The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Starting Point

[ 1 ] If we trace any of the main currents of contemporary intellectual life backwards to their sources, we will probably always encounter one of the spirits of our classical epoch. Goethe or Schiller, Herder or Lessing have given an impulse; and from this or that intellectual movement has proceeded, which still continues today. Our whole German education is based so much on our classics that many a man who thinks himself completely original accomplishes nothing more than to express what Goethe or Schiller have long since indicated. We have lived ourselves into the world created by them in such a way that hardly anyone can count on our understanding who wants to move outside the path they have laid out. Our way of viewing the world and life is so determined by them that no one can arouse our participation who does not seek points of contact with this world.

[ 2 ] Only of one branch of our spiritual culture must we confess that it has not yet found such a point of contact. It is that branch of science which goes beyond the mere collection of observations, beyond the knowledge of individual experiences, in order to provide a satisfactory overall view of the world and life. It is what is usually called philosophy. Our classical age seems to be virtually non-existent for it. It seeks its salvation in an artificial seclusion and noble isolation from all other intellectual life. This proposition is not refuted by the fact that a considerable number of older and newer philosophers and naturalists have discussed Goethe and Schiller. For they did not gain their scientific standpoint by developing the germs of the scientific achievements of those intellectual heroes. They gained their scientific point of view outside the world view that Schiller and Goethe represented and subsequently compared it with it. Nor did they do this with the intention of gaining something for their own direction from the scientific views of the classics, but rather to test whether they could stand up to their own direction. We will come back to this in more detail. For now, we would just like to point out the consequences that arise from this attitude towards the highest stage of development of modern culture for the field of science under consideration.

[ 3 ] A large part of the educated reading public today will immediately reject a literary-scientific work without reading it if it claims to be philosophical. There has hardly been a time when philosophy has enjoyed less popularity than it does today. Leaving aside the writings of Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, which deal with problems of life and the world that are of the most general interest and have therefore been widely disseminated, it would not be going too far to say that philosophical works are only read by specialist philosophers today. No one except them cares. The educated person who is not a specialist has the vague feeling: "This literature ^{a1The mood that lies behind this judgment about the nature of philosophical writing and the interest shown in it has arisen from the state of mind of scientific endeavor around the middle of the eighties of the last century. Since then, phenomena have come to light that no longer seem to justify this judgment. One need only think of the dazzling illumination that wide areas of life have experienced through Nietzsche's thoughts and feelings. And in the battles that took place and continue to take place today between the materialistically thinking monists and the defenders of a spiritual world view, both the striving of philosophical thought for life-fulfilling content and a broad general interest in the mysteries of existence are alive. Paths of thought such as Einstein's, which arose from the physical world view, have almost become the subject of general conversations and literary omissions.
And yet the motifs from which this judgment was made back then are still valid today. If it were written down today, it would have to be formulated differently. Since it appears as an almost old one again today, it is probably more appropriate to say to what extent it is still valid. - Goethe's world view, the epistemology of which was to be outlined in this essay, is based on the experience of the whole human being. Compared to this experience, the thinking view of the world is only one side. From the fullness of human existence, thought-forms rise to the surface of the soul's life. A part of these thought-images comprises an answer to the question: What is human cognition? And this answer turns out in such a way that one sifts: human existence only becomes what it is predisposed to be when it is cognitively active. Soul life without cognition would be like the human organism without a head; that is, it would not be at all. In the inner life of the soul grows a content which, like the starving organism, demands nourishment, so it demands perception from outside; and in the outer world there is perceptual content which does not carry its essence within itself, but only shows it when it is united with the soul content through the process of cognition. Thus the process of cognition becomes a link in the formation of world-reality. The human being co-creates this world-reality by recognizing. And if a plant root is inconceivable without the completion of its plants in the fruit, then not only the human being, but the world is not complete without cognition. In cognizing, man does not create something for himself alone, but he creates together with the world in the revelation of real being. What is in man is ideal appearance; what is in the world to be perceived is sense appearance; the cognitive working together of the two is only reality.
Seen in this way, epistemology becomes a part of life. And this is how it must be regarded when it is connected to the life-widths of Goethean soul-experience. But Nietzsche's thinking and feeling are not linked to such life-spans either. Still less that which has otherwise emerged as a philosophically directed world- and life-view since the writing of what is called the "starting point" in this essay. All this presupposes that reality exists somewhere outside of cognition, and that a human, pictorial representation of this reality should arise in cognition, or that it cannot arise. The fact that this reality cannot be found through cognition, because it is first created as reality in cognition, is hardly felt anywhere. Those who think philosophically seek life and being apart from cognition; Goethe stands in creative life and being by being active in cognition. That is why the newer attempts at a world view also stand outside Goethe's creation of ideas. This theory of knowledge would like to stand within it, because philosophy thereby becomes the content of life and interest in it becomes vital.} contains nothing that would correspond to one of my spiritual needs; the things that are dealt with there are of no concern to me; they are in no way connected with what I need to satisfy my spirit." This lack of interest in all philosophy can only be due to the circumstance we have indicated, because this lack of interest is countered by an ever-growing need for a satisfying view of the world and life. What for so many was a full substitute for a long time: religious dogmas are losing more and more of their convincing power. The urge to achieve through the work of thinking what was once owed to revelatory faith is increasing: satisfaction of the spirit. There could therefore be no lack of participation by the educated if the field of science in question really went hand in hand with the whole development of culture, if its representatives were to take a stand on the great questions that move humanity.

