37. Goethe's World View in the History of Thought

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And each group represents one of the two main currents that make up the intellectual life of the second half of the century.

In the youth of each of us there is a struggle between these two currents. One current can be characterized by the word: longing for freedom in all its forms:

— independence from divine providence.

— independence from tradition and the inherited sentiments of our ancestors.

— Independence from the influence of social and state powers.

— Independence from prejudices acquired by education.

The other current is that which stems from modern science.

We descend from the most highly developed mammals. Our nature is similar to that of these creatures, only more perfect. We can only act as we are organized. Our actions are more complicated, but the political revolutions of the century are not, because they thought, they felt, as one has thought and felt for millennia. As long as the old worldview lived in people's minds, the old forms of society and state were also justified.

Hegel recognized this. He understood that the old world order is the way it must be according to the old world of ideas. Reality corresponded to the old way of thinking, the old reasonableness.

Hegel was one of the most intelligent people of all time; a person of sophisticated thinking who knew the world of ideas of his time down to the finest ramifications and who could see that the existing reality in [here are missing two manuscript pages] original natural forces, which work out of themselves, without divine intervention. One could explain nature from its own source. And with that, a completely new position within the natural order was indicated to man. According to the old worldview, he had to derive his origin from the wise creator, from whom he derived all the rest of nature. This wise creator determines the laws of nature, this wise creator also determines the fate of men. Man had to bow to the will of this wise creator. He had to look up to him in humility, to explore his counsel and to follow it. With the new world view, this being standing above man was now extinguished. Man felt that he could feel like the highest being in the order of natural things; he could give himself direction and purpose in his existence. He could feel that he stood above all other beings, but he no longer needed to feel a power above him. In place of the philosophy of humility, the philosophy of pride, of self-confident humanity, could arise.

In this change in the world of feeling lies the great revolutionizing of minds in the nineteenth century.

The first person in German intellectual life to awaken this new world of feeling within himself and to proclaim it to the world was Goethe. Forty to fifty years before Geoffroy, in his dull and elementary way, proclaimed his battle cries against Cuvier, Goethe had already proclaimed the new gospel.

At the end of the last century, Goethe lived, thought and wrote poetry in accordance with the new view, which even today has remained the possession of only a few.

The way in which Goethe developed the new world view is a psychological fact of the very first order.

It grew in him as if out of nothing, as if out of the productive imagination of the individual genius, while he was surrounded by minds that were thoroughly in the thrall of the old world view. Goethe did not know that he was a century ahead of his time in terms of feeling. He did not know the future-proof impact of his thinking and feeling, and because it was a completely new plant in modern times that flourished in him, because he saw only contradiction and other views surrounding him, he felt insecure.

A mighty urge for knowledge lived in Goethe. An urge that expresses itself in the speeches of his Faust in such a moving way. He strove for truth, for knowledge of the deepest reasons for things. For he was imbued with the eternal truth, and that was what he, as a poet, wanted to proclaim to the world. He was not one of those lucky people who stick to the surface of things and believe that if they describe this surface faithfully, they are telling the truth. He felt that those who seek truth must delve into the depths of things, far below the surface.

The direction that his quest for knowledge took was such that all his immersion in the works and speeches of his contemporaries was of no use to him.

This contrast between Goethe's view was most clearly expressed in the conversation with Schiller, which Goethe himself described.

This old world view sees a deep chasm between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit, the world of thought. Goethe believes he can see his ideas with his eyes, just as one sees colors and light with the eyes. And for him, the human mind is an organ for seeing the ideas that belong to things just as colors belong to things.

That ideas belong to things contradicted all feelings of European cultural humanity at the time of Goethe.

Centuries of education in a false world view have thoroughly driven out this natural feeling.

The first person we can say with certainty has worked on this false education of European humanity is Parmenides.

Plato was Plato's foundation. The world of the senses is an illusion. The world of ideas alone is the truth. Despite Aristotle, European humanity was educated in this wrong world view. Christianity greedily adopted Platonism. From the illusion of the world of the senses, which has no truth, it made the sinful, the bad world, the earthly vale of tears. From the world of ideas, it made the hereafter, after man's longing. From the Platonic world of ideas, Christian providence was made. The ideas were transferred to the mind of God.

Nature was deprived of its rights. The mind, which belongs to nature, was snatched from it. And since man also belongs to nature, the spirit was also wrested from him, that is, this spirit was no longer to rule within man, no longer to be a part of him, of which he is master, which he possesses, with whose help he rules the world. No, the spirit was to lead an independent existence outside of man and through divine grace the blessings of this spirit were to flow to man. Man could not say: I am the spirit and what I do, I do by virtue of my spirit, but had to say: The spirit is above me and I do what it commands; man could not say: I descend into my spiritual being and explore the world of thoughts within me if I want to know the truth, but had to look up to God if he wanted to have knowledge.

Humanity was oppressed by the spirit throughout the Middle Ages. And when a new light dawned on some minds in modern times, it could not possibly unfold equally brightly; it could only dawn.

Christianity has not only filled the head with unhealthy thoughts, it has also led the heart and the life of feeling astray.

This can be seen in Baco and Descartes. The former restored the sense world to its rightful place, but the spirit was neglected. Descartes did not respect sensory knowledge. And Spinoza wanted to develop all wisdom and virtue from the spirit. The bond between the sense world and the spiritual world had been broken. One had become accustomed to the contempt of the sensual world. Therefore, the spiritual production also remained empty. Spinoza spun a logical web that makes the healthy person shiver.

Kant [gathered] the errors of the centuries in himself. He was full of the educational prejudices of these centuries.

Kant's gospel was the distressing gospel of Faust, that we cannot know anything. And Goethe, when he realized the bleak bleakness of this world view, could well say: it almost makes my heart burn.

What no German philosopher could give him, Goethe found in the contemplation of Greek works of art in Italy. In these works of art he found the sure truth, the ideal essence of the things he was seeking.

The high works of art.

The subject: nature.

(“When healthy nature works in man as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified [and valuable] whole, when harmonious comfort gives him pure, free delight – then the universe would rejoice if it could feel itself and admire the summit of its own becoming and being.”)

In man, nature reveals its secrets.

But Goethe lacked something for the full development of the proud human consciousness.

How did you get this far?
They say you have done well! My child! I have done it wisely, I have never thought about thinking.

And so he fell back into the old world view, into the old world of feeling. And it was in the spirit of this old world of feeling that Goethe rewrote his Faust.

What would have become of Faust if Goethe had remained true to his old world view?

What happened to him under the influence of his age?

Goethe the old man could not resist the world of feeling and imagination that assailed him from all sides; he finally bowed. But when he sensed Geoffroy's spirit in his spirit, all the thoughts and feelings that he had had in his own youth were kindled again. Geoffroy's cause was his cause after all.

And this cause of his has become the spiritual driving force of the nineteenth century.

Feuerbach came; Stirner came.

They were the two destroyers of the old misunderstood world of ideas, the restorers of the mistreated nature. Stirner marks a milestone.

The great Mephistopheles of the nineteenth century.

In his Nothing we hope to find the All.

The yawning abyss, the great Stirnerian Nothing had to be filled.

It had to be filled in a different way than Goethe did. With high [two manuscript pages missing here] there. When man says I will, this wanting is an earthly one. Man no longer needs to feel respect for a higher being; he is the highest being he knows; he has become the master of himself.