Goethe's Conception of the World
GA 6
Introduction
[ 1 ] If we want to understand Goethe's world-conception we must not rest content with simply listening to what he himself says about it in isolated phrases. It was not in his nature to express the core of his being in crystalline, sharply-cut aphorisms, which seemed to him to distort rather than present a true picture of reality. He had a certain fear of arresting the living, the reality, in a transparent thought. His inner life, his relationship to the outer world and his observations of things and events were too rich, too full of subtle, intimate elements for him to reduce them to simple formulae. He expresses himself when some experience or other impels him, but he always says either too much or too little. His living participation in everything that approaches him often forces him to use sharper expressions than his nature as a whole demands. This led him just as often to express himself indefinitely where his being felt the need of a definite opinion. He is always uneasy when it comes to the point of making a decision between two views. He does not like to depart from impartiality by giving a clearly defined direction to his thoughts. He contents himself with this thought: “Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to try to discover where the problems begin, and then to remain within the boundary of the comprehensible.” A problem that a man thinks he has solved deprives him of the possibility of clear vision of a thousand phenomena that fall within the domain of this problem. He pays no more heed to them because he thinks that he understands the sphere where they occur. Goethe would rather have two contrary opinions about a thing than one definite opinion. Every single phenomenon seems to him to include an infinity which man must approach from different angles if he is to perceive something of its full content. “It is said that the truth lies midway between two contrary opinions. By no means! The problem invisible, the eternal active life conceived of in repose lies between them.” Goethe's aim is to preserve a living quality in his thoughts, so that when compelled by reality he can at any moment transform them. He does not want to “be right;” he wants always to “set about” the right and nothing more. At two different times he expresses himself differently about the same thing. He is suspicious of a rigid theory that defines, once and for all, the law underlying a series of phenomena, because such a theory deprives the cognitive faculty of an unbiased relationship to mobile reality.
[ 2 ] When, however, it is a question of perceiving the unity running through his conceptions, we must pay less attention to his words than to his conduct of life. We must consider the relationship existing between him and the objects while he is investigating their nature and being, and then we must add what he himself does not say. We must penetrate to the innermost being of his personality—which is, for the most part, hidden behind his utterances. What he says may often be contradictory; his life, however, is always in conformity with a self-contained whole. He may not have set down his world-conception in a definite system but he has expressed it in a personality complete in itself. When we study his life all contradictions in his words are resolved. They are only present in his thoughts about the world in the same sense in which they are present in the world itself. He has said many things about Nature but he has never laid down his conception of Nature in a permanent thought-structure. Nevertheless, when we survey his individual thoughts in this region, they coalesce of themselves into one whole. We can form a conception of the thought-structure that would have arisen if he had presented his ideas in absolute coherence. In this book I have set myself the task of describing how the innermost being of Goethe's personality must have been constituted in order to be able to express such thoughts about natural phenomena as are found in his scientific works. I know that it is possible to quote sentences of Goethe that contradict many things that I have to say. In this book, however, the salient point, so far as I am concerned, is not to give any history of the development of his utterances but to depict the basic elements in his personality which led to his deep insight into the creative activity and the work of Nature. These basic elements cannot be understood from the numerous passages in which he takes other modes of thought to his aid in order to make himself intelligible, or in which he uses the formula; of this or that philosopher. Out of what he said to Eckermann one would be able to portray a Goethe who could never have written the Metamorphosis of the Plants. To Zelter he said many things that might lead us erroneously to assume the existence of a scientific conviction at variance with his great thoughts in reference to animal life. I admit the existence of forces in Goethe's personality of which I have not taken account, but these recede into the background of those that are really determinative and give his world-conception its special stamp. I have set myself the task of describing these determinative forces as vividly as lies in my power. Therefore in reading this book it must be remembered that it has never been my intention to allow any element of my own view of the world to colour the presentation of the Goethean mode of conception. I think that in a book of this kind one has no right to present the content of one's personal world-conception, but that one's duty is to apply what has been gained from this to the understanding of the particular world-conception under consideration. For example, it has been my aim to describe Goethe's relationship to the Western evolution of thought as this relationship appears from the point of view of his own world-conception. This is the only method which seems to me to guarantee historic objectivity to one's own view of the world-conception of a particular personality. A different method must be employed only when such a world-conception is considered in connection with others.
