ABSTRACT
If the French Revolution in 1789 marked the birth of modern society, the publication of Immanuel Kant's three critiques, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft in 1781, the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft in 1788 and the Kritik der Urteilskraft in 1790, shaped modern philosophy. In 1797 Joseph Görres, an early supporter of the French Revolution, remarked: Im vorigen Jahrzehnt fiel in Deutschland bekanntlich eine Revolution vor, wodurch sich das Land theoretisch um die Kultur der Menschheit beinahe ebenso verdient gemacht hat, als Frankreich praktisch. Ich meine die Reformation der Philosophie durch unsern unsterblichen Kant. By 1806, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's first unsuccessful attempt to write a modern De rerum natura was six years in the past and the historical circumstances were incomparably more eventful than the time of the heyday of the University in Jena. Goethe had aimed for a balance between subjective and objective elements that allowed him to establish the poems' new meaning independently of their original occasions.
