Goethe's Conception of the World
GA 6
The Position of Goethe in the Evolution of Western Thought
II. The Platonic Conception of the World
[ 1 ] Plato expresses this distrust in experience with his own admirable courage. “The things of this world which our senses perceive have no real existence: they are always becoming, they never are. Theirs is only a relative existence; taken together, they exist only in and by virtue of their relation to each other; hence we can with equal truth say of their whole existence that it is Non-Existence. Hence they are not objects of a real knowledge. There can only be real knowledge of something that exists in and for itself, and ever the same way, whereas these sense-phenomena are only the objects of conjecture evoked by sensation. So long as we are restricted to the perception of these things we are like men in a dark cave, bound so rigidly that they cannot even turn the head, seeing nothing except when the light of a fire burning behind them throws on the wall in front the shadows of real objects which pass between them and the fire; each man sees only the shadows of the other, only the shadow of himself on that wall. But the wisdom of such men would consist in predicting the sequence of those shadows as taught them by experience.”
[ 2 ] Platonism tears the perception (Vorstellung) of the universe into two parts: the perception of the world of appearance and that of the world of ideas, and true, eternal reality is supposed to correspond only to the latter. “That which alone may be said to have true existence, because it always is, neither becoming nor passing away, is the ideal Archetype of each shadow picture, the eternal idea, the archetypal form of each object. These eternal ideas undergo no multiplicity, for each in its true nature is one and one alone; it is the archetype whose reflections or shadows picture are all homonymous, single, transitory things of the same nature. These eternal ideas do not arise, neither do they pass away; they truly are, they do not become nor pass away like their transitory reflections. Hence of them alone can there be a real knowledge, for the object of a real knowledge can only be that which is eternally and in every respect, not that which is and again is not, according to how it is perceived.”
[ 3 ] It is only justifiable to make a distinction between ideas and perception when we are speaking of the way in which human cognition arises. Man must allow the objects to speak to him in a twofold sense. They communicate one part of their being to him voluntarily, and he need only pay attention. This is the part of reality that is free of ideas. The other part, however, he must himself extract from the objects. He must set thought in action and then his inner being is flooded with the ideas of the objects. The stage whereon objects reveal their inner, ideal content, is within the personality. They there make manifest that which is forever concealed from external perception. The true being of Nature here becomes articulate. It is due to the constitution of the human organisation that objects can only be cognised through the consonance of two tones. In Nature we have one exitant producing both tones. The open-minded man listens for the consonance. In the ideal speech of his inmost being he recognises the utterances which the objects make to him. Only those who are no longer open-minded interpret the matter otherwise. They believe that the speech of their inmost being proceeds from a sphere other than that of the speech of external perception. Plato realised how important it is for man's world-conception that the universe is revealed to him from two sides. His understanding appreciation of this fact made him recognise that reality may not be ascribed to the sense-world per se. Only when the world of ideas lights up from out of the life of soul and in his contemplation of the world man is able to set before his spirit, idea and sense perception as a uniform, cognitional experience, has he true reality before him. That which confronts sense-perception without being irradiated by the light of the world of ideas, is a world of appearance. In this sense Plato's insight also sheds light on Parmenides' view concerning the illusory nature of sense objects. It may well be said that Plato's philosophy is one of the most sublime thought-structures that have ever emanated from the mind of man. Platonism represents the conviction that the goal of all striving after knowledge must be the assimilation of the ideas that support the world and constitute its foundations. A man who cannot awaken this conviction in himself has no understanding of the Platonic view of the world. So far as Platonism has entered into the evolution of Western thought, however, it reveals yet another aspect. Plato did not only stress the knowledge that so far as human perception is concerned the sense world becomes mere appearance when the light of the world of ideas is not shed upon it, but his presentation of this fact has furthered the notion that the sense world in itself, apart altogether from man, is a world of appearance, and that true reality is to be found only in the ideas. Out of this notion the question arises: How do ideas and the world of sense (Nature) outside man coincide? Those who cannot admit the existence of a sense world, free of ideas, outside man, must seek for and solve the problem of the relationship of idea and sense world within the being of man. And this is how the matter stands before the Goethean world-conception. The question, “What is the relationship outside man between idea and sense world?” is, so far as this world-conception is concerned, unsound, because for it there exists outside man no sense world (Nature) apart from idea. Man alone can for himself separate ideas from the world of sense and so conceive Nature void of ideas. It may therefore be said that in the Goethean world-conception the question which has occupied the evolution of Western thought for centuries as to how idea and sense-object come together, is utterly superfluous. And the outcome of this current of Platonism in the evolution of Western thought which Goethe encountered in the above-mentioned conversations with Schiller, for example, and also elsewhere, seemed to him an unhealthy element in human thought. The view that he did not definitely put into words but which lived in his perception and was a formative impulse in his own world-conception was this: healthy human feeling teaches us at every moment how the languages of perception and of thought unite in order to reveal the full reality, and this has been ignored by the speculative thinkers. Instead of paying attention to the way in which Nature speaks to man, they have built up