Goethean Science
GA 1
8. From Art to Science
[ 1 ] Someone who sets himself the task of presenting the spiritual development of a thinker has to explain that thinker's particular direction in a psychological way from the facts given in his biography. But in presenting Goethe the thinker the task does not end there. What is asked for here is not only a justification and explanation of his specific scientific direction, but rather, and primarily how this genius came at all to be active in the scientific realm. Goethe had to suffer much through the incorrect views of his contemporaries who could not believe it possible that poetic creativity and scientific study could be united in one soul. The important point here is above all to answer the question What are the motives that drive the great poet to science? Did the transition from art to science lie purely in his subjective inclinations, in personal arbitrariness? Or was Goethe's artistic direction of such a kind that it had to drive him necessarily to science?
[ 2 ] If the first were the case, then his simultaneous devotion to art and science would merely signify a chance personal enthusiasm for both these directions of human striving; we would have to do with a poet who also happened to be a thinker, and it might very well have been the case that, if his course in life had been somewhat different, he would have taken the same path in his poetry, without concerning himself with science at all. Both sides of this man would then have interested us separately, each in its own right; each on its own would perhaps have helped the progress of mankind a good deal. All this would still be the case if the two directions in spirit had also been divided between two personalities. Goethe the poet would then have had nothing to do with Goethe the thinker.
[ 3 ] If the second were the case, then Goethe's artistic direction was of such a kind that, from within outward, it necessarily felt the urge to be supplemented by scientific thinking. Then it is utterly inconceivable that the two directions could have been divided between two personalities. Then each of the two directions interests us not only for its own sake but also because of its relationship to the other. Then there is an objective transition from art to science; there is a point at which the two meet in such a way that perfection in the one realm demands perfection in the other. Then Goethe was not following a personal inclination, but rather the direction in art to which he devoted himself awakened needs in him that could be satisfied only by scientific activity.
[ 4 ] Our age believes itself correct in keeping art and science as far apart as possible. They are supposed to be two completely opposing poles in the cultural evolution of mankind. Science, one thinks, is supposed to sketch for us the most objective picture of the world possible; it is supposed to show us reality in a mirror; or, in other words, it is supposed to hold fast purely to the given, renouncing all subjective arbitrariness. The objective world determines the laws of science; science must subject itself to this world. Science should take the yardstick for what is true and false entirely from the objects of experience.
[ 5 ] The situation is supposedly quite different in the case of artistic creations. Their law is given them by the self-creative power of the human spirit. For science, any interference of human subjectivity would be a falsifying of reality, a going beyond experience; art, on the other hand, grows upon the field of the subjectivity of a genius. Its creations are the productions of human imagination, not mirror images of the outer world. Outside of us, in objective existence, lies the source of scientific laws; within us, in our individuality, lies the source of aesthetic laws. The latter, therefore, have not the slightest value for knowledge; they create illusions without the slightest element of reality.
[ 6 ] Whoever grasps the matter in this way will never become clear about the relationship of Goethean poetry to Goethean science. He will only misunderstand both. Goethe's world historic significance lies, indeed, precisely in the fact that his art flows directly from the primal source of all existence, that there is nothing illusory or subjective about it, that, on the contrary, his art appears as the herald of that lawfulness that the poet has grasped by listening to the world spirit within the depths of nature's working. At this level, art becomes the interpreter of the mysteries of the world just as science is also, in a different sense.
[ 7 ] And Goethe always conceived of art in this way. It was for him one of the revelations of the primal law of the world; science was for him the other one. For him art and science sprang from one source. Whereas the researcher delves down into the depths of reality in order then to express their driving powers in the form of thoughts, the artist seeks to imbue his medium with these same driving powers. “I think that one could call science the knowledge of the general, abstracted knowing; art, on the other hand, would be science turned into action; science would be reason, and art its mechanism; therefore one could also call art practical science. And finally then science could be called the theorem and art the problem.” What science states as idea (theorem) is what art has to imprint into matter, becomes art's problem. “In the works of man, as in those of nature, it is the intentions that are primarily worthy of note,” says Goethe. He everywhere seeks not only what is given to the senses in the outer world, but also the tendency through which it has come into being. [ 8 ] To grasp this scientifically and to give it artistic form is his mission. In its own formations, nature gets itself, “in its specific forms, into a cul-de-sac”; one must go back to what ought to have come about if the tendency could have unfolded unhindered, just as the mathematician always keeps his eye, not upon this or that particular triangle, but always upon that lawfulness which underlies every possible triangle. The point is not what nature has created but rather the principle by which nature has created it. Then this principle is to be developed in the way that accords with its own nature, and not in the way this has occurred in each particular entity of nature in accordance with thousands of chance factors. The artist has “to evolve the noble out of the common and the beautiful out of the unformed.”