Einleitung
[ 1 ] Will man Goethes Weltanschauung verstehen, so darf man sich nicht damit begnügen, hinzuhorchen, was er selbst in einzelnen Aussprüchen über sie sagt. In kristallklaren, scharf geprägten Sätzen den Kern seines Wesens auszusprechen, lag nicht in seiner Natur. Solche Sätze schienen ihm die Wirklichkeit eher zu verzerren als richtig abzubilden. Er hatte eine gewisse Scheu davor, das Lebendige, die Wirklichkeit in einem durchsichtigen Gedanken festzuhalten. Sein Innenleben, seine Beziehung zur Außenwelt, seine Beobachtungen über die Dinge und Ereignisse waren zu reich, zu erfüllt von zarten Bestandteilen, von intimen Elementen, um von ihm selbst in einfache Formeln gebracht zu werden. Er spricht sich aus, wenn ihn dieses oder jenes Erlebnis dazu drängt. Aber er sagt immer zu viel oder zu wenig. Die lebhafte Anteilnahme an allem, was an ihn herankommt, bestimmt ihn oft, schärfere Ausdrücke zu gebrauchen, als es seine Gesamtnatur verlangt. Sie verführt ihn ebenso oft, sich unbestimmt zu äußern, wo ihn sein Wesen zu einer bestimmten Meinung nötigen könnte. Er ist immer ängstlich, wenn es sich darum handelt, zwischen zwei Ansichten zu entscheiden. Er will sich die Unbefangenheit nicht dadurch rauben, daß er seinen Gedanken eine scharfe Richtung gibt. Er beruhigt sich bei dem Gedanken: «Der Mensch ist nicht geboren, die Probleme der Welt zu lösen, wohl aber zu suchen, wo das Problem angeht, und sich sodann in der Grenze des Begreiflichen zu halten. »Ein Problem, das der Mensch gelöst zu haben glaubt, entzieht ihm die Möglichkeit, tausend Dinge klar zu sehen, die in den Bereich dieses Problems fallen. Er achtet auf sie nicht mehr, weil er über das Gebiet aufgeklärt zu sein glaubt, in das sie fallen. Goethe möchte lieber zwei Meinungen über eine Sache haben, die einander entgegengesetzt sind, als eine bestimmte. Denn jedes Ding scheint ihm eine Unendlichkeit einzuschließen, der man sich von verschiedenen Seiten nähern muß, um von ihrer ganzen Fülle etwas wahrzunehmen. «Man sagt, zwischen zwei entgegengesetzten Meinungen liegt die Wahrheit mitten inne. Keineswegs! Das Problem liegt dazwischen, das Unschaubare, das ewig tätige Leben, in Ruhe gedacht.» Goethe will seine Gedanken lebendig erhalten, damit er in jedem Augenblicke sie umwandeln könne, wenn die Wirklichkeit ihn dazu veranlaßt. Er will nicht recht haben; er will stets nur aufs «Rechte losgehen». In zwei verschiedenen Zeitpunkten spricht er sich über dieselbe Sache verschieden aus. Eine feste Theorie, die ein für allemal die Gesetzmäßigkeit einer Reihe von Erscheinungen zum Ausdruck bringen will, ist ihm bedenklich, weil eine solche der Erkenntniskraft das unbefangene Verhältnis zur beweglichen Wirklichkeit raubt.
