A Theory of Knowledge
GA 2
Preface
[ 1 ] This study of the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world-conception was written in the middle of the decade 1880–90. My mind was then vitally engaged in two activities of thought. One was directed toward the creative work of Goethe, and strove to formulate the view of life and of the world which revealed itself as the impelling force in this creative work. The completely and purely human seemed to me to be dominant in everything that Goethe gave to the world in creative work, in reflection, and in his life. Nowhere in the modern age did that inner assurance, harmonious completeness, and sense of reality in relation to the world seem to me to be as fully represented as in Goethe. From this thought there necessarily arose the recognition of the fact that the manner, likewise, in which Goethe comported himself in the act of cognition is that which issues out of the very nature of man and of the world.
In another direction my thought was vitally absorbed in the philosophical conceptions prevalent at that time regarding the essential nature of knowledge. In these conceptions, knowledge threatened to become sealed up within the being of man himself. The brilliant philosopher Otto Liebmann had asserted that human consciousness cannot pass beyond itself; that it must remain within itself. Whatever exists, as the true reality, beyond that world which consciousness forms within itself—of this it can know nothing. In brilliant writings Otto Liebmann elaborated this thought with respect to the most varied aspects of the realm of human experience. Johannes Volkelt had written his thoughtful books dealing with Kant's theory of knowledge and with Experience and Thought. He saw in the world as given to man only a combination of representations1Vorstellungen, single concepts corresponding to single percepts. based upon the relationship of man to a world in itself unknown. He admitted, to be sure, that an inevitability manifests itself in our inner experience of thinking when this lays hold in the realm of representations. When engaged in the activity of thinking, we have the sense, in a manner, of forcing our way through the world of representations into the world of reality. But what is gained thereby? We might for this reason feel justified, during the process of thinking, in forming judgments concerning the world of reality; but in such judgments we remain wholly within man himself; nothing of the nature of the world penetrates therein.
[ 2 ] Eduard von Hartmann, whose philosophy had been of great service to me, in spite of the fact that I could not admit its fundamental presuppositions or conclusions, occupied exactly the same point of view in regard to the theory of knowledge set forth exhaustively by Volkelt.
[ 3 ] There was everywhere manifest the confession that human knowledge arrives at certain barriers beyond which it cannot pass into the realm of genuine reality.
[ 4 ] In opposition to all this stood in my case the fact, inwardly experienced and known in experience, that human thinking, when it reaches a sufficient depth, lives within the reality of the world as a spiritual reality. I believed that I possessed this knowledge in a form which can exist in consciousness with the same clarity that characterizes mathematical knowledge.
[ 5 ] In the presence of this knowledge, it is impossible to sustain the opinion that there are such boundaries of cognition as were supposed to be established by the course of reasoning to which I have referred.
[ 6 ] In reference to all this, I was somewhat inclined toward the theory of evolution then in its flower. In Haeckel this theory had assumed forms in which no consideration whatever could be given to the self-existent being and action of the spiritual. The later and more perfect was supposed to arise in the course of time out of the earlier, the undeveloped. This was evident to me as regards the external reality of the senses, but I was too well aware of the self-existent spiritual, resting upon its own foundation, independent of the sensible, to yield the argument to the external world of the senses. But the problem was how to lay a bridge from this world to the world of the spirit.
[ 7 ] In the time sequence, as thought out on the basis of the senses, the spiritual in man appears to have evolved out of the antecedent non-spiritual. But the sensible, when rightly conceived, manifests itself everywhere as a revelation of the spiritual. In the light of this true knowledge of the sensible, I saw clearly that “boundaries of knowledge,” as then defined, could be admitted only by one who, when brought into contact with this sensible, deals with it like a man who should look at a printed page and, fixing his attention upon the forms of the letters alone without any idea of reading, should declare that it is impossible to know what lies behind these forms.
[ 8 ] Thus my look was guided along the path from sense-observation to the spiritual, which was firmly established in my inner experiential knowledge. Behind the sensible phenomena, I sought, not for a non-spiritual world of atoms, but for the spiritual, which appears to reveal itself within man himself, but which in reality inheres in the objects and processes of the sense-world itself. Because of man's attitude in the act of knowing, it appears as if the thoughts of things were within man, whereas in reality they hold sway within the things themselves. It is necessary for man, in experiencing the apparent,2in einem Schein-Erleben to separate thoughts from things; but, in a true experience of knowledge, he restores them again to things.
