The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Goals of All Knowledge ^{1Rudolf Steiner moved to this chapter to 'Appendix II' for the second edition of 1918 in a slightly revised form.}

I believe I am correctly identifying a fundamental feature of our age when I say that the cult of the human individual currently strives to become the center of all interests in life. Every effort is being made to overcome authority of any kind. What is to be valid must have its origin in the roots of individuality. Anything that hinders the full development of the individual's powers is rejected. “Everyone must choose their own hero, whom they follow on their way up to Olympus” no longer applies to us. We do not allow ideals to be imposed on us; we are convinced that there is something noble and worthy of development in each of us, if only we are able to descend deep enough, to the very core of our being. We no longer believe that there is a normal human being to whom we should all aspire. Our view of the perfection of the whole is that it is based on the particular perfection of each individual. We do not want to produce what everyone else can do, but rather what is possible only for us, according to the uniqueness of our nature, should be incorporated as our contribution to the development of the world. Never have artists wanted to know less about the norms and rules of art than they do today. Everyone claims the right to artistically express what is unique to them. There are playwrights who prefer to write in dialect rather than in the standard language required by grammar.

I can find no better expression for these phenomena than this: they arise from the individual's urge for freedom, heightened to the utmost. We do not want to be dependent in any direction; and where dependence is necessary, we only tolerate it if it coincides with an interest in the life of our individuality.

Such an age can only want to draw truth from the depths of human nature. Of Schiller's two well-known paths:

“We both seek truth, you outside in life, I inside
In the heart, and so everyone finds it willingly.
If the eye is healthy, it encounters the Creator outside;
If it is the heart, then surely it reflects the world inside.”

The present is best served by the latter. A truth that comes to us from outside always bears the stamp of uncertainty. We can only believe in what appears to each of us as truth within ourselves. Only truth can give us certainty in developing our individual powers. Those who are tormented by doubts find their powers paralyzed. In a world that is mysterious to them, they cannot find a goal for their creativity.

We no longer want to believe; we want to know. Faith demands acceptance of truths that we do not fully understand. But what we do not understand is repugnant to the individual, who wants to experience everything with his deepest inner being. Only knowledge that is not subject to any external norm, but springs from the inner life of the personality, satisfies us.

Nor do we want knowledge that has been frozen once and for all in school rules and preserved in compendiums that are valid for all time. We consider everyone entitled to start from their immediate experiences, their direct experiences, and from there ascend to the knowledge of the entire universe. We strive for certain knowledge, but each in his own way.

Our scientific teachings should no longer take on a form as if their acceptance were a matter of absolute compulsion. None of us would like to give a scientific work a title like Fichte once did: "A crystal-clear report to the general public on the true nature of the latest philosophy. An attempt to force readers to understand." Today, no one should be forced to understand. We do not demand recognition from those who are not driven by a special, individual need for a particular view. Even to those who are still immature, to children, we do not want to drum knowledge into them at present, but rather seek to develop their abilities so that they no longer need to be forced to understand, but want to understand.

I am under no illusions about this characteristic of my age. I know how much unindividualized stereotyping exists and is spreading. But I also know that many of my contemporaries are trying to organize their lives in the direction I have indicated. I would like to dedicate this writing to them. It is not intended to lead to “the only possible” path to truth, but it is intended to tell of the path taken by someone who is concerned with truth.

The text first leads into more abstract areas, where thoughts must take on sharp contours in order to arrive at certain points. But the reader is also led out of the dry concepts and into concrete life. I am of the opinion that one must also rise into the ethereal realm of abstraction if one wants to experience existence in all its dimensions. Those who know only how to enjoy with their senses do not know the delights of life. Oriental scholars require their students to spend years of renunciation and asceticism before they impart to them what they themselves know. The West no longer demands pious exercises and asceticism for the pursuit of science, but it does demand the willingness to withdraw for a short time from the immediate impressions of life and enter the realm of pure thought.

There are many areas of life. Special sciences develop for each individual area. But life itself is a unity, and the more the sciences strive to delve deeper into the individual areas, the further they move away from the view of the living whole of the world. There must be a knowledge that seeks the elements in the individual sciences in order to lead people back to a full life. The specialist researcher wants to use his findings to gain an awareness of the world and its effects; in this writing, the goal is philosophical: science itself should become organic and alive. The individual sciences are preliminary stages of the science sought here. A similar relationship prevails in the arts. The composer works on the basis of the theory of composition. The latter is a sum of knowledge, the possession of which is a necessary prerequisite for composing. In composing, the laws of composition serve life, real reality. In exactly the same sense, philosophy is an art. All real philosophers were conceptual artists. For them, human ideas became artistic material and the scientific method became artistic technique. Abstract thinking thus gains concrete, individual life. Ideas become life forces. We then have not merely knowledge of things, but we have made knowledge into a real, self-governing organism; our real, active consciousness has risen above a merely passive absorption of truths.

How philosophy as an art relates to human freedom, what the latter is, and whether we are or can become part of it: that is the main question of my writing. All other scientific explanations are included here only because they ultimately shed light on those questions which, in my opinion, are closest to human beings. A “philosophy of freedom” is to be presented in these pages.

All science would be nothing more than the satisfaction of idle curiosity if it did not strive to enhance the value of human existence. The sciences only attain their true value through a presentation of the human significance of their results. The ultimate goal of the individual cannot be the refinement of a single faculty of the soul, but rather the development of all the abilities that lie dormant within us. Knowledge has value only insofar as it contributes to the all-round development of the whole human nature.

This text therefore does not interpret the relationship between science and life as one in which humans must bow to ideas and devote their energies to serving them, but rather in the sense that they must take possession of the world of ideas in order to use it for their human goals, which go beyond the merely scientific.

One must confront the idea as a master, otherwise one falls under its servitude.