The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Starting Point of Epistemology

[ 1 ] At the beginning of epistemological investigations, as we have seen, everything is to be excluded which itself belongs already in the region of knowing activity. Knowledge is something that man brings about, something that arises through his activity. If epistemology is to extend itself, in a really enlightening way, over the entire region of knowing activity, then it must take something as its starting point which has remained entirely untouched by this activity of knowing, and from which, what is more, this activity itself first receives its impetus. That with which we must begin lies outside of knowing activity; it cannot itself yet be knowledge. But we must seek it immediately prior to our knowing activity so that the very next step we take from it will be an activity of knowing. Now the way in which this absolute first is to be characterized must be such that nothing flows along into it which already steins from an act of knowing.

[ 2 ] Such a start can only be made, however, from the directly “given” world picture, i.e., from that world picture which lies before the human being prior to his subjecting it in any way to the process of knowledge; that means, before he has said even the least thing about it, before he has undertaken even the least conceptual characterization with regard to it What there passes by before us and before which we pass, this world picture, which is incoherent and yet also not separated into individual details,^{1The separating of individual details out of the entirely undifferentiated world picture given us is already an act of thinking activity.} in which nothing is differentiated from anything else, nothing related to anything else, and nothing appears to be determined by anything else: this is the directly “given.” At this stage of existence — if we may use this term — no object, no happening is more important, more significant than any other. An animaFs most rudimentary organ, which a later stage of existence already illumined by the activity of knowing recognizes as completely insignificant for the animal's development and life, stands there with the same claim upon our attention as the noblest, most essential part of its organism. Before all knowing activity, nothing in our world picture presents itself as substance, or as accident, or as cause or effect; the distinctions between matter and spirit, between body and soul, have not yet been created. But we must also keep every other predicate away from the world picture we hold at this stage. It can be taken neither as reality nor as semblance, neither as subjective nor as objective, neither as chance nor as necessity; whether it is “thing-in-itself” or mere mental picture cannot be determined at this stage. For we have already seen that the results arrived at by physics and physiology, which mislead us into putting the “given” into one of the above categories, may not be placed at the forefront of epistemology.

[ 3 ] If a being with fully developed human intelligence were suddenly created out of nothing and were to confront the world, the first impression the latter would make upon his senses and his thinking would be something like what we call the directly “given” world picture. For the human being, to be sure, this picture does not really occur in this form at any moment of his life; in his development there is never a boundary present between pure, passive turning outward to the directly “given”, and knowing the “given” through thinking. This circumstance could arouse misgivings about what we are presenting as a starting point for epistemology. Eduard von Hartmann, for example, states the following: “We do not ask what the content of consciousness is of the child who is awaking into consciousness or of the animal that stands at the lowest stage of development; for the philosophizing person has no experience of this, and the deductions through which he tries to reconstruct this content of consciousness at primitive biogenetic or ontogenetic stages must after all be based upon his own personal experience. We must therefore determine first of all what is found by the philosophizing person to be the content of consciousness at the beginning of philosophical reflection.” (Basic Problem, p. 1) The objection to this, however, is that the world picture we have at the beginning of philosophical reflection already bears predicates provided only by the activity of knowing. These must not be accepted uncritically, but rather must be carefully extracted from the world picture so that it appears entirely free of everything added to it by the cognitive process. The boundary between what is “given” and what is known will not in fact coincide with any one moment of human development, but rather must be drawn artificially. But this can be done at any stage of development, if only the division is accurately drawn between what approaches us without any conceptual characterization before the act of knowing, and what the latter subsequently makes of it.

[ 4 ] Now someone could accuse us of having already heaped up a whole series of conceptual characterizations in our efforts to extract that supposedly immediate world picture from what people have made of it by applying their cognitive powers. But one can answer this by saying: The thoughts we have introduced are not meant, in fact, to characterize that world picture, to express any of its qualities, or to state anything at all about it; they are meant only to direct our study in such a way that it be led up to that boundary which the activity of knowing recognizes as its starting point Therefore it can never be a question of the truth or error, of the correctness or incorrectness, of those considerations which, in our view, precede the moment of standing at the starting point of epistemology. These only have the task of appropriately leading to this starting place. No one whose intention is to occupy himself with epistemological problems stands immediately at what is rightly called the starting place of the activity of knowing; to a certain degree, he has already developed some knowledge. Only by conceptual deliberation can he remove from this knowledge everything attained through his work in knowing, and determine the starting place that lies before this work But at this stage concepts cannot be credited with any value as knowledge; they have the purely negative task of removing from our field of vision everything that belongs to knowledge, and of leading us to the place where knowledge begins. These deliberations show the way to that starting place, approached by the act of knowing, but do not yet belong there themselves. With everything the epistemologist has to present before the starting place is determined, there is only appropriateness or inappropriateness, not truth or error. But all error is also excluded from this starting point itself, for error can begin only with the activity of knowing and cannot therefore lie before it.

