The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Epistemological Foundations of Theosophy II

[ 1 ] Eight days ago, I began these lectures by noting that contemporary philosophy—particularly German philosophy, and especially its epistemology—makes it difficult for its adherents to find their way to the theosophical worldview, and I noted that I would attempt to outline this epistemology, this contemporary philosophical worldview, and to show how someone with a thoroughly serious conscience in this direction finds it difficult to be a Theosophist.

[ 2 ] In general, the theories of knowledge that have emerged from Kantianism are excellent and absolutely correct. However, from their standpoint, it is not clear how a human being can come to learn anything at all about beings that are different from him—or indeed about real entities. Our examination of Kantianism has indeed shown us that this view ultimately leads to the conclusion that everything around us is merely an appearance, merely a representation of ourselves. What we have around us is not reality; rather, it is governed by the laws of our own mind, by the laws that we ourselves impose on our surroundings. I said: Just as we must see the whole world in this coloration with an eye endowed with colored glasses, so must human beings—according to Kant’s view—see the world colored in the way they perceive it according to their own constitution, regardless of what it may actually be like in external reality. Thus, we must not speak of a “thing-in-itself,” but merely of the entirely subjective world of phenomena. If that is the case, then everything that surrounds me—the table, the chairs, and so on—is a representation of my mind; for they are all there for me only insofar as I perceive them, insofar as I give form to these perceptions according to my own mental laws and prescribe laws for them. I cannot say anything about whether anything exists beyond my perception of the table and chairs. This is, in essence, what Kant’s philosophy ultimately amounts to.

[ 3 ] This, of course, is incompatible with the idea that we can penetrate the true nature of things. Theosophy is inseparable from the view that we can penetrate not only into the physical existence of things, but also into their spiritual nature; that we not only have knowledge of what physically surrounds us, but can also have experiences of what is purely spiritual. I would like to show you how a powerful book, reflecting the worldview now called “theosophy,” portrays what later became Kantianism, by reading you a passage from a work written shortly before the founding of Kantianism. The book was published in 1766. It is a book that—we can certainly say this—could have been written by a theosophist. It argues that human beings are not only in a relationship with the physical world surrounding them, but that it will certainly one day be scientifically proven that human beings belong not only to the physical world but also to a spiritual world, and that the manner in which they can be connected to this world can also be scientifically proven. There are many things so well demonstrated there that one could regard them as reasonably proven, or at least assume that they will be proven in the future: “I do not know where or when, but the human soul is in relation to others, that they interact and receive impressions from one another, of which the human being is not aware, however, as long as all is well.” And then from a second passage: “There are indeed certain things that are of a different nature, which cannot be accompanying ideas of the other world, and therefore all spiritual thought is such that it does not enter into the state of a spirit at all...” and so on.

[ 4 ] A person with average powers of perception cannot become aware of the spirit; yet it is said that such a shared existence with a spiritual world must nevertheless be assumed. Kant’s theory of knowledge cannot be reconciled with such a view. The one who wrote the foundation for this view is Immanuel Kant himself. It is thus the case that we must note a reversal in Kant himself. For in 1766 he writes this, and fourteen years later he establishes the theory of knowledge that makes it impossible to find the path to theosophy. Our modern philosophy is based on Kantianism. It has taken various forms, from those of Herbart and Schopenhauer to Otto Liebmann, Johannes Volkelt, and Friedrich Albert Lange. Everywhere we will find an epistemology colored to a greater or lesser extent by Kant, according to which we deal only with phenomena, with our subjective world of perception, so that we cannot penetrate to the essence, the root of the “thing-in-itself.”

[ 5 ] Now I would like to begin by presenting to you everything that emerged over the course of the 19th century, and what we might call the modified Kantian theory of knowledge. I would like to explain how the current theory of knowledge has developed, one that looks down with a certain arrogance upon those who believe that it is possible to know anything. I would like to show how a person whose mode of thought is grounded in Kantian principles forms a fundamental epistemological view. Everything that science has produced seems to corroborate Kantian epistemology. It seems so firmly established that one cannot escape it. Today we will unpack it, and next time we will see how one can come to terms with it.

