for something that is otherwise ineffable, fluid, transcendent or unstable. The symbol supposes an infinity of operative interconnections, a network, which may be materially represented by a certain object or appearance, but which is never fully reduced or captured by this appearance. The two functions, allegory and symbol, are not mutually exclusive or opposed but are essentially related and complementary terms. In the context of the Lehrjahre , these structures are in play in the numerous objects that circulate in the course of the story. From a subjective or psychological standpoint, one might want to call these objects fetishes, which would indicate their reified (allegorical) dimension. They are, however, also symbolic insofar as they stand for a “human relation” in Lukács’s sense, which is larger and more complicated than the object’s own intrinsic meaning, reference or use. The most exemplary case of this is the Pudermesser (a device of eighteenth-cen- Who Cares About Society? : “Sorge” and Reification in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” 247 tury grooming, used to remove excess powder from the forehead), which Philine gives to Wilhelm, inscribed with the words “gedenkt mein” (93, 124, 558). The Pudermesser , a trivial yet intimate piece of personal equipment, is able to function as a symbol insofar as it substitutes for memory traces and, at the limit, refers to the larger totality of the person to be remembered. The Pudermesser thus reifies a human relation as a souvenir. This commemoration is effectuated in an act of gift-giving, a change of hands at a moment in time. The present that Philine presents to Wilhelm is also able, perhaps, to prospectively represent the future, as an unspoken promise. The gift thus encompasses his relation to her in its totality. Even though a Pudermesser is not a wedding ring (a more conventional symbol), it symbolizes a different kind of relationship. The difference between the two— Pudermesser and wedding ring—can be understood in terms of functional equivalences in the context of everyday practices of gift-giving as forms of private symbol-making. The insufficiency of this reduction and the arbitrariness of the relation of the object to what it represents makes it a symbol, but, on the other hand, insofar as the symbolic aspect is made self-conscious by the inscription, one could speak of a reallegorization, reification and fetishization of the symbol. The gradual transition to allegory occurs to the extent that the symbol becomes pre-stabilized and conventional, for example when the symbolic aspect is made self-conscious by an inscription that can be reproduced and commodified (like a purchased greeting card that includes a written message). Complex structures are thereby reduced to one-to-one equivalences. Thus one could speak, especially if the symbolic object becomes redundantly over-inscribed, of allegorization, reification and fetishization. For Goethe such a palimpsestic relation of allegories to symbols is not a part of a wider history of decline, though one could still certainly pose the question of whether the acceleration of this relation is systematically inscribed in the history of capitalism. Philine’s apparently trivial gift thus sheds light on the idea of “human relations.” To the extent that such relations are distinct from other relations, they exist as a differential between their real existence, which is always essentially fleeting, temporal and unaussprechlich , and their symbolization and reification. Thus the “high culture” of symbolic exchange culminates in and is debased as an exchange of gifts that function as mementos and mnemonic devices� Taken together, morphology and the symbol, as reflections of the superabundance of time, nature and metamorphosis, may be read as a theory of non-reified materiality—of forms of objectivity that are neither opposed to the subject nor at its disposal. Thus I read Lukács as opposing symbolic richness to allegorical reification; capitalism in this sense might be definable as the eclipse of the symbolic by the systematic allegorization of reality. But this raises a number 248 Kirk Wetters of questions: Are the symbolic forms not equally if not more “spectral” than the allegorical forms? What is “reification” in an order of things that can only conceive a “thing” as a temporary stopover in an endless spatiotemporal network? How is it possible to argue that allegorical “freezing” is an increasing result of ongoing historical-cultural transformations (e.g., capitalism)? How is “phantom objectivity” conceivable if objectivity itself is a spectral projection or a transsubjective bond? What is “alienation” in the context of such dense social-symbolic fabrics? Is it possible, through the Lehrjahre , to imagine Lukács’s “reified society,” which covers over, freezes or perhaps extinguishes the molten core of life? What would it mean to understand the symbol as the privileged locus of “affirmative reification”? The novel’s main representative of affirmative reification is the figure of the Oheim , who, in comparison to Philine, is endowed with gothic mystery and the appearance of metaphysical dignity and mature masculinity. This “uncle” is a figure of the architect—the designer of “Weimar Classicism”—and thus has been read as a self-stylization of Goethe himself. 7 With respect to the question of reification, the Oheim ’s cultural agenda is the dominance of spirit over matter: die Vergeistigung des Materials . Rendered in terms of subjects and objects: he envisions a total dominion of the former over the latter, and perhaps, as a consequence, also of the latter over the former. In his own words, as reported in Book 6 of the Lehrjahre , the Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele : Des Menschen größtes Verdienst bleibt wohl, wenn er die Umstände so viel als möglich bestimmt und sich so wenig als möglich von ihnen bestimmen läßt. Das ganze Weltwesen liegt vor uns, wie ein großer Steinbruch vor dem Baumeister, der nur dann den Namen verdient, wenn er aus diesen zufälligen Naturmassen ein in seinem Geiste entsprungenes Urbild mit der größten Ökonomie, Zweckmäßigkeit und Festigkeit zusammen stellt. (407) This subjugation and rationalization of nature—of “zufällige[] Naturmassen”— takes the form of an elimination of contingency� The Oheim ’s purpose is to produce non-accidental objects, whose shape is dictated by “ein in seinem Geiste entsprungenes Urbild.” What kind of objects and materials result, precisely, from this shaping process? In a simple yet mysterious one-word answer: the materialization of the mind’s “Urbild” produces a “Werk” (“work”). And more, at the limit, in Faust’s last words to Sorge in the scene titled “Mitternacht,” what the Oheim calls “des Menschen größtes Verdienst” is envisioned by Faust as “das größte Werk”: Auf strenges Ordnen, raschen Fleiß, Erfolgt der allerschönste Preis; Who Cares About Society? : “Sorge” and Reification in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” 249 Daß sich das größte Werk vollende Genügt Ein Geist für tausend Hände. (332) Both Faust and the Oheim are builders striving for maximum materialization of spirit through the medium of the work. “Das größte Werk” strives to create a coherent “Welt” (“world”) out of the contingency of “das ganze Weltwesen�” Werk and Welt go together in this model, but both also tend to be limited, self-contained—microcosms—in relation to the infinite totality, the “Steinbruch” of the Weltwesen . Only God can create a world, but the “Gottähnlichkeit” of man authorizes and requires that he, as a creator of works, is also a creator of worlds (406)� The Oheim ’s manor and estate, which are singularly well-ordered among all of the buildings of the Lehrjahre , reflect this self-contained world-quality of the work: Wie selten ist eine Fete, wobei derjenige, der die Gäste zusammen beruft, auch die Schuldigkeit empfindet, für ihre Bedürfnisse und Bequemlichkeiten auf alle Weise zu sorgen. […] Durch diese gute Ordnung schien der Raum, in dem wir uns befanden, eine kleine Welt zu sein, und doch, wenn man es bei nahem betrachtete, war das Schloß nicht groß, und man würde ohne genaue Kenntnis desselben und ohne den Geist des Wirtes wohl schwerlich so viele Leute darin beherbergt und jeden nach seiner Art bewirtet haben� (405) The house is the symbol of the relation of mind or spirit, Geist , to work and world. The correlated importance of domestic order is amplified by the novel’s tragic ending, which is occasioned by a mix-up in room assignments. In the Oheim ’s house, by contrast, as in a perfect creation, a perfect ark or a perfect artwork, each individual is individually accommodated: “jeden nach seiner Art.” The artwork is an ark capable of housing and conveying life. At least this is the Oheim ’s vision, which evidently informs Lukács’s reading of the novel. In the plot of the Lehrjahre , this testamentary structure is articulated but also subtly undermined by the fact that the Oheim is survived by his work, the ultimate fate of which remains uncertain. After his physical death, he lives on in a special chamber of the Hauptgebäude of his house: in the mausoleum or time capsule called “der Saal der Vergangenheit.” This space is in many ways the culmination of the novel’s reflections on the symbol. In comparison to “der Saal der Vergangenheit,” Philine’s Pudermesser has the status of a technical demonstration� The chamber of the past extends the symbolic logic of gift-giving into an expansive logic of foundation within historical time. The chamber of the past symbolizes the human ability to create temporalized symbolic spaces. This room, guarded by two granite sphinxes, is described at length: “Wie angenehm ward man […] überrascht, als diese Erwartung [des Ernsthaften und 250 Kirk Wetters Schauerlichen, K. W.] sich in die reinste Heiterkeit auflöste, indem man in einen Saal trat, in welchem Kunst und Leben jede Erinnerung an Tod und Grab aufhoben” (541). The harmonizing effect of this chamber is summarized in a way that parallels the ordered arrangement with which the house receives its guests: “Alle diese Pracht und Zierde stellte sich in reinen architektonischen Verhältnissen dar, und so schien jeder, der hineintrat, über sich selbst erhoben zu sein, indem er durch die zusammentreffende Kunst, erst erfuhr, was der Mensch sei und was er sein könne” (541). In the chamber, Wilhelm experiences the harmonious objectivity and sense of human connectedness of “affirmative reification.” This experience, which seems so foreign to him, is akin to and perhaps identical with an idea of aesthetic experience that became traditional and perhaps even dominant during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 8 To the extent, however, that Wilhelm’s experience seems alien to the twenty-first century reader, this would mark the distance of historical retrospective that makes this legacy apparent and at the same time questionable. For example, the history of the ethical valorization of “affirmative reification” must have contributed to and conditioned Lukács’s negative concept of Verdinglichung � If both the positive and negative forms can be characterized as “gespenstige Gegenständlichkeit[en],” the negative form of the commodity fetish would be distinct only insofar as, rather than a materialization of Geist , it only reproduces the Geistlose in a proliferation of allegorical trinkets and especially in the catachresis of monetary value dressed up in object-form. Negative reification thus understood would be the systematic extension of the amorphous macrocosm, of the total contingency of the Weltwesen into the heart of the human world� In contrast to this idea of negative reification, Wilhelm’s experience in the “Saal der Vergangenheit” is an intensification of human relatedness: Wilhelm konnte sich nicht genug der Gegenstände freuen, die ihn umgaben. Welch ein Leben, rief er aus, in diesem Saale der Vergangenheit! man könnte ihn eben so gut den Saal der Gegenwart und der Zukunft nennen. So war alles und so wird alles sein! Nichts ist vergänglich, als der Eine der genießt und zuschaut. Hier dieses Bild der Mutter, die ihr Kind ans Herz drückt, wird viele Generationen glücklicher Mütter überleben, nach Jahrhunderten vielleicht erfreut sich ein Vater dieses bärtigen Mannes, der seinen Ernst ablegt und sich mit seinem Sohne neckt. (542) The description continues, up to the limit of language and comprehensibility: “Es war eine Welt, es war ein Himmel, der den Beschauenden an dieser Stätte umgab” (543). The “Saal der Vergangenheit” remains invisible, however, at least to the reader, who cannot be transported there. If only it were possible, “so würden wir den Leser an einen Ort versetzen, von dem er sich sobald nicht zu entfernen wünschte” (543). Who Cares About Society? : “Sorge” and Reification in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” 251 The chamber of the past strives to show how the creation of a Werk , a building, creates both Welt and Zukunft and at the same time preserves the Geist of the author, which presides over the material framework in which the lives (and deaths) of generations take place. The Vergeistigung of material and architectonic relations cannot occur, however, without the investment of a great deal of care—in all of the senses of the word. And the reality of this work can only be expressed conditionally, as a non-present experience, the communicability of which relies essentially on imagination� The “Mitternacht” scene from Faust II , in which Faust encounters the demon of Sorge , is a locus classicus for the question of care—and thus easily connects with the Oheim ’s investment of his lifework in the design of a new lifeworld� The scene from Faust II sets the stage for Faust’s apparently losing the wager with Mephistopheles. This might have implications for the interpretation of the figure of the Oheim —but first it would be necessary to account for the differences between the two figures. And, even more challenging, it would be necessary to consider the sharp divergences in the interpretation of Faust’s encounter with Sorge , especially in its connection to his wager with Mephistopheles and Mephistopheles’s wager with the Lord. 9 While acknowledging these difficulties, I hazard to suggest that in comparison to the Oheim ’s commitment to the care of the work, Faust II offers a more “nocturnal” and overtly problematic depiction of related metaphysical premises. These premises and problems, which crop up throughout Goethe’s career, certainly also express worries about his own lifework and mortality—but the logic of these externalizations does not necessarily imply that Goethe is himself a Faust -figure or an Oheim -figure. Rather, these figures are reflections of a more general problem that also pertained to Goethe. There is general agreement that Sorge is a central and even ubiquitous theme in Goethe’s work. At the same time, many prominent readings—from Burdach and Heidegger onward—have taken their understanding of care in Goethe primarily from the scene at the end of Faust II , which culminates in Faust’s blinding. This emphasis can be justified by the compelling aspects of the scene itself and was retrospectively reinforced by Heidegger’s articulation of care as a minimal existential constant. The discussion of Sorge in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit goes beyond the scope of the present essay—but it also cannot be entirely overlooked insofar as it contributed to the focus on Faust rather than the Lehrjahre . I do not contest the legitimacy of this focus, which is very convincing already in Burdach� But the focus on Faust is no reason to