The various critics who have assumed that Spinoza held a paramount position in Goethe's world view have much direct evidence from Goethe's own pen. I… - Benedictus de Spinoza

" "

The various critics who have assumed that Spinoza held a paramount position in Goethe's world view have much direct evidence from Goethe's own pen. In one of the Zahme Xenien Goethe calls Spinoza "the philosopher whom I trust most." From the 1780's onward numerous references to Spinoza appear in Goethe's work. How well Goethe knew Spinoza's philosophy before his arrival at Weimar is a matter of some uncertainty, but already in 1773 a book of Spinoza's, probably the Ethics, is mentioned as an object of his study. The letters of 1784-86 indicate that Goethe read and discussed the Ethics with Charlotte von Stein and that he disputed with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi about Spinoza's concept of God/Nature. During that same period Goethe had written that although he did not himself share Spinoza's way of representing nature (seine Vorstellungsart von Natur), if he were to name one book that agreed the most completely with his own conception of nature, it would have to be the Ethics: doch wenn die Rede wäre ein Buch anzugeben, das unter allen die ich kenne, am meisten mit der meinigen übereinkommt, die Ethik nennen müsste. In a conversation with Boisserée of August 3, 1815, Goethe said: "I always carry the Ethics of Spinoza with me." The most extended references to Spinoza are to found in Goethe's autobiography Poetry and Truth.