In the conclusion to the daemonic series, we're looking at Stefan Zweig's Struggle with the Daemon - specifically, the section on Nietzsche. Particularly helpful for our analysis will be Zweig's comparison and contrast of Nietzsche with Goethe: both men contain the daemoniacal drive, but whereas Goethe holds it at a distance, Nietzsche gives himself over to it. By following Zweig's interpretation of Nietzsche's life and work, we can move from the abstract conception of it to a particular manifestation, and get a sense of the daemonic as it appears in an individual.

In the second part of this series, we'll examine how it is that Goethe came to his conception of the Daemonic, involved as it is with Spinoza's pantheism. Goethe's introduction to Spinoza was largely through Herder, and his friendship with Herder he described as one of the most important in his entire life. We'll consider Herder's personality and some of the most important aspects of Herder's worldview, as well as the use of the term "daemonic" as Herder received it from his mentor, the "Magus of the North", Hamann. In the latter half of the episode, we'll look at the specifics of how Goethe describes the Daemonic in Dichtung und Wahrheit and in Conversations with Goethe, in which he describes it as a force that pushes against all limits and manifests in prodigious human beings. We'll relate the idea to Werther, Faust, and consider some of Goethe's real-world examples of it.

Part one of three. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe often spoke of a dangerous but invigorating life-force that he christened "the daemonic". In his conversations with Eckermann, and in his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit, he describes the daemonic by direct reference to Spinoza, and his pantheist philosophy.

In this first episode of our series on Goethe's Daemonic, we're going to look at Goethe's statement of the idea, then go back in time to consider: Plato's Symposium, the daemonion of Socrates, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, Justin Martyr and St. Augustine, and finally, the alleged Spinozism of the playwright Gotthold Lessing and the "pantheism controversy" that emerged over Lessing's legacy, argued by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn.

Next week (part two) will involve a closer reading of Goethe's concept of the daemonic and the influence of Herder on Goethe's reception of Spinoza.

Episode art: Lessing, pictured in front of some Greek daimones.