[ 4 ] It must always be borne in mind that it can never be a question of first artificially creating a spiritual need, but only of seeking out the existing need and granting it satisfaction.^{a2Questions of cognition arise from the perception of the external world through the human soul organization. In the soul impulse of the question lies the power to approach the perception in such a way that this, together with the soul activity, brings the reality of what is seen to revelation.} The task of science is not to raise questions, but to carefully observe them when they are posed by human nature and the respective cultural stage, and to answer them. Our modern philosophers set themselves tasks which are by no means a natural outgrowth of the stage of education at which we stand, and the answers to which no one therefore asks. But science passes by those questions which our education must ask because of the position to which our classics have elevated it. So we have a science that no one is looking for and a scientific need that no one satisfies.

[ 5 ] Our central science, the science that is supposed to solve the real riddles of the world, must make no exceptions to all other branches of intellectual life. It must seek its sources where the latter have found them. It must not only deal with our classics; it must also look to them for the seeds of its development; it must be imbued with the same spirit as the rest of our culture. This is a necessity in the nature of things. It is also due to this necessity that the above-mentioned disputes between modern scholars and the classics have taken place. But they show nothing more than that one has a dark feeling of the inadmissibility of simply passing over the convictions of those spirits to the order of the day. They also show, however, that no real further development of their views has been achieved. The way in which Lessing, Herder, Goethe and Schiller were approached speaks for this. For all the excellence of many of the writings belonging here, it must be said of almost everything that has been written about Goethe's and Schiller's scientific work that it has not developed organically from their views, but has been placed in a subsequent relationship to them. No fact can substantiate this more than the fact that the most opposing scientific schools saw in Goethe the spirit that "foreshadowed" their views. World views that have nothing at all in common with each other point to Goethe with seemingly equal justification when they feel the need to see their point of view recognized on the heights of humanity. No sharper contrasts can be imagined than the teachings of Hegel and Schopenhauer. The latter calls Hegel a charlatan, his philosophy shallow verbiage, barbaric nonsense, barbaric combinations of words. The two men have nothing in common except an unbounded admiration for Goethe and the belief that the latter subscribed to their world view.

