The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Correction of an Erroneous View of Total Experience

[ 1 ] This is the place to point out a prejudice that has existed since Kant and has already become so ingrained in certain circles that it is considered an axiom. Anyone who wanted to doubt it would be portrayed as a dilettante, as a person who has not progressed beyond the most elementary concepts of modern science. I mean the view as if it were a foregone conclusion that the entire world of perception, this infinite variety of colors and forms, of sounds and differences in warmth, etc., is nothing more than our subjective world of imagination, which only exists as long as we keep our senses open to the influences of a world unknown to us. The whole world of appearances is declared by this view to be a conception within our individual consciousness, and further assertions about the nature of cognition are based on this premise. Volkelt also subscribed to this view and based his epistemology, which is masterful in terms of its scientific implementation, on it. Nevertheless, this is not a fundamental truth and least of all called upon to stand at the pinnacle of epistemology.

[ 2 ] Just don't misunderstand us. We do not want to raise a protest against the physiological achievements of the present, which is certainly impotent. But what is perfectly justified physiologically is by no means called upon to be placed at the gates of epistemology. It may be regarded as an incontrovertible physiological truth that it is only through the cooperation of our organism that the complex of sensations and perceptions which we call experience arises. It remains certain, however, that such a realization can only be the result of many considerations and researches. This characteristic, that our phenomenal world is of a physiological subjective nature, is already a mental determination of it; thus it has nothing at all to do with its first appearance. It already presupposes the application of thought to experience. It must therefore be preceded by the investigation of the connection between these two factors of cognition.

[ 3 ] With this view, one believes oneself to be superior to the pre-Kantian "naivety" that took things in space and time for reality, as the naive person who has no scientific education still does today.

[ 4 ] Volkelt claims: "that all acts that claim to be objective cognition are inseparably bound to the cognizing, individual consciousness, that they do not take place initially and directly anywhere other than in the consciousness of the individual and that they are completely incapable of reaching beyond the realm of the individual and grasping or entering the realm of the external real." ^{7See Volkelt, "Experience and Thought", page 4.}

[ 5 ] Now, however, it is quite unfathomable to an unbiased mind what the form of reality (experience) that immediately approaches us has in itself that could somehow entitle us to call it mere imagination.

[ 6 ] The simple consideration that the naive person does not notice anything about things that could lead him to this view teaches us that there is no compelling reason for this assumption in the objects themselves. What is there about a tree, a table, that could lead me to regard it as a mere figment of the imagination? At the very least, this should not be taken as a self-evident truth.

[ 7 ] In doing the latter, Volkelt entangles himself in a contradiction with his own basic principles. According to our conviction, he had to be unfaithful to the truth he recognized, that experience contains nothing but an incoherent chaos of images without any mental determination, in order to be able to assert the subjective nature of the same experience. Otherwise he would have had to recognize that the subject of cognition, the observer, is just as unrelated within the world of experience as any other object in it. But if one attaches the predicate subjective to the perceived world, then this is just as much a conceptual determination as if one regards the falling stone as the cause of the impression in the ground. Volkelt himself, however, does not want to accept any connection between the things of experience. There lies the contradiction of his view, there he has been unfaithful to the principle he expresses of pure experience. He thereby locks himself into his individuality and is no longer able to get out of it. Indeed, he admits this ruthlessly. Everything that lies beyond the torn-off images of perception remains doubtful for him. It is true, in his view, that our thinking endeavors to deduce an objective reality from this imaginary world; but all going beyond it cannot lead us to really certain truths. According to Volkelt, all knowledge that we gain through thinking is not protected from doubt. It is in no way equal in certainty to direct experience. This alone provides knowledge that cannot be doubted. We have seen what a deficient one.

[ 8 ] But all this is only because Volkelt ascribes to sensible reality (experience) a quality that cannot be attributed to it in any way, and then builds his further assumptions on this presupposition.

[ 9 ] We had to take Volkelt's work into particular consideration because it is the most significant contemporary achievement in this field, and also because it can be regarded as a type for all epistemological efforts that are opposed in principle to the direction we advocate on the basis of Goethe's worldview.