Goethe's Worldview
GA 6
Rudolf Steiner had been the editor of Goethe's scientific writings since 1882 on the recommendation of his teacher, the Germanist Karl Julius Schröer. The five volumes edited by Steiner were part of the thirty-six-volume Goethe edition and appeared between 1884 and 1897 in Joseph Kürschner's “Deutsche National-Litteratur” (German National Literature). (GA 1) In 1890, Rudolf Steiner moved from Vienna to Weimar and became a permanent employee at the Goethe and Schiller Archive there. In this capacity, he published six volumes of Goethe's scientific writings in the large Weimar Sophien edition from 1891 to 1897 (GA 1f).
His plan to write a work on Goethe's worldview can be traced back to 1890. As his letters reveal, Steiner was thinking at that time of writing a “Goethe Philosophy.” On December 19, 1891, the publisher Emil Felber wrote to Rudolf Steiner, asking him to use his extensive experience to write a book on Goethe's significance for natural science. Steiner then planned a work entitled “Goethe's Relationship to Science” or “Goethe as a Natural Scientist”, and at even the end of 1896 he still referred to the work in progress in his letters as “Goethe's View of Nature.” In February 1897, the final title “Goethe's Worldview” appeared and the manuscript was completed several months later.
In an effort to present the continuity of his own worldview from his first Goethe manuscript to anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner republished his early, “pre-anthroposophical” writings from 1918 onwards. The new edition of Goethe's Worldview was published in 1918 by Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag (Berlin). This edition was so popular that two reprints were necessary in the same year. In 1918, Steiner also republished his major philosophical work “The Philosophy of Freedom,” which had been published more than twenty years earlier. However, while this new edition was a revision of the text, Steiner emphasized that Goethe's worldview was republished without any significant changes, except for the two chapters on the Platonic worldview, which have been significantly revised, not only stylistically but also in terms of content.
Goethe's Conception of the World, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London, and Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1928, 193 pp., translated from the second German edition of 1918, edited by H. Collison
Goethe's World View, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1985, 163 pp., translated from the fifth German edition of 1963 by William Lindemann
Goethe's worldview is here presented not only as a self-contained system, but also in connection with the ideas of Schiller and Hegel. A certain emphasis on Platonism is made and its bearing on Goethe and his outlook is shown.
Separate chapters are devoted to special emphases of Goethe's work such as the process of metamorphosis and studies in color.