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Reflections On The Natural Philosophy Of Goethe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Wolfgang Yourgrau
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Extract

Lichtenberg, the German philosopher and physicist, once remarked: “It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone's beard.” Goethe, coeval with Lichtenberg, possessed by the conviction that he too was the bearer of truth, recked not whose beard was singed. Between his scientific attitude and his philosophic insight, however, a contradiction was patent, as revealed in his maxim that truth is a torch and that it is only with blinking eyes that we try to get past it, whilst in actual terror of being burnt.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 26 , Issue 96 , January 1951 , pp. 69 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1951

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