artificial concepts of the relationship of the world of ideas and experience. In order to realise fully what deep significance this trend of thought, considered by Goethe to be unsound, had in the world-conception which confronted him and from which he would have liked to take his bearings, we must bear in mind how this current of Platonism which dissipates the sense world into appearance and so brings the world of ideas into a distorted relationship to it, has been strengthened as the result of a one-sided philosophical interpretation of Christian truth in the course of the evolution of Western thought. It was because of the fact that Goethe encountered Christian conceptions bound up with this, to him, unhealthy current of Platonism, that he could only with difficulty build up his relationship to Christianity. Goethe has not followed up in detail the further influence of this current of Platonism (which he discarded) in the evolution of Christian thought, but he perceived its influence in the modes of thought which he encountered. As a result of this, light is thrown on the development of Goethe's mode of conception by observation that is able to trace the growth of this influence in the directions taken by thought through the centuries prior to Goethe. The evolution of Christian thought as shown in many of its exponents, endeavoured to come to terms with the belief in the world Beyond and with the value that sense existence has in relation to the spiritual world. Those who adhered to the conception that the relation of the sense world to the world of ideas has a significance apart altogether from man, arrived, together with the problems arising out of this, at the conception of a Divine World Order. And Church Fathers, faced with this problem, had to cogitate on the role played by the Platonic world of ideas within this Divine World Order. Here there arose the danger of conceiving idea and sense world (which are united in human cognition through direct perception) not only as being separated off from man in themselves, but separated from each other, so that the ideas, apart from what is given to man in Nature, lead an independent existence of their own in a spirituality separated from Nature. When this conception, which is based on a false view of the world of ideas and the sense world, was added to the justifiable opinion that the Divine can never live in full consciousness in the human soul, the result was a complete severance of the world of ideas and Nature from each other. That which ought always to be sought within the spirit of man is then sought outside it in creation. The Archetypes of all objects are thought to be contained within the Divine Spirit. The world becomes the imperfect reflection of the perfect world of ideas resting in God. As a result, then, of a one-sided understanding of Platonism, the human soul is separated from the relationship existing between idea and “reality.” The soul extends its rightly conceived relationship to the Divine World Order to the relationship existing within itself between the world of ideas and the world of sense appearance. This mode of conception leads Augustine to the following view: “We can believe without hesitation that although the thinking soul is not of like nature to God, since He permits of no communion, the soul may indeed be illuminated as the result of participation in the Divine Nature.” And so when this particular mode of conception is carried to extremes, it is no longer possible for the human soul in its contemplation of Nature to experience the world of ideas as the essence of reality. Such experience is designated unchristian. The one-sided conception of Platonism is extended to Christianity itself. Platonism, as a philosophical view of the world remains more within the element of thought; religious experience plunges thought into the life of feeling and establishes it thus in man's nature. Grappled in this way to the soul life of man, the unsound element of a one-sided Platonism was able to assume a deeper significance in the Western evolution of thought than would have been the case if it had remained pure philosophy. For centuries this thought-evolution confronted questions such as: What relation is there between that which man builds up as idea and objects of reality? Are the living concepts existing in the human soul through the world of ideas only notions, names, that have nothing to do with reality? Have these concepts within them something real that enters into man when he becomes aware of reality and comprehends it through his intelligence? So far as the Goethean world-conception is concerned such questions are not reasonable in reference to anything that lies outside the scope of man's being. In man's perception of reality these problems are resolved through true human cognition in eternal, living essence. And the Goethean world-conception has not only to come to the conclusion that an element of a one-sided Platonism lives in Christian thought but it has a feeling of estrangement even from true Christianity itself when this appears before it saturated with such Platonism. In many of the thoughts that Goethe developed, in order to make the world intelligible to himself, there lived this element of aversion from the current of Platonism that he felt to be unsound. That he had, also, an open mind for the way in which Platonism raises the soul of man to the world of ideas is proved by many an utterance of his in this connection. He felt in himself the activity of the real world of ideas while observing and investigating Nature in his own way; he felt that Nature herself speaks in the language of ideas when the soul opens itself to such language. But he could not admit that the world of ideas may be considered as something separate and apart, and that it is possible, as a result of this, to say of an idea of the plant-being, that this is not an experience but an idea. For Goethe felt that his spiritual eye perceived the idea as reality, just as the eye of sense sees the physical part of the plant-being. In this sense the orientation of Platonism towards the world of ideas entered into the Goethean world-conception in its purity and the current of Platonism that leads away from reality was there overcome. As the result of this configuration of his world-conception Goethe had also to reject so-called “Christian” conceptions which had assumed a form that could only appear to him as transformed and one-sided Platonism. And he was, moreover, bound to feel that many of the world-conceptions confronting him and with which he would have liked to come to terms, had not been able in Western culture to overcome this Christian-Platonic view of reality that is not in conformity with Nature and Ideal.