[ 9 ] The evolution of the world is thus to be understood in such fashion that the antecedent non-spiritual, out of which the succeeding spirituality of man unfolds, possesses also a spiritual beside itself and outside itself. The later spirit-permeated sensible, amid which man appears, comes to pass by reason of the fact that the spiritual progenitor of man unites with imperfect, non-spiritual forms, and, having transformed these, then appears in sensible forms.
[ 10 ] This course of thought led me beyond the contemporary theorists of knowledge, even though I fully recognized their acumen and their sense of scientific responsibility. It led me to Goethe.
[ 11 ] I am impelled to look back from the present to my inner struggle at that time. It was no easy matter for me to advance beyond the course of reasoning characterizing contemporary philosophies. But my guiding star was always the self-substantiating recognition of the fact that it is possible for man to behold himself inwardly as spirit, independent of the body and dwelling in a world of spirit.
[ 12 ] Prior to my work dealing with Goethe's scientific writings and before the preparation of this theory of knowledge, I had written a brief paper on atomism, which was never printed. This was conceived in the direction here indicated. I cannot but recall what pleasure I experienced when Friedrich Theodor Vischer, to whom I sent that paper, wrote me some words of approval.
[ 13 ] But in my Goethe studies it became clear to me that my way of thinking led to a perception of the character of the knowledge which is manifest everywhere in Goethe's creative work and in his attitude toward the world. I perceived that my point of view afforded me a theory of knowledge which was that belonging to Goethe's world-conception.
[ 14 ] During the 'eighties of the last century I was invited through the influence of Karl Julius Schröer, my teacher and fatherly friend, to whom I am deeply indebted, to prepare the introductions to Goethe's scientific writings for the Kürschner National-Literatur, and to edit these writings. During the progress of this work, I traced the course of Goethe's intellectual life in all the fields with which he was occupied. It became constantly clearer to me in detail that my own perception placed me within that theory of knowledge belonging to Goethe's world-conception. Thus it was that I wrote this theory of knowledge in the course of the work I have mentioned.
[ 15 ] Now that I again turn my attention to it, it seems to me to be also the foundation and justification, as a theory of knowledge, for all that I have since asserted orally or in print. It speaks of an essential nature of knowledge which opens the way from the sense world to a world of spirit.
[ 16 ] It may seem strange that this youthful production, written nearly forty years ago, should now be published again, unaltered and expanded only by means of notes. In the manner of its presentation, it bears the marks of a kind of thinking which had entered vitally into the philosophy of that time, forty years ago. Were I writing the book now, I should express many things differently. But the essential nature of knowledge I could not set forth in any different light. Moreover, what I might write now could not convey so truly within itself the germ of the spiritual world-conception for which I stand. In such germinal fashion one can write only at the beginning of one's intellectual life. For this reason, it may be well that this youthful production should again appear in unaltered form. The theories of knowledge existing at the time of its composition have found their sequel in later theories of knowledge. What I have to say in regard to these I have said in my book Die Rätsel der Philosophie.3The Riddles of Philosophy—not yet translated into English This also will be issued in a new edition at the same time by the same publishers. That which I outlined many years ago as the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world-conception seems to me just as necessary to be said now as it was forty years ago.
