Goethe's Conscience

TL;DR: The following reading of Goethe is inspired by Rainer Nägele's work as discussed by the authors, which suggests that conscience might not be governed by deep-seated feelings of right and wrong but might instead be structured at least partly by almost mechanical linguistic maneuvers and associations.

Abstract: Any student or reader of the works by Rainer Nägele knows his insistence on what he calls surface reading. Those who have had the privilege of sitting in his classes will also know his reactions to metaphors of depth, hidden meanings, and truths to be uncovered: They do not belong to the practice of reading. Reading is to discover the textual connections that are out in the open and on the surface; it is about the “carpet of truth,” as one of his essays famously ends,2 and about a “reading of correspondences.”3 The following reading is inspired by Rainer Nägele’s work. I would like to suggest how conscience, or in German das Gewissen, can be found as operating on the surface rather than as a deep interior faculty. Conscience might not be governed by deep-seated feelings of right and wrong, but might instead be structured at least partly by almost mechanical linguistic maneuvers and associations. With the help of Rainer Nägele, this is what my reading of Goethe will allow us to consider. Structuring this reading of conscience and of conscience in Goethe, especially in Faust, are the subsequent arguments: