Augenblick (Moment)

Abstract

The motif of the Augenblick (moment) is omnipresent and important throughout Goethe’s writings, across genres and from his earliest to his latest work. As a compound term that combines within itself the idea of a visual act (as “eye-look”) with the temporality of a quick glance, the Augenblick is key to the understanding of time in texts ranging from the early lyric, to the morphological writings, to Faust II. The term is also and perhaps above all philosophically relevant to the exploration of selfhood: it recurrently highlights the role of the individual either as possessing an “eye”—even a quasi-divine eye—that appears to gain control over time, or instead as an entity subject to the influence of fateful moments of change. It also presents models of self-constitution and self-questioning, particularly in erotically charged moments of seeing and being seen. Finally, it provides models for considering the epistemological relationship, and thus the semiotic relationship, between the self and the objects of its cognitive activity.