Cont Philos Rev (2017) 50:335–357

DOI 10.1007/s11007-016-9387-z

Goethe and the study of life: a comparison with Husserl

and Simmel

Elke Weik1

Published online: 22 September 2016

 The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

Abstract In the paper at hand I introduce Goethe’s ontology and methodology for
the study of life as an alternative to current theories. ‘Life,’ in its individual, social
and/or pan-natural form, has been a recurring topic in the social sciences for the last
two centuries and may currently experience a renaissance, if we are to believe Scott
Lash. Goethe’s approach is of particular interest because he formulated it as one of
the first critical responses to the nascent discipline of biology. It can be charac-
terised broadly as phenomenology with a strong dose of life philosophy. For this
reason, and to draw its contours more clearly, I compare his approach to the
respective thoughts in Husserl’s and Simmel’s work. The comparison focuses on the
two central concepts phenomenon and life but also discusses broader epistemo-
logical and methodological issues, such as the relationship between observer and
observed, the relationship between culture (cultural sciences) and nature (natural
sciences), the nature of causality as well as preferred methods of study.

Keywords Life
Goethe
Husserl
Simmel
Phenomenon
Delicate Empirics

The problem of the study of social life has been a recurring theme in sociology and
organization theory. With the demise of structural functionalism and contingency
theory in the late 1960s scholars felt a need to get closer to the more fleeting aspects
of social life in groups, organisations and institutions. Despite their best intentions,
however, the concept seems today as elusive as ever. Lloyd Sandelands has put it
quite succinctly: ‘The basic facts of human social life – that it is social and that it is
alive – are easily overlooked’ (Sandelands 1995: 147). While the dynamisation of
institutionalist theory and organisation theory in the 1980s and a new interest in

& Elke Weik

e.weik@le.ac.uk
1
University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

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process theory and philosophy starting in the 2000s (among others, Chia and King
1998; Clegg et al. 2005; Cooper 2007; Hernes 2008) have certainly helped
modelling the fluidity of social life, the peculiar characteristics of ‘life’ as such have
hardly been discussed alongside it. (The work of Sandelands being one of the
exceptions). And while Lash (2005), arguing from a perspective of a sociology of
(high/late/post-) modernity, would like to see a ‘Lebenssoziologie’ (re-)instated, he
too needs effectively to go back a century to find the conceptual tools to discuss it.
It is hence the objective of this paper to explore a theory that might help us
understand the phenomenon of life better. I am proposing the scientific part of the
work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I do this for two reasons. The first, almost a
sine qua non, is that his study of life is well conceptualised and applicable today.
The second is that Goethe lived at a moment of time when the study of life became
‘scientized.’ During Goethe’s lifetime, Gottfried Treviranus coined the term
‘biology’ (Lenoir 1987), Alexander von Humboldt undertook his travels, Georges
de Cuvier proposed that species could become extinct, Carl von Linné (Linnaeus)
devised his taxonomy of plants and animals still used in Biology today, and Charles
Darwin undertook his voyage on the ‘Beagle.’ Goethe either corresponded with
each of them or, in the case of Darwin, was at least known and cited (Richards
2002). Only a generation after Goethe’s death, however, the direction of the Natural
Sciences changed towards a materialist-reductionist approach that, in retrospect, has
impeded the study of life rather than promoted it. Goethe anticipated this move and
opposed it without, however, being able to stop it. By going back to this crossroads
we may be able to get a truly alternative view of the study of life, a ‘science of
qualities’ that gives room to the material as well as the spiritual aspects of both the
study of life and the study of life.
In contrast to some papers recently published (Bleicher 2007; Levine 2012), I
will not look at Goethe from Simmel’s perspective, which in some respects I do not
share. Rather I will look at Goethe as an author in his own right and oeuvre. To
sharpen the contours of his theory I will do a ‘weighted comparison’ in the sense
that the two other authors will only serve as a foil to Goethe and not be presented in
their own right.
Selecting the authors to contrast him with I have gone back to the turn of the last
century because it is there when the two concepts most pertinent to his study—life
and phenomenon—became academically defined in a manner that is still accepted
today. This is not to say that there have not been definitions and accounts before that
time but they have been mostly superseded by the two eponymous schools I am
discussing, viz. Phenomenology and Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie). Talking
about phenomenology I will mostly draw on the works of its founder, Edmund
Husserl. While his philosophy has subsequently been imported into sociology by
Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann and has formed a distinct school there, this
school has developed a strong interest in a sociology of knowledge that is not really
pertinent to what I want to discuss in this paper. Life philosophy, on the other hand,
has a prominent sociological author in the person of Georg Simmel. Both Simmel
and the school as such, however, have had the misfortune to become rather
marginalized after World War II.

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The caveat remains that I am comparing authors from different epochs, different
disciplines and with different research objectives. It may be ameliorated by the fact
that the study of life is a truly interdisciplinary concern and thus contributions from
every discipline can be brought to bear on it. The comparison will focus on the two
central concepts phenomenon and life but also discuss broader epistemological and
methodological issues, such as the relationship between observer and observed, the
relationship between culture (cultural sciences) and nature (natural sciences), the
nature of causality, preferred methods of study as well as the role of ratiocination
and formal-mathematical methods.

1 The authors: a brief on dates, aims and contexts

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a contemporary of Kant, Hegel and
Linné. While generally recognised as one of the greatest German poets, his scientific
works (mostly in geology, biology and physics) have met with reserved praise.
Many natural scientists over the centuries have criticised major parts of his
empirical work. Great names like Einstein, Heisenberg, Helmholtz and Planck,
however, have embraced his overall ambition to maintain a ‘human dimension’ in
the natural sciences (Jensen 2011; Schad 1977)1 that was lost in the materialist-
reductive turn mentioned above. Goethe’s scientific legacy lives on in anthropo-
sophical circles (for example, Steiner Schools) but also on the margins of the
traditional university disciplines (Holdrege 2005; Schad 1977), and most recently
complexity theory (Goodwin 1997).2 In the best known parts of his scientific works
Goethe takes on the giants of his time: Isaac Newton in his ‘Theory of Colours’
(Farbenlehre, 1810) as well as Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) in his ‘Metamorphosis of
Plants’ (Metamorphose der Pflanzen, 1790). Although Goethe illustrates his ideas
on the phenomenon in the former, it is the latter that is of more interest to us.
Goethe, as I will discuss in more detail below, argues against Linnés taxonomy that
the system does not take into consideration that its objects are alive and evolving.
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) is the founder of Philosophical Phenomenology.
His thoughts were later to be imported into sociology by, most prominently, Alfred
Schütz and Thomas Luckmann. Like many authors of grand theories Husserl
changed his views on certain aspects of his philosophy over the years, and we can
see it move from a more formal argument in ‘Logical Investigations’ (Logische
Untersuchungen, 1900/01) towards what might be called a more applied interest in
the life-world and the sciences expressed in ‘The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Philosophy’ (Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die
transzendentale Phänomenologie, 1936). Publishing in an academic community
embedded in German Idealism and Marxism on the one hand and positivist science

1
According to Holton (Galison et al. 2008: 10), Goethe’s works ‘loomed largest’ in Einstein’s personal
library.
2
Goodwin claims to conduct his whole investigation in a ‘Goethean spirit’ holding that it is the
originality of Goethe’s science that keeps it marginalised (Goodwin 1997: 136).

