“Was bin ich gegen das All?”. Goethe and Man’s Relation to the Cosmos

The Copernican Revolution opened the doors to the idea of a widely inhabited universe. This assumption finds evidence in many modern works, such as Fontenelle’s "Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes" (1686), Swedenborg’s "Von den Erdcörpern der Planeten und des gestirnten Himmels Einwohnern" (1771), Kant’s "Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels" (1775), Weishaupt’s "Höhere Mysterien: 2te Klasse. Doceten" (1783/84), Gruithuisen’s "Entdeckung vieler deutlicher Spuren der Mondbewohner" (1824). Goethe was familiar with each of the aforementioned books, and was well aware that such books offered a modern revisitation of a theme which ancient and Renaissance authors had already treated when dealing with the subject of the soul’s cosmic voyage. It is therefore not a mere matter of chance that Goethe’s writings and conversations often refer to the idea of the soul’s cosmic voyage and to the existence of many inhabited worlds, from which our souls may descend or to which they may one day go to.