The law of striving and demand: Goethe's 'Faust' and the economic theories of Steuart, Moeser, and Schlosser (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir James Steuart, Justus Moeser, Johann Georg Schlosser, Germany)

Goethe's economic knowledge requires reevaluation in light of his official writings, contemporaneous economic theories and texts, and the developing discourse of demand in Germany during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. During more than a decade of experience as a senior advisor to Duke Carl August, Goethe dealt extensively in tax and finance matters. Prior to his arrival in Weimar in 1776, he had already thoroughly engaged the work of Justus Moser, considered by economic historians the premier German economist of the eighteenth century. Johann Georg Schlosser also served as a model for the young statesman. Goethe's familiarity with the works of Moser, Schlosser, and Sir James Steuart, the most influential Scottish economist in Germany in the 1770s and 1780s---well before the reception of Adam Smith in the 1790s---informs his literary endeavors and especially Faust.; I begin with Goethe's tax writings and consider them alongside his lifelong interest in taxation and, particularly, the final scene he wrote for Faust, "Des Gegenkaisers Zelt." The following chapter focuses on Goethe's discussion of intrinsic value in an official coin report and compares it to Steuart's discussions of specie, value, and demand. In the third chapter, I reconsider Goethe's view of Physiocracy through two texts by Moser and Schlosser and contend that Faust echoes their sentiments. I then analyze Goethe's incorporation of the economic concepts of Wert and Begehren in passages in Faust that have been traditionally deemed uneconomic. When Faust says of Helen, "Sie ist mein einziges Begehren!" (7412), he speaks not only of his "desire" but also his economic "demand." I conclude by reading Freud's theory of "das Okonomische" against the backdrop of Goethe Age economics and suggest that Faust provides a model for Freud's theory of the libidinal economy.