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(especially Psychologism3) on the other, Husserl sought to establish a philosophy

that could provide a foundation for the sciences—without drawing on them. He
shared their desire for objectivity and an ultimate grounding of knowledge, but
thought that what the natural sciences offered was only a ‘Scientific Objectivism,’
i.e. a concern for the objective truth of the world of experience. This ‘Scientific
Objectivism’ lacked any understanding of the prerequisites for experiencing the
world; prerequisites that were, according to Husserl, situated in a transcendental
subjectivity.4 There he claimed to have found these undoubtable foundations, or ‘the
absolute given’ (absolute Gegebenheit) as he called them, in the cogitatio (the
thinking act) and its corresponding cogitatum (thought, content). They constitute
what he calls a ‘phenomenon.’
Georg Simmel (1858–1918) is a thinker that is today often classified as a sociologist
but saw himself as a philosopher (Swedberg 2011). The study of life marked,
according to his own testimony, his most important and enduring concern among a
work that is astoundingly multi-faceted. It culminated in his last book ‘The View of
Life’ (Lebensanschauung 1918). Simmel admired and drew heavily on Goethe, on
whom he published several essays as well as a book. His fascination with the latter is
often categorised as a critique of Kant’s philosophy and the Newtonian view of natural
science (for example, Bleicher 2007). Although the contrast between the two thinkers
is the main subject of Simmel’s book ‘Kant und Goethe’ (1916), Simmel’s stance
towards, and reception of, the two authors is probably more subtle than a simple
juxtaposition condemning Kant and elevating Goethe (Levine 2012). Simmel’s
position within the life philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) movement is more on the
margins than in the centre, which is occupied by authors like Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Dilthey, Bergson and William James (Fellmann 1996).

2 Central concepts

2.1 Life

The basic characteristic of a living unit: to separate, to unite, to become

universal, to remain particular, to change, to specify and to present itself and
to vanish under a thousand conditions that the living may choose, to solidify
and to melt, to freeze and to flow, to extend and to contract. As all these effects
happen at the same time, everything and anything can happen. Becoming and
perishing, creating and destroying, birth and death, joy and sorrow, everything
mingles in the same sense and measure; this is why the most particular can
always appear as representation and simile for the most universal. (Goethe
1998b, no. 21, my translation)

3
Psychologism (Psychologismus) maintains that all social and cultural phenomena as well as philosophy
can be reduced to psychological phenomena.
4
As opposed to a psychological conception of an individual’s subjectivity, transcendental subjectivity
relates to a general capacity of human consciousness to constitute the experience of the world (Husserl
1962: §14).

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This is how Goethe5 characterises life and living organisms. The immediate
impression one gets is of constant movement and a strong interrelatedness. The first
impression, constant movement, leads us to Goethe’s primary objective for
undertaking studies of nature, for his aim is to study nature and life as alive, i.e. as
constantly developing. Never the one to produce static descriptions or dead
classifications, Goethe seeks to understand the most basic characteristic of life—
development or change—in adequate terms and with new methods. ‘Morphogen-
esis’ is Goethe’s name for the development of a living being in accordance with its
‘programme.’6 Organisms are subject to a formative drive (Bildungstrieb) that
powers it. It is important to note that the German word ‘Bildung’ also refers to
education and cultivation because this points to the spiritual7 dimension in the
development of living organisms. In this sense, Bildung goes beyond Gestalt
invoking both the formation process and its result. The Bildungstrieb is powered by
a tension in the ontological polarity between spirit and matter. It is hence not a pure,
unrestrained life force but an interplay of such a life force with fixed laws and
structures. Goethe (1998a: 34) gives a brief list of the forces involved in this
interplay as shown in Fig. 1. As a consequence life is always formed and unfolds in
rhythms (Schad 1977).
True creativity in art as in nature, Goethe would hold, is a product not of
unrestrained, shapeless productiveness but of an inner creative force that disciplines
itself to adhere to certain forms of communication or other forms of production. The
spiritual dimension of the Bildungstrieb, as Robbins (2006) argues, can be seen in
the fact that life, even in the lowest organisms, evaluates its environment in terms of
‘good/bad for me.’ This evaluation cannot be explained in terms of a mechanistic,
non-organic universe. For Goethe, its is the intensification of experience that leads
from the material to the spiritual (Naydler 1996). The strong emphasis on the
spiritual nature as well as the qualitative aspects of change leads Goethe to reject the
quantitative-mathematical approach of the Natural Sciences (see below). He argues
that living organisms cannot be measured and compared like mechanic artefacts. On
the contrary, every evaluation needs to take into account this ‘inner’ measure, which
is a spiritual, non-sensual measure.
5
Goethe has never compiled his thoughts on doing science in a systematic manner. Apart from the two
books mentioned in the introduction, there exist a multitude of short pieces, letters and even poetry on the
subject. The following authors have helped me find my way through this ocean of ideas: Bortoft (1986),
Stephenson (1995), Naydler (1996) and Jensen (2011). Authors that have contributed more specific
aspects will be mentioned in the respective places in the text.
6
I could not determine from Goethe’s writings whether this ‘programme’ is of an individual or typical
(i.e. species-related) nature. The logic of his Morphology would suggest a typical programme unfolding
in each plant or animal. As such, Goethe has been understood as a precursor of Darwin. Darwin’s species,
however, are linked by a (nowadays) empirically detectable ‘programme’ displayed in the chromosomes.
This ‘programme’ produces the genotype, which has phenotypical variations depending on individual life
circumstances. Goethe’s morphotype, in contrast, is an idea or principle of unity (Lenoir 1987; Naydler
1996). Unfortunately, he also speaks of Leibnizian monads in other passages, e.g.: ‘… Life, the
movement of the monas around itself…’ (Goethe 1998b, no. 227, my translation). This indicates an
individual ‘programme’.
7
The German word ‘Geist’ is often translated by ‘spirit’ although it should be noted that the distinctions
between ‘Geist/Seele’ on the one hand and ‘Mind/Spirit/Soul’ on the other are drawn along different
lines. ‘Geist’ has a firm component of ‘mind’ in it.

