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Goethe and Wittgenstein

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

M. W. Rowe
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Extract

The influence of Goethe on Wittgenstein is just beginning to be appreciated. Hacker and Baker, Westphal, Monk, and Haller have all drawn attention to significant affinities between the two men's work, and the number of explicit citations of Goethe in Wittgenstein's texts supports the idea that we are not dealing simply with a matter of deeplying similarities of aim and method, but of direct and major influence. These scholarly developments are encouraging because they help to place Wittgenstein's work within an important tradition of German letters which goes far beyond his contemporaries and immediate forebears in Vienna; and they show that Wittgenstein's profound interest in literature and music is ceasing to be merely a matter of biographical anecdote, and is being used to illuminate some of the most central areas of his work.

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Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 66 , Issue 257 , July 1991 , pp. 283 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1991

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References

1 Baker, G. P. and Hacker, P. M. S., Meaning and Understanding (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 301–304.Google Scholar

2 Westphal, J., Colour: Some Philosophical Problems From Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 8.Google Scholar

3 Monk, R., Ludwig Wittgenstein; The Duty of Genius (London: Cape, 1990), 303–304, 509–512, 561–563.Google Scholar

4 Haller, R., ‘Was Wittgenstein a Neo-Kantian?’, p. 53Google Scholar, and ‘The Common Behaviour of Mankind’, p. 119Google Scholar, both in Questions on Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 1988)Google Scholar. In the first paper Haller attacks the once popular alignment of Wittgenstein and Kant.

5 Cavell, S., ‘The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy’, in Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1976), 70Google Scholar. The final section of Cavell's essay is excellent on the matter of Wittgenstein's literary style, as is Bambrough, R., ‘How to Read Wittgenstein’ in Vesey, G. (ed.), Understanding Wittgenstein (London, 1974), 117–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 His attitude towards Fichte and Newton is nicely summarized by two verses in the Walpurgis Night dream sequence from Faust, part one, (trans. Luke, D., O.U.P., 1987):Google Scholar

AN IDEALIST

The power of my Fantasy

Today seems much augmented.

I must say, if all this is me,

I'm temporarily demented.

A REALIST

Is substance now no longer sound,

Is something wrong with Matter?

I once stood four-square on the ground:

Today I'm all a-totter.

(Lines, , 4, 347–4, 354)Google Scholar

7 Letter to Schiller, 6.1.1798, Quoted in Wilkinson, E. M., ‘The Poet as Thinker’ in Goethe: Poet and Thinker (London: Edward Arnold, 1962), 138Google Scholar. In my exposition I have relied heavily on pp. 133–140 of this excellent essay.

8 Quoted in Hacker, and Baker, , op. cit. 7Google Scholar

9 Trevelyan, H., ‘Goethe as Thinker’ in Essays on Goethe, Rose, W., (ed.) (London: Cassell, 1949), 122.Google Scholar

10 The following works give a useful account of Goethe's scientific thought. Wells, G. A., Goethe and the Development of Science 1750–1900, (Alpen aan den Rijn: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1978)Google Scholar; Nisbet, H. B., Goethe and the Scientific Tradition (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1972)Google Scholar; Bortoft, H., Goethe's Scientific Consciousness (Tunbridge Wells: Institute for Cultural Research, 1986)Google Scholar; Amrine, F., Zucker, F. J., Wheeler, H., (eds) Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 97 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The best short introduction remains, Heller, E., ‘Goethe and the Idea of Scientific Truth’ in his The Disinherited Mind (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1975), 3–34.Google Scholar

11 Goethe, , Theory of Colours, (Zur Farbenlehre), trans. Eastlake, C. L. (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970)Google Scholar. Hereafter ‘F’. Arabic numerals denote section numbers; Roman numerals denote pages of the introduction and prefaces.

12 I use the following abbreviations for Wittgenstein's works: ‘LC’, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), Barrett, C.: (ed.)Google Scholar. ‘PI’, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), (ed.) Anscombe, G. E. M.Google Scholar; ‘Z’, Zettel (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H. (eds)Google Scholar; ‘RC’, Remarks on Colour (Blackwell, Oxford, 1977) Anscombe, G. E. M. (ed.)Google Scholar; ‘RFM’, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978) Anscombe, G. E. M., Rhees, R., and von Wright, G. H. (eds)Google Scholar; ‘BB’, Blue Book (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964)Google Scholar; ‘CV’, Culture and Value (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) von Wright, G. H. (ed.)Google Scholar; ‘T’, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973)Google Scholar; ‘RPP’, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. I, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H. (eds)Google Scholar; ‘OC’, On Certainty, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969) Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H., (eds)Google Scholar. Page numbers are used only in the absence of section numbers.

