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On August 18, 1787, Goethe wrote to Knebel from Italy: “To judge by the plants and fish I have seen in Naples and Sicily, I would, if I were ten years younger, be very tempted to make a trip to India, not in order to discover something new, but in order to contemplate in my own way what has already been discovered .” I... | Goethean Science | Introduction | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c01.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c01 |
If one traces the history of how Goethe's thoughts about the development of organisms arose, one can all too easily be come doubtful about the part one must ascribe to the early years of the poet, i.e., to the time before he went to Weimar. Goethe himself attached very little value to the natural-scientific knowledge h... | Goethean Science | How Goethe's Theory of Metamorphosis Arose | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c02.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c02 |
Lavater's great work Physiognomical Fragments for Furthering Human Knowledge and Human Love 17 Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe appeared during the years 1775–1778. Goethe had taken a lively interest in it, not only through the fact that he oversaw its publication, but al... | Goethean Science | How Goethe's Thoughts on the Development of the Animals Arose | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c03.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c03 |
The great significance of Goethe's morphological works is to be sought in the fact that in them the theoretical basis and method for studying organic entities are established, and this is a scientific deed of the first order .
If one is to do justice to this rightly, one must above all bear in mind the great difference... | Goethean Science | The Nature and Significance of Goethe's Writings on Organic Development | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c04.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c04 |
When, at the end of this consideration of Goethe's thoughts on metamorphosis, I look back over the views that I felt compelled to express, I cannot conceal from myself the fact that a very great number of outstanding adherents of the various tendencies in scientific thought are of a different view than I. Their positio... | Goethean Science | Concluding Remarks on Goethe's Morphological Views | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c05.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c05 |
In June 1794, Johann Gottlieb Fichte sent the first sections of his Theory of Science 45 Wissenschaftslehre to Goethe. The latter wrote back to the philosopher on June 24: “As far as I am concerned, I will owe you the greatest thanks if you finally reconcile me with the philosophers, with whom I can never do without an... | Goethean Science | Goethe's Way of Knowledge | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c06.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c06 |
In the editing of Goethe's natural-scientific writings, for which I was responsible, I was guided by the thought of enlivening the study of the particulars in these writings by presenting the magnificent world of ideas that underlies them. It is my conviction that every single assertion of Goethe's acquires an entirely... | Goethean Science | The Arrangement of Goethe's Natural-scientific Writings | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c07.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c07 |
Someone who sets himself the task of presenting the spiritual development of a thinker has to explain that thinker's particular direction in a psychological way from the facts given in his biography. But in presenting Goethe the thinker the task does not end there. What is asked for here is not only a justification and... | Goethean Science | From Art to Science | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c08.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c08 |
We have already indicated in the previous chapter that Goethe's scientific world view does not exist for us as a complete whole, developed out of one principle. We have to do only with individual manifestations from which we see how one thought or another looks in the light of his way of thinking. This is the case with... | Goethean Science | Goethe's Epistemology | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c09.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c09 |
We have established what the relationship is between the world of ideas — attained by scientific thinking — and directly given experience. We have learned to know the beginning and end of a process: experience devoid of ideas and idea filled apprehension of reality. Between the two, however, there lies human activity. ... | Goethean Science | Knowing and Human Action in the Light of the Goethean Way of Thinking | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c10.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c10 |
When one speaks of the influence of earlier or contemporary thinkers upon the development of Goethe's spirit, this cannot be done out of the assumption that he formed his views on the basis of their teachings. The way he had to think, the way he saw the world, were inherent in the whole predisposition of his nature. An... | Goethean Science | Relationship of the Goethean Way of Thinking to Other Views | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c11.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c11 |
Among the main hindrances standing in the way of a just evaluation of Goethe's significance for science belongs the preconception that exists about his relationship to mathematics. This preconception is twofold. Firstly, one believes that Goethe was an enemy of this science and failed in the worst way to recognize its ... | Goethean Science | Goethe and Mathematics | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c12.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c12 |
Goethe is very often sought where he is absolutely not to be found. Among the many other areas where this has happened is the way the geological research of the poet has been judged. But here more than anywhere it is necessary for everything that Goethe wrote about details to recede into the background before the wonde... | Goethean Science | Goethe's Basic Geological Principle | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c13.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c13 |
