Meaning in Morphological Method

ABSTRACT

The reception history of Goethean morphology is not only interdisciplinary in scope, but it also comprises various contested interpretations of morphological method, such as how to determine the relation between metamorphosis and type. This article surveys some of the recent philosophical reception history of Goethean morphology with a focus on processes of meaning‐making. It attempts a more global reception history of Goethe's morphological method by incorporating material from the early Soviet period. By arranging strategies of morphological meaning‐making along synchronic and diachronic axes, this article juxtaposes two main lines within recent Goethe interpretations, before turning to morphology's reactivation in Jean Petitot's structuralist reading of Goethe. The morphological method, it argues, should be understood in a nonreductive way, where the synchronic and diachronic axes of interpretation intersect and inform each other.