1. The Point of Departure
When we trace any one of the major streams of present-day spiritual
life back to its sources, we always encounter one of the spirits of
our classical period. Goethe or Schiller, Herder or Lessing has given
an impulse, and from it one or another spiritual movement has taken
its start and still continues on today. Our whole German cultural life
is so fully based on our classical writers that many a person who
thinks himself completely original actually manages nothing more than
to express what Goethe or Schiller indicated long ago. We have lived
so fully into the world they created that hardly anyone who leaves the
path they indicated could expect our understanding. Our way of looking
at the world and at life is so influenced by them that no one can
rouse our interest who does not seek points of reference with this
world.
There is only one branch of our spiritual-cultural life that, we must
admit, has not yet found any such point of reference. It is that
branch of science which goes beyond merely collecting observations,
beyond information about individual phenomena, in order to provide a
satisfying overview of the world and of life. It is what one usually
calls philosophy. For philosophy, our classical period does not seem
to exist at all. It seeks its salvation in an artificial seclusion and
noble isolation from the rest of spiritual life. This statement is not
refuted by the fact that a considerable number of older and more
recent philosophers and natural scientists have occupied themselves
with Goethe and Schiller. For they have not arrived at their
scientific standpoint by bringing to fruition the seeds contained in
the scientific achievements of those heroes of the spirit. They
arrived at their scientific standpoint outside of the world view put
forward by Schiller and Goethe and then afterwards compared the two.
They did not make this comparison for the purpose of gaining something
for their own cause from the scientific views of the classical
thinkers, but rather in order to test these thinkers to see how they
stood up in the light of their own cause. We will come back to this in
more detail. But first we would like just to indicate the consequences
for this realm of science that arise out of the stance it takes toward
the highest level of cultural development in modern times.
A great number of educated readers today will immediately reject
unread any literary or scientific book that appears with a claim to
being philosophical. There has hardly ever been a time when philosophy
has enjoyed less favor than now. Leaving aside the writings of
Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, which take up questions
concerning life and the world, questions of the most general interest,
and which therefore have been widely read, one does not go too far in
saying that philosophical works are read today only by people in the
profession. Nobody bothers except them. An educated person not in the
profession has the vague feeling: This literature* (1)
contains nothing that meets my spiritual needs; the things dealt with
there do not concern me; they are not connected in any way with what
is necessary for the satisfaction of my spirit. Only the fact we have
indicated can bear the guilt for this lack of interest in all
philosophy, for, in contrast to this lack of interest, there stands an
ever-growing need for a satisfying view of the world and of life. What
for a long time was a substitute for so many people, i.e., religious
dogma, is losing more and more of its power to convince. The urge is
increasing all the time to achieve by the work of thinking what was
once owed to faith in revelation: satisfaction of spirit. The
involvement of educated people could therefore not fail to exist if
the sphere of science about which we are speaking really went hand in
hand with the whole development of culture, if its representatives
took a stand on the big questions that move humanity.
* See Notes to the New Edition, p. 121 –Ed.
One must always keep one's eye on the fact that it can never be a
question of first creating artificially a spiritual need, but only of
seeking out the need that exists and satisfying it. The task of
science* is not to pose questions, (2) but rather to consider
questions carefully when they are raised by human nature and by the particular
level of culture, and then to answer them. Our modern philosophers set
themselves tasks that are in no way a natural outgrowth of the level
of culture at which we stand; therefore no one is asking for their
findings. But this science passes over the questions that our culture
must pose by virtue of the vantage point to which our classical
writers have raised it. We therefore have a science [present-day
philosophy] that no one is seeing, and a scientific need that is not
being satisfied by anyone.
* Wissenschaft: “science” in the broader sense, from
scire, to know. Researchers should also look up for themselves
that another root word is skei-, to cut. This might evoke a
quite different meaning of the word “science.” –Ed.
Our central sciencethe science that should solve the actual
riddles of the world for us cannot be an exception among all the other
branches of spiritual life. It must seek its sources where they have
found theirs. It must not just come to terms with our classical
thinkers; it must also seek in them the seeds for its own development;
the same impulse must sweep through it as through the rest of our
culture. This necessity resides in the very nature of the matter. It
is also due to this necessity that modern researchers have occupied
themselves with the classical writers in the way already described
above. But this shows nothing more than that one had a vague feeling
of the impermissibility of passing over the convictions of
these thinkers and simply proceeding with the order of the day. But
this also shows that one did not really manage to develop their views
any further. The way one approached Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and
Schiller shows this. Despite all the excellence of many of the books
about these thinkers, one must still say, regarding almost everything
written about Goethe's and Schiller's scientific* works, that it did
not develop organically out of their views but was rather brought
afterwards into relationship to them. Nothing demonstrates this better
than the fact that the most contrary scientific theories have regarded
Goethe as the thinker who had earlier inklings of their
views. World views having absolutely nothing in common with each other
point to Goethe with seemingly equal justification when they feel the
need to see their standpoints recognized as being at the height of
human development. One cannot imagine a sharper antithesis than
between the teachings of Hegel and Schopenhauer. The latter calls
Hegel a charlatan and his philosophy vapid word-rubbish, pure
nonsense, barbaric word-combinations. These two men actually have
absolutely nothing in common with each other except an unlimited
reverence for Goethe and the belief that he adhered to their world
view.