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Material (Stoff)
Potential (Vermögen)
Power (Kraft)
Force (Gewalt) Life
Striving (Streben)
Urge (Trieb)
Form

Fig. 1 Life

Life, finally, must change in order not to die (von Weizsäcker 1987). As it
develops each stage must perish in order to make room for the next stage; as must
the organism as a whole to make room for new life. Death is hence a part of life
rather than its opposite. As Goethe states most beautifully in his poem ‘Eins und
Alles’8:
To take what’s made and then re-make it,
To fight rigidity and break it,
Eternal living action quest.
What never was grows real and fuller,
As pure clean suns, as worlds with colour,
And in becoming never rest.
It all must move, make new creations,
First take form, then transformations;
For moments it just seems held fast.
In all things life’s perpetuated,
And all must be annihilated
That existence strives to last.
The second impression, interrelatedness, makes living organisms, as Goethe (1998c:
21) puts it, outwardly multi-faceted and inwardly inexhaustible, so that research into
them can never come up with a comprehensive description. The way to study the
inner life of organisms is to take their external expressions as signs of their inner
lives, as we may take somebody’s behaviour as sign of his character:
To look at products of nature in themselves, without relation to utility or
effectiveness, without relation to a first cause, just as a living whole that
includes, by virtue of being alive, cause and effect; that we can approach and
ask to give account, that we can trust to tell us about the nature of its being.
The parable of a free human being that does not obey either father nor master
8
Translation from http://www.postpoems.org/authors/facethetruth2b/poem/920813.

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nor need. We watch him act and do not really understand why he acts in this
way. We approach him and ask him why. He would give us his innermost and
his circumstances and we would understand that he acts from necessity.
(Goethe, no date: 108, my translation)
This ‘freedom’ of living beings is, as I have argued above, partly a freedom from
efficient (mechanistic) causality as, first, living beings are their own causes in a
Leibnizian sense, and second, are subject to a multitude of causalities that I will
discuss in more detail in the respective section below. The all-encompassing life
force, the source and ultimate idea of life, is Nature. Again, we find the idea of Her
as an overflowing and in her interrelatedness over-rich entity:
Natural system: a contradictory expression. Nature has no system; and she has
– she is – life and development from an unknown centre toward an
unknowable periphery. Thus observation of Nature is limitless…9 (Goethe
1998c: 35)
Simmel takes from Goethe the notion of life as a unity permeating the various stages
of development as well as the idea of life and form as the primary ontological forces
that create all beings from their dialectic interplay. In Simmel’s philosophy,
however, the pair is evaluated unevenly with form acting as a threat to life. Life is
permanently in danger of being stifled by the rigidity and lifelessness of form,
whereas the opposite move—life breaking forms—is conceived as a liberating
move. While form is needed to bring forth culture and society, it also inevitably
leads to tragedy (see below). Life, in contrast, is permanent creativity and novelty;
the connotation of ‘vitality’ at its best. Simmel’s conception of ‘more-life’ (Mehr-
Leben) and ‘more-than-life’ (Mehr-als-Leben) show quite clearly that he tends to
regard life as the more fundamental category. This is not the evaluation that Goethe
would take. To him, the ‘rule’ acts as a positive constraint, a moment of reflection or
even contemplation born of human self-determination. Like the Kantian moral law,
the rule represents human freedom vis-à-vis a creativity that is born of divine nature
but to a certain extent beyond human control and understanding. Both authors also
agree on death as something inherent to life, although Simmel’s account goes
beyond this idea to explore reincarnation. He also links death to different degrees of
individuation10 when he explains that some persons are more individualised than
others and that those persons’ deaths cause the loss of ‘a greater quantum of the
world’ (Simmel 1918: 134). Goethe, while promoting the idea of the genius
elsewhere, is more pragmatic about this particular aspect when he remarks: ‘There
is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal’
(Goethe 1988, no. 48).

9
All quotations have been translated by Naydler (1996), unless stated otherwise.
10
Individuation is, in the classic Aristotelean tradition, the result of the form combining itself with
(unformed) matter. One may think of a clay mould that produces an individual brick in this manner.
Simmel’s discussion of individuation is thus a continuation of his argument about life and form.

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2.2 Causality

Goethe’s opposition against Newtonian science is in part fuelled by the latter’s

insistence on mechanistic, i.e. material efficient, causality. While Goethe does not
doubt that it exists and plays an important role in the non-organic world, he would
hold that, first, living organisms underlie a different causality (Schad 1977), and that
second, the world in its totality and its polarity of matter and spirit knows many
forms of causality that are not easily separated from one another. He lists them as:
… chance, mechanic, physical, chemical, organic, psychological, ethical,
religious, ingenious (genial). We have made a step that was well considered
but always seems risky: to describe all phenomena in continuous succession as
they develop out of each other, transform into each other. (Goethe 1840a: 71)
In the same vein, he also cautions against looking for ‘nearby,’ direct or
immediate, efficient causes when studying an effect. The phenomenon in its
complexity affords long and intricate chains of causality that are, more often than
not, non-linear. As a consequence, it may often be more correct to speak of
‘correlations’ in a phenomenon and leave it at that instead of establishing linear
cause-effect chains. Goethe’s rejection of mechanistic explanations for organisms
is based on his conviction that they follow an inner ‘programme’ (see above) that
functions as the main determinant of their development. We might call it entelechy
were it not for the fact that, as Brady (1984) points out, Goethe does not regard the
telos to mark the aim reached at the end of the developmental process (like the aim
of an action) but as comprising it in its entirety. While organisms, as physical
bodies, may be subject to efficient causality, the more important cause for their
changes is this inner drive. As a consequence, two aspects move to the fore. The
first is the relationship between the part and the whole that leads to an explanation
of each part in terms of its function for, and place in, the whole. This function can
be physical as well as spiritual but in any case the part contributes to something
beyond itself. The second aspect relates to the relationship between the inner drive
and the developmental process. As indicated above, the cause is not as clearly
separable from the change as is the case with efficient and final causes. Organisms
are inseparable from their potency for change (Brady 1984); in that sense, they are
their becoming.11
In reality, any attempt to express the inner nature of a thing is fruitless. What
we perceive are effects, and a complete record of these effects ought to
encompass this inner nature. We labour in vain to describe a person’s
character, but when we draw together their actions, their deeds, a picture of
their character will emerge. (Goethe 1998c: 315)
Simmel follows Goethe in his rejection of efficient causality. Instead of assuming a
multiplicity of causal relationships or simple correlations, Simmel (1918: 99ff.),
however, declares cause and effect to be (Kantian) subjective principles and reverts
to an Aristotelian scheme that takes form and matter (continuity) to be the primal

11
This is a famous dictum of the process philosopher Whitehead (1985).

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ontological principles out of whose interplay everything emerges. This moves the
focus from cause and effect to the transition from potentiality to actuality and hence
to the process of becoming.12 Although this is very close to Goethe’s thoughts,
Simmel distinguishes between non-organic entities whose form is determined by
external forces, and organic entities whose form is a self-sufficient entelechy. Both
entities arise out of a formation process that, according to him, cannot be described
exactly but results in individuation. This process of individuation is different even
within the same species so that, for example, human beings differ with regard to
their individuality. Husserl, in contrast, extensively develops how efficient causality
rose to universal dominance with the mathematisation of physics, but does not say
much in detail about other forms of causality.

