The Rudolf Steiner Archive

20. The Philosophical Justification of Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] By further developing the findings of the natural sciences and the results of philosophy, we arrive at a deeper understanding of our own selves—moving, so to speak, from conceptual thought to experiential thought, starting with Descartes and his famous “cogito, ergo sum” —I am aware of my existence when I am aware of my thinking. Bergson gave this statement a more mystical interpretation, but nevertheless held fast to it. I believe, however, that this statement is refuted by life itself, for if it were true, we would cease to live in the evening when we fall asleep and begin to live again in the morning when we wake up.

[ 2 ] Franz Brentano, the brilliant psychologist who recently passed away, published a book on psychology in 1873. He promised that further volumes would appear soon, but lo and behold, they never did.

[ 3 ] Kant’s philosophy is essentially a continuation of the statement: “I think, therefore I am”—just as many other ideas have found their way into Kant’s philosophy. With this statement by Descartes, we set out on the path toward a thorough observation of our consciousness. We must make it perfectly clear to ourselves what it means to say, “I am.” We must first truly grasp what it means that there must be an “I.”

[ 4 ] Sleeping is like the pendulum swinging to the other side—the so-called negative side. It becomes more and more intense … [gap] one will have to.

[ 5 ] [An illustration: Imagine a] red surface with a hole—that is, with a black spot—red being positive; black being negative. So [it is] when looking back on life: Sleep is the negative aspect of life. Self-awareness is not present without interruption. We experience our “I” as the gaps in our continuous waking life. We experience our “I” as a gap. We can bring into our consciousness—and experience within it—on the one hand, the fact of thought, and on the other, the fact of will.

[ 6 ] One can gradually learn to perceive the moments of falling asleep and waking up with one’s consciousness, much like sleep and self-awareness. The experience of waking up can be compared to the flash of a thought.

[ 7 ] Falling asleep: We sleep, so to speak, in part within our will. Alongside waking thought stands the sleeping state of volition. Just as sleep is interwoven with waking consciousness, so too is volition interwoven with our life of thought, with waking thought.

[ 8 ] There are limits to scientific knowledge. But when we live within these limits, Kant’s philosophy, as it were, comes to the fore. It is the inability to delve into the depths of things with the intellect bound to the brain that first gives us the capacity for love—naturally, in the subconscious. Human beings have become capable not of knowledge, but of love. We come to realize this when we struggle with these limits. We come to understand what we must do so as not to impair our capacity for love. We must enhance this capacity for love in order to walk the path into the spiritual world. Only then can one dare to advance toward a meditative life. Once one has attained pure thinking, one has an overview of one’s thoughts and of what lies within one’s consciousness.

[ 9 ] In a life devoted to meditation, we gradually come to realize that human beings are independent of their physical bodies.

[ 10 ] In ordinary life, the past and the future have no reality for thought. According to this meditative way of thinking, time becomes, so to speak, space; time loses its unreality.

[ 11 ] Anthroposophy must experience mysticism, but it must go beyond it. Mystical methods lead one to limits, just as scientific knowledge does. But these limits of mysticism, too, must be overcome. We could not possess the faculty of memory if we did not experience those limits. If we did not have a mirror of our experiences within us—memory—but instead, upon looking within ourselves, pierced through this mirror, then we would reach our eternal being in the act of piercing it. Exercises must be performed for this purpose: self-discipline, exercises of the will—a path into the spiritual world. Ordinary memory is replaced by a kind of intuition. Through these two exercises, we truly enter the spiritual world. One recognizes the essence of thought and will. The will that lives within us is, as it were, a seed of our self. We possess the post-mortem in the will within us, just as we possess the pre-natal in thought.

[ 12 ] Attaining a super-sensory presence of mind. Applying this to super-sensory experiences. These occur in our lives far more often than we realize—for example, in the morning when we wake up. They exist in a different time; they must be grasped in the very moment they arise—this is something to keep in mind. It must happen much more quickly: They have nothing in common with what we experience here in ordinary life; they actually have nothing to do with real thinking—hence the reversal of the phrase: “cogito, ergo sum.” – [Cohen] and Kinkel are already gradually moving in this direction.

[ 13 ] According to Kant, we are merely spectators of life; therefore, we cannot reach the “thing-in-itself”—this is, very briefly and inadequately put, the essence of Kant’s philosophy. At the end of the philosophical journey, we arrive at the beginning of what I have to offer as an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. We experience a spiritual enrichment of our being and life.