The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Epistemological Conclusion

[ 1 ] We have established epistemology as the science of the meaning of all human knowledge. Only through it do we gain insight into the relationship of the content of the individual sciences to the world. It makes it possible for us to arrive at a world view with the help of the sciences. We acquire positive knowledge through the individual insights; we learn the value of knowledge for reality through epistemology. By strictly adhering to this principle and not utilizing any individual knowledge in our arguments, we have overcome all one-sided world views. The one-sidedness usually arises from the fact that, instead of tackling the process of cognition itself, the investigation immediately approaches some object of this process. According to our arguments, dogmatism must drop its "thing-in-itself", subjective idealism its "I" as an original principle, for these are essentially determined in their mutual relationship only in thinking. "Thing in itself" and "I" are not to be determined in such a way that one is derived from the other, but both must be determined from thinking according to their character and relationship. Scepticism must abandon its doubt about the knowability of the world, for there is nothing to doubt about the "given" because it is still untouched by all predicates given by cognition. But if he wanted to claim that thinking cognition could never approach things, he could only do so through thinking reflection itself, which, however, also refutes himself. For whoever wants to justify doubt through thinking implicitly admits that thinking has sufficient power to support a conviction. Finally, our epistemology overcomes one-sided empiricism and one-sided rationalism by uniting both on a higher level. In this way, it does justice to both. We do justice to empiricism by showing that all content-related knowledge about the given can only be obtained in direct contact with the given itself. The rationalist also finds his account in our arguments, since we declare thinking to be the necessary and only mediator of cognition.

[ 2 ] Our worldview, as we have founded it epistemologically, is closest to that of A. E. Biedermann.^{39Christian Dogmatics. The epistemological studies in volume 1. Eduard von Hartmann has provided an exhaustive discussion of this point of view, see "Kritische Wanderungen durch die Philosophie der Gegenwart" p.200 ff.} But Biedermann needs statements to justify his point of view that do not belong in epistemology at all. Thus he operates with the terms: being, substance, space, time, etc., without first having examined the process of cognition for itself. Instead of establishing that in the process of cognition there are initially only the two elements of the given and thinking, he speaks of modes of being of reality.

[ 3 ] For example, he says in § 15: "In all content of consciousness two basic facts are contained: 1. In it we are given two kinds of being, which contradiction of being we call sensual and spiritual, reality and ideality." And §19: "What has spatio-temporal existence exists as something material; what is the ground of all processes of existence and the subject of life exists ideally, is real as an ideal being." Such considerations do not belong in epistemology, but in metaphysics, which can only be justified with the help of epistemology. It must be admitted that Biedermann's assertions are often similar to ours; our method, however, is not at all similar to his. For this reason, we found no reason to deal with him directly. Biedermann seeks to gain an epistemological standpoint with the help of a few metaphysical axioms. We seek to arrive at a view of reality by observing the process of cognition.

[ 4 ] And we believe that we have indeed shown that all disputes between worldviews arise from the fact that one seeks to acquire knowledge about an objective (thing, ego, consciousness, etc.) without first knowing precisely that which alone can provide information about all other knowledge: the nature of knowledge itself.