The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conceptio

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:25 am

VI. Correction of an Erroneous Conception of Experience As a Totality

THIS IS the proper point at which to refer to a preconception, persisting since the time of Kant, which has been so absorbed into the very life of certain circles as to pass for an axiom. Whoever should presume to question it would be considered a dilettante, a person not yet advanced beyond the most rudimentary concepts of modern philosophy. I refer to the opinion, held as if it were establisheda priori, that the whole perceptual world, this endless multiplicity of colors and forms, of tones and degrees of heat, were nothing more than our subjective world of representations, [Vorstellungswelt] possessing existence only so long as we keep our senses receptive to the influences from a world quite unknown to us. The whole phenomenal world is interpreted on the basis of this opinion, as a representation (Vorstellung) inside our individual consciousness; and, on the basis of this hypothesis, are constructed further assertions regarding the nature of cognition. Volkelt also has adopted this opinion and bases upon it his theory of knowledge, a masterly production in its scientific process of development. Yet this is no basic truth, and least of all is it appropriate to form the very culmination of the science of knowledge.

We would not be misunderstood. We have no desire to utter a protest — which would certainly be futile — against the contemporary achievements in physiology. But what is wholly justified as physiology is by no means for that reason appropriate to be set up before the very gateway leading to a theory of knowledge. It may pass as an unassailable physiological truth that the complex of sensations and percepts which we call experience first comes into existence through the cooperation of our organism. Yet it remains quite certain that such an item of knowledge as this can result only from much reflection and research. This characterization — that our phenomenal world is, in a physiological sense, of a subjective character — is itself a characterization of that world reached by thinking, and has, therefore, nothing whatever to do with its first manifestation. It presupposes the application of thinking to experience. It must, therefore, be preceded by an inquiry as to the interrelationship between the two factors in the act of cognition.

It is supposed that this opinion raises one above the pre-Kantian naïveté, which considered the things in space and in time as constituting reality, as is still done by the “naïve” person who has no scientific training.

Volkelt makes the assertion: “All acts that call themselves objective cognitions are inseparably bound up with the individual cognizing consciousness; they take their course at first and immediately nowhere else than in the consciousness of the individual; and they are utterly incapable of reaching beyond the sphere of the individual and laying hold of the sphere of the real lying outside, or of entering it.” [Cf. Volkelt: Erfahrung und Denken, p. 4.]

But it is quite impossible for unprejudiced thought to discover what that form of reality which touches us directly (experience) bears within itself that could in any way justify us in designating it as mere representation.

Even the simple reflection that the “naïve” person observes in things nothing which could lead him to this opinion teaches us that no compelling reason for this assumption exists in things themselves. What does a tree, a table, bear within itself that could lead me to look upon it as a mere mental image? This should not, then, be asserted — least of all as a self-evident truth.

Just because Volkelt does this, he entangles himself in a contradiction of his fundamental principles. According to our conviction, he could maintain the subjective nature of experience only by being disloyal to the truth recognized by him, that experience consists of nothing but an unrelated chaos of images without any thinkable definition. Otherwise he would have been forced to see that the cognizing subject, the observer, is just as unrelated within the world of experience as is any other object belonging to it. But, if one predicates subjectivity of the world of experience, this is at once a thought-characterization, just as if one looks upon a falling stone as the cause of an impression made in the ground. Yet Volkelt himself will not admit any sort of interrelationships among the things of experience. Here lies the inconsistency in his conception; here he becomes disloyal to the principle he has expressed regarding pure experience. Through this he shuts himself up within his individuality, and is no longer capable of emerging. Indeed, he admits this without reservation. Everything that lies beyond the disconnected images of perception remains for him in uncertainty. Our thinking, to be sure, endeavors according to his view to reach out from this world of mental images and infer an objective reality, but our going out beyond this world cannot lead to really known truths. All knowledge that we win by means of thinking is, according to Volkelt, not protected against doubt. It does not by any means attain to a certitude like that of immediate experience. This alone affords an indubitable knowledge. We have seen how defective is this knowledge.

But all this grows out of the fact that Volkelt attributes to sense-reality (experience) a characteristic which can by no means pertain thereto, and on this presupposition bases his further assumptions.

It has been necessary to give special attention to this writing of Volkelt's because it is the most important contemporary work in this field, and also for the reason that it may serve as a typical specimen of all endeavors after a theory of knowledge which are in basic opposition to the direction of thinking that we represent, founded upon Goethe's world-conception.
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Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:26 am

VII. Reference to the Experience of the Individual Reader

WE WOULD avoid the fallacy of attributing a characteristic a priori to the immediately given, to the first form in which the outer and the inner world appear to us, and then establishing the validity of our reasoning on the basis of this presupposition. Indeed, by our very definition, experience is that in which thinking has no share. There cannot be any charge, therefore, of an error in thinking at the outset of our discussion.

It is just here that the fundamental fallacy arises in many scientific endeavors, especially at the present time. Such scientists imagine that they are reproducing pure experience, whereas they are really reading again concepts which they themselves have interjected into the content of experience. It may be charged that we also have assigned a number of attributes to pure experience. We described it as endless multiplicity, as an aggregate of unrelated units, etc. Are not these also characterizations made by thought? Certainly not in the sense in which we have used them. We have made use of these concepts only to fix the reader's attention upon reality free from thought. We do not desire to attribute these concepts to experience; we employ them only to direct attention to that form of reality which is void of any concept whatever.

All scientific inquiries must naturally be conducted by means of language, and language can express nothing except concepts. But there is an essential difference between employing certain words for the purpose of directly attributing this or that characteristic to a thing, on the one hand, and, on the other, employing these words merely to direct the reader's or the hearer's attention to an object. If we may resort to an analogy, we might say: These are two different things, when A says on the one hand to B: “Observe that man in his family circle, and you will form an essentially different opinion of him from that which you form of him in his official behavior;” and, on the other hand, when he says: “That man is an excellent father to his family.” In the first instance the attention of B is attracted in a certain manner; he is advised to form a judgment of a certain person under certain circumstances. In the second instance a certain characteristic is attributed to this person, and therefore an assertion is made. As the first case here compares with the second, so does our initial step in the discussion compare with similar phenomena in literature. Since the exigencies of style or the difficulty of expressing our thought may at times give to the matter a different appearance, we wish to declare expressly at this point that our discussion is to be taken only in the sense here explained and is far removed from any pretension of having advanced any assertion whatever which holds good of things in themselves.

If, now, we are to have a name for the first form in which we observe reality, we are convinced that the name most adequately applicable is to be found in the expression “appearance to the senses.” We here understand by the termsense not only the external senses, mediators of the external world, but all bodily and mental organs whatsoever which have to do with our becoming aware of the immediate facts. Indeed, the terminner sense is quite ordinarily used in psychology for the perceptive capacity as to inner experience.

By the termappearance, however, we would designate merely a thing perceptible to us or a perceptible occurrence in so far as this appears in space or time.

Here we must raise still another question, which will bring us to the second factor that we must observe in relation to the science of cognition — that is, thinking.

Must we regard the form in which experience has hitherto been recognized by us as something rooted in the nature of things? Is it a characteristic of reality?

Much depends upon the answer to this question. That is, if this form is an essential characteristic of the things of experience, something which belongs to them by their nature in the truest sense of the word, then it is impossible to see how this stage of knowledge can ever be surmounted. We should simply have to apply ourselves to the task of making unrelated notes of all that we experience, and such an assemblage of notes would constitute our science. For what could all research into the interrelationships of things accomplish if the complete isolated-ness characterizing them in the form of experience represented their real nature?

The state of the case will be entirely different if in this form of reality we have to do, not with its essential nature, but only with its quite unessential external aspect; if we have before us only a shell of the true nature of the world which conceals that nature from us and requires us to search further for it. In that case, we should have to strive to break through this shell. We should have to proceed from this first form of the world in order to master its true characteristics (those essential to its being). We should have to surmount the “appearance for the senses” in order to unfold out of this a higher form of appearance.

The answer to this question is given in the following inquiries.
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Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:27 am

VIII. Thinking as a Higher Experience within Experience

AMID THE unrelated chaos of experience — and, indeed, at first as a fact of experience — we find an element that leads us out beyond this unrelated-ness. This element is thought. Thought, as one of the facts of experience, assumes an exceptional position within experience.

As regards the rest of experience, so long as I limit myself to that which is immediately present to my senses, I do not advance beyond the separate units. Assume that I have before me a liquid which I bring to a boil. At first it is still; then I observe bubbles rising; the liquid becomes agitated; then all passes over into the form of steam.

