Abstract
Departing from the general optimism of the day, Goethe's short essay "Geistesepochen" took inspiration from Hesiod and pointed forward to the bleak vision of W. B. Yeats. Although separated by centuries, each of those authors interpreted the course of history as one of decline. In particular, they felt that their own times were, if not in the grip, then on the verge of decay, even catastrophe. Both Yeats and Goethe wrote specifically about the loss of a center and concomittant disintegration. Goethe's personal experiences in the first decades of the new nineteenth century surely colored his cultural commentary, but the essay also takes a longer view of human progress, only to conclude that there is no such thing. In his assessment of cultural history, Goethe thus has more in common with a Schopenhauer or Spengler than with a Leibniz or Lessing. While Goethe's overview of human history tells us about the changing world he saw, it speaks as well to the one we face today.
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