The quest for wholeness: The parallel journeys of Goethe's Faust and Hegel's consciousness

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749--1832) and G. W. F. Hegel (1770--1831) were at the forefront of Romantic writers and philosophers seeking to remedy what they diagnosed as a spiritlessness of their age with its devastating effects upon Europe. One might read Goethe's Faust as a dramatic exegesis of the same philosophical "cure" prescribed by Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, both revealing how an individual and a culture progress from spiritless fragmentation to authentic, spirited wholeness. The present study examines the philosophical relationship of Goethe and Hegel and key features of their "spiritless age" in order to unveil the common internal themes and structures of Faust and the Phenomenology and the paths of development both consider essential to the cultivation of authentic spirit. At journey's end both Goethe's Faust and Hegel's Consciousness discover that Absolute Spirit has dwelled in them throughout their journey---the nature of authentic spirit is productive activity guided by love.