The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. On Philosophy

[ 1 ] What we are now considering is intended to fall entirely outside the scope of anthroposophical reflections. It is only indirectly related to them; it is intended to be a purely philosophical consideration. The direct connection is that it is often claimed that anthroposophical spiritual science cannot stand up to scientific scrutiny, that it appears to be nothing more than pure dilettantism, which a serious philosopher should not engage with. It will now be shown that the dilettantism lies not on the part of anthroposophy, but on the part of philosophy.

[ 2 ] Philosophy is currently a completely unsuitable tool for rising to the level of anthroposophy. Let us first get our bearings regarding philosophy. Let us see how philosophy has developed historically. Then let us subject this legacy to a certain examination. Let us show how philosophy today suffers from the fact that, at a certain point in time, all philosophical thinking became entangled in a spider’s web, rendering it incapable of gaining a broader perspective on reality.

[ 3 ] We must bear in mind the fact that the entire history of philosophy begins with Thales. In more recent times, attempts have been made to extend philosophy backward in time, that is, beyond Greek philosophy. People speak of an Indian philosophy and an Egyptian philosophy. Anyone who does not adopt an arbitrary concept of philosophy will recognize that an important era did indeed begin with Thales. If we ask what it is that intervenes in human development—something that was not there before—we must say: it is conceptual thinking. It did not exist before. This is what characteristically distinguishes it from everything that came before. Previously, people merely recounted what the seer had seen. In Plato, the gift of vision still predominates. The first conceptual thinker whose system is no longer based on the old gift of vision is Aristotle. In him we find the purely conceptual system. Everything else was preparation. That gift of living and thinking in pure concepts begins to find its most excellent expression in Aristotle. It is no mere coincidence that Aristotle is called the “Father of Logic.” To the seer, logic is revealed simultaneously with vision. However, the formation of concepts was necessary not only within his logic but also because, in the period that followed, the revelations of Christianity were recast into thought formations using Aristotelian logic.

[ 4 ] This Aristotelian thought spread not only into the Arab cultural sphere—across Asia, to Spain, and to Western Europe—but also to Southern Europe, where Christianity was influenced by Aristotelian thought. Anyone examining the 7th through 9th centuries will observe that Christian teachers, just like anti-Christian elements, expressed their teachings in Aristotelian form, and this remained the case until the 13th century.

[ 5 ] We will soon see where the focus of Aristotelian thought lies. In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas popularized what is known as Thomistic philosophy; it is based on Christian revelation and Aristotelian logic. Christian doctrine was not taught in a strictly rigid form of thought, but the aim was to show that this Christian doctrine could also be defended using Aristotelian modes of thought—against the Arabs and their students, such as Averroes, who also thought in these modes. The aim was to demonstrate how a correctly understood Aristotle could be used not to support Arab teachings, but rather to serve Christianity. The goal was to refute the objections raised by Arab thinkers; hence the zealous study of Thomas Aquinas. At that time, Aristotle dominated all fields of scholarship, including, for example, medicine.

[ 6 ] Now we must characterize what early Scholasticism took from Aristotle. The thinking of that time differed quite significantly from that of today. When one compares it to what was being done back then, one must say: in terms of substance, life at that time was poor. The tremendous inventions were made only later. The defining feature of that era was rigorously trained thinking. People today make fun of the strict definitions of Scholasticism. But when one compares them to today’s arbitrary understanding of all concepts, one only then appreciates the benefit of the view that there must be a common understanding of concepts. It takes a long time to establish these concepts once and for all; but then one works on solid ground.