[ 2 ] Wenn man dennoch die Einheit seiner Anschauungen überschauen will, so muß man weniger auf seine Worte hören, als auf seine Lebensführung sehen. Man muß sein Verhältnis zu den Dingen belauschen, wenn er ihrem Wesen nachforscht und dabei das ergänzen, was er selbst nicht sagt. Man muß auf das Innerste seiner Persönlichkeit eingehen, das sich zum größten Teile hinter seinen Äußerungen verbirgt. Was er sagt, mag sich oft widersprechen; was er lebt, gehört immer einem sich selber tragenden Ganzen an. Hat er seine Weltanschauung auch nicht in einem geschlossenen System aufgezeichnet; er hat sie in einer geschlossenen Persönlichkeit dargelebt. Wenn wir auf sein Leben sehen, so lösen sich alle Widersprüche in seinem Reden. Sie sind in seinem Denken über die Welt nur in dem Sinne vorhanden wie in der Welt selbst. Er hat über die Natur dies und jenes gesagt. In einem festgefügten Gedankengebäude hat er seine Naturanschauung niemals niedergelegt. Aber wenn wir seine einzelnen Gedanken auf diesem Gebiete überblicken, so schließen sie sich von selbst zu einem Ganzen zusammen. Man kann sich eine Vorstellung davon machen, welches Gedankengebäude entstanden wäre, wenn er seine Ansichten im Zusammenhang vollständig dargestellt hätte. Ich habe mir vorgesetzt, in dieser Schrift zu schildern, wie Goethes Persönlichkeit in ihrem innersten Wesen geartet gewesen sein muß, um über die Erscheinungen der Natur solche Gedanken äußern zu können, wie er sie in seinen naturwissenschaftlichen Arbeiten niedergelegt hat. Daß manchem von dem, was ich sagen werde, Goethesche Sätze entgegengehalten werden können, die ihm widersprechen, weiß ich. Es handelt sich mir aber in dieser Schrift nicht darum, eine Entwicklungsgeschichte seiner Aussprüche zu geben, sondern darum, die Grundlagen seiner Persönlichkeit darzustellen, die ihn zu seinen tiefen Einsichten in das Schaffen und Wirken der Natur führten. Nicht aus den zahlreichen Sätzen, in denen er an andere Denkweisen sich anlehnt, um dadurch verständlich zu werden; oder in denen er sich der Formeln bedient, welche der eine oder der andere Philosoph gebraucht hat, lassen sich diese Grundlagen erkennen. Aus den Äußerungen zu Eckermann könnte man sich einen Goethe konstruieren, der nie die Metamorphose der Pflanzen hätte schreiben können. An Zelter hatte Goethe manches Wort gerichtet, das verführen könnte, auf eine wissenschaftliche Gesinnung zu schließen, die seinen großen Gedanken über die Bildung der Tiere widerspricht. Ich gebe zu, daß in Goethes Persönlichkeit auch Kräfte gewirkt haben, die ich nicht berücksichtigt habe. Aber diese Kräfte treten zurück hinter den eigentlich bestimmenden, die seiner Weltanschauung das Gepräge geben. Diese bestimmenden Kräfte so scharf zu charakterisieren, als mir möglich ist, habe ich mir zur Aufgabe gestellt. Man wird beim Lesen dieses Buches deshalb beachten müssen, daß ich nirgends die Absicht gehabt habe, etwa Bestandteile einer eigenen Weltanschauung durch die Darstellung der Goetheschen Vorstellungsart hindurchschimmern zu lassen. Ich glaube, daß man bei einem Buche dieser Art kein Recht hat, die eigene Weltanschauung inhaltlich zu vertreten, sondern daß man die Pflicht hat, dasjenige, was einem die eigene Weltanschauung gibt, zum Verstehen der geschilderten zu verwenden. Ich habe z. B. Goethes Verhältnis zur abendländischen Gedankenentwickelung so schildern wollen, wie sich dieses Verhältnis vom Gesichtspunkte der Goetheschen Weltanschauung aus darstellt. Für die Betrachtung der Weltanschauungen einzelner Persönlichkeiten scheint mir diese Art einzig die historische Objektivität zu verbürgen. Eine andere Art hat erst einzutreten, wenn eine solche Weltanschauung im Zusammenhange mit anderen betrachtet wird.
