From Effects to Essence and Back Again

Goethe developed a new method for studying nature, both inorganic and organic. His intention was to uncover the natural law—the essence, the being, the idea—of a thing by introducing a special way of beholding the phenomena—the manifestations of the thing—in order to gain knowledge and insight. This approach was not being pursued by the conventional, supposedly “objective,” sciences of his time, and it was not possible for anyone holding on to a pre-scientific, naive view of the world. Goethe’s approach requires a certain exertion of the soul in order to prepare the necessary conditions that allow a thing to reveal its essence to human consciousness. The other side of this challenge is seeing the appearances of the thing for what they truly are and making correct judgments about the thing and its manifestations. From Goethe’s point of view, the first prerequisite necessary in order to reach this clarified perception and correct judgement is to recognize the “inner enemies”¹ of knowledge as clearly as possible and to cease their interference with our faculty of judgement.

---

Goethe does not introduce the concept of “essence” [or “being,” German Wesen] in his writings as an explicitly philosophical or scientific-theoretical term. In my personal view, though, his search for the laws governing the development of a plant is aimed at a concept of being, of essence. This is supported (among other things) by a letter Goethe wrote in 1786, where he reports on “becoming aware of the essential form that nature simply plays with, so to speak, playfully bringing forth manifold life.”² The “form” (from Latin forma, German Gestalt, “shape, figure”) refers back to the Greek expression eidos, which can be translated as “form, being, essence, appearance, idea,” depending on the context.³ The “essential form” that is “playfully bringing forth manifold life” could be comprehended in this context as the causal principle or the essential cause of the development of a plant—in Aristotelian terms, as the causa formalis [formal cause]⁴ or the aforementioned eidos.

In his work Zur Farbenlehre [Theory of Colors] from 1810, Goethe explicitly addresses the relationship between the most obvious, immediately perceptible phenomena, which he understands as manifold manifestations— or, as he wrote, “effects”—of an “essence.”⁵ He writes: “For we actually undertake in vain to express the essence of a thing. We become aware of effects, and a complete history of these effects would at best encompass the essence of the thing.”⁶ For Goethe, the effects represent the starting point and point of departure for research. They form, in a certain sense, a guiding thread for approaching the lawfulness of a connection between different phenomena or toward the essence, that is, the idea of a particular thing. The concept of history can be understood here as the genesis of phenomena, which the researcher must investigate. The “complete history” that is necessary to arrive at a full and adequate concept of the essence is, admittedly, the ideal of research. Guided by this, research should be open to the most diverse manifestations and to a possible future genesis (“history”) of phenomena.

On the Essence of Things

The prime example of this relationship between manifestations or “effects” and their underlying “essence” or “being” is the relationship between light, darkness, and colors, as presented in his magnum opus of 1810. To put it briefly, while pure light and pure darkness remain invisible to the physical eye, according to Goethe, they can nevertheless be experienced indirectly through their “effects,” that is, through colors. Colors represent the “effects” of an interaction between light, darkness, the eye, and a turbid medium. The “history of these effects” would refer to the entire path of the genesis and emergence of colors. If the course or “history” is traced back to the origin of their emergence, the laws of the “effects” (that is, of the colors) and thus the reason for their genesis would be revealed. With this lawful foundational source, what Goethe calls the “essence of the thing” is given.

Goethe’s observations of the effects and essence of color must be understood in the context of his fundamental difference from Newton’s theory of color. Goethe formally states the decisive difference between his approach and Newton’s at the beginning of the didactic part of his theory of colors. He is not concerned with explaining “what color is,” but rather with showing “how it appears.” In his Opticks (1704), Newton had given his answer to this question by explaining that color is merely a subjective sensation.⁷ In homogeneous light, he distinguishes between yellow-making rays, green-making ones, blue-making, violet-making, and others.⁸ “For rays are, strictly speaking, not colored. There is nothing in them but a certain force and tendency to produce the sensation of this or that color in the eye of the beholder.”⁹ Newton thus explains color phenomena as subjective sensations caused by certain dispositions in the homogeneous ray of light. With this explanation, color as a real (“objective”) phenomenon in the world, as the interplay of light, darkness, and a turbid medium, does not come into view.

