A Whiteheadian Take on Subjectivity and Philosophical Conceptualization in Goethe’s ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Ganymed’

Abstract

ABSTRACT Guided by the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and the transcendental materialism of Gilles Deleuze, this reading of Goethe’s ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Ganymed’ constructs the hymns’ defining polarity with reference to the ‘subjective aims’ of their ‘conceptual personae’. While each mythological figure is driven by a primordial ‘feeling’ along its separate path of ‘satisfaction’, the sum of their grasping moves, or physical and mental ‘prehensions’, constitutes a field of conceptualization that is post-theological and protophilosophical. The problematic Promethean ‘I’, according to this interpretive framing, undergoes a transformative reconfiguration in ‘Ganymed’ through the strategic deployment of the lexemes fassen and fangen, so that its counterpart in subject formation ultimately becomes a Whiteheadian ‘superject’.