On Vision and Colors - History

History

At his mother's tea parties in Weimar, Schopenhauer had met Goethe in 1813. In November, Goethe congratulated Schopenhauer on his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Both men shared the opinion that visual representations yielded more knowledge than did concepts. In the winter of 1813/1814, Goethe personally demonstrated his color experiments to Schopenhauer and they discussed color theory. Goethe encouraged Schopenhauer to write On Vision and Colors. Schopenhauer wrote it in a few weeks while living in Dresden in 1815. After it was published, in July 1815, Goethe rejected several of Schopenhauer's conclusions, especially as to whether white is a mixture of colors. He was also disappointed that Schopenhauer considered the whole topic of color to be a minor issue. Schopenhauer wrote as though Goethe had merely gathered data while Schopenhauer provided the actual theory. A major difference between the two men was that Goethe considered color to be an objective property of light and darkness. Schopenhauer's Kantian transcendental idealism was opposed to Goethe's realism. For Schopenhauer, color was subjective in that it exists totally in the spectator's retina. As such, it can be excited in various ways by external stimuli or internal bodily conditions. Light is only one kind of color stimulus.

In 1830, Schopenhauer published a revision of his color theory. The title was Theoria colorum Physiologica, eademque primaria (Fundamental physiological theory of color). It appeared in Justus Radius's Scriptores ophthalmologici minores (Minor ophthalmological writings). "This is no mere translation of the first edition," he wrote, "but differs noticeably from it in form and presentation and is also amply enriched in subject matter." Because it was written in Latin, he believed that foreign readers would be able to appreciate its value.

An improved second edition of On Vision and Colors was published in 1854. In 1870, a third edition was published, edited by Julius Frauenstädt. In 1942, an English translation by Lt. Col. E. F. J. Payne was published in Karachi, India. This translation was republished in 1994 by Berg Publishers, Inc., edited by Professor David E. Cartwright.