These are the percepts which follow one another. No matter how I may twist and turn the thing, if I am limited to that which the senses afford me, I discover no interrelationship among these facts. As regards thinking, such is not the case. If, for example, I grasp the thought of cause, this by its own content leads me to the thought of effect. I need only hold fast to the thoughts in that form in which they enter into immediate experience, and they appear as characterizations according to law.

That which, as regards the rest of experience, must be brought from elsewhere, if, indeed, it is applicable at all — interrelationship according to law — is present as regards thought in its very first appearance. With respect to the rest of experience, that which enters as an appearance before my consciousness does not at once manifest the whole of reality; but, with respect to thought, the whole thing passes over without residue into what is given to me. In the first case, I must penetrate the shell in order to reach the kernel; in the second, shell and kernel are an indivisible unity. It is only a universally human preconception if thought at first appears to us to be entirely analogous with the rest of experience. In the case of thought, we need only overcome this preconception within ourselves. In the case of the rest of experience, we need to resolve a difficulty inherent in the fact itself.

That for which we seek, in the case of the rest of experience, has itself in the case of thinking become immediate experience.

A difficulty is thereby resolved which could scarcely be resolved in any other way. It is a justifiable demand of science that we should limit ourselves to experience. But it is a no less justifiable demand that we should seek for the inner law of experience. Therefore this “inner” must itself appear at some place in experience. Experience is thus deepened by the help of experience itself. Our theory of knowledge makes the demand for experience in the very highest form; it repels every attempt to introduce something into experience from without. This theory finds even thought-characterizations within experience. The form in which thought enters into manifestation is the same as that of the rest of the world of experience.

The principle of experience is generally misunderstood both in its scope and in its true significance. In its baldest form, it is the demand that the objects of reality should be left in the form of their first appearance and only thus treated as objects of knowledge. This is purely a principle of methodology. It says nothing regarding the content of what is experienced. If it should be asserted that only sense-percepts can become the objects of knowledge, as is done by materialism, then it would not be possible to rest upon this principle. Whether the content be sensible or ideal is not decided by this principle. But if, in a certain case, it should be applied in the crassest form, to which we are referring, it certainly makes a presupposition. That is, it demands that objects, as these are experienced, shall already possess a form sufficing the strivings of knowledge. As regards the experience of the external senses, as we have seen, this is not the case. It occurs only in the case of thought.

Only in the case of thought can the principle of experience be applied in the most extreme sense.

This does not exclude the principle from being extended also to the rest of the world. It possesses other forms besides the most extreme. If, for the purpose of scientific explanation, we cannot leave an object just as it is immediately experienced, yet this explanation can take place in such a way that the means which we employ for this purpose are taken from other spheres of experience. We have then not gone beyond the bounds of “experience in general.”

A science of knowledge based upon Goethe's world-conception lays its chief emphasis upon the principle of remaining always true to experience. No one has recognized so fully as Goethe the exclusive applicability of this principle. Indeed, he represented that principle just as rigidly as we have demanded above. All higher points of view concerning Nature he would not look upon as anything except experience. They were considered as “higher Nature within Nature.” [Cf. Goethe: Dichtung und Wahrheit. XXII. 24 f.]

In the essayNature he says that we are incapable of getting outside Nature. If, then, we desire to interpret Nature to ourselves in this sense, which was his, we must find the means within Nature herself.

But how would it be possible to base a science of knowledge upon the principle of experience if we did not find anywhere in experience the basic element in all that is scientific — that is, ideal conformity to law? We need merely take hold of this element, as we have seen; we need merely submerge ourselves in it. For it exists in experience.

Now, does thought really meet us, and become known to our individuality, in such a way that we can with justice claim for it the characteristics emphasized above? Any one who fixes his attention upon this point will discover that an essential difference exists between the form in which an external phenomenon of sense-reality becomes known to us — or, indeed, even some other process of our mental life — and that in which we become aware of our own thought. In the former case we are definitely aware that we are in the presence of an already existent thing: existent, that is, in so far as it has become a phenomenon without our having exerted any determinative influence in its becoming. This is not true of thought. Only for the first moment does thought seem similar to the rest of experience. When we lay hold upon any thought, we know, in spite of the utter immediacy with which it enters our consciousness, that we are inwardly bound up with its manner of coming into existence. When any sudden idea occurs to me, entering my mind quite abruptly, so that its appearance is, therefore, from a certain point of view very much like that of an external event which must first be mediated to me by eye or ear, yet I always know that the field upon which this thought comes to manifestation is my own consciousness; I know that my own activity must first be called upon before the sudden idea can be made to come into existence. In the case of every external object, I am aware that at first it reveals only its outside to my senses; as regards a thought, I know quite certainly that what it exposes to me is its all; that it enters my consciousness as a totality complete in itself. The external stimuli that we must always presuppose in the case of an external object are not present in the case of thought. It is to these stimuli that we must ascribe the fact that sensible phenomena appear to us as something already existent; it is to them that we must ascribe the genesis of these phenomena. As regards a thought, I have the assurance that this genesis is not possible apart from my own activity. I must work through the thought, must re-create its content, must live through it even in its least details, if it is to have any significance for me whatever.

Thus far we have arrived at the following truths. At the first stage of world-contemplation, the whole of reality meets us as an unrelated aggregate; thought is included within this chaos. If we move through this multiplicity, we find in it one constituent which possesses, even in this first form of its appearance, that character which the rest of the multiplicity must afterwards gain. This constituent is thought. That which must be surmounted in the case of the rest of experience — that is, the form of its immediate appearance — is to be retained in the case of thought. This factor of reality which is to be allowed to remain in its original state we find in our consciousness, and we are united with it in such fashion that the activity of our own mind is at the same time the manifestation of this factor. These are one and the same fact seen from two sides. This fact is the thought-content of the world. In the one instance, it appears as an activity of our consciousness; in the other, as the immediate manifestation of a conformity to law, complete within itself, a self-determined ideal content. We shall quickly see which side possesses the greater weight.

Since, now, we stand inside the thought-content and permeate this in all its ingredients, we are in position really to know its very nature. The manner in which it meets us is a guarantee of the fact that the characteristics which we have attributed to it really belong to it. It can, therefore, certainly serve as the point of departure for every further form of world-contemplation. The essential character of thought can be derived from thought itself; if we would arrive at the essential character of the rest of things, our point of departure in this inquiry must be thinking. Let us at once express the matter more clearly. Since we experience in thinking alone a real conformity to law, an ideal determinateness, therefore the conformity to law of the rest of the world, which we do not experience in this itself, must also lie included within thought. In other words, thought and the appearance for the senses are face to face in experience. The latter, however, gives us no disclosure of its own nature; the former gives us this both as to itself and as to the nature of this appearance for the senses.
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Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:27 am

IX. Thought and Consciousness

IT APPEARS, however, as if we ourselves had here introduced the very subjective element we were so determined to exclude from our theory of knowledge. Although the rest of the perceptual world does not possess a subjective character — so it might be deduced from our explanation — yet thoughts, even according to our own opinion, do bear such a character.

This objection rests upon a confusion of two things — the theater in which our thoughts play their role and that element from which they derive the determination of their content, the inner law of their nature. We do not at all produce a thought-content in such fashion that, in this production, we determine into what interconnections our thoughts shall enter. We merely provide the occasion through which the thought-content unfolds according to its own nature. We grasp thoughta and thoughtb and give them the opportunity to enter into a connection according to principle by bringing them into mutual interaction one with the other. It is not our subjective organization which determines this interrelation betweena andb in a certain manner, but the content ofa andb is the sole determinant. The fact thata is related tob in a certain manner and not in another, — upon this fact we have not the slightest influence. Our mind brings about the interconnection between thought masses only according to the measure of their own content. Thus we fulfill the principle of experience in its very baldest form in the case of thinking.

This refutes the opinion of Kant and Schopenhauer, and in a broader sense of Fichte also, that the laws we assume in order to explain the world are merely an effect of our own mental organization, and that we inject them into the world only because of our own mental individuality.

Another objection might be raised from a subjective point of view. Even though the law-controlled relationship of the thought masses is not brought about according to our own organization, but depends upon the thought-content, yet this very content may be a mere subjective product, a mere quality of our mind, so that we should merely be uniting elements produced first by ourselves. In this case our thought-world would be none the less a subjective appearance. But it is very easy to meet this objection. That is, if it were well founded, we should be uniting the content of our thoughts according to laws while remaining wholly unaware as to whence these laws come. If these do not spring from our subjective being — a supposition we have already taken under consideration and set aside as untenable — what, then, could provide us with laws of interconnection for a content produced by ourselves?

In other words, our thought-world is an entity resting wholly upon itself, a totality self-enclosed, complete and entire within itself. Here we perceive which of the two aspects of the thought-world is the essential one: the objective aspect of its content and not the subjective aspect of its mode of emergence.

