Proteus (Proteus)

Abstract

Beginning with his botanical epiphany in Sicily in 1787, Goethe turned to the ancient Greek sea god Proteus as a key figure for imagining natural metamorphosis. “Proteus” is perhaps a surprising term for a lexicon of philosophical concepts. Its connection to symbol, myth, and what Hegel would call representational thinking (Vorstellungsdenken) contrasts with more overtly abstract terms of philosophy. Yet for the unorthodox thinker, Goethe, who consistently straddled the line between literature and philosophy, the boundaries between symbolic representation and speculative abstraction were often porous. Nowhere is this more evident than in his theory of metamorphosis, which was developed throughout his life in an aggregate of scientific, poetic, and biographical texts. The lexeme “Proteus,” as Goethe used it, grows out of and defines this uniquely interdisciplinary thinking. Itself a deeply protean concept in his oeuvre, it gives occasion to consider the mutually productive relationship between philosophy, literature, and life within the broader constellation of Goethe’s thought. In this entry, I situate Goethe’s “protean” model of metamorphosis vis-à-vis his engagement with maritime environments and literature, specifically Homer’s Odyssey, during the period of the Italian journey (1786-1788). As a symbol, I argue, Proteus played an especially important role in Goethe’s dynamic reconception of natural forms as well as his rebuttal to the “terrestrially biased” imagery of Carl Linnaeus, who construed the formal characteristics of plants through metaphors of geographical enclosure. Additionally, I consider how Goethe’s “protean” botany informed his theory of natural types (Typen) and prepared his theory and practice of science as “zarte Empirie” (WA IV/45:11; delicate empiricism). By reading the mythical figure of Proteus back into the adjective “protean,” which is used to characterize Goethe’s view of nature in his scientific and poetic writings, we can uncover a uniquely Goethean conception of metamorphosis and creativity.