Rudolf Steiner
Dornach, November 1923
Vorrede zur Neuauflage
[ 1 ] Diese Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung ist von mir in der Mitte der achtziger Jahre des vorigen Jahrhunderts niedergeschrieben worden. In meiner Seele lebten damals zwei Gedankentätigkeiten. Die eine hatte sich auf das Schaffen Goethes gerichtet und war bestrebt, die Welt- und Lebensanschauung auszugestalten, die sich als die treibende Kraft in diesem Schaffen offenbart. Das Vollund Reinmenschliche schien mir in allem zu walten, was Goethe schaffend, betrachtend und lebend der Welt gegeben hat. Nirgends schien mir in der neueren Zeit die innere Sicherheit, harmonische Geschlossenheit und der Wirklichkeitssinn im Verhältnis zur Welt so sich darzustellen wie bei Goethe. Aus diesem Gedanken mußte die Anerkennung der Tatsache entspringen, daß auch die Art, wie Goethe im Erkennen sich verhielt, die aus dem Wesen des Menschen und der Welt hervorgehende ist. — Auf der anderen Seite lebten meine Gedanken in den philosophischen Anschauungen über das Wesen der Erkenntnis, die in dieser Zeit vorhanden waren. In diesen Anschauungen drohte das Erkennen sich in die eigene Wesenheit des Menschen einzuspinnen. Otto Liebmann, der geistreiche Philosoph, hatte den Satz ausgesprochen: das Bewußtsein des Menschen könne sich selbst nicht überspringen. Es müsse in sich bleiben. Was jenseits der Welt, die es in sich selbst gestaltet, als die wahre Wirklichkeit liegt, davon könne es nichts wissen. In glanzvollen Schriften hat Otto Liebmann diesen Gedanken für die verschiedensten Gebiete der menschlichen Erfahrungswelt durchgeführt. Johannes Volkelt hatte seine gedankenvollen Bücher über «Kants Erkenntnistheorie» und über «Erfahrung und Denken» geschrieben. Er sah in der Welt, die dem Menschen gegeben ist, nur einen Zusammenhang von Vorstellungen, die sich bilden im Verhältnis des Menschen zu einer an sich unbekannten Welt. Zwar gab er zu, daß im Erleben des Denkens eine Notwendigkeit sich zeigt, wenn dieses in die Vorstellungswelt eingreift. Man fühle gewissermaßen eine Art Durchstoßen durch die Vorstellungswelt in die Wirklichkeit hinüber, wenn das Denken sich betätigt. Aber, was war damit gewonnen? Man konnte sich dadurch berechtigt fühlen, im Denken Urteile zu fällen, die etwas über die wirkliche Welt sagen; aber man steht mit solchen Urteilen doch ganz im Innern des Menschen drinnen; vom Wesen der Welt dringt nichts in diesen ein.
[ 2 ] Eduard von Hartmann, dessen Philosophie mir sehr wertvoll war, ohne daß ich deren Grundlagen und Ergebnisse anerkennen konnte, stand in erkenntnistheoretischen Fragen ganz auf dem Standpunkte, den dann Volkelt ausführlich dargestellt hat.
[ 3 ] Überall war das Eingeständnis vorhanden, daß der Mensch mit seinem Erkennen an gewisse Grenzen stoße, über die er nicht hinaus in das Gebiet der wahren Wirklichkeit dringen könne.
[ 4 ] All dem gegenüber stand bei mir die innerlich erlebte und im Erleben erkannte Tatsache, daß der Mensch mit seinem Denken, wenn er dies genügend vertieft, in der Weltwirklichkeit als einer geistigen drinnen lebt. Ich vermeinte diese Erkenntnis als eine solche zu besitzen, die mit der gleichen inneren Klarheit im Bewußtsein stehen kann wie das, was in mathematischer Erkenntnis sich offenbart.
[ 5 ] Vor dieser Erkenntnis kann die Meinung nicht bestehen, daß es solche Erkenntnisgrenzen gäbe, wie die gekennzeichnete Gedankenrichtung sie glaubte festsetzen zu müssen.
[ 6 ] In all dies spielte bei mir hinein eine Gedankenneigung zu der damals blühenden Entwickelungstheorie. Sie hatte in Haeckel Formen angenommen, in denen das selbständige Sein und Wirken des Geistigen keine Berücksichtigung finden konnte. Das Spätere, Vollkommene sollte aus dem Früheren, Unentwickelten im Zeitenlaufe hervorgegangen sein. Mir leuchtete das in bezug auf die äußere sinnenfällige Wirklichkeit ein. Doch kannte ich die vom Sinnenfälligen unabhängige, in sich befestigte, selbständige Geistigkeit zu gut, um der äußeren sinnenfälligen Erscheinungswelt recht zu geben. Aber es war die Brücke zu schlagen von dieser Welt zu der des Geistes. Im sinnenfällig gedachten Zeitenlaufe scheint das menschlich Geistige sich aus dem vorangehenden Ungeistigen zu entwickeln.