This insight into the inner purity and completeness of thought appears at its clearest in the scientific system of Hegel. No one else has attributed to thinking a power so complete that it could form a foundation in itself for a world-conception. Hegel has absolute confidence in thinking. Indeed, it is the only factor of reality which he trusts in the fullest sense of the word. Yet, although his point of view is in the main highly correct, he more than any one else has destroyed confidence in thought by the excessively unqualified form in which he has applied it. The way in which he has presented his view is responsible for the irremediable confusion which has found its way into our “thinking about thinking.” He desired to make the importance of thought, of the idea, evident by defining rational necessity in the same terms as factual necessity. In doing so he has given rise to the fallacy that thought-determinations are not purely ideal, but factual. His point of view was soon so conceived as if he had sought for thought itself as one of the facts in the world of sensible reality. Indeed, he failed to make himself entirely clear in regard to this. The truth must be firmly grasped that the sphere of thought is in human consciousness alone. Then it must be shown that the thought-world does not thereby sacrifice in the least its objectivity. Hegel exposed to view only the objective aspects of thought; but most persons see only what is easier to be seen — the subjective aspect — and it seems to them that Hegel treats something purely ideal as a thing — that is, that he indulged in a mystification. Even many scholars of the present time cannot be said to be quite free of this fallacy. They condemn Hegel because of a defect which he himself did not possess, but which can certainly be interjected into him because he failed to explain the matter in question with sufficient clearness.

We admit that we are here faced by something which is difficult for us to judge with the capacities we possess. Yet we believe it can be mastered by every energetic thinker. We must form two different conceptions: first, that by our own activity we bring the ideal world to manifestation; and, secondly, at the same time that what we by our activity call into existence rests, nevertheless, upon its own laws. It is true that we are accustomed so to conceive a phenomenon as if we needed only to stand passive before it, observing it. But this is not at all an absolute necessity. No matter how unfamiliar the conception may be to us, that we by our activity bring an objective entity to manifestation — that is, in other words, that we do not merely become aware of a phenomenon, but at the same time produce it — this conception is not at all invalid.

It is only necessary that we should abandon the customary idea that there are as many thought-worlds as there are human individuals. This idea is nothing more than an ancient preconception. It is tacitly presupposed everywhere without any consciousness that another conception is at least equally possible, and that the arguments for the validity of one or the other must, therefore, at least be weighed. Let us for a moment imagine, in place of the above preconception, the following: that there is one sole thought-content, and that our individual thinking is nothing more than the act of working ourselves, our individual personalities, into the thought-center of the world. This is not the place to investigate whether this point of view is correct or not; but it is possible, and we have attained what we wished to attain: that is, we have shown that it is entirely in order to postpone for the present undertaking to prove that the objectivity of thought, which we have declared to be a matter of necessity, is not a self-contradictory conception.

From the point of view of its objectivity, the work of the thinker may very appropriately be compared with that of a mechanic. Just as the latter brings natural forces into reciprocal action and thus brings about a purposeful activity and exertion of forces, so the thinker causes thought-elements to come into reciprocal activity, and these evolve into the thought-systems which compose our sciences.

There is no better means of throwing light upon a conception than by exposing the fallacies arrayed against it. Here again let us resort to this method, already profitably employed more than once.

It is generally supposed that the reason why we unite certain concepts into greater complexes, or why we think at all in certain ways, is because we sense a certain inner (logical) compulsion to do this. Volkelt also has appropriated this opinion. But how can this be harmonized with the transparent clearness with which our whole thought-world is present in consciousness? We know nothing in the world more thoroughly than we know our thoughts. Must we, then, assume a certain connection on the ground of an inner compulsion when everything is so clear? What need have I of the compulsion when I know the nature of what is to be united — know it through and through — and can guide myself according to this nature? All the operations of our thinking are processes which come to pass by reason of insight into the essential nature of the thoughts, and not according to compulsion. Such compulsion contradicts the nature of thinking.

We might certainly admit the possibility that it may be a part of the essential nature of thinking to stamp its content directly upon its manifestation, but that, nevertheless, we cannot immediately perceive this content by means of our mental organization. But such is not the case. The way in which the thought-content meets us is a guarantee to us that we here have the essential nature of the thing before us. We are assuredly aware that we accompany with our mind every process in the thought-world. Yet we can only think that the form of manifestation of a thing is determined by its essential nature. How could we reproduce the form of appearance if we did not know the essential nature of the thing? It is possible to conceive that the form of appearance emerges before us as an existent whole and we then seek for its central core. But it is impossible to maintain the point of view that we cooperate in producing the appearance without effecting this production by means of its own central core.
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Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:30 am

X. The Inner Nature of Thought

LET US draw one step nearer to thought. Hitherto we have been considering the place of thought in relation to the rest of the world of experience. We have reached the conclusion that it holds a unique position in that world, that it plays a central role. We shall for the present turn our attention elsewhere. We shall here restrict ourselves to a consideration of the inner nature of thinking. We shall investigate the very character of the thought-world itself, in order to perceive how one thought depends upon another; how thoughts are related to one another. From this inquiry we shall derive the means requisite for reaching a conclusion as to the question: “What is cognition in general?” Or, in other words, what is the meaning of forming thoughts about reality? What is the meaning of wishing to interpret the world by means of thinking?

Here we must keep our minds free from any preconceived opinion. We should be holding such a preconception if we should assume that a concept (thought) is an image within our consciousness by means of which we reach a solution concerning an object existing outside of consciousness. Here we are not concerned with this and similar preconceptions. We take thoughts just as we find them. The question as to whether they sustain a relationship to anything else whatever and, if so, what sort of relationship is just what we shall investigate. Therefore, we must not posit such a relationship here as our point of departure. This very opinion concerning the relationship between concept and object is very widespread. Indeed, the concept is often defined as the mental counterpart of an object existing outside the mind. The concept is supposed to reproduce the object, mediating to us a true photograph of it. Very often, when thinking is the subject of discussion, what people have in mind is only this preconceived relationship. Practically never does any one consider the idea of traversing the realm of thoughts, within their own sphere, in order to discover what is to be found there.

We will here investigate this realm just as if nothing whatever existed outside its boundaries, as if thought were the whole of reality. For a certain time we shall turn our attention away from all the rest of the world.

The fact that this sort of research has been neglected in those investigations concerning the theory of knowledge which are based upon Kant has been ruinous to this science. This omission has given an impulse to this science in a direction which is the very opposite of our own. This scientific trend can never, by reason of its whole character, comprehend Goethe. It is, in the truest sense of the word, un-Goethean to take as point of departure an assumption which is not found through observation, but actually injected into the thing observed. But this is what actually occurs when one sets at the very culmination of scientific knowledge the preconception that the relation mentioned above does exist between thinking and reality, between the idea and the world. The only way to treat this matter after the manner of Goethe is to enter deeply into the nature of thinking itself and then observe what relation comes about when thinking, thus known according to its own nature, is brought into relationship with experience.

Goethe always takes the path of experience in the strictest sense. He first takes the objects as they are, and, while banishing entirely every subjective opinion, seeks to penetrate into their nature; he then creates the conditions under which the objects can appear in reciprocal action and watches to see the results. He seeks to give Nature the opportunity to bring her laws into operation under especially characteristic circumstances, which he brings about — an opportunity, as it were, to express her own laws.

How does our thinking appear to us when observed in itself? It is a multiplicity of thoughts which are woven and bound organically together in the most complicated fashion. But, when we have once penetrated this multiplicity from all directions, it becomes again a unity, a harmony. All the elements are related one to another; they exist for one another; one modifies another, restricts it, etc. The moment our mind conceives two corresponding thoughts, it observes at once that these really flow together to form a unit. It finds everywhere in its whole realm the interrelated; this concept unites with that, a third illuminates or supports a fourth, and so on. If, for example, we find in our consciousness the concept “organism,” and we then scan our conceptual world, we meet with another concept, “systematic evolution, growth.” It becomes clear that these two concepts belong together; that they represent merely two aspects of one and the same thing. But this is true of our entire thought-system. All individual thoughts are parts of a great whole which we call our conceptual world.

When any single thought emerges in consciousness, I cannot rest until this is brought into harmony with the rest of my thinking. Such an isolated concept, apart from the rest of my mental world, is entirely unendurable. I am simply conscious of the fact that there exists an inwardly sustained harmony among all thoughts; that the thought-world is of the nature of a unit. Therefore, every such isolation is an abnormality, an untruth.

When we have arrived at that state of mind in which our whole thought-world bears the character of a complete inner harmony, we gain thereby the satisfaction for which our mind is striving. We feel that we are in possession of truth.