Die platonische Weltanschauung
[ 1 ] Mit der ihm eigenen bewunderungswerten Kühnheit spricht Plato dieses Mißtrauen in die Erfahrung aus: Die Dinge dieser Welt, welche unsere Sinne wahrnehmen, haben gar kein wahres Sein: sie werden immer, sind aber nie. Sie haben nur ein relatives Sein, sind insgesamt nur in und durch ihr Verhältnis zueinander; man kann daher ihr ganzes Dasein ebensowohl ein Nichtsein nennen. Sie sind folglich auch nicht Objekte einer eigentlichen Erkenntnis. Denn nur von dem, was an und für sich und immer auf gleiche Weise ist, kann es eine solche geben; sie hingegen sind nur das Objekt eines durch Empfindung veranlaßten Dafürhaltens. So lange wir nur auf ihre Wahrnehmung beschränkt sind, gleichen wir Menschen, die in einer finsteren Höhle so fest gebunden saßen, daß sie auch den Kopf nicht drehen könnten und nichts sehen, als beim Lichte eines hinter ihnen brennenden Feuers, an der Wand ihnen gegenüber die Schattenbilder wirklicher Dinge, welche zwischen ihnen und dem Feuer vorübergeführt würden, und auch sogar von einander, ja jeder von sich selbst, eben nur die Schatten an jener Wand. Ihre Weisheit aber wäre, die ans Erfahrung erlernte Reihenfolge jener Schatten vorherzusagen.
[ 2 ] In zwei Teile reißt die platonische Anschauung die Vorstellung des Weltganzen auseinander, in die Vorstellung einer Scheinwelt und in eine andere der Ideenwelt, der allein wahre, ewige Wirklichkeit entsprechen soll. «Was allein wahrhaft seiend genannt werden kann, weil es immer ist, aber nie wird, noch vergeht: das sind die idealen Urbilder jener Schattenbilder, es sind die ewigen Ideen, die Urformen aller Dinge. Ihnen kommt keine Vielheit zu; denn jedes ist seinem Wesen nach nur eines, indem es das Urbild selbst ist, dessen Nachbilder oder Schatten alle ihm gleichnamige, einzelne, vergängliche Dinge derselben Art sind. Ihnen kommt auch kein Entstehen und Vergehen zu; denn sie sind wahrhaft seiend, nie aber werdend, noch untergehend wie ihre hinschwindenden Nachbilder. Von ihnen allein daher gibt es eine eigentliche Erkenntnis, da das Objekt einer solchen nur das sein kann, was immer und in jedem Betracht ist, nicht das, was ist, aber auch wieder nicht ist, je nachdem man es ansieht.»
