Notes to the New Edition, 1924
The attitude lying behind this
assessment of the nature of philosophical literature and of the
interest shown it arose out of the intellectual approach of scientific
endeavor around the middle of the 1880's. Since then phenomena have
come to light in the face of which this assessment no longer seems
valid. One need think only of the brilliant insights that Nietzsche's
thoughts and feelings have given into broad areas of life. And in the
battles that took place and are taking place even today between
materialistically thinking monists and the defenders of a spiritually
oriented world view, there live both a striving of philosophical
thinking for a life-filled content, and also a deep general interest
in the riddles of existence. Paths of thought, such as those of
Einstein springing from the world view of physics, have almost become
the subject of universal conversation and literary expression.
But in spite of this the motives out of which this assessment was made
back then are also still valid today. If one were to put this
assessment into words today, one would have to formulate it
differently. Since it appears again today almost as something ancient,
it is quite appropriate to say how much this assessment is still
valid.
Goethe's world view, the epistemology of which is to be sketched in
this book, takes its start from what the whole human being
experiences. With respect to this experience, thinking contemplation
of the world is only one side. Out of the fullness of human existence
thought-configurations rise, as it were, to the surface of soul life.
One part of these thought-pictures constituted an answer to the
question: What is the knowing activity of man? And this answer turns
out to be such that one sees: Human existence reaches its potential
only when it becomes active in knowing. Soul life without knowledge
would be like a human organism without a head; i.e., it would not be
at all. Within the inner life of the soul there grows a content which,
just as the hungering organism demands nourishment, demands perception
from outside; and, in the outer world, there is a content of
perception which does not bear its essential being within itself, but
which first reveals this essential being when the cognitive process
connects this perceptual content with the soul content. In this way
the cognitive process becomes a part in the formation of world
reality. The human being works along creatively with this world
reality through his knowing activity. And if a plant root is
unthinkable without the fulfillment of its potential in the fruit, so
by no means only man but the world itself would not be complete unless
knowing activity took place. In his activity of knowing man does not
do something for himself alone; rather he works along with the world
in the revelation of real existence. What is in man is ideal
semblance; what is in the world of perception is sense semblance; the
inter-working of the two in knowing activity first constitutes
reality.
Seen in this way epistemology becomes a part of life. And it must be
seen in this way when it is joined to the breadth of life of Goethean
soul experience. But even Nietzsche's thinking and feeling do not
connect themselves with this breadth of life. And still less so does
that which otherwise has arisen as philosophically oriented views of
life and of the world since the writing of what was characterized in
this book as “The Point of Departure.” All these views,
after all, presuppose that reality is present somewhere outside of the
activity of knowing, and that in the activity of knowing, a human,
copied representation of this reality is to result, or perhaps cannot
result. The fact that this reality cannot be found by knowing
activity — because it is first made into reality in the activity of
knowing — is experienced hardly anywhere. Those who think
philosophically seek life and real existence outside of knowing
activity; Goethe stands within creative life and real existence by
engaging in the activity of knowing. Therefore even the more recent
attempts at a world view stand outside the Goethean creation of ideas.
Our epistemology wants to stand inside of it, because philosophy
becomes a content of life thereby, and an interest in philosophy
becomes necessary for life.
Questions of
knowing activity arise through the human soul organization in
contemplation of the outer world. Within the soul impulse of the
question there lies the power to press forward into the contemplation
in such a way that this contemplation, together with the soul
activity, brings the reality of what is contemplated to manifestation.
It is evident from the whole bearing of this
epistemology that the point of its deliberations is to gain an answer
to the question, What is knowledge? In order to attain this goal we
looked, to begin with, at the world of sense perception on the one
hand, and at penetration of it with thought, on the other. And it is
shown that in the interpenetration of both, the true reality of sense
existence reveals itself. With this the question, What is the activity
of knowing? is answered in principle. This answer becomes no different
when the question is extended to the contemplation of the spiritual.
Therefore, what is said in this book about the nature of knowledge is
valid also for the activity of knowing the spiritual worlds, to which
my later books refer. The sense world, in its manifestation to human
contemplation, is not reality. It attains its reality when connected
with what reveals itself about the sense world in man when he thinks.
Thoughts belong to the reality of what the senses behold; but the
thought-element within sense existence does not bring itself to
manifestation outside in sense existence but rather inside of man. Yet
thought and sense perception are one existence. Inasmuch as the human
being enters the world and views it with his senses, he excludes
thought from reality; but thought then just appears in another place:
inside the soul. The separation of perception and thought is of
absolutely no significance for the objective world; this separation
occurs only because man places himself into the midst of existence.
Through this there arises for him the illusion that thought and sense
perception are a duality. It is no different for spiritual
contemplation. When this arises — through soul processes that I
have described in my later book
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment
— it again constitutes only one side of
spiritual existence; the corresponding thoughts of the spirit
constitute the other side. A difference arises only insofar as sense
perception completes itself, attains reality, through thoughts upward,
in a certain way, to where the spiritual begins, whereas spiritual
contemplation is experienced in its true being from this beginning
point downward.
