Goethe's economy of nature and the nature of his economy

This paper traces the interplay of economic, administrative and management theories with theories of nature in eighteenth-century Germany, by offering a social history of the period. The author uses the statesman, poet, dramatist, novelist and natural researcher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to illustrate an administrative discourse in the Naturanschauungen of this period as well as demonstrate how eighteenth-century theories of economy were rooted in the laws of nature by the economists and politicians in order to legitimate the rule of their enlightened despots.