[ 9 ] Goethe and Schiller take art in all its full profundity. The beautiful is “a manifestation of secret laws of nature, that, except for the phenomenon of the beautiful, would have remained forever hidden to us.” A look into the poet's Italian Journey suffices for us to know that this is not an empty phrase, but rather deep inner conviction. When he says the following, one can see that for him nature and art are of the same origin: “The great works of art have at the same time been brought forth by human beings according to true and natural laws. just as the greatest works of nature are. Everything that is arbitrary, thought-up, falls away; there is necessity, there is God.” Relative to the art of the Greeks, he says in this direction: “I have the impression that they proceeded according to the same laws by which nature itself proceeds and whose tracks I am following.” And about Shakespeare: “Shakespeare allies himself with the world spirit; he penetrates the world like it does; nothing is hidden to either; however, if it is the world spirit's business to preserve mysteries before, and often after, the fact, so the poet is of a mind to give the secret away.”
[ 10 ] Here we should also recall the statement about the “joyful epoch in life” that the poet owed to Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment 47Kritik der Urteilskraft and for which he actually has only the fact to thank that he here “saw creations of art and of nature each treated like the other, and that aesthetic and teleological powers of judgment illuminated each other reciprocally.” “I was happy,” says the poet, “that the art of poetry and comparative natural science are so closely related, through the fact that both of them are subject to the same power of judgment.” In his essay, The Significant Benefit of a Single Intelligent Word 48Bedeutende Fördentis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort Goethe juxtaposes, with exactly the same thought in mind, his objective poetizing and his objective thinking.
[ 11 ] Thus, to Goethe, art seems to be just as objective as science. Only the form of each is different. Each appears to flow forth from one being, to be the necessary stages of one evolution. Any view was antithetical to him that relegates art or what is beautiful to an isolated position outside of the total picture of human evolution. Thus he says: “In the aesthetic realm, it is not good to speak of the idea of the beautiful; in doing so, one isolates the beautiful. which after all cannot be thought of as separate.” Or: “Style rests upon the deepest foundations of knowledge, upon the being of things, insofar as we are allowed to know this being in visible and tangible forms.” Art rests therefore upon our activity of knowing. The latter has the task of recreating in thought the order according to which the world is put together; art has the task of developing in detail the idea of this order that the world-all has. The artist incorporates into his work everything about the lawfulness of the world that is attainable to him. His work thus appears as a world in miniature. Herein lies the reason why the Goethean direction in art must supplement itself with science. As art, it is already an activity of knowing. Goethe, in fact, wanted neither science nor art: he wanted the idea. And he expresses or represents the idea in the direction from which the idea happens to present itself to him. Goethe sought to ally himself with the world spirit, and to reveal to us how it holds sway; he did this through the medium of art or of science as required. What lay in Goethe was not any one-sided artistic or scientific striving, but rather the indefatigable urge to behold “all working forces and seeds.”
[ 12 ] In this, Goethe is still not a philosophical poet, for his literary works do not take any roundabout path through thought in arriving at a sense-perceptible form; rather they stream directly from the source of all becoming, just as his scientific research is not imbued with poetic imagination, but rather rests directly upon his becoming aware of ideas. Without Goethe's being a philosophical poet, his basic direction seems, for the philosophical observer, to be a philosophical one.
[ 13 ] With this, the question as to whether Goethe's scientific work has any philosophical value or not takes on an entirely new form. It is a question of inferring, from what we have of Goethe's work, the underlying principles. What must we postulate in order for Goethe's scientific assertions to appear as the results of these postulates? We must express what Goethe left unexpressed, but which alone makes his views comprehensible.
