Goethe's Sorrows Term Paper

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Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as translated by Michael Hulse asks: "What did Goethe see as proper and improper moral precepts? How does one determine the difference between right and wrong?"

The titular hero of Goethe's book, Young Werther, dies a suicide. According to traditional Christian moral precepts he thus has committed an immoral act. However, although Goethe acknowledges the horror of suicide from the perspective of the dead man's friends and associates, the author also stresses the importance of living a fulfilling emotional and artistic life upon the principles of love. Such a life must be filled with an appreciation and apprehension of the sublime to be truly lived.

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Thus, much as young Werther feels for his beloved, whom he cannot marry the girl, and so he kills himself. Goethe makes the radical suggestion through not only the melodramatic plot of his work named after his hero, but also of the reasons the hero gives for killing himself, that the individual's own heart, rather than preexisting collective moral structures, institutions, and judgments must guide morality, The individual's proper and internal sense of right and wrong holds sway and create precepts for today, rather than obey the moral precepts of yesteryear.

The individual determines the difference between right and wrong based not upon logic, nor preexisting norms….....

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