What Phenomena Tell Us

Goethe’s theory of colors should not be understood merely as an alternative explanation for the manifestation of colors, but rather as evidence of a fundamentally different understanding of science. His theory is based on different methodological and epistemological premises—indeed, one could even say that it stands outside the paradigms of theoretical physics, which he calls into question. While Newton mechanizes light, quantifies it, and seeks causal explanations for how color arises from light, Goethe directs his attention to the “becoming” of color, its emergence and transformation, and the laws of the phenomena themselves—that is, on the appearance of colors to a perceiving consciousness.¹⁰ In his essay on the “pure phenomenon,” Goethe rejects the usual physical causal explanation of phenomena: “For here we are not asking about causes, but rather about conditions under which phenomena appear.”¹¹ His approach is based on the assumption that the phenomenon itself gives the observer a direct indication of the underlying conditions of its appearance. With reference to Goethe, Husserl’s student and a phenomenologist, Hedwig Conrad-Martius (1888–1966) aptly remarks that in light and colors, “the sensorily given directly expresses what can be grasped as its meaning; it lies within it!”¹²

Goethe’s question about the “how” of the appearance of color refers—in contrast to Newton’s approach—to an original, phenomenological way of approach. This requires viewing phenomena free of prejudice, that is, without any scientific-theoretical (physical), metaphysical, or naive everyday assumptions. Phenomena must first be observed and described in their multifaceted, subjective/objective manifestations in order to ultimately spiritually grasp their essence, their being. This approach perpetually leads back to the being and essence of the observer, the subject, to whom something objective has appeared. The investigation of the interrelationship between colors and the seeing human being also opens up for Goethe an approach to the question of what color is—and thereby to color’s essence and being. Goethe summarizes this subjective-objective essence of color immediately after the above-quoted passage in the following words: “For there remains for us no choice but to repeat: color is the lawful nature in relation to the sense of the eye.”¹³

In the didactic part of his Theory of Colors, connected with his theory of the Urphänomenon [Primordial/Archetypal Phenomenon], Goethe concretizes his plan to approach the essence of color by proceeding from its effects. In the preface, Goethe announces that in the didactic part, “the innumerable cases of phenomena will be summarized under certain main phenomena, listed in a specific order.”¹⁴ This order of the diverse color phenomena is divided into physiological, physical, and chemical colors, as well as the sensory-moral effect of color. A guiding idea—in his words, a “theoretical view”¹⁵—directs the process of ordering the phenomena from the outset. The so-called dioptric colors of the first class are of particular interest for the question of how to arrive at the essence from the effects. In this context, Goethe develops his doctrine of the archetypal phenomenon of colors, which we will examine in more detail later.

Goethe’s Aperçu

The physicalism in optics that Goethe attributes with decisive criticism to Newton in particular is based on the assumption that color phenomena are caused by a hypothetical, non-perceptible cause. Attempts are made by Newton to reconstruct this causal relationship experimentally and to substantiate it theoretically. If the hypothesis is confirmed by the experiment, the connection between the postulated cause and its effect appears to be sufficiently explained. For this reason, according to Goethe’s criticism, Newton’s few experiments are mainly aimed at verifying his hypothesis. A famous example of this approach is his “experimentum crucis” [crucial experiment], which is set up with the intention of confirming the central assumption: differential refrangibility as the supposed cause of colored light.

In his “Confession of the Author” (1809), Goethe retrospectively describes a groundbreaking experience from 1790—a “decisive aperçu [overview; insight]”¹⁶ as he calls it—that he had while experimenting with a prism. He had borrowed it in 1787 from Christian Wilhelm Büttner (1716–1801), a natural scientist from Jena. Goethe writes: “It did not take long to realize that a boundary was necessary to produce colors, and I immediately said aloud, as if by instinct, that Newton’s theory was wrong . . . .”¹⁷ The error in Newton’s theory of colors suddenly became apparent to Goethe when, looking through the prism, he saw the color spectrum not on the white wall—as Newton’s theory predicted—but only at the edges of his window.