[ 3 ] Die Unterscheidung von Idee und Wahrnehmung hat nur eine Berechtigung, wenn von der Art gesprochen wird, wie die menschliche Erkenntnis zustande kommt. Der Mensch muß die Dinge auf zweifache Art zu sich sprechen lassen. Einen Teil ihrer Wesenheit sagen sie ihm freiwillig. Er braucht nur hinzuhorchen. Dies ist der ideenfreie Teil der Wirklichkeit. Den andern aber muß er ihnen entlocken. Er muß sein Denken in Bewegung setzen, dann erfüllt sich sein Inneres mit den Ideen der Dinge. Im Innern der Persönlichkeit ist der Schauplatz, auf dem auch die Dinge ihr ideelles Innere enthüllen. Da sprechen sie aus, was der äußeren Anschauung ewig verborgen bleibt. Das Wesen der Natur kommt hier zu Worte. Aber es liegt nur an der menschlichen Organisation, daß durch den Zusammenklang von zwei Tönen die Dinge erkannt werden müssen. In der Natur ist ein Erreger da, der beide Töne hervorbringt. Der unbefangene Mensch horcht auf den Zusammenklang. Er erkennt in der ideellen Sprache seines Innern die Aussagen, die ihm die Dinge zukommen lassen. Nur wer die Unbefangenheit verloren hat, der deutet die Sache anders. Er glaubt, die Sprache seines Inneren komme aus einem andern Reich als die Sprache der äußeren Anschauung. Plato ist es zum Bewußtsein gekommen, welches Gewicht für die menschliche Weltanschauung die Tatsache hat, daß die Welt sich dem Menschen von zwei Seiten her offenbart. Aus der einsichtsvollen Wertung dieser Tatsache erkannte er, daß der Sinneswelt, allein für sich betrachtet, nicht Wirklichkeit zugesprochen werden darf. Erst wenn aus dem Seelenleben heraus die Ideenwelt aufleuchtet und im Anschauen der Welt der Mensch Idee und Sinnesbeobachtung als einheitliches Erkenntniserlebnis vor seinen Geist stellen kann, hat er wahre Wirklichkeit vor sich. Was die Sinnesbeobachtung vor sich hat, ohne daß es von dem Lichte der Ideen durchstrahlt wird, ist eine Scheinwelt. So betrachtet fällt von Platos Einsicht aus auch Licht auf die Ansicht des Parmenides von dem Trugcharakter der Sinnendinge. Und man kann sagen, die Philosophie Platos ist eines der erhabensten Gedankengebäude, die je aus dem Geiste der Menschheit entsprungen sind. Platonismus ist die Überzeugung, daß das Ziel alles Erkenntnisstrebens die Aneignung der die Welt tragenden und deren Grund bildenden Ideen sein müsse. Wer diese Überzeugung in sich nicht erwecken kann, der versteht die platonische Weltanschauung nicht. - Insofern aber der Platonismus in die abendländische Gedankenentwickelung eingegriffen hat, zeigt er noch eine andere Seite. Plato ist nicht dabei stehen geblieben, die Erkenntnis zu betonen, daß im menschlichen Anschauen die Sinneswelt zu einem Schein wird, wenn das Licht der Ideenwelt nicht auf sie geworfen wird, sondern er hat durch seine Darstellung dieser Tatsache der Meinung Vorschub geleistet, als ob die Sinneswelt für sich, abgesehen von dem Menschen, eine Scheinwelt sei und nur in den Ideen wahre Wirklichkeit zu finden. Aus dieser Meinung heraus entsteht die Frage: wie kommen Idee und Sinnenwelt (Natur) außerhalb des Menschen zu einander? Wer außerhalb des Menschen keine ideenlose Sinneswelt anerkennen kann, für den ist die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Idee und Sinneswelt eine solche, die innerhalb der menschlichen Wesenheit gesucht und gelöst werden muß. Und so steht die Sache vor der Goetheschen Weltanschauung. Für diese ist die Frage: «welches Verhältnis besteht außerhalb des Menschen zwischen Idee und Sinneswelt?» eine ungesunde, weil es für sie keine Sinneswelt (Natur) ohne Idee außerhalb des Menschen gibt. Nur der Mensch kann für sich die Idee von der Sinneswelt lösen und so die Natur ideenlos vorstellen. Deshalb kann man sagen: für die Goethesche Weltanschauung ist die Frage: «wie kommen Idee und Sinnendinge zu einander?» welche die abendländische Gedankenentwickelung durch Jahrhunderte beschäftigt hat, eine vollkommen überflüssige Frage. Und der Niederschlag dieser durch die abendländische Gedankenentwickelung laufenden Strömung des Platonismus, der Goethe z. B. in dem angeführten Gespräche mit Schiller, aber auch in anderen Fällen entgegentrat, wirkte auf seine Empfindung wie ein ungesundes Element des menschlichen Vorstellens. Was