Goethe´s Writings on Aesthetics and the Epistemic Transformations in the Late 18th and Early 19th Century

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https://sh.diva-portal.org/smash/project.jsf?pid=project:4694

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Title [sv]

Goethes estetiska skrifter och de epistemiska omvandlingarna omkring år 1800

Title [en]

Goethe´s Writings on Aesthetics and the Epistemic Transformations in the Late 18th and Early 19th Century

Abstract [sv]

The project will investigate the German author, artist, and scientist, J.W. Goethe´s (1749-1832), extensive production of writings on aesthetics. The aim is to disclose the aesthetic experience that constitutes the uniting force in Goethe´s aesthetic oeuvre, holding together the diverse collection of texts (reviews, descriptions of visual works of art, aphorisms, etc.). It also aims to show how this experience relates to the important transformation of the conception of knowledge that took place during the late 18th and early 19th century. During this period the aesthetic established itself as a relevant form of knowledge, which resulted in a re-evaluation of sensory knowledge and its relation to rational knowledge. Since scholarly works dealing with Goethe´s aesthetics have regularly construed it as unsystematic, neither the unifying experience, which is one of difference and separation, nor its relation to the epistemological transformation has been acknowledged. Rather, scholars have denied the very existence of a unity or a relation. By combining discursive methods, which are concerned with the mechanisms that regulate how we create and understand knowledge, with phenomenological methods, which focus on how one can understand experience and meaning, and using Goethe as the principle example, the project aims at displaying the role of aesthetics in epistemic transformations and the development of a modern conception of knowledge.