Thesis_Ginges_H.txt
THE ACT OF KNOWING: RUDOLF STEINER
AND THE NEO-KANTIAN TRADITION
Hal Jon Ginges
Page 1 Thesis_Ginges_H.txt
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
University of Western Sydney
February 2012
Page 2 2 Certificate.txt
Certificate
This work has not been submitted previously for a higher degree at any other institution. The work contained in this thesis is entirely my own, except for references to the works of others as indicated in the text.
Signed:
Date:
Page 1 3 Abstract.txt
Abstract
A central claim of Kantian critical idealism is that our knowledge is limited to appearances, and that we cannot show we have knowledge of things-in-themselves. All of our knowledge of the given world is mediated to us through the sensory intuitions of space and time, and our intellect is discursive rather than archetypal. As a result, we cannot know things spontaneously, and we cannot have holistic knowledge of natural phenomena. Although unmediated knowledge by way of intellectual intuition must be counted as a rational possibility that is not a capacity we possess. Similarly, while an archetypal intellect must be a rational possibility, according to Kant we do not have one.
Rudolf Steiner is well known as an educator. In his early career Steiner was trained as a natural scientist, took a doctorate in neo-Kantian philosophy and sought to demonstrate that we do have direct access to knowledge of essences. Steiner was greatly influenced by Goethe and Fichte and attempted to overcome the limit Kant placed upon possible knowledge by adapting Goethe’s concept of the archetypal phenomenon to claim that we do possess an intellectus archetypus and by extrapolating from Fichte’s argument for intellectual intuition to argue for what he calls intuitive thinking .
This dissertation examines Steiner’s arguments as a series of disjunctions from the propositions of the critical philosophy. The thesis of the dissertation is that Steiner is ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts to establish the capacities for an intellectus archetypus and intuitive thinking from within the context of critical idealism, but that his work opens up ways in which neo-Kantian scholarship may be further developed.
Page 1 4 CONTENTS.txt Contents
Acknowledgements ii
Abbreviations iv
Texts and translations vi
Introduction:
Rudolf Steiner the Philosopher 1
PART 1
Chapter 1: Intuition and Archetype 23
Chapter 2: Goethe’s Way of Seeing 32
Chapter 3: The Kantian Legacy 58
PART 2
Chapter 4: Monism and Dualism 72
Chapter 5: Perceiving the Archetype 108
Chapter 6: Intellectual Intuition 155
Chapter 7: Intuitive Thinking 209
Page 1 4 CONTENTS.txt
Conclusion 247
Bibliography 254
Page 2 5 Acknowledgements.txt Acknowledgements
I was introduced to the thought and work of Rudolf Steiner in about 1970, when I was an undergraduate student at Sydney University. I have had an ambivalent relationship with Steiner’s Anthroposophy ever since. I have been attracted from the start to the practical aspects of Anthroposophy such as the Waldorf school curriculum, biodynamic agriculture and Steiner’s socio-political concept of the threefold social order. I have met people I admire and respect through Anthroposophy and have formed strong friendships with some of them. At the same time my natural scepticism and my training in Philosophy have made me incapable of accepting on faith much of the world view that many anthroposophists take for granted.
My ambivalent relationship with Anthroposophy eventually drove me to read Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom carefully. I was astonished to find that this thinker, branded as a theosophist and a mystic, displayed an impressive familiarity with the work of Kant, the post-Kantians and his contemporary Neo-Kantians, and was attempting to argue for his spiritual science as a philosopher. I wanted to know whether Steiner’s spiritual science, and the practical activities which had arisen from it, could indeed be legitimised as a form of knowledge from within the mainstream Western tradition. I was surprised, though perhaps I ought not to have been, that there appeared to be almost no academic work undertaken on the subject.
In late 2005 I approached Dr Michael Symonds at the University of Western Sydney about his supervising a doctoral dissertation on the epistemology of Rudolf Steiner. I commenced as a part-time student in 2006, and was awarded a scholarship by the
University from 2007 to mid 2009. Throughout the six years of my research I have enjoyed Michael’s support and enthusiasm for the project, and have benefited greatly from his helpful criticisms and his clear insights. I was able to visit the Goetheanum, the international headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland in January 2008 with assistance from the University. I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the constant encouragement, well beyond the call of duty, which I have received from Dr Michael Symonds and the support I have had from the Research Unit of the University.
Outside of the University I have received support and encouragement from persons associated with Anthroposophy. The Eileen Mac Pherson Trust provided me with some financial support, Dr Walter Kugler and his staff at the Rudolf Steiner Archiv in Dornach were very accommodating, and Rudolf Steiner House in Sydney has assisted me by arranging for me to lecture on Steiner’s epistemology in an open forum. Numerous of
Page 1 5 Acknowledgements.txt my friends, including John Shaw, Arthur Marshall and Jacob van Gent have expressed a continuing interest in my project and a desire to read the final product.
On a personal and on a practical level I wish to acknowledge the love and support I have received from my wife, Heather. She has read my drafts and provided me with valuable suggestions, and challenged me on many points so as to sharpen my thinking. She has also had to carry the larger load of the responsibilities we bear towards our ever expanding family, and I thank her for ensuring that I have had time available to me to complete this labour of love. It only remains to thank our children and grandchildren for their continuing love and interest in what Papa is doing despite his absences: thank you, to all of you, for your kindness and understanding.
Page 2 6 Abbreviations.txt Abbreviations
Fichte, J.
IWL Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre. Translated by D. Breazeale. (Cornell
University Press: Ithaca and London, 1992).
Goethe, J.
GOS Goethe on Science: An Anthology of Goethe’s Scientific Writings. (Floris Books:
Edinburgh, 2000)
GSW Goethes Sämtliche Werke. (Max Hesses Verlag: Leipzig).
Henrich, D.
FOI Fichte’s Original Insight. In Contemporary German Philosophy vol 1.
(Pennsylvania State University Press, pp15-53)
Kant, I.
CJ Critique of Judgment. Translated by W. Pluhar. (Hackett Publishing Company:
Page 1 6 Abbreviations.txt
Indianapolis, 1987).
CPR Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. (Palgrave
Macmillan: London, 1993).
CPrR Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Lewis White Beck. (Prentice Hall:
New Jersey, 1993).
GW The Moral Law: Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Edited by
Paton. (Hutchinson University Library: London, 1972)
KPV Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1974)
KRV Kritik der reinen Vernunft. (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1974)
KU Kritik der Urteilskraft. (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1974)
Steiner, R.
CML Autobiography: The Course of my Life. Translated R. Stebbing.
Page 2 6 Abbreviations.txt
(Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, NY, 1983)
GNS Einleitungen zu Goethes Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften, (Rudolf
Steiner Verlag: Dornach, 1999)
GWV Goethe’s World View. Translated by W. Lindeman. (Mercury Press: Spring
Valley, 2004)
ITSP Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. Translated by M. Lipson.
(Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, NY, 1995)
NOS Nature’s Open Secret. Translated by J. Barnes and M. Spiegler,
(Anthroposophic Press: Spring Valley, NY, 1995).
Ph F Die Philosophie der Freiheit. (Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach, 2005).
Ph FE The Philosophy of Freedom. Translated by M. Wilson. (Rudolf Steiner Press:
Forest Row, 2001).
RP Riddles of Philosophy. Introduced by F. Koelln. (Anthroposophic Press: Spring
Page 3 6 Abbreviations.txt
Valley, NY, 1973).
SK The Science of Knowing. Translated by W. Lindeman. (Mercury Press: Spring
Valley, NY, 1988).
TK Truth and Knowledge. Translated by R. Stebbing. (Steinerbooks: Blauvelt, NY,
1981).
WW Wahrheit und Wissenschaft. (Rudolf Steiner Online Archiv, 2010).
Page 4 7 Texts and translations.txt Texts and Translations
Original sources
Rudolf Steiner’s works have been collected and authorised for publication by the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung in Dornach, Switzerland. Unless otherwise indicated references to the original texts are to the volumes of the 7th edition of the Gesamtausgabe published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach.
The texts used for the Kant’s Critiques are the 1974 Suhrkamp paperback editions published by Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. The texts used for Goethe are the Gesamtausgabe published by Max Hesse Verlag in Leipzig. Fichte’s works have not been consulted in the original.
Sources in translation
Much of Steiner’s work has been translated into English. The principal publishers are in the United Kingdom – London, Edinburgh and Forest Row – and at Spring Valley in New York. Some of Steiner’s principal works are available in several translations and editions. Philosophie der Freiheit was originally translated by Alfred Hoernle in 1916, and published as Philosophy of Freedom. A revised edition, with a translation by Hermann Poppelbaum was published in 1939 under the title The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The original translation was revisited by Michael Wilson, whose 1964 edition also restored the original title. Wilson’s translation is the accepted British version, and is now in its seventh edition. In the United States a new translation by Michael Lipson has been published recently under the title Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. Both the Wilson and the Lipson translations have been consulted but citations are to the Lipson translation.
Steiner’s introductions to Goethe’s scientific works were originally published in translation by Anthroposophic Press as Goethe the Scientist in 1950. The more recent American translation by J. Barnes and M. Spiegler is published as Nature’s Open Secret Anthroposophic Press. This translation has been consulted throughout.
The translations of Kant’s three Critiques, which have been consulted, are respectively the Kemp Smith, White Beck and Pluhar translations.
Page 1 7 Texts and translations.txt Some of Goethe’s scientific work is available in translation, though much of it in an incomplete form. Extensive use has been made of the anthology contained in Jeremy Naydler’s Goethe on Science. At times this writer has undertaken his own translations.
Page 2 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt INTRODUCTION: RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER
Rudolf Steiner is a fairly well-known figure in the intellectual life of Continental Europe of the early 20th century. Steiner is most commonly associated with the Waldorf, or Rudolf Steiner, schools for which he provided the curriculum and with biodynamic (advanced organic) agriculture. Were this dissertation to be a study of some aspect of Steiner’s educational philosophy or of the relative efficacy of Steiner’s form of organic agriculture it would not be particularly remarkable. There are many academic and other studies of Waldorf education,1 and there are numerous tracts on the efficacy of biodynamic agriculture.2 Outside of these fields, however, and despite the substantial volume of his work3 and his evident familiarity with the Western intellectual tradition Steiner has largely been ignored by the academy.4 In his later career Steiner became a theosophist and a spiritual scientist , and it seems that his contributions to neo-Kantian philosophy have been judged by this later career and have therefore been overlooked.
1 See, for example, Carlgren, F. (2008) Education Towards Freedom: Rudolf Steiner Education, Floris Books: Edinburgh; Mazzone, A. (2010) A Passionate Education, Griffin Press: Salisbury, South Australia.
2 See, for example, Pfeiffer, E. (1983) Biodynamic Gardening and Farming, Mercury Press: London.
3 There are about 400 volumes of the Gesamtausgabe published by the Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach.
4 Of this phenomenon see, for example, Davenport R. (1955) The Dignity of Man, Harper Bros: New York, pp335-336: That the academic world has managed to dismiss Steiner’s works as inconsequential and irrelevant, is one of the intellectual wonders of the twentieth century. Anyone who is willing to study those vast works with an open mind (let us say, a hundred of his titles) will find himself faced with one of the greatest thinkers of all time, whose grasp of the modern sciences is equaled only by his profound learning in the ancient ones. Steiner was no more of a mystic than Albert Einstein; he was a scientist, rather – but a scientist who dared to enter into the mysteries of life.
In his early career Steiner was an aspiring philosopher. He wrote on Kant and the neo- Kantian tradition in a way which reveals a clear understanding of the epistemological problems within it, and which demonstrates a familiarity with the thinking and arguments of his contemporary neo-Kantians and of more popular writers such as Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche.5 At that early stage Steiner’s primary interest was in knowledge in the strictest sense of the word, and in finding a way to overcome the unsatisfying conclusion of Kantian critical idealism, namely that we cannot claim to have knowledge of essences. It is the thesis of this dissertation that Steiner is entitled to have his early work regarded as a creditable attempt to address the epistemological issues which arise from the critical project, and that his contributions to Continental epistemology carry the promise of further developments in the idealist tradition.
Page 1 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt 5Steiner, R. (1999) Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of my Life, Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, NY hereinafter CML, p167: My affinity with Nietzsche allowed me to describe in my book about him my relationship to him in the very words he uses to describe his relationship with Schopenhauer: I am among those readers of Nietzsche who, once they read a page, know absolutely that they will read every page and listen to every word he has ever spoken. I felt immediate confidence in him … I understood him as though he had written in place of me, to clearly express me, though without presumption and foolishness. Steiner’s book about Nietzsche is Friedrich Nietzsche, Ein Kämpfer gegen seiner Zeit GA5 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach is translated as Friedrich Nietzsche: A Fighter against his Times and available in Steiner, R. (1985) Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, Spiritual Science Library: Blauvelt, N.Y.
6 Steiner dedicates his doctoral thesis Wahrheit und Wissenschaft [Truth and Knowledge] To Dr Eduard von Hartmann with the warm regard of the author.
Rudolf Steiner was born in 1861 in Krajkevic, Croatia, in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were Austrian, and the language of his written works is therefore German. Upon finishing school Steiner studied natural science at the University of Vienna and attended philosophy courses given by Franz Brentano. When he graduated in 1882 he was offered a position as the editor of Goethe’s scientific works for the Kürschner edition of German literature. This assignment took him to Weimar, where he undertook research in the Goethe-Schiller archives, was drawn to the transcendental realism of Eduard von Hartmann6 and to Nietzsche’s world view, completed his doctoral thesis and published his principal philosophical works. Steiner’s early career had unfolded within the arena of conventional intellectual life, and he sought an academic post, but was unsuccessful in obtaining one. When he finished his work in
the Goethe-Schiller Archives, he moved from Weimar to Berlin, edited an avant-garde magazine, Die Kommenden [The Coming Ones], was a member of the Bohemian literary and artistic cafe scene and taught at the Workers’ Institute.
From 1901 Steiner began to publish a series of books and articles, in which he set out what he claimed to be the results of his clairvoyant observations, and which he described as knowledge of higher worlds . In these works Steiner describes a path of inner development as a way of obtaining knowledge of essences. Steiner joined, and then led, the German branch of the Theosophical Society, out of which he formed the Anthroposophical Society in 1913. From then until his death in 1925 Steiner wrote and lectured extensively on the results of what he called anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft [anthroposophical spiritual science]. His increasing reputation as a public figure who claimed to have spiritual knowledge brought him a considerable personal following, but it cost him the respect and friendship of many of his former associations amongst philosophers and other intellectuals. Another consequence has been that Steiner’s early work as a serious commentator on neo-Kantian epistemology has been largely ignored or forgotten.
Page 2 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt Primary sources
Steiner’s epistemological works appeared in the last two decades of the 19th century, at a time when there were strong neo-Kantian movements in the mainstream of German philosophy. Between 1885 and 1897 Steiner wrote five works which might be said to comprise his specifically epistemological output. They are Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung mit besonderer Rücksicht auf
Schiller [Foundations of a theory of knowledge of Goethe’s world view with particular reference to Schiller] (1885)7, Einleitungen in Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften [Introductions to Goethe’s writings on natural science] (1885- 1897)8, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft [Truth and Knowledge] (1892)9, Die Philosophie der Freiheit [Philosophy of Freedom] (1894)10 and Goethes Weltanschauung [Goethe’s World View] (1897)11. Steiner’s first publication was written while he was engaged in preparing commentaries on Goethe’s scientific works, and is his first attempt to identify the theory of knowledge, which he believed underlay Goethe’s approach to the study of nature. The second publication is those commentaries themselves, which appeared in three batches between 1885 and 1897. Although the commentaries are intended as introductions to Goethe’s scientific works they also set out some of the arguments central to Steiner’s own epistemological position. The third is Steiner’s doctoral thesis, the fourth, Philosophy of Freedom, is his principal philosophical work and the fifth is his last publication before embarking upon spiritual science .
7Steiner, R (1999) Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheshen Weltanschauung mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schiller, GA 2 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach, now translated as Steiner, R.(1988) The Science of Knowing, Mercury Press: Spring Valley, NY and hereinafter SK.
8Steiner, R. (1999) Einleitungen in Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften, GA 1 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach, now translated as Steiner, R. (2000) Nature’s Open Secret, Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, NY and hereinafter NOS.
9Steiner, R. (1999) Wahrheit und Wissenschaft , GA 3 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach, in translation as Steiner, R. (1981) Truth and Knowledge, Steinerbooks: Blauvelt, NY hereinafter TK.
1010Steiner, R. (2005) Die Philosophie der Freiheit, GA 4 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach hereinafter PhF, in translation as Steiner, R. (2001) The Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner Press: Forest Row, hereinafter PhFE and as Steiner, R. (1995) Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, NY hereinafter ITSP. This is the translation most cited in the present work, largely because the editor has helpfully enumerated the paragraphs.
11 Steiner, R. (1999) Goethes Weltanschauung, GA 6 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach in translation as Steiner, R. (2004) Goethe’s World View, Mercury Press: Spring Valley, NY hereinafter GWV.
These first works are an attempt to create a theory of knowledge out of Goethe’s scientific methodology and independent of the Kantian tradition. The following excerpt
Page 3 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt from the first section of The Science of Knowing demonstrates Steiner’s early antipathy to Kantianism and his attachment to the cultural heritage represented by Goethe and Schiller. At this stage he has not yet attempted to incorporate Goethean thinking into neo-Kantianism, and could say:12
12 SK pp 17-18.
13 TK, p. 9.
14 TK pp 11-12.
In accordance with current scientific terminology, our work must be considered to be one of epistemology. To be sure, the questions with which it deals will in many ways be of a different nature from those usually raised by this science. We have seen why this is the case. Whenever similar investigations arise today, they take their start almost entirely from Kant. In scientific circles the fact has been completely overlooked that in addition to the science of knowledge founded by the great thinker of Koenigsberg, there is yet another direction, at least potentially, that is no less capable than the Kantian one of being deepened in an objective manner. In the early 1860’s Otto Liebmann made the statement that we must go back to Kant if we wish to arrive at a world view free of contradiction. This is why today we have a literature on Kant almost too vast to encompass.
But this Kantian path will not help the science of philosophy. Philosophy will play a part in cultural life again only when, instead of going back to Kant, it immerses itself in the scientific conception of Goethe and Schiller.
By the time Truth and Knowledge was published in 1892 Steiner has moved to approaching the issue of the limits to knowledge from within the context of the Kantian and post-Kantian traditions. Although he claims that present-day philosophy suffers from an unhealthy faith in Kant ,13 Steiner sets up his argument as a response to the foundations of critical idealism and as an extension of Fichte’s work on intellectual intuition. He is also able to articulate the difference of perspective between his position and the Kantian. In the Preface to Truth and Knowledge Steiner sets out his view of knowledge and the act of knowing in the following terms:14
The outcome of what follows is that truth is not, as is usually assumed, an ideal reflection of something real, but is a product of the human spirit, created by an
activity which is free; this product would exist nowhere if we did not create it ourselves. The object of knowledge is not to repeat in conceptual form something which already exists, but rather to create a completely new sphere, which when combined with the world given to our senses constitutes complete
Page 4 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt reality. Thus man’s highest activity, his spiritual creativeness, is an organic part of the universal world-process. The world-process should not be considered a complete, enclosed totality without this activity. Man is not a passive onlooker in relation to evolution, merely repeating in mental pictures cosmic events taking place without his participation; he is the active co-creator of the world-process, and cognition is the most perfect link in the organism of the universe.
This statement of Steiner’s epistemological position can also be read as an expression of what Steiner took his life’s mission to be, namely the reunification of matter and spirit within the sciences.
Steiner’s principal philosophical work, Philosophy of Freedom, appeared in 1894 and contains the clearest expression of Steiner’s arguments against Kantian epistemology. Philosophy of Freedom purports to be a demonstration that human beings are inwardly (spiritually) free, but it, too, is written as a response to critical idealism. The first half of the book argues for Steiner’s theory of knowledge against the backdrop of the dualism of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason]15, while the second half presents Steiner’s argument for ethical individualism as a counter to Kant’s deontological categorical imperative in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of Practical Reason]16. Philosophy of Freedom has been reprinted many times both in German and in English translation. Steiner recommended that the title be translated as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, so as to avoid the socio-political connotations most commonly
15 Kant, I. (1974) Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt aM. The translation used is by Lewis White Beck, annotated by Howard Caygill, (2003) Critique of Pure Reason, Palgrave MacMillan: Basingstoke, Hampshire, hereinafter the First Critique and CPR.
16 Kant, I. (1974 ) Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt aM. The translation used is by Lewis White Beck, (1993) Critique of Practical Reason, Prentice Hall: New Jersey, hereinafter the Second Critique and CPrR.
associated with freedom in English. He did not appreciate that the connotations of spiritual are equally likely to lead to misunderstanding.
The final specifically epistemological work is Goethe’s World View, which was published in 1897. By this time Steiner had published his book on Nietzsche and the last of his Introductions to Goethe’s scientific oeuvres, and was coming to the end of his time in Weimar. In Goethe’s World View Steiner distinguishes his own epistemological position from the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe’s natural science, argues that Plato’s concept of forms and Ideas has been consistently misunderstood, and claims that Goethe’s search for the archetypes in his perception of natural phenomena is the true form of Platonism.
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Despite his turn to theosophy and esoteric wisdom at the beginning of the 20th century, Steiner continued to publish works of a philosophical nature. These works tend to restate Steiner’s epistemological position rather than develop it any further. Between 1899 and 1910 Steiner composed Die Rätsel der Philosophie [Riddles of Philosophy],17 which is an overview of philosophical world views from classical Greece to the late nineteenth century. At the conclusion of this work Steiner argues that the future of philosophy does not lie in academic philosophy, but in his anthroposophy. This theme is continued in the lectures collected as Philosophie und Anthroposophie, GA35 in the Gesamtausgabe18, including Philosophie und Anthroposophie (1908)19 and Steiner’s
17 Steiner, R. (1973) Riddles of Philosophy, Anthroposophic Press: Spring Valley, NY hereinafter RP.
18 Steiner, R. (1984) Philosophie und Anthroposophie GA 35 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach.
19 Ibid, Philosophie und Anthroposophie pp 66-110 and available in translation as Steiner, R. (undated) Philosophy and Anthroposophy, Kessinger Publishing: USA.
contributions to the 4th International Congress of Philosophy at Bologna in 1911.20 Riddles of Philosophy was reprinted in 1914 and again in 1918, when The Philosophy of Freedom was also reprinted with some significant additions and alterations. Later lectures, such as the series on Thomas Aquinas given in 1919 and available in translation as The Redemption of Thinking,21 restate the argument of Goethe’s World View that Plato’s concept of forms had been misunderstood until Goethe’s endeavours to perceive the archetype.
