The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific MethodsSteiner, Rudolf
Religion
The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific Methods
Steiner, Rudolf
Anthroposophy; Free will and determinism; Knowledge, Theory of; Life
We have laid the foundations of the Theory of Knowledge as the
science of the significance of all human knowledge. It alone clears
up for us the relation of the contents of the separate sciences to
the world. It enables us, with the help of the sciences, to attain
to a philosophical world-view. Positive knowledge is acquired by us
through particular cognitions; what the value of our knowledge is,
considered as knowledge of reality, we learn through the Theory
of Knowledge. By holding fast strictly to this principle, and by
employing no particular cognitions in our argumentation, we have
transcended all one-sided world-views. One-sidedness, as a rule,
results from the fact that the inquiry, instead of concentrating on
the process of cognition itself, busies itself about some object of
that process. If our arguments are sound, Dogmatism must abandon its
"thing-in-itself" as fundamental principle, and Subjective Idealism its
"Ego," for both these owe their determinate natures in their relation
to each other first to thinking. Scepticism must give up its doubts
whether the world can be known, for there is no room for doubt with
reference to the "Given," because it is as yet untouched by any of
the predicates which cognition confers on it. On the other hand, if
Scepticism were to assert that thinking can never apprehend things as
they are, its assertion, being itself possible only through thinking,
would be self-contradictory. For, to justify doubt by thinking is to
admit by implication that thinking can produce grounds sufficient to
establish certainty. Lastly, our theory of knowledge transcends both
one-sided Empiricism and one-sided Rationalism in uniting both at a
higher level. Thus it does justice to both. It justifies Empiricism
by showing that all positive knowledge about the Given is obtainable
only through direct contact with the Given. And Rationalism, too,
receives its due in our argument, seeing that we hold thinking to be
the necessary and exclusive instrument of knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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