The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Goethe's Way of Knowing

[ 1 ] Johann Gottlieb Fichte sent the first sheets of his "Wissenschaftslehre" to Goethe in June 1794. The latter wrote to the philosopher on June 24: "As far as I am concerned, I will owe you the greatest thanks when you finally reconcile me with the philosophers whom I have never been able to do without and with whom I have never been able to unite." [WA 10, 167] What the poet sought here in Fichte, he had earlier sought in Spinoza; later he sought it in Schelling and Hegel: a philosophical view of the world that would suit his way of thinking. However, none of the philosophical directions he became acquainted with brought the poet complete satisfaction.

[ 2 ] This makes our task considerably more difficult. We want to approach Goethe from the philosophical side. If he himself had described a scientific point of view as his own, we could refer to it. But that is not the case. And so it falls to us to recognize the philosophical core that lay within the poet from all that we have of him and to sketch a picture of it. We consider the right way to solve this task to be a direction of ideas based on German idealist philosophy. This philosophy sought in its way to satisfy the same highest human needs to which Goethe and Schiller dedicated their lives. It emerged from the same zeitgeist. It is therefore also much closer to Goethe than the views that often dominate the sciences today. It will be possible to form a view from that philosophy, the consequence of which will be what Goethe shaped poetically, what he set out scientifically. From our present scientific directions probably never again. Today we are very far removed from the way of thinking that was in Goethe's nature.

[ 3 ] It is true that we have made progress in all areas of culture. But it can hardly be claimed that this is progress in depth. However, only progress in depth is decisive for the content of an age. The best way to describe our age, however, is to say that it rejects any progress into the depths as unattainable for man. We have become despondent in all areas, but especially in that of thinking and willing. As far as thinking is concerned, we observe endlessly, record our observations and do not have the courage to shape them into a scientific overall view of reality. German idealistic philosophy, however, is accused of being unscientific because it had this courage. Today, people only want to look sensually, not think. They have lost all trust in thinking. People do not consider it sufficient to penetrate the secrets of the world and of life; they renounce any solution to the great riddles of existence. The only thing that is considered possible is: to bring the statements of experience into a system. The only thing they forget is that with this view they are approaching a point of view that they consider to have long been overcome. The rejection of all thinking and the insistence on sensory experience is, when understood more deeply, nothing but the blind belief in revelation of the religions. The latter is only based on the fact that the church hands down ready-made truths in which one has to believe. Thought may struggle to penetrate their deeper meaning, but it is deprived of the power to test the truth itself, to penetrate the depths of the world on its own. And the science of experience: what does it demand of thinking? That it listens to what the facts say and interprets these statements, organizes them, etc. It also denies thinking the ability to penetrate the core of the world independently. There theology demands blind submission of thought to the sayings of the church, here science demands blind submission to the sayings of sensory observation. There as there, independent thinking that penetrates into the depths counts for nothing. The science of experience forgets only one thing. Thousands upon thousands have looked at a sensory fact and passed it by without noticing anything remarkable about it. Then came one who looked at it and realized an important law about it. Where did that come from? Only because the discoverer knew how to look differently than his predecessors. He looked at the fact with different eyes than his fellow human beings. When he looked, he had a certain thought about how to relate the fact to others, what was significant for them and what was not. And so he thought about the matter and saw more than the others. He saw with the eyes of the spirit. All scientific discoveries are based on the fact that the observer knows how to observe in a way that is regulated by the right thought. Thought must naturally guide observation. It cannot do this if the researcher has lost faith in thinking, if he does not know what to make of its implications. The science of experience wanders helplessly in the world of phenomena; the world of the senses becomes a confusing multiplicity for it because it does not have the energy in its thinking to penetrate into the center.

[ 4 ] Today we speak of the limits of knowledge because we do not know where the goal of thought lies. We have no clear view of what we want to achieve and doubt that we will achieve it. If someone were to come along today and point fingers at the solution to the world puzzle, we would have none of it because we wouldn't know what to make of the solution.

[ 5 ] And it is exactly the same with wanting and acting. You don't know how to set yourself specific tasks in life that you would be up to. One dreams oneself into vague, unclear ideals and then complains when one does not achieve what one hardly has a dark, much less a clear idea of. Ask one of the pessimists of our time what he actually wants and what he is desperate to achieve? He doesn't know. They are all problematic natures, unable to cope with any situation and yet none is enough. Don't misunderstand me. I do not want to eulogize shallow optimism, which, satisfied with the trivial pleasures of life, desires nothing higher and therefore never lacks anything. I do not want to break the baton over individuals who painfully feel the deep tragedy that lies in the fact that we are dependent on circumstances that have a paralyzing effect on all our actions and that we strive in vain to change. But let us not forget that pain is the impact of happiness. Think of the mother: how sweet is the joy of her children's prosperity when she has achieved it through sorrow, suffering and toil. Every better-thinking person would have to reject the happiness offered to him by any external power, because he cannot perceive as happiness what is given to him as an undeserved gift. If any creator had approached the creation of man with the thought that he would also give happiness to his image as an inheritance, he would have done better to leave him uncreated. It enhances the dignity of man that what he creates is always cruelly destroyed; for he must always form and create anew; and in doing lies our happiness, in what we ourselves accomplish. The gift of happiness is like the revealed truth. It is worthy of man alone that he himself should seek the truth, that neither experience nor revelation should guide him. Once this has been thoroughly recognized, the religions of revelation will have had their day. Man will then no longer want God to reveal himself to him or to bestow blessings. He will want to recognize through his own thinking, to justify his happiness through his own power. Whether some higher power directs our destiny for good or evil is none of our business; we have to mark out for ourselves the path we have to follow. The most sublime idea of God always remains that which assumes that God withdrew completely from the world after the creation of man and left the latter entirely to himself.