8. Von der Kunst zur Wissenschaft
[ 1 ] Wer sich die Aufgabe stellt, die Geistesentwicklung eines Denkers darzustellen, hat uns die besondere Richtung desselben auf psychologischem Wege aus den in seiner Biographie gegebenen Tatsachen zu erklären. Bei einer Darstellung von Goethe, dem Denker, ist die Aufgabe damit noch nicht erschöpft. Hier wird nicht nur nach einer Rechtfertigung und Erklärung seiner speziellen wissenschaftlichen Richtung, sondern und vorzüglich auch darnach gefragt, wie dieser Genius überhaupt dazu kam, auf wissenschaftlichem Gebiete tätig zu sein. Goethe hatte durch die falsche Ansicht seiner Zeitgenossen viel zu leiden, die sich nicht denken konnten, daß dichterisches Schaffen und wissenschaftliche Forschung sich in einem Geiste vereinigen lasse. Es handelt sich hier vor allem um Beantwortung der Frage: Welches sind die Motive, die den großen Dichter zur Wissenschaft getrieben? Liegt der Übergang von Kunst zur Wissenschaft rein in seiner subjektiven Neigung, in persönlicher Willkür? Oder war Goethes künstlerische Richtung eine solche, daß sie ihn mit Notwendigkeit zur Wissenschaft treiben mußte?
[ 2 ] Wäre das erstere der Fall, dann hätte die gleichzeitige Hingabe an Kunst und Wissenschaft bloß die Bedeutung einer zufälligen persönlichen Begeisterung für beide Richtungen des menschlichen Strebens; wir hätten es mit einem Dichter zu tun, der zufällig auch ein Denker ist, und es hätte wohl sein können, daß bei einem etwas andern Lebensgange Goethe dieselben Wege in der Dichtung eingeschlagen, ohne daß er sich um die Wissenschaft auch nur bekümmert hätte. Beide Seiten dieses Mannes interessierten uns dann abgesondert als solche, beide hätten vielleicht für sich ein gut Teil den Fortschritt der Menschheit gefördert. Alles das wäre aber auch der Fall, wenn die beiden Geistesrichtungen auf zwei Persönlichkeiten verteilt gewesen wären. Der Dichter Goethe hätte mit dem Denker Goethe nichts zu tun.
[ 3 ] Ist aber das zweite der Fall, dann war Goethes künstlerische Richtung eine solche, daß sie von innen heraus notwendig dazu drängte, durch wissenschaftliches Denken ergänzt zu werden. Dann ist es schlechterdings undenkbar, daß die beiden Richtungen auf zwei Persönlichkeiten verteilt gewesen wären. Dann interessiert uns jede der beiden Richtungen nicht nur um ihrer selbst willen, sondern auch wegen ihrer Beziehung auf die andere. Dann gibt es einen objektiven Übergang von Kunst zur Wissenschaft, einen Punkt, wo sich die beiden so berühren, daß Vollendung in dem einen Gebiete Vollendung in dem andern fordert. Goethe folgte dann nicht einer persönlichen Neigung, sondern die Kunstrichtung, der er sich ergab, weckte in ihm Bedürfnisse, denen nur in wissenschaftlicher Betätigung Befriedigung werden konnte.
[ 4 ] Unsere Zeit glaubt das Richtige zu treffen, wenn sie Kunst und Wissenschaft möglichst weit auseinanderhält. Sie sollen zwei vollkommen entgegengesetzte Pole in der Kulturentwicklung der Menschheit sein. Die Wissenschaft soll uns - so denkt man - ein möglichst objektives Weltbild entwerfen, sie soll uns die Wirklichkeit im Spiegel zeigen oder mit andern Worten: sie soll mit Entäußerung aller subjektiven Willkür sich rein an das Gegebene halten. Für ihre Gesetze ist die objektive Welt maßgebend, ihr hat sie sich zu unterwerfen. Sie soll den Maßstab des Wahren und Falschen ganz und gar aus den Objekten der Erfahrung nehmen.
[ 5 ] Ganz anders soll es bei den Schöpfungen der Kunst sein. Ihnen wird von der selbstschöpferischen Kraft des menschlichen Geistes das Gesetz gegeben. Für die Wissenschaft wäre jedes Einmischen der menschlichen Subjektivität Verfälschung der Wirklichkeit, Überschreitung der Erfahrung; die Kunst dagegen wächst auf dem Felde genialischer Subjektivität. Ihre Schöpfungen sind Gebilde menschlicher Einbildungskraft, nicht Spiegelbilder der Außenwelt. Außer uns, im objektiven Sein liegt der Ursprung wissenschaftlicher Gesetze; in uns, in unserer Individualität der der ästhetischen. Daher haben die letzteren nicht den geringsten Erkenntniswert, sie erzeugen Illusionen ohne den geringsten Wirklichkeitsfaktor.