er nicht deutlich mit Worten aussprach, was aber in seiner Empfindung lebte und ein mitgestaltender Impuls seiner eigenen Weltanschauung wurde, das ist die Ansicht: was das gesunde menschliche Empfinden in jedem Augenblicke lehrt: wie die Sprache der Anschauung und des Denkens sich verbinden, um die volle Wirklichkeit zu offenbaren, das wurde von den grübelnden Denkern nicht beachtet. Statt hinzusehen, wie die Natur zu dem Menschen spricht, bildeten sie künstliche Begriffe über das Verhältnis von Ideenwelt und Erfahrung aus. Um vollends zu überschauen, welch tiefe Bedeutung diese von Goethe als ungesund empfundene Denkrichtung in den Weltanschauungen hatte, die ihm entgegentraten und an denen er sich orientieren wollte, muß man bedenken, wie die angedeutete Strömung des Platonismus, welche die Sinnenwelt in Schein verflüchtigt, und die Ideenwelt dadurch in ein schiefes Verhältnis zu ihr bringt, durch eine einseitige philosophische Erfassung der christlichen Wahrheit im Laufe der abendländischen Gedankenentwicklung eine Verstärkung erfahren hat. Weil Goethe die christliche Anschauung, mit der von ihm als ungesund empfundenen Strömung des Platonismus verbunden, entgegentrat, konnte er nur unter Schwierigkeiten sein Verhältnis zu dem Christentum ausbilden. Goethe hat das Fortwirken der von ihm abgelehnten Strömung des Platonismus in der christlichen Gedankenentwicklung nicht im einzelnen verfolgt, aber er hat den Niederschlag dieses Fortwirkens in den Denkungsarten empfunden, die ihm entgegentraten. Daher wirft auf die Gestaltung seiner Vorstellungsart Licht eine Betrachtung, welche das Zustandekommen dieses Niederschlages in den Gedankenrichtungen verfolgt, welche sich durch die Jahrhunderte vor dem Auftreten Goethes ausgebildet haben. Die christliche Gedankenentwicklung war in vielen ihrer Vertreter bestrebt, sich auseinanderzusetzen mit dem Jenseitsglauben und mit dem Werte, den das Sinnesdasein hat gegenüber der geistigen Welt. Gab man sich der Anschauung hin, daß das Verhältnis der Sinneswelt zur Ideenwelt eine von dem Menschen abgesonderte Bedeutung hat, so kam man mit der daraus entstehenden Frage in die Anschauung der göttlichen Weltordnung hinein. Und Kirchenväter, an welche diese Frage herantrat, mußten sich Gedanken darüber machen, welche Rolle die platonische Ideenwelt innerhalb dieser göttlichen Weltordnung spielt. Damit stand man vor der Gefahr, dasjenige, was im menschlichen Erkennen durch unmittelbares Anschauen sich verbindet: Idee und Sinneswelt nicht nur für sich außer dem Menschen gesondert zu denken, sondern sie auseinander zu sondern, daß die Ideen außerhalb dessen, was dem Menschen als Natur gegeben ist, auch noch in einer von der Natur abgesonderten Geistigkeit für sich ein Dasein führen. Verband man diese Vorstellung, die auf einer unwahren Anschauung von Ideenwelt und Sinnenwelt beruhte mit der berechtigten Ansicht, daß das Göttliche nie in der Menschenseele vollbewußt anwesend sein kann, so er gab sich ein völliges Auseinanderreißen von Ideenwelt und Natur. Dann wird, was immer im menschlichen Geiste gesucht werden sollte, außerhalb desselben in der Schöpfung gesucht. In dem göttlichen Geist werden die Urbilder aller Dinge enthalten gedacht. Die Welt wird der unvollkommene Abglanz der in Gott ruhenden vollkommenen Ideenwelt. Es wird dann in Folge einer einseitigen Auffassung des Platonismus die Menschenseele von dem Verhältnis zwischen Idee und «Wirklichkeit» getrennt. Sie dehnt ihr berechtigt gedachtes Verhältnis zur göttlichen Weltordnung aus auf das Verhältnis, das in ihr lebt zwischen Ideenwelt und Sinnes-Scheinwelt. Augustinus kommt durch solche Vorstellungsart zu Ansichten wie diese: «Ohne jedes Schwanken wollen wir glauben, daß die denkende Seele nicht wesensgleich sei mit Gott, denn dieser gestattet keine Gemeinschaft, daß aber die Seele erleuchtet werden könne durch Teilnahme an der Gottesnatur.» Auf diese Art wird der Menschenseele dann, wenn diese Vorstellungsart einseitig übertrieben wird, die Möglichkeit entzogen, in der Naturbetrachtung die Ideenwelt als Wesen der Wirklichkeit mitzuerleben. Und es wird solches Miterleben als unchristlich gedeutet. Über das Christentum selbst wird die einseitige