Goethe's Conception of the World
GA 6
The Position of Goethe in the Evolution of Western Thought
I. Goethe and Schiller
[ 1 ] Goethe narrates a conversation that once ensued between Schiller and himself after they had both attended a meeting of the Society for Nature Research in Jena. Schiller was dissatisfied with the results of the meeting. He had found there a most disintegrating method for the study of Nature and he remarked that such a method could never appeal to a layman. Goethe replied that “possibly this method was cumbersome for the initiated also and that there might well exist yet another way of portraying Nature active and living, struggling from the whole into the parts, and not severed and isolated.” And then Goethe evolved the great ideas which had arisen within him concerning the nature of plants. He drew “with many characteristic strokes, a symbolic plant” before Schiller's eyes. This symbolic plant was intended to give expression to the essential being lying in every single plant, whatever particular form it assumes. It was intended to demonstrate the successive development of the single portions of the plant, their emergence from each other and their mutual relationship. In Palermo, 17th April, 1787, Goethe wrote these words in reference to this symbolic plant form: “There must be such a thing; if not, how could I recognise this or that structure to be a plant if all were not moulded after one pattern?” Goethe had evolved in himself the conception of a plastic, ideal form that was revealed to his spirit when he surveyed the diversity of the plant forms and observed the element common to them all. Schiller contemplated this form that was said to live, not in the single plant but in all plants, and said, dubiously: “That is not an experience, that is an idea.” To Goethe these words seemed to proceed from an alien world. He was conscious of the fact that he had arrived at his symbolic form by the same mode of naive perception by which he arrived at the conception of anything visible to the eye and tangible to the hand. To him the symbolic or archetypal plant was an objective being just as the single plant. He believed that this archetypal plant was the result, not of arbitrary speculation, but of unbiased observation. He could only rejoin: “It may be very pleasing to me if without knowing it, I have ideas and can actually perceive them with my eyes.” And he was very unhappy when Schiller added: “How can there ever be an experience that is commensurate with an idea? For the inherent characteristic of the latter is that an experience can never be equivalent to it.”
[ 2 ] Two opposing world-conceptions were confronting each other in this conversation. Goethe sees in the idea of an object an element that is immediately present, working and creating within it. In his view, any given object assumes definite forms for the reason that the idea has to express itself within this object in a particular way. For Goethe it has no meaning to say that an object is not in conformity with the idea, for the object can only exist as the idea has made it. Schiller thinks otherwise. To him the world of ideas and the world of experience are two separate regions. To experience belong the diverse objects and occurrences filling Space and Time. The realm of ideas stands over against this as a different kind of reality that is laid hold of by the reason. Schiller distinguishes two sources of knowledge, because man's knowledge flows to him from two directions—from without through observation, and from within through thought. For Goethe there is one source of knowledge only, the world of experience, and this includes the world of ideas. Goethe finds it impossible to speak of experience and idea, because for him the idea is there before the eye of the spirit as the result of spiritual experience, in the same way as the sense-world lies before the physical eyes.
