Goethe's Sorrows

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. 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 of logical thought and syllogisms, nor even the logic of the individual intellect. Rather, the individual in a right moral order must determine the difference between right and wrong based upon his or her own normative judgments grounded in his or her emotional experiences.

Werther decides because he cannot reconcile his love, or his expressions as an artist with the material world, on an emotional or an intellectual level, he has the right to commit suicide. Although the book expresses remorse and pity for Werther in the voice of Werther's friend, the book does not condemn the titular figure for his actions. Rather, it condemns the structure of a world that conspires to create such an environment that drives a man possessing the artistic and emotional integrity of Werther to do away with.