[ 6 ] Wer die Sache so faßt, wird nie Klarheit darüber gewinnen, welches Verhältnis Goethesche Dichtung zu Goethescher Wissenschaft hat. Dadurch wird aber beides mißverstanden. Die welthistorische Bedeutung Goethes liegt ja gerade darinnen, daß seine Kunst unmittelbar aus dem Urquell des Seins fließt, daß sie nichts Illusorisches, nichts Subjektives an sich trägt, sondern als die Künderin jener Gesetzlichkeit erscheint, die der Dichter in den Tiefen des Naturwirkens dem Weltgeiste abgelauscht hat. Auf dieser Stufe wird die Kunst die Interpretin der Weltgeheimnisse, wie es die Wissenschaft in anderem Sinne ist.
[ 7 ] So hat Goethe auch stets die Kunst aufgefaßt. Sie war ihm die eine Offenbarung des Urgesetzes der Welt, die Wissenschaft war ihm die andere. Für ihn entsprangen Kunst und Wissenschaft aus einer Quelle. Während der Forscher untertaucht in die Tiefen der Wirklichkeit, um die treibenden Kräfte derselben in Form von Gedanken auszusprechen, sucht der Künstler dieselben treibenden Gewalten seinem Stoffe einzubilden. «Ich denke, Wissenschaft könnte man die Kenntnis des Allgemeinen nennen, das abgezogene Wissen; Kunst dagegen wäre Wissenschaft zur Tat verwendet; Wissenschaft wäre Vernunft, und Kunst ihr Mechanismus, deshalb man sie auch praktische Wissenschaft nennen könnte. Und so wäre denn endlich Wissenschaft das Theorem, Kunst das Problem.» 87«Sprüche in Prosa»; Natw. Schr., 4. Bd., 2. Abt., S. 535. Was die Wissenschaft als Idee (Theorem) ausspricht, das soll die Kunst dem Stoffe einprägen, das soll ihr Problem werden. «In den Werken des Menschen wie in denen der Natur sind die Absichten vorzüglich der Aufmerksamkeit wert», sagt Goethe. 88Ebenda S. 378. Überall sucht er nicht nur das, was den Sinnen in der Außenwelt gegeben ist, sondern die Tendenz, durch die es geworden.
[ 8 ] Diese wissenschaftlich aufzufassen, künstlerisch zu gestalten, das ist seine Sendung. Bei ihren eigenen Bildungen gerät die Natur «auf Spezifikationen wie in eine Sackgasse»; man muß auf das zurückgehen, was hätte werden sollen, wenn die Tendenz sich hätte ungehindert entfalten können, so wie der Mathematiker nie dieses oder jenes Dreieck, sondern immer jene Gesetzmäßigkeit im Auge hat, die jedem möglichen Dreiecke zugrunde liegt. Nicht was die Natur geschaffen, sondern nach welchem Prinzipe sie es geschaffen, darauf kommt es an. Dann ist dieses Prinzip so auszugestalten, wie es seiner eigenen Natur gemäß ist, nicht wie es in dem von tausend Zufälligkeiten abhängigen einzelnen Gebilde der Natur geschehen ist. Der Künstler hat «aus dem Gemeinen das Edle, aus der Unform das Schöne zu entwickeln».