Anschauung des Platonismus gebreitet. Der Platonismus als philosophische Weltanschauung hält sich mehr im Elemente des Denkens; das religiöse Empfinden taucht das Denken in das Gefühlsleben und befestigt es auf diese Art in der Menschennatur. So im Menschenseelenleben verankert konnte das Ungesunde des einseitigen Platonismus in der abendländischen Gedankenentwicklung tiefere Bedeutung gewinnen, als wenn es bloß Philosophie geblieben wäre. Durch Jahrhunderte stand diese Gedankenentwicklung vor Fragen wie diese: wie steht, was der Mensch als Idee ausbildet, zu den Dingen der Wirklichkeit? Sind die in der Menschenseele durch die Ideenwelt lebenden Begriffe nur Vorstellungen, Namen, die mit der Wirklichkeit nichts zu tun haben? Sind sie selbst etwas Wirkliches, das der Mensch empfängt, indem er die Wirklichkeit wahrnimmt und durch seinen Verstand begreift? Solche Fragen sind für die Goethesche Weltanschauung keine Verstandesfragen über irgend etwas, das außerhalb der menschlichen Wesenheit liegt. Im menschlichen Anschauen der Wirklichkeit lösen sich diese Fragen in immerwährender Lebendigkeit durch das wahre menschliche Erkennen. Und diese Goethesche Weltanschauung muß nicht nur finden, daß in den christlichen Gedanken der Niederschlag eines einseitigen Platonismus lebt, sondern sie empfindet sich selbst dem echten Christentum entfremdet, wenn dieses von solchem Platonismus getränkt, ihr entgegentritt. - Was in vielen Gedanken lebt, die Goethe in sich ausgebildet hat, um sich die Welt verständlich zu machen, das war Ablehnung der von ihm als ungesund empfundenen Strömung des Platonismus. Daß er daneben einen freien Sinn hatte für die platonische Erhebung der Menschenseele zur Ideenwelt, das wird durch manchen Ausspruch bezeugt, den er in dieser Richtung getan hat. Er fühlte in sich die Wirksamkeit der Ideenwirklichkeit, indem er in seiner Art der Natur betrachtend und forschend gegenübertrat; er fühlte, daß die Natur selbst in der Sprache der Ideen redet, wenn sich die Seele solcher Sprache erschließt. Aber er konnte nicht zugeben, daß man die Ideenwelt als Abgesondertes betrachtet, und sich dadurch die Möglichkeit schuf gegenüber einer Idee von dem Pflanzenwesen zu sagen: Das ist keine Erfahrung, das ist eine Idee. Da empfand er, daß sein geistiges Auge die Idee als Wirklichkeit schaute, wie das sinnliche Auge den physischen Teil des Pflanzenwesens sieht. So stellte sich in Goethes Weltanschauung die auf die Ideenwelt gehende Richtung des Platonismus in ihrer Reinheit her, und es wird in ihr die von der Wirklichkeit ablenkende Strömung desselben überwunden. Wegen dieser Gestaltung seiner Weltanschauung mußte Goethe auch ablehnen, was ihm sich als christliche Vorstellungen so gab, daß es ihm nur als umgewandelter einseitiger Platonismus erscheinen konnte. Und er mußte empfinden, daß in den Formen mancher Weltanschauung, die ihm entgegentraten und mit denen er sich auseinandersetzen wollte, es nicht gelungen sei, die christlich-platonische, nicht natur- und ideengemäße Ansicht über die Wirklichkeit innerhalb der abendländischen Bildung zu überwinden.
The Platonic worldview
[ 1 ] With his own admirable boldness, Plato expresses this mistrust in experience: The things of this world, which our senses perceive, have no true being at all: they always become, but never are. They have only a relative being, are altogether only in and through their relation to one another; therefore one can just as well call their whole existence a non-being. They are consequently also not objects of actual knowledge. For there can only be such knowledge of that which is in and of itself and always in the same way; they, on the other hand, are only the object of a perception induced by sensation. As long as we are limited only to their perception, we resemble men who sit so firmly bound in a dark cave that they could not turn their heads and see nothing but by the light of a fire burning behind them, on the wall opposite them, the shadow images of real things, which would pass between them and the fire, and even of each other, indeed each of themselves, just the shadows on that wall. But their wisdom would be to predict the order of those shadows learned from experience.
