What's the meaning of this aphorism by Goethe?

Question

What's the meaning of this aphorism by Goethe?

"A Spinoza in poetry becomes Machiavelli in philosophy"

Answer 1

Thanks to @JoWehler we got the German original text, which reads:

Alles Spinozistische in der poetischen Produktion wird in der Reflexion Machiavellismus.

A proper translation would be

Everything that is Spinozistic in poetic production becomes Machiavellism when reflected upon.

Does not sound quite the same, does it? Now, what do we have to make of it?

The first part is the poetic Spinozism. We know that Goethe thought highly reverential of Spinoza and saw himself as a Spinozist. This is linked to his own almost atheist position and can be seen in his writings.

In a sense, we can see his most iconic figure Faust as a figure of Spinozism in poetic production: The curious mind of a rational thinker in search of the ultimate truth is not morally condemned for the morally questionable means used on the way, but ultimatly receives salvation for his relentless rational search for truth. There is no transcendent external judgement by God for every act but the rational mind itself is the only proper judge and the epitome of divinity, in a way. And ultimately, it is the eternal strive for the better which has prevented Mephisteles from getting hold of Faust's soul. A truly Spinozian thought, where activity is a high value and fallibility not seen as evil.

On the other hand, this opens the way for Machiavellism: If we rationally analyse the necessary means for a higher (good) goal and set them into motion, we will not be condemned for the (rationally necessary) means we use on the way but will even receive "salvation" (forgiveness) in the end for our relentless rational pursuit of realising the good, no matter how atrocious the means have been. The Machiavellian Prince cannot be condemned within a Spinozian framework bereft of a personalised judging God as long as they are active in a strive for (personal and general) betterment.

Thus, this kind of Spinozistic thought, if used in poetic production, can serve as an example and justification for Machiavellian politics: A political Faust (like Goethe probably saw in Napoléon Bonaparte) who reflects the same justifications and motivations and realises them in political context is a Machiavellian Prince. And, more widely speaking, for any course of action the ends justify all means if part of a perpetual strive for betterment. This is what we usually understand under Machiavellism.

Of course, the terms "Spinozism" and "Machiavellism" indicate an undue, caricaturist reduction of the actual depth of the writings of these great men, something Goethe probably was well aware of. After all, Spinozist still was rather an insult than a description in his times.

(Informations taken from intimate knowledge of German Idealism and the contemporary intellectual movements. Most facts are verifiable even through Wikipedia entries though.)

Answer 2

The quote is from "Goethe: Maximen und Reflexionen. Aus Kunst und Altertum. Fünftes Heft, Dritter Band 1826".

The German original reads: „Alles Spinozistische in der poetischen Produktion wird in der Reflexion Machiavellismus.“

Unfortunately we do not have any context. "Maximen und Reflexionen" is just a collection of separate sentences, one after the other. The collection was made by two of Goethe's private secretaries during Goethe's last years. The collection was published posthumously.

To find out the meaning of the sentence above one has to find out, how Goethe used the keywords: "Spinoza" versus "Machiavelli", "poetische Produktion"(= poetry) versus "Reflexion". This seeems to me a task for Goethe experts.

Answer 3

I take this to be making maybe a similar point to Zizek when he argues that poetry is an inherently ambiguous medium, because it is about pure experience — just like music, a poem can be used to inspire good or evil; at the very least it is suggestive, aids and multiplies us, and can hypnotize us into thinking we are doing something good (when maybe we aren’t!) All great art perhaps tempts us towards as-yet unforeseen critiques and crimes — and poetry can lure us into fascism just as easily as into revolution. Zizek suggests that reactionary political movements depend upon the depersonalizing effects of poetry to desensitize people to ethical horror.

Which is only to say maybe that it depends; at times, poetry is salvation, satiating a spiritual hunger or slaking a thirst unslakable in any other way. At times it can lead us into darkness — addiction, neurosis, madness. Poetry is ultimately just the intensification of life: if it may be said to have a purpose, it might be to help people think new thoughts and feel new feelings. It is a force for good in almost all cases maybe! But it is also a very powerful and general instrument in transforming consciousness and forming subjectivities and so on. So that suffice to say it is important to be responsible with this power that poetry grants us over the inner life.