[ 7 ] Aber das Sinnenfällige, richtig erkannt, zeigt überall, daß es Offenbarung des Geistigen ist. Dieser richtigen Erkenntnis des Sinnenfälligen gegenüber war mir klar, daß «Grenzen der Erkenntnis», wie sie damals festgestellt wurden, nur der zugeben kann, der auf dieses Sinnenfällige stößt und es so behandelt, wie jemand eine vollgedruckte Seite dann behandeln würde, wenn er die Anschauung nur auf die Buchstabenformen richtete und ohne Ahnung vom Lesen sagte, man könne nicht wissen, was hinter diesen Formen stecke.
[ 8 ] So wurde mein Blick auf den Weg von der Sinnesbeobachtung zu dem Geistigen hingelenkt, das mir im inneren erkennenden Erleben feststand. Ich suchte hinter den sinnenfälligen Erscheinungen nicht ungeistige Atomwelten, sondern das Geistige, das sich scheinbar im Innern des Menschen offenbart, das aber in Wirklichkeit den Sinnendingen und Sinnesvorgängen selbst angehört. Es entsteht durch das Verhalten des erkennenden Menschen der Schein, als ob die Gedanken der Dinge im Menschen seien, während sie in Wirklichkeit in den Dingen walten. Der Mensch hat nötig, sie in einem Schein-Erleben von den Dingen abzusondern; im wahren Erkenntnis-Erleben gibt er sie den Dingen wieder zurück.
[ 9 ] Die Entwickelung der Welt ist dann so zu verstehen, daß das vorangehende Ungeistige, aus dem sich später die Geistigkeit des Menschen entfaltet, neben und außer sich ein Geistiges hat. Die spätere durchgeistigte Sinnlichkeit, in der der Mensch erscheint, tritt dann dadurch auf, daß sich der Geistesvorfahre des Menschen mit den unvollkommenen ungeistigen Formen vereint, und, diese umbildend, dann in sinnenfälliger Form auftritt.
[ 10 ] Diese Ideengänge führten mich über die damaligen Erkenntnistheoretiker, deren Scharfsinn und wissenschaftliches Verantwortungsgefühl ich voll anerkannte, hinaus. Sie führten mich zu Goethe hin.
[ 11 ] Ich muß heute zurückdenken an mein damaliges inneres Ringen. Ich habe es mir nicht leicht gemacht, über die Gedankengänge der damaligen Philosophien hinwegzukommen. Mein Leuchtstern war aber stets die ganz durch sich selbst bewirkte Anerkennung der Tatsache, daß der Mensch sich innerlich als vom Körper unabhängiger Geist, stehend in einer rein geistigen Welt, schauen kann.
[ 12 ] Vor meinen Arbeiten über Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften und vor dieser Erkenntnistheorie schrieb ich einen kleinen Aufsatz über Atomismus, der nie gedruckt worden ist. Er war in der angedeuteten Richtung gehalten. Ich muß gedenken, welche Freude es mir machte, als Friedrich Theodor Vischer, dem ich den Aufsatz zuschickte, mir einige zustimmende Worte schrieb.
[ 13 ] Nun aber wurde mir an meinen Goethe-Studien klar, wie meine Gedanken zu einem Anschauen vom Wesen der Erkenntnis führen, das in Goethes Schaffen und seiner Stellung zur Welt überall hervortritt. Ich fand, daß meine Gesichtspunkte mir eine Erkenntnistheorie ergaben, die die der Goetheschen Weltanschauung ist.
[ 14 ] Ich wurde in den achtziger Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts durch Karl Julius Schröer, meinen Lehrer und väterlichen Freund, dem ich viel verdanke, empfohlen, die Einleitungen zu Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften für die Kürschnersche «National-Literatur» zu schreiben und die Herausgabe dieser Schriften zu besorgen. In dieser Arbeit verfolgte ich das Erkenntnisleben Goethes auf allen Gebieten, auf denen er tätig war. Immer klarer im einzelnen wurde mir die Tatsache, daß mich meine eigene Anschauung in eine Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung hineinstellte. Und so schrieb ich denn diese Erkenntnistheorie während der genannten Arbeiten.