[ 3 ] Schiller's conception has grown out of the philosophy of his time. We must go back to Greek Antiquity to discover the basic conceptions which are the hall-mark of this philosophy and which have become the motive forces of the whole of Western spiritual culture. We can form a picture of the particular nature of the Goethean world-conception if we endeavour to build up this picture entirely from elements inherent in the world-conception itself, with the help of ideas gleaned from it. Such an attempt will be made in the later chapters of this book. A delineation of this kind can, however, be assisted by a preliminary consideration of the fact that Goethe expressed himself in this or that way about certain matters because he agreed or disagreed, as the case might be, with what others thought about some particular region of natural and spiritual life. Many an utterance of Goethe becomes intelligible only when we study the modes of conception which confronted him and which he analysed in order to arrive at his own personal point of view. How he thought and felt about one thing or another throws light on the nature of his own world-conception. When it is a question of considering this sphere of Goethe's being a great deal of what with him remained unconscious feeling only must be given expression. In the conversation with Schiller referred to above there stood before Goethe's spiritual eye a world-conception contrary to his own. And this element of opposition shows how he felt in regard to the mode of conception proceeding from one aspect of Greek culture, which perceives a gulf between material and spiritual experience; it shows how, to him, sense experience and spiritual experience were united without any such gulf, in a world-picture communicated to him by reality. If we want to experience in conscious living thoughts what was in Goethe a more or less unconscious perception of the constitution of Western world-conceptions we must consider the following. At a certain crucial moment a mistrust in man's organs of sense took possession of a Greek thinker. He began to think that these organs of sense do not impart the Truth to man but that they deceive him. He lost faith in the results of naive, direct observation. He discovered that thought about the true being of phenomena has not the same thing to say as experience. It is difficult to indicate the particular mind where this mistrust first gained a hold. We meet with it in the Eleatic School of philosophy, of which Xenophanes, born at Kolophon, 570 B.C., is the first representative. The personality of greatest significance in this School appears in Parmenides. Parmenides has asserted more emphatically than any of his predecessors that there are two sources of human knowledge. He has declared that sense impressions are illusory and deceptive and that man can only attain to knowledge of the True through pure thinking that takes no account of experience. As a result of this conception of thought and sense experience that arose with Parmenides many later philosophies came to be inoculated with an evolutionary disease, from which scientific culture still suffers to-day. To discuss what origin this mode of conception has in oriental thought does not fall within the scope of the Goethean world-conception.
Goethe und Schiller
[ 1 ] Goethe erzählt von einem Gespräch, das sich einstmals zwischen ihm und Schillern entspann, nachdem beide einer Sitzung der naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Jena beigewohnt hatten. Schiller zeigte sich wenig befriedigt von dem, was in der Sitzung vorgebracht worden war. Eine zerstückelte Art, die Natur zu betrachten, war ihm entgegen getreten. Und er bemerkte, daß eine solche den Laien keineswegs anmuten könne. Goethe erwiderte, daß sie den Eingeweihten selbst vielleicht unheimlich bliebe, und daß es noch eine andere Weise geben könne, die Natur nicht gesondert und vereinzelt, sondern sie wirkend und lebendig, aus dem Ganzen in die Teile strebend darzustellen. Und nun entwickelte Goethe die großen Ideen, die ihm über die Pflanzennatur aufgegangen waren. Er zeichnete «mit manchen charakteristischen Federstrichen eine symbolische Pflanze» vor Schillers Augen. Diese symbolische Pflanze sollte die Wesenheit ausdrücken, die in jeder einzelnen Pflanze lebt, was für besondere Formen eine solche auch annimmt. Sie sollte das sukzessive Werden der einzelnen Pflanzenteile, ihr Hervorgehen auseinander und ihre Verwandtschaft untereinander zeigen. Über diese symbolische Pflanzengestalt schrieb Goethe am 17. April 1787 in Palermo die Worte nieder «Eine solche muß es denn doch geben! Woran würde ich sonst erkennen, daß dieses oder jenes Gebilde eine Pflanze sei, wenn sie nicht alle nach einem Muster gebildet wären.» Die Vorstellung einer plastisch-ideellen Form, die dem Geiste sich offenbart, wenn er die Mannigfaltigkeit der Pflanzengestalten überschaut und ihr Gemeinsames beachtet, hatte Goethe in sich ausgebildet. Schiller betrachtete dieses Gebilde, das nicht in einer einzelnen, sondern in allen Pflanzen leben sollte, und sagte kopfschüttelnd: «Das ist keine Erfahrung, das ist eine Idee.» Wie aus einer fremden Welt kommend, erschienen Goethe diese Worte. Er war sich bewußt, daß er zu seiner symbolischen Gestalt durch dieselbe Art naiver Wahrnehmung gelangt war wie zu der Vorstellung eines Dinges, das man mit Augen sehen und mit Händen greifen kann. Wie die einzelne Pflanze, so war für ihn die symbolische oder Urpflanze ein objektives Wesen. Nicht einer willkürlichen Spekulation, sondern unbefangener Beobachtung glaubte er sie zu verdanken. Er konnte nichts entgegnen als: «Das kann mir sehr lieb sein, wenn ich Ideen habe, ohne es zu wissen, und sie sogar mit Augen sehe.» Und er war ganz unglücklich, als Schiller daran die Worte knüpfte: «Wie kann jemals eine Erfahrung gegeben werden, die einer Idee angemessen sein sollte. Denn darin besteht das Eigentümliche der letzteren, daß ihr niemals eine Erfahrung kongruieren könne.»
