Thank you very much sir for all these lectures which are extremely important and rich. However I have a couple of points to make briefly; first, in the philosophy of Leibniz there is no contingency from the perspective of God, whom he calls monad monadum (the monad of monads), or more precisely God has no perspective for He sees everything at once. The monad, which is the totality of it's perceptions and reflects all the universe from it's point of view, is contingent only because it could never know the sufficient cause of each and every one of it's perceptive states. And since everything is connected to everything else in Leibniz's doctrine of pre-established Harmony, he thinks that if we knew completely the condition of any single monad at any time, and if we had adequate logical powers, we could determine the states of all the monads at all times. This is clearly the picture of a deterministic universe in which there is No Contingency. Second, I'm very interested in Goethe and I think one can learn from his creative personality a great deal. He was constantly evolving and was the first, to my knowledge, to create the concept of international literature and universal culture, everything he touches turns gold. However I found his juvenilia of little interest, and even his play Goetz left me cold, it's the work of an aesthete and not a mature artist, and I think if one wrote such a play today no publishing company would take it. His Werther Is far removed from modern sensibility, however the modern reader can still find in it some sparks and even illuminations here and there. His Faust part one is unmatchable and I have read it many times. The second part is heavy and pedantic sometimes (the cat is talking and so are the mosquitoes, crickets and I don't know what... Also the history of money and the other bullcrap he filled the play with). I loved his Roman Elegies and his great Divan where he emulated Hafiz (unfortunately he did not know Omar Khayyam). His Hermann and Dorethea is not great stuff. His conversations with Eckermann, Nietzsche's favorite German book, is truly a gold mine. I'd like to ask you a question sir, a great literary scholar once said, if it wasn't for Faust, Goethe would have been just like any other writer of his time, what do you think of that?
Thank you for this lengthy comment Richard. I appreciate your observations on Leibniz. When it comes to Leibniz, I'm still learning, so I very much appreciate your insights. He was very important to Goethe, but like all the philosophy Goethe absorbed, he modified it to make it fit whatever his world-view happened to be at that time. He did that with Spinoza and Kant too. Regarding Goethe's early work, I hold a different view. Goethe is struggling with questions of human nature and how it relates to nature at large. When Werther falls in love, he finds nature is creative and benevolent, and this feeds into human life in many ways. When his love goes wrong, nature appears as destructive, and it leads to self-destruction. This is a lasting question for him, and his later works are unimaginable without the early investigations. When Goethe turns to scientific endeavours, the question remains. How are representations (scientific or aesthetic) adequate to the forces of nature (and when it comes to force, Goethe is also a Leibnizian - second hand via Herder, I think)? This problem also dominates Faust II. So here, too I have a different view. Faust II is heavy and tedious, you are right. Some scholars argue it could never be put on the Stage. When Peter Stein did this in 2000, it ran some 22 hours! But much can be learned from it concerning the relationship between science and literature!
These videos are very enjoyable and insightful. Thank you for making them!
Thanks Austin, I'm glad you find them helpful, John
Thank you very much sir for all these lectures which are extremely important and rich. However I have a couple of points to make briefly; first, in the philosophy of Leibniz there is no contingency from the perspective of God, whom he calls monad monadum (the monad of monads), or more precisely God has no perspective for He sees everything at once. The monad, which is the totality of it's perceptions and reflects all the universe from it's point of view, is contingent only because it could never know the sufficient cause of each and every one of it's perceptive states. And since everything is connected to everything else in Leibniz's doctrine of pre-established Harmony, he thinks that if we knew completely the condition of any single monad at any time, and if we had adequate logical powers, we could determine the states of all the monads at all times. This is clearly the picture of a deterministic universe in which there is No Contingency.
Second, I'm very interested in Goethe and I think one can learn from his creative personality a great deal. He was constantly evolving and was the first, to my knowledge, to create the concept of international literature and universal culture, everything he touches turns gold. However I found his juvenilia of little interest, and even his play Goetz left me cold, it's the work of an aesthete and not a mature artist, and I think if one wrote such a play today no publishing company would take it. His Werther Is far removed from modern sensibility, however the modern reader can still find in it some sparks and even illuminations here and there. His Faust part one is unmatchable and I have read it many times. The second part is heavy and pedantic sometimes (the cat is talking and so are the mosquitoes, crickets and I don't know what... Also the history of money and the other bullcrap he filled the play with). I loved his Roman Elegies and his great Divan where he emulated Hafiz (unfortunately he did not know Omar Khayyam). His Hermann and Dorethea is not great stuff. His conversations with Eckermann, Nietzsche's favorite German book, is truly a gold mine.
I'd like to ask you a question sir, a great literary scholar once said, if it wasn't for Faust, Goethe would have been just like any other writer of his time, what do you think of that?
Thank you for this lengthy comment Richard. I appreciate your observations on Leibniz. When it comes to Leibniz, I'm still learning, so I very much appreciate your insights. He was very important to Goethe, but like all the philosophy Goethe absorbed, he modified it to make it fit whatever his world-view happened to be at that time. He did that with Spinoza and Kant too. Regarding Goethe's early work, I hold a different view. Goethe is struggling with questions of human nature and how it relates to nature at large. When Werther falls in love, he finds nature is creative and benevolent, and this feeds into human life in many ways. When his love goes wrong, nature appears as destructive, and it leads to self-destruction. This is a lasting question for him, and his later works are unimaginable without the early investigations. When Goethe turns to scientific endeavours, the question remains. How are representations (scientific or aesthetic) adequate to the forces of nature (and when it comes to force, Goethe is also a Leibnizian - second hand via Herder, I think)? This problem also dominates Faust II. So here, too I have a different view. Faust II is heavy and tedious, you are right. Some scholars argue it could never be put on the Stage. When Peter Stein did this in 2000, it ran some 22 hours! But much can be learned from it concerning the relationship between science and literature!
Oh, and one other thing. Who are you citing about Goethe's greatness and Faust? I searched but couldn't find the citation online.