In sacred measures she shimmers and resounds,ДЄnd itвЂ™s solely the form that ennobles content, She hovers on waters, bestrides these pastures,

(FA 1.6:685) 1 She descends hereto in a thousand formations, Mir erschien sie in Jugend-, in Frauen-Gestalt. Verleiht ihm, verleiht sich die hГ¶chste Gewalt, Nach heiligen Massen erglГ¤nzt sie und schallt, Sie schwebet auf Wassern, sie schreitet auf Gefilden, Introduction Sie steiget hernieder in tausend Gebilden, A brief entry such as this can do no more than carve a slender path through this variegated semantic terrain. Finally, nearly all the terms within the nexus are susceptible to poetic intensification, as exemplified in the verses from Pandora recalled at the outset. The entire nexus is central both to GoetheвЂ™s aesthetics and to his scientific studies. Kindred terms include Gestalt, ( Um-) Gestaltung, Typus, Urbild crucial explicating concepts are Organisation, Einheit, and Idee syntactic and semantic linkages run inter alia to schaffen and Gewalt (in the sense of force, not violence) Morphologie is the science of form negative concepts such as formlos and Chaos likewise have their place. It is important to stress the selectivity of such a project, for to examine the peculiar inflection the concept of form undergoes in GoetheвЂ™s work is to enter a field of intricately interwoven concepts.

Their purpose is to highlight sites of reflection in GoetheвЂ™s oeuvre in which the concept of form does irreplaceable intellectual work. The following remarks must pursue a more modest aim. In view of its centrality to GoetheвЂ™s work, the concept may thus be considered one of the privileged themes for assessing GoetheвЂ™s position in the Western philosophical tradition. The concept of form today remains as indispensable to philosophical reflection as it was for Plato and Aristotle.

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