[ 2 ] Zwei entgegengesetzte Weltanschauungen stehen in diesem Gespräche einander gegenüber. Goethe sieht in der Idee eines Dinges ein Element, das in demselben unmittelbar gegenwärtig ist, in ihm wirkt und schafft. Ein einzelnes Ding nimmt, nach seiner Ansicht, bestimmte Formen aus dem Grunde an, weil die Idee sich in dem gegebenen Falle in einer besonderen Weise ausleben muß. Es hat für Goethe keinen Sinn zu sagen, ein Ding entspreche der Idee nicht. Denn das Ding kann nichts anderes sein, als das, wozu es die Idee gemacht hat. Anders denkt Schiller. Ihm sind Ideenwelt und Erfahrungswelt zwei getrennte Reiche. Der Erfahrung gehören die mannigfaltigen Dinge und Ereignisse an, die den Raum und die Zeit erfüllen. Ihr steht das Reich der Ideen gegenüber, als eine anders geartete Wirklichkeit, dessen sich die Vernunft bemächtigt. Weil von zwei Seiten dem Menschen seine Erkenntnisse zufließen, von außen durch Beobachtung und von innen durch das Denken, unterscheidet Schiller zwei Quellen der Erkenntnis. Für Goethe gibt es nur eine Quelle der Erkenntnis, die Erfahrungswelt, in welcher die Ideenwelt eingeschossen ist. Für ihn ist es unmöglich, zu sagen: Erfahrung und Idee, weil ihm die Idee durch die geistige Erfahrung so vor dem geistigen Auge liegt, wie die sinnliche Welt vor dem physischen.
[ 3 ] Schillers Anschauung ist hervorgegangen aus der Philosophie seiner Zeit. Die grundlegenden Vorstellungen, welche dieser Philosophie das Gepräge gegeben haben, und welche treibende Kräfte der ganzen abendländischen Geistesbildung geworden sind, muß man im griechischen Altertume suchen. Man kann von der besonderen Wesenheit der Goetheschen Weltanschauung ein Bild gewinnen, wenn man sie ganz aus sich selbst heraus, gewissermaßen mit Ideen, die man bloß aus ihr entlehnt, zu kennzeichnen versucht. Das soll in den späteren Teilen dieser Schrift angestrebt werden. Einer solchen Kennzeichnung kann aber zu Hilfe kommen ein vorangehendes Betrachten der Tatsache, daß sich Goethe über gewisse Dinge in der einen oder andern Art ausgesprochen hat, weil er sich in Überein Stimmung oder in Gegensatz fühlte mit dem, was andere über ein Gebiet des Natur- und Geisteslebens dachten. Mancher Ausspruch Goethes wird nur verständlich, wenn man die Vorstellungsarten betrachtet, denen er sich gegenüber gestellt fand, und mit denen er sich auseinandersetzte, um einen eigenen Gesichtspunkt zu gewinnen. Wie er über dies oder jenes dachte und empfand, gibt zugleich eine Aufklärung über das Wesen seiner eigenen Weltanschauung. Man muß, wenn man über dieses Gebiet Goetheschen Wesens sprechen will, manches zum Ausdruck bringen, was bei ihm nur unbewußte Empfindung geblieben ist. In dem hier angeführten Gespräch mit Schiller stand vor Goethes geistigem Auge eine der seinigen gegensätzliche Weltanschauung. Und diese Gegensätzlichkeit zeigt, wie er empfand über diejenige Vorstellungsart, die, von einer Seite des Griechentums herkommend, einen Abgrund sieht zwischen der sinnlichen und der geistigen Erfahrung und wie er, ohne solchen Abgrund, die Erfahrung der Sinne und die Erfahrung des Geistes sich zusammenschließen sah in einem Weltbild, das ihm die Wirklichkeit vermittelte. Will man bewußt als Gedanken in sich beleben, was Goethe mehr oder weniger unbewußt als Anschauung über die Gestalt der abendländischen Weltanschauungen in sich trug, so werden diese Gedanken die folgenden sein. In einem verhängnisvollen Augenblicke bemächtigte sich eines griechischen Denkers ein Mißtrauen in die menschlichen Sinnesorgane. Er fing an zu glauben, daß diese Organe dem Menschen nicht die Wahrheit überliefern, sondern daß sie ihn täuschen. Er verlor