[ 6 ] It is no different with more recent scientific trends. Haeckel, who developed Darwinism with iron consistency and in an ingenious manner, and whom we must regard as by far the most important follower of the English scientist, sees Goethe's view as prefiguring his own. Another contemporary naturalist, C. F. W. Jessen, writes of Darwin's theory: "The sensation which this theory, often put forward in the past and just as often refuted by thorough research, but now supported by many bogus reasons, has caused among some specialist researchers and many laymen, shows how little the results of natural research are unfortunately still recognized and understood by the people." ^{3C. F. W. Jessen, Botanik der Gegenwart und Vorzeit in Kulturhistorischer Entwicklung, Leipzig 1864, page 459.} The same researcher says of Goethe that he "rose to comprehensive research in both inanimate and animate nature" ^{4ibid, page 343} by finding "the basic law of all plant formation" ^{5ibid, page 332} in a sensible, deeply penetrating observation of nature. Each of the aforementioned researchers knows how to provide an almost overwhelming number of proofs for the agreement of his scientific direction with Goethe's "sensible observations". It would have to cast a dubious light on the unity of Goethe's thought if each of these points of view could justifiably refer to the same thing. The reason for this phenomenon, however, lies precisely in the fact that none of these views has really grown out of Goethe's world view, but that each has its roots outside it. It lies in the fact that one seeks external agreement with details which, torn out of Goethe's thinking as a whole, lose their meaning, but that one does not want to concede to this whole itself the internal solidity to establish a scientific direction. Goethe's views were never the starting point of scientific investigations, but always only the object of comparison. Those who studied him were rarely students who devoted themselves to his ideas with an unbiased mind, but mostly critics who sat in judgment of him.

[ 7] It is said that Goethe had far too little scientific sense; he was all the worse a philosopher than he was a better poet. It would therefore be impossible to base a scientific point of view on him. That is a complete misjudgment of Goethe's nature. Goethe was certainly not a philosopher in the ordinary sense of the word; but it must not be forgotten that the wonderful harmony of his personality led Schiller to say: "The poet is the only true man." That which Schiller here understands by the "true man" was Goethe. There was no element missing in his personality that belonged to the highest expression of the universal human. But all these elements united in him to form a totality that is effective as such. So it happens that his views on nature are based on a deep philosophical meaning, even if this philosophical meaning does not come to his consciousness in the form of specific scientific propositions. Anyone who immerses himself in that totality will, if he has philosophical dispositions, be able to detach that philosophical sense and present it as a Goethean science. But he must start from Goethe and not approach him with a ready-made view. Goethe's intellectual powers are always active in a way that corresponds to the strictest philosophy, even if he did not leave behind a systematic whole of it.

[ 8 ] Goethe's view of the world is the most versatile imaginable. It proceeds from a center which is situated in the unified nature of the poet, and always brings out that side which corresponds to the nature of the object under consideration. The uniformity of the activity of the spiritual forces lies in Goethe's nature; the respective kind of this activity is determined by the object in question. Goethe borrows the way of looking at the outside world and does not impose it on it. However, the thinking of many people is only effective in one particular way; it is only useful for one kind of object; it is not uniform like Goethe's, but uniform. Let us be more precise: there are people whose minds are primarily suited to thinking purely mechanical dependencies and effects; they imagine the whole universe as a mechanism. Others have an urge to perceive the mysterious, mystical element of the outer world everywhere; they become followers of mysticism. All error arises from the fact that such a way of thinking, which is fully valid for one kind of object, is declared to be universal. This explains the conflict between the many world views. If such a one-sided view now confronts Goethe's, which is unrestricted because it takes the way of looking at things not at all from the mind of the observer but from the nature of what is observed, it is understandable that it clings to those elements of thought in it which are in accordance with it. Goethe's view of the world includes many schools of thought in the sense indicated, while it can never be penetrated by any one-sided view.

[ 9 ] The philosophical sense, which is an essential element in the organism of Goethe's genius, also has significance for his poetry. Even if Goethe was far removed from presenting what this sense conveyed to him in a conceptually clear form, as Schiller was able to do, it is nevertheless, as with Schiller, a factor that contributes to his artistic creation. Goethe's and Schiller's poetic productions are inconceivable without their underlying world view. In Schiller's case it depends more on his truly developed principles, in Goethe's on the kind of his view. But the fact that the greatest poets of our nation at the height of their creativity could not do without this philosophical element is more than anything else a guarantee that it is a necessary element in the history of human development. It is precisely the reference to Goethe and Schiller that will make it possible to wrest our central science from its cathederal isolation and incorporate it into the rest of cultural development. The scientific convictions of our classicists are linked by a thousand threads to their other endeavors, they are those that are demanded by the cultural epoch that created them.