ABSTRACT
Critical attention has been brought to bear on the question of whether Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s notion of organic metamorphosis provides an adequate conceptual framework for his own self-presentation and for his understanding of the individual as thoroughly historical in nature. For some readers, Poetry and Truth, and to a certain extent Goethe’s entire autobiographical corpus, can be fruitfully read in terms of the developmental principles that emerge from his scientific thinking. The stylistic heterogeneity of Poetry and Truth also contributes to a sense of irregularity or disorder on the narrative level. Poetry and Truth is filled with spirals. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s artistic, cultural, political, religious, and moral development can be plotted along similar spiral structures. Teleologically driven, Goethe’s spiral thought nonetheless insists on the impossibility of ever fully reaching an end-state or telos. Goethe’s work in the natural sciences provides him with a model for conceptualizing and representing the self that is uniquely historical and dynamic.
