Goethe Yearbook

Abstract:

Karl Philipp Moritz's highly abstract aesthetic theories of the sublime and of artistic autonomy, the honest, pragmatic self-reflection in his autobiographical novel Anton Reiser, and his pioneering edited collection of psychological case histories in the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde approach concepts such as perfection, harmony, and balance through dichotomies such as objectivity/subjectivity, creation/destruction, health/illness, and beauty/desolation. For this reason, Moritz focused on self-development and on perfecting and creating beauty as dynamic processes rather than goals, as negative dialectics that remove that which is expedient in order to uncover what is innate. Moritz wished to understand the function of beauty on the psyche in order to make it useful to mankind and to highlight the value of each human being; however, he simultaneously recognized, was on occasion overwhelmed by, and, in essence, acknowledged the pernicious dissension of human existence. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate how this so-called outsider figure, who still struggles to be accepted into the canon, engaged creatively with the new anthropological worldview—which itself eclectically brought together aesthetics, philosophy, pedagogy, and (avant la lettre) psychology—and contributed substantially to the debate.