[ 7 ] To gain further insight, we must examine a few of Aristotle’s concepts. He was a valuable interpreter of Christianity, even from the perspective of anthroposophy. A few of these concepts will demonstrate the sharpness of Aristotle’s thinking. Aristotle distinguishes between cognition through the senses and cognition through the intellect. The senses perceive this rose, this person, this stone. Then the intellect comes into play. It breaks this down into a knowledge of matter and form. All things contain matter and form. These two concepts take us a long way. Aristotle sees matter and form in every single natural object that the senses grasp: Consider a wolf. It feeds on nothing but lambs; thus it consists of the same matter as the lambs, but the wolf never becomes a lamb. — What distinguishes the two is form. We have the form of the lamb and the form of the wolf. He identifies what underlies them as form with the genus “lamb” and the genus “wolf.” Aristotle makes a sharp distinction between genus and the generic concept. When we stand before a flock of lambs, we form the generic concept. What our concept establishes in its form is an objective reality outside of us, as if we were to imagine the archetypes of forms spread invisibly throughout the world—archetypes from which the individual genera spring forth, into which the indifferent matter is poured. Everything around us is based on the generic; for Aristotle, the material is something indifferent.^{1See the note on this at}

[ 8 ] Among the Scholastics, particularly Albertus Magnus, we find what underlies external entities. The earlier Scholastics distinguished between universals prior to things, in things, and after things. Albertus Magnus says the following about this: “The universals prior to things are the thoughts of divine entities.” There we have the genus. These thoughts have flowed into things. When a person encounters things, he forms universals according to the things, which is the conceptual form. In this entire description of intellectual development, only sensible things are discussed. He identifies “sense” with the external sense. Everything else that remains is a concept to him. For him, the generic concept is not identical with the genus. All of this stems from the fact that human beings had lost the ancient gift of clairvoyance, so that a philosophy could emerge.

[ 9 ] An ancient sage would not have understood such distinctions at all, for he would have said: With the gift of clairvoyance, one can perceive the genus. - Only when the gift of clairvoyance dries up does true science emerge. Only when human beings were left to their own devices did the need arise to develop the art of thinking. Scholasticism arose under the influence of this important principle. In ancient times, the spiritual worlds were still accessible to human beings. Now the Scholastics could all the more readily invoke Aristotle, for he spoke of the gift of clairvoyance: Ancient accounts tell us that the heavenly bodies are gods, but the human intellect can no longer discern anything about them. Yet we have no reason to doubt this.

[ 10 ] Scholasticism substituted revelation for what is observed. It placed what was to be doctrine in the once-inspired Word. First of all, humanity must accustom itself to developing its philosophy based on external things. Where would it end up if it were to wander off into all manner of supernatural things? Let us refrain from that; let us educate ourselves through the things that surround us. So says Thomas Aquinas. When objects present themselves to us, they are given to us through the senses. Then we are compelled to form concepts of them. Behind these things lie the divine powers, which we do not dare to approach. Let us train ourselves from one thing to the next. Then, by strictly adhering to the sensible realm, we will finally arrive at the highest concepts. People thus adhered to two things: to the revealed doctrine found in the Scriptures, which thought does not approach—it has been handed down by the seers—and to what is derived from sensory reality. In this way, we merely approach the Bible and revelation. For a time, the higher world is withdrawn from human thought. But there is no final renunciation of the supersensible worlds. Once a person has mastered the sensory world, they can gain a foreboding of the supersensible worlds. A person can become free from the physical body and experience revelation directly. But first, the intellect must be trained. When a person forms concepts about external things, their form depends on the human constitution, but not their content. Scholastic epistemology never considers that something unrecognized might remain. The objective enters into knowledge; only the form in which concepts are formed depends on the constitution of the human mind.

[ 11 ] This earlier form of Scholasticism is called Realism. It believed in the reality of content. Scholasticism then became nominalistic. People lost touch with the objective external world. They said: The mind forms concepts; they are not real. — Concepts became mere names; they were only abstractions. What the concept is meant to convey is lost. Therefore, the nominalists had to tell themselves: Sensory reality spreads out before us. We summarize it as our intellect sees fit. Nothing real corresponds to our concepts. One must protect the true revelation from human thought and renounce all understanding.”—This view reached its culmination in Zuther’s statement that human reason is powerless, a deaf, blind, foolish fool who should not presume to approach the body of doctrine.