20 Ibid, Die psychologischen Grundlagen und die erkenntnistheoretische Stellung der Anthroposophie
pp 111-144, Die Theosophie und das Geistesleben der Gegenwart, pp 145-151, Ein Wort über Theosophie auf dem IV. Internationalen Kongreß für Philosophie, pp 152-155.
21 Steiner, R. (1983) The Redemption of Thinking, Anthroposophic Press: Spring Valley, NY.
22 SK pp 122-123.
Steiner’s claim that it is one and the same epistemological position, which he espouses in all of his work, is repeated in the new edition of his first work, The Science of Knowing, which was published in 1924, forty years after its first appearance. In a note to this largely unaltered edition Steiner says of his position and of philosophy since the 1880’s:22
All these views [of philosophers], 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
Page 6 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt 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.
Steiner can claim that his epistemological position has remained unchanged, but in the forty years between 1884 and 1924 he had said a great deal else about the nature of life and the cosmos, much of which did little to enhance his reputation as a philosopher.
Secondary sources in English
There is almost no secondary literature in English dealing with Steiner as a philosopher. This is surprising, as Steiner qualifies for entries in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and the Penguin Companion to Philosophy, though the emphasis in both these compendia is upon Steiner’s contributions to education and biodynamic agriculture, his involvement with the Theosophical Society and founding of the anthroposophical movement.23 There are occasional passing references to Steiner in studies of some of his contemporaries, such as Brentano, Husserl and Nietzsche.24 Outside of the academy there are many works about Steiner’s way of thinking and his engagement in various aspects of practical life, but these, almost without exception, are uncritical presentations of Steiner’s world view from within the orbit of the Anthroposophical Society or those who are sympathetic to it. Some of these, particularly those by practising scientists25 and the Inkling-group
23See, for example, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy: … German anthroposophist. Steiner’s doctoral dissertation from Vienna concerned the philosophy of Fichte; he also studied Goethe intensively. He eventually evolved a speculative and oracular metaphysic, anthroposophy, akin to theosophy, and postulating different levels of psychical and astral realms … ; and the Penguin entry: … German thinker and theosophist, born in what was then Hungary and is currently Croatia. He held a prominent position in the theosophical movement at the beginning of the century, but broke away to develop an alternative system of thought, and of mental and bodily culture, which he called anthroposophy. Its organizational centre in Dornach (near Basel) in Switzerland is named Goetheanum, a clear indication of the strong influence of Goethe’s nature-philosophy on Steiner, who rejected mainstream mechanistic and materialistic science, which he considered to be at best one-sided and in need of a more organic and spiritual supplementation. Genuine knowledge, he thought, must always include intuitive and aesthetic elements. Although Steiner’s anthroposophical system is replete with esoteric and occult mystifications, impartial observers have found much of value in his ideas for schooling (including an emphasis on the development of children’s aesthetic and creative potential), practised in the so-called Waldorf or Steiner schools. The aim is to assist and encourage a many-sided and harmonious development of the individual’s potential.
24See, for example, Rollinger, R. Brentano and Husserl in Jacquette, D. (2004) Cambridge Companion to
Page 7 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt Brentano, Cambridge UP: Cambridge, pp255-276: [Husserl’s] rejection of mysticism in philosophy is also to be found throughout his comments on Heidegger, Scheler and Steiner as well as others.
25 See, for example, Lehrs, E. (1985) Man or matter? Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature based upon Goethe’s Method of Training, Observation and Thought, Rudolf Steiner Press: London.
writer and critic Owen Barfield26, do nevertheless demonstrate that Steiner’s way of thinking can be adapted to inform the study of natural science, literature and etymology.
26See, for example, Barfield, O. (1965) Saving the Appearances, Harcourt, Brace and World: New York; (1977) The Rediscovery of Meaning and other Essays, Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, Conn.
27 Welburn, A. (2004) Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy, Floris Books: Edinburgh.
28 Tarnas, R. (1993) The Passion of the Western Mind, Ballantine Books: New York.
29 Hammer, O. (2004) Claiming Knowledge, Brill: Leiden.
30 Tarnas’ more recent work is entitled Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View.
This writer has been able to locate only three substantial English-language secondary sources, which overtly purport to locate Steiner’s work within the philosophical tradition. Two of them are sympathetic to Steiner, and one is not. They are Andrew Welburn’s recent Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy27, Richard Tarnas’ The Passion of the Western Mind28and Olav Hammer’s Claiming Knowledge29. Welburn holds an academic post at Oxford, and it is therefore perhaps noteworthy that his book is not published by a recognised academic publishing house, but by an anthroposophical press, which specialises in religious exegesis. His Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy offers a comprehensive overview of Steiner’s world view, but it is an insider’s introduction to Anthroposophy for a general audience rather than a critique of Steiner’s philosophical work. Welburn does provide an account of Steiner’s epistemological work, but it is descriptive rather than critical and takes the form of an appendix for the reader with a more specialised interest.
Richard Tarnas is a Californian philosopher, who appears to have a growing interest in the less acknowledged strands of the Western intellectual tradition.30 The Passion of the Western Mind is a broad canvas approach to Western thought from the pre-Socratics to post-modernism. Tarnas is not writing specifically about Steiner, but he accords Steiner a significant role in the development of modern Western thought. Tarnas claims Steiner
as the primary 20th century exponent of an alternative philosophical tradition. Having sketched the inherent problems in Kantian dualism Tarnas introduces Steiner by saying:31
31 Tarnas (1993), p. 433.
Page 8 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt 32Ibid., pp 433-434.
All of this suggests that another, more sophisticated and comprehensive epistemological perspective is called for. Although the Cartesian-Kantian epistemological position has been the dominant paradigm of the modern mind, it has not been the only one, for at almost precisely the same time that the Enlightenment reached its philosophical climax in Kant, a radically different epistemological perspective began to emerge – first visible in Goethe with his study of natural forms, developed in new directions by Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Coleridge, and Emerson, and articulated within the past century by Rudolf Steiner. Each of these thinkers gave his own distinct emphasis to the developing perspective, but common to all was a fundamental conviction that the relation of the human mind to the world was ultimately not dualistic but participatory.
In the following paragraphs Tarnas qualifies his claim that what is being put forward is a radically different epistemological perspective by identifying it as a variant of critical idealism, which appears to encompass Fichtean subjective idealism, Schelling’s nature- philosophy and Hegelian absolutism. The position which Tarnas claims Steiner has articulated within the last century is the following:32
In essence this alternative conception did not oppose the Kantian epistemology but rather went beyond it, subsuming it in a larger and subtler understanding of human knowledge. The new conception fully acknowledged the validity of Kant’s critical insight, that all human knowledge of the world is in some sense determined by subjective principles; but instead of considering these principles as belonging ultimately to the separate human subject, and therefore not grounded in the world independent of human cognition, this participatory conception held that these subjective principles are in fact an expression of the world’s own being, and that the human mind is ultimately the organ of the world’s own process of self- revelation. In this view, the essential reality of nature is not separate, self- contained, and complete in itself, so that the human mind can examine it objectively and register it from without. Rather, nature’s unfolding truth emerges only with the active participation of the human mind.
In addition to the claim that this alternative conception acknowledges the validity of Kant’s critical insight and goes beyond it, Tarnas claims that it overcomes the evident
problems arising from the dualism inherent in any form of transcendental idealism. Tarnas characterizes Steiner’s alternative conception as a modern form of participatory consciousness:33
33 Ibid., pp 434-435.
Page 9 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt 34 The others are the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky, the neo-theosophist Alice Bailey, the mentalist Edgar Cayce and a cluster of representatives of the broadly described New Age movement.
This participatory epistemology, developed in different ways by Goethe, Hegel, Steiner, and others, can be understood not as a regression to na„ve participation mystique, but as the dialectical synthesis of the long evolution from the primordial undifferentiated consciousness through the dualistic alienation. It incorporates the postmodern understanding of knowledge and yet goes beyond it. The interpretive and constructive character of human cognition is fully acknowledged, but the intimate, interpenetrating and all-permeating relationship of nature to the human being and human mind allows the Kantian consequence of epistemological alienation to be entirely overcome.
Although Tarnas clearly locates Steiner within the mainstream philosophical tradition, and adds some weight to the argument for Steiner to be taken seriously as a philosopher, he, too, does not offer any critical analysis of Steiner’s epistemological contributions.
Olav Hammer is a Swedish philosopher of religion working in Denmark, whose field of research includes an interest in what he calls the Modern Esoteric Tradition. Hammer sees this tradition as commencing with the foundation of the Theosophical Society in 1880 and stretching to the various manifestations of the New Age movement of the 1970s and beyond. Claiming Knowledge is a critique of five forms of modern esotericism, all of which claim knowledge of essences on the basis of reconstituted histories and traditions, supposedly scientific arguments and the immediacy of personal experience. One of these traditions is Steiner’s Anthroposophy.34 Although Hammer’s interest is in the cosmological, mystical and pseudo-religious aspects of Steiner’s legacy, his study does also acknowledge and discuss Steiner as a neo-Kantian. Hammer purports to be
neither sympathetic to nor dismissive of his subjects, but the criterion against which the respective traditions are measured is the empirical science of the Enlightenment. As a consequence Hammer criticises Steiner’s epistemological position without examining the arguments for it.
In addition to these three books there are recent papers published in journals or delivered at conferences, which attempt to relate Steiner’s epistemological work to more familiar trends in contemporary Continental philosophy. These papers include, for example, studies of Goethean science with allusion to Steiner and a comparison between Steiner’s concept of intuitive thinking and the re-examination of thinking in the later works of Heidegger.35 Again, however, this writer has not been able to find any papers which offer a critical analysis of Steiner’s position.
35See, for example, Fischer, L. (2011) Goethe contra Hegel: The Question of the End of Art, Goethe Yearbook XVIII pp127-156; Dahlin, B. and Majorek, M. (2008) On the path towards thinking: learning
Page 10 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt from Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Steiner, EERA Conference in Gothenburg, Info3 Verlag; Frankfurt am Main.
