GOETHE’S CONCEPT OF SPACE

by Rudolf Steiner

(Translated by Eva Lauterbach)

(C) 1984 · Schaumberg Publications, Inc.
Reprinted in the Journal of Borderland Research, with permission of the translator, from THE FOUR ETHERS by Dr. Ernst Marti.

This article was sourced from the Journal of Borderland Research Vol XVLIII, No 6 Nov-Dec 1987

Download the full Volume HERE
Download the Journal of Borderland Research Collection HERE

A full understanding of Goethe’s work in physics is only possible if one this reason we considers Goethe’s concept of space. For this reason we shall describe it here. If we wish to understand this concept, we need to have grasped from our preceding elaborations the following points:

1) Objects singly confronting us in our experience have an inner reference to each other. In reality, they are bound together uniformly by the world. In them lives but one common principle.

2) When our mind approaches objects and tries to mentally embrace what is separated, the conceptual unity thus produced is not external to the objects, but taken from the inner essence of nature itself. Human understanding is not a process taking place outside objects, arising from purely subjective arbitrariness, instead, the law of nature arising in our mind, the happening in our soul, is the heartbeat of the universe itself.

For our present purpose, we shall examine the most external reference our mind establishes between the object of experience. Let us take the simplest case in which our experiencing calls for mental activity. Two simple elements of the world of appearances are given by way of example. In order not to complicate our examination, let us take something quite simple, for example two shining points. We shall leave aside completely that possibly in each of these shining two points we already have something unbelievably complicated posing a task for our mind. We shall also leave aside the quality of the tangible elements of the world of the senses before us. We shall only consider the circumstance that we have before us two elements separated from each other, i.e., appearing separate to our senses. We are only taking as given two factors, each of which is capable of making an impression on our senses: that is all we are taking as given. We shall further take for granted that the existence of one of these factors does not exclude the existence of the other. One organ of perception can perceive both of them.

If we assume that the existence of one of these elements is dependent upon the existence of the other in any way whatsoever, then we have a problem different from our present one. If the existence of A, yet, according to its essence, is dependent on it, then A and B have to have a relationship in time. Because the dependence of B on A – keeping in mind that the existence of B excludes the existence of A – is conditioned on A preceding B. But this should be discussed separately.

For our present purpose we shall not assume such a relationship. We are taking for granted that those things we are concerned with do not exclude each other’s existence, but instead are entities existing with each other. If we disregard every reference demanded by inner nature, only this remains that a reference as such exists of the special qualities, that I can transit from one to the other. There can be no doubt for anyone what kind of relationship it may be that I create between things without considering their composition, their essence. Whoever asks what kind of transition from one thing to the other an be found with thing itself of no consideration, must certainly give the answer: space. Every other relationship has to be based on the qualitative composition of what appears separately in the world. Only space considers nothing other than that things are separated. When I am thinking: A is above, B is below, I don’t concern myself at all with what A and B are. I connect no other thought with them than they are separate factors of the world that I grasp with my senses.

When looking at experience our mind wants to overcome separateness, it wants to demonstrate that the force of the whole can be seen in the individual members. Concerning spatial views, it does not wish to overcome anything other than individuation as such. Our mind wants to establish the utmost general relationship. That A and B individually are not a world by themselves but share togetherness, is clear through spatial observation. that is the idea of next to each other. If each thing were a being alone, there would exist no concept of next to each other. I would in no way be able to establish a reference of beings to each other.

Now we shall examine what further follows from establishing an external reference between two individual entities. I can visualize two elements only one way in such a reference. I visualize A next to B. I can now do the same with two other elements of the world of the senses, C and D. Thereby, I have established a concrete reference between A and B and another between C and D. Now I will completely set aside the elements A, B, C, and D, and only refer the two concrete references to each other. It is clear that as two special entities, I can refer these to each other as much as A and B themselves. What I am referring here are concrete references; I may call them a and b. If I now go a step further, I can refer a again to b. But now I have already lost all that is individual. When looking at a, I no longer fund an individual A and B referring to one another, and the same with b. In both of them I find nothing other than that there has been a reference as such. This determination however, is the same for a and b. What enabled me to still distinguish a and b was that they referred to A, B, C, and D. If I exclude this remnant of the individual and only refer a and b to each other, i.e., the circumstance that there has been a reference altogether (not that something specific has been referred), then I have again arrived very generally at the spatial relationship from which I started. Further I cannot go. I have reached what I have set out for earlier: space itself is standing before my soul.

Herein lies the secret of the three dimensions. In the first dimension I refer to each other two concrete elements appearing in the world of the senses; in the second dimension I refer these spatial references themselves to each other. I have established a reference between references. I have brushed off the concrete things, the concrete references have remained. Now I spatially refer these to each other. That is, I disregard that they are concrete references; then, however, I have to find in the second reference exactly whatever I find in the first. I am establishing references where there is no difference. Now the responsibility of relating is ending because the difference is ended.

What I previously took as the viewpoint for my observation, namely, the totally external reference, I now reach again as idea based on sense perception; from the observation of space, after executing my operation three times, I have arrived at space, i.e. my starting point.

Therefore, space can have only three dimensions. What we have done here with the idea of space is actually only special case of the method we employ when we observingly approach things. By observing tangible objects from a general viewpoint, we gain concepts of individual things. These concepts we then examine from the same viewpoints so that we have only the concepts of the concepts before us. If we connect those, they melt into that uniformity of an idea which may be placed no further viewpoint that its own. Let us take a specific example. I am getting to know two people. A and B. I look at these from the viewpoint of friendship. In which case, I shall gain a very specific concept, a, of the two people’s friendship. Now I look at two other people, C and D, from the same viewpoint. I come to another concept, b, of this friendship. I can go further and refer these two concepts of friendship to each other. What I am left with, if I disregard the concrete fact that I have gained, is the concept of friendship as such. This, however, I can also gain in reality by viewing the persons E and F from the same viewpoint, and also G and H. In this, as in innumerable other cases, I can reach the concept of friendship as such. All these concepts, however, are essentially identical to each other; and if I look at them from the same viewpoint, it becomes apparent that I have found a whole. I have returned again to what I started with.

Space is thus a view of things, a way in which our mind gathers things into a unit. The three dimensions in this connection behave in the following manner. The first dimension establishes the relationship between two sensory perceptions (sensory perception here is what Kant calls sensations [Empfindung]). Thus it is a concrete thought. The second dimension relates two concrete thoughts to each other and thereby moves into the area of abstraction. The third dimension, finally, only established the uniformity of the idea between the abstractions. Therefore, it is totally incorrect to consider the three dimensions of space as completely equal. Whichever is the first depends, of course, on the elements perceived. But then the other dimensions have a very specific and different meaning from the first. Kant assumed, quite in error, that space is a totality instead of an entity conceptually determinable within itself.

Heretofore, we have spoken of space as a relationship, a reference. But is there only this relationship of next to each other? Or is an absolute determination of location existent for each thing? This, of course, has not even been touched on in our preceding elaborations. But, let us examine if such a condition of location, a very specific “there” exists. What am I referring to in reality when speaking of such a “there”? Nothing other than an object of which the immediate neighbor is the object in question. “There” means neighboring an object referred to by me. With that, however, the absolute indication of location has been led back to a spatial relationship.

Finally, let us raise the question: According to the preceding examinations, what is space? Nothing other than a necessity, inherent in the things themselves, to overcome a most external way their being individual without uniformity. Space, therefore, is a way of grasping the world as uniformity. Space is an idea; not as Kant thought, something one sees.