disqualify the Lehrjahre as a supplementary or alternate source. The focus on the Lehrjahre seems especially important because, starting with Burdach, though scores of examples from other texts are introduced and quoted, the Lehrjahre is strangely never mentioned� 10 If it were added to the mix, it would seem that the figure of Sorge 252 Kirk Wetters became significantly more demonic between the 1790s and the posthumously published Faust II � 11 This difference need not be taken as a general tendency of Goethe’s development, however—in part because the Lehrjahre , published in 1795-96, contains a wide range of figurations of care. And, even if, with the possible exception of the Oheim , care in the Lehrjahre is typically non-demonic, this may simply be a difference in register between Faust and Wilhelm Meister � The Lehrjahre ’s figure of Natalie, for example, epitomizes care in its apparently most non-demonic form, as feminine or maternal consideration for others; her way of caring is a genuine charity that addresses itself directly to others’ qualitative lacks without resorting to monetary means (528, 566). In order to gain access to the range and variety of care in the Lehrjahre , it is helpful to rely on the hints and questions posed by the philosophical Faust -reception. To this end, I cite Hans Blumenberg’s compact summary of Heidegger’s idea of Sorge : Heidegger hat die Sorge zum Wesen des Daseins erklärt und darin den Schlüssel zur Zeitlichkeit als dem Horizont gefunden, in dem Dasein Sein versteht. Die Sorge erlaubt dem Dasein nicht, in seiner Gegenwart aufzugehen; sie kommt aus einem angespannten Verhältnis zur Zeit, das Heidegger ekstatisch nennt. Auch Intentionalität heißt Anspannung, und auch in ihr liegt ein gespanntes Verhältnis zur Zeit, indem sie gerade die Eigenschaft des Bewußtseins bezeichnet, die es seine Sachen niemals und gleich haben läßt. Bewußtsein heißt, daß gewartet werden muß und gezögert werden kann � ( Die Sorge geht über den Fluß 217) Following these lines, Blumenberg is mostly interested in the states that can be produced by a relaxation of the tensions associated with “consciousness” as the ontic-ontological norm of care and self-care. A somewhat broader Heidegger-paraphrase, which however corroborates aspects of Blumenberg’s reading, is given by Ellis Dye: “In the fable [of Hyginus, K. W.] and in Goethe too, Heidegger suggests, care is constitutive of human being or ‘Dasein’—Heidegger’s word for the kind of being for whom its own existence is an issue. And care is the being of Dasein as such� Care is what makes us human” (207)� Whatever one makes of the philosophical understandings, from a literary-interpretive standpoint they are rather general and decontextualized—even with respect to the plot of Faust . The allegorical figure of Sorge offers a certain basis for such generalizations, but only if one is willing to skirt the notorious interpretive puzzles. For example, there is the question of whether Sorge is both the precondition of Faustian striving and the possibility of its end and demise; and the question of whether Faust is truly affected by Sorge when she blinds him, or if he rejects her and keeps on striving; or the question of whether she re-hu- Who Cares About Society? : “Sorge” and Reification in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” 253 manizes him by bringing him back to the universal human condition of care and thereby prepares him for death. The philosophical approach may include such questions by implication, but, as Dye puts it, claiming to echo Goethe and Heidegger: care is “constitutive of our very being” (214, my italics). And thus “we” are Faust in that we grapple with and perhaps occasionally transcend Care. Precisely this existential claim, however, seems to produce a reading of Faust that Blumenberg rejects, namely that Faust is an everyman or a heroic allegory of modern man. For Blumenberg, “we” are not Faust, and to compare someone to Faust is not a compliment: “Es ist etwas faul an diesem ‘Faustischen.’ Denn der blinde Faust, der sich am Geklirr der Spaten ergötzt, die ihm schon am Werk zu sein scheinen, wird doch betrogen, denn man gräbt an seinem Grab, nicht am Entwässerungsgraben des Sumpfes. […] So ist, genau genommen, ‘das Faustische’ ein Selbstbetrug” ( Goethe zum Beispiel 85). Blumenberg, however, ultimately does not reject all generalizations of Faust. He only argues for a different generalization, de-emphasizing the tragic in order to highlight the ironic. Thus the difficulties of how to generalize Faust in relation to Sorge (herself an allegorical figure and thus by definition a generalization) are not unique to Heidegger, Dye or Blumenberg, but belong to the existential, theological and philosophical implications of the figure itself. This begins with Hyginus’s fable, which is, as John Hamilton has shown, the most important source for this entire vein of thought. In Faust , the allegorical figure of Sorge speaks on behalf of her own generalization—a generalization which may include Faust, despite his attempts to shut her out. But the question remains: does he succeed, or does the attempt to resist Care lead him to buy into an illusion? For Blumenberg, the cost of the overcoming of