Goethe's World View
GA 6
Afterword to the New Edition of 1918
[ 1 ] It was said by critics of this work immediately after its publication that it did not give a picture of Goethe's "Weltanschauung", but only of his "Naturanschauung". I am not of the opinion that this judgment was made from a justified point of view, even if, on the face of it, the book speaks almost exclusively of Goethe's ideas of nature. For I believe I have shown in the course of my remarks that these ideas of nature are based on a very particular way of looking at world phenomena. And I believe I have indicated, through the writing itself, that the adoption of a point of view towards natural phenomena, such as Goethe had, can lead to certain views on psychological, historical and further-reaching world phenomena. What is expressed in Goethe's view of nature in a certain area is precisely a world view, not a mere view of nature, which could also be held by a personality whose thoughts have no significance for a further world view. On the other hand, however, I did not believe that I should present in this book anything other than what can be said in direct connection with the area that Goethe himself worked out from the overall scope of his world view. It is, of course, quite possible and undoubtedly of the utmost interest to sketch the world view that reveals itself in Goethe's poetry, in his art-historical ideas, and so on. However, anyone who considers the attitude of the present work will not look for such a world view in it. Such a person will recognize that I have set myself the task of tracing that part of Goethe's view of the world for which there are explanations in his own writings, one of which emerges from the other without any gaps. I have also indicated at various points where Goethe got stuck in this complete elaboration of his world view, which he succeeded in doing for certain areas of nature. Goethe's views on the world and on life reveal themselves in the broadest sense. However, the emergence of these views from his very own world view is not as clear in his works beyond the field of natural phenomena as it is in this field. In other areas it becomes clear what Goethe's soul had to reveal to the world; in the area of his ideas of nature it becomes clear how the basic trait of his spirit conquers a world view step by step up to a certain limit. Precisely by going no further in the sketch of Goethe's work of thought than in the realization of that which has developed in him into a mentally closed piece of world view, one will gain a light for the special colouring of that which otherwise reveals itself in his life's work. That is why I did not want to paint the world view that speaks from Goethe's life's work as a whole, but rather that part of it that comes to light in him himself in the form in which a world view is mentally expressed. The views that emerge from a personality, however great, are not yet part of a self-contained and coherently conceived world view. But Goethe's ideas of nature are such a self-contained piece of a world view. And as an illumination of natural phenomena, they are not a mere view of nature, but the link of a world view.
[ 2 ] I am not surprised that I have been accused of having changed my views since the publication of this book, since I am not unfamiliar with the assumptions that guide such judgments. In the preface to the first volume of my "Rätsel der Philosophie" and in an essay in the journal "Das Reich" ("Die Geisteswissenschaft als Anthroposophie und die zeitgenössische Erkenntnistheorie", 2nd volume, 2nd book of "Das Reich") I have spoken out about this search for contradictions in my writings. Such a search is only possible with judges who completely misjudge how my world view must behave if it wants to take different areas of life into consideration. I will not go into this question again here in general, but only briefly comment on a few things with reference to this Goethe book. I myself see in the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which I have been presenting in my writings for 16 years, that kind of knowledge for the spiritual world content accessible to man to which he must come who has enlivened Goethe's ideas of nature in his soul as something corresponding to him and from there strives for cognitive experiences about the spiritual realm of the world. I am of the opinion that this spiritual science presupposes a natural science that corresponds to Goethe's. Not only do I mean that the spiritual science I present does not contradict this natural science. For I know that it says little if there is only no logical contradiction between different assertions. They could therefore be quite incompatible in reality. Rather, I believe I can see that Goethe's ideas about the realm of nature, really experienced, must necessarily lead to the anthroposophical insights I have outlined if, as Goethe has not yet done, the experiences in the realm of nature are transferred to experiences in the realm of spirit. The nature of these latter experiences is described in my spiritual scientific works. For this reason, the essential content of this book, which I published for the first time in 1897, has been reprinted as my rendition of Goethe's world view even now, after the publication of my writings on spiritual science. All the ideas presented in it are still valid for me today. I have only made changes in individual passages, which do not affect the attitude of the thoughts, but only the stylization of individual statements. And it is understandable that, after twenty years, one might wish to stylize a book differently here or there. What is otherwise different in the new edition from the previous one are a few additions, not changes to the content. I am of the opinion that anyone seeking a scientific foundation for spiritual science can find it in Goethe's world view. Therefore, it seems to me that a writing on Goethe's world view can also be of importance to those who want to deal with anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. My writing, however, is designed to consider Goethe's world view entirely on its own, without reference to spiritual science proper. (Some of what can be said about Goethe from the point of view of the humanities in particular can be found in my essay on "Goethe's Faust and the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake").
[ 3 ] Subsequent note: A critic of this book of mine on Goethe (in Kantstudien III, 1898) thought he had made a special discovery with regard to my "contradictions" by combining what I say about Platonism in this book (in the first edition of 1897) with a statement that I made at almost exactly the same time in my introduction to the 4th volume of Goethe's Natural Sciences. Volume 4 of Goethe's scientific writings (Kürschner's edition): "Plato's philosophy is one of the most sublime constructs of thought that ever arose from the spirit of mankind. It is one of the saddest signs of our time that the Platonic approach to philosophy is regarded as the very opposite of sound reason." It is difficult for certain minds to understand that every thing, viewed from different sides, presents itself differently. That my various statements about Platonism do not represent a real contradiction will be easily understood by those who do not adhere to the mere sounds of words, but who consider the various relations into which I had to bring Platonism, on the one hand and on the other, by its own nature. On the one hand, it is a sad sign if one regards Platonism as contrary to sound reason, because one finds it only in accordance with this reason to stand still with the mere view of the senses as the only reality. And it is also contrary to a healthy view of the idea and the sensory world if Platonism is applied in such a way that an unhealthy separation of idea and sensory view is brought about by it. He who cannot enter into this kind of intellectual penetration of the phenomena of life always remains, with what he comprehends, outside reality. He who - to use Goethe's phrase - piles up a concept in order to limit a rich content of life, has no sense of the fact that life takes shape in relationships that have different effects in different directions. It is, however, more convenient to substitute a schematic concept for a view of the fullness of life; it is easy to make schematic judgments with such concepts. But through such a process one lives in abstractions without essence. Human concepts become such abstractions precisely because one thinks that one can treat them in the mind in the same way as things treat each other. But these concepts are rather like images that one receives from different sides of a thing. The thing is one; the images are many. And it is not the focus on one image, but the combination of several images that leads to a view of the thing. Since I unfortunately had to see how much inclination there is among some judges to construct "contradictions" from such an observation of a phenomenon from different points of view, which strives for penetration with reality, I felt compelled in this new edition to make particularly clear in the explanations on Platonism, firstly, by a somewhat altered stylization of the presentation given in the first edition, that which seemed to me twenty years ago to be truly clear enough from the context in which it stands; secondly, to show how the two statements are in complete harmony with each other by placing the statement from my other work next to what is said in this book. But for those who have a taste for finding contradictions in such things, I have saved them the trouble of having to search for them in two books.