The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Knowing and Reality

[ 1 ] It is therefore in concepts and ideas that we are given what leads at the same time beyond the “given.” But the possibility is presented us thereby of determining the nature of the rest of our cognitive activity also.

[ 2 ] By means of a postulate we have separated out one part of the “given” world picture, because it lies in the nature of the activity of knowing to take its start precisely from this particular part. This separating out was done, therefore, only to enable us to grasp the activity of knowing. But along with this we must also be aware that we have artificially tom apart the unity of the world picture. We must recognize that, regardless of the requirement we set and outside it, the segment we have separated off from the “given” stands in necessary union with the content of the world. With this the next step of epistemology is given. It will consist in restoring the unity that was tom to make knowledge possible. This restoring takes place in our thinking about the “given” world. In thinking contemplation of the world there actually occurs the unification of the two parts of the world content: what we survey as “given” on the horizon of our experiences, and what must be produced in the act of knowledge in order also to be “given.” The act of knowledge is the synthesis of these two elements. And in every single act of knowledge, indeed, the one element appears as something produced in the act itself and brought by it to the merely “given.” Only at the beginning of epistemology does what is otherwise always produced appear as a “given.”

[ 3 ] To permeate the “given” world with concepts and ideas, however, is thinking contemplation of things. Thus thinking is actually the act through which knowledge is mediated. Only when thinking, from out of itself, orders the content of the world picture, can knowledge come about, Thinking itself is an activity that brings forth a content all its own in the moment of knowing. Therefore, as long as the known content flows solely from thinking, this content raises no difficulties for knowing. Here we need merely observe, and we have the essential being directly given. The description of thinking is at the same time the science of thinking. Logic, in fact, was never anything other than the description of thought-forms, never a science that proves things. Proof enters only when a synthesis occurs between what is thought and other kinds of world content. Gideon Spicker is right, therefore, in stating in his book, Lessing's World View (p. 5), that Mwe can never discover, either empirically or logically, whether thinking in itself is correct or not." We can add: With thinking all proving ceases. For proof already presupposes thinking. One can very well prove an individual fact, but one can never prove proving itself. We can only describe what a proof is. In logic all theory ^{1Theorie. In German, this word still connotes more of the sense of the Greek root: what thinking “sees.” —Translator.} is empiricism; in this science there is only observation. But if we want to know something besides our thinking we can do that only with the help of thinking; i.e., thinking must approach something “given"” and bring it out of a chaotic connection with the world picture into a systematic one. Thinking therefore approaches the “given” world content as the forming principle. The process is the following: First of all certain entities are lifted by thought out of the totality of the world. For within the “given” there are no entities; everything is in continuous connection. Thinking, in accordance with the forms it produces, now relates these separated entities to each other and lastly determines what results from this relation. Through establishing a relation between two separate parts of the world content, thinking has determined absolutely nothing out of itself about them. Thinking, in fact, waits to see what will follow of itself as a result of establishing the relation. Only this result, finally, is a knowledge about these particular parts of the world content. If it lay in the nature of the world content to express nothing at all about itself through that relation, then this thought-attempt (Denkversuch) would be a failure and a new one would take its place. All knowledge depends upon bringing two or more elements of reality into the right connection and grasping what results from this.

[ 4 ] There is no doubt that we make many such unsuccessful thought-attempts, not only in the sciences where history gives us plenty of examples, but also in ordinary life; however, in the simple cases we usually encounter, the correct attempt replaces the incorrect one so quickly that the latter seldom or never comes to consciousness.

[ 5 ] In his “synthetical unity of apperception” there hovered before Kant the above activity of thinking whose purpose is the systematic organization of the world content. But how little he brought to consciousness the actual task of thinking in this is evident from the fact that he believes he can derive the a priori laws of pure natural science from the principles by which this synthesis occurs. In believing this he did not consider the fact that the synthetical activity of thinking is such that it can only prepare for the acquisition of the actual laws of nature. Let us imagine that we detach a content a from the world picture, and likewise another content b. If knowledge of a lawful connection between a and b is to arise, then thinking has first of all to bring a into such a relation with b that it becomes possible for the existing interdependency to present itself to us as a given. The actual content of a natural law. therefore, results from a given, and thinking's task is merely to bring about the opportunity by which the parts of the world picture are brought into such relations that their inner lawfulness becomes visible. Therefore no objective laws result from the merely synthetical activity of thinking.

[ 6 ] We must now ask ourselves what part thinking plays in setting up our scientific world picture in contrast to the merely “given” world picture. It follows from what we have presented that thinking provides for the form of lawfulness. Let us assume, in the above case, that a is the cause and b the effect The causal connection of a and b could never become knowledge if thinking were not in a position to form the concept of causality. But in order, in a given case, to recognize a as the cause and b as the effect, it is necessary that both correspond to what is understood as cause and effect. And it is the same with other categories of thinking.

