In Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche, he discussed how the colour of the eternal return is deep yellow, and the colour of the will to power is fiery red.1placeholder The red, Heidegger explained, can be interpreted as the deepest falsehood, error, and semblance – all of which are fundamental aspects of Nietzsche’s anti-epistemic view of a world grounded on the constant change of a multiplicity of interacting forces – and the yellow can be interpreted as the golden flash of the serpent of eternity.2placeholder
We can ask whether these colours may only be symbolic, where they are used to create a more poetic mode of expression. If the yellow is the golden flash of a serpent, could an alternative serpentine colour scheme play the same role? Or is there a deeper connection between these concepts and their colour? Could it be that yellow not only concerns the serpent that symbolises the eternal return, but in some way belongs to the concept of the eternal return itself?
We find in Nietzsche moments when colour does not appear to be simply chosen according to symbolic needs. In an early note, he expressed a concern that the use of quotations can disrupt the colour of his work.3placeholder He described his early writings as “paintings, for which I took the colors from the materials I depicted, as a chemist would, and used them like an artist.”4placeholder He acknowledged that the torment and confusion of his heart may have had an effect on the colours of certain sections of his work.5placeholder He asked himself why a particular thought comes back to him again and again in ever more varied colours.6placeholder He sent a letter to his sister, explaining that in his isolation from others there was the “feeling that there is about me something very remote and alien, that my words have other colors than the same words from other people.”7placeholder In the notes for Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he wrote: “My thoughts are colors: my colors are songs.”8placeholder In the final section of Beyond Good and Evil, he referred to how his thoughts appear when they have grown older compared to when they are new: “I only have colors for your afternoon, my written and painted thoughts, perhaps many colors, many colorful affections and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds: – but nobody will guess from this how you looked in your morning.”9placeholder
If the colours associated with Nietzsche’s concepts are not based on purely symbolic grounds, are they instances of the synaesthesia that can be found in other forms of creative thought? Nabokov explained how letters appear to him as colours, where colour sensations seem to be produced “by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline.”10placeholder Kandinsky described the moment when he heard Wagner’s Lohengrin: “The violins, the deep tones of the basses, and especially the wind instruments at that time embodied for me all the power of that pre-nocturnal hour. I saw all my colors in my mind; they stood before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me.”11placeholder
If Nietzsche’s concepts find their colour through synaesthesia, we may think that their chromatic nature involves an association that belongs only to their letters. Perhaps we could say that the repetition of a and e, the long r’s, u, and m sounds give ‘the eternal return of the same’ a smooth, yellow hue that glides through it. But this cannot be a complete explanation if we agree with Heidegger’s association of the eternal return with yellow. The German ‘die ewige Wiederkunft des Gleichen’ has a different sound: perhaps we could say that the phrase appears in darker tones in comparison to the English, the d’s, the g’s, and the k adding deeper more earthy shades.
As the English and the German have opposing sounds, it appears that the colour of concepts is not reducible to the colour of their letters or words. As the visible outlines of their letters are divergent, this suggests another possible synaesthetic explanation does not hold. If we find that the fiery red and deep yellow cross between two different languages, it appears that the colouration of concepts operates along the lines of the concepts themselves; their colour is one of conceptual meaning and structure rather than of phonemic sound or graphemic form. We may understand this in terms of the imagination providing systematic distinctions in colour: two primary colours appearing as the dual foundation of a speculative system, a chromatic contrast constituting its own elaboration of the Nietzschean philosophy. A fiery red accompanies a deep yellow as the continual movement and striving of the will accompanies the infinite depth of eternity. It is where these chromatic qualities may appear, not in terms of a general idea of the will or a generic eternity, independent and conceptually unaligned, but on the basis of their structural role within Nietzsche’s thought.
If there is a conceptual colour that belongs to philosophical thought, a colour that is not only symbolic, that is not only a result of a synaesthetic association of colours and letters, we can ask what it could mean. Plato would see its meaning in terms of a contamination of thought by the empirical world. In the Phaedrus it is said that what belongs to the intelligible world of forms has no colour.12placeholder This world is opposed to the world of the senses; any chromatic qualities of the latter are absent in the former. The purity of an abstraction appears to be compromised if it operates among what belongs to the field of vision; in the Platonic philosophy, a pure reason must appear achromatic and thereby untainted by what is merely visible. But Nietzsche would criticise Plato on this basis. In a general remark, the former wrote: “Every thinker paints his world in fewer colours than are actually there, and is blind to certain individual colours.”13placeholder If this is applied to the possibility of conceptual colour, it would present Plato as an extreme: he is not only blind to certain colours; he has removed conceptual colour in its entirety.
