English Issue 24/2025

“Look for nothing behind the phenomena; they are themselves the theory.” This sentence by Goethe from his Maxims and Reflections is thinking’s declaration of love for all phenomena and beings. Thinking does not impose a coordinate system on matter, or design a model, or build a construct to grasp the unfamiliar, but asks stone, plant, animal, or human about their being from within their own being. In her article “From Effects to Essence and Back Again,” Iris Hennigfeld leads us to this “yes” to contemplation. She takes us on a journey in which the phenomena themselves become the teaching.