2.3 Phenomenon

Goethe’s way of doing science has often been labelled phenomenological (e.g.
Heinemann 1934; Robbins 2006). His conception of the phenomenon and our access
to it, however, differs from the way Husserl would conceptualize it. Before I move
on to describe Goethe’s conception of the phenomenon it is necessary to point out
that this conception has changed over the course of his scientific writings. In 1794,
recounting a meeting with Schiller, Goethe writes:
I gave a spirited explanation of my theory of the metamorphosis of plants with
graphic pen sketches of a symbolic plant. He listened and looked with great
interest, with unerring comprehension, but when I had ended, he shook his
head, saying, ‘‘That is not an empiric experience, it is an idea.’’ I was taken
aback and somewhat irritated, for the disparity in our viewpoints were here
sharply delineated. […] Controlling myself, I replied, ‘‘How splendid that I
have ideas with out knowing it, and can see them before my very eyes’’.
(Goethe 1998a: 541f.)
The quote indicates a rejection of Kantian epistemology with its division between
subject and object. More than thirty years later, however, Goethe recognises the
difficulty of accessing the phenomenon immediately. He muses:
At this point we encounter a characteristic difficulty […] namely, that a
definite chasm appears to be fixed between idea and experience. Our efforts to
overbridge the chasm are forever in vain, but nevertheless we strive eternally
to overcome this hiatus with reason, intellect, imagination, faith, emotion,
illusion, or - if we are capable of nothing better – with folly. By honest
persistent effort we finally discover that the philosopher might probably be
right to assert that no idea can completely coincide with experience,
nevertheless admitting that the idea and the experience are analogous, indeed
must be so. (Goethe 1998c: 31f.)

12
The interplay of potentiality and actuality is a central theme in the philosophy of becoming, see for
example, Whitehead (1985).

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The hiatus between idea and experience is, however, not of a categorical nature but
due to the limits of the human mind, as Goethe explains continuing:
…in an idea, the simultaneous and successive are intimately bound up
together, whereas in an experience they are always separated. Out attempt to
imagine an operation of nature as both simultaneous and successive, as we
must in an idea, seems to drive us to the verge of insanity.
Even in this later stage, however, he would disagree with Husserl’s focus on the
world as immanent in consciousness and hold that the human observer of nature is
directly involved with the phenomena both on a pragmatic and on a spiritual plane.
First, human beings are part of nature and thus not categorically different from other
natural objects. They are, by nature, linked to natural objects and it is in their
nature—a necessity for survival—to perceive, understand and manipulate these
objects. If they did not grasp the objects truly, they would not be able to apply them.
Second, nature creates and operates in a way analogous to a creative human spirit.
Therefore, ideas exist in nature, not just in the human mind. The true nature of an
object is thus spiritual, and as such the human spirit can grasp it and, ideally,
reconstruct the act of its creation. Through this reconstruction the human spirit
participates in the object. To Goethe, phenomena are the ultimate building blocks of
reality; there is nothing outside of them and nothing beyond them that would be
inaccessible to the human mind:
The ultimate goal would be: to grasp that everything in the realm of fact is
already theory. The blue of the sky shows us the basic law of chromatics. Let
us not seek for something behind the phenomena – they themselves are the
theory. (Goethe 1998b, no. 488)
In some respects Goethe’s phenomena are like Leibnizian monads: As unifying
principles of the various relations with their environment they form microcosms
reflecting the macrocosm of nature. They also follow an internal programme in their
development (their morphogenesis). Their qualities and relations are necessary.
Goethe assumes that phenomena have an essence that defines them—he calls this
‘form’ or ‘idea’—but, again like Leibniz, holds that this essence is of a changing
nature. Its purest reincarnation is the primal phenomenon (Urphänomen).13 The
primal phenomenon becomes visible through long and patient study that proceeds
from the empirical phenomenon through the scientific phenomenon to the primal
phenomenon (Goethe 1998c: 23ff.). While the scientific phenomenon is described
by laying out different conditions and relations in a successive manner, the primal
phenomenon appears (often only for a brief moment) as the synthesis and
simultaneous picture of them all. As part of the Heraclitean Flow, phenomena are
related amongst each other. Goethe uses different concepts to describe the various
essences forming complexities of an ever increasing order (Kronenberg 1924): form
is the essence of the individual organism, type that of the species, law denotes a
connection of types and, finally, nature a connection of laws and the ultimate whole.

13
Goethe also refers to it as ‘pure phenomenon’ (reines Phänomen). I will, however, reserve this term for
the Husserlian notion.

