Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749-1832 · Romanticism · Household name
Goethe refused the title of philosopher and built a science of looking instead, outside the systems of his day. Train perception long enough and it becomes theory. Then stop, because explanation halts at the primal phenomenon and you seek nothing behind what appears. He read the form of a plant as one organ transformed again and again. Purpose in nature, he wrote, is a comfort man projects because he cannot conceive nature larger than himself.
Signature
The position Goethe is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence
- Perception
- Conceptual Mediation
Positions on the 13 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- mildly between Mechanistic and Purposeful (50 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (75 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (25 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly between Unity and Multiplicity (46 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (15 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- leans Sublation (25 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Ethics
- leans Means (75 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (75 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
7 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Goethe refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Panentheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Good and Evil
- Natural Emergence
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- No End
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Beginning of Things
- Causa Sui
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Process / Becoming
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Paradox
- Productive Tension
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law?