[ 6 ] At first glance, it seems to be physics itself that teaches us everywhere that what the naive person believes to be reality is not reality. Take sound, for example. You know that the vibration of the air exists outside our organ, outside our ear, which hears the sound. What happens outside of us is a vibration of air particles. Only because this vibration enters our ear and causes the eardrum to vibrate does the movement continue all the way to the brain. There we perceive what we call sound. The whole world would be silent and soundless; only because the external movement is received by our ear, and what is merely vibration is transformed, do we experience what we perceive as the world of sound. Thus the epistemologist can easily say: Sound is only what exists within you, and if you think this away, there is nothing left but moving air.

[ 7 ] The same applies to the colors and light we encounter in the external world. Physicists hold the view that color is a vibration of the ether, which fills the entire universe. Just as sound causes the air to vibrate—so that when we hear a sound, there is nothing present outside of us other than the movement of the air—so too, in the case of light, there is only a vibrating movement of the ether. The vibrations of the ether are somewhat different from those of the air. The ether vibrates perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the waves. This has been demonstrated by experimental physics. When we have the color sensation of “red,” we are dealing with a sensation. Then we must ask ourselves: What else is present when there is no perceiving eye? — After all, there is supposed to be nothing else in space regarding colors except vibrating ether. The quality of color ceases to exist when the perceiving eye ceases to exist.

[ 8 ] What you see as red consists of 392 to 454 trillion vibrations; for violet, it is 751 to 757 trillion vibrations. That is unimaginably fast. Nineteenth-century physics reduced all perception of light and color to vibrations of the ether. If there were no eye, the entire world of color would not exist. Everything would be pitch black. We could not speak of color quality in the external world. This goes so far that Helmholtz said: We have within us the sensations of color and light, of sound and tone. This is not even similar to what is happening outside of us. We cannot even call this an image of what takes place outside of us. — What we know as the color quality of red is not similar to the approximately 420 trillion vibrations per second. That is why Helmholtz says: What is truly present in our consciousness is not an image, but a mere sign.

[ 9 ] Physical science has maintained that space and time exist as I perceive them. The physicist thus imagines that when I have a color sensation, movement occurs in space. And the same applies to the concept of time: when I have the sensation of red and the sensation of violet, both are subjective processes within me. They follow one another in time. The vibrations follow one another in the external world. Physics does not go as far as Kant in this regard. Whether “things-in-themselves” are spatial, whether they exist in space or follow one another in time—we cannot know this, in Kant’s sense; rather, we know only this: we are organized in such and such a way, and therefore whatever is spatial or non-spatial must always take on the form of the spatial. We project this form onto it. For physics, the oscillating motion must take place in space; it must take a certain amount of time. The ether oscillates at, say, 480 trillion vibrations per second. This already contains the concept of space and time. The physicist thus assumes that space and time lie outside of us. Everything else, however, is merely a concept; it is subjective. You can read in works of physics that for those who have come to understand what happens in the external world, nothing exists except vibrating air, except vibrating ether. This seems to be the contribution of physics: that everything we have exists only within our consciousness, and that nothing exists outside of it.

[ 10 ] The second thing that 19th-century science can demonstrate to us are the principles provided by physiology. The great physiologist Johannes Müller discovered the law of specific sensory energies. According to this law, every organ responds with a specific sensation. If you strike the eye, you can perceive a glimmer of light; if electricity passes through it, the same occurs. The eye will respond to every external influence in a manner that corresponds to the nature of the eye itself. It possesses the inherent power to respond with this characteristic of light and color. When light and ether penetrate it, the eye responds with stimuli of light and color.

[ 11 ] Physiology provides further evidence to support the claims made by the subjectivist view. Suppose we have a tactile sensation. The naive person imagines that it is the object itself that he perceives. But what does he actually perceive? — asks the epistemologist. What stands before me is nothing other than an assembly of minute particles, of molecules. They are in motion. Every body is in such motion, which cannot be perceived by the senses because the vibrations are too small. Basically, it is nothing other than just the motion that I can perceive, for the body cannot crawl inside me. What happens when you place your hand on the body? The hand performs a movement. This continues to the nerve, and the nerve translates it into what you experience as sensation: into warmth and cold, into softness and hardness. Movements are also present in the external world, and when my sense of touch encounters them, the organ translates them into warmth or cold, into softness or hardness.