Sorge is self-deception, even sublimation. The problem of generalization or existentialization remains, which also allows Blumenberg to broaden the stakes. Instead of focusing Sorge in primarily literary-interpretive contexts, he focuses on Goethe’s own Sorgen , his worries about life and death, lifework and posterity. Not “we” or Faust, but Goethe himself thus becomes Blumenberg’s primary exemplar of the existential analytic of Sorge (based on what appears to have been a first-hand documentary study). In Blumenberg’s analysis, Goethe’s Sorgen may have left their first traces when the six-year-old heard about the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. As Blumenberg imagines it in Arbeit am Mythos , the earthquake laid the groundwork for the lifework, the goal of which was the articulation of a new idea of the immortality of the soul, designed to immunize humanity against care and anxiety, as well as against the existential threats of death and catastrophe. The drift of Blumenberg’s reading is the reconstruction of an ontological position that decisively breaks with the idea of evil and the Augustinian conception of original sin. The deactivation of these ontological presuppositions means that the confrontation 254 Kirk Wetters with Sorge can no longer be resolved by its projection into an alternate arena of transcendence. God is, in other words, no longer able to function as the stabilizer of worldly woes. This reading likely still pursues an indirect dialogue with Heidegger—insofar as Augustine is counted among Heidegger’s interlocutors (Hamilton 265-69). According to Blumenberg, Goethe, instead of tying human freedom essentially to care in the context of evil, guilt and redemption, attempts to reintroduce a mythical imagination of the “Unvernichtbarkeit des Menschen” ( Arbeit am Mythos 470). Focusing on Goethe’s lifelong fear of earthquakes and of death, Blumenberg reads Goethe’s reactions not as a “solution” to the Augustinian problem but as an acute symptom of the latent existential threat laid bare by the eclipse of theodicy. An end point of this trajectory may be found in one of Blumenberg’s posthumously published fragments, “Goethe’s Mortality” ( Goethes Sterblichkeit ), in which Goethe’s care for his own literary posterity is interpreted as a striving for an alternate immortality: “Das Werk ist die wahre Monade, jene Entelechie, die sich genügend Lebenskraft gegeben haben kann, um zu überleben” ( Goethe zum Beispiel 106). This is precisely the situation of Faust at the end of the scene with Sorge . After he is blinded, the first thing he does is to get to work. Rather than overcoming care and returning to his striving, this lends credence to the idea that Faust’s striving is (and perhaps always was) essentially related to Sorge . Care and industry invested in the future of the lifework produce a cryogenic Monade , in which the frozen Geist may survive or at least have a chance of being thawed out and reawakened� The end of Faust presents this possibility with meticulous ambivalence and irony. The juxtaposition of Sorge and Fleiß , which is common to both Faust and the Oheim , also appears in lines from Goethe’s “Iphigenie auf Tauris,” in which the protagonist invokes Sorge as a personified (but apparently benevolent) demon: Mich selbst hat eine Sorge gleich gewarnt, Daß der Betrug nicht eines Räubers mich Vom sichern Schutzort reiße, mich der Knechtschaft Verrate. Fleißig hab’ ich sie befragt, Nach jedem Umstand mich erkundigt, Zeichen Gefordert, und gewiß ist nun mein Herz. (218) And again the lines from Faust II : Auf strenges Ordnen, raschen Fleiß, Erfolgt der allerschönste Preis; Daß sich das größte Werk vollende Genügt ein Geist für tausend Hände. (332) Who Cares About Society? : “Sorge” and Reification in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” 255 Considering the almost fifty years that separate the two works, one might want to see this as a coincidence. Burdach’s study, however, strongly suggests continuities. And the substantive connection lies in the potential falseness, compensatory or Scheincharakter of the performance of Sorge through Fleiß � Faust’s “rasche[r] Fleiß” and the diligence with which Iphigenie claims to have questioned her prisoners are either ironized as a difference between interiority and exteriority (in Faust ) or ironic by virtue disingenuousness (in “Iphigenie”). The implication in both cases is that the intensive activities provoked by care tend to be blind, delusional and counterproductive. In other words, the cares that go into the work may be busywork; or they may legitimate self-serving aims whose main concern is to keep up the appearance of care� Not unlike Faust , the Lehrjahre also famously promoted very generalized understandings (e.g., “Bildungsroman”). But, as in Faust (e.g., “das Faustische”), Sorge in the Lehrjahre does not easily fit within these reified conceptions. The Lehrjahre , rather than valorizing or existentializing a single conception, focuses on Sorge in a way that results in a solar system of the semantics of care, orbiting around the Faustian Oheim � As an uncle, the unnamed Oheim is referred to according to his displaced and perhaps nonexistent biological paternity. To