The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] All epistemologists after Kant have been influenced to a greater or lesser extent by Kant’s flawed reasoning. Kant’s view (that all objects given to us are merely our mental representations) arises due to his a priori stance. His view consequently has been made the principle starting point of almost all epistemological systems. What is initially and immediately certain to us, he claims, is that we only know our mental pictures (Vorstellungen). This view has been believed almost universally by philosophers. As early as 1792, G. E. Schulze claimed in his Anesidemus ⁴⁵ that mental pictures are all that we know, and that we can never go beyond them. Schopenhauer presents this same view with his own philosophical pathos, that the lasting attainment of Kant's philosophy is the view that the world is simply my own mental picture. Eduard von Hartmann finds this sentence so inviolable, that in his work Critical Foundations of Transcendental Realism he takes for granted that all his readers, by critical reflection, have freed themselves from the naive identification of their perceptual image with a thing-in-itself, and consider as evident that the seeming diversity of objects of observation in the act of mental picturing is a singular subjective-ideal content of consciousness, and consider as evident that something else exists in and of itself, independent of the form of consciousness. In other words, his readers are permeated by the conviction that the totality of what is immediately given to us consists of mental pictures (Vorstellungen).⁴⁶

In his last epistemological publication, Hartmann tried to justify his view. Our further discussion will show how an unprejudiced epistemology must respond to this sort of justification. Otto Liebmann states as the sacrosanct supreme principle of all epistemology, “Consciousness cannot leap over itself.” ⁴⁷ Vokelt had the opinion that the first, most immediate truth is that "all our knowing extends initially only to our mental pictures, the positivistic principle of knowledge, and he only considers that theory of knowing as eminently critical which contains this principle, and then develops its consequences”.⁴⁸ Other philosophers put other claims at the forefront of epistemology, for example, that the real problem lies in the question of the relationship between thinking and existence, and the possibility of mediating between the two, or the question how a being becomes conscious.⁴⁹ Kirchmann ⁵⁰ starts from two epistemological axioms, “what is perceived is” and “the contradiction is not.⁵¹ According to E. L. Fischer, cognition consists in the knowledge of something actual, real,⁵² and he leaves this dogma unexamined, just as does Göring, who claims something similar, “Knowing always means recognizing a being, and that is a fact which neither skepticism nor Kantian criticism can deny.” ⁵³ In the case of the last two, one simply decrees what knowing consists of, without asking by what right this can happen.

[ 2 ] Even if these various claims were correct or led to correct problems, they could not be discussed at the beginning of a theory of knowing, because, as very specific insights, they all already stand within the domain of knowing. When I say that my knowledge initially only extends to my ideas or mental pictures, that is a very specific cognitive judgment. Through this sentence a predicate is added to the world given to me, namely existence in the form of a mental picture. But above all, how am I supposed to know that the things given to me are mental pictures?

[ 3 ] We will best convince ourselves of the correctness of not placing this sentence at the forefront of epistemology if we follow the path that the human mind must take to get to it. Yet the phrase has become a part of modern scientific consciousness. The considerations that pushed it to the front can be found systematically and completely compiled in the first section of Eduard von Hartmann's Critical Foundation of Transcendental Realism.⁵⁴ What has been put forward can therefore serve as a kind of guide, if one sets out to discuss all the reasons that could lead to that assumption. [ 4 ] These reasons are physical, psycho-physical, physiological, and specifically philosophical.

[ 5 ] A physicist tries to reach out through observation to actual events in our environment. When we, for instance, have a sensation of sound, a physicist conjectures that there is nothing in these actual happenings that has even the remotest similarity to what we simply perceive as sound. Outside, in the space surrounding us, only longitudinal vibrations of the bodies and the air can be found. From this it is concluded that what we call sound or tone in ordinary life is merely a subjective reaction of our organism to that wave movement. Likewise, one finds that light, color, and heat are all purely subjective. The varieties of color-scattering, light-refraction, light-wave-overlapping, and polarization teach us that the above-mentioned sensory qualities correspond to vibrations or waves moving in external space, which we feel compelled to attribute partly to bodies and partly to something immeasurably fine, elastic, and flowing in the atmosphere. Furthermore, due to certain phenomena in the physical world, the physicist is forced to give up the belief in the continuity of objects in space and to trace them back to systems of the smallest parts (molecules, atoms) whose sizes are immeasurably small in relation to their relative positions in space. From this he concludes that all effects of bodies on one-another work through empty space, which indicates forces acting over distances.⁵⁵ Physics believes it is justified in assuming that the effect of bodies on our sense of touch and warmth does not occur through direct contact, because there must always be a certain, albeit small, distance between the area of skin touching the body and the body itself. From this it follows that what we perceive, for example, as the hardness or warmth of the body, are only reactions of nerve endings that are sensitive to touch or heat, and heat, reacting to the molecular forces acting through empty space.

[ 6 ] These considerations of physicists are supplemented by those of psychophysicists,⁵⁶ which find expression in the doctrine of specific sensory energies. J. Müller ⁵⁷ has shown that every sense can only be affected in its own way, determined by its organization, and that it always reacts in the same way, whatever external impression is made on it. When the optic nerve is excited, we sense light, regardless of whether it is pressure or electric current or light that acts on the nerve. On the other hand, the same external stimuli produce completely different sensations, depending on how they are perceived by this or that sense. From this it has been concluded that there is only one type of process in the external world, namely movement, and that the diversity of the world we perceive is essentially a reaction of our senses to these processes. According to this view, we do not perceive the external world as such, but only the subjective feelings it triggers within us.

[ 7 ] In addition to the considerations of physics and psychophysicists, there are also those of physiologists. The former follows the phenomena that occur outside our organism and which correspond to our perceptions. Physiology seeks to explore the processes in people's own bodies that take place when certain sensory nerves are stimulated. Physiology teaches that the epidermis is completely insensitive to stimuli from the outside world. So, if the end-organs of our touch-sensitive nerves near the surface of the body are to be stimulated by the influences of the outside world, the vibrations or waves that lie outside our body must first propagate through the epidermis. In the auditory and visual senses, the external movement process is also modified by many organelles in the sensory apparatus before it reaches the auditory or visual nerves. This action on the end-organs is then conducted through the nerves to the central organ, and only there, from purely mechanical processes in the brain, the sensation is generated, is born.

It is quite clear that the sensory organ stimulation is converted on its way into the brain, so much so that every trace of resemblance between the first impact on the sensory system and the final sensation in awareness is obliterated. Hartmann summarizes this consideration in the following words, “This content of consciousness originally consists of sensations with which the soul reacts reflexively to the states of movement in its highest brain center, but which do not have the slightest resemblance to the molecular states of movement through which they are exercised”. [ 8 ] Anyone who thinks this train of thought through to the end must admit that if it is correct, not the slightest remnant of what can be called external existence would be contained in the content of our consciousness.

[ 9 ] To his physical and physiological objections to what he calls naive realism, Hartman adds what he calls purely philosophical objections. When we examine the first two objections logically, however, we notice that we can only really come to the result indicated if we start from the existence of and our connection to external things, just as ordinary naive consciousness assumes, and afterward examine how this external world can come into our awareness inside our bodily organization. We have seen that we lose every trace of such an external world on the way from the sensory impression to the entry into consciousness, and in the latter, in our awareness, nothing remains but our ideas, our mental pictures (Vorstellungen). We must therefore assume that our image of the external world is built by the soul based on sensations. First, a spatial picture of the world is constructed from the sensations of sight and touch, into which the sensations of the other senses are then inserted. If we find ourselves forced to think that a certain complex of sensations is coherent, we come to the concept of substance, which carries itself. If we notice that certain sensed qualities of a substance disappear as others appear, we attribute this to a change in the material world, regulated by the law of causality. According to this view, our entire worldview is made up of subjective sensory content, which is regulated by our own soul activity. Hartmann says, “The subject perceives only modifications of his own psychological states and nothing else.” ⁵⁸

[ 10 ] Let us now ask ourselves, how do we come to such a conclusion? The skeleton of the thought process is that if an external world exists, we do not perceive it as such, but rather transform it into a world of mental pictures through our organization. What we are dealing with here is a premise, that if pursued rigorously, cancels itself out. Is this line of thought a suitable basis for any conviction? Are we justified in viewing the world given to us as subjective conceptual content when this view necessarily leads to the assumption of naive consciousness, of naive realism? Our goal is to prove this assumption itself to be invalid. Can it be possible for an assertion to turn out to be false, and yet arrive at a proper conclusion? Well, that may happen, but the conclusion can never be regarded as proven in that way.

[ 11 ] The world view that accepts the reality of the world picture that is immediately given to us as something that cannot be questioned, and is self-evident, is usually called naive realism. The opposite, on the other hand, which considers this world view to be merely the content of our consciousness, is transcendental idealism. We can therefore also summarize the result of the previous considerations with the following words: transcendental idealism proves its correctness by operating with the means of naive realism, which it aims to refute.

Naive realism may be false, but its falseness is proven here only with the help of the false view itself. Anyone who keeps this in mind has no alternative but to leave the path taken here, and attempt to take up another view of the world. But should this be done on a trial basis, with luck, until we accidentally come across the right thing? Eduard von Hartmann has taken this path; he believes he has demonstrated the validity of his epistemological approach, for it explains world phenomena while others do not. According to him, individual world views struggle for existence, and the one that proves itself best is ultimately accepted as the winner. But such a procedure seems inadmissible to us, simply because there could easily be several hypotheses that lead to an equally satisfactory explanation of world phenomena. Therefore, we would rather stick to the above line of thought for refuting naive realism and see where specifically its deficiency lies.

Naive realism is the viewpoint from which all people start. For this reason alone, it is advisable to start the correction with it. If we understand what in it is defective, then we will be guided onto the right path with a completely different degree of certainty than if we simply try something randomly. [ 12 ] The subjectivism outlined above is based on mental processing of certain facts. It therefore presupposes, from an actual starting point, that correct convictions can be obtained through logical thinking (logical combination of certain observations). The right to apply our thinking in this way, however, is not examined from this point of view. And therein lies its weakness. While naive realism is based on the unexamined assumption that our perceived experience has objective reality, the characterized viewpoint above is based on the equally unexamined belief that one can arrive at scientifically justified convictions through the application of thinking. In contrast to naive realism, this point of view can be called naive rationalism. As a means of justifying this terminology, we would like to make a brief comment about the term “naive”. A. Doring seeks to define this concept more closely in his essay on the concept of naive realism.⁵⁹ He says about it, “The concept of naïveté describes, as it were, the zero point on the scale of reflection on one's own behavior. In terms of content, naïveté can certainly make the right decision, because it is indeed without reflection and therefore uncritical, but this lack of reflection and criticism only excludes the objective certainty of doing the right thing; it includes the possibility and danger of failing, but by no means the necessity of it. There is a naïveté of feeling and willing, as well as of imagining and thinking, in the broadest sense of the latter word, as well as a naïveté of the expressions of these inner states in contrast to the repression or modification of them brought about by considerations and reflection. Naïveté (at least consciously, not influenced by what is traditional, learned, and prescriptive) is in all areas what the root word nativus expresses, namely unconscious, impulsive, instinctive, demonic.”

Starting from these sentences, we want the concept of being naive to be a little more precise. In every activity we carry out, two things come into consideration: the activity itself and a consideration of its consequences. We can be completely absorbed in the former without asking about the latter. This is the case when an artist fails to consider how his work affects others, but rather practices his art according to his own feelings and sensations. We call him naive. But there is a type of self-observation that considers the consequences of one's own actions, and which exchanges this awareness for naïveté, and knows exactly the scope and justification of what it is doing. We want to call this critical. We believe that this best captures the meaning of the term critical, as it has become established in philosophy with various degrees of clarity since Kant. Critical prudence is therefore the opposite of naïveté. We call behavior critical when it takes control of the laws of one's own activity, to learn about their safety and limits. Therefore, a theory of knowing, epistemology, can only be a critical science. Its object to a high degree is the subjective human activity of cognition,⁶⁰ and what it wants to demonstrate are the laws of cognition. All naïveté must therefore be excluded from this science. It must see its strength precisely in the fact that it accomplishes what many practical minds boast that they have never done, namely "thinking about thinking."