Introduction
[ 1 ] If we want to understand Goethe's world view, we must not content ourselves with listening to what he himself says about it in individual statements. It was not in his nature to express the core of his being in crystal-clear, sharply defined sentences. Such sentences seemed to him to distort reality rather than accurately reflect it. He had a certain reluctance to capture the living, the reality in a transparent thought. His inner life, his relationship to the outside world, his observations of things and events were too rich, too full of delicate components, of intimate elements, to be put into simple formulas by himself. He speaks out when this or that experience urges him to do so. But he always says too much or too little. His vivid interest in everything that comes to him often determines him to use sharper expressions than his overall nature demands. It just as often tempts him to express himself indeterminately where his nature might compel him to express a definite opinion. He is always anxious when it comes to deciding between two opinions. He does not want to rob himself of his impartiality by giving his thoughts a sharp direction. He reassures himself with the thought: "Man is not born to solve the problems of the world, but to seek where the problem lies and then to keep within the bounds of the comprehensible. "A problem that man believes he has solved deprives him of the opportunity to see clearly a thousand things that fall within the scope of this problem. He no longer pays attention to them because he believes he is enlightened about the area in which they fall. Goethe would rather have two opinions about one thing that are opposed to each other than one certain one. For every thing seems to him to include an infinity that must be approached from different sides in order to perceive something of its fullness. "It is said that the truth lies between two opposing opinions. Not at all! The problem lies between them, the unseen, the eternally active life, thought in peace." Goethe wants to keep his thoughts alive so that he can transform them at any moment when reality prompts him to do so. He does not want to be right; he only ever wants to "go for the right". At two different times he speaks differently about the same thing. A fixed theory that seeks to express the lawfulness of a series of phenomena once and for all is questionable to him, because such a theory robs the power of cognition of its unbiased relationship to moving reality.
[ 2 ] If one nevertheless wishes to survey the unity of his views, one must listen less to his words than to his way of life. We must listen to his relationship to things when he investigates their essence and add to what he does not say himself. You have to look into the innermost part of his personality, which is largely hidden behind his statements. What he says may often contradict itself; what he lives always belongs to a self-sustaining whole. He did not record his world view in a closed system; he lived it in a closed personality. When we look at his life, all the contradictions in his words dissolve. They are present in his thinking about the world only in the same sense as in the world itself. He said this and that about nature. He never laid down his view of nature in a fixed body of thought. But if we take an overview of his individual thoughts in this area, they automatically come together to form a whole. One can imagine the body of thought that would have emerged if he had presented his views in their entirety. I have set myself the task of describing in this essay what Goethe's personality must have been like in its innermost essence in order to be able to express such thoughts about the phenomena of nature as he set down in his scientific works. I know that some of what I am going to say can be countered with Goethean statements that contradict him. However, my aim in this paper is not to give a history of the development of his sayings, but to present the foundations of his personality that led him to his profound insights into the workings of nature. These foundations cannot be recognized from the numerous sentences in which he borrows from other ways of thinking in order to make them comprehensible, or in which he uses formulas used by one philosopher or another. From the remarks on Eckermann, one could construct a Goethe who could never have written The Metamorphosis of Plants. Goethe addressed many a word to Zelter that might tempt us to conclude that he had a scientific attitude that contradicted his great thoughts on the formation of animals. I admit that there were forces at work in Goethe's personality that I have not taken into account. But these forces take a back seat to the actual determining forces that give his world view its character. I have set myself the task of characterizing these determining forces as sharply as I can. When reading this book, you will therefore have to bear in mind that nowhere have I intended to allow any elements of my own world view to shine through the portrayal of Goethe's way of thinking. I believe that in a book of this kind one has no right to represent one's own world view in terms of content, but that one has the duty to use what one's own world view gives one to understand the one described. For example, I have wanted to describe Goethe's relationship to the development of Western thought as this relationship appears from the point of view of Goethe's world view. For the consideration of the worldviews of individual personalities, this way seems to me to guarantee only historical objectivity. A different kind only comes into play when such a world view is considered in connection with others.