Answer 4

Well, to understand this aphorism we would need to understand how Goethe saw both Spinoza and Machivelli. It's known that Goethe admired Spinoza hugely, he said of his Ethics:

After looking around me in vain for a means of disciplining my peculiar nature, I at last chanced upon the Ethica of this man. To say exactly how much I gained from that work was due to Spinoza or to my own reading of him would be impossible. Enough that I found in him a sedative to my passions and that he appeared to me to open up a large and free outlook on the material and moral world. But what specially attracted me to him was the boundless disinterestedness that shone out from every sentence. That marvellous saying, 'Who truly loved God, must not desire God to love him in return', with all the premises on which it rests and the consequences that flow from it, permeated my whole thinking. To be disinterested in everything, and most of all in love and friendship, was my highest desire, my maxim, my constant practise.

This is high praise indeed. But in a letter to an acquaintence from whom he had borrowed a work by Spinoza, he simply said:

May I keep it a while longer? I will only see how far I may follow this fellow in his subterreanean borings.

So his enthusiasm was tempered or perhaps he was snared by his passions as he describes above. Spinoza is often understood as a rationalist but in our rationalist times this is easily misunderstood. It is not the rationalism of today which is profoundly secular but the rationality of a Euclid who re-arranges what is known so everything belongs in its place and the whole becomes crystal clear. This geometric method is the 'disinterestedness' that Goethe praised. But what about content? In an essay on philosophical theology, Aldo di Giovanni has said:

Spinoza identifies God's divine law as a "principle of living" "which aims only at the supreme good" of human kind. This principle is the basis of Spinoza's ethics. Spinoza says Christ writes "the law" "thoroughly in their hearts" producing an intellectual knowledge of the operations of natural divine law in people. The natural laws of physical nature as described by 'mechanising' natural philosophers or scientists at the time or since, do not convey this "aim", "principle of living" or rather natural property of the human nature inclining the human mind to the supreme good.

Spinoza's Natura (even as percieved under the attribute of extension) includes more than "a certain mass or corporeal matter", it includes real, divine things, their properties and divine natural laws. Spinoza wrote to Oldenburg [Secretary of The Royal Society], that "modern Christian's", ie the mechanical philosophers' and modern theologians' understanding of Spinoza's "God or Nature" "is a complete mistake". For Spinoza, there is a marked difference between abstract mechanised laws applied to nature and errantly taken to be Nature itself and the natural divine law of God's own nature as it is in itself to an extent, resides in human nature.

The mechanisation of Nature is so subtly entrenched in our thinking that it is prudent to keep in mind that not only is Nature not mechanised for Spinoza, neither is substance, modes, thought or extension.

This speaks for itself. Spinoza is very far from the rationalising 'mechanical' philosophers, who are known as physicalists today. He is not a rationalist in say the mode of a Christopher Hitchens. He is a spiritual but rigorous philosopher.

When we turn to Machiavelli, we discover that Goethe said very little on him. There is your aphorism and not much else. However when we turn to his plays:

It occurs as the name of a character in Egmont who is the confidential secretary to Margaret of Parma, the Regent of the Netherlands before Alba's arrival ... the Machavellian Oranien, like other courtiers in Goethe's plays, notably Weislingen, represents the new world of essentially amoral, political manipulation. He tends towards the Machiavellianism that moralists conventionally denounce - Ritchieson, Goethe & Machiavelli.

Weislingen appears as a character in Goethe's play, Gotz von Berlichengen. GermanLit.org, edited by Ernest Schonfield, lecturer in German at the University of Glasgow, explains that in this play, Goethe

... explores the opposition between the instintive Gotz with his medieval code of honour and his modern rival, the scheming intellectual and womaniser, Weislingen.

They also says:

Gotz dies exclaiming "Freiheit!" (Freedom) after having predicted the dawn of a new and more treacherous age.

And quote the following, which I assume is from the play itself:

Lock your hearts more carefully than you do your gates. The time of betrayal is coming, it will have no limits. The unworthy will govern with deceit and he who is noble, will be caught in their nets

From all this we can deduce that Goethe did not view Machivelli, and the amoral, pragmatic politics that he represented with much favour and did not consider him as one of the greats. Spinoza was a spiritual but rigourous philosopher and probably like Plato not a fan of poetry. However, Spinoza for many, represented a divinisation of nature and this is one aspect of the European Romanticism. So it appears that Geothe is saying or observing that a romantic nature is no safeguard against falling into a vile and scheming philisophy and/or politics.