[ 9 ] Goethe und Schiller nehmen die Kunst in ihrer vollen Tiefe. Das Schöne ist «eine Manifestation geheimer Naturgesetze, die uns ohne dessen Erscheinung ewig wären verborgen geblieben». Ein Blick in des Dichters «Italienische Reise» genügt, um zu erkennen, daß das nicht etwa eine Phrase, sondern tiefinnerliche Überzeugung ist. Wenn er sagt: «Die hohen Kunstwerke sind zugleich als die höchsten Naturwerke von Menschen nach wahren und natürlichen Gesetzen hervorgebracht worden. Alles Willkürliche, Eingebildete fällt zusammen; da ist Notwendigkeit, da ist Gott», so geht daraus hervor, daß ihm Natur und Kunst gleichen Ursprunges sind. Bezüglich der Kunst der Griechen sagt er in dieser Richtung folgendes: «Ich habe die Vermutung, daß sie nach den Gesetzen verfuhren, nach welchen die Natur selbst verfährt und denen ich auf der Spur bin.» Und von Shakespeare: «Shakespeare gesellt sich zum Weltgeist; er durchdringt die Welt wie jener, beiden ist nichts verborgen; aber wenn des Weltgeistes Geschäft ist, Geheimnisse vor, ja oft nach der Tat zu bewahren, so ist der Sinn des Dichters, das Geheimnis zu verschwätzen.»
[ 10 ] Hier ist auch an den Ausspruch von der «frohen Lebensepoche» zu erinnern, die der Dichter Kants «Kritik der Urteilskraft» schuldig geworden ist, und die er ja doch eigentlich nur dem Umstande dankte, daß er hier «Kunst- und Naturerzeugnisse eins behandelt sah wie das andere, daß sich ästhetische und teleologische Urteilskraft wechselweise erleuchteten.» «Mich freute», sagt der Dichter, «daß Dichtkunst und vergleichende Naturkunde so nah miteinander verwandt seien, indem beide sich derselben Urteilskraft unterwerfen.» In dem Aufsatz: «Bedeutende Fördernis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort» [Natw. Schr., 2. Bd., S. 31ff.] stellt Goethe ganz in derselben Absicht seinem gegenständlichen Denken sein gegenständliches Dichten gegenüber.
[ 11 ] So erscheint Goethe die Kunst ebenso objektiv wie die Wissenschaft. Nur die Form beider ist verschieden. Beide erscheinen als der Ausfluß eines Wesens, als notwendige Stufen einer Entwicklung. Jede Ansicht, die der Kunst oder dem Schönen eine isolierte Stellung außerhalb des Gesamtbildes menschlicher Entwicklung anweist, widerstrebt ihm. So sagt er: «Im Ästhetischen tut man nicht wohl, zu sagen: die Idee des Schönen; dadurch vereinzelt man das Schöne, das doch einzeln nicht gedacht werden kann» 89«Sprüche in Prosa», Natw. Schr., 4. Bd., 2. Abt., S. 379. oder: «Der Stil ruht auf den tiefsten Grundfesten der Erkenntnis, auf dem Wesen der Dinge, insofern uns erlaubt ist, es in sichtbaren und greiflichen Gestalten zu erkennen.» 90Einfache Nachahmung der Natur, Manicr, Stil, in: Schriften zur Kunst 1788-1800. Die Kunst beruht also auf dem Erkennen. Das letztere hat die Aufgabe, die Ordnung, nach der die Welt gefügt ist, im Gedanken nachzuschaffen; die Kunst die, im einzelnen die Idee dieser Ordnung des Weltganzen auszubilden. Alles, was dem Künstler an Weltgesetzlichkeit erreichbar ist, das legt er in sein Werk. Dies erscheint somit als eine Welt im kleinen. Hierin liegt der Grund dafür, warum sich die Goethesche Kunstrichtung durch Wissenschaft ergänzen muß. Sie ist schon als Kunst ein Erkennen. Goethe wollte eben weder Wissenschaft noch Kunst; er wollte die Idee. Und diese spricht er aus oder stellt er dar, nach der Seite, nach der sie sich ihm gerade darbietet. Goethe suchte sich mit dem Weltgeiste zu verbünden und uns dessen Walten zu offenbaren; er tat es durch das Medium der Kunst oder der Wissenschaft, je nach Erfordernis. Nicht einseitiges Kunst- oder wissenschaftliches Streben lag in Goethe, sondern der rastlose Drang, «alle Wirkenskraft und Samen» zu schauen.
[ 12 ] Dabei ist Goethe doch kein philosophischer Dichter, denn seine Dichtungen nehmen nicht den Umweg durch den Gedanken zur sinnenfälligen Gestaltung; sondern sie strömen unmittelbar aus der Quelle alles Werdens, wie seine Forschungen nicht mit dichterischer Phantasie durchtränkt sind, sondern unmittelbar auf dem Gewahrwerden der Ideen beruhen. Ohne daß Goethe ein philosophischer Dichter ist, erscheint seine Grundrichtung für den philosophischen Betrachter als eine philosophische.