[ 7 ] It would be useful here to say a few words about Hume's study of the concept of causality. Hume says that the concepts of cause and effect have their origin merely in custom. We observe a number of times that a certain event is followed by another, and become accustomed to thinking of the two as causally connected, so that we expect the second one to occur whenever we notice the first. This interpretation, however, takes its start from a completely erroneous picture of what a causal relationship is. If, over a period of time, I always meet the same person as I step out the door of my house, I will, it is true, gradually become accustomed to expect the sequence of these two events in time, but it would never occur to me to consider the relation between his and my appearance at the same spot to be a causal one. I will look into quite different parts of the world content if I want to explain the immediate sequence of events. It is definitely not by any sequence in time that we determine a relation to be a causal one, but rather by the inner significance of the parts of the world content that we have designated as cause and effect.

[ 8 ] From the fact that thinking exercises only a formal activity in bringing about our scientific world picture, it follows that no content of knowledge can be established a priori before observation (i.e., before thinking comes to terms with the “given”), but rather must come forth entirely from observation. In this sense all our knowledge is empirical. And it is utterly incomprehensible how this should be otherwise. For, the Kantian judgments a priori are basically not knowledge at all, but only postulates. In Kant's sense one can only say that if a thing is to become a potential object of experience, it must conform to such and such laws. Those are therefore laws which the subject prescribes for the object Yet one would expect that if knowledge of the “given” is granted us, it must flow not from subjectivity but from objectivity.

[ 9 ] Thinking says nothing a priori about the “given,” but it does produce those forms upon which the lawfulness of phenomena becomes manifest a posteriori.

[ 10 ] It is clear that Kant's view can determine nothing a priori about the degree of certainty of a judgment attained in knowledge. For certainty cannot be attained from anything except the “given” itself. Someone could object that observation never says anything more than that some complex of phenomena or other once takes place, but not that it must take place and, under similar conditions, will always take place. But this assumption is also an erroneous one. For, if I recognize a certain connection between parts of the world picture, this connection, in our sense, is nothing other than what is found in these parts themselves; it is not something that I add to these parts by thinking, but rather something that essentially belongs to them, something that therefore must necessarily always be there if they themselves are there.

[ 11 ] Only a view that takes its start from the premise that all scientific activity consists solely in connecting the facts of experience according to subjective maxims lying outside them can believe that a and b can be connected today by one law and tomorrow by another (John Stuart Mill). But someone who sees that the laws of nature stem from the "given — that they are therefore what constitutes and determines the interrelation of phenomena, would never think of speaking of a merely comparative universality of the laws attained from observation. By this we naturally do not mean to assert about the natural laws we have once accepted as correct, that they also have to be absolutely valid. But if a later case overturns a law that had once been established, this is not because one could only deduce the law the first time with comparative universality but rather because it was not deduced then with complete correctness. A genuine law of nature is nothing other than the expression of a relation in the “given” world picture, and it is just as little present without the facts it governs as these are present without it.

[ 12 ] We stated above as the nature of the act of knowledge that the “given” world picture is permeated, in thinking, with concepts and ideas. What follows from this fact? If the directly “given" were a totality, complete in itself, then to work upon it in this way in the activity of knowing would be impossible and also unnecessary. We would then simply accept the "given” as it is and would be satisfied with it in this form. Only when something lies hidden within the "given” that does not yet appear when we look at it in its immediate form, but that first manifests with the help of the order thinking brings to it — only then is the act of knowledge possible. What lies within the “given” before it is worked through by thought is not its full totality.

[ 13 ] This becomes even clearer when we take a closer look at the pertinent factors in the act of knowledge. The first factor is the “given.” Its being “given” is not a characteristic of the “given” but is only an expression for its relation to the second factor of the act of knowledge. What the “given” is, in its own nature, is therefore left completely in the dark by this designation. In the act of knowledge, thinking finds the second factor, the conceptual content of the “given,” to be necessarily united with the “given.” We ask ourselves now: 1) Where does the separation between “given” and concept lie? 2) Where are they united? Both these questions have been answered beyond any doubt in our foregoing investigations. The separation exists solely in the act of knowledge; the union lies in the “given.” It follows necessarily from this that the conceptual content is only a part of the “given — and that the act of knowledge consists in uniting with one another the component parts of the world picture that are at first given to it separated from each other. Thus the “given” world picture first becomes complete through that indirect way of being “given” which is brought about through thinking. In its direct form the world picture reveals itself at first in an entirely incomplete state (Gestalt).

[ 14 ] If, from the beginning, the thought content were united with the "given” in the world content, then there would be no activity of knowing. For, the need could nowhere arise to go beyond the "given." But if it were the case that we create all the content of the world by thinking and within thinking, there would just as little be any activity of knowing. With respect to what we produce ourselves, we do not need the activity of knowing. The activity of knowing, therefore, is based upon the fact that the content of the world is given us at first in a form that is incomplete, that does not entirely contain this content, but that, besides what it presents directly, also has a second essential side. This second, at first not "given/ side of the world content is revealed through knowledge. What appears to us in thinking as something separate is therefore not empty forms, but rather a sum of characterizations (categories) that constitute the form for the rest of the world content. Only the state (Gestalt) of the world content attained through knowledge, in which the two aspects of this content described above are united, can be called reality.