Since we perceive truth in the thorough-going agreement of all concepts in our possession, the question at once forces itself upon us: “Has thought, apart from all perceptible reality of the phenomenal world of the senses, a content of its own? When we have removed all sense-content, is not the remainder an utter emptiness, a mere phantasm?”

It might well be a widespread opinion that this is true; hence we must consider this opinion a little more closely. As we have already remarked above, it is very frequently assumed that the whole system of concepts is merely a photograph of the external world. It is firmly maintained that knowledge evolves in the form of thought; but it is demanded of “strictly scientific knowledge” that it shall receive its content from without. According to this view, the world must provide the substance which flows into our concepts; without that, these are mere empty forms void of content. If the external world should vanish, then concepts and ideas would no longer have any meaning, for they exist by reason of that world.

This point of view might be called the negation of the concept; for there it no longer possesses any significance in relation to objectivity. It is something added to the latter. The world would thus exist in all completeness even were there no concepts whatever, for these contribute nothing new to the world. They contain nothing which would not be there without them. They are there only because the cognizing subject wills to use them in order to possess in a form suitable to him what is otherwise already there. They are mere mediators to the subject of a content which is of a non-conceptual character. Such is the point of view under discussion.

If it were well founded, one of the following assumptions would necessarily be true.

1. That the conceptual world stands in such a relationship to the external world that it merely repeats the whole content of this in another form. (Here the term “external world” means the sense-world). If such were the case, one could not perceive any necessity for lifting oneself at all above the sense-world. In this latter everything relating and pertaining to knowledge would already be given.

2. That the conceptual world takes as its content merely a part of the “appearance for the senses.” We may imagine the thing somewhat like this. We make a series of observations. We meet in these the most diverse objects. We discover in the process that certain characteristics which we observe in a certain object have already been observed by us. A series of objects pass in survey before our eyes: A, B, C, D, etc. Suppose A had the characteristics p q a r; B shows i m b n; C, k h c g; D, p u a v. Here in the case of D we meet again the characteristics a and p previously observed in connection with A. We designate these characteristics as essential. And, in so far as A and D possess essential characteristics in common, we say they are of the same kind. Thus we unite A and D in that we lay hold of their essential characteristics in our thinking. Here we have a thought which does not entirely coincide with the sense-world and to which the charge of superfluity mentioned above cannot be applied, and yet it is far from bringing anything new to the sense-world. Against this, we may say, first of all, that to determine which characteristics of a thing are essential requires, to begin with, a certain norm which will enable us to distinguish between essential and unessential. This norm cannot exist in the object itself for this includes both the essential and the unessential in inseparable unity. This norm must belong to the very content of our thinking.

But this objection does not wholly refute this point of view. One holding this view might meet the objection thus. He might admit that we have no justification for classifying any characteristic as essential or unessential, but might declare that this need not disturb us; that we simply classify things together when we observe similar characteristics in them without any regard to the essential or unessential nature of these characteristics.

This view, however, requires a presupposition which by no means squares with the facts. So long as we confine ourselves to sense-experience, there is nothing really in common between two things of the same class. An example will make this clear. The simplest is the best because it can best be surveyed.

Image
Diagram 1

Let us observe the two triangles above. What is there really in common between them when we confine ourselves to sense-experience? Nothing whatever. That which they possess in common — that is, the principle on which they are formed and which causes them to be classed under the concept triangle — is attained only when we cross over the boundary of the sense-experience. The concept triangle comprises all triangles. We do not attain to it by merely observing all individual triangles. This concept always remains the same, however frequently I may conceive it, whereas it will scarcely ever happen that I shall see two identical triangles. That by reason of which a single triangle is “this” triangle and no other has nothing to do with the concept. A specific triangle is this specific one, not because it corresponds to the concept, but because of elements which lie entirely outside the concept: — the length of its sides, the measurements of its angles, its position, etc. Yet it is quite incorrect to maintain that the content of the concept is borrowed from the external sense-world, since it is evident that its content is not to be found in any sense-phenomenon.

3. Still a third view is possible. The concept may be the mediator through which to apprehend certain entities which are not perceptible to the senses but which possess a self-sustaining character. This character would be the non-conceptual content of the conceptual form of our thought. Whoever assumes such entities existing beyond the boundaries of experience, and attributes to us the possibility of a knowledge of these entities, must necessarily see in the concept the interpreter of this cognition.

The inadequacy of this point of view we shall later make especially clear. For the moment we need only remark that, in any case, it does not run counter to the contentual character of the conceptual world. For, if the object about which we think really lay beyond the boundaries of experience and of thinking, thought would all the more have to contain within itself the content upon which it rests. It could still not think about objects of which no trace could be found within the thought-world.

In any case it is clear that thought is no empty vessel, but that in and of itself it is possessed of content and that its content does not square with that of any other form of phenomenon.
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Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:31 am

XI. Thought and Perception

KNOWLEDGE permeates perceived reality with the concepts apprehended and worked through by our thinking. It supplements and deepens that which is passively received by means of what our mind through its own activity has lifted out of the darkness of the merely potential into the light of reality. This presupposes that perception needs to be supplemented by the mind; that perception is not in itself something definitive, final, conclusive.

The fundamental fallacy of modern science consists in the fact that it looks upon sense-perception as something conclusive, complete. For this reason it sets itself the task simply to photograph this existence, complete in itself. The only view which is logical in this respect is positivism, which simply rejects every advance beyond perception. Yet one observes nowadays in almost all branches of science an endeavor to look upon this point of view as being correct. In the true sense of the word, such a demand would be adequate only for such a science as merely enumerates and describes things as they exist beside one another in space, and occurrences as they follow one another in time. Natural history of the older type comes closest to meeting this requirement. The newer type makes the same demand, to be sure, and sets forth a complete theory of experience — only, however, to transgress this at once the moment it undertakes the first step into real knowledge.

If we should wish to lay hold upon pure experience, we should have to empty ourselves completely of our thinking. To deny to thinking the capacity for perceiving in itself entities which are inaccessible to the senses is a degradation of thought. Apart from the factor of sensible qualities, there must be within reality a factor which is apprehended by thought. Thinking is an organ of man ordained to observe something higher than is afforded by the senses. To thinking is accessible that side of reality of which a mere sense-being could never become aware. What thought exists for is not merely to repeat the sensible, but to penetrate into what is concealed from the senses. The sense-percept gives us only one side of reality. The other side is the apprehending of the world through thinking. At first appearance, thought seems to us something quite alien to perception; for perception enters into us from without, while thinking works from within outward. The content of thought appears to us as an inwardly complete organism; all is in the closest interrelationship. The individual members of the thought system mutually determine one another; each single concept has its ultimate roots in the totality of our thought structure.

At first glance, it seems as if the inner freedom from contradiction which characterizes thought, its self-sufficiency, rendered any transition to the percept an impossibility. Were the thought-characterizations such that they could be satisfied in one way alone, thinking would really be confined within itself; we could not emerge from within it. But this is not the case. These characterizations are such that they may be satisfied in a variety of different ways; only the element which produces this multifarious-ness must not be sought within thinking itself. Let us take the thought-characterization: “The earth attracts every other body.” We shall observe at once that the thought admits of the possibility of being fulfilled in the most diverse ways. But these are variations which can no longer be reached by thinking. There is room for another element. This element is the sense-percept. This percept affords such a form of specialization of thought-characterizations, which is left open by thought itself.

It is in this specialization that the world meets us when we make use of mere experience. Psychologically, that comes first which in point of fact is the derivative.

In all working over of reality through cognition, the process is as follows: We meet with a concrete percept. It confronts us as a riddle. Within us the impulse manifests itself to investigate its “What?” — its real nature — which the percept itself does not express. This impulse is nothing but the upward working of a concept out of the darkness of our consciousness. We then hold this concept firmly while the sense percept moves on a parallel line with this thought-process. The mute percept suddenly speaks a language intelligible to us; we know that the concept which we have taken hold of is that real nature of the percept for which we have been seeking.

What has here come about is a judgment. It is different from that form of judgment which unites two concepts without reference to percepts. When I say: “Freedom is the determination of a being from within itself,” I have here also formed a judgment. The constituents of this judgment are concepts not given to me in perception. Upon such judgments rests that inner unity of our thought which we discussed in the preceding chapter.

The judgment which we now consider has for its subject a percept and for predicate a concept. “This animal before me is a dog.” In such a judgment, a percept is injected into my thought system at a determinate place. Let us call such a judgment a perceptual judgment.

By means of the perceptual judgment we cognize that a determinate sensible object corresponds by nature with a determinate concept.

If, then, we are to comprehend what we perceive, the percept must have been formed within us beforehand as a determinate concept. Any object of which this were not true we should pass by without its being intelligible to us.