underscore this and as a tribute to Orwell, I call him “Big Uncle.” Indirect paternity implies indirect care, direction from afar, remote control and action through proxies. Those under Big Uncle’s care are the hands through which he operates: the secret society of the tower ( Turmgesellschaft ). At the end of the novel, under the auspices of his patrimony and aesthetic-managerial prowess, the surviving characters are endowed with a past, a present and a future. Given this setup—which Lukács perceived and with which he identified—one might ask: who is Big Uncle? He is a figure who never emerges from the shadows, from the periphery of the novel’s plot. He is known through his legacy more than through his presence and actions. He is a sinister figure. I note as a precaution that such a reading risks anachronism, but—post-Kafka, post-Orwell and post-Oz—it is difficult to see a puppet-, towerand castle-master as anything but sinister� The Munich edition of the Lehrjahre (compare note 7) discourages the reader from being too suspicions of Big Uncle—who apparently has too much in common with Goethe to be a villain. Both are Spinozists and visionaries who undertake far-sighted and far-reaching aesthetic-cultural initiatives. The old Faust is also such a figure, who, unlike the other two, ends up getting blinded by Sorge , and, instead of a “Saal der Vergangenheit,” he digs his own grave. Care may also “cure” Faust of his magically prolonged youth—just as she causes premature aging and hypochondria in Wilhelm’s friend Werner (500, 564). In another parallel, the song of the watcher on the tower ( Türmer ) from 256 Kirk Wetters Faust II , also reflects the relation of seeing and blindness, care and carelessness. The tower-keeper’s song, which is often taken as an ode to Goethe’s metaphysics and aesthetics of the visible, may instead foreshadow Faust’s blinding. Following Johannes Anderegg (122-26), the Türmer is charged with seeing, but he becomes captivated by looking and by his own song to what he sees. He is hypnotized and careless, paying no attention to threats and dangers—which are presumably the point of his watch. Care is always double-sided� Faust is an Oheim -figure, just as Big Uncle is a Faust-figure. Both are far-seers and far-planners, movers and shakers, but, as Blumenberg remarked, based on the ambivalence of the Faustian, it may not be a compliment to say that someone is a Faust-figure. Just as das Faustische is reinterpretable as “self-deception,” das Oheimische may have the flipside of “control freak�” 12 Big Uncle is also ambivalently “Faustian,” and he is not “we” and certainly not an everyman� At the time of the events narrated in the Lehrjahre , he might be better described as a Faust-figure whose titanic aspirations have not yet collapsed. Though dead at the end of the novel, he has not yet lost his wager; though he rests comfortably in the chamber of the past, his spirit abides and is still being enacted by a thousand writing hands� Like Faust, however, Big Uncle will lose in the end. There are many indications of this, including relatively obvious ones like the physical disrepair of the Tower and institutional changes within its Society. And, perhaps more subtly, one may note that the only other Oheim in the novel is the usurper Claudius from “Hamlet.” More telling, however, are the persistent signs that Big Uncle, who loves the soothing harmonies of secularized sacred choral music, did not have a harmonious relation with his family and society. He managed to build some great works, a small world that is supposedly a microcosm of his own spirit, but the surviving members of this society are as likely to liquidate his endowment (and emigrate) as to carry out his will� Most telling, however, is the way that Big Uncle is first introduced in the novel, at a point when his role in its architecture has not yet been revealed. Big Uncle makes his first appearance as a young man, in the Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele , an autobiographical narrative written by an unnamed devoutly Pietist woman. Friedrich Schlegel refers to her simply as “die Tante” (142). I take this as an indication that he understands her as a symmetrical counterweight to Big Uncle� Schlegel’s reading of the Seele as the Aunt is, however, not a common one. Starting with Schiller, the tendency has been to marginalize her and her religiosity as a structural foil and counterexample. The Aunt is said to reflect problematically one-sided and exclusively interior Bildung —which is ‘defeated’ by Big Uncle’s social-secular-pedagogical culture-building experiments. Such readings allow the reader to side with the Uncle’s decision to exclude the Aunt Who Cares About Society? : “Sorge” and Reification in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” 257 and keep her away from the children. Therefore, following Schlegel and in order to restore a certain parity, I read die schöne Seele as Big Aunt—as the Queen of the Night to Big Uncle’s Sarastro� Big Aunt first introduces Big Uncle to the reader as the “Stiefbruder meines Vaters” (her “father’s stepbrother”). He has left an influential position at court “weil nicht alles nach seinem Sinne ging” ( Lehrjahre 385). His autocratic