Secondary sources in German
There is a significantly larger secondary literature in German on Steiner as a philosopher. Most of the material until quite recently is, like the English language corpus, merely explicatory. It, too, is mostly written by anthroposophists or others committed to Steiner’s world view. With few exceptions it does not attempt to offer any critique of Steiner’s arguments and his epistemological position. One exceptional writer is Michael Muschalle, who has published books, articles and an online newsletter, which attempt to acknowledge and to respond to the philosophical problems in Steiner’s epistemology. Commencing with his doctoral thesis, Die Beobachtung des Denkens [The Observation of
Thinking],36 through numerous articles37 and to his most recent Beobachtung des Denkens bei Rudolf Steiner38 [Rudolf Steiner’s Observation of Thinking] Muschalle explores the philosophical issues, which emerge from Steiner’s view of the nature of thinking. Another recent contributor to Steiner exegesis is Michael Kirn, whose books Das grosse Denk-Ereignis [The Turning Point in Thinking] and Freiheit im Leib? [Physically Free?]39 are explorations of the philosophical implications of the first three chapters of Philosophy of Freedom. Marcello da Veiga Greuel’s Wirklichkeit und Freiheit [Reality and Freedom]40 is a comparative study of the concepts and methodologies of Fichte’s and Steiner’s epistemologies. Although da Veiga Greuel is clearly sympathetic to Steiner Wirklichkeit und Freiheit is the closest attempt this writer has found to a critique of Steiner from within the context of the idealist tradition. Marek Majorek, the co-author of one of the recent papers mentioned earlier, has published a work on the concept of objectivity, in which he argues for Steiner’s spiritual science from within the context of objectivity as a philosophical problem.41 In addition to these efforts to place Steiner within his philosophical context there are criticisms of Steiner’s epistemology from those attached to a perspective which it appears to challenge.42 The German secondary literature appears to have reached the stage at which Steiner’s epistemological work is
36 Muschalle, M. (1988) Die Beobachtung des Denkens: Universitaet Bielefeld: online.
37 See, for example, Muschalle, M. (2007) Goethe, Kant und das intuitive Denken in Rudolf Steiners Philosophie der Freiheit, Studien zur Anthroposophie: online; (2009) The Causality of Thinking, trans. T. Boardman and G. Savier: online.
38 Muschalle, M. (2007) Beobachtung des Denkens bei Rudolf Steiner: Books on Demand GmbH: Norderstedt.
39 Kirn, M. (1998) Das grosse Denk-Ereignis, Verlag am Goetheanum: Dornach; (1999) Freiheit im Leib?, Verlag am Goetheanum: Dornach.
40 Veiga Greuel, M. da (1990) Wirklichkeit und Freiheit, Gideon Spicker Verlag: Dornach.
41 Majorek, M. (2002) Objektivitaet: ein Erkenntnisideal auf dem Prüfstand – Rudolf Steiners
Page 11 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt Geisteswissenschaft als ein Ausweg aus der Sackgasse [Objectivity: An ideal of knowledge on trial – Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science as a Way out of the Dead End], Francke Verlag: Tuebingen & Basel.
42 See, for example, Dilloo-Heidger, E. (2005) Projekt: Grundlagen der Anthroposophie, www.dilloo.de/anthroindex.htm; Dilloo-Heidger’s project is to assess Steiner’s early work hermeneutically, and without reference to Steiner’s claims to intuitive sources for knowledge of higher worlds.
now the subject of serious intellectual argument. Even within the German corpus, however, there still seems to be little attempt to subject Steiner’s philosophical arguments to critical analysis.
Secondary sources in other languages
Although the largest part of the literature about Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy is written in German and English, there is a growing literature in other languages, including Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, the Scandinavian languages and Polish, Hungarian and Russian. Most of the works this writer could decipher are translations of Steiner’s primary texts or of secondary literature already long available in German and English.43
43 The author visited the library at the Goetheanum, which houses collections in these other languages.
44 Steiner frequently cites Volkelt, and often refers to Cohen and Windelband.
The Kantian context
In this dissertation the view has been taken that Steiner’s epistemological work is best considered as a response to Kantian transcendental idealism, although Steiner would not have regarded himself as a neo-Kantian. The citations in his early works demonstrate that he was very familiar with the orientations of the Marburg and Baden schools of neo- Kantianism, though he distanced himself from them.44 His philosophical positions seem to have been most strongly influenced by his personal contacts with Brentano and von Hartmann and by his readings of the reinterpretations of Kantian idealism undertaken by Fichte and Schopenhauer. The outcome of these influences upon Steiner has resulted in an approach which Steiner, following on from Brentano, chooses to characterise as phenomenological , but which also bears the hallmarks of strong Idealist tendencies. Steiner is certainly not a phenomenologist in the style of Husserl or even of Brentano, for
it matters to Steiner to acknowledge the limits imposed upon possible knowledge by critical idealism.
Steiner appears to accept Kantian transcendental idealism as the necessary starting point for any epistemological investigation, including his own.45 In his autobiographical The
Page 12 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt Course of my Life, Steiner tells of saving his pocket money to buy the First Critique and reading it surreptitiously at school behind the covers of his history book.46 He then describes the effect the Critique of Pure Reason had upon the development of his own thinking:
45 See, for example, RP p. 445: Security and certainty of knowledge is being sought in many philosophical systems, and Kant’s ideas are more or less taken as its point of departure.
46 CML, p. 33.
47 Ibid., p. 34.
... the question concerning the scope of the human power of thought occupied me constantly. I felt that thinking could be developed into a power that truly includes the things and processes of the world. Subject matter that remains beyond thinking, as something merely reflected upon , was an unbearable idea to me. I told myself again and again that what is in the thing must enter one’s thoughts.
This feeling clashed continually with what I read in Kant, but I hardly noticed this conflict at the time. More than anything, through the Critique of Pure Reason I wanted to obtain a firm foundation that would enable me to come to terms with my own thinking. Whenever I went for walks during the holidays, I had to sit somewhere quiet, and repeatedly make clear to myself the exact process involved in the transition from simple surveyable concepts to mental images of natural manifestations. My attitude toward Kant was very uncritical at the time, but I got no further through him.47
Steiner subsequently distances himself from Kant, but he continues to use Kant’s epistemological architectonic and concepts as the structural framework for his own. In Truth and Knowledge Steiner stakes out his own ground by first criticizing the then widespread acceptance of Kantian thinking within academic philosophy. In Philosophy of Freedom his starting point is to show that any form of transcendental idealism is
untenable. In Riddles of Philosophy, in numerous lectures and in The Course of my Life, Steiner returns time and again to Kant, so as to have a context, within which to explain the positions of other philosophers and to account for his own. Indeed, Steiner seems to regard this as almost inevitable, for he says:
One thing is certain; Kant offered his contemporaries innumerable points for attack and interpretations. Precisely through his unclarities and contradictions, he became the father of the classical German world conceptions of Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Herbart and Schleiermacher. His unclarities became new questions for them. No matter how he endeavoured to limit
Page 13 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt knowledge in order to make place for belief, the human spirit can confess to be satisfied in the true sense of the word only through knowledge, through cognition.48
48RP, p. 122.
49CML, p. 33.
It is something of an irony that the subsequent neglect of Steiner as a philosopher appears to have arisen from his own expectation that the findings of his spiritual science would be regarded as knowledge and accepted on faith.
In Course of My Life Steiner describes his first encounters with the Critique of Pure Reason and his life-long passion to demonstrate that much more is knowable than is acknowledged within critical idealism. He describes his enthusiasm for Kant in the following terms:
While Kant was coming into my sphere of thinking, I was completely ignorant of his position in human intellectual history. All the views of him, whether for or against, were completely unknown to me. My unbounded interest in the Critique of Pure Reason arose entirely from my personal soul life. In my boyish way I tried to understand to what degree human reason is capable of true understanding of the nature of things.49
That enthusiasm had waned by the time Steiner published his doctoral thesis, the Preface for which begins:
Present-day philosophy suffers from an unhealthy faith in Kant. This essay is intended to be a contribution toward overcoming this. It would be wrong to belittle this man’s lasting contributions toward the development of German philosophy and science. But the time has come to recognize that the foundation for a truly satisfying view of the world and of life can be laid only by adopting a position which contrasts strongly with Kant’s.50
50 TK, p. 9.
51 RP, p. 101.
52 CML, p. 112.
Later, in Riddles of Philosophy Steiner says of the Kantian legacy: Kant found an
Page 14 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt answer that saved the truth and certainty of human knowledge by sacrificing human insight into the grounds of the world. 51 In The Course of my Life Steiner claims for himself a life-long interest in the problem of knowledge, and sums up his conception of knowledge in this way:
My primary concern in bringing forth my own insights was to refute the theory that there are limits to knowledge. I wanted to reject the path of knowledge that looks at the sensory world and then wants to go outward through the sensory world to break through to true reality. I wanted to show that true reality must be sought by going more deeply into the inner human being, not by attempting to break through toward the outer.52
The driving force of Steiner’s philosophical endeavours is to find a way to retain the truth and certainty of knowledge, and at the same time to justify a human capacity for insight into the grounds of the world .
Steiner therefore sees it as his task to show that the limits Kant imposes upon knowledge can be overcome within the context of the Kantian architectonic. His approach is to apply to Kant’s epistemology two interrelated concepts, which Steiner derives from Goethe and Fichte. From Goethe he takes the idea that it is possible to identify the archetypes, forms or Ideas of the sense-perceptible world within the perceived phenomena. In Kantian terms the thing-in-itself does not lie in some other world, but
is the perceptible phenomenon viewed as an instance of its archetype. The other concept is what Steiner calls intuitive thinking. Kant employed the concept of intuition, but reduced its ambit to what he called sensory intuitions, our constructs of space and time. Fichte expanded intuition to include intellectual intuition, by which he meant the starting point of our conscious processes, the point at which we recognize a separation between ourselves and the given, external world. Steiner adopts Fichte’s derivation of intellectual intuition, and attaches the immediacy, spontaneity and primacy of intuition to the cognitive process of thinking. Steiner’s intuitive thinking is the intellectual process which allows for perception of the archetypes, and which is intended to overcome the ontological distinctions between subject and object, and noumenon and phenomenon.
Dissertation
This dissertation is an examination of Rudolf Steiner’s responses to the limits Kant imposes upon the range of possible human knowledge. The dissertation canvasses the arguments Steiner mounts against the claims of critical idealism, and examines the extent to which those arguments are successful in challenging the conclusions of the critical philosophy. The thesis of the dissertation is that although Steiner is unable to extend the range of possible knowledge from within the context of Kantian idealism he does identify some points in the critical philosophy, from which the search for essences might be
Page 15 8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt expanded. It is another question, of course, whether Steiner’s inability to arrive at essences from within the neo-Kantian tradition demonstrates a fault in Steiner’s epistemological project or in the enterprise of the critical philosophy.
There are two parts to this dissertation. Part 1 consists of three short introductory chapters. The first of these, Intuition and Archetype, is provided as a background to the two concepts, which are most central to Steiner’s contribution to epistemology. The second, Goethe’s Way of Seeing, describes the methodology of Goethe’s natural science, which Steiner sought to incorporate into Kantian idealism. The third introductory chapter, The Kantian Legacy, describes how Steiner understood the critical project and how he sought to respond to it. Steiner’s responses are described as disjunctions from the critical philosophy.
Part 2 contains four chapters, each of which addresses a disjunction between Kantian critical idealism and Steiner’s epistemological position. The chapters do not entirely follow the order of publication of Steiner’s five main epistemological works. They attempt instead to trace the argument of Steiner’s responses to Kant. The first chapter, Monism and Dualism, examines the fundamental disjunction between Kant and Steiner, namely Steiner’s rejection of the dualism, which is inherent in any form of transcendental idealism. The next two chapters deal with the two concepts Steiner is endeavouring to work into Continental idealism. The second chapter, Perceiving the Archetype, is concerned with Steiner’s attempt to incorporate insights from Goethe’s natural science into the critical philosophy. The third chapter, Intellectual Intuition, deals with Steiner’s extrapolation from Fichte’s intellectual intuition to intuition as an enhanced form of cognition. These two concepts, intuition and archetype, provide the ground from which Steiner then sets out to argue that human beings are spiritually free, and that freedom arises in the creativity of thinking. The final chapter, Intuitive Thinking, addresses Steiner’s concepts of freedom and intuitive thinking, and shows that by the time Steiner
is arguing for intuitive thinking he has moved away from the philosophical tradition and into his spiritual science .