[ 2 ] The Platonic view tears the idea of the world as a whole apart into two parts, into the idea of an illusory world and into another of the world of ideas, to which alone true, eternal reality is supposed to correspond. "What alone can be called truly existing, because it always is, but never becomes, nor passes away: these are the ideal archetypes of those shadowy images, they are the eternal Ideas, the archetypes of all things. They have no multiplicity; for each is in its essence only one in that it is the archetype itself, whose afterimages or shadows are all individual, transient things of the same kind with the same name. Nor do they come into being or pass away; for they are truly existing, but never becoming, nor perishing like their vanishing afterimages. Of them alone, therefore, there is an actual knowledge, since the object of such a knowledge can only be that which is always and in every consideration, not that which is, but also again is not, depending on how one looks at it."
[ 3 ] The distinction between idea and perception is only justified when we speak of the way in which human cognition comes about. Man must allow things to speak to him in two ways. They tell him part of their essence voluntarily. He need only listen. This is the part of reality that is free of ideas. The other, however, he must elicit from them. He must set his thinking in motion, then his inner being will be filled with the ideas of things. Within the personality is the arena in which things also reveal their ideal inner being. There they express what remains eternally hidden from external perception. The essence of nature is expressed here. But it is only due to human organization that things must be recognized through the harmony of two tones. In nature there is an exciter which produces both sounds. The unbiased person listens to the harmony. He recognizes in the ideal language of his inner being the statements that things make to him. Only those who have lost their impartiality interpret things differently. He believes that the language of his inner self comes from a different realm than the language of external perception. Plato realized the importance for the human world view of the fact that the world reveals itself to man from two sides. From his insightful evaluation of this fact, he recognized that the world of the senses, considered on its own, cannot be attributed reality. Only when the world of ideas shines forth from the life of the soul and man can place the idea and sense observation before his mind as a unified experience of knowledge, does he have true reality before him. What sense observation has before it, without being illuminated by the light of ideas, is an illusory world. Seen in this way, Plato's insight also sheds light on Parmenides' view of the illusory character of sensory things. And it can be said that Plato's philosophy is one of the most sublime constructs of thought that has ever sprung from the mind of mankind. Platonism is the conviction that the goal of all striving for knowledge must be the appropriation of the ideas that support the world and form its foundation. Anyone who cannot awaken this conviction in himself does not understand the Platonic world view. - But insofar as Platonism has intervened in the development of Western thought, it also shows another side. Plato did not stop at emphasizing the insight that in human perception the sense world becomes an illusion if the light of the world of ideas is not thrown upon it, but by his presentation of this fact he encouraged the opinion that the sense world in itself, apart from man, is an illusory world and that true reality can only be found in the ideas. This opinion gives rise to the question: how do ideas and the world of the senses (nature) come together outside of man? For those who cannot recognize an idea-free sense world outside of man, the question of the relationship between idea and sense world is one that must be sought and solved within the human being. And so the matter stands before Goethe's world view. For it, the question: "What relationship exists outside of man between the idea and the sense world?" is an unhealthy one, because for it there is no sense world (nature) without the idea outside of man. Only man can separate the idea from the sensory world for himself and thus imagine nature without an idea. Therefore one can say: for Goethe's world view, the question: "How do ideas and sensory things come together?", which has occupied the development of Western thought for centuries, is a completely superfluous question. And the precipitation of this current of Platonism running through the development of Western thought, which Goethe confronted, for example, in the above-mentioned conversation with Schiller, but also in other cases, had the effect on his sensibility of an unhealthy element of human imagination. What he did not express clearly in words, but what lived in his perception and became a co-forming impulse of his own world view, is the view: what healthy human perception teaches at every moment: how the language of perception and thought combine to reveal the full reality, that was ignored by the brooding thinkers. Instead of looking at how nature speaks to man, they formed artificial concepts about the relationship between the world of ideas and experience. In order to fully comprehend the profound significance of this school of thought, which Goethe felt to be unhealthy, in the worldviews that he encountered and which he wanted to orientate himself towards, one must consider how the implied current of Platonism, which evaporates the world of the senses into appearance and thereby brings the world of ideas into a skewed relationship with it, has been reinforced by a one-sided philosophical grasp of Christian truth in the course of the development of Western thought. Because