The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Goals of All Knowledge

[ 1 ] I believe I am correctly identifying a fundamental characteristic of our age when I say: the cult of the human individual is currently striving to become the center of all life’s interests. With great energy, people are striving to overcome authority of any kind. Whatever is to be valid must have its origin in the roots of individuality. Anything that hinders the full development of the individual’s powers is rejected. “Each must choose his own hero, following whom he works his way up to Olympus” no longer applies to us. We do not allow ideals to be imposed upon us; we are convinced that within each of us lives something noble and worthy of development, if only we are able to descend deeply enough, to the very depths of our being. We no longer believe that there is a “normal” person toward whom everyone should strive. Our view of the perfection of the whole is that it is based on the particular perfection of each individual. We do not wish to produce what everyone else can do, but rather, what is possible only for us according to the uniqueness of our being should be incorporated into the development of the world as our small contribution. Never have artists cared less about the norms and rules of art than they do today. Everyone claims the right to artistically shape what is unique to them. There are playwrights who prefer to write in dialect rather than in the standard language required by grammar.

[ 2 ] I can find no better way to describe these phenomena than to say that they stem from the individual’s drive for freedom, heightened to the utmost degree. We do not wish to be dependent in any way; and where dependence is unavoidable, we tolerate it only if it coincides with a vital interest of our individual self.

[ 3 ] Such an age can only seek to draw truth from the depths of the human being. Of Schiller’s well-known two paths:

“We both seek truth—you in the world outside, I within
In the heart, and so each of us is sure to find it.
If the eye is sound, it encounters the Creator in the world outside;
If it is the heart, then surely it reflects the world within”

The present moment is best served by the second of the pious. A truth that comes to us from outside always bears the mark of uncertainty. We may believe only in what appears to each of us as truth within our own hearts.

[ 4 ] Only the truth can give us the confidence to develop our individual powers. Those tormented by doubt find their powers paralyzed. In a world that is a mystery to them, they cannot find a purpose for their work.

[ 5 ] We no longer want to believe; we want to know. Faith demands acceptance of truths that we do not fully comprehend. But what we do not comprehend is repugnant to the individual, who wants to experience everything with his deepest inner self. Only knowledge that does not submit to any external norm, but springs from the inner life of the personality, satisfies us.

[ 6 ] Nor do we want knowledge that has been set in stone once and for all in rigid school rules and preserved in compendia valid for all time. We believe everyone has the right to start from their immediate experiences and, from there, ascend to an understanding of the entire universe. We strive for certain knowledge, but each in his own way.

[ 7 ] Our scientific teachings should no longer take on a form that suggests their acceptance is a matter of absolute compulsion. None of us would want to give a scientific work a title like Fichte once did: “A Crystal-Clear Report to the General Public on the True Nature of the Latest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel Readers to Understand.” Today, no one should be compelled to understand. We do not demand acceptance from those who are not driven to a particular view by a specific, individual need. Nor do we currently wish to cram knowledge into the still-immature person, the child; rather, we seek to develop their abilities so that they no longer need to be compelled to understand, but will want to understand.

[ 8 ] I harbor no illusions regarding this characteristic of my age. I know how much unindividualistic conformity exists and is spreading. But I know just as well that many of my contemporaries are trying to organize their lives in the direction I have indicated. To them I would like to dedicate this work. It is not intended to lead to “the only possible” path to truth, but it is meant to tell the story of the path taken by someone who is concerned with truth.

[ 9 ] The text first leads us into more abstract realms, where thought must draw sharp contours in order to arrive at certain points. But the reader is also led out of these dry concepts and into concrete life. I am firmly of the opinion that one must also rise into the ethereal realm of abstraction if one wishes to experience existence in all its dimensions. Those who know how to enjoy life only through the senses do not know the delights of life. Oriental scholars first have their students spend years living a life of renunciation and asceticism before they impart to them what they themselves know. The West no longer demands pious exercises or asceticism for the sake of science, but it does require the willingness to withdraw for a short time from the immediate impressions of life and to enter the realm of the pure world of thought.

[ 10 ] There are many fields of life. Specific sciences develop for each one. Life itself, however, is a unity, and the more the sciences strive to delve into individual fields, the further they distance themselves from a view of the living world as a whole. There must be a form of knowledge that seeks out the elements within the individual sciences in order to lead humanity back to a full life. The specialized scientific researcher seeks, through his findings, to acquire an awareness of the world and its effects; in this work, the goal is a philosophical one: science itself is to become organically alive. The individual sciences are preliminary stages of the science sought here. A similar relationship prevails in the arts. The composer works on the basis of the theory of composition. The latter is a body of knowledge, the possession of which is a necessary precondition for composing. In composing, the laws of the theory of composition serve life, real reality. In exactly the same sense, philosophy is an art. All true philosophers were conceptual artists. For them, human ideas became artistic material and the scientific method became an artistic technique. Abstract thought thereby gains concrete, individual life. Ideas become life forces. We then do not merely have knowledge of things, but we have made knowledge into a real, self-governing organism; our real, active consciousness has risen above a merely passive reception of truths.

[ 11 ] How philosophy relates to the art of human freedom, what the latter is, and whether we share in it or can come to share in it: that is the central question of my work. All other scholarly discussions are included here only because they ultimately shed light on those questions which, in my opinion, lie closest to the human condition. A “Philosophy of Freedom” is to be presented in these pages.

[ 12 ] All science would be nothing more than the satisfaction of idle curiosity if it did not strive to enhance the value of human existence. The true value of the sciences is derived only from a presentation of the human significance of their results. The ultimate goal of the individual cannot be the refinement of a single faculty of the soul, but rather the development of all the abilities that lie dormant within us. Knowledge has value only insofar as it contributes to the all-round development of the whole of human nature.

[ 13 ] This work therefore does not conceive of the relationship between science and life as one in which human beings must bow to the idea and devote their energies to its service, but rather as one in which they take control of the world of ideas in order to use it for their human goals, which go beyond the merely scientific.

[ 14 ] One must confront the idea as its master; otherwise, one falls under its bondage.