According to Goethe, color does not arise from applying a prism to light. Rather, darkness is the second condition—after light—that is needed in order for color to arise; the prism plays a purely subordinate role. Goethe describes the three fundamental conditions in his writings on optics as light and dark, brightness and darkness, and boundary or turbid medium. These conditions can vary: artificial light sources or the sun represent the light pole, a darkened room or the darkness of space represent the dark pole, while atmospheric turbidity, smoke, water, the prism, or the human eye act as turbid media.

These conditions—indispensable for every manifestation of color—result from the reduction of diverse instances to their simplest elements; together with the colors that arise from them, the conditions themselves form a special phenomenon. This phenomenon also fulfills the essential characteristics of Goethe’s “pure phenomenon” as set forth in his essay “Experience and Science” of 1798. In the didactic part of his Theory of Colors of 1810, he describes this phenomenon as a “fundamental and archetypal phenomenon” [Grund- und Urphänomen].¹⁸ In view of this extraordinary phenomenon (and to anticipate our later conclusions), the phenomenological law of color genesis becomes directly and spiritually apparent to the observer because the archetypal phenomenon itself cannot be perceived by the senses, but solely in spirit. For Goethe, as in the case of the “pure phenomenon,” this experiential evidence expresses the underlying natural law in its purest and most elementary form.

The Emergence of Color through Light, Darkness, and Turbidity

In §§ 150 and 151 of his Theory of Colors, Goethe gives the most simple, easily understandable, and fundamental phenomenon of the emergence of color using two polar, complementary phenomena. The first phenomenon describes how sunlight appears yellow, or even yellow-red or ruby red, when seen through a turbid medium shadowed by darkness. The intensification from yellow to ruby red depends on the degree of turbidity of the medium. The opposite case immediately follows: “If, on the other hand, darkness is seen through a turbid medium illuminated by light, a blue color appears to us . . . .”¹⁹ We can see these fundamental phenomena every day in the atmospheric colors of the morning and evening reds and the blue color of the sky, as Goethe describes in §§ 154 and 155. “The sun is heralded by a redness as it shines toward us through a denser mass of vapors. The higher it rises, the brighter and yellower the glow becomes.”²⁰ He goes on to say: “When the darkness of infinite space is viewed through atmospheric vapors illuminated by daylight, the blue color appears.”²¹ These quotations exemplify how Goethe describes the emergence of colors from the interactions between light, darkness, the atmosphere, and turbidity.

In §§ 174 to 177, Goethe retrospectively explains in detail the research method he used to ultimately arrive at an awareness of the archetypal phenomenon. From the outset, he orients himself toward his hypothetical guideline of a triad—consisting of the polarity of light and darkness along with the turbid medium—in order to empirically demonstrate these conditions that he assumes to be necessary for the appearance of color. Goethe describes a path of knowledge that begins with specific, individual experiences, with ordinary empiricism. He arranges these in a step-by-step progression under “general empirical categories,”²² which represent, in a sense, levels of experience of higher generality. In a next step of generalization, according to Goethe, there are “scientific categories,”²³ which, in the terminology of 1798, correspond to the “scientific phenomenon”²⁴ and the natural laws corresponding to it. The final stage of knowledge provides insight into the necessary or “indispensable conditions for what appears.”²⁵ This is not another hypothesis, abstraction, or construction of a theory “behind the appearances,” as might be expected from the perspective of conventional science. Rather, the phenomenon, and even thinking itself, both become concrete and real by passing through the scientific categories/phenomenon because they are both beheld intuitively in their spiritual reality once again. Goethe continues in § 175: “From now on, everything more and more conforms to higher rules and laws, which, however, are not revealed to our reason through words and hypotheses, but to the intuition through phenomena”.²⁶ This quotation requires a more detailed explanation.