• 45. Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761–1833), Aenesidemus, Helmstädt, 1792.
• 46. Eduard von Hartmann, Kritische Grundlegung, Berlin 1875, Foreword, p. 10 of the German ed.
• 47. Otto Liebmann, Zur Analysis, p. 28 ff. of the German ed
• 48. Vokelt, Kant’s Erkenntnistheorie, section 1.
• 49. J. Rehmke, Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff uns; Berlin 1880.
• 50. Julius Heinrich v. Kirchmann (1802–1884), Die Lehre vom Wissen, The Theory of Knowledge, Berlin, 1868.
• 51. A. Dorner, Das menschliche Erkennen, usw., Human Cognition, Berlin, 1887.
• 52. E. L. Fischer, Die Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie, Basic Questions of the Theory of Cognition, Mainz 1887, p. 385.
• 53. C. Göring, System der kritischen Philosophie, System of Critical Philosophy, Leipzig, 1874, Part I, p. 257.
• 54. Eduard von Hartmann, Kritische Grundlegung des transzendentalen Realismus; 2. Aufl. Berlin 1875, S.37.
• 55. t/n Physicists consider electromagnetic forces, gravitational forces, weak and strong nuclear forces, as well as quantum entanglement (EPR pairs).
• 56. t/n A psychophysicist is someone who deals with the relationship between a physical stimulus and the sensation and perception it produces.
• 57. t/n Johannes Müller (1801–1858)
• 58. Hartmann's Grundproblem, p. 37
• 59. A. Döring, article in Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. XXVI, 1890, p. 390. publ. Heidelberg.
• 60. t/n Cognition is the mental activity of acquiring understanding of sense perceptions and concepts.

[ 1 ] According to everything we have seen, investigations at the beginning of a theory of knowing (epistemology), everything that already belongs to the arena of knowing must be excluded. Knowing itself is something that comes with the human condition, something arising through daily activity. If a theory of knowing is really to extend to illuminating the entire field of becoming familiar with, of knowing concepts and ideas (Erkennens), then it must take as its starting point something that has remained completely untouched by this activity, from which the latter itself receives its impetus. What to begin with lies outside of knowing cannot be knowing itself. Therefore, we must look for it immediately before the familiarity of knowing (cognition, Erkennens), so that the very next step that the human being takes from this precursor is an activity of knowing. The way in which this absolute first is to be determined must be such that nothing that already comes from knowing, from cognition, flows into it.

[ 2 ] But such a beginning can only be made with the immediately given picture of the world, the world picture that is available to man before he has subjected it in any way to the cognitive process, before he has made even the slightest statement about it, before he has made the slightest mental judgement about it. What passes before us, and what we pass by, which is a disconnected world view, not separated into individual components,⁶¹ in which nothing is separated, nor related to, or determined by anything else, that is what is immediately given. At this stage of existence-awareness (des Daseins), if we may use the expression, no object, no event is more important, more meaningful than any other. The rudimentary animal-organ, devoid of meaning for development and for life itself, has the right, perhaps for a later stage of recognition-illuminated existence-awareness, to be considered the noblest most essential part of the organism.

Before all cognitive activity, nothing presents itself in the world picture as substance, nothing as accident, nothing as cause or effect; the opposites matter-spirit, body-soul, have not yet been created. But we must also keep away any other predicate from the worldview held at this stage. It can be understood neither as reality nor as appearance, neither as subjective nor as objective, neither as accidental nor as necessary. Whether it is a “thing in itself” or a mere idea cannot be decided at this stage. We have already seen that the findings of physics and physiology, which lead to subsuming “the given” under one of the above categories, must not be placed at the forefront of epistemology.

[ 3 ] If a being with fully developed human intelligence were suddenly created from nothing and confronted the world, the first impression that the world would make on its senses and thinking would be something like what we call the immediately given world view. However, the same thing is not present to a person in this form at any moment of his life. There is nowhere in his development a boundary between pure, passive turning towards what is immediately given and the thinking recognition of it. This circumstance could raise concerns about our positing a beginning of epistemology. About this Hartmann says, “We do not ask what is the content of consciousness of the child who is awakening to consciousness, or of the animal standing at the lowest stage of living creatures, because the philosophizing person has no experience of this. He cannot infer or reconstruct the content of consciousness of primitive biologic organisms at any stage from fertilization to death, as such attempts must always be based on personal experience. We must therefore first determine what is the content of consciousness found by the philosophizing person at the beginning of philosophical reflections”.⁶² The objection to this, however, is that the world view that we have at the beginning of philosophical reflection already contains predicates that are only conveyed through cognition. These must not be accepted uncritically, but must be carefully peeled out of the world picture so that it appears completely pure of everything that has been added through the cognitive process. The boundary between what is given and what is known will not coincide with any moment of human development, but must be drawn artificially. But this can happen at any stage of development if we only correctly draw the line between what comes to us without mental determination, before recognition, and what is made from it through determination and recognition.

[ 4 ] Now one can accuse me of having already accumulated a whole series of mental characterizations, so that I may separate that supposedly immediate world view from the one that people have completed through cognitive processing. But the following must be said against this: the thoughts we have brought up should not characterize that world view, should not indicate any properties of it, should not say anything at all about it, but should only guide our consideration, in such a way that it is taken to the boundary where recognition is placed at its beginning. There can therefore be no talk of the truth or error, the accuracy or falsity of those statements, which in our opinion precede the moment in which we stand at the beginning of the theory of knowledge. They only have the task of leading appropriately to this beginning.

No one who is about to deal with epistemological problems is at the same time confronted with what is rightly called the beginning of knowing, for he has already developed knowledge to a certain extent. To remove from this everything that has been gained by cognition, and to establish a pre-cognitive beginning can only be done conceptually. But concepts have no cognitive value at this stage; they have the purely negative task of removing everything from the field of vision that belongs to knowledge and leading it to where knowing begins. These considerations are signposts pointing to the beginning of the act of knowing, but do not yet belong to it. In everything that the epistemologist puts forward before establishing the beginning, there is only expediency or inexpediency, not truth or error. But even in this starting point itself, all error is excluded, because the error can only begin with recognition, with knowing (Erkennen), and cannot therefore lie before it.

[ 5 ] The last sentence cannot be claimed by any epistemologist not proceeding from these considerations. Where the starting point is made by mentally evaluating an object (or subject), an error is possible at the very beginning, namely right at this evaluation. The justification of this depends on the laws on which the act of knowing is based. However, this can only emerge during epistemological investigations. Only if one says that I separate all mental determinations acquired through knowing from my picture of the world and only hold on to everything that comes into the horizon of my observation without my intervention, then all error is excluded. Since I fundamentally abstain from making any statements, I cannot make any mistakes. [ 6 ] Insofar as error comes into consideration epistemologically, it can only lie within the act of cognition. An illusion is not an error, so if the moon appears larger to us at its rising point than at its zenith, we are not dealing with an error, but with a fact well founded in the laws of nature. An error in knowing would only arise if we incorrectly interpreted “bigger” and “smaller” when combining given perceptions in thinking, but this interpretation lies within the act of knowing.

[ 7 ] If one really wants to understand cognition in its entire essence, then one must undoubtedly first grasp it where it begins, where it sits in the world. It is also clear that what lies before this beginning must not be included in the explanation of cognition, but rather must be assumed. Penetrating the essence of our assumptions is the task of scientific work (wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis) in its individual branches, where we do not want to gain special knowledge about this or that, but rather we want to examine knowing itself. Only when we have understood the act of cognition can we come to a judgment about the significance of statements about world-contents that are made with cognition.

[ 8 ] That is why we refrain from making any attribution, any characterization about what is immediately given, so long as we do not know how such an attribution relates to what is determined. Even with the concept of the “immediately given” we say nothing about what lies before cognition. Its only purpose is to point out the same thing, to focus attention on it. The conceptual formation is here, at the beginning of the theory of knowing, only the first connection in which knowing sits in relation to world-content. This designation itself provides for the eventuality that the entire content of the world is only a web of our own "I", and that exclusive subjectivism therefore rightly exists, because there can be no question of this first connection (dieser Tatsache) being “given”. It could only be the result of cognitive consideration. In other words, it could only turn out to be correct through epistemology, but could not serve as a prerequisite for it.

[ 9 ] Everything that can arise within the horizon of our experiences in the broadest sense is now included in this immediately given world content: sensations, perceptions, views, feelings, acts of will, dream and fantasy images, images, concepts, and ideas. [ 10 ] At this level, illusions and hallucinations are also on an equal footing with other parts of the world content. For what relationship these perceptions have to other perceptions can only be learned by cognitive observation. [ 11 ] If a theory of knowing starts from the assumption that everything just mentioned is the content of our consciousness, then the question immediately arises of how we get from mere consciousness to knowledge of being, to being aware of being. Where is the springboard that leads us from the subjective to the trans-subjective? For me, the matter is completely different. For me, consciousness and the "I" idea are initially only parts of the immediately given, and what relationship the former has to the latter is only a result of cognitive awareness. We do not want to determine cognition from consciousness, but vice versa; consciousness and the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity is determined by cognition. Since we initially isolate the given without any predicates, we must ask how we even arrive at a characterization of it. How is it possible to begin the activity of knowing? How can we designate one part of the worldview, for example, as perception, and another part as concept, one as being, the other as appearance, one as cause, another as effect. How can we separate ourselves from the objective, and regard ourselves as "I" compared to the "not-I"?

[ 12 ] We must find the bridge from the “given” worldview to the one we develop through our knowing. The difficulty is that so long as we just passively stare at what is given, we cannot find a fundamental starting point to build on, on which to continue to develop knowledge. We would have to find a place somewhere in the given where we can intervene, where there is something of the same nature (Homogenes) as cognition. If everything were entirely just given, then it would have to be a matter of simply staring out into the external world and a completely equivalent staring into the world of our individuality. We could then at most describe things as external, but never understand them. Our concepts only have a purely external connection to what they refer to, not an internal one. For true knowing, everything depends on us finding an area somewhere in the given where our knowing activity not only presupposes something given, but actively stands in the middle of the given. In other words, it must turn out, especially when we strictly adhere to what is merely given, that not everything is just given. Our prerequisite, through its strict adherence, must partially cancel itself out. We set it up so that we do not arbitrarily fix any beginning of the theory of knowing, but truly seek it out. Everything can be “the given” in this sense, even what is not given in its innermost nature. It then only appears to us formally as a given, but upon closer inspection it reveals itself to be what it really is.

[ 13 ] All the difficulty in understanding knowing lies in the fact that we do not produce the content of the world from within ourselves. If we did that, there would be no recognition at all. A question for me can only arise from a thing if it is “given” to me. Onto whatever I bring forth, I bestow characterizations myself, so I don't need to ask about their authentication. [ 14 ] This is the second point of my epistemology, namely the postulate that there must be something in the realm of the given where our activity does not float in the void, where the content of the world itself is the active agent.

[ 15 ] We determined the beginning of the theory of knowing in such a way that we placed it entirely before cognitive activity, so that no prejudice would cloud knowing itself. In the same way we determine the first step that we take in the development of our discourse, so that there can be no question of error or inaccuracy. For we do not make a judgment about anything, but only point out the requirement that must be fulfilled if knowing is to come about at all. It all depends on us being aware, with full consideration (Besonnenheit, basking in the Sun’s clarity), that we put forward as a postulate the characteristics which that part of the world's content must have on which we can use our cognitive skill.

