The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Goethe and Hegel

[ 1 ] Goethe's view of the world only goes as far as a certain limit. He observes the phenomena of light and color and penetrates to the primordial phenomenon; he seeks to find his way within the diversity of the plant being and arrives at its sensual, supersensible primordial plant. He does not ascend from the primordial phenomenon or the primordial plant to higher principles of explanation. He leaves that to the philosophers. He is satisfied when "he finds himself on the empirical level, where he can look backwards over experience in all its stages, and forward into the realm of theory, if he cannot enter it, he can at least look into it. Goethe goes so far in his contemplation of the real that he can see the ideas. How the ideas are related to one another; how one emerges from the other within the ideal; these are tasks that only begin at the empirical level at which Goethe remains. "The idea is eternal and unique," he says, "that we also need the plural is not well done. Everything that we become aware of and of which we can speak are only manifestations of the idea." Since, however, the idea appears in manifestation as a multiplicity of individual ideas, e.g. the idea of the plant, the idea of the animal, these must be reducible to a basic form, just as the plant can be traced back to the leaf. The individual ideas are also only different in their appearance; in their true essence they are identical. It is therefore just as much in the spirit of Goethe's world view to speak of a metamorphosis of ideas as of a metamorphosis of plants. The philosopher who has attempted to describe this metamorphosis of ideas is Hegel. He is thus the philosopher of Goethe's world view. He starts from the simplest idea, pure "being". In this the true form of world phenomena is completely concealed. Their rich content becomes an anemic abstraction. Hegel has been reproached for deriving the whole world of ideas from pure "being". But pure being contains the whole world of ideas "according to the idea", just as the leaf contains the whole plant according to the idea. Hegel traces the metamorphoses of the idea from pure abstract being to the stage at which the idea becomes a directly real phenomenon. He considers this highest stage to be the appearance of philosophy itself. For in philosophy, the ideas that are effective in the world are seen in their very own form. In Goethe's terms, one could say: philosophy is the idea in its greatest expansion; pure being is the idea in its outermost contraction. The fact that Hegel sees in philosophy the most perfect metamorphosis of the idea proves that true self-regard is as far removed from him as it is from Goethe. A thing has reached its highest metamorphosis when it works out its full content in perception, in immediate life. Philosophy, however, contains the idea content of the world not in the form of life, but in the form of thought. The living idea, the idea as perception, is given solely to human self-observation. Hegel's philosophy is not a world view of freedom, because it does not seek the content of the world in its highest form on the ground of the human personality. On this ground all content becomes entirely individual. It is not this individual that Hegel seeks, but the general, the genus. He therefore does not place the origin of the moral in the human individual, but in the world order lying outside the human being, which is supposed to contain the moral ideas. Man does not give himself his moral goal, but has to integrate himself into the moral world order. For Hegel, the individual is considered to be the bad thing if it remains in its individuality. It only acquires its value within the whole. This is the attitude of the bourgeoisie, says Max Stirner, "and its poet Goethe, like its philosopher Hegel, knew how to glorify the dependence of the subject on the object, obedience to the objective world, etc.". This is again another one-sided mode of conception. Hegel, like Goethe, lacks the conception of freedom, because both lack the conception of the innermost essence of the world of thought. Hegel certainly feels himself to be a philosopher of Goethe's world view. He wrote to Goethe on February 20, 1821: "You place the simple and abstract, which you very aptly call the primal phenomenon, at the top, then point out the more concrete phenomena as arising through the addition of further modes of action and circumstances and govern the whole course in such a way that the sequence progresses from the simple conditions to the composite ones and ranks them in such a way that the complex now appears in its clarity through this decomposition. To trace out the original phenomenon, to free it from the other surroundings which are accidental to it, - to comprehend it abstractly, as we call it, this I regard as a matter of the great spiritual sense of nature, as well as that course in general as the truly scientific aspect of knowledge in this field." "But may I now also speak to you of the special interest that such an outstanding primordial phenomenon has for us philosophers, namely that we can use such a preparation for philosophical purposes! - For once we have finally exposed our initially oyster-like, gray or completely black ... ... absolute against air and light, so that it has become desirous of it, we need windows in order to bring it fully out into the light of day; our schemas would fade into a haze if we wanted to place them in the colorful, confused company of the disgusting world. Here now come to us Ew. etc. In this twilight, spiritual and comprehensible through its simplicity, visible or tangible through its sensuality - the two worlds, our abstruse and the appearing existence, greet each other."

[ 2 ] Although Goethe's worldview and Hegel's philosophy correspond perfectly, one would be very much mistaken if one were to attribute the same value to Goethe's and Hegel's intellectual achievements. The same mode of conception lives in both. Both want to avoid self-perception. Yet Goethe conducted his reflections in areas in which the lack of perception does not have a harmful effect. Even if he never saw the world of ideas as perception, he lived in the world of ideas and allowed it to permeate his observations. Like Goethe, Hegel did not see the world of ideas as perception, as individual spirit existence. But it was precisely on the world of ideas that he made his reflections. These are therefore skewed and untrue in many directions. If Hegel had made observations about nature, they would probably have been just as valuable as Goethe's; if Goethe had wanted to set up a philosophical edifice of thought, he would probably have lost the sure view of true reality that guided him in his observations of nature.