The Archetypal Phenomenon—Beholding the Law Intuitively

Goethe uses his thinking to classify the diverse conditions under which colors appear—that is, the various experiments in his theory of colors—according to their inner lawful relationships and connections. In this way, the general conditions are recognized through a generalized thought process. On the “objective” side, the archetypal phenomenon ultimately emerges in its simplest form as a special phenomenon among ordinary phenomena, insofar as light, darkness, and a turbid medium (or a boundary) are brought together as the necessary, general conditions. The archetypal phenomenon is extraordinary in that its appearance illuminates the lawful connection between a multitude of ordinary phenomena. According to Goethe, it is the “most beautiful” of pearls in a “string of pearls.”²⁷ The archetypal phenomenon thus represents a law of nature itself, in Goethe’s sense, which—in contrast to a law of nature in the conventional sciences—can be exhibited and experienced within the phenomenal world. Goethe’s “phenomenal law of nature” differs from abstract concepts, from “critical” or “speculative” ideas, and from Newton’s speculative explanation of colors (his “color-producing” wavelengths contained in light) because Goethe’s “law” is manifest, it appears and can be observed in the sensory world under the methodological conditions described here. One of these conditions is that the natural-scientific consciousness orders and observes the phenomena according to certain principles.²⁸

The highest stage of the process of knowledge, the archetypal phenomenon, corresponds to a theory (from the ancient Greek theoria, θεωρία) in the original sense of the word—namely, as the intuitive aspect of the law of nature in the realm of colors. This intuition encompasses the (subjective) activity of consciousness, through which the objective side of the phenomenon of intuition appears at the same time. As already indicated, this perception shows itself to be a dynamic, inner experience that is brought to fulfillment through experimentation. (We need only to consider all Goethe’s previous attempts in order to see his whole path of experiments leading to his ultimate success.) As a result, the diversity of colors resulting from the interplay of light, darkness, and turbidity—that is, from the dynamic, color-producing interactions of these three factors—appears to the researching consciousness as a phenomenon explained by a law. Goethe writes:

“Such an archetypal phenomenon is what we have thus far described. On one side, we see light, brightness; on the other, darkness; we bring the turbid between the two, and from these polarities, placed in a certain arrangement through the help of thought, the colors develop, also in a polarity, but, through an interrelationship, they refer back directly to a common element.”²⁹

The dynamic character of the archetypal phenomenon comes from the fact that the researcher produces the colors from the common, fundamental conditions and arranges them in their “interrelationship” within these conditions—ideally, based on what the researcher has learned through their own experimentations. Just as all possible plants can emerge from the idea of the archetypal plant, all individual instances can be derived from the archetypal phenomenon—right down to the “most common instance of everyday experience.”³⁰ Analogous to morphology, all phenomena are explained as variations of a basic pattern. The archetypal phenomenon thus represents the unity in which all individual instances are contained.

Where Theory Is Proclaimed

Even after presenting his theory of colors, Goethe returned to the archetypal phenomenon. He expressed it succinctly in an aphorism: “It is quite correct to say that a phenomenon is a consequence without a reason, an effect without a cause. It is so difficult for humans to find reason and cause because they are so simple that they are hidden from view.”³¹ Goethe thus rejects both the physical and metaphysical conceptions of “reason” and “cause” that are “behind” the appearances. Nevertheless, he seems to introduce alternative concepts of “reason” and “cause” that initially elude human comprehension. In his 1810 Theory of Colors, the archetypal phenomenon had proven to be a phenomenological “reason” at the end of a complex path of research. The concept of a “reason,” the “grounds” for something, here refers to the fact that the archetypal phenomenon allows the entire diversity of color phenomena to emerge from the simplest, most elementary factors. The colors, in turn, refer back to the archetypal phenomenon and are thus grounded in it; the archetypal phenomenon is the reason for all the multifarious phenomena of colors.

Thus, according to Goethe’s scientific approach, primordial or archetypal phenomena ought not be questioned any further. In contrast to physical or metaphysical causes, the phenomenological basis of phenomena discovered by Goethe is to be illuminated and recognized as a natural law that is within the phenomenal world itself. Goethe, therefore, explains the connection between cause and effect in an aphorism from 1829 with the words: “Together [cause and effect] make up the indivisible phenomenon.”³² This is not because Goethe clings solely to sensory perception or is hostile to theory, but because he proceeds from an enhanced capacity of consciousness that views, orders, and observes phenomena by way of a natural scientific practice. Only in this way, according to Goethe himself, can the phenomena proclaim their “theory,” which this consciousness is able to grasp. A well-known aphorism from 1829 states: “The highest achievement would be to comprehend that everything factual is already theory. The blue of the sky reveals to us the fundamental law of chromatics. One should not seek anything behind phenomena; they themselves are the theory.”³³