[ 12 ] This is an important turning point. Luther condemns Aristotle. It is from this point that the line of thought emerged which gave rise to Kantianism. Until the late 1960s, Kant was a Wolffian, as were almost all philosophers at the time. Wolff taught that reason is capable of discerning something about the suprasensory worlds. He distinguished between rational and empirical science. It is possible to attain a certain body of human knowledge. A posteriori knowledge has only relative validity.

[ 13 ] [Gaps and shortcomings in the transcript. For Wolff’s philosophy, see the discussion in the lecture of March 14, 1908, in this volume.]

[ 14 ] At first, Kant, too, followed in Wolff’s footsteps. Hume troubled him. Hume developed skepticism. He argued that no dividing line should be drawn between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. All knowledge is based on habit; there is no rational knowledge. Kant awoke from his dogmatic slumber. But he could not fully go along with it. He said: Hume is right; we derive everything from experience. Only mathematics is an exception; what it states has absolute validity. He thus holds two positions. First: There are absolutely certain a priori judgments. Second: All knowledge must be derived from experience. Experience, however, is shaped by our judgments. We ourselves give laws to experience. Human beings approach things with their cognitive structure. All experience is shaped by our form of cognition. In this way, Kant reconciled Hume with Wolff.

[ 15 ] Now human beings are entangled in this philosophical web. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are exceptions. Some natural scientists also follow this path. Helmholtz says: What human beings have before them is spun out of their own organization. What we perceive of the thing is not even an image, but merely a sign. The eye perceives only the surface. Humanity is completely entangled in its own subjectivity. The thing-in-itself remains unknown. - It was bound to turn out this way. Nominalism has lost sight of the spiritual behind the surface. The human inner life has been weakened. Inner activity becomes purely formal. When a person seeks to penetrate reality, his inner self offers no answer. The entire philosophical thought of the 19th century cannot find its way out of this. Hartmann, for example, cannot move beyond the concept. A simple comparison can shed light on this. A seal bears the name “Müller.” Nothing—not even the tiniest material particle from the brass of the seal—can pass into the sealing wax. Consequently, nothing objective can pass over from the seal; the name “Müller” must form itself from the sealing wax. The thinker is the sealing wax. Nothing passes over from the object to the thinker. And yet the name “Müller” is in the sealing wax. Thus, we extract the content from the objective world; yet it is the true content that we extract. If one considers only the material aspect, it is true: nothing passes from the sealing wax into the seal, nor vice versa. But as soon as one perceives the spirit—the higher principle capable of encompassing both the objective and the subjective—the spirit flows back and forth between the subjective and the objective. The spirit carries everything over from objectivity into subjectivity. The “I” is both objective and subjective in itself. Fichte demonstrated this. -^{2The rest of the lecture was recorded by the transcriber only in fragmentary notes, as the following sentences show.}

[ 16 ] The entire epistemology of the 19th century resembles a dog chasing its own tail. One comes to the conclusion: I have created everything. The world is my imagination. Everything has gushed forth from within me. I also have the right to kill everything.

[ 17 ] Kant certainly uses some rather convoluted terms. Kant says: “I have destroyed knowledge to make room for faith.”—He has limited knowledge and established a practical faith, because everything is spun out of the subjective.

[ 18 ] Kantianism is the ultimate outcome of nominalism. Today, that time has passed. Human beings must once again train their thinking in accordance with reality in order to form real concepts; only then can we recognize the transcendent truths once more. The scholastic mindset is a product of its time; the spiritual had to be withdrawn from thought for a while. Now, revealed doctrine must once again become a body of teaching subject to scrutiny. We must once again view everything through reason. It is a light with which one can shine into every corner. One can explore, understand, and grasp everything. Reason is the lowest power of perception, but it is a power that sees, hears, and understands. Thus we extricate ourselves from the web. Philosophy must free itself from this web and allow itself to be enriched by logic in order to attain true thought.