Goethe was confronted with the Christian view, which he felt to be connected with the unhealthy current of Platonism, he was only able to develop his relationship to Christianity with difficulty. Goethe did not follow in detail the continued influence of the current of Platonism, which he rejected, in the development of Christian thought, but he felt the impact of this continued influence in the ways of thinking that he encountered. Therefore, an examination of the development of his way of thinking sheds light on the formation of this precipitation in the schools of thought that had developed over the centuries before Goethe's appearance. Many of the representatives of Christian thought endeavored to come to terms with the belief in the afterlife and with the value of sensory existence in relation to the spiritual world. If the view was accepted that the relationship between the world of senses and the world of ideas has a significance separate from that of man, the resulting question led to the view of the divine world order. And church fathers who were confronted with this question had to think about the role of the Platonic world of ideas within this divine world order. They were thus faced with the danger of combining that which is connected in human cognition through direct observation: Not only to think of ideas and the world of senses as separate for themselves apart from man, but to separate them from each other, that the ideas, outside of what is given to man as nature, also have an existence for themselves in a spirituality separate from nature. If this idea, which was based on an untrue view of the world of ideas and the world of the senses, were combined with the justified view that the divine can never be fully consciously present in the human soul, a complete separation of the world of ideas and nature would result. Then whatever should be sought in the human spirit is sought outside it in creation. The archetypes of all things are thought to be contained in the divine spirit. The world becomes the imperfect reflection of the perfect world of ideas resting in God. As a result of a one-sided view of Platonism, the human soul is then separated from the relationship between idea and "reality". It extends its justifiably conceived relationship to the divine world order to the relationship that exists within it between the world of ideas and the world of sensory appearances. Augustine arrives at views such as these through this kind of conception: "Without any wavering we want to believe that the thinking soul is not of the same essence as God, for the latter does not permit communion, but that the soul can be enlightened through participation in the nature of God." In this way, if this way of thinking is exaggerated one-sidedly, the human soul is deprived of the possibility of experiencing the world of ideas as the essence of reality in the contemplation of nature. And such co-experience is interpreted as unchristian. The one-sided view of Platonism is spread over Christianity itself. Platonism, as a philosophical world view, remains more in the element of thought; religious feeling immerses thought in the emotional life and in this way anchors it in human nature. Thus anchored in the life of the human soul, the unhealthiness of one-sided Platonism could gain deeper meaning in the development of Western thought than if it had remained mere philosophy. For centuries, this development of thought was faced with questions such as: how does what man forms as an idea relate to the things of reality? Are the concepts that live in the human soul through the world of ideas just ideas, names that have nothing to do with reality? Are they themselves something real that man receives by perceiving reality and comprehending it through his intellect? For Goethe's view of the world, such questions are not intellectual questions about anything that lies outside the human being. In the human contemplation of reality, these questions are resolved in perpetual vitality through true human cognition. And this Goethean view of the world must not only find that in Christian thought lives the precipitate of a one-sided Platonism, but it feels itself alienated from genuine Christianity when the latter, soaked in such Platonism, confronts it. - What lives in many of the thoughts that Goethe formed within himself in order to make the world comprehensible to himself was a rejection of the current of Platonism, which he felt to be unhealthy. That he also had an open mind for the Platonic elevation of the human soul to the world of ideas is attested to by many a statement he made in this direction. He felt within himself the efficacy of the reality of ideas, as he approached nature in his way of contemplation and research; he felt that nature itself speaks in the language of ideas when the soul opens itself up to such language. But he could not admit that the world of ideas was regarded as something separate, and that this made it possible for him to say to an idea of a plant being: "This is not an experience, this is an idea. Then he felt that his spiritual eye saw the idea as reality, just as the sensual eye sees the physical part of the plant being. Thus in Goethe's view of the world the direction of Platonism towards the world of ideas was established in its purity, and in it the current of Platonism that distracts from reality is overcome. Because of this shaping of his world view, Goethe also had to reject what presented itself to him as Christian ideas in such a way that it could only appear to him as transformed one-sided Platonism. And he had to feel that in the forms of some worldviews that confronted him and with which he wanted to come to terms, he had not succeeded in overcoming the Christian-Platonic view of reality within Western education, which was not in keeping with nature and ideas.