2. Philosophy

GA 76/1921-04-04/p035 ·1921-04-04 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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Goethe sensed what lies in this pure thinking. Others can only feel it with him. That is why they always quote a Goethe saying incorrectly, which says something like that the kind God has saved him from “thinking about thinking”. As Goethe meant it, it is already correct. Goethe never “thought about thinking” because, admittedly, one cannot achieve this pure thinking with the thinking that one has become accustomed to. One must look at it as an image. So that one can say: the thinking itself that one wants to recognize, pure thinking, becomes a looking at this pure thinking. Pure thinking can be achieved not dialectically but vividly. One arrives at this point in philosophical development at the problem of freedom, which is why freedom, real freedom, is not possible at all without attaining this pure thinking, which is a mere image.

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Cite: GA 76/1921-04-04/p035 · edition English