[
Ein Unterschied tritt nur insofern auf, als die Sinneswahrnehmung
durch den Gedanken gewissermaßen nach oben zum Anfang des
Geistigen hin in Wirklichkeit vollendet, die geistige Anschauung von
diesem Anfang an nach unten hin in ihrer wahren Wesenheit erlebt wird.]
The fact that the experience of sense perception
occurs through the senses that nature has formed, whereas the
experience of spiritual contemplation occurs through spiritual organs
of perception that are first developed in a soul way, does not make a
principle difference.
It is true to say that in none of my later books have I diverged from
the idea of knowing activity that I developed in this one; rather I
have only applied this idea to spiritual experience.
In my writings in
connection with the “Goethe Society,” I have tried to show
that this essay has its origin in the fact that Tobler — who was
in contact with Goethe in Weimar at the time this essay came into
being — after conversations with Goethe, wrote down ideas that
lived in Goethe as ones he recognized. What he wrote down then
appeared in the Tiefurt Journal, which at that time was circulated
only in a handwritten form. One finds in Goethe's writings a much
later essay about this earlier publication. There Goethe states
expressly that he does not remember whether the essay was his but that
it contains ideas that were his at the time of its appearance. In my
discussion in the writings of the “Goethe Society,” I
attempted to show that these ideas, in their further development,
flowed into the whole Goethean view of nature. There have subsequently
been published arguments claiming for Tobler the full rights of
authorship for this essay “Nature.” I do not wish to enter
into the controversy on this question. Even if one credits Tobler with
full originality in this essay, the fact still remains that these
ideas did live in Goethe at the beginning of the 1780's and did so in
such a way that — even according to his own admission — they
prove to be the starting point of his comprehensive view of nature.
Personally I have no reason to abandon my own view in this regard,
which is that the ideas arose in Goethe. But even if they did not do
so, they experienced in his spirit an existence that has become
immeasurably fruitful. For the observer of the Goethean world view
they are not of significance in themselves, but rather in relation to
what has become of them.
In this discussion there is
already an allusion to the contemplation of the spiritual of which my
later writings tell, in the sense of what is said in the above
note number 3.
This discussion does not contradict contemplation of the spiritual; rather
it points to the fact that for sense perception one can attain its
essential being not, so to speak, by piercing the perception and
penetrating to an existence behind it into its essential being, but
rather by going back to the thought-element that manifests within man.
It is interesting to know that Goethe wrote yet another
essay in which he developed further his thoughts in the first essay
about experimentation. We can reconstruct this second essay from
Schiller's letter of January 19, 1798. There Goethe divides the
methods of science into: common empiricism, which stays with the
external phenomena given to the senses; rationalism, which builds up
thought-systems upon insufficient observation, which, therefore,
instead of grouping the facts in accordance with their nature, first
figures out certain connections artificially, and then in fantastic
ways reads something from them into the factual world; and finally
rational empiricism, which does not stop short at common experience,
but rather creates conditions under which experience reveals its
essential being. [This note was to the first edition. To this, Rudolf
Steiner added the further note in the second edition to the effect
that the essay he “here assumed hypothetically, was actually
discovered later in the Goethe-Schiller Archives and was included in
the Weimar edition of Goethe's works.”]
One will find the “mystical approach” and
“mysticism” spoken of in different ways in my writings. One
can see in every case, from the context, that there is no
contradiction among these different ways such as one has tried to
fancy there. One can form a general concept of “mysticism.”
According to it, mysticism comprises what one can experience of the
world through inner soul experience. This concept, first of all,
cannot be disputed. For there is such an experience. And it reveals
not only something about man's inner being but also something about
the world. One must have eyes in which certain processes occur, in
order to experience something about the realm of color. But through
this one experiences not only something about the eye but also about
the world. One must have an inner soul organ in order to experience
certain things about the world.
But one must bring the full clarity of concepts into the experiences
of the mystical organ if knowledge is to arise. There are people,
however, who wish to take refuge in what is “inward” in
order to flee the clarity of concepts. They call “mysticism”
that which wants to lead knowledge out of the light of ideas into the
darkness of the world of feeling — the world of feeling not
illuminated by ideas. My writings everywhere speak against this
mysticism; every page of my books, however, was written for the
mysticism that holds fast to the clarity of ideas in thinking and that
makes into a soul organ of perception that mystical sense which is
active in the same region of man's being where otherwise dim feelings
hold sway. This sense is for the spiritual completely like what the
eye or ear is for the physical.
The ideas of this philosophy have been developed further in my later
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1894).
[
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,
Anthroposophic Press, 1986]
After having worked through the different areas of
what I call “anthroposophy,” I would now have to add
anthroposophy to these were I writing this little book today. Forty
years ago, as I was writing it, there stood before my mind's eye as
“psychology” — in an unusual sense of the word, to be
sure — something that included within itself the contemplation of
the whole “spirit world” (pneumatology). But one should not
infer from this that I wanted to exclude this “spirit world”
from man's knowledge back then.
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