das Vertrauen zu dem, was die naive, unbefangene Beobachtung darbietet. Er fand, daß das Denken über die wahre Wesenheit der Dinge andere Aussagen mache als die Erfahrung. Es wird schwer sein zu sagen, in welchem Kopfe sich dieses Mißtrauen zuerst festsetzte. Man begegnet ihm in der eleatischen Philosophenschule, deren erster Vertreter der um 570 v.Chr. zu Kolophon geborene Xenophanes ist. Als die wichtigste Persönlichkeit dieser Schule erscheint Parmenides. Denn er hat mit einer Schärfe wie niemand vor ihm behauptet, es gäbe zwei Quellen der menschlichen Erkenntnis. Er hat erklärt, daß die Eindrücke der Sinne Trug und Täuschung seien, und daß der Mensch zu der Erkenntnis des Wahren nur durch das reine Denken, das auf die Erfahrung keine Rücksicht nimmt, gelangen könne. Durch die Art, wie diese Auffassung über das Denken und die Sinnes-Erfahrung bei Parmenides auftritt, war vielen folgenden Philosophien eine Entwicklungskrankheit eingeimpft, an der die wissenschaftliche Bildung noch heute leidet. Welchen Ursprung diese Vorstellungsart in orientalischen Anschauungen hat, dies zu besprechen, ist innerhalb des Zusammenhanges der Goetheschen Weltanschauung nicht der Ort.
Goethe and Schiller
[ 1 ] Goethe recounts a conversation that once ensued between him and Schiller after both had attended a meeting of the natural history society in Jena. Schiller was not very satisfied with what had been presented at the meeting. He was confronted with a fragmented way of looking at nature. And he remarked that such a view could in no way appeal to the layman. Goethe replied that it might remain uncanny even to the initiated, and that there could be another way of depicting nature not as separate and isolated, but as working and living, as striving from the whole into the parts. And now Goethe developed the great ideas that had occurred to him about plant nature. He drew "a symbolic plant with a few characteristic strokes of the pen" before Schiller's eyes. This symbolic plant was to express the essence that lives in each individual plant, whatever particular form it takes. It was to show the successive development of the individual parts of the plant, their emergence from one another and their relationship to one another. On April 17, 1787 in Palermo, Goethe wrote down the following words about this symbolic plant form: "There must be one after all! How else would I recognize that this or that structure is a plant if they were not all formed according to a pattern?" Goethe had developed in himself the idea of a plastic-ideal form that reveals itself to the mind when it surveys the diversity of plant forms and observes what they have in common. Schiller looked at this structure, which should not live in a single plant, but in all plants, and said, shaking his head: "This is not an experience, this is an idea." These words seemed to Goethe to come from a strange world. He was aware that he had arrived at his symbolic figure through the same kind of naive perception as he had arrived at the idea of a thing that you can see with your eyes and grasp with your hands. Like the individual plant, the symbolic or primordial plant was an objective being for him. He did not believe he owed it to arbitrary speculation, but to unbiased observation. He could only reply: "It can be very dear to me when I have ideas without knowing it, and even see them with my eyes." And he was quite unhappy when Schiller followed this up with the words: "How can an experience ever be given that should be appropriate to an idea. For therein consists the peculiarity of the latter, that it can never be congruent with an experience."
