16. Goethe's Understanding

What Goethe actually means by understanding becomes clear to us when we consider the three stages of mental activity through which, in his view, man rises to the highest possible understanding of things.

Several years ago, I pointed out that Goethe must have set down these views in an essay of his own, which he sent to Schiller in 1798. At the time, I tried to reconstruct the content of this essay, which may have been lost but may also still be found, based on the correspondence.

I said at the time that Goethe distinguished three levels of knowledge of nature: firstly, the point of view of common empiricism, which deals with empirical phenomena. This point of view collects the individual phenomena, describes and organizes them for the mind.

The second point of view is that of ordinary scientific knowledge, which deals with scientific phenomena. Here, the phenomena as they appear to us in nature are intensified in an attempt to understand them. Man not only observes nature, he sets up the conditions himself so that nature answers certain questions he asks of it. Through a series of conditions he has put together, a phenomenon appears that would otherwise not appear in nature in this way. But it always remains a single phenomenon.

The mind must now rise above this individual phenomenon, no longer seeing it as an individual but as a link in a chain. It must separate the essential from the accidental, the permanent from the temporary; it must see in the individual phenomenon only an example, only a symbol of a law of nature, of an idea. Then nature has spoken to him. But then he no longer has this individual phenomenon before him, but a higher, more general phenomenon. The individual is only an example through which the general expresses itself. Then he has the rational phenomenon, and with that he has succeeded in climbing the third form of knowledge.

Those who lack an understanding of this third way of knowing will never understand Goethe. And unfortunately the whole of modern natural philosophy is far removed from it. We must have the courage to admit this despite the great developments in the individual that it has made. We must have the courage to say openly and frankly: natural science does not understand Goethe. And how little has been contributed from this side to an appreciation of his essence is precisely what the Weimar edition will show.

Modern natural science unfortunately stops at the second stage of cognition. And when, as happened recently with Jordan, as it happened years ago with du Bois-Reymond and as it is parroted again and again, Goethe is denied the scientific sense altogether, this means nothing other than: Those who make this accusation simply have no sense of the third stage of knowledge; the revelations of this stage are closed to them. What is found here they do not understand. They therefore regard it as the poet's unscientific views.

This opinion is now thoroughly refuted by the Weimar Treasures. We see here how Goethe deals extensively with the entire intellectual treasure of his time, we see him engaged in chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, botany, and mineralogy. No problem that has occupied the minds in these sciences remains outside his circle. With thorough prudence, he works his way through everything. He even studies mathematics, a subject in which Goethe is all too often said to have had no understanding at all.

In the face of these treasures, one cannot but be convinced that Goethe was at the pinnacle of the scientific knowledge of his time. In view of this fact, which is established beyond doubt by Goethe's intellectual legacy, those claims that Goethe lacked a scientific mind appear completely void. At the Goethe Archive in Weimar, we have proof of the serious, solid scientific greatness of Goethe's world view, and I say expressly of the scientific greatness of Goethe's world view.

For what we have in his scientific works is a complete confession of that third stage of knowledge of which I have spoken; here he has already overcome the second stage. He gives us only the highest fruit of his studies. To the deeper thinker, of course, the greatness of these writings was clear from the outset. But those who could not rise to this point of view did not understand Goethe's writings.

And herein I see a major part of the task of the Goetheanum. It must see its task as showing us the points of passage through which Goethe struggled, and in this way it must lift us up to those heights that Goethe scaled.

We know that Goethe once said to Eckermann: His works cannot become popular. They are understandable only to a few educated people who have the same feelings and the same views. But these few will become more and more if, by recognizing the path by which Goethe reached his spiritual height, if his spiritual legacy provides us with guidance on this path.

I see the main prize as lying precisely in what is newly emerging from Weimar in terms of an understanding of his scientific outlook. But do not think that new light will not also fall on his poetic achievements. But a large part of the convictions, feelings and thoughts that permeate the organic structure of his poetic work can be found in his scientific achievements.

Thus, with good cheer and full of confidence in the certain direction of a scientific purpose, I made Goethe's scientific writings the subject of my detailed considerations as early as a number of years ago; for I expected from it a furtherance of the whole conception of Goethe's nature. I also put all my studies at the service of this work and experienced the joy of many a confirmation, although there was no lack of decided contradiction.

This contradiction is a matter of course, especially with regard to the subject matter. Of Goethe's scientific works, only the Theory of Colors is available as a fully systematic work in all its parts. We also have the attempt at the metamorphosis of plants, which can be considered a completed monograph. Everything else is fragmentary.

In anatomy, botany, geology and mineralogy, for example, great ideas alternate with mere suggestions or even schematizations. Many a supplementary idea was necessary, and transitions had to be created. Often the prerequisites for the consequences expressed by Goethe had to be determined independently. The aim was to work towards a holistic Goethean conception of the world, into which the fragmentary components could be integrated without contradiction.

But precisely because of the fragmentary nature of Goethe's writings, we have a series of completely opposing views of his outlook. From those who see in him the pure Platonist, who seeks in abstract, idealized schemata the “be-all and end-all” of science, to those who declare him to be a materialist and realist in the sense of the modern physical school on the one hand, and a Darwinian on the other, we have all the intermediate stages. Each then picks out those passages in Goethe's writings that serve to confirm his preconceived opinion.

Those who approach Goethe directly find that Goethe is above all these points of view. Those who have looked a little deeper into the workings of the human mind will eventually find that no one says anything so wrong and illogical that it does not have some truth to it, however limited. But the defect of many minds is that they cannot rise above this limitation.

'For example, who could say that the mechanical conception of nature is wrong? It is fully justified for certain lower levels of natural existence and offers a sufficient explanation for this area. But as soon as we enter the realm of sensory perception, where man, this most perfect physical apparatus according to Goethe's saying, confronts the world, the merely mechanical ceases, the mechanical conception appears as a completely insufficient one.

This is why Goethe confronted Newton's own color theory with his own. The appreciation of Goethe's color theory must start from there. It will then appear to us in a completely new light as a supplement to what is missing from Newton's purely physical color theory. It is certain that Goethe would have done better to refrain from the somewhat passionate polemic against Newton and his school. By emphasizing the contradiction, the opponents were only embittered. Goethe later realized this too. That is why we find a testamentary disposition according to which the polemical part of the theory of colors should actually be omitted from his works. The systematic part should speak for itself. Of course, we are not in a position to carry out this disposition. For no one has the right to withdraw a work of Goethe from the eyes of the world. But we can at least shape our view in the sense that the intention hinted at by Goethe in his will is taken into account.