willfulness is enabled by a large inheritance (a “Vermögen”), which he received from a wealthy mother and her various “nahe[] und ferne[] Verwandten” (386). On this material basis, he can afford to be stubborn and independent. These habits of mind were further intensified by a “häusliches Unglück” (386). Big Uncle tragically lost his wife and young son, and from that point onward, he wanted to avoid “alles […] was nicht von seinem Willen abhing” (386). Like the old Faust, Big Uncle tries to lock out care and seeks to exercise absolute prevention. Regarding his character, Big Aunt also notes his conflict-averse style of discourse and his condescending way of accommodating her religiosity and its language: “[…] so war es mir doch auffallend, daß er von dem, worin der Grund aller meiner Handlungen lag, offenbar keinen Begriff hatte” (386). On this basis I conclude that, despite the massiveness and impressiveness of Big Uncle’s investments in monumental culture-building projects, there is no reason to think that these will turn out any better than Wilhelm’s infatuations with the theater. This need not imply, however, that Goethe thinks that culture is a bad thing, or that he entirely opposes Big Uncle’s aspirations. Just as the novel is not a diatribe against the idealization of theater as a national-cultural aspiration or moral institution, so it is not a polemic against Big Uncle. Recognizing Big Uncle’s limitations simply means recognizing both the positive and negative aspects of the passage of time, the fleetingness of his symbolic materializations, the transformational and even contingent elements of all societies. If these limitations are overlooked, the novel becomes what Lukács thought it was—a one-sided ideology of Bildung on the way to social integration� Big Aunt is the novel’s moment of self-critique with regard to such aspirations. The novel may limit her standpoint and in many ways isolate her (as she isolates herself), but it gives her her own space, and her critique thereby becomes all the more decisive—because it emerges from a point outside of the novel’s own apparent project. Big Aunt exposes the existential groundlessness of the Faustian-Oheimian ethics of care and security. In Blumenberg’s terms, one might even read her as a partial re-Augustinianization of Goethe’s mythical imagination of the “Unvernichtbarkeit des Menschen” ( Arbeit am Mythos 470)� The answer to care can only be found in the imagination of transcendence—even if it is a self-deception. The chamber of the past, with its reliance on imagination, and the final scene of Faust II , with its over-the-top phantasmagoria of transcendence, echo 258 Kirk Wetters this thought. Big Aunt sees Big Uncle (and perhaps also Goethe) as a figure of sublimation, of anxiety and hopeless striving for a false earthly immortality. Thus, what goes for the Theatergesellschaft also goes for the Turmgesellschaft —and perhaps even for Lukács’s non-reified socialist society of the future. And perhaps it even goes for the symbolic memorialization enacted in the “Saal der Vergangenheit,” whose dead residents are “die stille Gesellschaft” (“the quiet society”) (575). 13 The most perfect society, the symbolic society, the quiet society, is literally a society of the dead. It may unify past, present and future, and it may be inscribed with the injunction “Gedenke zu leben” (542), but this memento vivere , like the “Gedenkt mein” on Philine’s Pudermesser , is, on the one hand, only a symbol—an appearance that stands in for something infinitely greater—and, on the other hand, a reified symbol inscribed with its own significance. The memento vivere speaks from beyond the grave and its very inscription means death. “Gedenke zu leben” is “remembering to live”— which enjoins the living to a self-conscious departure from the frozen world of “die stille Gesellschaft�” The groundlessness of all societies except for the society of the dead is best expressed in a comment that the narrator makes in connection with Aurelie, the novel’s tragic heroine, whose ranting and raving—her Unmut —are mentioned among the factors that may have contributed to the dissolution of her brother Serlo’s troupe: Überhaupt ist es leider der Fall, daß alles, was durch mehrere zusammentreffende Menschen und Umstände hervorgebracht werden soll, keine lange Zeit sich vollkommen erhalten kann. Von einer Theatergesellschaft so gut wie von einem Reiche, von einem Zirkel Freunde so gut wie von einer Armee läßt sich gewöhnlich der Moment angeben, wenn sie auf der höchsten Stufe ihrer Vollkommenheit, ihrer Übereinstimmung, ihrer Zufriedenheit und Tätigkeit standen; oft aber verändert sich schnell das Personal, neue Glieder treten hinzu, die Personen passen nicht mehr zu den Umständen, die Umstände nicht mehr zu den Personen; es wird alles anders, und was vorher verbunden war, fällt nunmehr bald auseinander. (343) For the living, societies come and go. The ideal of a “quiet society” of perfect social-symbolic-aesthetic integration is the exception that proves the rule. The aesthetic sphere of the chamber of the past can at most provide a temporary relief or illusory quasi-transcendence from the cares of the world. The allegorical injunction, “Gedenke zu leben” is