[ 12 ] Nor can we perceive what happens between the body and us, for the outermost layer of skin is insensitive. If the epidermis lacks an underlying nerve, it can never feel anything. The epidermis is always situated between the object and the body. The stimulus thus acts from a relatively great distance through the epidermis. Only what is stimulated in your nerve can be perceived. The outer body remains entirely outside the process of movement. You are separated from the object, and what you actually feel is generated within the epidermis. Everything that can truly penetrate your consciousness occurs within the body, so that it remains separated from the epidermis. We would therefore have to conclude, based on this physiological consideration, that we do not receive anything of what is happening in the external world, but that it is merely processes within our nerves themselves—which propagate in the brain—that excite us through entirely unknown external processes. We can never go beyond our epidermis. You are trapped within your skin and perceive nothing other than what takes place within it.

[ 13 ] Let us move on to another sensory organ, the eye. Let us shift from the physical to the physiological. You see that the vibrations propagate; they must first penetrate our body. The eye consists first of all of a membrane, the cornea. Behind this lies the lens, and behind the lens the vitreous body. The light must first pass through these. Then it reaches the back of the eye, which is lined with the retina. If you were to remove the retina, the eye would never be able to convert anything into light. When we perceive the shapes of objects, the rays must first enter our eye, and within the eye a small retinal image is formed. This is the final stage that can evoke a sensation. What lies before the retina is insensitive; we cannot have any real perception of what happens there. Only the image on the retina can be perceived. One imagines that chemical changes in the visual purple are taking place there. The effect emanating from the external object must pass through the lens and the vitreous body, then cause a chemical change in the retina, and that is what becomes sensation. Then the eye projects the image outward again, surrounds itself with the stimuli it has received, and transforms them back into the world outside us. What takes place in our eye is not what constitutes the stimulus, but a chemical process. Physiologists are constantly providing new grounds for epistemologists. We must apparently agree entirely with Schopenhauer when he says: The starry sky is created by ourselves. It is a reinterpretation of the stimuli. We can know nothing of the “thing-in-itself.”

[ 14 ] You see, this theory of knowledge limits human beings solely to the things—let’s say, ideas—that their consciousness creates. They are confined within their own consciousness. They may assume, if they wish, that there is something in the world that makes an impression on them. In any case, however, nothing can penetrate into them. Everything he perceives is created by himself. We cannot even know anything about what is happening on the periphery. Take the stimulus in the visual field. It must be transmitted to the nerve, and this must in turn be translated in some way into the actual sensation, so that the entire world surrounding us would be nothing other than what we have created from within ourselves.

[ 15 ] This is the physiological evidence that leads us to say that this is the case. However, there are also people who ask how we come to assume the existence of other people besides ourselves, whom we, after all, recognize only through the sensory impressions we receive from them. When a person stands before me, I have only vibrations as stimuli and then an image in my own consciousness. It is merely an assumption that something resembling a human being exists beyond this image in consciousness. Thus, modern epistemology supports its view that the content of external experience is purely subjective in nature. It states: What is perceived is exclusively the content of one’s own consciousness; it is a transformation of this content of consciousness. Whether things in themselves exist lies beyond our experience. The world is for me a subjective phenomenon that is constructed, consciously or unconsciously, from my sensations. Whether other worlds exist also lies beyond the realm of my experience.

[ 16 ] When I say that it lies beyond the realm of experience whether there is another world, it also lies beyond the realm of experience whether there are other people with different consciousnesses, for nothing from the consciousness of other people can enter into a person. Nothing from another person’s imagination or consciousness can enter my own consciousness. This is the view held by those who have more or less subscribed to Kant’s theory of knowledge.