[ 5 ] No epistemology other than the one that takes its start from our deliberations can lay claim to this last principle. Whenever an object (or subject) bearing any conceptual characterization is taken as a starting point, error is certainly possible right from the beginning, in the very characterization itself. For the rightfulness of this characterization depends, after all, upon the laws established by the act of knowledge. But this rightfulness can only manifest in the course of epistemological investigation. All error is excluded only when one says: I remove from my world picture all characterizations that are conceptual, that are attained by my activity of knowing, and retain only what arises, without my participation, upon the horizon of my observation. Whenever I refrain fundamentally from making any statement, then I also can commit no error.

[ 6 ] Insofar as error comes into consideration epistemologically, it can lie only within the act of knowledge. Sense deception is not an error. If the moon appears larger to us on the horizon than at its zenith, we are not dealing with an error, but rather with a fact that is well-founded in the laws of nature. An error in knowledge would arise only if, in combining the given perceptions in thinking, we were to interpret that “larger” and “smaller” in an incorrect way. This interpretation, however, lies within the act of knowledge.

[ 7 ] If one really wants to comprehend the activity of knowing in its whole being, then, without any doubt, one must grasp it first of all where it has its beginning, where it sets in. It is also clear that what lies before this beginning place may not be included in explaining the activity of knowing, but must in fact be presupposed. To penetrate into the essential being of what is being presupposed by us here is the task of scientific knowledge in its individual branches. Here, however, we do not want to gain any particular knowledge about one thing or another; we want to investigate knowing activity itself. Only when we have understood the act of knowledge can we judge the significance of any statement made in the activity of knowing about the content of the world.

[ 8 ] Therefore we refrain from characterizing in any way the directly “given” for as long as we do not know what relation any such characterization has to what is characterized. Even with the concept of the directly “given” we are not stating anything about what is present before knowing takes place. This concept has the purpose only of pointing to what is there, of directing our gaze upon it. Here at the beginning of epistemology the conceptual form is only the first relation into which knowing places itself with respect to the content of the world. This term even allows for the eventuality that the entire content of the world is only something spun by our own “I,” that therefore the doctrine of exclusive subjectivism rightfully exists; for there can be no question of subjectivism being a “given.” It could only be the result of cognitive deliberations, i.e., could only turn out to be correct through epistemology but could not, as presupposition, serve epistemology.

[ 9 ] Now, included in this “directly given” content of the world is everything that can arise in any way on the horizon of our experiences in their widest sense: sensations, perceptions, views, feelings, acts of will, dreams and fantasies, mental pictures, concepts, and ideas.

[ 10 ] Even illusions and hallucinations stand there at this stage with entirely the same legitimacy as other parts of the world content. For, only cognitive consideration of them can teach us what relation they have to other perceptions.

[ 11 ] If epistemology takes its start from the assumption that everything just enumerated is the content of our consciousness, then right away the question naturally arises: How do we get out of our consciousness to knowledge of being; where is the springboard that launches us out of the subjective into the trans-subjective? For us the situation is entirely different. For us, consciousness, and the mental picture “I” as well, are at first only parts of the directly “given,” and the relation of these two parts to the latter will first have to be determined by knowledge. We do not want to characterize knowing from the standpoint of consciousness, but rather the other way around: from knowing to characterize consciousness and the relation of subjectivity and objectivity. Since we leave the “given” at first without any predicates, we must ask: How do we come at all to a way of characterizing it; how is it possible to start somewhere with the activity of knowing? How can we designate one part of the world picture, for example, as perception and the other as concept, the one as being and the other as semblance, the one as cause and the other as effect; how can we separate ourselves off from what is objective and regard ourselves as “I” in contrast to the "not-I”?

[ 12 ] We must find the bridge from the “given” world picture over to the one we develop through our knowing. In doing so, however, we encounter the following difficulty. As long as we merely stare passively at the "given," we cannot find anywhere a point of attack at which to engage ourselves, in order further to unfold our knowing activity from there. Somewhere within the “given” we would have to find the place where we can take hold, where something lies that is homogeneous to knowing. If everything really were only “given,” then the matter would rest there, with us merely staring out into the outer world and staring in exactly the same way into the world of our individuality. We could then, as outsiders, at best describe things, but never comprehend them. Our concepts would then have a purely external connection with that to which they relate, no inner one. For true knowing, everything depends upon our finding, somewhere within the “given,” a region where our activity of knowing does not merely presuppose a “given,” but stands actively in the very midst of the “given.” In other words: Precisely by our holding fast to the merely “given” it must turn out to be the case that not everything is merely “given.” The prerequisite we established has to have been of such a kind that through its being strictly met it partially cancels itself out. We set it up in order not to stipulate arbitrarily some starting point or other for epistemology, but rather really to seek the starting point. Everything can be "given,” in our sense of the word, even that which in its innermost nature is not “given.” It approaches us then merely in the form of the "given,” but to closer scrutiny reveals itself of its own accord as what it really is.

