The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4.2 The Appearance of “Limits of Knowledge”

[ 1 ] Among the thinkers who strive with full vigor for a relation to true reality, such as is demanded by the inner nature of man, one finds in great abundance the limits of knowledge discussed on page 22 ff. of this paper; and if we consider the nature of these discussions, we may well notice how the impulse which genuine thinkers experience at such "limits" urges them in the direction of inner soul-experience, of which the first section of this paper speaks. See how the intellectual Friedrich Theodor Vischer, in the substantial essay he wrote on Johannes Volkelt's book "Dream Fantasy", describes the cognitive experience he had at such a boundary:

"No mind where no nerve center, where no brain, say the opponents. No nerve-center, no brain, we say, if it were not prepared from below in innumerable stages; it is easy to speak mockingly of a remodeling of the mind in granite and lime, - no harder than it would be for us to ask mockingly how the protein in the brain rises to ideas. Human cognition loses the ability to measure the differences in levels. It will remain a mystery how it happens that nature, under which the spirit must slumber, stands there as such a perfect counterblow to the spirit that we bump into it; it is a direction of such apparent absoluteness that with Hegel's otherness and extra-selfhood, as ingenious as the formula is, it says as good as nothing, the abruptness of the apparent dividing wall is simply concealed. The correct recognition of the cutting edge and the thrust in this counterblow is found in Fichte, but no explanation for it"

(compare Friedr. Theodor Vischer: "Altes und Neues", 1881, First Section page 229 f.). Friedrich Theodor Vischer points sharply to such a point as those to which anthroposophy must also refer. But he does not realize that in such a borderline place of cognition another form of cognition can occur. He would like to live with the same kind of cognition at these boundaries with which he gets along before them. Anthroposophy tries to show that science does not stop where ordinary cognition makes "dents", where it finds "cuts" and "jolts" in the counterblow of reality; but that the experiences as a result of these "dents", "cuts and jolts" lead to the development of a different kind of cognition, which transforms the counterblow of reality into spirit perception, which can initially, at its first stage, be compared with the tactile perception of the sensory realm.

In the third part of "Old and New" (page 224), Friedrich Theodor Vischer says: "Well, there is no soul apart from the body (Vischer means for the materialist); precisely what we call matter thus becomes soul at the highest stage of its formation known to us, in the brain, and the soul develops into spirit. It is necessary to realize a concept that is a pure contradiction for the separating mind." In contrast to Vischer's explanation, anthroposophy must again say: Well, for the separating mind there is a contradiction; but for the soul the contradiction becomes the starting point of a cognition before which the separating mind stops because it experiences the "counterblow" of spiritual reality.

[ 2 ] Gideon Spicker, who in addition to a series of perceptive writings also wrote (1910) the "Philosophical Confession of a Former Capuchin", points to one of the limit points of ordinary cognition with words that are truly forceful enough (see page 30 of this confession):

"Whatever philosophy one professes: whether dogmatic or skeptical, empirical or transcendental, critical or eclectic: all without exception proceed from an unproven and unprovable proposition, namely the necessity of thought. No investigation, however deep it may dig, can ever fall short of this necessity. It must be assumed unconditionally and cannot be justified by anything; any attempt to prove its correctness always presupposes it. Beneath it yawns a bottomless abyss, an eerie darkness that is not illuminated by any ray of light. We therefore do not know where it comes from, nor where it leads. Whether a merciful God or an evil demon has placed it in reason, both are uncertain."

So the contemplation of thought itself also leads the thinker to a borderline place of ordinary cognition. Anthroposophy begins with its cognition at the borderline place; it knows that necessity stands before the art of intellectual thinking like an impenetrable wall. For experienced thinking, the impenetrability of the wall disappears; this experienced thinking finds a light to illuminate the "darkness not illuminated by any ray of light" of merely intellectual thinking; and the "bottomless abyss" is such only for the realm of the senses; whoever does not stop at this abyss, but takes the risk of moving forward with thinking even when it has to discard what the sensory world has inserted into it, will find spiritual reality in "the bottomless abyss".

[ 3 ] And so we could continue, without foreseeable end, in the demonstration of the experiences that serious thinkers have at the "limits of knowledge". - One would see from such a demonstration that anthroposophy is the appropriate result of the development of thought in recent times. Many things point to it, if these many things are seen in the right light.