The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preface (1914)

[ 1 ] It was not my intention to write an "occasional book" on the beginning of the century when I set about writing "Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert", which was published in 1901. The invitation to make this contribution to an anthology was merely the external impetus for me to summarize the results of philosophical developments since Kant's time, which I had long since acquired and which I was striving to publish. When a new edition of the book had become necessary, and I had its contents brought before my mind again, the realization forced itself upon me that only through a substantial expansion of the account given at that time could what it had aimed to achieve become fully clear. At that time I limited myself to the characteristics of the last one hundred and thirty years of philosophical development. Such a limitation is justified because this development really represents a self-contained whole and could be portrayed even if one were not writing a "century book". In my soul, however, the philosophical views of this last age lived in such a way that the attempts to solve the development of the world view since its beginning resounded everywhere like undertones in the presentation of philosophical questions. This feeling became more pronounced when I began to work on a new edition. And this indicates the reason why a new book, rather than a new edition of the old one, was produced. Although the content of the old book has essentially been retained verbatim, it has been preceded by a brief account of philosophical development since the sixth century BC, and the second volume will continue the characterization of philosophies up to the present day. In addition, the brief remarks at the end of the second volume, which were previously entitled "Outlook", will be transformed into a detailed presentation of the prospects for philosophical knowledge in the present day. There will be some objections to the composition of the book, because the scope of the earlier remarks has not been shortened, but the characteristics of the philosophies from the sixth century before Christ to the nineteenth century after Christ have only been presented in the briefest outline. However, since my aim is not merely to give a brief outline of the history of philosophical questions, but to speak of these questions and their attempted solutions themselves through their historical consideration, I thought it right to retain the greater detail for the last age. The way in which these questions have been considered and presented by the philosophers of the nineteenth century is still close to the usual lines of thought and the philosophical needs of the present. What has gone before means the same to the present life of the soul only in so far as it sheds light on the last period. The "Outlooks" at the end of the second volume arose from the same endeavor to develop philosophy itself from the history of philosophies.

[ 2 ] You will miss some things in this book that you might look for in a "History of Philosophy", for example the views of Hobbes and many others. However, it was not my intention to list all philosophical opinions, but to present the development of philosophical questions. In such an account, it is inappropriate to list a philosophical opinion that appears historically if the essence of this opinion is characterized in a different context.

[ 3 ] Whoever wishes to recognize in this book a new proof that I have "changed" my own views over the years, I will probably not be able to dissuade him from such an "opinion" by pointing out, that the presentation of the philosophical views which I gave in the first edition of "Welt- und Lebensanschauungen" has indeed been much expanded and enhanced in detail, but that the content of the old book has essentially passed over unchanged verbatim into the new one. The minor changes that occur in individual passages seemed necessary to me, not because I felt the need to present one thing or another differently after fifteen years than before, but because I found that a change of expression was required by the larger context in which this or that idea appears in the new book, whereas in the old book there was no mention of such a context. However, there will certainly always be people who would like to construct contradictions in the successive writings of a personality, because they cannot or do not want to grasp the certainly not inadmissible expansion of the striving for knowledge of such a personality. The fact that in such expansion some things are said differently in later years than in earlier ones certainly does not mean a contradiction, if one means the correspondence of the one with the other not in the sense of copying the later from the earlier, but in the sense of the living development of a personality. In order not to be accused of changing one's views by people who can disregard this, one would actually have to repeat the same thing whenever thoughts come into consideration.

April 1914
Rudolf Steiner