[ 17 ] Kant summarized epistemology in the following words: A hundred possible thalers contain no fewer than a hundred real thalers; that is to say, I cannot regard an object as real simply by adding something to my conception of it. The imagination merely provides an image. If an object is to exist, then it must come to me, and I wrap it in the laws that I develop from within myself. Schopenhauer also subscribed to this view in a somewhat modified form.

[ 18 ] Johann Gottlieb Fichte also subscribed to this view in his youth. He thought through Kant’s theory consistently. There is perhaps no more beautiful description of it than the one Fichte provided in his essay “On the Vocation of Man.” In it, he says: “There is nothing permanent anywhere, neither outside of me nor within me, but only ceaseless change. I know of no being anywhere, not even my own. There is no being. — I myself know nothing at all, and I am not. Images are: they are the only thing that exists, and they know of themselves, in the manner of images; — images that float by without there being anything over which they float; that are connected by images to the images. Images without anything depicted within them, without meaning or purpose. I myself am one of these images; indeed, I am not even this, but only a confused image of the images.”

[ 19 ] Indeed—if you maintain that, in your subjective view, you are dealing solely with the constructs of your own consciousness, then you must necessarily come to the conclusion that you know no more about yourself than you do about the external world. If you turn to the concept of your own self, you are no more certain of it than of the external world. If you grasp this thought in its full significance, it will become clear to you that the external world dissolves into a sum of illusions, and that the inner world, too, is nothing other than a construct of interlocking subjective dreams. You can already imagine from the outside—I would say, from the perspective of physicality—that you yourself, just like the external world, are nothing more than a kind of dream construct, a kind of illusion, if you interpret this view correctly.

[ 20 ] Look at your hand, which translates your movements into tactile sensations. This hand is nothing other than a construct of my subjective consciousness, and my entire body and everything within me is also a construct of my subjective consciousness. Or take my brain: if I could examine under a microscope how sensation arises in the brain, I would have nothing before me but an object that I must once again translate into an image in my consciousness.

[ 21 ] The concept of the self is just such a concept; it is produced like any other. Dreams pass before my eyes, illusions pass before my eyes—this is the worldview of illusionism, which necessarily emerges as the ultimate consequence of Kantianism. Kant wanted to overcome the old dogmatic philosophy; he wanted to overcome what had been put forward by Wolff and the Wolffian school. He regarded this as a collection of fanciful notions.

[ 22 ] It was the proofs of free will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God that Kant exposed as mere figments of the imagination in terms of their evidential value. And what does he offer as proof? He has proven that we can know nothing of a “thing-in-itself,” that what we have is merely the content of consciousness, but that God must be “a thing-in-itself.” Thus, we cannot necessarily prove the existence of God in Kant’s sense. Our reason, our intellect, are applicable only to what is given in perception. They exist only to prescribe laws for what perception is, and therefore these things—God, the soul, the will—lie completely beyond the reach of our rational knowledge. Reason has a limit, and it cannot go beyond it.

[ 23 ] In the preface to the second edition of *Critique of Pure Reason*, he states at one point: “I therefore had to set knowledge aside in order to make room for faith.” That is essentially what he wanted. He wanted to limit knowledge to sensory perception, and everything that goes beyond reason, he wanted to attain in another way. He wanted to attain it through moral faith. Hence he said: Science will never, under any circumstances, be able to attain the objective existence of things. But there is one thing we find within ourselves: the categorical imperative, which arises in us as an unconditional obligation. — Kant calls it a divine voice. It is transcendent over things; it carries with it unconditional moral necessity. From here, Kant ascends to reclaim for faith what he has destroyed for knowledge. Since the categorical imperative has nothing to do with anything conditioned by sensory influence, but arises within us, there must be something that conditions both the senses and the categorical imperative, and that arises when all the duties of the categorical imperative are fulfilled. That would be bliss. But no human being can find the bridge between the two. Since he cannot find it, a divine being must establish it. This brings us to a concept of God that we can never find through the senses.