It is possible to move in another direction, where conceptual thought is not entirely disconnected from our broader cognitive functions, but can appear and operate therein: in even the most abstract thought, there may remain an association with aspects of visual perception. The colour of abstraction appears to show us that abstraction itself remains worldly, that it occurs within the world rather than within what fundamentally goes beyond it. It is where even the pure abstractions of logic may have sharp, bright colour schemes associated with them, where analytical certainties generate a chromatic brightness as a reflection of their form and interconnections, a form that may involve apodictic certainty but has not thereby abandoned the sense of the linguistic world in which it occurs.
In my own experience of philosophy, I have found moments where conceptual ideas can be associated with colour schemes through an internal visualisation. These colour schemes are not simply invented or chosen; they are instinctive in terms of how they choose themselves. These colours appear, not only as an effect of the surface of thought, but as a reflection of its depths. They may appear spontaneously; they may also appear when there is a choice to attend to them. There can also be suggestions of shape, where the jagged edges of intermingled geometric forms accompany internal explorations of thought. The shapes and colours are not the focus of these explorations. They are noticed as they attach themselves to the thoughts; they are found as unforeseen artefacts uncovered while searching among ideas.
Although concepts can be thought of purely in terms of their semantic content, where ideas are recollected in a purely linguistic form, in the moments when aspects of colour begin to coalesce around them, it appears as if there is a shift towards another mode of recollection. To explain this we might say that seeing concepts as colours involves a form of cognitive efficiency, where complex formations can be seen in a simplified form.14placeholder The colour schemes allow us to gain the sense of a work from the history of philosophy in an immediate flash, where the content of many hundreds of pages can be instantly visualised through no more than a momentary internal glance. Immediately differences and contrasts are seen in comparison to other works, both inside and outside a particular oeuvre. Movements are seen within a philosopher’s development, aspects of change, instances where conceptual development turns in subtle new directions producing vivid differences in colour. The colour schemes become a simplified image of the semantic meaning; without having to remember the detail of countless philosophical ideas, our cognitive operations can still put them to use if their conceptual colours are recalled. In reading a work, we may find an intuitive form of colours and shapes, where an association appears between a conceptual and chromatic structure. The meaning of the one seems linked to the meaning of the other. There is a certain spirit that is expressed in both, in one way conceptual, in another way chromatic.
But conceptual colour may be more than a mere mnemonic tool where it is possible to visualise colour within our own creative process. There are moments of an intuitive, visual thought where my own works appear in their own chromatic form. The Absent World can appear as dark grey, bottle green, dark purple, and deep red (see colour chart 1). Content and Operation can appear as light grey, mint green, lilac, and sky blue (see colour chart 2). Instinct and Intelligence can appear as an even lighter grey, white, soft yellow, and soft carmine red (see colour chart 3).
It is not entirely clear, even to me, how to interpret these colours, but the following intuitive associations present themselves nonetheless. The grey and the green/white reflects language and thought as it appears in each essay; the combination of the deeper green and purple of The Absent World reflects its concept of depth, and the red is Heraclitus’s image; the subtle tension between the lilac and sky blue reflects thought’s chaos in Content and Operation; the yellow of Instinct and Intelligence reflects something about the tone and structure of that work, and the carmine red is a marker of the unconscious. But our aim is not to document and explain which philosophical ideas happen to appear in which colours. Our main interest is in the attempt to understand conceptual colour in terms of its meaning and purpose.
Sometimes a single thought initially appears colourless, but it gains colour through its entrance into larger conceptual structures; as it is used within a complex systematic role, the colours may begin to appear as we form these structures ourselves. A shared colour may allow us to see an interconnection between two things; a range of colours may imply a wide-ranging meaning. These considerations open the possibility of our understanding of colour becoming an aspect of method. These colours are not mere colours; they are generated by the movement of concepts within a purpose. They do not merely reflect an aesthetic meaning, but a meaning that concerns a richness of conceptual movement. These concepts have a sense that goes beyond language into an imaginative internal vision. An image, a contrast can be painted for philosophy, giving thought a distinct visual style, where the sense of conceptual thought becomes multisensory.