[ 6 ] Whoever acknowledges that thinking has a perceptive capacity that transcends the senses must necessarily also recognize objects that lie beyond mere sensory reality. The objects of thought, however, are ideas. When thinking takes possession of the idea, it merges with the primordial ground of world existence; that which works outside enters the spirit of man: he becomes one with objective reality at its highest potency. The realization of the idea in reality is the true communion of man.

[ 7 ] Thinking has the same significance in relation to ideas as the eye has to light, the ear to sound. It is the organ of perception.

[ 8 ] This view is able to unite two things that today are considered completely incompatible: empirical method and idealism as a scientific view of the world. It is believed that the recognition of the former entails the rejection of the latter. This is not at all correct. Admittedly, if one considers the senses to be the only organs of perception of an objective reality, one must arrive at this view. For the senses provide only those connections between things that can be traced back to mechanical laws. And thus the mechanical view of the world would be given as the only true form of such a view. In doing so, one makes the mistake of simply overlooking the other equally objective components of reality, which cannot be traced back to mechanical laws. The objective given does not coincide at all with the sensible given, as the mechanical view of the world believes. The latter is only half of the given. The other half of the given are the ideas, which are also the object of experience, albeit a higher one, whose organ is thinking. Ideas are also accessible to an inductive method.

[ 9 ] Today's empirical science follows the quite correct method: to hold fast to the given; but it adds the inadmissible assertion that this method can only deliver the sensuously factual. Instead of stopping at how we arrive at our views, it determines from the outset what they are. The only satisfactory view of reality is empirical method with idealistic research results. This is idealism, but not one that pursues a nebulous, dreamed unity of things, but one that seeks the concrete idea content of reality just as experientially as today's hyper-exact research seeks the factual content.

[ 10 ] By approaching Goethe with these views, we believe we are penetrating his essence. We adhere to idealism, but in developing it we do not base ourselves on Hegel's dialectical method, but on a purified, higher empiricism.

[ 11 ] This is also the basis of Eduard v. Hartmann's philosophy. Eduard v. Hartmann seeks in nature the unity of ideas that is positive for thinking full of content. He rejects the merely mechanical conception of nature and the hyper-Darwinism that clings to the external. In science, he is the founder of a concrete monism. In history and aesthetics, he seeks the concrete idea. All this according to an empirical-inductive method.

[ 12 ] Hartmann's philosophy differs from mine only in the question of pessimism and in the metaphysical intensification of the system according to the "unconscious". As far as the latter point is concerned, see below. With regard to pessimism, however, the following should be noted: What Hartmann cites as reasons for pessimism, i.e. for the view that nothing in the world can fully satisfy us, that unpleasure always outweighs pleasure, I would like to describe as the happiness of mankind. For me, what he presents is only evidence that it is in vain to strive for happiness. We must give up such aspirations altogether and seek our destiny purely in selflessly fulfilling the ideal tasks that our reason sets before us. What does this mean other than that we should seek our happiness only in creating, in restless activity?

[ 13 ] Only the active person, namely the selflessly active person who does not strive for a reward with his activity, fulfills his destiny. It is foolish to want to be rewarded for one's activity; there is no true reward. Hartmann should build on this. He should show what, under such conditions, can be the only driving force behind all our actions. If the prospect of a desired goal is eliminated, it can only be selfless devotion to the object to which one devotes one's activity, it can only be love. Only an action out of love can be a moral one. The idea must be our guiding star in science, love in action. And that brings us back to Goethe. "What matters to the active man is that he does the right thing; whether the right thing is done should not concern him." "Our whole art consists in the fact that we give up our existence in order to exist." ("Proverbs in Prose"; Natw. Schr., 4th vol., 2nd dept., pp. 464 and 441)

[ 14 ] I did not arrive at my view of the world solely through the study of Goethe or even Hegelianism. I started from the mechanical-naturalistic view of the world, but realized that intensive thinking could not stop there. Proceeding strictly according to the scientific method, I found the only satisfactory view of the world in objective idealism. My Theory of Knowledge ^{86Rudolf Steiner, Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schiller shows the way in which a self-understanding, non-contradictory thinking arrives at this view of the world. Berlin and Stuttgart 1886, 6th ed. Complete edition Dornach 1960.} I then found that this objective idealism permeates Goethe's view of the world. So, of course, the development of my views has been going on for years in parallel with the study of Goethe; and I have never found a principal contradiction between my basic views and Goethe's scientific activity. If I have at least partially succeeded: firstly, in developing my point of view in such a way that it also comes alive in others, and secondly, in bringing about the conviction that this point of view is really Goethe's, then I regard my task as fulfilled.