Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) is one of the classics of world literature, and at the same time a major thinker. The peak of Goethe’s work is considered the philosophical tragedy “Faust.”
Sometimes Goethe’s brilliant tragedy is interpreted as an expression of the tragic nature and hopelessness of a person—and of humanity—as its desperate struggle against evil. Some researchers see in “Faust” Nietzschean ideas of irrational will and the immanent striving for “action” of the so-called supermen. However, the true meaning of Goethe’s work lies in the fact that it calls for a fight against everything backward, against the infection and miasmas of the “rotten swamp”—and Mephistopheles’ “nothing” proves powerless in the face of life-affirming Faustian beginning.
The book presents Goethe’s reflections on the human being, society, nature, and the world, as well as some philosophical poems and sayings (“Maxims”).