[ 16 ] Anything else is quite unthinkable. The content of the world as given would be completely undermined. No part can give the impetus of itself to create order in such a chaos. Therefore, cognitive activity must make a power statement and say that certain parts must be such and such. Such a power statement in no way affects the quality of the given. It does not bring arbitrary assertions into the science of clear thinking. It doesn't claim anything at all, but just says that if knowledge is to be clarified at all, then one must search for an arena as described above. If such is present, then there is a clarification of knowing, otherwise not. While we began the theory of knowing with the "given" in general, we now limit the requirement to keeping a specific viewpoint in mind.

[ 17 ] We now should examine this stipulation more closely. Where do we find anything in the world picture that is not just a given, but is a given insofar as it is at the same time something produced, brought forth (Hervorgebrachtes) in the act of knowing?

[ 18 ] We must be completely clear that what is brought forth in the act of knowing must have been given fresh and unmodified. Conclusive inferences are not necessary to recognize this. This already shows that the sensory qualities do not satisfy our requirements, because we do not know directly that these do not arise without our activity, but only through physical and physiological considerations. But we do know directly that concepts and ideas always first enter the sphere of unmodified-given in and by the act of knowing. Therefore no one is mistaken about this characterization of concepts and ideas. One can certainly consider hallucinations to be something given from outside, but one will never believe that its concepts are given to us without our own work of thinking. A madman considers certain things and conditions to be real, and endows them with the label “reality”, even though there are no facts to back that up. A madman will never say, however, of his concepts and ideas, that they enter the world of the “given” without his own activity. Everything else in our worldview has such a character that it must be ‘given’ if we want to experience it, and only with concepts and ideas does the reverse hold true. We must produce Ideas and concepts if we want to experience them.

Only what we call concepts and ideas have been given to us in a form we call “the intellectual view”. Kant and the more recent philosophers who follow him completely deny that people have this ability, because all thinking is supposed to incorporate only objects standing in the vicinity (Gegenstände) and brings forth absolutely nothing out of itself. In the intellectual view, however, the content must be given along with the think-form (Denkform). But isn't this really the case with pure concepts and ideas? — By concept I mean a rule according to which the unconnected elements of perception are combined into a unity. Causality, for example, is a concept. Idea is just a concept with a larger content. Organism, taken completely abstractly, is an idea. — One only must look at concepts and ideas in the form in which they are still completely free of any empirical content. For example, if you want to grasp the pure concept of causality, you must not stick to any specific causality or to the sum of all causalities, but rather to the mere concept of it. We must look for causes and effects in the world (Ursachen und Wirkungen, primal circumstances and how they work themselves out), but we ourselves must produce causality as thought-form before we can find it in the world. But if one wanted to hold on to Kant's assertion that concepts without intuitions are empty, it would be unthinkable to demonstrate the possibility of characterizing the given world through concepts. Suppose two elements of the world's content are given, a and b. If I am to look for a relationship between them, I must do so with a rule that has a certain content, but I can only produce such a rule in the act of cognition itself. I cannot take the rule from the object, because any characterization of the object is done with the help of the rule. Such a rule for the determination of actuality, of being real (Bestimmung des Wirklichen) arises completely within a being capable of pure inner grasping, of pure inner understanding (der rein begrifflichen Entität).

[ 19 ] Before going any further, let's first eliminate a possible objection. It seems as if the idea of the “I”, the “personal subject”, plays a role unconsciously in our thought processes, and that we use this idea in the progress of our thought development without having demonstrated the justification for it. This is the case when we say, for example that we produce concepts, or when we make this or that demand. But nothing in our statements gives reason to see such sentences as more than stylistic twists. As we have already said, the fact that the act of knowing belongs to an “I” and proceeds from it can only be established by cognitive considerations. So, for the time being we should only speak of the act of knowing without even mentioning its bearer. For everything that has been established up to now is limited to the fact that there is something "given" and that the postulate stated above arises from one point of this "given", and finally that concepts and ideas are the in the arena that corresponds to this postulate. This is not to deny that the point from which the postulate arises is the “I”. But for now, we limit ourselves to presenting these two steps of epistemology in their purity.

• 61. Differentiation of the given, indistinct, world picture into distinct entities is already a mental activity (ein Akt gedanklicher Tätigkeit).
• 62. Hartmann, Grundproblem, S. 1.

[ 1 ] In concepts and ideas, we have “the given”, and at the same time, that which leads beyond the given. But this offers the possibility of also determining the nature of the remaining cognitive activity. [ 2 ] We have separated out and started with a part of the given picture of the world by a postulate, because this specific part lies in what knowing really is. This separation was only done to be able to understand cognition. At the same time, we must also be clear that we have artificially disrupted the unity of the worldview. We must realize that the segment we have separated from the given stands in a necessary connection with the content of the world, irrespective of our postulate. In this way taking the next step in epistemology is set up. It will consist of restoring the unity that was torn apart to make knowing possible. This restoration occurs in thinking about the given world. In the thinking view of the world, the unification of the two parts of the world's content indeed takes place, that which we see as given on the horizon of our experiences, and that which must be produced in the act of knowing which is also given. The act of knowing is the synthesis of these two elements. In each individual act of knowing, one of these appears as something produced in the act itself, added through it to what is merely given. Only at the beginning of epistemology itself does what is otherwise always produced appear as a given.

[ 3 ] The given world infused with concepts and ideas therefore is contemplation of things by thinking. Thinking is therefore actually the act through which knowledge is conveyed. Knowledge can only come about when thinking itself organizes the content of the worldview. Thinking itself is an action that brings forth an appropriate content in the moment of knowing. So insofar as the recognized content flows from thinking alone, it presents no difficulty for cognition. Here we just need to observe, and we have the essence given directly. The description of thinking is at the same time the science of thinking. In fact, logic was never anything other than a description of the forms of thinking, never a demonstrable science. Evidence only consists of a synthesis, a union of thoughts with other world content.

Gideon Spicker rightly says in his book Lessing’s Weltanschauung (p. 5), “Whether thinking is correct we can never experience, neither empirically nor logically.” I can add, that with thinking, all evidence stops, because evidence already presupposes thinking. One can certainly prove a single fact, but the evidence cannot prove itself. We can only describe what evidence is. In logic all theory is merely empiricism; in the science of logic there is only observation. But if we want to know something outside of our thinking, we can only do so with the help of thinking.

The essence of thinking is to approach something “given” and bring it out of the chaos into a systematic interconnection with the world picture. Thinking therefore approaches the given content of the world as the forming principle. The process begins with mentally separating certain details from the whole totality of the world, for nothing is initially separate in the given, for everything is in continuous connection. Thinking now relates these separate details to one another in accordance with the forms it produces, and ultimately determines what results from this relationship. Because thinking establishes a connection between two separate parts of the content of the world, it has not determined anything about them of its own accord. We must just wait and see what happens due to establishing the connection. This result is knowing about relevant parts of the world's content. If it were in the nature of the latter to express nothing at all about itself through that reference, well, then the attempt at thinking would fail and a new one would have to take its place. All knowledge is based on the human being’s bringing two or more elements of reality into the correct connection and grasping what results from this.

Through establishing a connection between two separate parts of the content of the world, thinking certainly has not determined anything about them of its own accord. We just must wait and see what happens due to establishing the connection. This result is knowing about the relevant parts of the world's content. If it were in the nature of the latter to express nothing at all about itself through that reference, well, then the attempt at thinking would fail and a new one would have to take its place. All knowledge is due to the human being bringing two or more elements of reality into the correct interconnection and grasping what results from this.

[ 4 ] There is no doubt that we make many such forlorn attempts at thinking, not only in the experience of seeing things with rigorous logical clarity (Wissenschaft), as the history of science teaches us sufficiently, but also in ordinary life. In the simple cases of forlorn error that we usually encounter, however, the right attempt takes the place of the wrong one so quickly that we don't become aware of the latter at all, or only rarely.

[ 5 ] Kant hovered over (schwebte) our progressive activity of thinking (connected as a hoof is to a cow, zum Behuf) in systematically structuring the world-content in his “synthetic unity of apperception”. But how little he become aware of the actual task of thinking is evident from his believing that the laws of pure natural science independent of any experience (a priori) can be derived from the rules by which this synthesis takes place. He failed to consider that the synthetic activity of thinking only prepares for acquiring the actual laws of nature. Let us imagine that we detach some content “a” from the world picture, and then another content “b”. If a lawful connection between “a” and “b” is to be recognized, thinking must first bring “a” into such a relationship with “b” that it becomes possible for the existing dependency to appear to us as a given. The actual content of a natural law only follows from what is given, and it is only up to thinking to create the opportunity through which the parts of the world picture are brought into such relationships; only then does their lawfulness becomes apparent. No objective laws follow from the mere synthetic activity of thinking.

[ 6 ] We must now ask what part thinking plays in establishing our scientific worldview, as opposed to the merely given worldview? From our presentation it follows that thinking attends to, worries about, concerns itself (besorgt) with connecting things lawfully. In our scheme above, let us assume that “a” is the cause and “b” is the effect. The causal connection between “a” and “b” could never become knowledge if thinking were not able to form the concept of causality. But to recognize “a” as a cause and “b” as an effect in an individual case, it is necessary that these two correspond to what is meant by cause and effect. The same applies to other categories of thinking.

[ 7 ] It will be useful here to refer to Hume's comments on the concept of causality in a few words. Hume says that the concepts of cause and effect have their origin merely by our habit,⁶³ meaning, that often one event is observed followed by another, and we become accustomed to thinking of the two in causal connection, then when we notice the first, we expect the second to occur. However, this view is based on a completely erroneous idea of the causal relationship. If I meet the same person over a series of days when I step out of the gate of my house, I will gradually get used to expecting the chronological sequence of the two events, but it will not even occur to me to find a causal connection here between my appearance and that of the other person in the same place. I will look at other parts of the world to explain the direct consequence of the facts mentioned. We do not determine the causal connection according to the temporal sequence, but rather according to the meaning of the parts of the world called cause and effect.

[ 8 ] Following from this (that thinking only carries out a formal activity in bringing about our scientific picture of the world), the content of any bit of knowledge cannot be fixed a priori before observation (before thinking's engagement with the given), but must emerge completely from the act of thinking. In this sense, all knowing is empirical. But it's hard to understand how it could be any different, as Kant's a priori judgments are basically not insights at all, but only postulates. In Kant's sense, one can only ever say that if a thing is to become the object of a possible experience, then it must conform to these laws. These are specifications that the subject makes to the objects. But one should believe that if we are to gain knowledge of what is given, then it must flow not from subjectivity, but from objectivity.

[ 9 ] Thinking says nothing a priori about the given, but it puts in place the forms on which the laws of phenomena come to light based on experience, a posteriori. [ 10 ] It is clear, that this view can make no difference a priori about the degree of certainty that an acquired cognitive judgment has. For certainty cannot be gained from anything other than the given itself. It can be objected that observation never says anything other than that some connection between phenomena takes place, but not that it must take place, and in the same case, always will take place. But this assumption is also erroneous. For if I recognize a certain connection between parts of the world picture, then in our sense it is nothing other than what results from these parts themselves. It is not something that I add to these parts, but something that essentially belongs to them, which therefore must always be there when they themselves are there.

[ 11 ] Only a view that considers all scientific activity to be merely using subjective maxims to link the elements of experience, which lie outside of the maxims, only such a view can believe that “a” and “b” can be linked today according to one law and tomorrow according to a different law (John Stuart Mill ⁶⁴ (1806–73). But anyone who understands that the laws of nature come from what is given, and are therefore what constitutes and determines the connection between phenomena, will not even think of speaking of a merely comparative universality of the laws obtained from observation. Of course, we do not mean to claim that the natural laws we have once assumed to be correct must necessarily be valid. But if a later case overturns a established law, then this is not due to the fact that the first time it could only be concluded with comparative generality, but rather because the conclusion was not completely correct at that time either. A genuine natural law is nothing other than the expression of a connection in the given picture of the world, and it does not exist without the facts that it regulates, just as these facts do not exist without the connection.

[ 12 ] We have characterized the nature of the act of knowing above, that given world thinking will be interfused with concepts and ideas. What follows from this? If the immediately given contained a complete whole, then such processing of it in cognition would be impossible and therefore unnecessary. We would then simply accept what is given as it is and be satisfied with it in this form. Only if there is something hidden in the given, which does not yet appear when we look at it in its immediacy, but only with the help of the order introduced by thinking, then the act of knowing is possible. What lies in the given before mental processing is not its full whole.

[ 13 ] This becomes even clearer when we look more closely at the factors that come into consideration in the act of knowing. The first of these is the given. Being given is not a property of the given, but only an expression of its relationship to the second factor of the act of knowing. What the given is according to its own nature remains completely obscure through this determination. The second factor, the content of the given that can be grasped, is found by thinking in the act of knowing as necessarily connected to the given. We now ask ourselves:

• Where is the separation between the given and the concept?
• Where is the union of these?

The answer to these two questions without doubt has been given in our previous examination. The separation exists only in the act of knowing, the connection lies in the given. From this it necessarily follows that the graspable (begriffliche) content is only a part of what is given, and that the act of knowing consists in uniting the components of the world picture that were initially given separately. The given world view therefore only becomes complete through that indirect kind of givenness that is brought about by thinking. Due to the form of immediacy, the world view initially appears in a completely incomplete form.

[ 14 ] Within the world-content, if the thought-content were united with the given at the outset, then there would be no knowing. For nowhere could the need arise to go beyond what is given. If we were to produce all the content of the world with our thinking and within it, then there would be just as little thinking. For we don't need to know what we produce ourselves. Cognition is therefore based on the content of the world having been given to us primordially in a form that is incomplete, that does not embody it completely, but that has a second essential side in addition to what it presents directly. This second, originally not-given side of the world's content is unveiled, uncloaked (enthüllt) through knowing. What appears to us separate and sundered (abgesondert) in thinking are therefore not empty forms, but a sum of characterizations (categories), which however are form-giving for the remainder of the world's content. Only the gained-by-knowing world-content gestalt, in which both sides are illustrated, can be called reality.

• 63. t/n F. H. Jacobi, David Hume über den Glauben oder Idealismus und Realismus; Breslau 1787, and Hume, David (1748) Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (1 ed.). London: A. Millar.
• 64. t/n John Stuart Mill, System of Logic, 1843, “The most scientific proceeding can be no more than an improved form of that which was primitively pursued by the human understanding while undirected by science. (System, VII: 318-406)

[ 1 ] With what has been presented so far, we have clarified the idea of knowing. This idea is now given in human awareness without any mediation, insofar as it is limited to knowing itself. The ego (without mediation the center of awareness) is given external perception, internal perception, and perception of its own self-existence (sein eigenes Dasein). (It hardly needs to be said that we do not want the term "center" to be associated with a theoretical view of the nature of consciousness, but rather that we are only using it as a stylistic shorthand for the overall characteristic features of awareness.) The ego feels the urge to find more in what is given than what is immediately given. It goes beyond the given world to the second world of thinking, and it combines the two through a free decision (about possible reality) which we have settled on as the idea of knowing.

Herein lies a fundamental difference between (firstly) the way, in objective human awareness, in which concept and immediately-given show themselves bound together in total reality, and (secondly) that which has value regarding the remaining world-content. With every other part of the world picture, we must imagine that the connection is original and necessary from the outset. Only at the beginning of knowing does an artificial separation occur for knowing, which ultimately will again be uplifted (aufgehoben), by means of the appropriate recognition of the original nature of what is objective.

Things are different with human awareness. Here the connection is only present if it is carried out consciously in actual activity. With any other object, the separation has no meaning for the object, only for knowing does it have meaning. The connection is the first thing here, the separation is the derivative. The act of knowing only carries out the separation, because in its own way, it cannot take possession of the connection unless it has separated first. But the concept and the given reality of awareness are originally separate. The connection is what is derived, and that is why knowing is described here in this way.

Because in consciousness the idea and the given necessarily appear separately, the whole of reality is split into these two parts, and because consciousness can only bring about the combination of the two elements mentioned through its own activity, in this way it arrives at full reality through bringing to reality the act of knowing. The remaining categories (ideas) would necessarily be linked to the corresponding forms of the given, if they were not included in knowing; the idea of knowing can be united with the given related to it only through the activity of awareness. A real consciousness exists only when it realizes itself, when it brings itself to reality (sich selbst verwirklicht). I believe that I am sufficiently prepared to expose the fundamental error of Fichte's Principles of Science (Wissenschaftlehre) and at the same time to provide the key to understanding it.

Fichte is the philosopher who felt most vividly (among Kant's successors) that the foundation of all scientific thinking (Wissenschaft),⁶⁵ could only stand within a theory of consciousness, but he never realized why that was so. He felt that what we call the second step of epistemology, and to which we give the form of a postulate, must really be carried out by the ego. We see this for example, in his following words. “The Principles of Science (Wissenschaftslehre), insofar as it is intended to be a systematic science (just like all possible sciences insofar as they are intended to be systematic), arises through a stipulation of freedom, which here in particular stipulates the art of handling intelligence in raising it to consciousness at all.— Through this free handling (Handlung), the necessary action of intelligence, already itself a form, will now be taken up substantially as the new form of perception of experience (des Wissens) or aware existence (Bewußtseins)..." ⁶⁶ What is here understood by the art of handling of intelligence, expressing what is darkly felt in clear terms, is nothing other than fully bringing into awareness the idea of knowing. If Fichte had been fully aware of this, he would simply have had to formulate the above sentence like this: The Principles of Science (Wissenschaftslehre) must raise knowing, insofar as it is still an unconscious activity of the ego, into awareness-existence (Bewußtsein). It must show that the objectification of the idea of knowing is carried out in the ego as a necessary action.

[ 2 ] In his attempt to define the activity of the ego, Fichte concludes, "Whoever’s existence (essential being) consists solely in the fact that it assumes itself as being, that is the ego, as an absolute subject.” ⁶⁷ For Fichte, this positioning of the ego is the first unencumbered active handling that “lies at the basis of all other awareness of existence.” ⁶⁸ In Fichte's sense, the ego can only begin all its activity through an absolute decision. But for Fichte it is impossible to help this activity (which is absolutely done by the ego) to find any content for its actions. For it has nothing upon which to direct this activity, and by which it should determine itself. His ego is supposed to carry out an act, but what should it do? Because Fichte did not establish the concept of knowing that the ego should realize, he struggled in vain to find any progression from his absolute act to a further determination of the ego. Yes, he finally declares regarding such a progression, that the investigation into this lies outside the limits of theory. In deducing what the mental picture is, he assumes neither an absolute activity of the ego nor of the “non-ego”, but takes his start rather from something determined and at the same time determining, because nothing else is or can be contained directly in consciousness.

What determines this determination remains completely undecided in theory, and through this indeterminacy we are driven beyond theory into the practical part of scientific theory.⁶⁹ With this clarification, Fichte destroys knowing altogether. For the practical activity of the ego belongs to a completely different arena. Clearly, the postulate I made above can only be realized through a free action of the ego, but if the ego is to behave in a way of knowing, then it is important that the determination of the ego is to realize the idea of knowing. It is certainly true that the ego can do many other things of its own free will. But the epistemological foundation of all sciences is not based on a characteristic of the free ego, but rather on a characteristic of the knowing ego. However, Fichte allowed himself to be influenced too much by his subjective tendency to place the freedom of the human personality in the brightest light. Harms rightly remarks in his speech on Fichte's philosophy S.15, "His world view is predominantly and exclusively ethical, and his epistemology has no other character." Cognition would have absolutely no task if all areas of reality were given in their totality. But since the ego, so long as it is not integrated by thinking into the systematic whole of the world picture, is nothing other than something directly given, simply showing what it does is not sufficient. Fichte, however, is of the opinion that everything is already done for the ego by simply looking for it. “We must seek out the first principle (absolutely without presuppositions) of all human knowing. It cannot be proven or determined if it is to be the absolute first principle.” ⁷⁰

We have seen that in proving and defining, only the content of pure logic is out of place, not required. The ego, however, belongs to reality, where it is necessary to determine the presence of this or that category in the given. Fichte didn't do that. And this is the reason why he gave his scientific theory such a wrong shape. Zeller notes ⁷¹ that the logical formulas through which Fichte wants to arrive at the concept of the ego only poorly disguise the fact that Fichte wants to achieve the already preconceived purpose of getting to this starting point at all costs. These words refer to the first form that Fichte gave to his scientific theory in 1794. If we hold on to the fact that Fichte, based on the whole nature of his philosophizing, could have wanted nothing other than to have science begin through an absolute power decree, then there are only two ways in which this beginning appears understandable. One was to touch consciousness in some of its empirical activities and to crystallize the pure concept of the ego by gradually peeling away everything that does not originally follow from it. The other way, however, was to start with the original activity of the ego and to reveal its nature through self-reflection and self-observation. Fichte took the first path at the beginning of his philosophizing, but as his philosophizing coursed along, he gradually moved on to the second.

[ 3 ] Building on Kant's synthesis of “transcendental apperception”, Fichte found that all activity of the ego consisted in the assembly of the material of experience according to the forms of judgment. Judging consists in linking the predicate with the subject, which is expressed in a purely formal way by the sentence “a” = “a”. This proposition would be impossible if the unknown factor “x” that connects the first and second “a” were not based on an absolute ability to posit. Because the sentence does not mean: “a” is, but rather: if “a” is, then “a” is. There can be no question of postulating “a” absolutely. There is nothing left to arrive at something totally valid, other than to declare the positing itself to be absolute. While the “a” is conditional, the positing of the “a” is unconditional. But this setting is an act of the ego. The ego therefore can posit absolutely and unconditionally. In the sentence “a” = “a”, one “a” is only posited by presupposing the other; namely it is set by the ego. Fichte states, “If ‘a’ is posited in the ego, then it is posited.” ⁷² This connection is only possible under the condition that there is something in the ego that is always the same, something that moves from one “a” to the other. And the “x” mentioned above is based on this constant. The ego that posits one “a” is the same as that which posits the other. And that means “I” “I” This sentence expressed in the form of the proposition: “If I am, then so it is”, but this proposition has no meaning. The ego is not placed under the presupposition of another, but rather it presupposes itself. But that means it is absolute and unconditional.

The hypothetical form of the judgment, which belongs to all judgments without the presupposition of the absolute ego, is transformed here into the form of the absolute existential sentence: “I simply am”. Fichte also expresses this as follows: “The ego originally posits its own being.” ⁷³ We see that Fichte's entire derivation is nothing but a kind of pedagogical discussion to lead his readers to the point where the knowledge of the unconditioned activity of the ego dawns on them. The purpose is to make clear to his readers, that without this activity of the ego, there is no ego at all.

[ 4 ] We now want to look back at Fichte's train of thought. If you look more closely, it turns out that there is a crack in it, and one that calls into question the correctness of the view of the original act. What really is absolute in the positing of the I? The judgment is made: If “a” is, then “a” is. The “a” is placed by the ego. There can be no doubt about this setting. But even if it is unconditional as an activity, the ego can only set something. It cannot posit “activity in and of itself”, but only a specific activity. In short: the setting must have a content. But it cannot take this from itself, otherwise it could do nothing but set forever. There must therefore be something for the positing, for the absolute activity of the ego, which is realized through it. Without the ego taking hold of something given and positing it, it can posit nothing, and therefore cannot posit. This is therefore shown by a Fichte-like sentence that the ego posits its existence, this existence is a category. We are back to our statement: The activity of the ego is based on the ego positing the concepts and ideas of the given out of its own free decision. Only because Fichte unconsciously sets out to establish the ego as something that has existence does he reach his conclusion. If he had developed the concept of knowing, he would have arrived at the true starting point of the theory of knowing (epistemology), that the ego posits knowing. Since Fichte did not make it clear to himself what determines the activity of the ego, he simply described the positing of existence as the character of this activity. But in doing so he also limited the absolute activity of the ego. For if only the “existence-positing” of the ego is unconditional, then everything else that emanates from the ego is conditional. But every path to get from the unconditional to the conditional is also cut off. If the ego is unconditioned only in the direction indicated, then the possibility for it to posit something other than its own being through an original act immediately ceases. The need therefore arises to give the reason for all other activity of the ego. Fichte searched for one in vain, as we have already seen above.

[ 5 ] Therefore, he turned to the other path described above to derive the ego. As early as 1797 in his First Introduction to the Doctrine of Scientific Awareness he recommended self-observation as the right thing to do to recognize the ego by its very own character. “Pay attention to yourself, turn your gaze away from everything that surrounds you and peer into your inner self. This is the first demand that philosophy makes to its apprentices. There is no talk of anything outside of you, but only of yourself.” ⁷⁴ This way of introducing the Principles of Science (Wissenschaftslehre), however, has a great advantage over the other. For self-observation does not in fact deliver the activity of the ego one-sidedly in a certain direction, it does not merely show it as positing existence, but rather it shows it in its all-round development, how it tries to think and understand the immediately given content of the world. Introspection shows the ego how it builds its worldview from the combination of the given and the concept. But for anyone who has not gone through the consideration above, who does not know that the ego only comes to the full content of reality when it approaches the given with thinking, for him the process of knowing appears as the world spinning out of the ego. For Fichte, the worldview becomes more and more a construction of the ego. He increasingly emphasizes that what is important in scientific teaching is to awaken the sense that can overhear the ego constructing the world. Anyone who can do this appears to Fichte to be at a higher level of knowing than someone who only sees the constructed, the finished existence. Anyone who only looks at the world of objects, does not recognize that they are created by the ego. But whoever looks at the ego in its construing sees the basis of the finished world picture, and knows how it came about, for it appears to him due to certain given prerequisites. Someone with ordinary consciousness only sees what is posited, what is determined in this or that way. He lacks insight into the antecedents, into the reasons why it is set this way and not otherwise. According to Fichte, the conscious experience of perceiving with logic and clarity (das Wissen) is the task of a completely new sense. I find this most clearly expressed in his Introductory lectures on his Principles of Science (Wissenschaftslehre) that he read aloud in the fall of 1813 at the University of Berlin: “This doctrine presupposes a completely new inner sensory tool through which a new world is created that does not exist at all for the ordinary person." ⁷⁵ Also: “The world of the new sense (and thereby itself) is for the moment clearly determined. It is seeing the antecedents on which judgment is based. It is something that itself grounds the grounds of existence, which is exactly why, because it is this, is not itself again and is an existence.” ⁷⁶

[ 6 ] Here too, Fichte lacks a clear insight into the content of the activity carried out by the ego. He never got through to it. That is why his Wissenschaftslehre could not become what it otherwise would have had to become given its entire structure, which is a theory of knowing as basic philosophical science. Once it was recognized that the activity of the ego must be determined by the ego itself, it was obvious to think that it also receives its determination from the ego. But how can this happen other than by giving content to the purely formal actions of the ego. But if this is really to be introduced by the ego into its otherwise completely undetermined activity, then it must also be determined according to its nature. Otherwise, it could at most be realized by a “thing in itself” lying in the ego, whose tool is the ego, but not by the latter itself. If Fichte had attempted this definition, then he would have arrived at the concept of knowing, which is to be realized by the ego. Fichte's teaching of science is proof that even the most astute thinker will not succeed in having a fruitful impact in any field if one does not arrive at the correct thought form (category, idea), which when supplemented with what is given, gives reality. Such a thinker is the same as a person who listens to the most wonderful melodies, but doesn't hear them at all, due to having no feeling for melody. Consciousness, as a given, can only be characterized by someone who knows how to put himself in possession of the “idea of consciousness”.

[ 7 ] Fichte came quite close to the correct insight. In 1797 he found in his Introduction to the Principles of Science that there were two theoretical systems, dogmatism,⁷⁷ in which the ego is determined by things, and idealism, in which things are determined by the ego. In his view, both stand as possible worldviews. Both allow consistent implementation. But if we give in to dogmatism, then we must give up the independence of the ego and make it dependent on the thing-in-itself. We are in the opposite situation when we pay homage to idealism. Which of the systems one or the other philosopher wants to choose, Fichte simply leaves it up to the discretion of the ego. But if it wants to preserve its independence, it would suspend belief in things outside of us and surrender to idealism.

[ 8 ] All that Fichte had needed was to have considered that the ego cannot come to any real, well-founded decision and determination if it does not presuppose something that helps it to make one. All determination from the ego would remain empty and contentless if the ego does not find something full of content and thoroughly determined that makes it possible for it to determine what is given and thus also allows the choice to be made between idealism and dogmatism. But this thoroughly full-of-content world is the world of thinking. And determining what is given through thinking means knowing. We may linger on Fichte’s work wherever we want, but everywhere we will find that his train of thought immediately takes root when we think of the completely gray, empty activity of the ego as being filled and regulated by what we have called the process of knowing.

[ 9 ] The ego can put itself into activity through freedom, which makes it possible for it to make real the category of knowing through self-determination. In the rest of the world, the categories are linked to the given that corresponds to them through objective necessity. Investigating the nature of free self-determination will be the task of ethics and metaphysics based on our epistemology. This task will also have to discuss the question of whether the ego is also able to realize ideas other than knowing. it is already clear from the comments made above, however, that the realization of knowing occurs through freedom. For if what is immediately given and the associated form of thinking are united by the ego in the process of knowing, then the unification of the two elements of reality that otherwise always remain separate in consciousness can occur only through an act of freedom.

[ 10 ] Through the preceding discussion, light will be thrown on critical idealism in a completely different way. To anyone who has studied Fichte's system in detail, it appears to be a matter close to the heart of this philosopher to maintain the principle that nothing can enter the ego from outside, nothing that is not originally posited by the ego itself. But this entails that no idealism will ever be able to derive from the ego that form of world content that we have described as the immediately given. This form can only be given, never construed from thinking. Just consider that even if we were given the rest of the color gamut, we would not be able to add even one shade of color purely from the ego. We can form a picture of the most distant areas of the country, areas that we have never seen, if we have experienced similar elements individually as given. We then combine these individual elements we have experienced into a picture based on the descriptions given to us. But we will strive in vain to spin out of ourselves even a single element of perception that never lay in the realm of the “given”. It is quite different to simply to become acquainted (kennen) with something in the given world. it is also different to recognize (erkennen) the essential nature of something or someone. The latter, although it is intimately linked to the content of the world, is not clear to us unless we build reality ourselves from what is given and from thinking. The actual “what” of the given is posited for the ego only by the ego itself. But the ego has absolutely no reason to put the essential nature of a “given” inside itself, for it sees the matter first in a totally unencumbered way. Therefore, what is posited by the ego as the essential nature of the world is not posited without the ego, but through it.

[ 11 ] It is not the first form in which reality confronts the ego that is its true form, but the last form that the ego makes out of it. That first form has no meaning at all for the objective world, and only has such a meaning as a basis for the cognitive process. Therefore, the shape of the world that theory gives to it is not the subjective one, but rather that which is first given to the ego. If one wants to continue along with Volkelt’s followers, who call this given world experience, one must say that scientific knowing completes the organization of our awareness that appears in subjective form as experience, as emerging world-picture as what it essentially is.

[ 12 ] Our epistemology provides the basis for an idealism that understands itself in the true sense of the word. It establishes the belief that the essence of the world is conveyed in thinking. The relationship between the parts of the world's content can be shown by nothing other than thinking, whether it is the relationship of the heat of the sun to the heated stone, or of the ego to the outside world. Thinking alone is the element that determines all things in their relationships to one another.

[ 13 ] The objection that Kantianism could still make would be that the essential determination of the given as characterized above is only one for the ego. In the spirit of our basic conception, we must reply to this that the split between the ego and the external world only exists within the given, and therefore that “for the ego” has no meaning when compared to the thinking observation that unites all opposites. The ego as something separated from the outside world is completely lost in the thinking world view, so it no longer makes any sense to speak of determinations solely for the ego.

• 65. t/n In this sense science is consciously thinking about experiences with clarity and logic
• 66. Fichte, Über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophie, Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, p. 71.
• 67. Ibid. Vol. I, p. 97.
• 68. Ibid. Vol. I, p. 91.
• 69. Ibid. Vol. I, p. 178.
• 70. Ibid. Vol. I, p. 91.
• 71. Eduard Zeller (1814–1908), Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz, History of German Philosophy Since Leibnitz, Munich, 1871–75, p. 605.
• 72. Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, p. 94.
• 73. Ibid. Vol. I, p. 98.
• 74. Ibid. Vol. I, p. 422.
• 75. Ibid. Vol. I, p. 422.
• 76. J. G. Fichtes Nachgelassene Werke. Herausgegeben von J. H. Fichte, Bd. 1, Bonn 1834, S.4 und S.16.
• 77. t/n The meaning of dogmatism here is unclear. Here it sounds like materialism, but with the recent growing acceptance of materialism, dogmatism has come to be seen as something like Bishop Berkeley’s spiritism. In the modern view (see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on idealism), idealism is often paired with its opposite realism, and materialism with its opposite spiritism. Anyone holding a specific world-view usually accuses those holding different views of being dogmatic, that is, holding beliefs that are unquestioned, undefended, and unsubstantiated.

[ 1 ] We have grounded ⁷⁸ the theory of knowing (Erkenntnistheorie) on the concept of the act of clear, conscious, logical scientific thinking about perceptions (Wissenschaft) as the significant way to understand all human conceptions (Wissen). Only through clear logical thinking do we procure the relationship between individual concepts and the world. With the help of this sort of scientific thinking, it is possible to come to a world outlook. We reach the basic meaning of conception (positives Wissen) through the individual perceptions. The value of perceptions for reality we experience through the theory of knowing, through epistemology. By sticking strictly to this principle, and not using any individual perceptions in our argument about immediately approaching some object of the cognitive process, we have overcome all one-sided world outlooks. One-sidedness usually arises due to the investigation immediately approaching some object of the cognitive process, instead of addressing the cognitive process itself. After our discussions, dogmatism must drop its "thing-in-itself" and subjective idealism must drop its "I" as a primary principle, because their mutual relationship is determined essentially only by thinking. “Thing-in-itself” and “I” cannot be determined by deriving one from the other, but both must be determined by thinking, according to their character and relationship. Skepticism must abandon its doubts about the knowability of the world, because there is nothing to doubt about what is "given", as it is still untouched by all the predicates given by knowing. But if it wanted to claim that thinking cognition could never approach things, it could only do this through thinking reflection, which would also prove it wrong. Anyone who wants to establish doubt in thinking implicitly admits that thinking has sufficient power to support convictions. Our epistemology, finally, overcomes one-sided empiricism and one-sided rationalism by uniting both at a higher level. In this way, it does justice to both. We do justice to the empiricist by showing that to attain awareness of all the contents of the given, it is sufficient to merely be in direct contact with it. The rationalist also finds his due in our argument, since we declare thinking to be the necessary and only mediator of knowing.

[ 2 ] The next thing our world outlook touches on, if we have grounded it on the theory of knowing, is the presentation of A. E. Biedermann.⁷⁹ But Biedermann needs (for the grounding of his standpoint’s declaration) something that in no way belongs in the theory knowing. He operates with the concepts of existence, substance, space, time, etc., without having first examined the cognitive process itself. Instead of stating that initially only the two elements given and thinking are present in the cognitive process, he speaks of modes of existence of reality.

[ 3 ] So, he says for example in section 15, "Two basic certainties are contained in the contents of consciousness: 1. There are two types of existence given to us, whose contrasting existence we describe as sensory and spiritual, material and ideal existence." And in section 19, “Whatever has a spatial-temporal existence exists as something material; what the grounds are of all processes involving existence-awareness and subjectivity of life, the existing ideal, is real as an ideal-existence.” Such considerations do not belong in epistemology, but in metaphysics, which can only be justified with the help of epistemology. It must be admitted that Biedermann's claims are in many ways like mine, but my method has absolutely no bearing on his. I therefore find no reason to deal with him directly. Biedermann tries to gain an epistemological point of view with the help of some metaphysical axioms. We seek to arrive at a view of reality by considering the cognitive process.