The Conclusion of the dissertation points to recent developments in Continental idealism, which display some similarities to Steiner’s work. They indicate that, although Steiner did not succeed in reformulating critical idealism so that it could become the epistemological ground for his own world view, his disjunctions may have drawn attention to nodal points for further developments within the Kantian tradition.
Page 16 9 PART 1.txt
PART 1
Page 1 10 Part 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE.txt PART 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE
It will become clear, in the course of this dissertation, that the concepts of intuition [Anschauung] and archetype [Archtyp] play a central role in Steiner’s theory of knowledge. For Steiner there is an inherent connection between the exercise of intuitive thinking and the perception of archetypes. Kant also refers to intuition frequently, and makes occasional reference to archetypes, but his understanding of these concepts is very different from Steiner’s. Both terms are called upon from time to time within the general epistemological lexicon, but they are both to some extent fringe concepts and are prone to ambiguity and misinterpretation. There is also, of course, the issue of translation. When Steiner uses the term Anschauung [intuition] he means something quite different from what Kant means by Anschauung, and in addition Steiner introduces the term Intuition to convey a particular sense of intuition. Steiner’s employment of archetype overlaps with Kant’s use of that term, but it needs to be distinguished from the related Platonic concepts of Idea, Type and Form. Steiner’s archetype is not the same thing, for example, as the Platonic Idea as it is usually understood and as Kant understands it. It seems necessary, therefore, to say something at the outset about what intuition and archetype have been taken to mean in this dissertation.
Intuition
The word intuition is generally used in the sense that it is a mode of coming to know, which has some or all of the characteristics of spontaneity, immediacy, totality and inaccessibility to the processes of rational thinking. These various characteristics, however, can lead to unrelated or even contrary concepts of intuition. Three examples of attempts to define intuition will serve to demonstrate the difficulty in describing what intuition denotes. The first is to be found in the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, which offers three meanings for intuition:
1. Immediate insight or knowledge, in contrast to insight or knowledge arrived at discursively, by means of analysis or proof. This is how the term is used by Descartes, Locke, Leibniz and Hume. Husserl saw the intuiting of essences as the task of phenomenology. The contrasting term used by Descartes for knowledge by way of analysis or proof was deduction, whereas Locke and Hume used demonstration.
As with other epistemic terms there is an act/content ambiguity: intuition can denote the manner in which something is known, or that which is known in a certain manner.
2. Direct perception of an object. This is roughly the meaning of intuition when used to translate the German Anschauung in Kant and others. According to him we have sensory intuitions, but no non-sensory, intellectual intuitions, and therefore no knowledge of super-empirical facts. On this last point, Fichte and Schelling took the opposite stand.
Page 1 10 Part 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE.txt
3. Immediate, unreflected belief that we find ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect (Bertrand Russell). Intuitions, in this sense of the word, are simply non- inferential beliefs. But the term is sometimes reserved for non-inferential beliefs which are highly resistant, though not immune, to revision or rejection.1
1 Mautner, T. (2005) The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, Penguin: London, p. 310.
2 Nelson, L. (1970) Progress and Regress in Philosophy, Basil Blackwell: Oxford.
The second example is a discussion of varieties of intuition taken from Leonard Nelson’s Progress and Regress in Philosophy,2 a study of neo-Kantian idealism. Nelson points out the contradictory implications of definitions intuition understood as 1 and 3 above, as feeling and intuition as perception:
People talk of grasping a truth intuitively’. This can mean one of two things. It can express a contrast to logical mediation, i.e. to reaching the truth by inference from some other truth. Thus it may be said that great scientific discoveries or important artistic creations took place intuitively’. It is the contrast with conceptual thought that is intended here.
We must distinguish this feeling-for-truth from another and more appropriate sense of intuition’. If someone says that he has come to know some truth by intuition, this may mean that he can give a perfectly good account of the grounds of his assertion, by reference to perception, i.e. to a definite and immediate knowledge of the object, one which is clear without any reflection. This is just the opposite of the other sense, in which intuition’ denoted a claim to truth for which the claimant knew he could not give the grounds.
We must therefore distinguish two sorts of intuition’ which are confused in common speech and which are not usually separated in psychological analysis: the feeling, first, which is simply our confidence that grounds for our judgment could be found, so that
through a dim awareness of the truth we just take those grounds for granted; and secondly perception, which is a clear, definite and sufficient ground for the judgment.3
3 Ibid, pp88-89, writer’s emphasis.
4 Beck, L. W. (1965) The Fact of Reason: An Essay on Justification in Ethics, in Studies in the Philosophy of Kant, The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc: Indianapolis.
The third comes from Beck. In The Fact of Reason: A Essay on Justification in Ethics Beck is undertaking an analysis of the intuitive answer to what he calls the external question in ethics, the question Why ought I to be moral? In the course of this discussion he engages
Page 2 10 Part 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE.txt in a more general discussion of intuition, and says:
While these truths are not, of course, seen with one’s physical eyes, the act of apprehending them is more like seeing something than it is like thinking and inferring. To call it seeing is to make use of a metaphor, and all the other words which name it likewise seem to be metaphorical also: Anschauen, intueor, apprehend , grasp, see by the lumen naturale , etc. I shall here use the word intuition to two senses, which I shall distinguish as follows. An intuition in the real sense is a direct apprehension of an objective truth, value, or state of affairs. An intuition in the putative sense is an act which seems to be a real intuition but which in fact may or may not be.
... I submit that all we have in the way of data are intuitions in the putative sense, that contradictory judgments of intuitions in the putative sense exist, and that there is no valid intuitive means by which real intuitions can be distinguished from putative intuitions.4
Beck’s distinction between putative intuitions and real intuitions highlights the strength of the Kantian position by emphasising the looseness and uncertainty of intuitions, that is, of particular beliefs as to facts or values.
These various definitions provide some assistance in teasing out what Kant and Steiner mean by intuition, but they also demonstrate why it is so difficult to come to a clear understanding of what the term means. The distinction Nelson draws between intuition as feeling and intuition as perception is clear until we consider the elaborations of that distinction in the Penguin definitions. In the first definition, for example, intuition is defined as immediate insight or knowledge, in contrast to insight or knowledge arrived at discursively ... , and it is thereby being described as the content of something which is known, rather than as the
manner of knowing. The difficulty is that the term insight itself suffers from exactly the same ambiguity as intuition , in that it, likewise, can denote both a manner of knowing and the content of something known. It is true that we do not use insight as a transitive verb, though we do say we can see into something. Insight is, however, a more literal translation than intuit and intuition of the German anschauen [verb] and Anschauung [noun]. It does not make things any clearer, therefore, to define intuition in terms of insight .
The second definition is an attempt to present intuition in the way Kant uses the term, but it, too, bundles together intuition as an act and intuition as content. The characterisation of intuition as direct perception of an object could refer to either, but the remainder of the definition limits intuition to the content of a process, namely the direct perception of a sensory fact. This definition of intuition is doubly unfortunate, in that it bears little resemblance to our everyday use of the term, and nor does it convey accurately what Kant means by intuition. Indeed, this attempt at a definition suggests a limited understanding of the Kantian project, which is to account for how it is, in the absence of a faculty for intellectual intuition, that we do have knowledge of super-empirical facts.
The third definition is the non-technical meaning of intuition, which constitutes what Russell calls a non-inferential belief . This vernacular use of the term takes the form of expressions such as I had an intuition that you’d arrive today or She knew what to get for his birthday, she’s very intuitive , and is not so much a non-inferential belief as a non-
Page 3 10 Part 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE.txt inferential judgment. That is, intuition in this sense does not take the form of belief as opposed to knowledge, but is knowledge arrived at by the conjunction of ideas or concepts in a non-inferential judgment. Intuition, in this sense, is yet to be the subject of an epistemological investigation, and it is not what either Kant or Steiner means by intuition.
Steiner’s concept of intuition in his epistemological work accords with the first of the Penguin definitions, in that it emphasises the characteristics of knowledge known immediately and spontaneously, and allows for the existence of a faculty of intellectual intuition. Intuition is generally a translation of Anschauung in Steiner’s texts, but it should be noted that, in certain sections of Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner also uses the word Intuition. This writer has not been able to determine whether Steiner intends something different when he uses Intuition rather than Anschauung in this context. There is another context, however, in which Steiner does employ the term Intuition in a quite specific and idiosyncratic way. In his later, anthroposophical works Steiner uses the term Intuition to denote the final stage in the practice of spiritual science, following on from Imagination and Inspiration.5
5 See, for example, Steiner, R. (1976) Knowledge of Higher Worlds: How is it achieved? Rudolf Steiner Press: London; (1997) An Outline of Esoteric Science, Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, N. Y.
6CPR, A19, B33 p. 65: In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed. But intuition takes place only in so far as the object is given to us.
7 Ibid, B35-B36 pp 66-67: I term all representations pure (in the transcendental sense) in which there is nothing that belongs to sensation. ... In the course of this investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensible intuitions, serving as principles of a priori knowledge, namely space and time.
8 Ibid, A734, B762 p590: Mathematics … derives its knowledge not from concepts but from the construction of them, that is, from intuition, which can be given a priori in accordance with the concepts.
Kant’s use of the term is also somewhat idiosyncratic. He begins the Critique of Pure Reason with a definition of intuition6, describes space and time as intuitions [Anschauungen] and as pure representations, and as our only pure sensible intuitions.7 The remainder of our sensory intuitions are then described as having specific content within a spatiotemporal manifold, and these are the direct perceptions of an object to which the second dictionary definition refers. The other sense in which Kant speaks of intuitions relates to the formation of mathematical concepts.8 For Kant intuitions are immediate and singular, in contrast with
concepts, which are mediated and general.9 There is some further development of the concept of intuition in the Third Critique, but Kant is consistent in denying human consciousness the capacity for non-sensory intellectual (non mathematical) intuition, which is only available to God.10 In his A Kant Dictionary Howard Caygill points out that Kant’s concept of intuition is a radical departure from Descartes and Spinoza, for both of whom
Page 4 10 Part 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE.txt intuition existed as a distinct form of knowledge.11 Caygill argues that Kant’s concept of intuition amounts to a refinement of Aristotle’s use of the term12, but it is nevertheless an unconventional application of it.
9 CPR, A320, B377 p. 314. For Kant the singularity of intuitions is a further reason there can be no intellectual intuitions for human cognition.
10 Ibid, B72, p 90: ... intellectual intuition seems to belong solely to the primordial being, and can never be ascribed to a dependent being, which through that intuition determines its existence solely in relation to given objects.
11 Caygill, H. (1995) A Kant Dictionary, Blackwell Publishers Ltd: Oxford pp 262-266.
12 Ibid. p 266: … the critical philosophy both respects the received Aristotelian distinction, while reconfiguring it in accordance with a doctrine of intuition which combines sensible and intelligible aspects.
Archetype
The concept of archetype will be familiar as a translation of the Platonic notion of the form or Idea , which is claimed by Platonists to lie behind the sense-perceptible phenomenon. For this reason it will generally be associated with the Platonic or the Idealist tradition, or perhaps with the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself. Steiner’s understanding of archetype comes, however, from Goethe’s use of the term in his scientific studies, and for Steiner the archetype is almost the antithesis of Kant’s thing-in-itself: the archetype is perceptible and knowable, while the thing-in-itself is neither. Again, in an attempt to clarify what archetype is intended to mean in this dissertation, two definitions of archetype are offered for consideration. They also demonstrate both the inherent difficulties in the term archetype and the consequent lack of attention to it. The definitions are taken from the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy and Howard Caygill’s A Kant Dictionary.
The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy gives three accounts for archetype, the first of which relates to its use in epistemology, and describes various uses of the term as follows:13
13 Mautner, op. cit., p 40.
14 Caygill, op. cit., pp 83-84.
The concept occurs in Descartes, Malebranche, Cudworth, Locke, Berkeley and others. In the Meditations (III, 33), Descartes insists that a series of ideas that generate one another must have a beginning in an archetype. Locke uses the word pattern’ as a synonym, and takes an archetype to be that to which our ideas must conform in order to be adequate (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2,20,1); but he also holds that most complex ideas are archetypes of the mind’s own making (4,4,5). In Malebranche and Berkeley, archetypes are ideas in God’s mind, independently of and prior to their being perceived by a human mind. Correlated term: ectype. An ectype relates to an archetype as a copy to its original.
Page 5 10 Part 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE.txt It will be seen that the kind of archetype to which Malebranche, Berkeley and Descartes refer distinguishes between what is available to human cognition and what must be presumed to emanate from outside of human cognition, while Locke uses the term to describe the relationship between ideas and perceptions and ideas and each other. The Dictionary of Philosophy definition does not associate archetype with the Platonic Idea, and there is no mention of what archetype means for Kant. Nor is it suggested that archetypes are realities, as they are for Goethe and Steiner, and by whom they are said to be available to heightened forms of human perception.
Caygill, again, describes two ways in which Kant uses the term archetype - one relating to the Platonic notion of forms, and the other to the archetype as a model for emulation of ethical behaviour. Caygill says the following:14
The archetype [archetypon, Urbild] for Kant is to the ectype as original is to copy, or as the possible holistic understanding of an intellectus archetypus to a discursive understanding that has need of images [intellectus ectypus]’ (CJ s77). Underlying these distinctions is a critical engagement with Platonism. In CPR Kant criticized Plato’s mystical deduction’ of the ideas’ which hypostatized them by making them into the archetypes of the things themselves’ (CPR A 313/B 370). Kant claims that Plato’s flight from the ectypal mode of reflecting upon the physical world-order to the architectonic ordering of it according to ends, that is, according to ideas’ (CPR A 318/ B 375) makes regulative principles’ for the systematic completion of knowledge into constitutive principles of the origin of things. Kant’s critique of Plato’s practical
philosophy follows similar lines, by arguing for an idea of the good which would serve as a regulative principle for any judgment as to moral worth’ but which would not itself be an archetype. Yet this principle can serve as an archetype when it serves as an ideal for imitation. In CPR Kant describes the wise man of the stoics as just such an archetype which serves for the complete determination of the copy; and we have no other standard for our actions than the conduct of this divine man within us, with which we compare and judge ourselves, and so reform ourselves, although we can never attain to the perfection thereby prescribed’ (CPR A 569/ B 597).
Caygill’s discussion of the ways in which Kant uses the term archetype provides some explanation, but does not mention Kant’s more extensive discussions of Platonic Ideas, ideals and archetypes in the later sections of the First Critique. In the first chapter of the Transcendental Dialectic, The Ideal of Pure Reason, Kant identifies what he means by an ideal with what Plato calls an Idea and relates both of these to the concept of an archetype.15
15 *
16 CPR A 811, B 839, p. 639: It is … only in the ideal of the supreme original good that pure reason can find the ground of this connection, which is necessary from the practical point of view, between the two elements of the supreme derivative good – the ground, namely, of an intelligible, that is, moral world. Now since we are necessarily constrained by reason to represent ourselves as belonging to such a world, while the senses present
Page 6 10 Part 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE.txt to us nothing but a world of appearances, we must assume that moral world to be a consequence of our conduct in the world of sense … and therefore to be for us a future world. Thus God and the future life are two postulates which, according to the principles of pure reason, are inseparable from the obligation which that same reason imposes upon us.
17 CPR A 838, B866, p. 657: Philosophy is the system of all philosophical knowledge. If we are to understand by it the archetype for the estimation of all attempts at philosophizing, and if this archetype is to serve for the
This thesis does not examine the other sense in which Kant uses the term archetype , archetype as moral exemplar, but it is interesting to note that in The Canon of Pure Reason of the First Critique Kant appears to engage in what might be called the archetypal thinking Steiner sets out to describe. Kant is providing the rational grounds for belief in God and an afterlife, and argues to the existence of a supreme being from the practical possibility of the supreme good, and the reality of a future life from the fact of a moral world independent of the world of the senses.16 In the following Architectonic of Pure Reason Kant is delineating the varieties of philosophy and uses the term archetype to characterise the idea of each particular field of knowledge. Kant’s use of archetype in these contexts appears to be consistent with the Platonic usage.17
estimation of each subjective philosophy, the structure of which is often so diverse and liable to alteration, it must be taken objectively. Thus regarded, philosophy is a mere idea of a possible science which nowhere exists in concreto, but to which, by many different paths, we eneavour to approximate, until the one true path … has achieved likeness to the archetype, so far as this is granted to [mortal] man.
18NOS, p. 45.
19Ibid., pp166 - 191.
20 GWV, pp 10-74.
Steiner refers to archetypes and archetypal thinking frequently. The concept of the archetype as the form or Idea of the phenomena plays a central role in Steiner’s epistemological works and arises from his studies of Goethe’s approach to nature. There is a discussion of Kant’s distinction between the intellectus ectypus and the intellectus archetypus in the fourth of Steiner’s introductions to Goethe’s nature studies,18 and a comprehensive account of the distinction Steiner draws between types, archetypes and Ideas in the 16th introduction.19 The last of Steiner’s epistemological studies, Goethe’s World View, contains an extended argument for a reinterpretation of Plato’s concept of the archetype along the lines of Goethe’s Urphaenomenon.20 To put it in Kantian terms, Steiner’s presentation of the archetype is an attempt to collapse the distinction between regulative principles and constitutive principles,
Page 7 10 Part 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE.txt and to ground the archetype as a regulative principle within the phenomena. Some of the background to Goethe’s concept of archetype is contained in Part 1 Chapter 2 following, and Steiner’s understanding of the archetype is developed in Part 2 Chapter 4.
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When he finished his studies in natural science at the University of Vienna in 1882, Rudolf Steiner took up an offer to be the editor of Goethe’s scientific works in Joseph Kürschner’s National German Literature. Steiner was engaged on this project until 1890 in Vienna, and then undertook similar work in Weimar as the editor of the scientific section of the Weimar edition of Goethe’s collected works at the Goethe-Schiller archives until he left Weimar for Berlin in 1897.1 Steiner published all of his primary epistemological works over this period. It is not surprising, then, that Goethe’s scientific essays can be identified as one of the principal sources upon which Steiner draws for his responses to the epistemology of the critical philosophy. From early on Steiner was convinced that the methodology Goethe had employed in observing natural phenomena provided a way to reach beyond the limits to knowledge imposed by Kantian idealism. The holism of Goethe’s approach to natural science also provided Steiner with an intellectual grounding for his inherent aversion to dualism and to the Kantian notion that human consciousness does not have access to knowledge of essences. As Steiner’s epistemological arguments depend so much upon what he has taken from Goethe’s phenomenology of nature it seems necessary, at this stage, to provide some background about Goethe’s natural science and the methodology for the investigation of nature which Steiner claims to have derived from it.
1CML, pp77-121.
1. Goethe’s concept of natural science
Although J. W. von Goethe is most known for his lyric poetry, his version of the Faust legend and his other literary achievements, Goethe himself regarded his essays into the
investigation of nature as his greatest contribution to human culture. Like philosophers and other intellectuals of the time, including Kant2 and many of the post-Kantians, Goethe kept abreast of the rapid advances in science and technology of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and contributed to scientific debates and discussions. Goethe’s orientation to natural phenomena was, however, much more practical than philosophical. He gathered botanical specimens from the garden of his summer house, collected and classified bones and minerals, attended anatomy lectures, performed autopsies and experiments in light and optics, and corresponded with other amateur and professional scientists. When it came to developing a theory to account for his observations Goethe’s initial response was to turn to Kant for an explanatory method.3 Later on, however, it became apparent that Goethe’s research method was very much at odds with Kant’s and that of other contemporary scientists and philosophers.
2 Kant had a particular interest in cosmology. His earlier work included an extensive treatise on the movement of the stars, which is acknowledged in references to the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula.
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3 Goethe, J. Campaign in France, cited in Naydler, J. (2000) Goethe on Science, hereinafter GOS, pp 57- 58: In Kant’s scientific writings I have grasped the idea that attraction and repulsion are essential constituents of matter and that neither can be divorced from the other in the concept of matter. This led me to the recognition of polarity as a basic feature of all creation, a principle permeating and animating the infinite range of phenomena.
4 Bacon, F. Novum Organum 1, 46.265 cited in Quinton, A. (1980) Francis Bacon, OUP: Oxford: The human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down … forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.
5 It is noteworthy that Kant dedicates the First Critique to Bacon and cites Bacon’s Great Instauration.
The research method for natural science which had come to be widely adopted by Goethe’s time was the eliminative induction ,4 which had grown out of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum and other scientific treatises, and had been so successful in precipitating the advancement of science and technology throughout the Enlightenment.5 This method emphasizes quantitative analysis of observations, and focuses therefore upon spatial
measurement and systematic categorization as the primary tools for the investigation of natural phenomena. Goethe reacted strongly against the notion that the scientific study of nature should be founded only upon the assessment of quantities, and that what are termed the secondary qualities of nature, such as colour, smell and taste, should be regarded as unscientific and subjective , and be relegated to forming the subject matter of poetry and art. For Goethe art and science were interdependent, and to him it seemed unscientific and irrational to look to measuring instruments rather than the finely tuned sensibilities of the human organism to explain natural phenomena.6 The gap between Goethe’s approach to nature and conventional science grew to the point that, in his late work on colour, the Farbenlehre [Theory of Colour]7, Goethe lampoons the methodology and the conclusions of Newton’s Optics and, in more general terms, criticises the scientific method of the Enlightenment.8
6 Goethe, J. The Human Being is the most exact Instrument cited in GOS, p. 29: In so far as we make use of our healthy senses, the human being is the most powerful and exact scientific instrument possible.
7 Goethe, J. (1970) Theory of Colours, MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.
8Goethe’s approach to the observation of phenomena has found much more favour with 20th century physicists than it did with his contemporaries and their successors. The expansion of physics from Newton’s laws to relativity, quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has demanded of physicists that they take account of the subject, as well, in the interpretation of subatomic phenomena. Heisenberg was himself aware of Goethe’s scientific work, and the implications of it. Referring to Goethe’s polemic against Newton he writes in Heisenberg (1979) Philosophic Problems of Quantum Physics, Ox Bow Press: Woodbridge, Connecticut: It would be superficial to neglect this struggle as unimportant; there is a good reason for one of the most eminent of men using all his power to combat the
Page 2 11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt achievement of Newton’s optics. One can only charge Goethe with a lack of consistency. He should not only have combated Newton’s views but he should have said that the whole of Newton’s physics, optics, mechanics and gravitational theory was the work of the devil.