That such is the case is best shown by the fact that persons who have lived a rich mental life also penetrate far deeper into the world of experience than do others of whom this is not true. Much that passes over others without leaving a trace makes a deep impression upon these persons. (‘If the eye were not sun-like, it could never see the sun.') But, if may be asked, do we not meet in our lives innumerable things of which we have not previously had the slightest conception? — and do we not on the spot form concepts of these? Undoubtedly. But is the sum of all potential concepts identical with the sum of those which I have already formed in the previous part of my life? Is not my conceptual system capable of evolving? In the presence of a reality which is unintelligible to me, can I not set my thinking in action in order that it may evolve on the spot the concept with which I must match the object? I need only possess the capacity of drawing a determinate concept out of the store of the thought-world. It is not that a determinate concept was already consciously known to me in the previous part of my life but that this concept can be drawn forth from the world of thoughts accessible to me. Where and when I grasp the concept is not essential to its content. Indeed, I bring forth thought-characterizations out of the thought-world. Nothing whatever flows from the sensible object into this content. I simply recognize in the sensible object the thought which I draw forth from within myself. This object induces me, to be sure, to call forth at a certain moment from the unity of all potential thoughts just this one thought-content, but it does not by any means furnish me the material for constructing the thought. This I must draw from within myself.

When we cause our thinking to become active, only then does reality attain to true characterizations. Previously mute, it now speaks a clear language.

Our thinking is the interpreter that explains the dumb show of experience.

Men are so accustomed to look upon the world of concepts as void of content, and to contrast with this world the percept as being filled with content and thoroughly determinate, that it will be difficult for the true facts of the case to win the place belonging to them. The truth is entirely overlooked that mere beholding is the emptiest thing imaginable and that it receives content only from thinking. The sole truth in regard to the object is that it holds the constant flux of thought in a determinate form without our having to cooperate actively in thus holding it. When one who has a rich mental life sees a thousand things which are nothing to the mentally poor, this shows as clearly as sunlight that the content of reality is only the reflection of the content of our minds and that we receive from without merely the empty form. Of course, we must possess the inner power to recognize ourselves as the creator of this content; otherwise we shall forever see only the reflection and never our own mind which is reflected. Indeed, one who perceives himself in an actual mirror must know himself as a personality in order to recognize himself in the reflected image.

All sense-perception finally resolves itself, as to its essential nature, into ideal content. Only then does it appear to us transparent and clear. The sciences are to a large extent wholly unaffected by the consciousness of this truth. Thought-characterizations are considered the attributes of objects, like colors, odors, etc. Thus it is supposed that all bodies are characterized by the definition that they remain in the state wherein they are — of rest or motion — until an influence from without alters their state. It is in this form that the law of inertia plays its role in natural science. But the actual fact is something quite different. In my conceptual system the concept body exists in many modifications. One of these is the concept of a thing which can of itself set itself in motion or come to rest; another is the concept of a body which alters its state only under an external influence. These latter bodies we designate as inorganic. If, then, I meet a certain body which reflects in the percept the above conceptual definition, I designate it as inorganic and unite with it all characterizations which follow from the concept of an inorganic body.

All sciences should be permeated by the conviction that their content is solely a thought-content and that they sustain no other relationship to perception than that they see in the perceptual object a specialized form of the concept.
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Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:32 am

XII. Intellect and Reason

THINKING has a twofold function to discharge: first, to form concepts with sharply outlined contours; secondly, to unite the single concepts thus formed into a unified whole. In the first instance, we have to do with the activity of differentiation; in the second with that of combination. These two mental tendencies do not by any means enjoy equal favor in the sciences. The number of persons possessing the acumen which differentiates even down to the minutest trifles is noticeably greater than that of persons possessing the combining power of thought which penetrates to the depths of things.

For a long time the function of science has been supposed to consist in an adequate differentiation among things. We need only recall the state of natural history in Goethe's day. Through the influence of Linnaeus, it had become the ideal of this science to investigate the differences among individual plants sufficiently to succeed in setting apart new classes and sub-classes on the basis of the most insignificant characteristics. Two species of animals or plants differing only in the most unessential details were forthwith assigned to different classes. If some creature hitherto assigned to a certain class was discovered to show an unexpected divergence from the arbitrarily determined class-character, the result was, not an effort to discover how this divergence might be explained on the basis of that very class-character, but on the contrary a new class was at once set up.

This differentiation is the work of the intellect. It has only to divide and to retain the concepts in this process of division. It is a necessary stage preliminary to all higher forms of scientific knowledge. First of all, must we have definitely fixed, sharply outlined concepts before we can seek for a harmony among these. But we must not stop at the stage of division. To the intellect, things are divided which a fundamental human need requires us to see united. To the intellect, cause and effect are divided; mechanism and organism; freedom and necessity; idea and reality; spirit and Nature; etc., etc. All these differentiations are established by the intellect. They must be established, because otherwise the world would appear to us as a blurred, obscure chaos which would form for us no unity except in the sense that it would be utterly indeterminate.

Intellect itself is not capable of passing beyond this process of division. It holds fast to the divided members.

The task of passing beyond this belongs to reason. It must cause the concepts formed by the intellect to pass over into one another. It has to show that what the intellect keeps in strict separation is in reality an inner unity. The division is something artificially introduced, a necessary intervening stage for our knowledge, but not its conclusion. Whoever apprehends reality only intellectually alienates himself therefrom. In place of reality, which is in truth a unity, he sets up an artificial multiplicity, a manifoldness, which has no relation to the essential nature of reality.

This is the source of the discord which arises between intellectually pursued knowledge and the human heart. Many persons whose thinking has not so developed as to enable them to reach thereby a unified world-view which they can grasp with complete conceptual clarity are, nevertheless, capable of penetrating through their feeling to the inner harmony of the world as a whole. To these is given by the heart that which the scientifically trained receive from the reason.

When such persons meet the intellectual view of the world, they reject with scorn the endless multiplicity and cling to that unity which they do not know, indeed, but which they sense more or less vividly. They see very well that the intellect is alienated from Nature, that it loses sight of that spiritual bond which units the parts of reality.

Reason leads back to reality. The unity of all being, which had before been felt or only vaguely sensed, is completely fathomed by reason. The intellectual view must be deepened by the view of reason. If the former is looked upon, not merely as an inevitable transitional point, but as an end in itself, it does not yield reality but only a caricature.

Difficulties at times arise in combining the thoughts formed by the intellect. The history of science affords numerous evidences of this fact. We often see the human mind struggling to reunite the differences created by the intellect.

In the reasoned view of the world, man finally arrives at undivided unity.

Kant called attention to the difference between intellect and reason. Reason he defined as the capacity to perceive ideas; whereas intellect is restricted to seeing the world in its dividedness, in the isolated-ness of single parts.

It is true that reason is the capacity to perceive ideas. Here we must define the difference between concept and idea, to which we have hitherto paid no attention. For our purpose up to this point it was necessary only to discover those qualities of thought which are present in both concept and idea. The concept is a single thought as grasped by the intellect. If I bring a number of such single thoughts into a living flux so that they pass over into one another, become united, thought-structures thus arise which exist for the reason alone, which cannot be attained by the intellect. The creations of the intellect surrender their isolated existence to the reason, and thenceforth they live only as parts of a totality. These structures formed by the reason we shall call ideas.

That the idea reduces to unity a multiplicity of intellectual concepts was stated also by Kant. But he defined those structures which come to manifestation through the reason as mere phantasms, as illusions, eternally reflected before the human mind because man is forever striving to attain a unity of experience which is never given to him. The unities which are formed in ideas do not rest, according to Kant, upon objective relationships; they do not flow from the thing itself, but are mere subjective norms according to which we bring order into our knowledge. Kant, therefore, designated ideas, not as constitutive principles which must be determinative for things, but as regulative principles which have meaning and significance only for the systematics of our knowledge.

But, if we observe the manner in which ideas come into existence, this point of view is shown at once to be fallacious. It is true, of course, that the subjective reason has a craving for unity. But this craving is void of content, a mere empty striving toward unity. If reason is confronted by something absolutely lacking such unity of nature, reason cannot produce the unity out of itself. But, if reason is confronted by a multiplicity which admits of being reduced to an inner harmony, then reason brings this to pass. Such a multiplicity is the world of intellectually formed concepts.

Reason does not presuppose a determinate unity, but the empty form of unification; it is the capacity to bring harmony to light when harmony exists in the object itself. Concepts themselves unite in the reason to form ideas. Reason brings the higher unity of the intellectual concepts into evidence, the unity which the intellect possesses, indeed, in its images but lacks the capacity to perceive. The fact that this truth is overlooked is the cause of much misunderstanding as to the application of reason in the branches of scientific knowledge.