[ 4 ] And I believe that I have shown definitively that all conflicts between world viewpoints arise due to trying to experience objective perceptions (things, the “I”, awareness, etc.) without specifically becoming familiar with what primarily and alone can open an understanding to all other perceptions, namely the essential nature of what it is to experience conceptions (des Wissens) itself.

• 78. t/n This chapter marks the end of Steiner’s original doctoral dissertation.
• 79. A. E. Biedermann’s epistemological arguments in his 1884-85 edition Christliche Dogmatik, Vol. 1. A complete discussion of his point of view has been provided by Eduard von Hartmann’s Kritische Wanderungen durch die Philosophie der Gegenwart, Critical Survey of Contemporary Philosophy, p. 200 ff.

[ 1 ] The preceding discussion aimed to throw light on the relationship between knowing one’s essential being and knowing the objective nature of the world. What does it mean for us to become familiar with concepts (Erkenntnis) and to develop and practice science (Wissenschaft)? This was the question to which we sought the answer.

[ 2 ] We have seen that the innermost core of the world plays out in our knowing. The lawful harmony, by which the world-all will be governed, comes into human awareness through appearance. [ 3 ] It is therefore part of man's job to transfer the basic laws of the world, which otherwise govern all existence, but would never come into existence themselves, into the arena of apparent reality. This is the nature of knowing, that it represents the foundation of the world that can never be found in objective reality. Our familiarity with concepts, figuratively speaking, is a constant living into the foundation of the world.

[ 4 ] Such a conviction must also shed light on our practical view of life. [ 5 ] The entire character of one’s lifestyle is determined by moral ideals. These are the ideas we have about our tasks in life, or in other words, what we are supposed to accomplish through our actions.

[ 6 ] Our actions are part of general world events. It is therefore also subject to the general laws of these events. [ 7 ] If an event occurs somewhere in the universe, two things must be distinguished about it: its external course in space and time and its inner lawfulness.

[ 8 ] Awareness of this lawfulness for human activity is only a special case of awareness. The views we have derived about the nature of knowing must therefore also be applicable here. Recognizing oneself as an active personal entity, therefore, means maintaining familiarity (for our actions) with the corresponding laws, namely with moral concepts and ideals. If we have recognized this lawfulness, then our behavior is also our work. Lawfulness is then not something given, lying outside of the object, onto which happenings appear, but as the content of the activity of the object itself. The object in this case is our own self, our “I”, our ego. If our ego has thoroughly infused its essential behavior with real awareness, then it feels at once the master of its behavior. So long as this does not take place, the laws of action appear to us as something alien, they dominate us. What we accomplish is under the pressure they exert on us. Once they have been transformed from such a foreign entity into our very own activity, then this compulsion ceases. The compulsion has become our own nature. The law no longer rules over us, but rather within us over the events emanating from our ego. The realization of an event by means of a law that is external to the person who realizes it is an act of bondage, while the realization of an event by the person who realizes it is an act of freedom. Recognizing the laws of one's actions means being aware of one's freedom. According to our explanations, the process of knowing is the developmental process towards freedom.

[ 9 ] Not all human actions have this character. In many cases we do not have any knowledge of the laws that govern our actions. That part of our activity is the unfree part of our work. Opposite that is the activity in which we fully accept these laws. That is the free arena. Insofar as our life belongs to the free arena, it can only be described as moral. The transformation of the first area into one with the character of the second is the task of every individual’s development, as well as that of whole of mankind.

[ 10 ] The most important problem of all human thinking is this: to understand a person as a self-grounded, free personality.

Rudolf Steiner was awarded a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Rostock in 1891. To his doctoral dissertation he added a preface and a final chapter,¹ and this was published as Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, now in its 6^th edition (GA3). This is a new English translation of this seminal work, in which he first puts forth a world-view that combines perceptions with concepts, as two sides of a whole.

Wahrheit is cognate with the English word awareness and Wissenschaft with the phrase wising-up-ship. Wahrheit is being aware of the truth of what is in the surrounding world, rather than what we want it to be. Wissenschaft is a more mature activity of seeing perceptions and concepts with clarity and logic, in the sense of "I see what you mean". Seeing comes from the Latin verb scire, the noun form of which is sciēns, and so the title becomes Truth and Science. In translating Wissenschaft as science, however, one must remember that the scientific method can be applied to more than just sense impressions and sensory-derived concepts.

Erkentnistheorie and Wissenschaftslehre occur frequently in the text, and unfortunately both have been translated as epistemology, a Latin-derived term introduced into English philosophy in 1854 by James Frederick Ferrier.² The term epistemology did not exist when Fichte wrote his Wissenschaftslehre in 1794. Steiner chose indigenous words rather than Latin-derived words whenever possible, and expounded on this in his 1919 lectures on the Genius of Language. I have tried to do the same. The stem word of Erkenntnistheorie is to know (in the Scottish dialect to ken), and the prefix er- makes it an inner knowing of concepts and intuitions. In this sense Erkenntnistheorie becomes the Theory of Knowing. Wissenschaftslehre becomes the “Principles of Science” itself, or one might say, the doctrine of scientific awareness.

Another problem arises in translating das Ich as the “I”, which sounds awkward in English and is how Steiner said people refer to their ego after death. We must remember that the ego is that part of a person out of which he can say “I am”. It is not used in the Freudian sense of the conscious self in relation to the unconscious id and the adopted cultural rules of the superego. We share soul-nature with the animals, and the divisions of psychology traditionally are thinking, feeling, and willing. We do not share ego-nature with the animals, for it involves spirit-activities such as art, music, humor, belief, recognition, scientific thinking, technique, laughter, and weeping.

Translating Geist as spirit was clouded over at the Council of Constantinople of 869, which declared that people had only soul, and not spirit. Whether this was due to evil intent ³ or due to limitations of the Latin language ⁴ is unclear, but it resulted in the split of Roman Catholicism (which used Latin) and Eastern Orthodox (which used Greek). For Greek speakers psyche continued to be distinct from pneuma, which persisted in German speakers with the indigenous words Seele and Geist. English speakers still have the indigenous word soul, but must use the word spirit rather than ghost (which has too many psychological associations).

John Riedel MD
3/19/2024

• 1. Martina Maria Sam, Prädikat nicht beantragt Zur Benotung von Rudolf Steiners Promotion, Das Goetheanum 3–4 · 2023, p12-15.
• 2. Ferrier posited, much like Steiner, that one cannot conceive of a thing-in-itself because the synthesis of subject-with-object is the minimum unit of cognition, of knowing. https://iep.utm.edu/ferrier/
• 3. R Steiner, Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, GA 175, Lecture I, Berlin, March 27th, 1917
• 4. John Bickford Heard, The Tripartate Nature of Man, Chapter 1, 1868.

By means ¹³ of an analysis going back to the fundamental elements of the activity of inner knowing (Erkanntnisakt), the task of this work is to correctly formulate the problem of knowing and to set out the path to its solution. Through a critique of Kant’s thoughts on the roots of the theory of knowing (Erkenntnistheorie), it will be shown that from his standpoint no solution to the problem is possible. In doing so it must be acknowledged that it would have been very difficult to find a solution without Johannes Volkelt's groundbreaking preparatory work with its basic investigation into the concept of experience, with its precise framing of the concept of what preexists for us, with what is just given to us, with what is at hand for us (das Gegeben).¹⁴

Also let us hope that this work lays the foundation for overcoming the subjective nature inherent in Kant's theory of knowing. This has been done beyond doubt by showing that the subjective form in which the world picture presents itself to us in the act of knowing (in cognition), prior to any scientific explanation of it, is merely a necessary transitional stage which is overcome in the very process of knowing.

The so-called experience given to us, which positivism ¹⁵ and neo-Kantianism ¹⁶ would like to present as the only certainty, is in fact the most subjective of all. Showing this establishes objective idealism ¹⁷ as a necessary consequence of a self-understood theory of knowing. It differs from Hegel's metaphysical, absolute idealism ¹⁸ in that the reason for dividing reality into given-to-us and concepts is sought in the subjectivity of knowing, and seeks to resolve this not in an objective world dialectic, ¹⁹ but in the subjective process of knowing itself.

I already outlined this point of view in my 1885 work Outline of Goethe’s Theory of Knowing, with Especial Consideration of Schiller, ²⁰ but my method differed significantly in that work, for it did not analyze the basic elements of the act of knowing.

[ 2 ] The recent literature relevant to these discussions is as follows. Cited is not only what this presentation directly relates to, but also to all those writings that deal with questions that are similar. I have refrained from specifically citing the writings of the actual philosophical classics.