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All these essences stand in an organismic relationship to one another, i.e. each part
is generative of the others and all contribute functionally to the whole.
For Husserl (1986), the phenomenon forms the cornerstone of his philosophy
because he considers it to be the absolute given. Following Descartes’ cogito ergo
sum, he argues that while we cannot infer real existence of an ‘I’ (Descartes’ sum)
from the act of thinking we can nevertheless be certain of the fact that a thinking
process (cogitatio) is happening and that this thinking process has a content
(cogitatum). This, Husserl reasons, must then form the ultimate, undoubtable foun-
dation of all further investigations into the possibility of knowledge and knowing
(Erkenntnis). Although the phenomenon is immediately given to a thinking person,
it is normally accompanied by a host of assumptions and inferences that are far less
certain than the phenomenon itself. The ‘normally’ in the previous sentence refers to
the attitude in which we live and experiences our everyday life, the ‘natural attitude’
(natürliche Einstellung) as Husserl calls it. The natural attitude is characterized by
the absence of doubts about the possibility of knowing something with certainty. In
the natural attitude people take the world for granted; they do not question its
existence. They do not distinguish between different degrees of epistemic certainty
and reserve hence no special place for the pure phenomenon as the absolute given. It
is only when we apply Phenomenological Reduction and leave the natural attitude
that we can isolate the pure phenomenon from other, less certain assumptions and
inferences, most notably the assumption that a perceived object exists outside of our
consciousness as a real-world object. Reduction proceeds in two steps.14 The first,
which Husserl calls ‘Eidetic Reduction’ aims to separate the contingent from the
essential qualities of an object in consciousness. By varying the attributes in a
thought experiment (Eidetic Variation) the observer can determine which attributes
are contingent to an object and can abstract from them, thus arriving at the object’s
invariant essence (Holzhey and Röd 2004: 148ff.; Husserl 1968). The second step,
the Epistemological or Transcendental or Phenomenological Reduction, in contrast,
requires the observer to leave the natural attitude by suspending the belief in the
reality of the object. Husserl (1962: §40) refers to this suspension as ‘bracketing’ or
epoché. From then on, real is what presents itself as real in consciousness. The
epoché is important in order to be able to study the conditions of reality-making in
which the transcendental Ego posits the world as given, objective, scientific and so
on—the truly phenomenological task, if phenomenology is defined as the study of
the essence of pure epistemological phenomena (Wesenslehre der reinen Erken-
ntnisphänomene) (Husserl 1986: 47). The transcendental Ego must not be mistaken
for a psychological, individual Ego, as Husserl never ceases to emphasise. Studying
the latter—the realm of psychology—can only render subjective truths, whereas
studying the former—phenomenology—means studying a universal, and in this
sense objective, constellation. The pure phenomenon is the essence (Wesen) of a
subjective mental experience as derived from both reductions (Husserl 1986: 44).

14
I follow Ströker (1983) in her distinction between Eidetic Reduction as a reduction from fact to
essence and Phenomenological Reduction as a reduction from a being to its pure phenomenon. As Ströker
makes clear, Husserl himself has not always followed this distinction consistently.

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We can thus see that Goethe and Husserl share a number of thoughts on the
phenomenon. Both see it as an inexhaustible, complex part of the ever-changing
ontological flow. Both would also argue that it is accessible to human study if a
particular method is applied. In comparison, however, Goethe stresses the
diachronic nature of the phenomenon undergoing continuous change. He seeks to
capture this variety—be it the variety across phenomena or the variety of the same
phenomenon over time—through careful observation and an ensuing synthesis in
the mind. Husserl’s method, in contrast, is one of privation aiming to arrive at the
invariant essence by abstracting from the multitude of appearances. Goethe is also
quite happy to make ontological assumptions regarding the interrelatedness of
phenomena or their cosmological function. The major reason for this is
Goethe’s strong emphasis on the pragmatic function of knowledge, i.e. the idea
that any knowledge must serve a purpose. This purpose is not as narrowly defined as
utility or technical applicability but may also be connected to contributing to living
everyday life in moral terms. The ‘deed’ (Tat) is Goethe’s highest category in which
human perfection can become visible. Due to this commitment, Goethe’s primal
phenomenon is easier to conceptualize as the ultimate building block of his natural
philosophy. While Husserl remains focused on consciousness and refers only
vaguely (mostly by bracketing) to the physical world, Goethe can collapse both and
argue that what we ultimately ‘see’ as primal phenomena is indeed in an ontological
sense the essence of the natural world. Husserl (1962: 116, translation by Simms
and myself) himself addresses this distinction in a passage in which he probably
refers to Goethe’s primal phenomenon of the plant:
All objective consideration of the world is consideration of the ‘‘exterior’’ and
grasps only ‘‘externals’’, objective entities. The radical contemplation of the
world is a systematic and pure internal consideration of the subjectivity which
‘‘externalizes’’ itself in the exterior. It is like the unity of a living organism
which you can consider and dissect from the outside, but which you can
understand only if you go back to its hidden roots and systematically follow
the formative life force in all its achievements as it arises in the roots and
strives upwards from them. Is this, however, only a simile, and is not, in the
end, our human being and its consciousness with its deepest world
problematization the locus where all problems of inner being and external
representation are addressed?
At the end of the day, the primal/pure phenomenon of the plant cannot be more that
a simile for Husserl, a simile depicting the invariant structures of existence as they
appear in consciousness (Simms 2005), while for Goethe it remains a truly existing,
underived entity.
Simmel straddles both positions. He agrees with Goethe on the objective entity of
the organism as represented by its entelechy. With regard to non-organic entities
like actions or things, however, he follows the idealist tradition in saying that it is
the mind that constitutes their entity.

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3 The relationship between observer (subject) and observed (object)

From what I have said about Goethe’s conception of phenomena, primal phenomena
and the observers’ access to them, it should be clear that the subject-object problem
is not a pressing one because the Kantian distinctions between noumena and
phenomena, between nature and culture, are, to Goethe, not categorical distinctions.
He, furthermore, assumes that an object’s qualities emerge in the relation between
observer and observed in a unique moment of experience. They are in this sense
neither subjective nor objective but relational. This relationality has an ontological
quality as being known changes the phenomenon.15 Perception is in this sense
creative (Stephenson 1995). It is also ecstatic in the literal sense of the word as
reaching out beyond the observer. This also means that the observer is a true
participant in the process who emerges as changed from it as does the observed. In
this process of co-creation, the wish to manipulate and control nature gives way to a
‘Delicate Empirics’ (Zarte Empirie) that retains wonder and admiration in its studies
of the phenomena. It also implies what Whitehead (1993) calls—non-disparag-
ingly—a ‘Provisional Realism’ in which nothing is hidden from the observer’s
perception. There are no primary qualities hidden behind, or even beyond, the
phenomenon. On the contrary, phenomena display relations, tensions and intensities
that belong to their nature and can be felt by the observer just as the observer can
see, hear or smell their other qualities.
There is also an ecstatic aspect in Husserl’s description of the relation between
observer and observed. Although Husserl often discusses consciousness as
something ‘containing’ cogitata, he does not entertain a homo clausus view
(Prechtl 1998). On the contrary, consciousness has to ‘reach out’ into the world
because it constitutes the very objects of this world. The world is the world we are
conscious of, and consciousness, vice versa, needs the world to be conscious of
something. In this sense, Husserl overcomes the Cartesian dichotomy of subject and
object. Moreover, consciousness is first of all an act or an experience (Erlebnis)
before it becomes a person’s experience. The constitution of the subject follows the
experience as an ‘It is me who experiences this.’ In this sense the psychological
subject has the same status as a physical object in that both are constituted after, and
out of, the initial experiencing act. They transcend it. It is only within this
conceptual dichotomy of transcendence and immanence that Husserl talks of inside/
outside stressing that this is by no means a spatial distinction of ‘inside/outside
someone’s head.’ This implies that there is an important epistemological distinction
between cogitatio-cogitatum on the one and psychological subject-physical object
on the other hand. Phenomenology only really concerns itself with the first two
because they are undoubtedly given and constitute the pure phenomenon. The latter
pair corresponds to the former but forms the concern of the natural attitude because
it transcends the phenomenon. It is hence not undoubtedly given but subject to
ontological assumptions that are part of the natural attitude.

