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Book Review
The Will to Create: Goethe’s
Philosophy of Nature
by Astrida Orle Tantillo
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002, 241 pgs.
Review by Christina Root
In her book, The Will to Create: Goethe’s Philosophy of
Nature, Astrida Orle Tantillo, Professor of Germanic Studies
at the University of Illinois at Chicago, offers a provocative
exploration of Goethean science. She begins her study by distancing
herself from anthroposophists, who, she says, have
treated Goethe’s scientific work “as a kind of mysticism or
religion.” She goes on to say that “the anthroposophists who
often write on Goethe’s science tend to look within his texts
for messages of personal/spiritual guidance or fulfillment”(x).
In the footnote to this point, Tantillo quotes Mark Riegner’s
claim that Goethe helps us see “the idea within reality,” and
Henri Bortoft’s assertion that Goethe’s holistic approach
could be the foundation of an education based on a new relationship
with nature. Given the reasonable quality of these
statements, I wasn’t sure what to make of her dismissal of
the vast body of research into Goethe’s method done by anthroposophists,
except to wonder, cynically, if dismissing that
research allowed her better to claim, as she does, that her
book is “the first comprehensive study of Goethe’s natural
philosophy across his scientific corpus” (ix).
Despite the author's preface making me begin the book
in a dour mood, I was soon won over by her approach to
Goethe and the picture of his science that emerges from her
examination of him. In fact, her work is so appreciative and
open it doesn’t seem to me to differ that much from the best
anthroposophical studies. Rather, it constitutes a welcome
addition to them. Her deep knowledge and careful building
up of a wide range of Goethe’s ideas result not only in a comprehensive
study but a richly sympathetic one. As Tantillo
proceeds, her initial attempt to divide the philosophy underlying
Goethe’s science from the seemingly mystical elements
50 • being human
of his thought falls
away. Ultimately, she
seems persuaded by
the coherence of Goethe’s work as a whole, and by his insistence
on the unity of spirit and matter. Her endorsement of
a Goethean outlook can be seen in her following his lead and
refusing to study different aspects of his work in isolation.
Her own method of connecting his observations about plants
and animals, clouds and colors to his poetry and to his
observations on art is particularly salutary. She succeeds in
showing that the common theme throughout Goethe’s work
as well as his life is his desire to show nature’s “will to create,”
and to describe the striving that is apparent everywhere, not
only in human beings.
Given where her study takes her, the rejection of the possibility
that Goethe might offer some kind of personal or
spiritual guidance seems especially odd. Her project gives her
and her readers more than simply a fuller understanding of
Goethe’s views. In showing so persuasively the kind of alternative
he offers to the Newtonian/Cartesian tradition his
work is a protest against, Tantillo also makes a case for her
audience’s embracing, or at least considering, the potential
fruits of that alternative.
The book is divided into four chapters, each concentrating
on one of Goethe’s main scientific principles: polarity,
steigerung (intensification), compensation, and, finally (as a
group), competition, reproduction, and gender. The chapters
seem less like separate sections than stopping places along a
journey of discovery, beginning with widely known aspects
of Goethe’s thought and then moving deeply into less familiar
territory.