1. R. Avenarius, Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemäß dem Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftsmaßes, usw.; Leipzig, 1876, Kritik, der reinen Erfahrung, Vol. I, Leipzig, 1888
2. J. F. A. Bahnsen, Der Widerspruch im Wissen und Wesen der Welt; Vol. I, Leipzig, 1882.
3. J. Baumann, Philosophie als Orientierung über die Welt; Leipzig, 1872.
4. J. S. Beck, Einzig möglicher Standpunkt, aus welchem die kritische Philosophie beurteilt werden muss; Riga, 1796.
5. Friedrich Ed. Benecke, System der Metaphysik und Religionsphilosophie, usw.; Berlin, 1839.
6. Julius Bergmann, Sein und Erkennen, usw.; Berlin, 1880.
7. A. E. Biedermann, Christliche Dogmatik; 2nd Edition, Berlin, 1884–5, Vol. I, pp. 51–173.
8. H. Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung; Berlin, 1871.
9. P. Deussen, Die Elemente der Metaphysik; 2nd Edition, Leipzig, 1890.
10. W. Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, usw.; Leipzig, 1883.—Especially the introductory chapters dealing with the interrelation of the theory of cognition and the other sciences.—Further references in works by the same author: Beiträge zur Lösung der Frage von Ursprung unseres Glaubens an die Realität der Außenwelt und seinem Recht; Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akademic der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Contributions to the Solution of Our Belief in the Reality of the Outer World and its Justification. Reports of Meetings of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin), Berlin, 1890, p. 977.
11. A. Dorner, Das menschliche Erkennen usw.; Berlin, 1887.
12. E. Dreher, Ueber Wahrnehmung und Denken; Berlin, 1878.
13. G. Engel, Sein und Denken; Berlin, 1889.
14. W. Enoch, Der Begriff der Wahrnehmung; Hamburg, 1890.
15. B. Erdmann, Kants Kriticismus in der ersten und zweiten Auflage seiner Kritik der reinen Vernunft; Leipzig, 1878.
16. F. v. Feldegg, Das Gefühl als Fundament der Weltordnung; Vienna, 1890.
17. E. L. Fischer, Die Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie; Mainz, 1887
18. K. Fischer, System der Logik und Metaphysik oder Wissenschaftslehre; 2nd Edition, Heidelberg, 1865. Geschichte der neueren Philosophie; Mannheim, 1860, especially the parts concerning Kant.
19. A. Ganser, Die Wahrheit; Graz, 1890.
20. C. Göring, System der kritischen Philosophie; Leipzig, 1874. Über den Begriff der Erfahrung; In Vierteiljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie; Leipzig, 1st Year, 1877, p. 384.
21. E. Grimm, Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems, usw.; Leipzig, 1890.
22. F. Grung, Das Problem der Gewissheit; Heidelberg, 1886.
23. R. Hamerling, Die Atomistik des Willens; Hamburg, 1891.
24. F. Harms, Die Philosophie seit Kant; Berlin, 1876.
25. E. v. Hartmann, Kritische Grundlegung des transzendentalen Realismus; 2nd Edition Berlin, 1875. J. H. v. Kirchmanns erkenntnistheoretischer Realismus; Berlin, 1875. Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, usw.; Leipzig, 889. Kritische Wanderungen durch die Philosophie der Gegenwart; Leipzig, 1889.
26. H. L. F. v. Helmholtz, Die Tatsachen in der Wahrnehmung; Berlin, 1879.
27. G. Heymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens; Leyden, 1890.
28. A. Hölder, Darstellung der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie; Tübingen, 1874.
29. A. Horwicz, Analyse des Denkens, usw.; Halle, 1875.
30. F. H. Jacobi, David Hume über den Glauben oder Idealismus und Realismus; Breslau, 1787.
31. M. Kappes, Der “Common Sense” als Prinzip der Gewissheit in der Philosophie des Schotten Thomas Reid; Munich, 1890.
32. M. Kauffmann, Fundamente der Erkenntnistheorie und Wissenschaftslehre; Leipzig, 1890.
33. B. Kerry, System einer Theorie der Grenzgebiete; Vienna, 1890.
34. J. H. v. Kirchmann, Die Lehre vom Wissen als Einleitung in das Studium philosophischer Werke; Berlin, 1868.
35. E. Laas, Die Kausalitat des Ich (The Causality of the I), Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie; Leipzig, 4th Year, 1880, p. ff., 185ff.,311ff. Idealismus und Positivismus; Berlin, 1879.
36. F. A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus; Iserlohn, 1873–75.
37. A. v. Leclair, Beiträge zu einer monistischen Erkenntnistheorie; Breslau, 1882. Das kategorische Gepräge des Denkens; Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie; Leipzig, 7th Year, 1883, p. 257 ff.
38. O. Liebmann, Kant und die Epigonen; Stuttgart, 1865. Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit; Straßburg, 1880. Gedanken und Tatsachen; Straßburg, 1882. Die Klimax der Theorien; Straßburg, 1884.
39. Th. Lipps, Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens; Bonn, 1883.
40. H. R. Lotze, System der Philosophie, I Teil: Logik Leipzig, 1874.
41. J. V. Mayer, Vom Erkennen; Freiburg i. Br., 1885.
42. A. Meinong, Hume-Studien; Vienna, 1877.
43. J. St. Mill, System der induktiven und deduktiven Logik; 1843; German translation, Braunschweig, 1849.
44. W Müntz, Die Grundlagen der Kantschen Erkenntnistheorie; 2nd Edition, Breslau, 1885.
45. G. Neudecker, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie; Nordlingen, 1881.
46. F. Paulsen, Versuch einer Entwicklungsgeschichte der Kantschen Erkenntnistheorie; Leipzig, 1875.
47. J. Rehmke, Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff, usw.; Berlin, 1880.
48. Th. Reid, Untersuchungen uber den menschlichen Geist nach Prinzipien des gesunden Menschenverstandes; 1764; German translation, Leipzig, 1782.
49. A. Riehl, Der philosophische Kritizismus und seine Bedeutung für die positive Wissenschaft; Leipzig, 1887.
50. J. Rülf, Wissenschaft des Weltgedankens und der Gedankenwelt, System einer neuen Metaphysik; Leipzig, 1888.
51. R. v. Schubert-Soldern, Gund lagen einer Erkenntnistheorie; Leipzig, 1884.
52. G. E. Schulze, Aenesidemus, Helmstädt, 1792.
53. W. Schuppe, Zur voraussetzungslosen Erkenntnistheorie; Philosophische Monatschefte; Berlin, Leipzig, Heidelberg, 1882, Vol. XVIII, Nos. 6 and 7.
54. Rud. Seydel, Logik oder Wissenschaft vom Wissen; Leipzig, 1866.
55. Christoph v. Sigwart, Logik; Freiburg i. Br., 1878.
56. A. Stadler, Die Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntnistheorie in der Kantischen Philosophie; Leipzig, 1876.
57. H. Taine, De l'Intelligence, 5th Edition, Paris, 1888.
58. A. Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen; Leipzig, 1862.
59. F. Ueberweg, System der Logik; 3rd Edition, Bonn, 1882.
60. H. Vaihinger, Hartmann, Dühring, Lange, Iserlohn, 1876.
61. Th. Varnbühler, Widerlegung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft; Leipzig, 1890.
62. J. Volkelt, Immanuel Kants Erkenntnistheorie, usw.; Hamburg, 1879. Erfahrung und Denken; Hamburg, 1886.
63. Richard Wahle, Gehirn und Bewusstsein; Vienna, 1884.
64. W. Windelband, Präluden; Freiburg i. Br., 1884. Die verschiedenen Phasen der Kantschen Lehre vom “Ding an sich”; Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie; Leipzig, 1st Year (1877), p. 229 ff.
65. J. H. Witte, Beiträge zur Verständnis Kants; Berlin, 1874. Vorstudien zur Erkenntnis des unerfahrbaren Seins; Bonn, 1876.
66. H. Wolff, Ueber den Zusammenhang unserer Vorstellungen mit Dingen ausser uns; Leipzig, 1874.
67. Joh. Wolff, Das Bewusstsein und sein Objekt; Berlin, 1889.
68. W. Wundt, Logik (Logic), Vol. I: Erkenntnislehre; Stuttgart, 1880.

For Fichte the following comes into consideration.:

1. F. C. Biedermann, De Genetica philosophandi ratione et methodo, praesertim Fichtii, Schellingii, Hegelii, Dissertationis particula prima, syntheticam Fichtii methodum exhibens, etc., Lipsiae, 1835.
2. F. Frederichs, Der Freiheitsbegriff Kants und Fichtes; Berlin, 1886.
3. O. Gühloff, Der transcendentale Idealismus; Halle, 1888.
4. P. Hensel, Ueber die Beizehung des reinen Ich bei Fichte zur Einheit der Apperception bei Kant; Freiburg i. Br., 1885.
5. G. Schwabe, Fichtes und Schopenhauers Lehre vom Willen mit ihren Consequenzen für Weltbegreifung und Lebensfuhrung; Jena, 1887.

[ 4 ] The numerous writings published on Fichte's anniversary in 1862 are of course not acknowledged here. At most, Trendelenburg's speech; which contains more important theoretical points of view, should be mentioned.

• 13. This chapter marks the beginning of Rudolf Steiner’s doctoral dissertation.
• 14. Johannes Volkelt, Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, Experience and Thinking. Critical Foundation for a Theory of Knowing. Hamburg and Leipzig, 1886.
• 15. t/n In Positivism, something is known by common sense (such as 2+2=4), or by reasoning about our sensory experience. Intuition is rejected.
• 16. t/n Neo-Kantianism, the extension of Kant’s terminology and methods, was dominant in German philosophy until WWI.
• 17. t/n Bishop Berkeley’s and Friedrich Schelling’s objective idealism holds that nothing exists except for what is in the mind of spirits. Everything in the minds of the multitude of spirits also exists is in the mind of God. Modern philosophy often calls this dogmatism. Steiner called it spiritism. Steiner’s objective idealism is slightly different.
• 18. t/n G.W.F. Hegel’s and later Josiah Royce’s absolute idealism holds that there is an identity of a person’s subjective consciousness and what is out there in the world, which is all that is conceivable. Realism, on the other hand, holds that what is manifest in subjective consciousness emerges from what preexists externally in the world.
• 19. t/n Dialectic is a logical attempt to combine two different viewpoints. It is a debate without emotional appeal or unconscious willfulness.
• 20. t/n GA 2, Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schiller

[ 1 ] Certain objections raised from philosophical quarters immediately after the appearance of this book move me to add the following brief comments to this new edition. I can very well imagine that there are readers interested in the content of this book who will nevertheless regard the following as a superfluous, remote, and abstract spinning out of concepts. They can leave this brief presentation unread. However, within the philosophical way of looking at the world, problems arise which have their origin more in certain preconceptions of thinkers than in the natural course of general human thinking. What is otherwise taken upon in this book seems tome to be a task which concerns every person who is struggling for clarity with respect to the being of man and his relationship to the world. What follows, however, is more a problem that certain philosophers demand be taken up when the things presented in this boo are discussed, because, through their way of picturing things, these philosophers have created for themselves certain difficulties not generally present. If one completely bypasses such problems, then certain personalities are quick at hand with the reproach of dilettantism and the like. And there arises an opinion as though the author of a presentation like the one given in this book had not come to terms with views which he does not discuss within the book itself.

[ 2 ] The problem to which I refer is this; there are thinkers who are of the opinion that a particular difficulty arises when one wants to grasp how another human soul life could affect one's own (the observer's). They say that my conscious world is enclosed within me; and the other conscious world likewise within itself. I cannot see into the world of consciousness of another. How do I arrive at knowing myself to be in a common world with him? That world view which regards it as possible to infer, from the conscious world, an unconscious one that can never become conscious attempts to solve this difficulty in the following fashion. It says that the world which I have in my consciousness is a representation in me of a world of reality not consciously attainable by me. In this world of reality lie the unknown causes of my world of consciousness. In it lies also my real being, of which I likewise have only a representation in my consciousness. In it lies also my real being, of which I likewise have only a representation in my consciousness. In it lies also, however, the being of the other person who approaches me. Now what is experienced in the consciousness of this other person has its corresponding reality, independent of his consciousness, within his being This reality works in the realm that cannot become conscious upon my essential unconscious being, and through this a representation is created in my consciousness for that which is present in a consciousness that is completely independent of my conscious experience. One can see that here, in addition to the world accessible to my consciousness, a world is hypothetically constructed which cannot be experienced by this consciousness, because otherwise one believes oneself forced to maintain that all the outer word which I believe I have before me is only my word of consciousness, and that would result in the solipsistic absurdity that other people also live only within my consciousness.

[ 3 ] Clarity can also be gained on this question, raised by many epistemological tendencies of our day, if one undertakes to look at the matter from the point of view of observation in accordance with the spirit taken in the presentation of this book. What do I have before me then to begin with when I confront another personality? I look at what is most immediate. This is the bodily manifestation of the other person given to me as perception; then in addition perhaps the audible perception of what he says, and so on. I do not merely stare at all this, but rather it sets my thinking activity in motion. Inasmuch as I stand, thinking, before the other personality, the perception reveals to me its characteristic of being in a certain way transparent to the soul. I am obliged, in grasping the perception in thinking, to say to myself that it is not at all that which it appears to be to the outer senses. The physical manifestation reveals, within what it is directly, something else which it is indirectly. Its placing itself before me is at the same time its extinguishing as a merely physical manifestation. But what it brings to manifestation in this extinguishing compels me as a thinking being to extinguish my thinking during the time of its working and to set in the place of my thinking, its thinking. Its thinking, however, I grasp within my thinking as an experience like my own. I have really perceived the thinking of the other person. For the direct perception which extinguishes itself as a physical manifestation is grasped by my thinking, and this is an occurrence lying completely within my consciousness, an occurrence which consists in the fact that the other thinking takes the place of my thinking. Through the physical manifestation's extinguishing itself, the separation between the two spheres of consciousness is actually removed. This represents itself within my consciousness through the fact that, in experiencing the other content of consciousness, I experience my own consciousness just as little as I experience it in dreamless sleep. Just as in dreamless sleep my day consciousness is excluded, so in perceiving the other content of consciousness my own content is excluded. What keeps me from recognizing this is only the fact that, firstly, when I perceive the other person, unconsciousness does not enter the place where the content of my own consciousness is extinguished as in sleep, but rather the other content of consciousness enters, and secondly, that the alternating states of the extinguishing and lighting up again of my consciousness of myself succeed one another too quickly to be usually noticed.—The whole problem lying before us here is not to be solved by artificial constructs of concepts which infer something conscious-in-itself that can never become conscious, but rather by true experiencing of what results from the joining of thinking and perception. This is the case with very many of the questions which appear in philosophical literature. Thinkers should seek the way to unprejudiced observation in accordance with the spirit; instead of this they thrust an artificial construct of concepts in front of reality.