15
Bortoft (1986: 70) relates this thought back to Aristotle’s treatise ‘On the Soul’ (214). Aristotle
explains that the soul as the entelechy of the living organism is a form (or idea), and as such will move
from an ontological state of potentiality to a state of actuality as it is grasped by an intellect.

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Both authors thus describe subject and object as constituted in analogous

processes: for Husserl the constituting entity is consciousness, whereas for Goethe it
is nature. The difference between them is marked by Kant. For Husserl, the critical
Cartesian who takes the ‘cogito’ as his starting point, the dichotomy between res
extensa and res cogitans remains in place as the pure phenomena shown within
consciousness are not the physical phenomena found in nature. Husserl (1950: §90)
speaks of the physical entity as a ‘correlate’ to its conscious perception (cogitatum).
As we perceive everything as something, the cogitatum consists of two layers
(Schichten): a sensual or hyletic layer and an intentional, sensemaking or noetic
layer.16 It is only the act of perception, and more precisely the noetic aspect of that,
that creates objects from the Heracliteian, chaotic flow of phenomena. Similar to
Kant, Husserl therefore holds that the reality of things (as meaningful things) is in
their cogitata, but that we must not infer from that that the things in nature are just
appearances (Holzhey and Röd 2004: 149). The Heracliteian flow exists but we
cannot say anything about it that is not something related to a cogitatum.
For Goethe, the contemporary of Kant who kept his distance from the genius of
Königsberg, everything is infused with spirit (Geist) and matter. Together they form
the basic polarity that drives nature. He can hence say that, first, both the observer
and the observed are created by nature, but also secondly and more importantly that
the human mind can emulate nature in its creative process and create objects of its
own for nature operates with ideas just as the human mind does. Goethe hence
follows Spinoza rather than Descartes in his ontology of mind and matter.
The second major point of divergence is the status of the individual experience of
the observer. While both object to the universalisation won through inductive
abstraction, their concept of the relationship of particular and universal differs
markedly. For Husserl the individual experience is initially subjective and private
but can be universalised in Transcendental Reduction. For Goethe, the individual
experience remains unique and unrepeatable because it is constituted by a set of
relations between the observer and the observed in a particular time and place:
The manifestation of a phenomenon is not independent of the observer – it is
caught up and entangled in his individuality’ (Goethe 1988, no. 1224)
There is, however, universality in each case because each particular phenomenon is
a microcosm reflecting the universal.
Since neither knowledge nor reflection can summon the whole – the former
lacks the internal, the latter the external perspective – we must conceive
science as an art if we expect any holistic results. We must not, however, seek
those in the universal or exaggerated. On the contrary, like art always presents
itself wholly in one piece of art, so science should present itself wholly in each
single study. (Goethe 1998d: 41, my translation)

16
For a more in-depth discussion of the nature of noema and their relation to meaning and sense see
Føllesdal (1969).

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Goethe and the study of life: a comparison with Husserl… 349

4 Methods

This is probably the part most explicitly and extensively covered in Goethe’s works.
His deep respect for the manifoldness of natural phenomena and his related
suspicion of every attempt to understand them in a ‘dead,’ i.e. mechanistic or static-
classificatory, way drive him to adopt methods that are, on the one hand, alert to
empirical variation and change but, on the other hand, also conscious of the need to
find the form that, like his Bildungstrieb, guides the development of that variety.
The first parts leads him to a relentless, almost obsessive, observation of the
phenomenon referring each subsequent operation stubbornly back to the immediate
experience of the object: ‘The senses do not deceive, judgment does.’ (Goethe 1988,
no. 1193). This is particularly true for any form of abstraction, inference, hypothesis
or theory building:
How difficult it is, though, to refrain from replacing the thing with its sign, to
keep the object alive before us instead of killing it with a word. (Goethe
1998c: 492)
And:
All hypotheses get in the way of the anatheorismos - the urge to look again, to
contemplate the objects, the phenomenon in question, from all angles. […].
(Goethe 1988, no. 1221)
On the other hand, he just as readily concedes that experience is not limited to sense
perception:
An extremely odd demand is often set forth but never met, even by those who
make it: that is, that empirical data should be presented without any theoretical
context, leaving the reader, the student, to his own devices in judging it. This
demand seems odd because it is useless simply to look at something. Every act
of looking turns into observation, every act of observation into reflection,
every act of reflection into the making of associations; thus it is evident that
we theorise everytime we look carefully at the world. The ability to do this
with clarity of mind, with self-knowledge, in a free way, and (if I may venture
to put it so) with irony, is a skill we will need in order to avoid the pitfalls of
abstraction and obtain the results we desire, results which can find a living and
practical application. (Goethe 1998c: 317)
Phenomena are inexhaustible, and observers must use all faculties to experience
them, researchers every method available:
None of the human faculties should be excluded from scientific activity. The
depth of intuition (Ahnung), a sure awareness (Anschauen) of the present,
mathematical profundity, physical exactitude, the heights of reason (Vernunft),
and sharpness of intellect (Verstand) together with the versatile and ardent
imagination, and a loving delight in the world of the senses – they are all
essential for a lively and productive apprehension of the moment. (Goethe
1998d: 41)

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‘Anschauung’ is of particular importance because it allows us to picture the

