1. Preliminary Questions
The urge is increasing all the time to achieve by the work of thinking what was once owed to faith in revelation: satisfaction of spirit.
the task of science* is not to pose questions, but rather to consider questions carefully when they are raised by human nature and by the particular level of culture, and then to answer them.
Goethe takes his way of looking at things from the outer world and does not force any particular way upon it.
oethean one, which is not limited —because it does not in any way take its way of looking at things from the spirit of the beholder but rather from the nature of what is beheld — then it is comprehensible that the one-sided conception fastens onto those elements of thought in the Goethean conception that are in accord with itself. Goethe's world view encompasses many directions
2.
Under no circumstances should a scientific view be based on an authority; it must always rest upon principles.
Goethe's gaze is directed upon nature and upon life, and his way of looking at things in doing so will be the object (the content) of our discussion; Schiller's gaze is directed upon Goethe's spirit, and his way of looking at things in doing so will be the ideal for our method.
3.
Each science has its own area in which it seeks the interconnections of phenomena. But there still remains a great polarity in our scientific efforts: between the ideal (**) world achieved by the sciences on the one hand and the objects that underlie it on the other. There must be a science that also elucidates the interrelationships here. The ideal and the real world, the polarity of idea and reality, these are the subject of such a science. These opposites must also be known in their interrelationship.
To seek these relationships is the purpose of the following discussion. The existence of science on the one hand, and nature and history on the other are to be brought into a relationship. What significance is there in the mirroring of the outer world in human consciousness; what connection exists between our thinking about the objects of reality and these objects themselves?
The urge is increasing all the time to achieve by the work of thinking what was once owed to faith in revelation: satisfaction of spirit.
the task of science* is not to pose questions, but rather to consider questions carefully when they are raised by human nature and by the particular level of culture, and then to answer them.
Goethe takes his way of looking at things from the outer world and does not force any particular way upon it.
oethean one, which is not limited —because it does not in any way take its way of looking at things from the spirit of the beholder but rather from the nature of what is beheld — then it is comprehensible that the one-sided conception fastens onto those elements of thought in the Goethean conception that are in accord with itself. Goethe's world view encompasses many directions
2.
Under no circumstances should a scientific view be based on an authority; it must always rest upon principles.
Goethe's gaze is directed upon nature and upon life, and his way of looking at things in doing so will be the object (the content) of our discussion; Schiller's gaze is directed upon Goethe's spirit, and his way of looking at things in doing so will be the ideal for our method.
3.
Each science has its own area in which it seeks the interconnections of phenomena. But there still remains a great polarity in our scientific efforts: between the ideal (**) world achieved by the sciences on the one hand and the objects that underlie it on the other. There must be a science that also elucidates the interrelationships here. The ideal and the real world, the polarity of idea and reality, these are the subject of such a science. These opposites must also be known in their interrelationship.
To seek these relationships is the purpose of the following discussion. The existence of science on the one hand, and nature and history on the other are to be brought into a relationship. What significance is there in the mirroring of the outer world in human consciousness; what connection exists between our thinking about the objects of reality and these objects themselves?
4. Experience
What is experience?
My definition: The recollection of lived phenomena’s, and the capacity to respond in future events based on past actions.
This first activity of ours is grasping reality with our senses. We must hold onto what it thus presents us. For only this can be called pure experience
But what results from such asking and seeking is no longer pure experience. It already has a twofold origin: experience and thinking.
4. Nature are applicable to this form of reality: "We are surrounded and embraced by her. She takes us up, unasked and unwarned, into the orbit of her dance."
Our inner states also appear on the horizon of our consciousness in the same form as the things and facts of the outer world. A feeling presses in upon me in the same way that an impression of light does. The fact that I bring it into closer connection with my own personality is of no consequence in this regard. We must go still further. Even thinking itself appears to us at first as an object of experience. Already in approaching our thinking investigatively, we set it before us; we picture its first form to ourselves as coming from something unknown to us.
Everything that is to become the object of our knowing must accommodate itself to this form of confrontation. We are incapable of lifting ourselves above this form. If, in thinking, we are to gain a means of penetrating more deeply into the world, then thinking itself must first become experience. We must seek thinking among the facts of experience as just such a fact itself.
5.
It is only when the spark of thought strikes into this surface that heights and depths appear, that one thing appears to stand out more or less than another, that everything takes form in a definite way, that threads weave from one configuration to another, that everything becomes a harmony complete within itself.
Their complete unrelatedness, and of the absolute insignificance of the individual sense-perceptible facts for the totality of our picture of reality.
Mental images, that go through by experiencing other things: Here we have depicted, within a certain limited period of time, what we really experience, the form of reality in which thinking plays no part at all.
6.
7.
Must we regard the form of experience we have described thus far as how things actually are? Is it a characteristic of reality?
What’s the use of noticing our perceptions/manifestations?
We would have to take our start from this first form of the world in order then to possess ourselves of its true (essential) characteristics. We would then have to overcome its manifestation to the senses in order to develop out of it a higher form of manifestation.
What is experience?
My definition: The recollection of lived phenomena’s, and the capacity to respond in future events based on past actions.
This first activity of ours is grasping reality with our senses. We must hold onto what it thus presents us. For only this can be called pure experience
But what results from such asking and seeking is no longer pure experience. It already has a twofold origin: experience and thinking.
4. Nature are applicable to this form of reality: "We are surrounded and embraced by her. She takes us up, unasked and unwarned, into the orbit of her dance."
Our inner states also appear on the horizon of our consciousness in the same form as the things and facts of the outer world. A feeling presses in upon me in the same way that an impression of light does. The fact that I bring it into closer connection with my own personality is of no consequence in this regard. We must go still further. Even thinking itself appears to us at first as an object of experience. Already in approaching our thinking investigatively, we set it before us; we picture its first form to ourselves as coming from something unknown to us.