To a slight extent every science in its very rudiments, and even ordinary thinking, has need of reason. When, in the proposition: “Every body possesses weight,” we unite the subject-concept with the predicate-concept, we have already a union of two concepts and, therefore, the simplest activity of the reason.

The unity which reason takes as its object is existent prior to all thinking, prior to all use of the reason; only, it is concealed; it exists merely as a potentiality, not as an actual phenomenon. Then the human mind introduces division in order that we may have a complete view into reality through the reason's unification of the separated members.

Whoever does not presuppose this must either look upon all thought-combinations as the arbitrary work of the subjective mind, or else assume that the unity exists behind the world we experience, and that it forces us, in a manner unknown to us, to reduce the multiplicity again to unity. In that case, we unite thoughts without any insight into the true reasons of the interrelation which we bring about; in that case, truth is not cognized by us but forced upon us from without. All knowledge which proceeds from this presupposition we may call a dogmatic knowledge. To this we shall later return.

Every such scientific point of view will meet with difficulties when called upon to explain why we bring about one or another combination of thoughts. That is, this point of view requires that we seek for subjective reasons for combining objects whose interconnection on objective grounds is concealed from us. Why do I form a judgment when the thing which requires the interconnection of subject-concept and predicate-concept has nothing to do with the forming of this judgment?

Kant took this question as the point of departure for his critical work. At the beginning of hisCritique of Pure Reason we find the question, How are synthetic judgmentsa priori possible? — that is, How is it possible that I unite two concepts (subject and predicate) if the content of the one is not already contained in the other, and if the judgment is not a mere experiential judgment, the fixing of a single fact? Kant considers that such judgments are possible only when experience cannot exist except on the presupposition of their validity. The possibility of experience is, therefore, determinative if such a judgment is to be formed. If I can say to myself that experience is possible only in case this or that synthetic judgment isa priori true, then the judgment possesses validity. But this principle cannot be applied to ideas themselves. According to Kant these never possess that degree of objectivity.

Kant decides that the propositions of mathematics and pure natural science area priori such valid propositions. He takes, for example, the proposition 7 + 5 = 12. In 7 and 5 the sum 12 is, he concludes, by no means contained. I must go beyond 7 and 5 and call upon my sense of sight, whereupon I find the concept 12. My vision makes it necessary that the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 shall be assumed. But the objects of experience must approach me through the medium of my sense of sight, thus blending themselves with its principles. If experience is to be possible at all, such propositions must be true.

Before an objective examination, this whole artificial thought-structure of Kant fails to maintain itself. It is impossible that I have no clue in the subject-concept which directs me to the predicate-concept. For both concepts are attained by my intellect, and that in reference to a thing which in itself constitutes a unit. Let no one be deceived at this point. The mathematical unit which lies at the basis of number is not primary. The primary thing is the magnitude, which is a certain number of repetitions of the unit. I must assume a magnitude when I speak of a unit. The unit is an image created by our intellect which separates it from a totality just as it separates effect from cause, substances from their attributes. When I think 7 + 5, I really hold 12 mathematical units in mind, only not all at once but separated into two parts. If I think the group of mathematical units all at once, this is absolutely the same thing. This identity I express in the proposition 7 + 5 = 12. The same is true of the geometrical examples cited by Kant. A limited straight line with the termini A and B is an indivisible unit. My intellect can form two concepts of this. At one time it may consider the straight line as a direction and at another as the distance between the two points A and B. From this fact comes the judgment: The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

All judgments, in so far as the members which enter into the judgment are concepts, are nothing more than the reunifying of that which the intellect has divided. The interconnection comes to light as soon as one enters into the content of the intellectual concepts.
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Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:33 am

XIII. The Act of Cognition

REALITY HAS divided itself for us into two spheres: the spheres of experience and thought. Experience must be considered from a twofold point of view: — First, in so far as the total reality possesses, apart from our thinking, a form of manifestation which must emerge in the form of experience. Secondly, in so far as it is inherent in the character of our mind (whose essential nature consists in contemplation: that is, in an outwardly directed activity) that the objects to be observed must enter its field of vision: that is, again, must be given to it in the form of experience. It may be that this form of the given does not contain within itself the essential nature of the thing; in which case the thing itself requires that it shall first appear in perception (in experience) only later to reveal its essential nature to an activity of our mind which reaches beyond experience. Another possibility is that the essential nature may be present in the immediately given and that our not becoming forthwith conscious of that essential nature is due to the second circumstance: the requirement of our mind that everything must appear before it as experience. The second possibility is true of thought, the former of all other reality. In the case of thought, it is only necessary to overcome our subjective preconceptions in order to grasp this in its innermost essence. That which, in the case of all other reality, rests upon the actual situation in objective perception — that is, that the immediate form of appearance must be surmounted in order to interpret it — rests in the case of thought only upon a characteristic of our minds. In the former case, it is the thing itself which gives to itself the experiential form; in the latter, it is the organization of our mind. In the one case, we do not possess the whole thing when we lay hold of experience; in the other case, we do possess the whole thing.

Upon this rests the dualism which must be surmounted by knowledge, which is cognition by means of thinking. Man finds himself confronted by two worlds whose interconnection he must bring about. One is experience, of which he knows that it contains only one half of reality; the other is thought, complete in itself, into which that external experiential reality must flow if there is to result a satisfying world-view. If the world were populated by mere sentient creatures, its essential nature (its ideal content) would remain forever hidden; laws would, of course, control the world processes, but these laws would never become manifest. If this is to occur, there must intervene between the law and the form of manifestation a being to whom is given both the organs requisite to perceive that sensible form of reality dependent upon the laws and also the capacity to perceive the conformity to law itself. From one side the sense-world must come to meet this being and from another side the ideal nature of this world, and he must unite these two factors of reality by means of his own activity.

Here it is perfectly clear that our mind is not to be conceived as a receptacle for the ideal world, containing the thoughts within itself, but as an organ which perceives the thoughts.

It is an organ of apprehension just as are the eye and the ear. Thought is related to our minds just as light is related to the eye, tone to the ear. It does not occur to any one to think of color as something which stamps itself on the eye, remaining there as if it adhered to the eye. But in regard to the mind this is the prevailing conception. It is supposed that a thought of each thing forms itself in the consciousness and there remains, to be drawn forth at need. A peculiar theory has been based upon this view as if those thoughts of which we are at any moment unconscious were really preserved in our minds, but were lying below the threshold of consciousness.

These strange opinions dissolve into nothing the moment we reflect that the ideal world is self-determinative. What has this self-determinative content to do with the multiplicity of consciousnesses? It will not be supposed that this content so determines itself in indeterminate multiplicity that one fractional content is always independent of another! The thing is perfectly clear. Thought-content is of such a nature that it simply requires a mental organ for its manifestation, but that the number of beings possessed of such an organ is a matter of indifference. Therefore, an indefinite number of beings endowed with minds may be confronted by the one thought-content. That is, thinking as an organ of apprehension, perceives the thought-content of the world. There is only one single thought-content of the world. Our consciousness is not the capacity to produce thoughts and store them up, as is so generally supposed, but the capacity to perceive thoughts (ideas). Goethe expressed this strikingly in the following words: “The Idea is eternal and single; the fact that we use the plural is unfortunate. All things of which we become aware and of which we can speak are only manifestations of the Idea; we utter concepts, and to that extent the Idea itself is a concept.”

Dwelling in two worlds, the world of the senses and the world of thoughts — the one pressing in from below and the other shining down from above — man makes himself master of knowledge, whereby he unites the two into an undivided unity. From one side, external form beckons to us; from the other side, inner being; we must unite the two into one. Here our theory of knowledge has lifted itself above those points of view generally adopted by similar inquiries, which never get beyond mere formulae. From those points of view it is said that knowledge is the elaboration of experience, without specifying what is elaborated into experience; the matter is defined by saying that in cognition perception flows over into thinking, or else thinking, by virtue of a certain inner compulsion, presses forward from experience to the real entity which is behind experience. But these are the merest formulae. A science of knowledge that seeks to grasp cognition in its world-important role must, first of all, postulate the ideal goal of cognition. This goal is to give a solution to inconclusive experience by revealing its central core. Such a theory must, in the second place, determine what this central core is, considered as to its content. It is thought, Idea. Third, and lastly, it must show how this uncovering of the core is achieved. Our chapter onThinking and Perception explains this. Our theory of knowledge leads to the positive conclusion that thought is the essential nature of the world, and the individual human thinking is the only phenomenal form of this essential nature. A merely formal theory of knowledge cannot do this, but remains forever barren. It possesses no opinion as to the relationship between that which knowledge attains and the nature and fabric of the world. And yet it is precisely in the theory of knowledge that this relationship must be found. This science must show us where we arrive by way of cognition; to what point every other form of knowledge leads us.

