
Programme 2023-2024
23 November 2023
5.45pm
MATTHEW BELL (London)
The Beginnings of Goethe’s Science:
A Reassessment.
5.45pm
MATTHEW BELL (London)
The Beginnings of Goethe’s Science:
A Reassessment.

This talk will consider the earliest phase of Goethe’s
scientific work, from 1776 to the mid-1780s. It will examine the initial
impulses that led to Goethe becoming interested in natural science and what
these impulses can tell us about his scientific career as a whole. It has
traditionally been assumed that the first impulse to become a scientist came
when Duke Carl August directed Goethe to take control of the re-opening of the
silver mines at Ilmenau in spring 1776. The plan suited his highly practical cast
of mind, and accordingly a consistent strand in his scientific work was
practical and less interested in (or even opposed to) theory. However, a closer
look at the years between 1776 and 1780 shows that Goethe’s first steps as a
scientist went through two very different phases, and the second phase, which
began with his reading Buffon’s The Epochs
of Nature (1778) in 1780, was at least as important as the first, practical
one. The remainder of the talk will consider his reactions to Buffon and what
they tell us about his scientific work more generally.
This lecture will be given in person (Senate House, Malet Street, Room G37) and will be streamed live via Zoom. Attendance is free. Advance registration is essential.
Please register HERE.
This lecture will be given in person (Senate House, Malet Street, Room G37) and will be streamed live via Zoom. Attendance is free. Advance registration is essential.
Please register HERE.
25 January 2024
5.45pm
JEROME CARROLL (Nottingham)
Crusius’ hybrid philosophy: between abstraction and actuality
(preceded by the Annual General Meeting, at 5pm, Senate House, G37)
5.45pm
JEROME CARROLL (Nottingham)
Crusius’ hybrid philosophy: between abstraction and actuality
(preceded by the Annual General Meeting, at 5pm, Senate House, G37)
Christian August Crusius has tended in recent assessments to
be identified as a philosopher who prioritises experience or existence or
actuality over logical or essentialist abstraction. Broadly speaking I agree
with this assessment, but it risks ignoring the fact that his writings often
accord value to the methods and fruits of abstraction, even to the extent of
contradiction with his remarks on existence and actuality. The aim of this
paper is two-fold: firstly, to redress the balance in readings of Crusius’ work
by highlighting the several ways in which abstraction is accorded value in his
writings, in terms of the aims (to establish the grounds of knowledge and
experience) and methods (logic and abstraction) of philosophy; and, secondly,
to explore the reasons for the ambivalence that this gives rise to. I argue
that the tensions in his thinking should not be dismissed as a case of Crusius
being contradictory or confused in his ideas, but rather that his approach
should be characterised as hybrid, a quality which I ascribe two aspects of his
ideas: firstly, Crusius’ sense of the inherent and insuperable limitations of
either approach; and secondly, his sense of the complexity of reality, which
limits the possibility and value of separating out necessary and contingent
aspects of reality, essential from extraneous, and singular from multiple and
diverse grounds.
This lecture will be given in person (Senate House, Malet Street, Room G37) and will be streamed live via Zoom. Attendance is free. Advance registration is essential.
Please register HERE.
This lecture will be given in person (Senate House, Malet Street, Room G37) and will be streamed live via Zoom. Attendance is free. Advance registration is essential.
Please register HERE.
22 February 2024
5.45pm
JENNIFER GOSETTI-FERENCEI
(Baltimore/Oxford)
Goethe, Imagination, and Literary Ecology
5.45pm
JENNIFER GOSETTI-FERENCEI
(Baltimore/Oxford)
Goethe, Imagination, and Literary Ecology

Recent environmentally-oriented scholarship on Goethe
has focused on his conception of nature, life-oriented approach to empirical
science, and observational studies of natural phenomena, while interest in the
ecological themes of Goethe's literary works is also emerging. This talk will
explore how ecological themes in some of Goethe's literary works can be
seen in light of contemporary notions of literary ecology, and address the tension between observation and imagination
in Goethe's literary description of the natural world.
This lecture will be given in person (Senate House, Malet Street, Room G37) and will be streamed live via Zoom. Attendance is free. Advance registration is essential.
Please register HERE.
This lecture will be given in person (Senate House, Malet Street, Room G37) and will be streamed live via Zoom. Attendance is free. Advance registration is essential.
Please register HERE.
14 March 2024
5.45pm
Ida Herz Lecture
KAI SINA (Muenster):
In der Provinz, in den Gazetten: Thomas Manns politischer Aktivismus jenseits der großen Bühne.
5.45pm
Ida Herz Lecture
KAI SINA (Muenster):
In der Provinz, in den Gazetten: Thomas Manns politischer Aktivismus jenseits der großen Bühne.

25 April 2023
5.45pm
Prawer Lecture
RACHEL WONG (Chicago)
Oceanic Resonances in Schiller’s Ring des Polykrates
5.45pm
Prawer Lecture
RACHEL WONG (Chicago)
Oceanic Resonances in Schiller’s Ring des Polykrates
Inspired by recent scholarship in the “blue humanities,” this
lecture explores the role of oceanic imagery in Friedrich Schiller’s “Der Ring
des Polykrates” (1797). The ballad, which reworks a story from Herodotus’ Histories, recounts how a Greek king attempts to forestall
divine envy by throwing his most prized possession—a signet ring—into the sea.
By reconstructing Schiller’s encounter with Johann Friedrich Degen’s translation Herodots Geschichte (1783-91) and Christian Garve’s philosophical
commentary “Über zwei Stellen des Herodots” (1796), I show how the ocean exerts
a latent power over the human actions depicted in the poem. As a field of
circulation in which Polykrates’ signet ring comes to signify both present
fortune and future demise, the ocean’s uncanny ability to make diachronic
events appear co-present raises the stakes of Polykrates’ actions and offers us
a view of his life contained within a single, lyrical Augenblick. The lecture concludes by considering Erich
Wolfgang Korngold’s one-act opera buffa of the same name, in which Schiller’s
main characters are reimagined as jealous friends and the ocean’s fateful
distortions of time are replaced by the humdrum rhythms of modern city life.
Please register HERE.
Please register HERE.
6 June 2024
5.45pm
Venue: German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ
Wilkinson-Willoughby Lecture
BARBARA STOLLBERG-RILINGER (Berlin)
Ein gespenstisches Welttheater? Der alte Goethe, der junge Hegel und das Ende des Römisch-deutschen Reiches.
5.45pm
Venue: German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ
Wilkinson-Willoughby Lecture
BARBARA STOLLBERG-RILINGER (Berlin)
Ein gespenstisches Welttheater? Der alte Goethe, der junge Hegel und das Ende des Römisch-deutschen Reiches.

Als Goethe
sich an die feierliche Krönung Josephs II. in Frankfurt zurückerinnerte, gab es
das Römisch-deutsche Reich nicht mehr. Rückblickend stilisierte er das
Schauspiel, dessen Augenzeuge er als Kind gewesen war, als gespenstisches
"Welttheater", das "eine gewisse Deutung verbarg, irgend ein
innres Verhältnis anzeigte". Wenige Jahre zuvor hatte der junge Hegel den
Deutschen vorgeworfen, sie verwechselten die uralte Krönungszeremonie aus
"Aberglauben an die äußeren Formen" mit der Verfassung des Reiches selbst.
Der Vortrag fragt danach, wie Goethe und Hegel die Reichsverfassung wahrnahmen
und welche Rolle den symbolisch-rituellen Formen des Politischen dabei zukam.
Please register HERE.
Please register HERE.