In his accounts of his observations of nature and his occasional essays into the methodology of natural science Goethe claims it is possible to engage in a qualitative approach to natural phenomena, which is nevertheless scientific. He also claims that the
proper study of nature requires the development of enhanced mental powers9 and the opening up of new organs 10 of thinking and of perception. According to Goethe the scientific observer is obligated to engage in a process of inner transformation herself along with the phenomena which are being observed.11 This is an attitude towards the undertaking of scientific enquiry which is evidently completely at odds with the purportedly objective stance of conventional science.
9 GOS, p. 72: There is a delicate empiricism which makes itself utterly identical with the object, becoming true theory. But this enhancement of our mental powers belongs to a highly evolved age , citing Goethe, J. (1823) Maximen und Reflexionen, HA 12.509
10 Ibid, p. 102: Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us , citing Goethe, J.(1823) Bedeutende Foerdenis, HA 13.41-42
11Ibid, p. 50: When something has acquired a form it metamorphoses immediately to a new one. If we wish to arrive at some living perception of Nature we ourselves must remain as quick and flexible as Nature and follow the example she gives , citing Goethe, J. (1817) Die Absicht eingeleitet, HA 13.54-56
12 Goethe, J. Einwirkung der neuen Philosophie [Effects of the New Philosophy] in Sämtliche Werke in Max Hesses Verlag, vol 40, p. 27: Für Philosophie im eigentlichen Sinne hatte ich kein Organ
13 Ibid, pp 27-30.
14 Goethe, J. (1978) The Metamorphosis of Plants, op. cit., pp 51-53.
15 Foerster, E. (2001) Goethe and the Auge des Geistes , Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte pp 87-101.
Goethe claimed to have had no organ for philosophy 12 but was, in fact, very familiar with contemporary developments in philosophical thinking, including Kant’s critical philosophy.13 He corresponded with Fichte, and was on friendly terms with Hegel. Goethe came to reject the Linnaean system of classifying plants, and Linnaeus’ theory of anticipation 14, but that was only after he had, himself, made thousands of detailed drawings and descriptions of natural phenomena. His objection to the style of thinking underlying the philosophy and science of his time was a belief that it did injustice both to the object of observation and to the observer. Goethe subsequently shared this concern with those Romantics and post-Kantians, such as Schelling and Hegel, who also rejected
Page 3 11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt the methodology of the science of their times, but for very different reasons.15 Unlike these Naturphilosophen, however, Goethe opposed orthodox science not for its emphasis
upon careful observation, but for what he saw as its failure to observe carefully enough: its failure to take proper account of the activities of the observer in the observation, and the effect those activities had upon the information one could draw from the phenomena. The organ for philosophy Goethe claimed to have lacked was what he saw as the propensity of both the Kantians and their nature-philosophy opponents to theorise about natural phenomena rather than to engage with them. The claim made by Steiner and others who regard Goethe as a significant natural scientist16 is that Goethe had the capacity to perceive the idea within the phenomena, and to enter into sense-perceptible phenomena in such a way as to participate in the phenomenology of nature.
16 Arthur Zajonc, a physicist, and Craig Holdrege, a biologist, co-editors of two recent collections of essays on Goethean science, are scientists who promote Goethe’s methodology as a legitimate scientific method.
17 Rorty, R. (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton U.P.: Princeton, p. 367: On the periphery of the history of modern philosophy, one finds figures who, without forming a tradition , resemble each other in their distrust of the notion that man’s essence is to be a knower of essences. Goethe, Kierkegaard, Santayana, William James, Dewey, the later Wittgenstein, the later Heidegger, are figures of this sort. Goethe was not a systematiser, but Rorty is mistaken to claim that Goethe did not seek to be a knower of essences .
18 Cassirer, E. (1979) The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Princeton U.P.: Princeton.
19 Cassirer, E. (1970) Rousseau Kant Goethe, Princeton UP: Princeton pp 61-97.
20 Cassirer, E. (1974) The Problem of Knowledge, Yale U.P.: New Haven.
In addition to Steiner there are some philosophers who have acknowledged Goethe’s contribution to natural science and there has been a recent trend amongst some scientists to rehabilitate Goethe’s scientific method. Of the philosophers Richard Rorty in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature17 classes Goethe as one of his few edifying philosophers and Ernst Cassirer in The Philosophy of the Enlightenment18, Rousseau Kant Goethe19 and in The Problem of Knowledge20 explores the relationship between the critical philosophy and Goethe’s way of looking at the world. Rorty does not explain, however, what it is about Goethe’s way of seeing that earns Goethe his approbation, nor
why he qualifies Goethe as a philosopher at all. Cassirer, similarly, does not develop the epistemological implications of Goethe’s scientific work nor the interplay between Goethe’s methodology and the critical philosophy. Instead, in The Philosophy of the Enlightenment Cassirer focuses upon an apparent harmony between the aesthetics of the
Page 4 11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt Critique of Judgment and Goethe’s poetic works21, and in Rousseau Kant Goethe, upon the tension between Kant’s mathematical metaphysics of nature and Goethe’s natural science 22. In The Problem of Knowledge Cassirer does, however, hit upon a feature of Goethe’s way of seeing with epistemological implications when he says:
21Cassirer, E. (1979), op. cit., pp 277-278; there is also considerable tension between Kant’s analysis of the capacity for judgment and Goethe’s concept of anschauende Urteilskraft [intuitive judgment].
22 Cassirer, E. (1970), op. cit., p. 62 describes Goethe’s approach as …one continuous attack upon Newton and Newtonian physics. This is something of an overstatement, for until the Theory of Colour Goethe’s attack was not so much on Newton, or even on Newtonian physics, as on the tendency in the science of his time to exclude qualities from scientific examination.
23 Cassirer, E. (1974), op. cit. p. 146.
24 Steiner, R. (2000) Nature’s Open Secret, op. cit., pp 86-87: Art was for [Goethe] one revelation of the primal lawfulness of the world, science the other. For him, art and science spring from a single source. Whereas researchers delve into the depths of reality to formulate its driving forces in the form of thoughts, artists seek to imbue their medium with these same driving forces.
25 Foerster, E. (2001) , op. cit., pp 87-101.
There prevails in his writings a relationship of the particular to the universal such as can hardly be found elsewhere in the history of philosophy or of natural science.23
Steiner says something similar in Nature’s Open Secret 24 and Foerster develops the interconnection between Goethe and the post-Kantians in Goethe and the Auge des Geistes. 25
The recent trend amongst some natural scientists to rehabilitate Goethe as a scientist has come a century and a half after Goethe’s death in 1832. Between then and Steiner’s editorial introductions of the 1880’s and 1890’s Goethe’s scientific works were not taken
seriously by many thinkers,26 but over the last 30 years or so there has been a significant reassessment of Goethe’s scientific work. Recent studies of Goethean science include the sets of papers published as Goethe’s Way of Science27 in 1998 and Goethe’s Delicate Empiricism published in 200828. Many of the authors of these papers refer to Steiner’s work in bringing about recognition of Goethe’s contribution to scientific enquiry.29 It is probable that popular works such as Sheldrake’s The Rebirth of Nature30 have also been influenced by Steiner’s articulation of Goethe’s way of seeing. There are numerous works by science teachers from Rudolf Steiner schools which present Goethe’s approach to the study of nature.31 Overall it might be said that Goethe’s scientific work is now sufficiently in the public eye to be the subject of critical assessment.32 The gravamen of Steiner’s presentation of Goethe as a scientist is the claim that Goethe was able to steer a
Page 5 11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt safe and intellectually sustainable course between the Scylla of scientific, but incomplete, empiricism and the Charybdis of participatory, but inexact, mental imaging.
26 Exceptions included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who translated Goethe and promoted his scientific work, and the naturalist T. H. Huxley, who used a poem of Goethe’s to introduce the first edition of the magazine Nature in 1869.
27Seamon, D. & Zajonc, A. (eds) (1998) Goethe’s Way of Science, SUNY: New York.
28 Bywater, B. & Holdrege, C. (eds) (2005) Goethe’s Delicate Empiricism, Trivium Publications: Amherst, New York.
29 Holdrege, C. Doing Goethean Science; Wahl, D. Zarte Empirie : Goethean Science as a Way of Knowing; Sims, E-M. Goethe, Husserl and the Crisis of the European Sciences; and Root, C. The Proteus Within: Thoreau’s Practice of Goethe’s Phenomenology in Bywater, B. & Holdrege, C., op. cit., refer to Steiner’s contribution.
30 Sheldrake, N. (1990) The Rebirth of Nature, Century: London.
31 See, for example, Bortoft, H. (1996) The Wholeness of Nature, Lindisfarne Books: Great Barrington, Mass.; Edelglass, S. (2006) The Physics of Human Experience, Adonis Press: Hillsdale, NY.
32 Goethe claimed credit for the discovery of the intermaxillary bone in the human skeleton. Both the claims that there is a human intermaxillary bone and that the discovery was Goethe’s have been challenged in Wells, G. (1967) Goethe and the Intermaxillary Bone, The British Journal for the History of Science, vol 3, no 12 pp 348-361.
2. Goethe’s nature studies
Goethe’s scientific writings include occasional essays, notes and aphorisms on science and scientific method, longer essays on plant and animal morphology, and treatises on optics and the theory of colour. The longer essays and the treatises contain detailed descriptions of Goethe’s observations and the results of his exhaustive experimentation. Many of the catch-phrases which are said to distinguish Goethe’s scientific method from the conventional are contained in shorter notes and occasional commentaries. Goethe’s major scientific works include Die Metamorphosen der Pflanzen [The Metamorphosis of Plants] (1790)33, his essay on method, Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt [The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject] (1793)34, Osteologie (Osteology) (1795), Morphologie [Morphology] (1807)35, and the Farbenlehre [Theory of Colour] (1810)36. The following sections on the metamorphosis of plants, the essay on method and the theory of colour are provided to demonstrate Goethe’s approach to natural phenomena and the aspects of Goethe’s methodology from which Steiner could draw his epistemological implications.
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33 GSW vol 38 p. 13; in translation, Goethe, J. (1978), op. cit., p. 20.