[ 13 ] Damit nimmt die Frage, ob Goethes wissenschaftliche Arbeiten philosophischen Wert haben oder nicht, eine durchaus neue Gestalt an. Es handelt sich darum, von dem, was vorliegt, zurück auf die Prinzipien zu schließen. Was müssen wir voraussetzen, daß uns Goethes wissenschaftliche Aufstellungen als Folge dieser Voraussetzungen erscheinen? Wir müssen aussprechen, was Goethe unausgesprochen gelassen hat, was aber allein seine Anschauungen verständlich macht.
8. From art to science
[ 1 ] Whoever sets himself the task of depicting the intellectual development of a thinker has to explain his particular direction psychologically from the facts given in his biography. In a portrayal of Goethe, the thinker, the task is not yet exhausted. Here we are not only looking for a justification and explanation of his particular scientific direction, but also, and above all, how this genius ever came to be active in the scientific field. Goethe suffered a great deal from the mistaken opinion of his contemporaries, who could not imagine that poetic creativity and scientific research could be united in one spirit. The main question to be answered here is: What are the motives that drove the great poet to science? Does the transition from art to science lie purely in his subjective inclination, in personal arbitrariness? Or was Goethe's artistic direction such that it had necessarily to drive him towards science?
[ 2 ] If the former were the case, then the simultaneous devotion to art and science would merely have the meaning of an accidental personal enthusiasm for both directions of human endeavor; we would be dealing with a poet who also happened to be a thinker, and it could well have been that in a somewhat different course of life Goethe would have taken the same paths in poetry without even caring about science. Both sides of this man would then have interested us separately as such, and both might well have contributed to the progress of mankind. But all this would also have been the case if the two schools of thought had been divided between two personalities. The poet Goethe would have had nothing to do with the thinker Goethe.
[ 3 ] If, however, the second is the case, then Goethe's artistic direction was such that it necessarily urged from within to be supplemented by scientific thought. Then it is absolutely inconceivable that the two directions could have been divided between two personalities. Then each of the two directions interests us not only for its own sake, but also because of its relationship to the other. Then there is an objective transition from art to science, a point where the two touch each other in such a way that perfection in one area demands perfection in the other. Goethe was not following a personal inclination, but the artistic direction to which he devoted himself awakened needs in him that could only be satisfied through scientific activity.
[ 4 ] Our age believes it is doing the right thing when it keeps art and science as far apart as possible. They are supposed to be two completely opposite poles in the cultural development of mankind. Science, it is thought, should present us with as objective a view of the world as possible, it should show us reality in a mirror, or in other words: it should adhere purely to the given, divesting itself of all subjective arbitrariness. The objective world is decisive for its laws and it must submit to it. It should take the standard of truth and falsity entirely from the objects of experience.
[ 5 ] The creations of art should be completely different. They are governed by the self-creative power of the human spirit. For science, any interference of human subjectivity would be a falsification of reality, a transgression of experience; art, on the other hand, grows in the field of ingenious subjectivity. Its creations are the product of human imagination, not reflections of the outside world. The origin of scientific laws lies outside us, in objective existence; that of aesthetic laws lies within us, in our individuality. Therefore, the latter have not the slightest cognitive value, they create illusions without the slightest reality factor.
[ 6 ] Those who understand the matter in this way will never gain clarity about the relationship between Goethean poetry and Goethean science. But this misunderstands both. The world-historical significance of Goethe lies precisely in the fact that his art flows directly from the original source of being, that it has nothing illusory, nothing subjective about it, but appears as the herald of that lawfulness which the poet has elicited from the world spirit in the depths of the workings of nature. At this stage, art becomes the interpreter of the secrets of the world, as science is in another sense.
[ 7 ] This is also how Goethe always understood art. It was for him one revelation of the primal law of the world, science was for him the other. For him, art and science sprang from one source. While the researcher immerses himself in the depths of reality in order to express its driving forces in the form of thoughts, the artist seeks to imbue his material with the same driving forces. "I think science could be called knowledge of the general, knowledge extracted; art, on the other hand, would be science applied to action; science would be reason, and art its mechanism, which is why it could also be called practical science. And so, finally, science would be the theorem, art the problem." 87"Proverbs in Prose"; Natw. Schr., 4th vol., 2nd ab., p. 535. What science expresses as an idea (theorem), art should imprint on the material, that should become its problem. "In the works of man as in those of nature, the intentions are especially worthy of attention," says Goethe. 88Ebenda p. 378. Everywhere he seeks not only that which is given to the senses in the external world, but the tendency through which it has become.