---

Translation Joshua Kelberman

1. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens [Complete works by periods of his career], edited by Karl Richter with Herbert G. Göpfert, Norbert Miller, and Gerhard Sauder (Munich: Hanser, 1998). In the following, I quote Goethe’s works from this edition with the corresponding volume and page number; vol. 4.2: p. 326; [cf., in English: Goethe, Scientific Studies, ed. Douglas Miller, in Collected Works, vol. 12 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. Charles Lock Eastlake (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970).]
2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, July 9/10, 1786, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Briefe an Charlotte von Stein [Letters to Charlotte von Stein] in Goethes Werke [Goethe’s works], published on behalf of Grand Duchess Sophie of Saxony, IV:4 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1907), 239.
3. On Goethe’s concept of “Form,” cf. David Wellbery “Form,” Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts 1 (1): 45–52.
4. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, Loeb Classical Library 271 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), Book Z, 1032b; Book H, 1042a.
5. See footnote 1, 10:9.
6. Ibid.
7. Isaac Newton, Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions, and Colours of Light. Based on the fourth edition, London, 1730 (New York: Dover, 1952), 125; for the most recent edition, see Isaac Newton, The Optical Papers of Isaac Newton, vol. 2: The Opticks (1704) and Related Papers ca. 1688–1717, ed. Alan E. Shapiro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
8. Ibid., p. 124.
9. Modern rephrasing of exact quotation: “For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour” (Ibid., p. 124 f.).
10. A concise comparison of Newton and Goethe’s scientific approaches to color theory can be found in Rudolf Steiner’s third volume of introductions to Goethe’s scientific writings (1890); see Rudolf Steiner, “Goethe as Thinker and Researcher,” in Nature’s Open Secret: Introductions to Goethe’s Scientific Writings, CW 1 (Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press, 2000), ch. 16, pp. 166–191.
11. See footnote 1, 6.2:821; Goethe, “Empirical Observation and Science,” in Scientific Studies, pp. 24–25.
12. Hedwig Conrad-Martius, “Farben: Ein Kapitel aus der Realontologie [Colors: a chapter from Realontology],” in Festschrift für Edmund Husserl [Commemorative Publication for Edmund Husserl], ed. Moritz Geiger (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1929), 339–370; quoted here, p. 344.
13. See footnote 1, 10:21. See Sebastian Meixner, “Urphänomen (Original/Primordial Phenomenon),” Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts 3 (December 2022).
14. See footnote 1, 10:10; Goethe, “Theory of Color: Preface,” Scientific Studies, p. 159.
15. Ibid.
16. See footnote 1, 10:914.
17. See footnote 1, 10:910.
18. See footnote 1, 10:68; Goethe, “Dioptric Colors of the First Class” Scientific Studies, p. 194 (§ 174).
19. See footnote 1, 10:67; ibid., p. 191 (§ 150–51).
20. See footnote 1, 10:68; ibid., (§ 154–55).
21. See footnote 1, 10:69; ibid., pp. 191–2.
22. See footnote 1, 10:74; ibid. pp. 194–195 (§ 174–77).
23. Ibid.
24. See footnote 1, 6.2:820; and footnote 11.
25. See footnote 1, 10:74; and footnote 22.
26. Ibid.
27. Goethe wrote the aphorism: “A phenomenon, an experiment, cannot prove anything; it is a member of a large chain that only makes sense in context. Were someone to cover a string of pearls and show only the most beautiful one, demanding that we should believe the rest are all the same, hardly anyone would agree to the deal,” Goethe, Maxims and Reflections (London: Penguin Classics, 1998), no. 5
28. Rudolf Steiner emphasizes this point in his analysis of Goethe’s method: “But anyone who has really clarified for himself that the explanation of phenomena means nothing other than observing them in a context established by our reason must accept Goethe’s theory of colors in principle”; see footnote 10.
29. See footnote 1, 10:75′; and footnote 22 (§ 175).
30. See footnote 1, 10:74; ibid.
31. See footnote 27, no. 502.
32. Ibid., no. 503.
33. Ibid., no. 488; Goethe, “Selections from Maxims and Reflections,” Scientific Studies, p. 307.