an ironic reminder that there is no dwelling in the space of the symbolic, of “affirmative reification.” Echoing the words of the Pudermesser and of the ghost of King Hamlet, the inscription reminds the living visitor that the space of aesthetic experience is always conditioned by the lifeless space of the museum and the mausoleum. Who Cares About Society? : “Sorge” and Reification in Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” 259 Notes 1 Lukács’s imagery resembles that of Carl Schmitt’s Politische Theologie and Max Weber’s “Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus.” It remains an open question, however, whether the co-invocation of Weber’s “stahlhartes Gehäuse” (203) and Schmitt’s exception—“In der Ausnahme durchbricht die Kraft des wirklichen Lebens die Kruste einer in Wiederholung erstarrten Mechanik” (21)—enhance or reduce the overall cogency of Lukács’s analyses. 2 Many have pointed out the dated and problematic character of Lukács’s thesis (most recently Agnes Heller). Winfried Menninghaus’s 1983 essay stands out for its attempt at a systematic refutation and a revocation of the classic status of Lukács’s conception. Heller emphasizes that Lukács actually aspired to the status of “classic”—to become nothing less than the St. Augustine of Marxism (12)—and thus also may have imagined and in a sense striven toward his own reification. 3 For a recent overview of the tradition of the Bildungsroman , including its problems and debates, see Boes; also Sammons (1981 and 1991) and Moretti. 4 Lukács’s way of reading the Lehrjahre as a Bildungsroman fits within a long tradition of interpretation, which is implicitly based, at least in part, on the complex semantics of Bildung . Within this tradition, Friedrich Kittler’s 1978 “Über die Sozialisation Wilhelm Meisters” stands out in its critique of the disciplinary structures of Bildung , which the novel and its readers (including Lukács) compulsively valorized. Kittler thus understands the Lehrjahre as a Bildungsroman but emphatically rejects the viral and institutionalized forms of Bildung that are proliferated in and by Goethe’s novel. 5 Concepts of society tend toward dualism, oscillating between positive and negative, good and bad, Gemeinschaft vs� Gesellschaft , reified vs. non-reified forms of human interaction. Goethe is no exception to this rule. To my knowledge, however, he never directly idealizes the social as Lukács does. Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten would be an interesting test case for this, but I would argue that it is more focused on combatting social disintegration than on social engineering� See also the discussion in my Demonic History (49-51) of “die menschliche Gesellschaft,” which for Goethe typically represented an amorphous exception to nature’s morphological rule� 6 From my Demonic History , see “Demons of Morphology” (39-58), as well as chapters on Oswald Spengler (87-110) and on Walter Benjamin (111-34), which address the problematic and critical potentials of this conception. 260 Kirk Wetters 7 See Sching’s commentary to the Munich edition of the Lehrjahre (799-805), which, though helpful and exemplary, emphasizes connections between Goethe and the Oheim in ways which tend to downplay the fact that the Oheim is not just an alter ego of Goethe but a character in the novel. The figure of the architect, however, whose “spirit,” analogous to that of the Creator, can move “a thousand hands,” goes back as far as 1773, to Goethe’s “Von deutscher Baukunst” (415). 8 Stefan Zweig’s “Das Geheimnis des künstlerischen Schaffens” is a case of a twentieth-century author who consciously works within the tradition in question yet borders on unconsciously reproducing old clichés. Lukács, one could argue, is only a more complex example of the same problem. 9 A survey of the positions would go far beyond the scope of this essay. It is possible to say, however, that the basic interpretive problems have not changed that much since Burdach and Heidegger (see especially Sein und Zeit § 42, 196-200). Significant recent work includes Dye, Brodsky (29-44, 146-47), Anderegg (122-70), Hamilton (262-74) and Brown (139-42). The crux of these readings is whether Faust, blinded by Sorge , is able to defeat or dismiss her and maintain his inner light and identity� Burdach claims that despite the obvious disconnect between Faust’s “Geist” and the “tausend Hände,” he does not stop striving and therefore continues to live up to the conditions of the wagers� This reading’s claim to authoritativeness can be seen in its adoption by the Munich edition of Faust II (1122)� The underlying question of interpreters’ motivations and their investment in Faust’s fate hinges on the possibilities of an ethical judgment based on the difference between his inner state and his blindness to his own actions (already prefigured in the Gretchentragödie )� 10 An exception is Anthony Adler, whose article on curiosity in the Lehrjahre emphasizes the centrality of Sorge in connection with Heidegger and Blumenberg (250-51). 11 According to the Munich edition (1112), the “Mitternacht” scene of Faust II was written in three phases in 1825, 1826 and 1831. 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