Le Idee per la filosofia della storia dell’umanità di Herder e il Faust di Goethe

The focus of the contribution proposed here is a reflection on the anthropology underlying the Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Mankind, which Herder conceived in the 1780s in dialogue with Goethe, who in turn drew from its essential elements for the Faustian subject matter in general, and in particular for the conception of the last scenes written in 1831 for Act V of Faust II. Critics have rightly interpreted the scenes written in the aftermath of the July Revolution in France as an alarmed response to the optimism of Sansimonian doctrines, alluding however only sporadically to a re-actualization, within this historical framework, of the Herderian semantics of the Ideas and their critique of an aggressive and inhuman capitalism. That renewed influence of the Ideas, which the elder Goethe hopes for in 1828, seems to start from his own verses of 1831.