vol 23 no1,A 2023

Egomania, Self-Certainty, and Thinghood: A Hegelian Reading of Rousseau’s “Julie” and Goethe’s “Werther”

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Egomania, Self-Certainty, and Thinghood: A Hegelian Reading of Rousseau's "Julie" and Goethe's "Werther"

Noor Nader Mohammad A'bed Samira Fayyad al-Khawaldeh

Faculty of Foreign Languages Faculty of Foreign Languages

University of Jordan University of Jordan

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Received :03/11/2021 Accepted :01/12/2021

Abstract

This paper aims to read Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise and Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther in light of the Hegelian dialectic of lordship and bondage. The appreciation of these novels lies in the fact that they have triggered social changes, mutinous attitudes, most importantly, the socio-political emergence for the French Revolution. They are pragmatic texts that implicate certain purposes and ideological tenets toward social and cultural rejuvenations. Subsequently, Hegel's ideas of the "struggle for recognition" in subject-object relationship will be utilised to interpret the relationships between Julie and Saint-Preux, on one hand, and Lotte and Werther, on the other. These characters are determined by love and domination, their encounters as self-consciousnesses are analogised to the battle to death. Each consciousness endeavours to oblige their point of view on the other while extracting his/her recognition from that other. The self-consciousnesses of these characters are traced through three particular phases: confrontation as a position of power, recognition and acceptance. As roles of ascendency and captivity are ultimately reversed, the process reveals itself as constituted of the Hegelian stages of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Keywords: Julie, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Subjection, Hegel's Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis.

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