[ 2 ] Two opposing worldviews confront each other in this conversation. Goethe sees in the idea of a thing an element that is directly present in it, that acts and creates in it. In his view, an individual thing takes on certain forms for the reason that the idea must live itself out in a particular way in the given case. It makes no sense for Goethe to say that a thing does not correspond to the idea. For the thing cannot be anything other than what the idea has made it to be. Schiller thinks differently. For him, the world of ideas and the world of experience are two separate realms. The manifold things and events that fill space and time belong to experience. Opposite it is the realm of ideas, as a different kind of reality, which reason takes possession of. Because knowledge flows to man from two sides, from outside through observation and from within through thinking, Schiller distinguishes between two sources of knowledge. For Goethe, there is only one source of knowledge, the world of experience, in which the world of ideas is embedded. For him, it is impossible to say: experience and idea, because the idea lies before the mind's eye through spiritual experience in the same way as the sensory world lies before the physical.
[ 3 ] Schiller's view emerged from the philosophy of his time. The fundamental ideas that shaped this philosophy, and which became the driving forces of the entire Western intellectual formation, must be sought in Greek antiquity. One can gain a picture of the particular nature of Goethe's world view if one tries to characterize it entirely from within itself, as it were with ideas that one merely borrows from it. This is what will be attempted in the later parts of this essay. Such a characterization can, however, be aided by a previous consideration of the fact that Goethe expressed himself about certain things in one way or another because he felt himself to be in agreement or in opposition to what others thought about an area of natural and spiritual life. Some of Goethe's statements only become understandable if one considers the kinds of ideas he found himself confronted with and with which he grappled in order to gain his own point of view. How he thought and felt about this or that also sheds light on the nature of his own world view. If we want to talk about this area of Goethe's nature, we have to express some things that remained only unconscious feelings in his mind. In the conversation with Schiller referred to here, a world view contrary to his own stood before Goethe's mind's eye. And this contrast shows how he felt about the kind of conception which, coming from one side of Greekness, sees an abyss between sensual and spiritual experience and how, without such an abyss, he saw the experience of the senses and the experience of the spirit united in a world view which conveyed reality to him. If one wants to consciously revive as thoughts what Goethe more or less unconsciously carried within him as an opinion about the shape of the Western worldviews, these thoughts will be the following. At a fateful moment a Greek thinker was seized by a distrust of the human sense organs. He began to believe that these organs did not transmit the truth to man, but that they deceived him. He lost confidence in what naive, unbiased observation offered. He found that thinking made different statements about the true nature of things than experience. It will be difficult to say in which mind this mistrust first took root. One encounters it in the Eleatic school of philosophers, whose first representative is Xenophanes, who was born in Colophon around 570 BC. Parmenides appears to be the most important personality of this school. For he asserted with a sharpness like no one before him that there are two sources of human knowledge. He declared that the impressions of the senses are deception and delusion, and that man can only arrive at knowledge of the true through pure thought, which takes no account of experience. The way in which this view of thinking and sensory experience appears in Parmenides inoculated many subsequent philosophies with a developmental disease from which scientific education still suffers today. It is not the place within the context of Goethe's world view to discuss the origin of this type of conception in oriental views.