Perhaps there is a cognitive benefit where our interest is so intense that it starts to make use of other areas of our cognitive functions that would not normally be associated with the subject matter in question. Perhaps there is an advantage to grappling with something with as many of our internal processes as possible: the language, sound, colour, and shape of a philosophical work combine to provide us with a view from many different associative sides.
This use of conceptual colour allows us to view our productive work, not only in terms of what is there, but also in terms of what is missing. Through an intuitive vision, we can judge the colour of the work done so far; we can see if an unresolved chromatic form suggests the need for an extra ingredient, for some theme that is not yet there. There may be difficulties in the formation of a work, where it appears that we do not yet understand what colours and shapes it involves. If we perceive a flatness of colour, we perceive a lack of range in the conceptual development. If we find that we are painting all things the same colour, we find that we have lost the world under the domination of a single concept.
If there is a conceptual colour within our thought during the writing process, we can look at a work from a chromatic point of view, looking across it part by part to see whether it satisfies, whether there is balance. It gives us a momentary indication of how far a new work may have departed from our previous ones, whether a new chromatism is operative within it. It gives us an indication of the work as a whole, how it may form a coherent multifaceted colour scheme rather than a disconnected patchwork of colours and shapes. It can show us a certain form of conceptual consistency; a repetition of content that supplies the same hues may prompt us towards other conceptual forms, towards a diversification of conceptual style.
In our exploration of conceptual colour, we may be drawn towards the idea of understanding philosophy as an art form. If there is colour in our concepts, we may say that philosophy is like painting with thought. Even though our text is only black and white, it still contains colours that are expressed, not through an external vision, but through the ideas. This involves a countering of a counter-movement that occurred in art history. There are examples of conceptual art where colour was rejected. Seth Siegelaub’s Xerox Book (1968), for example, involved a number of conceptual artists who submitted works which were then reproduced within the chromatic limitations of the Xerox machine. Douglas Huebler’s contribution makes us think of an ideational space through a series of pages where points are stated to represent locations at varying distances ahead or behind the picture plane. Joseph Kosuth provided a single-line description of each element of the book’s project, formed into a structural sequence.
These examples involve conceptual artists aiming to escape colour through a movement towards conceptual language, but can we say that conceptualism has come in a full circle where concepts exhibit colours of their own? From a rejection of colour in favour of concepts, we find a route back towards colour through the concepts themselves. But this circle does not involve a pure repetition. The result of a conceptual colour does not bring philosophy fully into the remit of art. If the colour of philosophical abstraction is not merely aesthetic but functional, this concerns the way we use it in thought. It is a functional colouration that follows from the concept rather than preceding it as an aesthetic ground: we do not choose a colour palette and then apply concepts to the colours; we apply concepts to a work and the colour associations appear. We are not simply creating colour combinations; these are not primarily operative in our thought. We find that colour becomes an effect of the semantic terms that can be used to provide a certain panoramic view.
There are limits to the colour of abstraction: there should be a creative priority of semantic content over colour; we should not find ourselves dominated by the latter. Alexander Luria documented the case of a man at the extreme end of synaesthesia, whose imaginative imagery was so intense that he struggled to reach the basic meaning of stories he was told or read.15placeholder Luria wrote that the man’s cognitive functions had reached the point “at which images begin to guide one’s thinking, rather than thought itself being the dominant element.”16placeholder The man’s figurative, synaesthetic thinking was so dominant that he could only understand what he could visualise: he was incapable of abstraction; the word ‘nothing’, for example, appeared to him as a completely transparent cloud.17placeholder His thought could do nothing with abstractions because they could not be grounded within the purely figurative world of his ideas; they could not become operative because they could not gain traction therein. These practical, or we might say pathological, limits take us far beyond the remit of a useful purpose for conceptual colour within philosophical thought. A practical limit is where the practical itself breaks down; the moments when conceptual colour appears must remain within such a limit if it is to be operative within its own form of productive creation.