* Again: scientific in the broader sense –Ed.
And it is no different with more recent scientific theories. Haeckel,
who has elaborated Darwinism brilliantly and with iron consistency,
and whom we must regard as by far the most significant follower of the
English scientist, sees his own view prefigured in the Goethean one.
Another natural scientist of the present day, C.F.W. Jessen, writes of
Darwin's theory: The stir caused among many specialists and
laymen by this theory which had often been set forth earlier
and just as often refuted by thorough research, but which is now
propped up by many seeming supports shows, unfortunately, how
little people know and understand the results of natural-scientific
research. The same researcher says of Goethe that he rose
to comprehensive investigations into inorganic as well as organic
nature by finding, through intelligent, deeply penetrating
contemplation of nature, the basic law of all plant formation.
Each of these researchers can bring, in utterly overwhelming numbers,
proofs of the agreement of his scientific theory with the
intelligent observations of Goethe. It would put the unity
of Goethe's thought in a very dubious light if both of these
standpoints could justifiably cite it as their authority. The reason
for this phenomenon, however, lies precisely in the fact that not one
of these views, after all, has really grown out of the Goethean world
view, but rather each has its roots outside it. The reason lies in the
fact that one seeks an outer agreement of one's view with details torn
out of the wholeness of Goethe's thinking, which thereby lose their
meaning; one does not want to attribute to this wholeness itself the
inner worthiness to found a scientific direction. Goethe's views were
never the starting point of scientific investigations but always only
an object of comparison. Those who concerned themselves with him were
rarely students, devoting themselves to his ideas without
preconceptions, but rather critics, sitting in judgment over him.
One says, in fact, that Goethe had far too little scientific sense;
the worse a philosopher, the better a poet he was. Therefore it would
be impossible to base a scientific standpoint on him. This is a total
misconception about Goethe's nature. To be sure, Goethe was no
philosopher in the usual sense of the word; but it should not be
forgotten that the wonderful harmony of his personality led Schiller
to say: The poet is the only true human being. What
Schiller understood here by true human being was Goethe.
There was not lacking in his personality any element that belongs to
the highest expression of the universally human. But all these
elements united in him into a totality that works as such. This is how
it comes about that a deep philosophical sense underlies his views
about nature, even though this philosophical sense does not come to
consciousness in him in the form of definite scientific principles.
Anyone who enters more deeply into that totality will be able, if he
also brings along a philosophical disposition, to separate out that
philosophical sense and to present it as Goethean science. But he must
take his start from Goethe and not approach him with an already fixed
view. Goethe's spiritual powers always work in a way that accords with
the strictest philosophy, even though he did not leave behind any
systematic presentation of them.
Goethe's world view* is the most many-sided imaginable. It issues from
a center resting within the unified nature of the poet, and it always
turns outward the side corresponding to the nature of the object being
considered. The unity of the spiritual forces being exercised lies in
Goethe's nature; the way these forces are exercised at any given
moment is determined by the object under consideration. Goethe takes
his way of looking at things from the outer world and does not force
any particular way upon it. These days, however, the thinking of many
people is active in only one particular way; it is useful for only one
category of objects; it is not, like that of Goethe, unified
but rather uniform. Let us express this even more precisely:
There are people whose intellect is especially able to think purely
mechanical interdependencies and effects; they picture the whole
universe as a mechanism. Other people have an urge to perceive
everywhere the mysterious mystical element in the outer world; they
become adherents of mysticism. All error arises when a way of thinking
like this which is valid for one category of objects is declared to be
universal. In this way the conflict between the many world views is
explained. If such a one-sided conception approaches the Goethean one,
which is not limited because it does not in any way take its way
of looking at things from the spirit of the beholder but rather from
the nature of what is beheld then it is comprehensible that the
one-sided conception fastens onto those elements of thought in the
Goethean conception that are in accord with itself. Goethe's world
view encompasses many directions of thought in the sense just
indicated and cannot, in fact, ever be imbued with any single,
one-sided conception.
* See also Rudolf Steiner's Goethe's World View, Mercury Press, 1985. –Ed.
The philosophical sense that is an essential element in the organism
of Goethe's genius has significance also for his literary works. Even
though it was far from Goethe's way to present in a conceptually clear
form what this sense communicated to him, as Schiller could, it was
nevertheless still a factor contributing to his artistic work, as it
was with Schiller. The literary productions of Goethe and Schiller are
unthinkable without the world view that stands in the background. With
Schiller this is expressed more in the basic principles he actually
formulated, with Goethe more in the way he looked at things. Yet the
fact that the greatest poets of our nation, at the height of their
creative work, could not do without that philosophical element proves
more than anything else that this element is a necessary part of the
history of humanity's development. Precisely this dependence on Goethe
and Schiller will make it possible to wrest our central science
[philosophy] out of its academic isolation and to incorporate it into
the rest of cultural development. The scientific convictions of our
classical writers are connected by a thousand threads to their other
strivings and are of a sort demanded by the cultural epoch that
created them.
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