[ 13 ] All difficulty in understanding the activity of knowing lies in the fact that we do not bring forth the content of the world out of ourselves. If we did do so, there would be no activity of knowing at all. A question can arise for me about a thing only when the thing is a “given” for me. I bestow characteristics on what I myself bring forth; I do not therefore need first to ask about their rightfulness.

[ 14 ] This is the second point of our epistemology. It consists in the postulate: Within the region of the “given” there must be something where our [own] activity does not hover in empty air, but where the content of the world itself enters into this activity.

[ 15 ] Just as we specified the starting place of epistemology in such a way that we set it absolutely before all cognitive activity, so that we would not cloud our knowing by any preconceptions within this activity itself, so now we also specify the first step we take in our expositions in such a way that there can be no question of error or incorrectness. For we make no judgment about anything at all, but only indicate the prerequisite that must be met if knowledge is to come about at all. Everything depends upon our becoming conscious of the following, through full critical deliberation: We ourselves set up as postulate the characteristic which that part of the world content must have at which we can begin with our activity of knowledge.

[ 16 ] To do anything else, however, is also utterly impossible. The world content as "given,” after all, is entirely without characterization. No part, of itself, can give the impetus to take it as the starting place for an ordering of this chaos. Therefore, cognitive activity must make a decree and say: The nature of this part must be such and such. A decree of this kind also does not encroach in any way upon the “given” in its qualitative aspect. It does not bring any arbitrary assertion into science. It actually asserts nothing at all, but says only: If knowledge is to be declared possible, then a region must be sought such as was described above. If such a region is present then there is an explanation of knowing> otherwise not. Whereas we took the “given” in general as the starting place of epistemology, we now limit our requirement to focusing attention on one particular point of the “given.”

[ 17 ] Let us now take a closer look at this requirement Where do we find anything in the world picture that is not merely “given,” but “given” only insofar as it is also brought forth in the act of knowledge?

[ 18 ] We must be entirely clear about the fact that this bringing forth must itself be “given” us with complete directness. Deductions, for example, must not be necessary for us to know it. It already follows from this that sense impressions do not meet our requirement. For we do not know directly, but only by considering physical and physiological factors, that these impressions do not arise without our activity. But we do indeed know directly that concepts and ideas always occur first of all in the act of knowledge and through it enter into the sphere of the directly “given.” Therefore no one can mistake this characteristic of his concepts and ideas. A person can very well take a hallucination to be something “given” from outside himself, but he will never believe of his concepts that they are “given” him without his own work in thinking. A madman regards only those things and conditions as real that are endowed with the predicates of “reality,” even though factually they are not real; but he will never say of his concepts and ideas that they enter the world of the "given” without his own activity. It is characteristic of everything else in our world picture, in fact, that it must be “given” if we want to experience it; only with concepts and ideas does the opposite occur: We must bring them forth if we want to experience them. Only concepts and ideas are given us in the form that has been called intellectual beholding (intellektuelle Anschauung). Kant and later philosophical adherents of his completely deny that man has this faculty, because all thinking relates only to objects and can bring absolutely nothing out of itself. In intellectual beholding, along with the thought-form, a content must be given at the same time. But is this not really the case with pure concepts and ideas? (By “concept” I mean a principle according to which the unconnected elements of perception are bound together in a unity. Causality, for example, is a concept. An idea is only a concept with greater content. “Organism,” taken quite abstractly, is an idea.) One need only look at them in the form in which they are still entirely free of all empirical content. If one wants to grasp the pure concept of causality, for example, one must not hold onto any specific causality or onto the totality of all causalities, but merely onto the concept of causality. Causes and effects we must seek in the world; causality as a thought-form we must bring forth ourselves before we can find causes and effects in the world. But if one wanted to hold fast to the Kantian assertion that concepts without perceptions are empty, then establishing the possibility of characterizing the “given” world through concepts would be unthinkable. For, let us imagine that two elements of the world content, a and b, are “given.” If I am to seek a relation between them, I must do so with the help of a principle with a definite content; but this I can produce only in the act of knowledge itself; I cannot take it from the object, because my characterizations of the object have first of all to be won with the help of the principle. This kind of principle, which makes characterizations about the real, arises therefore entirely within the purely conceptual sphere.

[ 19 ] Before continuing let us clear away a possible objection. It seems, namely, as though the mental picture of the “I,” of the “personal subject,” unconsciously plays a part in our line of thought, and that we use this mental picture in the course of our argument without having established our right to do so. This is the case, for example, when we say that “we bring forth concepts” or that “we set this or that requirement” But nothing in what we have presented gives cause to see more in such statements than stylistic expressions. Whether the act of knowledge belongs to an “I” and issues from it, as we have already said, can be determined only on the basis of cognitive considerations. Actually we would have for the moment to speak only of the act of knowledge, without even mentioning any bearer of it. For, all that is settled so far is that a “given” lies there, and that from one point of this “given” the above postulate springs; and finally that concepts and ideas are the region which correspond to this postulate. By this we do not mean to deny that the point from which the postulate springs is the “I.” But we are limiting ourselves, to begin with, to presenting those two steps of epistemology in all their purity.