[ 8 ] To grasp this scientifically, to shape it artistically, that is his mission. In its own formations, nature "comes to specifications as if into a dead end"; one must go back to what should have become if the tendency could have unfolded unhindered, just as the mathematician never has this or that triangle in mind, but always that lawfulness which underlies every possible triangle. It is not what nature created, but according to which principle it created it, that matters. Then this principle is to be shaped as it is according to its own nature, not as it has happened in the individual structure of nature, which depends on a thousand coincidences. The artist must "develop the noble from the common, the beautiful from the unformed".
[ 9 ] Goethe and Schiller take art in its full depth. Beauty is "a manifestation of secret natural laws that would have remained hidden from us forever without its appearance". A glance at the poet's "Italian Journey" is enough to realize that this is not just a phrase, but a deep conviction. When he says: "The high works of art, like the highest works of nature, were created by men according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and imaginary coincides; there is necessity, there is God", so it follows that nature and art are of the same origin for him. With regard to the art of the Greeks, he says the following in this direction: "I have the assumption that they proceeded according to the laws according to which nature itself proceeds and which I am on the trail of." And of Shakespeare: "Shakespeare joins the spirit of the world; he pervades the world like the latter, nothing is hidden from either; but if the business of the spirit of the world is to keep secrets before, and often after the act, the business of the poet is to conceal the secret."
[ 10 ] Here we should also recall the expression about the "joyful epoch of life", which the poet owed to Kant's "Critique of Judgment", and which he actually only owed to the fact that he saw "products of art and nature treated one like the other, that aesthetic and teleological powers of judgment alternately illuminated each other." "I was pleased," says the poet, "that poetry and comparative natural history are so closely related, in that both are subject to the same power of judgment." In the essay: "Bedeutende Fördernis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort" [Natw. Schr., 2nd vol., p. 31ff.], Goethe contrasts his representational thinking with his representational poetry with the same intention.
[ 11 ] So art appears to Goethe to be just as objective as science. Only the form of the two is different. Both appear as the outflow of one being, as necessary stages of a development. Any view that assigns art or beauty an isolated position outside the overall picture of human development is repugnant to him. Thus he says: "In aesthetics it is not good to say: the idea of beauty; thereby one isolates the beautiful, which cannot be thought of individually" 89"Proverbs in Prose", Natw. Schr., 4th vol., 2nd Abt, p. 379. or: "Style rests on the deepest foundations of knowledge, on the essence of things, in so far as we are permitted to recognize it in visible and tangible forms. " 90Simple Imitation of Nature, Manicr, Style, in: Writings on Art 1788-1800. Art is thus based on recognition. The latter has the task of recreating in thought the order according to which the world is structured; art has the task of forming in detail the idea of this order of the world as a whole. Everything that the artist can achieve in terms of the laws of the world, he puts into his work. This thus appears as a world in miniature. Herein lies the reason why Goethe's art must be complemented by science. As art, it is already cognition. Goethe wanted neither science nor art; he wanted the idea. And this he expresses or presents according to the side in which it presents itself to him. Goethe sought to ally himself with the spirit of the world and to reveal its workings to us; he did this through the medium of art or science, as required. It was not one-sided artistic or scientific striving that lay within Goethe, but rather the restless urge to see "all active power and seeds".
[ 12 ] However, Goethe is not a philosophical poet, for his poems do not take the detour through thought to sensuous creation; rather, they flow directly from the source of all becoming, just as his researches are not imbued with poetic fantasy, but are based directly on the realization of ideas. Without Goethe being a philosophical poet, his basic direction appears to the philosophical observer as a philosophical one.
[ 13 ] Thus the question of whether Goethe's scientific works have philosophical value or not takes on a completely new form. It is a question of inferring the principles from what is present. What must we presuppose in order for Goethe's scientific constellations to appear to us as a consequence of these presuppositions? We must express what Goethe left unspoken, but which alone makes his views comprehensible.