[ 15 ] Indem ich sie heute wieder vor mich hinstelle, erscheint sie mir auch als die erkenntnistheoretische Grundlegung und Rechtfertigung von alle dem, was ich später gesagt und veröffentlicht habe. Sie spricht von einem Wesen des Erkennens, das den Weg freilegt von der sinnenfälligen Welt in eine geistige hinein.
[ 16 ] Es könnte sonderbar erscheinen, daß diese Jugendschrift, die nahezu vierzig Jahre alt ist, heute wieder unverändert, nur durch Anmerkungen erweitert, erscheint. Sie trägt in der Art der Darstellung die Kennzeichen eines Denkens, das sich in die Philosophie der Zeit vor vierzig Jahren eingelebt hat. Ich würde, schriebe ich sie heute, manches anders sagen. Aber ich würde als Wesen der Erkenntnis nichts anderes angeben können. Aber, was ich heute schriebe, würde nicht so treulich die Keime der von mir vertretenen geistgemäßen Weltanschauung in sich tragen können. So keimhaft kann man nur schreiben im Anfange eines Erkenntnislebens. Deshalb darf vielleicht diese Jugendschrift gerade in der unveränderten Form wieder erscheinen. Was in der Zeit ihrer Abfassung an Erkenntnistheorien vorhanden war, hat eine Fortsetzung in späteren Erkenntnistheorien gefunden. Ich habe, was ich darüber zu sagen habe, in meinem Buche «Die Rätsel der Philosophie» gesagt. Dies erscheint gleichzeitig in demselben Verlage in Neuauflage. — Was ich vor Zeiten als Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung in diesem Schriftchen skizziert habe, scheint mir heute so nötig zu sagen wie vor vierzig Jahren.
Goetheanum zu Dornach bei Basel
November 1923, Rudolf Steiner
Preface to the new edition
[ 1 ] This epistemology of Goethe's world view was written down by me in the mid-eighties of the last century. At that time, two thoughts were living in my soul. One was focused on Goethe's work and endeavored to shape the view of the world and of life that revealed itself as the driving force in this work. The fully and purely human seemed to me to prevail in everything that Goethe gave to the world by creating, contemplating and living. Nowhere else in recent times did the inner certainty, harmonious unity and sense of reality in relation to the world seem to me to be so evident as in Goethe. From this thought must have sprung the recognition of the fact that the way in which Goethe conducted himself in cognition is also that which emerges from the essence of man and the world. - On the other hand, my thoughts lived in the philosophical views on the nature of knowledge that existed at that time. In these views, cognition threatened to spin itself into man's own essence. Otto Liebmann, the witty philosopher, had said that man's consciousness could not transcend itself. It must remain within itself. It cannot know what lies beyond the world it creates within itself as true reality. Otto Liebmann developed this idea for the most diverse areas of human experience in his brilliant writings. Johannes Volkelt had written his thought-provoking books on "Kant's Theory of Knowledge" and "Experience and Thought". He saw in the world that is given to man only a connection of ideas that are formed in man's relationship to a world that is unknown in itself. He admitted that there is a necessity in the experience of thinking when it intervenes in the imaginary world. One feels, as it were, a kind of piercing through the world of imagination into reality when thinking becomes active. But what was gained by this? One could thereby feel entitled to make judgments in thinking that say something about the real world; but with such judgments one stands completely inside the human being; nothing of the essence of the world penetrates into it.
[ 2 ] Eduard von Hartmann, whose philosophy was very valuable to me without me being able to recognize its foundations and results, stood in epistemological questions entirely on the standpoint that Volkelt then presented in detail.
[ 3 ] Everywhere there was the admission that man reaches certain limits with his cognition, beyond which he cannot penetrate into the realm of true reality.
[ 4 ] All of this was contrasted with the fact, which I experienced inwardly and recognized in my experience, that man lives with his thinking, if he deepens it sufficiently, in the reality of the world as a spiritual one. I believed that I possessed this knowledge as one that can stand in consciousness with the same inner clarity as that which is revealed in mathematical knowledge.
[ 5 ] Before this realization, the opinion cannot exist that there are such limits to knowledge as the marked line of thought believed it had to establish.