[ 4 ] In an essay by Eduard von Hartmann on “The Ultimate Questions of Epistemology and Metaphysics” (in the Journal of Philosophy and Philosophical Criticism, Vol. 108, p. 55ff.) ¹ my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is included in that philosophical discussion of thought which wishes to base itself upon an “epistemological monism.” Such a standpoint is rejected by Eduard von Hartmann as an impossible one. He does this for the following reasons. According to the way of picturing things brought to expression in his essay, there are only three possible epistemological standpoints. Either a person remains at the naive standpoint, which takes the manifestations it perceives to be real things outside of human consciousness. Then one would lack critical knowledge. One would not see that one is, with one's content of consciousness, still only within one's own consciousness. One would not recognize that one does not have to do with a “table-in-itself,” but rather only with an object of one's own consciousness. Whoever remains at this standpoint or returns to it again through some consideration or other, is a naive realist. But this standpoint is impossible, however, for it overlooks the fact that consciousness has only its own objects of consciousness. Or one recognizes this state of affairs and admits it to oneself fully. Then one becomes at first a transcendental idealist. But then one would have to reject the possibility that anything of a “thing-in-itself” could ever appear within human consciousness. Through this, however, one cannot escape absolute illusionism, if one is only consistent enough about it. For the world which one confronts transforms itself for one into a mere sum total of objects of consciousness, and in fact only of objects of one's own consciousness. One is then compelled—and this absurd—to think that even other people as objects are present only in one's own content of consciousness alone. Only the third standpoint, transcendental realism, is a possible one. It assumes that there are “things-in-themselves,” but that consciousness cannot in any way have anything to do with them in immediate experience. Beyond human consciousness, in a way that does not enter consciousness, they bring it about that within consciousness the objects of consciousness appear. One can come to these “things-in-themselves” only through inferences drawn from the content of one's consciousness which alone is experienced but which in fact is merely one's mental pictures. Now Eduard von Hartmann maintains, in the essay mentioned above, that an “epistemological monism,” which he considers my standpoint to be, would have to espouse one of the three standpoints; it does not do so only because it does not draw the actual conclusions lying within its presuppositions. And then in the essay it is said, “If one wants to find out which epistemological standpoint a supposed epistemological monist belongs, then one needs only to lay a few questions before him and to compel him to answer them. For of himself no such monist will ever venture any utterance on these points, and he will even seek in every way to evade answering direct questions, because every answer invalidates the claim of epistemological monism as to its being a different standpoint than the other three. These questions are the following: 1. Are things continuous or intermittent in their existence? If the answer is that they are continuous, then one has to do with naive realism in one form or anther. If the answer is that they are intermittent, then it is a case of transcendental idealism. But if the answer is that they are on the one hand (as content of the absolute consciousness, or as unconscious mental pictures or as perceptual possibilities) continuous, and on the other hand (as content of our limited consciousness) intermittent, then transcendental realism is established. 2. If three people are sitting at a table, how many specimens of the table are present? Whoever answers ‘one,’ is a naive realist; whoever answers ‘three’ is a transcendental idealist, but whoever answers ‘four,’ he is a transcendental realist. It is, to be sure, assumed in this, that one is allowed to draw together into one common appellation ‘specimens of the table,’ such unlike things as the table as thing-in-itself, and the three tables as objects of perception within the three consciousnesses. If this seems too great a liberty to anyone, he will have to give the answer ‘one and three’ instead of ‘four.’ 3. If two people are alone together in a room, how many specimens of these people are present? Whoever answers ‘two’ is a naive realist; whoever answers ‘four’ (namely, in each of the two consciousnesses, one ego and one other), he is a transcendental idealist; but whoever answers ‘six’ (namely, two people as things-in-themselves, and four mental pictures of people within the two consciousnesses), he is a transcendental realist. Whoever wanted to show that epistemological monism is a different standpoint than these three, would have to give to each of these three questions some different answer; I wouldn't know, however, what they could be.” The answers of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity would have to be: 1. Whoever grasps only the perceptual content of things and considers this to be reality is a naive realist, and he does not make it clear to himself that he should actually regard this perceptual content as existing only for as long as he is looking at the things, that therefore he would have to think of what he has before him as intermittent. As soon as he becomes clear about the fact, however, that reality is present only when the perceptible is permeated with thought, will he attain the insight that the content of perception, appearing as intermittent, if permeated by what is worked out in thinking, reveals itself to be continuous. We must therefore regard as continuous the perceptual content grasped by a thinking which is experienced; the part of this content that is only perceived would have to be thought of as intermittent, if—which is not the case—it were real.—2. If three people are sitting at a table, how many specimens of the table are present? There is only one table present; but as long as the three people wanted to stop short at their perceptual pictures, they would have to say that these perceptual pictures are definitely no reality. As soon as they proceed to the table grasped in their thinking, the one reality of the table reveals itself to them; they are united with their three contents of consciousness within this reality.—3. If two people are alone together in a room, how many specimens of these people are present? There are quite certainly not six—not even I the sense of the transcendental realist—specimens present, but only two. Only, each of the persons has at first, both of himself and of the other person, only his unreal perceptual picture. Of these pictures there are four present, through whose presence within the thinking activities of the two persons the grasping of reality takes place. In this thinking activity each of the persons reaches beyond his sphere of consciousness; the sphere of consciousness, the other person's and his own, comes to life in this activity. In the moment this comes to life the two people are enclosed just as little within their consciousness as they are in sleep. But in the other moments, the consciousness of this merging with the other consciousness arises again, in such a way that, in thinking experience the consciousness of each one of the two people grasps himself and the other. I know that the transcendental realist will call this a relapse into naive realism. However, I have already indicated in this book that naive realism still holds good for thinking which is experienced. The transcendental realist does not enter at all into the true state of affairs with respect to the cognitive process; he closes himself off from this through a web of thoughts and entangles himself in it. The monism which appears in Philosophy of Spiritual Activity should also not be called “epistemological,” bur rather, if one wishes a second name, thought-monism. All this was misunderstood by Eduard von Hartmann. He did not enter into that which is particular in what Philosophy of Spiritual Activity presents, but rather asserted that I had made the attempt to combine Hegel's universalistic panlogism with Hume's individualistic phenomenalism (p. 71 of the Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 108, footnote),² whereas in fact as such has absolutely nothing to do with these two standpoints which it is supposedly trying to unite. (This is also the reason I could not be concerned about coming to terms, for example, with the “epistemological monism” of Johannes Rehmke. The point of view of Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is, in fact, completely different from what Eduard von Hartmann and others call epistemological monism.)

• 1. “Die letzten Fragen der Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik.
• 2. Zeitschrift fur Philosophie

[ 1 ] In the following there is given again, in all its essential points, what stood as a kind of preface to the first edition of this book. Since it gives more the mood of thought out of which I wrote the book twenty-five years ago than the book's content, I bring it here as an “appendix.” I do not want to leave it out entirely, for the reason that the view always comes upon again that because of my later spiritual-scientific writings I have something to suppress in my earlier writings.

[ 2 ] Our age can wish to draw the truth only out of the depths of man's being.¹ Of Schiller's well-known two ways, the second will especially benefit the present day:

Truth we both are seeking, you in the life without,
I within the heart, and so each finds it surely.
Is the eye healthy, it meets the creator without;
Is the heart so, it surely mirrors the world within.

A truth which comes to us from outside always bears the stamp of uncertainty about it. What appears to each one of us within his own inner life as truth, in this only do we want to believe.

[ 3 ] Only the truth can bring us certainty in the developing of our individual powers. Whoever is tormented by doubts, his powers are lamed. In a world which is a riddle to him, he can find no goal for his activity.

[ 4 ] We no longer want merely to believe; we want to know. Faith demands the acceptance of truths about which we do not have full insight. That about which we do not have full insight, however, goes against what is individual, which wants to experience everything with its deepest inner life. Only that knowing satisfies us which submits to no outer norm, but rather springs from the inner life of the personality.

[ 5 ] We also do not want any kind of knowing that has become frozen once and for all into rigid academic formulations and preserved in compendia valid for all time. We consider ourselves, each one, justified in taking our starting point from our immediate experiences, from what we live through directly and in ascending from there to knowledge of the whole universe. We are striving for a sure knowing, but each in his own way.

[ 6 ] Our scientific teachings should also no longer be formulated as though we were unconditionally compelled to accept them. No one would want to give a scientific work a title like Fichte once did: “A Crystal-clear Report to the Wider Public on the Actual Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel Readers to Understand.” Today, no one should be compelled to understand. If no definite individual need moves a person toward a certain view, we demand neither that he recognize nor agree with it. Today we do not want to funnel knowledge even into the still immature human being, the child, but rather we seek to develop his capacities so that he no longer needs to be compelled to understand, but rather wants to understand.

[ 7 ] I am under no illusions with respect to this characteristic of my times. I know how alive and extensive the tendency is to be stereotyped and without individuality. But I know just as well that many of my contemporaries are seeking to conduct their life in the sense and direction I have indicated. I would like to dedicate this book to them. It is not meant to be “the only possible” way to the truth, but it is meant to tell of that way which one person has taken, whose concern is for the truth.

[ 8 ] This book leads at first into more abstract regions, where thought must draw sharp outlines in order to reach sure points. But the reader will be led out of these dry concepts into concrete life also. I am altogether of the view that one must lift oneself also into the ethereal realm of concepts, if one wants to experience existence in all directions. Whoever knows only how to enjoy with his senses does not know the real delicacies of life. Oriental sages make their pupils lead lives of renunciation and asceticism for years before they communicate what they themselves know. The West no longer demands for science any devout exercises or asceticism, but it does require, instead of these, the good will to withdraw oneself for a short time from the immediate impressions of life, and to betake oneself into the realm of the world of pure thought.

[ 9 ] The realms of life are many. For each of these, particular sciences evolve. But life itself is a unity, and the more the sciences strive to deepen themselves in the individual realms, the more they distance themselves from a view of the living wholeness of the world. There must be a knowledge which seeks within the individual sciences the elements needed to lead man back again into full life. The scientific researcher in a particular field wants to acquire through his knowledge a consciousness of the world and its workings; in this book the goal is a philosophical one: the science itself is meant to become organically living. The individual sciences are preparatory stages of the science striven for here. A similar relationship holds sway in the arts. The composer works on the basis of the theory of composition. This last is a sum of knowledge whose acquirement is a necessary prerequisite for composing music. In composing, the laws of composition serve life, serve actual reality. In exactly the same sense philosophy is an art. All real philosophers were artists in concepts. For them human ideas become the artistic medium and the scientific method became the artistic technique. Abstract thinking thereby gains concrete individual life. Ideas become powers of life. We have the not merely a knowing about things, but rather we have made knowing into a real self-governing organism; our actual active consciousness has lifted itself above a merely passive taking up of truths.

[ 10 ] How philosophy as an art relates itself to the inner freedom of man, what inner freedom is, and whether we partake in it or can become partakers in it: that is the main question of my book. All other scientific discussions are included here only because they ultimately shed light on those questions which, in my view, concern the human being most immediately. A Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freiheit) is meant to be given in these pages.

[ 11 ] All science would only be the satisfying of idle curiosity, if it did not strive toward raising the value of existence of the human personality. The sciences first acquire their true value through presenting the human significance of their results. The ennobling of one single soul faculty cannot be the end of all the abilities that slumber within us. Knowledge has value only through the fact that it contributes to the all-around unfolding of the whole nature of man.

[ 12 ] This book does not therefore consider the relationship between science and life to be such that man has to bow down to the idea and dedicate his forces to its service, but rather in the sense that man takes possession of the world of ideas in order to use them for his human goals which transcend merely scientific ones.

[ 13 ] One must be able to confront the idea, experiencing it; otherwise one falls into bondage to it.

• 1. Entirely left out here are only the very first introductory sentences (of the first edition) of these considerations which seem to me today completely unessential. But the rest of what is said seems to me necessary, even now, in spite of the scientific mode of thought of our contemporaries, nay precisely because of it.