development rather than just a static configuration. Again, the German expression is
difficult to translate. Many render it as ‘intuition’ to capture its introspective, often
fleeting and vague, aspects. The German word, however, derives from ‘schauen’,
which means ‘to see’ both in its simple form of visual sense perception and its
enhanced form of seeing the future or something transcendental. There is hence a
practical, everyday component in it that ‘intuition’ does not capture. Goethe (1998c:
40) speaks of a ‘pregnant aspect’ (prägnanter Punkt) in which the observer sees,
realizes or intuits the inner form of the phenomenon. Thus Goethe defines
Morphology as:
… to understand living development as such, to see and grasp its exterior parts
as they relate to each other, to understand them as signs of the interior and to
master thus the whole in imagination (Anschauung) (Goethe 1998c: 55, my
translation)
And:
I had the ability, with my eyes closed and my head lowered, to evoke the
image of a flower in the centre of my organ of visualization; and to perceive
the flower in such a way that it did not remain in its original form for a single
moment, but spread out, and from within there unfolded again new flowers
with colours as well as green leaves. They were not natural flowers by any
means, but products of the imagination […] It did not occur to me to
experiment like this with other objects. Perhaps these offered themselves so
readily because they had their roots in many years of contemplation of the
metamorphosis of plants. (Goethe 1824)
Researchers will find themselves moving back and forth between the empirical
experience and their inner vision looking for the idea of the phenomenon.17 The full
scope of the phenomenon is reached by differentiating the various experiences of a
phenomenon rather than looking for similarities in them. In contrast to modern
quantitative science the aim is never to form abstractions inductively, but to let the
differences stand as legitimate expressions of the complexity of the phenomenon.
To reach a synthesis from this multitude of differences, however, then becomes a
difficult endeavour. Goethe claims that it can, at best, only be there for a brief,
fleeting moment of ‘Anschauung.’ This synthesis is much more of an aesthetic than
a cognitive nature as rational-conceptual thinking plays a part but not the central
role. The stress on difference rather than commonalities has earned Goethe’s
method the label of a ‘science of qualities’ (Amrine et al. 1987). While Newtonian
science is based on the idea of the extensiveness and homogeneity of matter—
permitting quantification and reduction—Goethean science studies intensities based
on unique, different experiences. Rather than finding unity through the homoge-
nization and reduction of multiplicity, it aims at finding the indivisible unity that
encompasses the multiplicity of the phenomenon (Bortoft 1986). Most importantly

17
A detailed description of the stages of this ‘back and forth’ can be found in Robbins (2006) and
Holdrege (2005).

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in this, researchers must avoid the temptation to form theories before they have
grasped the full scope of the phenomenon.
Theories are often the hasty results of an impatient mind that want to rid itself
of the phenomena and replace them with images, concepts or even just words.
(Goethe 1988, no. 428)
When talking about the spiritual aspect of Goethe’s Empirics, a second component
should not be overlooked. ‘Anschauung’ is not only important because the synthesis
of experiences cannot be achieved anywhere but in the mind but also because it
represents a creative act of thinking. This creative act reconstructs the original
creative act of Nature. Nature, according to Goethe (1998c: 31), has ideas and
brings forth the phenomena in an act very similar to an artist producing a work from
an idea.
This is also, I would hold, the source of Goethe’s definition of exactitude, as re-
creation requires a specific form of exactness that does justice to the individual
while at the same time understanding the general principle. Exactitude, to him,
refers not to the numerical distance of a taken measurement to the object’s ‘real’ or
commonly accepted quality. It does, however, refer to connotations like diligence,
constancy and rigour. And Goethe adds the notion of adequacy as a link to the ever
present human, spiritual dimension of learning when he says (Goethe 1998b, no.
664):
In so far as we make use of our healthy senses, the human being is the most
powerful and exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of
modern physics is that it experiments have, as it were, been set apart from the
human being; physics refuses to recognise in Nature anything not shown by
artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.
And:
People who look through glasses [that is, microscopes and telescopes] think
themselves cleverer than they are: for their external sense is in this way taken
out of equilibrium with their inner capacity for judgment. (Goethe 1998e: 120)
As such, exact sensorial imagination is not an oxymoron but the descriptor of a
process in which the scientist reverts to the careful (multi-faculty) observation of the
object until s/he is capable of re-creating every detail of it in their imagination.
The balance and development of human capacities are what makes Goethe’s
empirics ‘delicate.’ There is an interplay of nuances, an awareness that rejects the
striking and immediate, a challenge and an invitation that results from listening to
Nature. In contrast, Goethe compares the scientific methods of his time to a torture
chamber (Goethe 1998b, no. 498) and warns:
If the scientist wants to defend his right to a free description and study, he
should also feel obliged to secure the rights of Nature. Only where She is free,
will he be free; where She is bound by human conventions, he will find
himself bound too. (Goethe 1840b: 164)

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While Goethe would regard Delicate Empirics a general scientific method, Husserl
considers phenomenology to be as much a method as a science. The core part of his
method in this sense is to approach the pure phenomena by switching from the
natural attitude to the phenomenological attitude. This is achieved through
Phenomenological Reduction in which we exclude all transcendental assumptions
(i.e. theories, assumptions, inductions, deductions) and reduce the phenomena we
perceive to pure phenomena. As Husserl bans induction, deduction and other forms
of logical inference in the Phenomenological Reduction the perception of pure
phenomena is more alike to ‘seeing’ than to ‘thinking’ the phenomenon (Rombach
1994). Not surprisingly then, he uses the same term as Goethe: Anschauung. The
idea of varying the characteristics of the object in a thought experiment (Husserl:
eidetic variation, Goethe: exact sensorial imagination) also seems the same. Overall,
however, Husserl would refrain from Goethe’s wide use of epistemic faculties and
limit himself to the cognitive spectre. Applying the methods, both seek objective
knowledge although Husserl, post Kant, feels that he has to make a big effort to
reach it, while Goethe is not impeded by a categorical distinction of subject and
object. The aim of the thought experiment is, furthermore, a different one, as I have
pointed out above: while Goethe aims at manifoldness, Husserl aims at reduction.
Husserl would also agree with Goethe that the method needs to be exact (Goethe
uses the word repeatedly in his description of the methodological stages, for
example ‘exact sense perception’ or ‘exact sensorial imagination’) in order to render
useful results. This is the only point where Simmel, who otherwise does not talk
about methods for the study of life, would interfere to maintain that exactness is a
characteristic of form and thus categorically opposed to life. The stream of life, as
far as it is knowable at all, can only be grasped in an intuition as fluid and ephemeral
as the stream itself.

4.1 The relationship between culture and nature

Goethe proposes analogous methods for the study of culture and nature as the two
realms are not separated. Every phenomenon has material as well as spiritual
aspects that must both be grasped in order to understand the phenomenon fully. The
two even merge in the act of knowing or imagining as the mind (re-)creates the
object with the help of the same ideas that nature uses in her original creative act
(Kuhn 1987). Here Goethe inverts the Kantian dictum that all nature is culture
because it is construed by human minds that cannot escape their cultural formation.
For him, nature is culture too, but because nature, like human minds, works from
ideas to create its subjects. Moreover, Goethe does not want to control and
manipulate nature but advocates a Delicate Empirics that treats nature as a source of
inspiration and admiration rather than something subjected to human fancy
(Robbins 2006).
A second point relating nature and culture is that the aim of the sciences is not
just to gather knowledge about objects but to contribute to an understanding of the
world that is moral as well as epistemic. Scientists, like any other human being in
Goethe’s view, must strive for moral self-perfection, and hence their occupation

