The Rudolf Steiner Archive

18. True Enlightenment as the Basis of Social Thinking

[ 1 ] The number of people who emphasize that the only way out of the social confusion of our time is to introduce a spiritual dimension into thinking and feeling is constantly increasing. The disappointments brought about by "economic" ideas, which sought their foundations only in the production of material goods and their distribution, have led many to make such a commitment.

[ 2 ] But one can also clearly see how unfruitful such a commitment to the spirit is in our time. If it is supposed to produce economic views, it fails. For the mere reference to the spirit is not enough. First of all, it merely expresses a need. It is at a loss when it comes to talking about the satisfaction of this need. This fact should be recognized as a task for the present. We should ask ourselves: Why is it that even those who today consider a turn to the spirit necessary for social life do not go beyond discussing this necessity? Why do they not come to really spiritualize economic thinking?

[ 3 ] You will find the answer to this question if you look at the development of thought within civilized humanity in recent times. Those personalities who have come to a world view out of the formation of the times regard it as a sign of their higher "spiritual culture" to speak of the "unknowable" behind things. It has gradually become a widespread belief that only a biased person can still speak about the "essence of things", about "the invisible causes of visible things". Now such an intellectual attitude can be maintained for a while in relation to the knowledge of nature. Natural phenomena present themselves; and even those who do not want to know anything about their causes can describe them and thereby arrive at a certain content of their thinking.

[ 4 ] In economic matters, however, such an intellectual attitude must fail. For there the phenomena are ultimately produced by men; the demands proceed from the minds of men. In man, however, there lives as an entity precisely that for which insight is obstructed when one becomes accustomed to speak of nature as something "unrecognizable", as is the case with many proponents of more recent views of life. Thus it has come about that the recent past has developed habits of thought into the present which completely fail in economic matters. One can contemplate the freezing of water, the development of the embryo, and speak "nobly" of the "unknowable" in the world and admonish contemporaries not to lose themselves in fantasies about this "unknowable". But it is not possible to master economic tasks with a mindset that is trained in such a state of mind. These require an approach to the full human life. And this is where the spiritual-soul dimension prevails, even if it only manifests itself in the demand for the satisfaction of material needs.

[ 5 ] We will only have the kind of economics that the present day needs when we no longer merely "point to" the spirit and the soul, but when we no longer brand the efforts to arrive at a real knowledge of the spirit as "unscientific" and unworthy of an enlightened human being. For one will only be able to judge the soul of man if one sees through its connection with that which one wishes to avoid in the knowledge of nature.

[ 6 ] People who today speak of supersensible things based on their views and who express the belief that the prevailing materialism can only be overcome through such knowledge of the supersensible are replied that materialism has been overcome "scientifically". There are enough disputes which, based on "real" science, prove that materialism is not sufficient to explain natural events. On the other hand, it must be said: Such arguments may be theoretically interesting, but they cannot overcome materialism. It can only be overcome if one does not merely prove theoretically that there is more to the facts of the world than what the senses see; it can only be overcome if a living spirit enters into the observation of world events. Only this spirit, which reigns in human perception, can also oversee the connections that are effective in the material life of human communities. One can prove for a long time that "life" is not a mere chemical process; this will not hurt materialism. We will only fight it effectively when we have the courage not only to say that spirit must be at work in world views, but also to really make this spirit the content of our consciousness.

[ 7 ] The idea of the threefold structure of the social organism is addressed to people who have this courage. This courage seeks to penetrate from the externals of life to its inner essence. It grasps the necessity of cultivating a free, independent spiritual life, because it realizes that a bound spiritual life can at best only reach the point of "pointing" to the spirit, but not to a life in the spirit. He also grasps the necessity of an independent legal life because he gains the insight that legal consciousness is rooted in areas of the human soul that can only be effective in a human context that unfolds independently of spiritual and economic life. Such insight can only be attained through the realization of the soul in man. A view of life that has grown up with the opinion of the "unknowable" in the sense of many of today's schools of thought will tend towards the error that one can find a social structure of human souls that is formed only from the material facts of economic life.

[ 8 ] The courage we are talking about here cannot stop at the opinion that people are not "ripe" for such a thorough transformation of their thinking and feelings. They will only be "immature" as long as the insight into the spiritual is presented to them "scientifically" as a prejudice. It is not immaturity that is effective in the present confusion, but the belief that knowledge of the spirit is the sign of an unenlightened human being. All attempts to shape social life that arise from this unspiritual "enlightenment" must fail, because they eliminate the spirit in the shaping; but the spirit asserts its claims in the unconscious at the moment when man banishes it from his consciousness. Only if man does not work against the spirit can the spiritual promote human actions. But only those who accept the spirit into their consciousness work with it. Overcoming that false "enlightenment" which has emerged from a misunderstood understanding of nature and which in recent times has become a worldly gospel for large masses of people will alone be able to provide the basis for a social knowledge that can have a fruitful effect on real life.