34 GSW vol 40 p. 7; in translation, GOS, pp 75-83.
35 GSW vol 38, p. 5 and p. 152.
36 GSW 41-44; in translation Theory of Colours (1990), MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.
2.1 The Metamorphosis of Plants.
Goethe’s interest in the forms of plants engaged him from the time he moved to Weimar in 1775. It was an abiding preoccupation throughout his Italian journey from 1786 to 1788. Goethe visited botanic gardens, and compared the plants he saw with the plants with which he was familiar from northern Europe. He kept extensive diaries of botanic descriptions and drawings, and conveyed them to acquaintances who shared his interest
in scientific investigation. Goethe’s findings are set out in his diarised Italienische Reise [Italian Journey]37 and in his letters to Herder and others. Early in the journey Goethe hypothesises about discovering the form of the Urpflanze [archetypal plant]:
37 Goethe, J. (1970) Italian Journey Penguin Books: London.
38 Ibid, p. 71, Padua 27th September, 1786.
39 Ibid, p. 310, Naples 17th May, 1787; this translation from NOS, p. 17.
40 Ibid, p. 366, Rome July 31, 1787.
Here, where I am confronted with a great variety of plants my hypothesis that it might be possible to derive all plant forms from one original plant becomes clearer to me and more exciting. Only when we have accepted this idea will it be possible to determine genera and species exactly.38
Subsequently he tells Herder he is close to describing the archetypal plant:
Moreover, I must confide to you that I have come very close to the secret of the generation and organization of plants and that it is the simplest thing one can imagine … The archetypal plant will be the most extraordinary creature in the world, for which nature herself will envy me. With this model and the key to it one will then be able to invent plants ad infinitum that must be consistent. In other words, even if they do not exist, they could exist and are not merely painterly or poetic whims but possess an inner truth and necessity. It will be
Page 7 11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt possible to apply the same law to all living things.39
Finally he claims to have discovered the principle of organic metamorphosis:
While walking in the public gardens of Palermo it came to me in a flash that in the organ of the plant which we are accustomed to call the leaf lies the true Proteus, who can hide or reveal himself in vegetal forms. From first to last the plant is nothing but leaf, which is so inseparable from the future germ that one cannot think of one without the other.40
With these two ideas – the archetypal form of the plant and the principle of metamorphosis - Goethe embarks upon a phenomenology of nature. The first stage of scientific enquiry remains the accurate observation of the physical phenomena. The second stage is the recognition of the Gestalt [form] and Bildung [development], which constitute the Vorstellungen [mental images] of the spatial and temporal blueprints of the observed phenomena. In the case of plant life this will amount to recognition of the
principle of metamorphosis. As the archetypal plant is neither the original plant’ nor any specific physical plant it can best be understood as a particular instance of the Urphänomen [archetypal phenomenon]. Identification of the archetypal phenomenon becomes the third, and final, stage of abstraction from the perceived phenomena. The task of the scientist, therefore, will be the uncovering of the archetypal phenomenon within the specific aspect of nature under investigation.
In The Metamorphosis of Plants Goethe traces the growth of annual plants from seed to flower, to fruit and to seed again, and identifies six sequential stages: seed (and seed- leaf), stem-leaves, flower (calyx), corolla, stamens (nectaries, style and stigma) and fruit. Goethe observes that each stage metamorphoses into the next and that, therefore, all the plant’s organs can be seen to be variations on the leaf. There is also an alternation from expansion to contraction and back to expansion, and a progression towards ever greater refinement: the seed expands out into the stem-leaf, which contracts and concentrates its energy to produce the calyx and flower; the calyx expands out to produce the corolla, which then contracts into the sexual organs; they expand into the fruit, and the fruit contracts, finally, back into the seed.
Goethe does not articulate in any systematic way how he has come to conceive of plants as he does. To some extent, however, the method emerges from the language he employs. The following paragraphs from the chapter The Fruits is an example of Goethe’s way of approaching the observation of nature:41
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41 Goethe, J. (1978), op. cit. pp40-42.
74. It is now the fruit which we have to observe, and we shall soon be convinced that this too originates in the same way as the previous parts and is subject to the same laws. We speak here really of those vessels or capsules formed by
Nature to enclose the so-called covered seeds, or rather to develop through fructification within these vessels a greater or lesser number of seeds. It will be easy to show that these vessels may likewise be explained according to the nature and organisation of those parts of the plant we have already considered. 75. It is once more the retrogressive metamorphosis which brings to our notice this law of Nature. … 76. Furthermore even in normal and constant formations Nature reveals in manifold ways the fruitfulness that lies hidden in the leaf. … 77. 78. If we keep observations in mind we shall not fail to recognise the leaf-form in all seed-vessels, in spite of their manifold formations, their peculiar modifications and combinations. 79. Nature conceals this likeness to the leaf-form most when she forms soft and juicy or hard and woody seed-forms. But even then it will not escape our notice if we know how to follow this development carefully through all its transitions. Here it is enough to have indicated the general idea and to have shown by means of a few examples Nature’s unity of purpose.
These paragraphs indicate the following aspects of Goethe’s method:
(1) Observations of other parts of the plant have led Goethe to laws , which he anticipates will be evident in fruit as well; (2) Having deduced the phenomenon of metamorphosis, Goethe applies it both progressively and retrogressively; (3) Having concluded that every organ of the plant is a transformation of the leaf, Goethe seeks the leaf in formations, in which it is not immediately observable; (4) There is a general idea within the phenomena, which are a manifestation of Nature’s unity of purpose .
The method, in essence, requires a perception of the general, from which Goethe proceeds back to the particular. In this respect it runs counter to the usual understanding of the methodology of conventional natural science, which is held to be inductive, and which claims to develop its laws by proceeding from the particularity of experimental observation to the general. Goethe’s approach is more akin to deduction which, as a
Page 9 11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt method for obtaining knowledge, is usually said to be limited to pure mathematics, or to the truths Kant categorised as the analytic a priori.
2.2 Goethe’s essays on method
Goethe wrote a few short essays on method, two of which have particular significance in relation to an enquiry into the theory of knowledge which the method implies. One of these, Die Absicht eingeleitet [The Intention Introduced], is an introduction to his botanical writings, and in it Goethe relates his observations of organic phenomena to several of the concepts he employs, such as Anschauung [intuition], Bildung [form] and morphology.42 The other is Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt [The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object], which is Goethe’s most complete attempt to describe and to justify his scientific method.43 The following is an extract from the former essay, in which Goethe contrasts his approach to the observation of natural phenomena with conventional scientific method:44
42 Goethe, J. (1817) Die Absicht eingeleitet, HA 13.54-56.
43 Goethe, J. (1823) Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt, HA 13.10-20.
44 Goethe, op. cit., cited GOS, pp 49-50.
In observing objects of Nature, especially those that are alive, we often think the best way of gaining insight into the relationship between their inner nature and the effects they produce is to divide them into their constituent parts. Such an approach may, in fact, bring us a long way toward our goal. In a word, those familiar with science can recall what chemistry and anatomy have contributed toward an understanding and overview of Nature.
But these attempts at division also produce many adverse effects when carried to an extreme. To be sure, what is alive can be dissected into its component parts, but from these parts it will be impossible to restore it and bring it back to life. This is true even of many inorganic substances, to say nothing of things organic in nature.
Thus scientific minds of every epoch have also exhibited an urge to understand living formations as such, to grasp their outward, visible, tangible parts in context, to see these parts as an indication of what lies within and thereby gain some
understanding of the whole through an exercise of intuitive perception. It is no doubt unnecessary to describe in detail the close relationship between this
Page 10 11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt scientific desire and our need for art and imitation.
Thus the history of art, knowledge and science has produced many attempts to establish and develop a theory which we will call morphology’. The historical part of our discourse will deal with the different forms in which these attempts have appeared.
The Germans have a word for the complex of existence presented by a physical organism: Gestalt [structured form]. With this expression they exclude what is changeable and assume that an interrelated whole is identified, defined and fixed in character.
But if we look at all these Gestalten, especially the organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent, nothing is at rest or defined – everything is in a flux of continual motion. This is why German frequently and fittingly makes use of the word Bildung to describe the end product and what is in process of production as well.
Thus in setting forth a morphology we should not speak of Gestalt, or if we use the term we should at least do so only in reference to the idea, the concept, or to an empirical element held fast for a mere moment of time.
When something has acquired a form it metamorphoses immediately to a new one. If we wish to arrive at some living perception of Nature we ourselves must remain as quick and flexible as Nature and follow the example she gives.
In The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object Goethe moves from a psychology of observation to the standpoint of the scientific observer and to the constituents of experimentation.45 This work reads as if were intended as a discussion paper, but although it is dated April 28, 1792 it was not published until 1823. The essay argues for the fairly uncontroversial proposition that science depends upon repeated, and not just repeatable, experiments:
45Goethe, op. cit., cited in GOS, p. 75: (1) As we become aware of objects in our environment we will relate them to ourselves, and rightly so since our fate hinges on whether these objects please or displease us
… (2) This yardstick of pleasure and displeasure, attraction and repulsion, help and harm, we must now renounce absolutely; as a neutral seemingly godlike being we must seek out and examine what it is, not
Page 11 11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt what pleases. The constituents of experimentation are found in GSW, vol 40 pp 7-15, and translated in GOS, pp 75-83.
(13) The main value of an experiment lies in the fact that, simple or compound, it can be reproduced at any time given the requisite preparations, apparatus, and skill. After assembling the necessary materials we may perform the experiment as often as we wish. …
(14) As worthwhile as each experiment may be, it receives its real value only when united or combined with other experiments. … Two phenomena may be related, but not nearly so closely as we think. Although one experiment seems to follow from another, an extensive series of experiments might be required to put the two into an order actually conforming to nature.46
46 Goethe, op. cit., pp 10-11, translated in GOS p. 78.
47 Ibid., pp 11-13, translated in GOS pp 79-80
48CPR B xiii, p 20: Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which alone concordant appearances can be admitted as equivalent to laws, and in the other hand the experiment which it has
Goethe is alluding to his experiments rearranging the order of leaves, so as to show their metamorphoses, and to deficits he claimed to have identified in the methodology of Newton’s Optics. He also cautions against the imposition of theoretical constructs upon observed phenomena:
(18) Every piece of empirical evidence, every experiment, must be viewed as isolated, yet the human faculty of thought forcibly strives to unite all external objects known to it. It is easy to see the risk we run when we try to connect a single bit of evidence with an idea already formed, or use individual experiments to prove some relationship not fully perceptible to the senses but expressed through the creative power of the mind. …
(24) Nothing happens in living Nature that does not bear some relation to the whole. The empirical evidence may seem quite isolated, we may view our experiments as mere isolated facts, but this is not to say that they are, in fact, isolated. The question is: how can we find the connection between these phenomena, these events? 47
On the face of it Goethe’s conception of the experiment is in stark contrast with the relationship between observer and phenomenon Kant recommends in the First Critique,
Page 12 11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt for which the scientist compels [nature] to answer questions which he has himself formulated. 48 The opposition between Goethe and Kant as scientists is also highlighted in Goethe’s well-known description of his first meeting with Schiller.49
devised in conformity with these principles, must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witnesses to answer questions which he has himself formulated. Goethe, in his note on types of humans, says something surprisingly similar: Naydler, op cit p38: By proceeding from ideas, [the comprehenders] simultaneously express the unity of the whole, and it is almost the obligation of Nature to conform to the ideas.
49 Goethe, J. Poetry and Truth, translated in GOS pp 96-97: Schiller had moved to Jena, where, as before, I saw nothing of him. It was about this time that Batsch, with unbelievable enterprise, had founded a scientific society, with fine collections and impressive apparatus. I usually attended its periodic meetings and one time found Schiller there. By chance we were left in the hall together, and began a conversation. He appeared to be interested in the lectures, but remarked with great insight, and to my pleasure, that such mangled methods regarding Nature could only repel a lay person who might otherwise be willing to venture into the subject. I answered that perhaps even to express such a method would be uncongenial and that there might be another way of considering Nature, not piecemeal and isolated but actively at work, as she proceeds from the whole to the parts. Schiller expressed the desire to have the point clarified through discussion, though not concealing his doubts and refusing to grant that my views owed their origins to experience.