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must be such as to contribute to this aim (Amrine et al. 1987). This is the point
where Goethe’s critique of Newtonian mathematized science becomes harshest.
Both Husserl and Simmel agree with Goethe’s second point. In fact, the ‘distant
rumble on the horizon’ (Simms 2005: 161) disturbing Goethe in the eighteenth
century had become a full-blown storm of discontent by the time Husserl and
Simmel wrote. Husserl dedicates a whole book to the ‘crisis of the European
sciences’ in which he describes how the sciences have become mere ‘factual
sciences’ (Tatsachenwissenschaften) unable to treat ‘problems of humankind’
(Menschheitsfragen) concerning the ultimate sense or purpose of human being. Life
philosophy as a movement, too, stands in almost programmatic rejection of modern
science arguing that its gathering of abstract knowledge through exact methods
misses the most fundamental and existential issues. [It is worth noting, however,
that the school would raise the same concerns over Husserlian Phenomenology
(Roesner 2012).] Simmel, however, takes a more subtle stance. He argues that, on
the one hand, there is a certain ‘normality’ in the development of modern science as
something set apart from everyday life. It is the result of a process occurring every
now and again in which a section of the everyday world, rather than being
subordinate and instrumental to the purposes of everyday life, develops a purpose in
itself and starts to subordinate the everyday world to this purpose. It also develops
forms that guide and constrain the previously free flow of life. Simmel calls this
‘axis rotation’ (Achsendrehung) and regards it the origin of culture. The implicit
paradox—that life brings forth culture which then tries to stifle life—he refers to as
‘tragedy of culture’ (Tragödie der Geisteskultur). In this sense, then, science is no
different from other cultural regimes like religion or the economy. The specifically
modern problem, however, is the divergence between personal and objective culture
(personaler und sachlicher Kultur) (Gerhardt 1971; Simmel 1907). As a result of
the increasing division of labour, personal culture becomes disconnected from
objective culture and does not develop at the same pace. It can thus draw less and
less on objective culture for its self-realization and is more and more at risk to be
completely subjected to objective culture. Simmel, in sum, conceptualizes the
danger to human morality more broadly with science as one factor among several.
As to Goethe’s first point, the pan-spiritual conception of nature, Simmel would
probably agree where Husserl would not. For Husserl, human consciousness is a
unique center of understanding in the world where Goethe would only concede that
it is a higher form of understanding. Simmel’s philosophy of life does not explicitly
concern itself with nature although we might infer that he tends toward Goethe’s
view rather than toward Husserl’s when he defines life as a form of existence that
does not limit its reality to the present (Simmel 1918: 12). Continuity (flow) and
form as the ultimate shaping principles, too, are borrowed from Goethe.

5 Conclusion

Goethe presents a natural philosophy and method that is original and strikes a
careful balance between life philosophy and phenomenology. In comparison with
Simmel, he is less vitalist, i.e. less enthusiastic about pure creativity and abundant

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production. For Goethe, the form-giving idea needs to be present as well and in the
same measure. What Simmel considers to be rigid and stifling is for Goethe a
necessary check on what would otherwise be ‘brute’ forces. It is, for all its evident
problems, the lingering spirit of the Enlightenment coupled with the experience of
the failures of the French Revolution that make Goethe demand a balance of order
and force, of reason and emotion. In this he is also more optimistic than Simmel,
who writes in the middle of large-scale industrialization and World War I. Goethe’s
phenomenology is directed towards the world (‘Nature’), not just towards (human)
consciousness within it. This world is not a correlate of experience whose validity is
born out of that experience, but something in which human beings thrive or fail. It is
a challenge, not in terms of gaining control over it but of developing the faculties to
become worthy of it. As such, the sciences and humanities cannot be separate
spheres developed in a process of societal differentiation but must always be
measured by their contribution to help human beings gain wisdom and thus moral
perfection. Life is wisdom, and wisdom is gained through the study of phenomena.

6 Consequences for the study of life

Students of life may not only feel inspired by Goethe’s approach but also get
pragmatic and detailed advice how to go on about it. A few fundamental issues
emerge from the above discussion that are worth reiterating because each student
will have to take a stance on them, whether implicitly or explicitly.
The conceptualization of life has, in Goethe as well as in others, been couched in
terms of a dialectics between a creative, dynamic source and a fixed, recurring
factor. Only recently, complexity theory (Goodwin 1997) has put forward that life
develops in the space between rigid structure and absolute chaos. How these
opposing forces interact needs to be spelled out as well; Goethe’s solution for this is
a dialectical one. The ontological status of the stable factor—called form or idea by
Goethe and many others—needs to be addressed. Goethe’s solution of a visible idea
is unique (Bortoft 1986, with reference to Cassirer), but not the only available. It is
remarkable, however, how many process thinkers (for example, Leibniz or
Whitehead) go back before Kant and Descartes to avoid the subject-object
dichotomy that adds an additional difficulty to this discussion. As soon as mind and
matter are conceptualized without a categorical difference, a visible idea becomes a
possibility.
At the same time, the chasm between observer and observed vanishes. This
thought is rather appealing to modern sensitivities because it enables human
observers to conceptualize nature as something in its own right rather than
something to be manipulated. With regard to the social sciences, it seems an even
more appropriate attitude towards the object of study. Holdrege (2005) discusses
Goethe’s Delicate Empirics in terms of a conversation with nature in the course of
which both partners become enriched. Similar notions are treated under Shotter’s
(2005) ‘withness-thinking’ or Kaplan’s (2005) ‘reading a gesture’ in the context of
social inquiry. This also feeds into the moral aspect of science as discussed above.

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Defining the difference between mind and matter in degrees rather than
categories also opens up the path for a discussion of intensification, which Goethe
considered one of the most important trajectories in the development of life. This
thought is echoed in the philosophy of Langer (1970), but also in the Nobel prize
winner Sperry’s (1980) treatise on life. A second issue here is whether
intensification can adopt a causal role in the scheme of life. Goethe has made it
quite clear that efficient causality alone will not take us very far, and that it may
even be more useful to avoid causal explanations, especially those of a linear nature.
The ‘science of qualities’ that he has heralded certainly adopts a very complex
picture of a heterogeneous multiplicity that we must aim to describe rather than
reduce to explain—which is difficult enough. Developing a language for this in each
discipline rises as a fascinating challenge. In contrast to Simmel and many
contemporary process thinkers Goethe would maintain that this description should
strive to be exact in order to do justice to the multiplicity of the phenomena.
Exactness here is not to be confused with reduction or simplicity. To those falling
into this trap, Goethe’s own conceptual scheme seems inconsistent (for example,
Heinemann 1934). It is not. We may well assume that the man who helped shape
modern German had quite an acute feeling for the terms he was using. Polyvalence,
however, is not inconsistence nor is it vagueness. It is an adequate and artful
description for complex phenomena.

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