Not otherwise than by way of a theory of knowledge does one attain to the view that thought is the central core of the world. For this science shows us the connection between thought and the rest of reality. But through what other means shall we learn in reference to thought what its relation to experience is unless it be through that science which takes as the very object of its inquiry just this relationship? Furthermore, how should we ever know in regard to a certain spiritual or sensible entity that it is the very primal force of the world if we do not investigate its relationship to reality? If, therefore, we have to do in any manner whatever with an inquiry as to the essential nature of a thing, this discovery will always consist in a return to the ideal content of the world. The sphere of this content must not be transgressed if we mean to remain within clear characterizations and do not wish to grope around in the indeterminate. Thought is a totality within itself, sufficient unto itself, which cannot pass beyond itself without entering a void. In other words, it must not, in an endeavor to explain anything whatever, have recourse to things which are not to be found within itself. A thing which could not be comprised within thought would be a no-thing. All finally resolves itself into thought; all at last finds its place within thought.

Expressed in reference to our individual consciousness, this means that, in order to establish anything scientifically, we must limit ourselves rigidly to what is given to us in consciousness; beyond this we cannot go. When any one perceives clearly that we cannot leap over our own consciousness without finding ourselves in the unreal, but does not at the same time perceive that the essential nature of things is to be met within our consciousness in the act of perceiving Ideas, he then falls into the fallacy of talking about limitations of human knowledge. If we cannot get beyond our consciousness, and if the essential nature of reality is not within consciousness, then we can never force our way through to that reality in its true nature.

Our thought is bound to the hither side and knows nothing of a yonder side.

But, according to our point of view, this opinion is nothing more than a thinking which misunderstands itself. A limitation of knowledge would be possible only if external experience in itself forced upon us the inquiry into its own nature, only if it determined the question which must be posed in its presence. But such is not the case. In thought itself arises the need to match with experience, as it perceives this, the essential nature of what is experienced. Thinking can have only the most definite tendency to see in the rest of the world its own conformity to law, but never anything of which it has not the least information.

Another fallacy must also be corrected at this point. It is that which considers thought not sufficient in itself to constitute the world; as if something else (force, will, etc.) must supervene in order to render the world possible.

As soon, however, as we reflect sufficiently, we see that all such factors really amount to nothing more than abstractions drawn from the perceptual world, and must themselves await interpretation by thought. Every component of the World-Being other than thought would require a form of apprehension, of cognition, other than that through thought. These other components we should have to reach otherwise than by means of thought. For thinking yields only thoughts. But, as soon as we endeavor to explain the part played in the fabric of the world by these other components, and resort to concepts for this explanation, we fall into self-contradiction. Moreover, there is no third part given to us in addition to sense-perception and thought. And we cannot consider any part of the former as the core of the world, since a closer inspection of all its constituents shows that, as such, they do not contain its own essential nature. This can be found nowhere save in thought.
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Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:33 am

XIV. Cognition and the Ultimate Foundation of Things

KANT TOOK a great step forward in philosophy in that he directed man's attention to himself. He must seek the reasons for certitude regarding his affirmations in that which is given to him as the capacities of his own mind, and not in truths forced upon him from without. Scientific conviction only through oneself, — that is the slogan of the Kantian philosophy. It is for this reason especially that he called it a critical and not dogmatic philosophy, such as maintains ready-made postulates as handed down and seeks afterwards for the proofs of these. Here appears a contradiction between two scientific trends; but this was not thought out by Kant with that distinctness to which it lends itself.

Let us fix clearly in mind how a scientific postulate comes into existence. It unites two things — either a concept and a percept or two concepts. Of the latter sort, for example, is the postulate: No effect without a cause. It may be that the objective reasons why the two concepts flow together lie beyond that which these contain in themselves, and which alone, therefore, is given to me. I may then have all sorts of formal reasons (freedom from contradiction, fixed axioms) which lead me to a definite combining of thoughts. But these reasons have no influence upon the thing itself. The postulate rests upon something which I can never reach in an objective manner. Therefore, I can never have a real insight into the thing; I know about it only as one standing outside it. According to this view, that which the postulate expresses is in a world unknown to me; the postulate alone is in my own world. This is the character of dogma. There are two sorts of dogma: the dogma of revelation and that of experience. The former hands down to man, in some way or other, truths about things which are beyond the reach of his vision. He possesses no insight into the world from which these postulates spring. He must simply believe in their verity, and cannot get access to the reasons for this belief. The case is quite similar with dogmas of experience. If any one holds the opinion that we should simply limit ourselves to pure experience and can merely observe its transmutations without penetrating to the causative forces, he is applying to the world postulates whose reasons are inaccessible to him. Here also truth is not attained by insight into the inner agency of the thing, but it is imposed by what is exterior to the thing itself. If earlier science was dominated by the dogmas of revelation, contemporary science is suffering from the dogmas of experience.

Our study has shown us that any assumption of a fundamental source of Being which exists outside the Idea is nonsense. The total fundamental essence of Being has poured itself out in the world; it has passed over into the world. In thought, it is manifest in its most complete form, just as it is, in and of itself. If, then, thinking forms a combination, if a judgment occurs, it is the content of the World-Fundament itself, poured out into thought, which is thus united. In thought, postulates are not given to us about a yonder-side World-Fundament, but this in its very substance has flowed into thought. We have a direct insight into the objective, not merely the formal, grounds for the formation of a judgment. The judgment reaches a characterization, not about something alien, but about its own content. Therefore, our view lays foundations for a true knowledge. Our theory of knowledge is really critical. According to our view, not only need nothing be conceded to revelation for which thought itself does not contain objective reasons, but also experience must be cognized within thought, not only on the side of its manifestation, but also as causative. By means of our thinking, we lift ourselves from perceiving reality as product to perceiving it as that which produces.

The essential nature of a thing thus comes to light only when the thing is brought into relation with man. For only in man does the real Being appear for each thing. This truth lays the foundation for a relativism as a world view — that is, the trend of thought which assumes that we see all things in the light which is lent to them by man himself. This point of view bears the name Anthropomorphism. It has many exponents. Most of these, however, believe that this peculiarity of our cognition alienates us from objectivity as it is in and of itself. We perceive all, so they think, through the spectacles of subjectivity. Our conception shows us the exact opposite of this. If we would reach the essential nature of things, we must view them through these spectacles. The world is not merely known to us as it appears, but it appears as it is, although only to thinking contemplation. The form of reality which man delineates in his knowledge is its final true form.

And now we have still to extend to the individual fields of reality that form of cognition which we have come to recognize as the right form — as leading to reality in its true nature. We shall now show how the real nature of experience is to be found in its individual forms.
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Re: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conce

Postby admin » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:38 am

XV. Inorganic Nature

THE SIMPLEST form of action in Nature seems to us to be that in which an occurrence results wholly from factors external to one another. Here is an occurrence, or a relationship between two objects, not necessitated by an entity which manifests itself in the external forms of appearance — an individuality which exhibits its capacities and character in an effect produced outwardly. The occurrence or relationship has been called forth merely by the fact that one thing which has occurred has, in its occurrence, produced a certain effect upon another thing, has transferred its own state to some other thing. The states of one thing appear as results of those of another. The system of actions which happen in this fashion, so that one fact is always the result of others of similar sort, is called inorganic Nature.

Here the course of an occurrence or the characteristic of a relationship depends upon external determinants; the facts bear marks in themselves which are the results of these determinants. If the form is altered in which these external factors meet, the result of their combined existence is also naturally altered; the phenomenon thus brought about is altered.

What is, now, the manner of this combined existence in the case of inorganic Nature as it enters directly into our field of observation? It bears altogether the character which we designated above as that of immediate experience. We have here merely a special case of that experience in general. We have to deal here with connections between facts of the senses. But it is just these connections which seem to us in the experience not to be clear or transparent. The fact a confronts us, but at the same moment also numerous others. When we cast our glance over the multiplicity here presented to us, we are in complete uncertainty as to which of these other facts stand in closer and which in more remote relationships to the fact a, now under discussion. There may be some present of such sort that the event could not occur without them, and others which merely modify it but without which it could nevertheless occur, except that it would have, under the different circumstances, another form.

In this way we see at once the path which cognition must take in this field. If the combination of facts in immediate experience does not suffice us, then we must go forward to another combination satisfying to our need for explanation. We have to create such conditions that an occurrence will appear to us in transparent clarity as the inevitable result of these conditions.