This can be the case even if the idea of conceptual colour itself is no more than a figment of the imagination, based on no more than individual idiosyncrasies: the creative imagination can operate within and for itself. We may find that the colours we associate with concepts are not entirely stable over time, that there is no graspable system, no clear causality, no possibility of assigning a particular colour to a particular concept as if it were an essential attribute, as if there was the potential for a universal translation between the two. But these colours can nonetheless provide a dimension for our approach. Without seeking their ground in neurological observations, we can find them operative within our thought. Without looking for a clear and distinct truth, we can see nonetheless the difference they make. If there is a chromatic dimension that belongs to the creation of concepts, we can follow it regardless of its epistemic status; we can follow the colour of abstraction to see what areas it may lead us towards. We can apply combinations of divergent elements for polychromatic works, avoiding one-dimensional approaches that present themselves in monochrome forms, or where colour fades as it finds itself repeated through what is merely habitual. This is not only a stylistic or aesthetic feature but the distinct effect of a certain approach to philosophy. It is another pathway to include among the routes we take within philosophical thought. It is a guiding thought for the difference between the recreation of the pre-existing and creation itself.
Works Cited
Heidegger, Martin. ‘The Eternal Recurrence of the Same’, in Nietzsche, Volume II (trans. Krell), Harper & Row, New York, 1984, pp. 1–208.
Kandinsky, Wassily. ‘Reminiscences/Three Pictures’, in Kenneth Lindsay/Peter Vergo (eds. and trans.), Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, Volume One (1901–1921), G.K. Hall, Boston, 1982, pp. 355–391.
Luria, Alexander. The Mind of a Mnemonist (trans. Solotaroff), Basic Books, New York, 1968.
Milward, Andrew. Content and Operation, 2017, available from: https://www.andrewmilward.net/works/content-and-operation/
Milward, Andrew. Instinct and Intelligence, 2020, available from: https://www.andrewmilward.net/works/instinct-and-intelligence/
Milward, Andrew. The Absent World, 2017, available from: https://www.andrewmilward.net/works/the-absent-world/
Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, Putnam Books, New York, 1966.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil (trans. Norman), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (trans. Hollingdale), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke und Briefe, 2009, available from: http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human: A Book for free Spirits (trans. Hollingdale), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Middleton), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1969.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Human, All Too Human I, Volume 12 (trans. Handwerk), Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2021.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Volume 14 (trans. Loeb/Tinsley), Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2019.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations, Volume 11 (trans. Gray), Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2000.
Plato. ‘Phaedrus’ (trans. Nehamas/Woodruff), in John Cooper (ed.), Plato: Complete Works, Hackett, Indianapolis, 1997, pp. 506–556.
Watson, Marcus, et al. ‘Synesthesia and Learning: A Critical Review and Novel Theory’, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 8, 2014, pp. 1–15.
‘The Eternal Recurrence of the Same’, p. 51.
‘The Eternal Recurrence of the Same’, p. 51. Heidegger also discussed another interpretation of the two colours, where yellow refers to other aspects of the will to power, i.e. its supreme passion and incandescent creation.
NF-1874, 37[3]. Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations, p. 380. Gray’s translation has Nietzsche discussing a potential disruption to the tone of his work, perhaps suggesting that a certain literary quality is what Nietzsche had in mind. But the German ‘Farbe’ is primarily translated as ‘colour’.
NF-1877, 22[64]. Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Human, All Too Human I, p. 353. Translation altered. See also Human, All Too Human, 1:205.
BVN-1883, 461. Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke und Briefe: http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/BVN-1883,461. The sections Nietzsche is referring to are the first two sections of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
BVN-1885, 602. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 241.
NF-1883, 13[1]. Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 383.
Beyond Good and Evil, 296. The italics are in the original.
Speak, Memory, p. 34.
‘Reminiscences/Three Pictures’, p. 364.
Daybreak, 426. The italics are in the original.
This could be related to what is known as the learning hypothesis of synaesthetic development, where synaesthesia may develop in part as a strategy for coping with complex learning demands (Watson et al. 2014, pp. 9–12).
The Mind of a Mnemonist, pp. 64–66 and pp. 112–116. But there were also advantages: although the man would struggle to grasp the important points of a literary narrative, he could notice details that others would miss (pp. 97–98). While reading Chekhov’s The Chameleon, for example, he immediately noticed a discrepancy in the text: Chekhov first tells us that Ochumelov came out wearing a new greatcoat (shinel), but he later asks an Officer to help him take off his coat (pal’to).
The Mind of a Mnemonist, p. 116.
The Mind of a Mnemonist, p. 132. The whole section on his struggles with scientific and conceptual abstraction is of interest (see pp. 128–136).