Truth and Science
GA 3
Translated by William Lindeman
Preface
[ 1 ] Present-day philosophy suffers from an unhealthy belief in Kant. This book is meant to help overcome this belief. It would be wrong to belittle the lasting services this man has rendered to the development of German science. 1Wissenschaft: "science” in the broader sense, from scire, to know. —Translator. But we must Anally recognize that we can lay the foundation for a truly satisfying view of the world and of life only if we place ourselves in decisive opposition to this thinker. What did Kant do? He indicated that the primal ground of things, which [he believed] lies beyond the world of our senses and reason, and which his predecessors sought with the help of wrongly understood conceptual stereotypes, is not accessible to our ability to know. From this he concluded that our scientific striving must remain within what is attainable in [sense-perceptible] experience and cannot gain access to knowledge of the supersensible primal ground of the °*t*hing-in-itself. But what if this “thing-in-itself,” including the primal ground of things in the beyond, is only a phantom? It is easy to see that this is indeed the case. To search for the deepest being of things, for their basic principles, is a drive that is inseparable from man's nature. It underlies all scientific activity.
[ 2 ] But there is not the slightest reason to seek this primal ground outside of the sense-perceptible and spiritual 2In the general sense of “nonmaterial.” Ideas and mental pictures, for example, are there for us although not perceptible to our physical senses. —Translator. world given to us, as long as a comprehensive investigation of this world does not show that there are elements within it which clearly point to an influence from outside.
[ 3 ] This book seeks to bring proof that everything needed for explaining the world and for plumbing its depths lies within the reach of our thinking. The assumption that there are principles of the world lying outside our world proves to be the preconception of a withered philosophy living in vain and illusory dogmas. Kant would have had to come to this conclusion himself if he had really investigated the capabilities of our thinking. Instead of this he "proved" in the most intricate manner that, because of the way our ability to know is constituted, we cannot arrive at the ultimate principles, which lie beyond our experience. It is not at all in accord with reason, however, to transfer these principles into any such beyond. Kant did indeed refute “dogmatic” philosophy, but he put nothing in its place. Therefore, the German philosophy that followed him developed everywhere in opposition to Kant. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel bothered no further about the limits to knowledge which their predecessor had marked out, and sought the basic principles of things within the here and now of human reason. Even Schopenhauer, who after all asserts that the results of the Kantian critique of reason are eternally irrefutable truths, cannot keep from taking paths to knowledge of the ultimate causes which deviate from those of his master. The misfortune of these thinkers was that they sought knowledge of the highest truths without having laid the basis for such an undertaking by investigating the nature of man's knowing activity (Erkennen) 3In philosophical works, Erkennen is sometimes translated as “cognition.” I wished, however, to keep the root word “know” (kennen), which is also present in “knowledge” (Erkenntnis), because of its rich connotations, as for example in the statement “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” —Translator. itself. As a result the proud thought-edifices of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel stand there without foundation. And the lack of just such a foundation worked detrimentally upon the further course of philosophical thought. Without knowing the significance of the pure world of ideas and its relationship to the realm of sense perception, they built error upon error, one-sidedness upon one-sidedness. No wonder that their all-too-daring systems could not withstand the storms of an age inimical to philosophy, and much good they contained was ruthlessly swept away along with the bad.
[ 4 ] The following investigations are meant to remedy the deficiency thus indicated. They do not want to present, as Kant did, what our ability to know cannot do; their purpose is to show what it really is able to do.
[ 5 ] The results of these investigations show that truth is not, as one usually assumes, the ideal 4Throughout this book, the adjective “ideal” usually means “in the form of ideas.” —Translator. reflection of some real thing or other, but rather a free creation of the human spirit that would not exist anywhere at all if we ourselves did not bring it forth. The task of knowledge is not to repeat in conceptual form something already present somewhere else, but rather to create a completely new realm which, along with the world given to the senses, first constitutes full reality. With this, the highest activity of man, his spiritual creativity, is incorporated organically into the general working of the world. Without this activity, the working of the world could not be conceived at all as a totality complete in itself. With respect to the course of the world, the human being is not an idle onlooker who repeats within his mind in picture form something taking place in the cosmos without his participation. He is the active co-creator of the world process, and his activity of knowing is the most perfect part of the organism of the universe.
[ 6 ] For the laws of our actions, for our moral ideals, this view has the significant consequence that these also cannot be regarded as copies of something existing outside us, but rather as something present only within us. Also rejected by this view is any power whose commandments we would have to regard as our moral laws. We acknowledge no “categorical imperative,” no voice from the beyond, as it were, prescribing what we have to do or not do. Our moral ideals are our own free creation. We have only to carry out what we ourselves prescribe as the norm for our actions. To view truth as a deed of inner freedom (Freiheit) also establishes therefore an ethic based upon the completely free personality.
[ 7 ] These statements apply of course only to that part of our actions whose laws we penetrate ideally in complete knowledge. As long as these laws are merely a motivation of nature, or motives that are conceptually still unclear, a spiritually higher person can certainly recognize to what extent the laws governing our actions are founded within our individuality; but we ourselves experience them as working upon us from outside, compelling us. Every time we succeed in penetrating such a motive, clearly knowing, we make a conquest in the realm of inner freedom.
[ 8 ] How our views relate to the most significant philosophical phenomenon of the present day, to the world conception of Eduard von Hartmann, will be found by the reader in detailed form in our book insofar as it pertains to the question of knowledge.
[ 9 ] It is a “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” (Philosophie der Freiheit) 5Rudolf Steiner suggested “spiritual activity as a translation of the German word Freiheit (literally, “freehood”). For him, Freiheit meant “action, thinking, and feeling from out of the spiritual individuality of man.” The title of the first English translation of Die Philosophie der Freiheit was The Philosophy of Freedom, At the author's request, for the second edition, the title was changed to The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. —Translator. for which we have created a prelude with the present work This “Philosophy” itself is intended to follow soon in a detailed form.
[ 10 ] To enhance the value of existence of the human personality is after all the ultimate goal of all science. A person who does not pursue science with this intent is only working because he saw his teacher do something similar; he “does research” because that is what he happened to learn. He cannot be called a “free thinker.”
[ 11 ] What first gives the sciences their true worth is the philosophical demonstration of the human significance of their findings. I wanted to make a contribution to this demonstration. But perhaps the science of the present day is not asking for any philosophical justification for itself! If so, then two things are certain: one, that I have produced an unnecessary book, and two, that modem scholarship is fishing in troubled waters and does not know what it wants.
[ 12 ] Here at the end of this preface I cannot hold back ; personal remark. Until now I have always presented my philosophical views in connection with the Goethean world view, into which I was first introduced by my most revered teacher Karl Julius Schröer, who stands so high in my esteem for his Goethe research because he always looks beyond the individual thing to the ideas.
[ 13 ] With this book, however, I hope I have shown that my thought-edifice is whole and founded in itself and does not need to be traced back to the Goethean world view. My thoughts, as they exist in this book and as they will follow in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity have arisen in the course of many years. And it is only from a deep feeling of gratitude that I must add that the loving way I was met by the Specht family in Vienna during the time I was responsible for the education of their children provided a uniquely favorable “milieu” for the shaping of my ideas; furthermore, that I have stimulating conversations with my highly valued friend Rosa Mayreder in Vienna to thank for the frame of mind needed for rounding out many of the thoughts of my "philosophy of spiritual activity (Freiheitsphilosophie) which for the moment are sketched in seed form in the last chapter of this book Her literary works, which arise from a sensitive and noble artistic nature, are due to be published soon.
Vienna: the beginning of December, 1891
Dr. Rudolf Steiner