Everything that is to become the object of our knowing must accommodate itself to this form of confrontation. We are incapable of lifting ourselves above this form. If, in thinking, we are to gain a means of penetrating more deeply into the world, then thinking itself must first become experience. We must seek thinking among the facts of experience as just such a fact itself.
5.
It is only when the spark of thought strikes into this surface that heights and depths appear, that one thing appears to stand out more or less than another, that everything takes form in a definite way, that threads weave from one configuration to another, that everything becomes a harmony complete within itself.
Their complete unrelatedness, and of the absolute insignificance of the individual sense-perceptible facts for the totality of our picture of reality.
Mental images, that go through by experiencing other things: Here we have depicted, within a certain limited period of time, what we really experience, the form of reality in which thinking plays no part at all.
6.
7.
Must we regard the form of experience we have described thus far as how things actually are? Is it a characteristic of reality?
What’s the use of noticing our perceptions/manifestations?
We would have to take our start from this first form of the world in order then to possess ourselves of its true (essential) characteristics. We would then have to overcome its manifestation to the senses in order to develop out of it a higher form of manifestation.
C. Thinking
C. Thinking as a Higher Experience within Experience
Direct experience will manifest in lawful characterizations (ex.boiling water)
With thinking we have to overcome our own limitation. With the rest of experience we must solve a difficulty lying in the thing itself.
In thinking, what we must seek for with the rest of experience has itself become direct experience.
If we wish to explain nature to ourselves, we must find the means of doing so within nature.
It is to be found within experience.
The way we become aware of our own thinking
Work the thought through, recreate its content, must experience it inwardly right into its smallest parts if fit is to have any significance for me at all.
The form of its immediate appearance, is precesily what we must hold onto with thinking- to arrive to truth.
Now, because we stand inside this thought-content, be cause we permeate it in all its component parts, we are capable of really knowing its most essential nature. The way it approaches us is a guarantee of the fact that the characteristics we earlier ascribed to it really are its due. There fore it can definitely serve as a starting point for every further kind of contemplation of the world.
Thinking and consciousness
We are the ones who determine into which connections our thoughts enter.
We actively bring the ideal world into manifestation, and at the same time, that what we actively call into existence is founded upon its own laws.
There is absolutely only one single thought-content, and our individual thinking is nothing more than our self, our individual personality, working its way into the thought-center of the world.
How would we be able to reproduce the form of manifestation if we did not know the essential being of the thing?
10. the inner nature of thinking
What is knowing activity? Or, in other words: What does it mean to make thoughts for oneself about reality; what does it mean to want to come to terms with the world through thinking?
One scarcely ever seeks to travel through the realm of thoughts, for once, within its own region, in order to see what one might find there.
One acts as Goethe would only if one enters deeply into thinking's own nature itself and then observes the relationship that results when this thinking, known in its own being, is then brought into connection with experience.
As soon as our spirit pictures two corresponding thoughts to itself, it notices at once that they actually flow together into one. Everywhere in our spirit's thought-realm it finds elements that belong together; this concept joins itself to that one, a third one elucidates or supports a fourth, and so on. Thus, for example, we find in our consciousness the thought-content "organism"; when we scan our world of mental pictures, we hit upon a second thought-content: "lawful development, growth."
It is in any case clear, therefore, that thinking is not an empty vessel; rather, taken purely for itself, it is full of content; and its content does not coincide with that of any other form of manifestation.
Direct experience will manifest in lawful characterizations (ex.boiling water)
With thinking we have to overcome our own limitation. With the rest of experience we must solve a difficulty lying in the thing itself.
In thinking, what we must seek for with the rest of experience has itself become direct experience.
If we wish to explain nature to ourselves, we must find the means of doing so within nature.
It is to be found within experience.
The way we become aware of our own thinking
Work the thought through, recreate its content, must experience it inwardly right into its smallest parts if fit is to have any significance for me at all.
The form of its immediate appearance, is precesily what we must hold onto with thinking- to arrive to truth.
Now, because we stand inside this thought-content, be cause we permeate it in all its component parts, we are capable of really knowing its most essential nature. The way it approaches us is a guarantee of the fact that the characteristics we earlier ascribed to it really are its due. There fore it can definitely serve as a starting point for every further kind of contemplation of the world.
Thinking and consciousness
We are the ones who determine into which connections our thoughts enter.
We actively bring the ideal world into manifestation, and at the same time, that what we actively call into existence is founded upon its own laws.
There is absolutely only one single thought-content, and our individual thinking is nothing more than our self, our individual personality, working its way into the thought-center of the world.
How would we be able to reproduce the form of manifestation if we did not know the essential being of the thing?
10. the inner nature of thinking
What is knowing activity? Or, in other words: What does it mean to make thoughts for oneself about reality; what does it mean to want to come to terms with the world through thinking?
One scarcely ever seeks to travel through the realm of thoughts, for once, within its own region, in order to see what one might find there.
One acts as Goethe would only if one enters deeply into thinking's own nature itself and then observes the relationship that results when this thinking, known in its own being, is then brought into connection with experience.
As soon as our spirit pictures two corresponding thoughts to itself, it notices at once that they actually flow together into one. Everywhere in our spirit's thought-realm it finds elements that belong together; this concept joins itself to that one, a third one elucidates or supports a fourth, and so on. Thus, for example, we find in our consciousness the thought-content "organism"; when we scan our world of mental pictures, we hit upon a second thought-content: "lawful development, growth."
It is in any case clear, therefore, that thinking is not an empty vessel; rather, taken purely for itself, it is full of content; and its content does not coincide with that of any other form of manifestation.