13 See Wilkinson, E. M., ‘Goethe's Conception of Form’Google Scholar in Willoughby, and Wilkinson, , op. cit., 168–184.Google Scholar

14 See Hartner, W., ‘Goethe and the Natural Sciences’ in Goethe: A Collection of Critical Essays (N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 153Google Scholar; Hacker, and Baker, op. cit., 301–304Google Scholar; Wilkinson, , ‘Goethe's Conception of Form’, 184Google Scholar; Heller, , op. cit., 9–14.Google Scholar

15 See Hartner, op. cit., 153Google Scholar, and Wilkinson, , op. cit., 184.Google Scholar

16 Quoted in Heller, ibid., 7.

17 Heller, ibid., 7–8.

18 Heller, ibid., 6.

19 See Baker, and Hacker, , op. cit., 302.Google Scholar

20 The relationships between Goethe's concept of a Gestalt, the importance of this meeting with Schiller, and how these relate to Wittgenstein's discussion of ‘seeing-as’ are well brought out in Monk, , op. cit., 509–512.Google Scholar

21 Goethe, , Die Schriften Zur Naturwissenschaft, herausgegeben im Auftrage der Deutschen Akademie der Narurforscher (Leopoldina) Weimar, 1947ff. I, 3 p. 308Google Scholar. Quoted in Nisbet, , op. cit., 51.Google Scholar

22 Goethe, , op. cit., I, 10, p. 393Google Scholar. Quoted in Nisbet, op. cit., 54.Google Scholar

23 The second passage is [RPP:I:950], quoted on p. 295.Google Scholar

24 Waismann, F., The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, Harré, R., (ed.) (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), 80–81Google Scholar. The passage is quoted in Monk, , op. cit., 303–304.Google Scholar

25 I adapt this expression from Isenberg, A., ‘Critical Communication’ in his Aesthetics and the Theory of Criticism, Callaghan, W. etc., (eds) (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1988), 167.Google Scholar

26 Haller, , op. cit., 118–120.Google Scholar

27 I owe this point and the revised translation to Ray Monk.

28 This passage was brought to my attention by reading Haller, op. cit., 120.Google Scholar

29 Remark to Eckermann, , 02 18, 1829Google Scholar. Quoted in Amrine, etc. op cit., p. viiiGoogle Scholar. See also, Bortoft, op. cit., 15.Google Scholar

30 Goethe, , Maximen and Reflexionen, no. 575, Hacker, Max (ed.), (Weimar, 1907)Google Scholar. Quoted in Baker, and Hacker, op. cit., 285nGoogle Scholar. Wittgenstein quotes this remark again in [RPP: I:889] and I use the translation found there.

31 See, Westphal, , op. cit., 8.Google Scholar

32 Simon Glendinning drew my attention to this passage.

33 See Baker, and Hacker, op. cit., 301–304.Google Scholar

34 Quoted in Monk, , op. cit., 561.Google Scholar

35 Bambrough, op. cit.

36 The expression is Michael Tanner's. See his introduction to Nietzsche, F., Daybreak (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1982), p. viii.Google Scholar

37 von Wright, G. H., Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 34.Google Scholar

38 Marie McGinn has emphasized to me that Goethe and Wittgenstein hold fundamentally different ideas about the place of language in their investigations. Both believe that language can be seriously misleading, but whereas Wittgenstein thinks that the phenomena of the world become surveyable to us when we have obtained an overview of our language, Goethe thinks that we can only gain an overview of the phenomena by getting beyond language altogether.

39 See Baker, and Hacker, op. cit., 24.Google Scholar

40 Heidegger, M., On Being and Time (New York, 1972)Google Scholar. Quoted in ‘Heidegger, and Rorty, on “The End of Philosophy”, Metaphilosophy, vol. 21, no. 3, 07 1990, 223Google Scholar. For Goethe's relation to Heidegger see Bortoft, , op. cit., 38–39Google Scholar; for Heidegger's relation to Wittgenstein see Mulhall, S., On Being in the World: Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Seeing Aspects, (London: Routledge, 1990), 106–122.Google Scholar

41 Quoted in Monk, , op. cit., 516.Google Scholar

42 Arnold, Matthew, ‘Heinrich Heine’ in Essays in Criticism, First Series, Super, R. H., (ed.) (Michigan: Univ. Michigan Press, 1962), 110.Google Scholar

43 I would like to thank Simon Glendinning, Marie McGinn and Ray Monk, for very useful criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper.