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Schopenhauer relates the second result to the first. Showing that the four forms of the principle of sufficient reason stem from our cognitive capacities and that they can be summarized as a single principle, does not entail that this principle refers to some simple, single, absolute ground. To think that this follows would be like thinking that there is something like a triangle in general, something over and above equilateral, isosceles, or scalene triangles. Although one can formulate the concept of a ground in general, just as one conceptualizes a triangle in general, there are no possible objects denoted by these concepts, which are simply empty abstractions produced by discursive thought.

Schopenhauer, however, did not live long enough to publish a second edition of that work Schopenhauer told Goethe that he had provided a theory to complete Goethe’s set of facts in a letter; see GB 19, letter to Goethe, 11 November 1815. , 192 Introduction xxxvii Schopenhauer mentions a remark that he thought might have caused Goethe to consider him to be his opponent; ‘in particular we will encounter a point at which Goethe, who on the whole was perfectly correct, still erred, and Newton, who on the whole was completely wrong, pronounced the truth to a certain extent – although actually more in words than in sense, and even not entirely so’ (p.

Both Goethe and Newton concentrate on the cause of the sensation of colour without examining its effect, that is, colour as a physiological phenomenon. Newton did so by viewing colours as epiphenomena, subjective correlates of the mechanical properties of light rays, and Goethe did so by focusing on the role of physical media as light moved from its source to the seeing eye. Although Schopenhauer accepts Goethe’s claims that white light is homogeneous, that there are six and not seven primary colours, and that colour necessarily includes darkness, he also agrees with Newton’s claim that colour is a divisional process.