Undergraduate thesis examines Goethe’s scientific methodology in relation to Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva and the question of the possibility of intuitive knowledge of singular things. The starting point is the problem of the connection between the universal and the particular, which, in Goethe’s work, manifests as the problem of the relationship between the Idea and experience. Goethe’s morphology attempts to establish a connection between the Idea and experience that allows the whole as such to be grasped in a single act of intuition. Unlike the understanding or Spinonoza’s 2nd kind of knowledge, which operates with universal concepts and adequate ideas regarding the properties of things, intuitive knowledge enables the understanding of a thing through its essence. Goethe’s practice of natural science can thus be understood as an attempt to realize a Spinozistic intuitive science. Crucial to this is Goethe’s requirement for an “experience of a higher order” – one produced by multiplying individual experiences, eliminating the accidental, and revealing the necessary internal transitions between the individual parts of a phenomenon. Intuitive insight thus proves to be not a passive act of gazing, but an active cultivation of intuition – a process in which the scientist herself must also undergo transformation.
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