[ 24 ] A harmony must be established between the sensory world and the world of moral reason. Even if enough were done in a single lifetime, so to speak, we must not believe that earthly life is sufficient in itself. Human life extends beyond earthly life, because the categorical imperative demands it. And so we must accept a divine world order. And how could man follow a divine world order—the categorical imperative—if he did not have freedom? — Thus Kant destroyed knowledge in order to reach the higher things of the spirit through faith. We must believe! He attempts, through the path of practical reason, to reintroduce what he has cast out of theoretical reason.

[ 25 ] Even those views that seem to be quite distant from Kant’s philosophy are grounded in it. This includes a philosopher who had a great influence—including in the field of education: Herbart. He had developed his own view based on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: When we look at the world, we encounter contradictions. Let us just take a look at our own self. Today it has these ideas, yesterday it had others, tomorrow it will have yet others. Yes, what is it, this “I”? It presents itself to us and is filled with a certain world of ideas. In another moment, it presents itself to us with a different world of ideas. We have here a process of becoming, many qualities, and yet it is supposed to be a single thing. It is one and many. Every thing is a contradiction. Thus, says Herbart, there are only contradictions everywhere in the world. Above all, we must bear in mind the principle that contradiction cannot be true being. From this, Herbart derives the task of his philosophy. He says: We must eliminate the contradictions; we must construct a world free of contradictions for ourselves. The world of experience is an unreal, contradictory one. In the transformation of the contradictory world into a contradiction-free one, he sees the true meaning, true being. Herbart says: We find the path to the “thing-in-itself” by seeing the contradictions, and when we eliminate these from ourselves, we penetrate to true being, to the true real. — But he also shares with Kant the view that what surrounds us in the external world is a mere illusion. He, too, has attempted to ground what is supposed to be valuable to humanity in a different way.

[ 26 ] And now we come, so to speak, to the heart of the matter. We must bear in mind that all moral action, fundamentally speaking, only makes sense if it can take on real reality in the world. What is the point of all moral action if we live in a world of appearances? There, you can never be certain that what you do represents something real. Then, fundamentally speaking, all your moral development and all your goals are left hanging in the air. In this regard, Fichte was wonderfully consistent. Later, he changed his view and turned to pure theosophy. Through perception, he says, we can never know anything about the world other than dreams of these dreams. But something drives us to will the good. This allows us to glimpse, in a flash, into this great dream world. He sees the realization of the moral law in the dream world. What no intellect teaches must be grounded in the demands of the moral law. — And Herbart says: Because everything we perceive is contradictory, we can never arrive at norms for our moral action. Therefore, there must be norms for our moral conduct that are exempt from all judgment on the part of the intellect and reason. Moral perfection, benevolence, inner freedom—these are independent of intellectual activity. Because everything in our world is an illusion, we must have something that frees us from reflection within it.

[ 27 ] This is the first phase of 19th-century development: the transformation of truth into a dream world. Dream idealism—which was supposed to be the sole destination of reflection on being—sought to make the foundation of a moral worldview independent of all knowledge and understanding. It sought to limit knowledge in order to make room for faith. That is why German philosophy broke with the ancient traditions of those worldviews we call theosophy. No one who called themselves a theosophist could ever have accepted this dualism, this separation of the moral realm and the dream world. For him, it was always a unity, from the lowest atom of force all the way up to the highest spiritual reality. For just as what the animal accomplishes in pleasure and displeasure differs only gradually from what arises at the highest pinnacle of spiritual life from the purest motives, so too is what happens below everywhere only gradually different from what happens above. Kant abandoned this unified path to a comprehensive knowledge and an overall view of the world by dividing the world into a world that is knowable but illusory, and into another that has a completely different origin, the world of morality. In doing so, he has clouded the vision of an infinite number of people. All those who cannot find access to theosophy suffer from the aftereffects of Kantian philosophy.

[ 28 ] Finally, you will see how theosophy springs from a true theory of knowledge; but first it was necessary for me to demonstrate the seemingly solid structure of science. That it is only the ether that vibrates, and that we perceive green or blue, that we perceive sound through the vibrations of the air—this seems to be irrefutably established by research. To show how this actually works will be the subject of the next lecture.