We recall why it is that thought contains its own essential nature in immediate experience. It is because we stand within and not without that process which creates thought combinations out of the single thought elements. Here, therefore, we are given, not only the finished process, the product, but that which produces. And the important point is that, when we confront any occurrence in the external world, we shall above all perceive the impelling forces which bring this forth from the center of the world-totality to its periphery. The opacity or obscurity of any phenomenon or relationship in the sense-world can be overcome only when we perceive adequately that it is the result of a certain association of facts. We must know that the occurrence we now see arises through the interaction of this and that element of the sense-world. Then the manner of this interaction must be completely penetrable by our intellect. The relation into which the facts are brought must be an ideal relation, one suited to our minds. Of course, in the relationships into which things are brought by our intellect, they comport themselves according to their own natures.

We see at once what is hereby gained. If I look haphazard into the sense-world, I see occurrences brought about by the interaction of so many factors that it is impossible for me to see directly what really stands behind this effect as the causative element. I observe an occurrence and at the same time the facts a, b, c, d. How shall I know at once which of these facts participate to greater and which to lesser extent in the occurrence? The thing becomes transparent when I first inquire which of the four facts is absolutely necessary if the process is to occur at all. I find for example that a and c are absolutely necessary. Then I find that without d the process occurs, indeed, but with important modification; and, on the contrary, that b has no essential

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Diagram 1

significance but could be replaced by some other factor. In the above diagram let I represent symbolically the grouping of the elements for mere sense-perception; II, that for the mind. Thus the mind so groups the facts of the inorganic world that it perceives in an occurrence or a condition the result of the relationship of the facts. Thus the mind introduces necessity into the midst of chance.

We will make this clear by an example. When I have before me a triangle ABC, I do not see at first glance that the sum of the three angles is always equal to two right angles. This becomes clear when I group the facts in the following manner.

Image

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Diagram 2

From the figures by the side of the triangle it becomes clear at once that the angle a' equals the angle a; the angle b' equals the angle b. (AB and CD are parallel to A'B' and C'D' respectively.) If, now, I draw through the apex C of a triangle a line parallel to the base AB,I find, when I apply the above example, that the angle a' equals the angle a; b' equals b. Since, now, c equals itself, then of necessity the three angles of the triangle equal together two right angles. Here I have explained a complicated combination of facts by reducing it to such simple facts that, by reason of the condition presented to the mind, the corresponding relationship is necessarily inferred from the nature of the things given.

Another example is the following. I throw a stone in a

Image
Diagram 3

horizontal direction. It describes a path which we have represented in the line ll'. When I consider the impelling forces which are here to be taken into account, I find: 1. the propelling force which I exerted; 2. the force with which the earth attracts the stone; 3. the force of the atmospheric resistance.

Upon closer examination, I find that the first two forces are essential and determine the character of the path, while the third is subsidiary. If only the first two were present, the stone would describe the path LL'. This latter I find when I ignore the third force and bring into combination only the former two. To carry this out in actual fact is neither possible nor necessary. I cannot eliminate all resistance. But for my purpose I need only apprehend in thought the nature of the first two forces, and then bring them into the necessary relationship likewise in thought, and I deduce the path LL' as that which must necessarily result when only these two forces interact.

In this way the mind resolves all phenomena of the inorganic world into those in which the effect seems to the mind to come directly and of necessity from the causative factor.

If, then, after arriving at the law of the motion of the stone under the influence of the two forces, one introduces the third force, the result is path ll'. Additional conditions might complicate the matter still further. Every composite occurrence in the sense-world appears as a web of such simple facts, which can be penetrated by the mind; and it is reducible to these.

Now, a phenomenon in which the character of the occurrence can be seen in transparently clear fashion to result directly from the nature of the factors under consideration is called a primal phenomenon, or fundamental fact.

This primal phenomenon is identical with objective natural law. For in it there is expressed the fact, not only that an occurrence happened under certain definite conditions, but that it had to happen. It has been seen clearly that the occurrence had to happen because of the very nature of the thing under consideration. The reason why empiricism is to-day so generally demanded is that it is supposed that any assumption which goes beyond what is empirically given leaves us groping in the uncertain. We see that we may remain wholly within the phenomena and yet meet with the inevitable. The inductive method, to-day so much espoused, can never do this. In reality it proceeds in the following manner. It observes a phenomenon which comes about in a definite manner under given conditions. Again it sees the same phenomenon occur under similar conditions. From this it concludes that there exists a general law according to which this occurrence must take place, and postulates this law as such. Such a method remains entirely external to the phenomena. It does not penetrate into the depths. Its laws are generalizations from individual facts. It must always await the establishment of the rule by the individual facts. Our method knows that its laws are simply facts which are torn out of the confusion of chance and made into matters of necessity. We know that, when the factors a and b are present, a definite effect must appear. We do not go beyond the world of phenomena. The content of knowledge, as we view it, is nothing more than objective occurrence. The only change is in the form of the combination of facts. But this change advances one step deeper into objectivity than experience enables one to penetrate. We so combine the facts that they act according to their own natures and only thus, and that this effect cannot be modified by this or that circumstance.

We attach the greatest importance to the fact that these discussions can be confirmed wherever one may look into the real functioning of science. They are contradicted only by the fallacious opinions that are held in regard to the scope and nature of scientific principles. While many of our contemporaries contradict their own theories when they enter the field of practical research, the harmony between our explanation and all true research can easily be shown in every single instance.

Our theory demands for every natural law a definite form. It presupposes a combination of facts and maintains that, when this appears anywhere in reality, a definite occurrence must take place.

Every natural law, therefore, has this form: When this fact interacts with that, this phenomenon arises. It would be easy to show that all natural laws really have this form: When two bodies of unequal temperature are in contact, heat passes from the warmer to the less warm until the temperature of the two is the same. If a fluid is contained in two vessels which are connected, the level becomes identical in the two vessels. If a body stands between a source of light and another body, it casts a shadow upon the latter. In mathematics, physics, and mechanics, anything which is not mere description must be a primal phenomenon.

All advance in knowledge rests upon the perception of primal phenomena. When we are able to remove an occurrence from its connection with other occurrences and explain it as the effect of definite elements of experience, then we have penetrated a step deeper into the fabric of the world.

We have seen that the primal phenomenon yields itself wholly to thinking when the factors concerned are brought together in thought according to their nature. But one can also create artificially the necessary conditions. This happens in scientific research. There we have in our own control the occurrence of definite factors. Naturally we cannot ignore all related circumstances. Yet there is a way by which we may surmount the latter. We may produce a phenomenon under various modifications. We allow first one and then another contributing circumstance to be active. We then find that one constant persists through all these modifications. We must retain the essential thing in all the combinations. We find that in all these individual experiences a factual component of these is constant. This is higher experience within experience. It is the fundamental fact, or primal phenomenon.

The experiment is intended to convince us that nothing else influences a definite occurrence except what we take into account. We bring together certain conditions whose nature is known to us and observe what follows from these. Here we have an objective phenomenon on the basis of subjective creation. We have something objective which is at the same time thoroughly subjective. The experiment is, therefore, the true mediator between subject and object in inorganic science.

The germ of the view we have here developed is to be found in the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller. Goethe's letters 410 and 413 and Schiller's 412 and 414 are concerned with this. They designate this method as rational empiricism, because it takes as content for knowledge nothing except objective occurrences, but these objective occurrences are held together by a web of concepts (laws) which our minds discover in them. Sensible occurrences in an interconnection which only thought can grasp — this is rational empiricism. If these letters are compared with Goethe's essay Der Versuch als Vermittler von Subjekt and Object, [The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object.] the theory given above will be found to be the logical conclusion to be drawn from them.

Thus the general relation we have defined between experience and knowledge is valid everywhere in inorganic Nature. Ordinary experience is only one half of reality. To the senses this half alone exists. The other half is present only to the conceptual capacities of our minds. The mind raises experience from an “appearance for the senses” to something belonging to itself. We have shown how it is possible in this realm to raise oneself from the product to the producing. It is the mind that finds this latter when it confronts the former.

Scientific satisfaction will come to us from a point of view only when it leads us into a totality complete in itself. But the sense-world as inorganic does not appear at any point as brought to a conclusion; nowhere does an individual whole appear. Every occurrence points to another upon which it depends; this to a third; etc. Where is there any conclusion in this? The sense-world as inorganic does not arrive at individuality. Only in its totality is it complete in itself. We must strive, therefore, if we would have a whole, to conceive the assemblage of the inorganic as a system. Such a system is the cosmos.

A thorough understanding of the cosmos is the goal and ideal of inorganic natural science. Every scientific endeavor which does not attain to this is merely preparatory: a member of the whole, but not the whole itself.
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