[ 6 ] In all of this, I was influenced by an inclination towards the then flourishing theory of development. In Haeckel it had assumed forms in which the independent existence and activity of the spiritual could not be taken into account. The later, the perfect was supposed to have emerged from the earlier, the undeveloped in the course of time. This made sense to me in relation to the external sensory reality. But I knew the spirituality that was independent of the sensory, fixed in itself and autonomous, too well to agree with the external sensory world of appearances. But the bridge had to be built from this world to that of the spirit. In the sensually conceived course of time, the human spiritual seems to develop from the preceding unspiritual.
[ 7 ] But the sensuous, correctly recognized, shows everywhere that it is the revelation of the spiritual. In the face of this correct recognition of the sensible, it was clear to me that "limits of knowledge", as they were established at that time, can only be admitted by those who come across this sensible and treat it in the same way as someone would treat a fully printed page if he focused his view only on the letter forms and said, without any idea of reading, that one could not know what was behind these forms.
[ 8 ] So my gaze was directed from sensory observation to the spiritual, which was fixed in my inner cognitive experience. I was not looking for unspiritual atomic worlds behind the sensory phenomena, but for the spiritual, which apparently reveals itself within the human being, but which in reality belongs to the sensory things and sensory processes themselves. The behavior of the cognizing human being creates the appearance that the thoughts of things are in the human being, while in reality they are in the things. Man needs to separate them from the things in an illusory experience; in the true experience of cognition he returns them to the things.
[ 9 ] The development of the world is then to be understood in such a way that the preceding unspiritual, from which the spirituality of man later unfolds, has a spiritual beside and outside itself. The later spiritualized sensuality, in which the human being appears, then arises through the fact that the spiritual ancestor of the human being unites with the imperfect unspiritual forms and, transforming these, then appears in a sensual form.
[ 10 ] These ideas led me beyond the epistemologists of the time, whose acumen and sense of scientific responsibility I fully recognized. They led me to Goethe.
[ 11 ] I have to think back today to my inner struggle at the time. I didn't make it easy for myself to get over the thought processes of the philosophies of the time. But my shining star was always the recognition, brought about entirely by myself, of the fact that man can see himself inwardly as a spirit independent of the body, standing in a purely spiritual world.
[ 12 ] Before my work on Goethe's scientific writings and before this epistemology, I wrote a small essay on atomism that was never printed. It was along the lines indicated. I must remember how pleased I was when Friedrich Theodor Vischer, to whom I sent the essay, wrote me a few words of approval.
[ 13 ] Now, however, my studies of Goethe made it clear to me how my thoughts lead to a view of the nature of knowledge that emerges everywhere in Goethe's work and his position in the world. I found that my points of view gave me a theory of knowledge which is that of Goethe's world view.
[ 14 ] In the eighties of the last century, Karl Julius Schröer, my teacher and fatherly friend, to whom I owe much, recommended me to write the introductions to Goethe's scientific writings for Kürschner's "National-Literatur" and to take care of the publication of these writings. In this work I followed Goethe's life of knowledge in all the fields in which he was active. It became increasingly clear to me in detail that my own views placed me in an epistemology of Goethe's world view. And so I wrote this epistemology during the aforementioned work.
[ 15 ] As I present it to myself again today, it also appears to me as the epistemological foundation and justification of everything I later said and published. It speaks of an essence of cognition that clears the way from the sensory world into a spiritual one.
[ 16 ] It might seem strange that this youthful writing, which is almost forty years old, appears again today unchanged, only expanded by annotations. In the way it is presented, it bears the hallmarks of a way of thinking that settled into the philosophy of the time forty years ago. If I were writing it today, I would say many things differently. But I would not be able to state anything else as the essence of knowledge. But what I would write today would not be able to carry so faithfully the germs of the spiritual world view I represent. One can only write in such a germinal way at the beginning of a life of knowledge. That is perhaps why this youthful writing may reappear in its unchanged form. Whatever theories of knowledge existed at the time of its writing have found a continuation in later theories of knowledge. I have said what I have to say about this in my book "The Riddles of Philosophy". This is being published at the same time by the same publisher in a new edition. - What I outlined some time ago as the epistemology of Goethe's world view in this little book seems to me to be as necessary to say today as it was forty years ago.
Goetheanum at Dornach near Basel
November 1923, Rudolf Steiner