Just as in geology, so in meteorology it would be an error to go into what Goethe actually achieved and consider that to be the main thing. His meteorological experiments are in fact nowhere complete. One can only look everywhere at his intention. His thinking was always directed at finding the pregnant 70 “ Significan... | Goethean Science | Goethe's Meteorological Conceptions | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c14.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c14 |
The reason for writing this chapter does not lie in the fact that the Colour Theory , accompanied by an introduction, must also be included in a Goethe edition. It stems from a deep, spiritual need of the editor of this edition. The latter took his start from the study of mathematics and physics and with inner necessit... | Goethean Science | Goethe and Natural-scientific Illusionism | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c15.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c15 |
If it were not a person's duty to state the truth without reserve once he believes he has come to know it, the following exposition would certainly have remained unwritten. I have no doubts about the judgment that the specialists will pass on it, given the dominant trend in natural science today. One will regard it as ... | Goethean Science | Goethe as Thinker and Investigator | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c16.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c16 |
There is much talk nowadays about the fruitful development of natural science in the nineteenth century. I believe that one can rightfully speak of significant natural-scientific experiences that one has had, and of a transformation of our practical life by these experiences. But with respect to the basic mental pictur... | Goethean Science | Goethe Against Atomism | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c17.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c17 |
The human being is not content with what nature willingly offers to his observing spirit. He feels that nature, in order to bring forth the manifoldness of its creations, needs driving forces that it at first conceals from the observer. Nature does not itself utter its final word. Our experience shows us what nature ca... | Goethean Science | Goethe's World View in his Aphorisms in Prose | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA001/English/MP1988/GA001_c18.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA001_c18 |
This volume is a translation of the treatise Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung , published in 1886. This was originally prepared by Rudolf Steiner as a supplement to Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften , as edited by him, with ample introductory and interpretive notes, for Kürschne... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Publisher's Notes | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_pnote.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_pnote |
When Rudolf Steiner, still a student and tutor in Vienna, published this terse little volume just after his twenty-fifth birthday, he concluded an intellectual struggle in which he had been engaged since childhood. He arrived at a solution of the problem: What is the relation between man's inner and his outer world?
Fo... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Translator's Preface | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_transpref.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_transpref |
This study of the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world-conception was written in the middle of the decade 1880–90. My mind was then vitally engaged in two activities of thought. One was directed toward the creative work of Goethe, and strove to formulate the view of life and of the world which revealed itself... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Preface to the New Edition | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_preface.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_preface |
When Professor Kürschner did me the honor of intrusting to me the task of editing the scientific writings of Goethe for the Deutsche National-Literatur , I was fully aware of the difficulties confronting me in such an undertaking. It would be necessary for me to oppose a point of view which had become almost universall... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Foreword to the First Edition | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_foreword.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_foreword |
When we trace any one of the intellectual currents of the present time back to its source, we invariably arrive at one of the great spirits of our “classical age.” Goethe or Schiller, Herder or Lessing gave an impulse; and from this impulse has issued this or that intellectual movement which continues even to-day. Our ... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | The Point of Departure | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c01.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c01 |
In the preceding pages we have determined the direction that is to be taken by the following inquiries. They are to constitute a development of that which became manifest in Goethe as a scientific sense; an interpretation of his way of observing the world.
The objection may be raised that this is not the way in which t... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Goethe's Science Considered According to the Method of Schiller | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c02.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c02 |
With regard to all knowledge, that holds true which Goethe expressed so aptly in the words: “Theory is of no use in and of itself save as it causes us to believe in the interrelationship of phenomena.” By means of science, we are always bringing separate facts of experience into relationship. We perceive in inorganic N... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | The Function of This Branch of Science | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c03.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c03 |
Two spheres thus stand over against one another, — our thinking and the objects with which this is occupied. These latter are designated, in so far as they are accessible to our observation, as the content of experience. Whether or not there are other objects of thought outside the field of our observation, and of what... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Definition of the Concept of Experience | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c04.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c04 |
Let now fix our attention upon pure experience. In what does this consist when it comes into our consciousness, not elaborated by our thinking? It is merely juxtaposition in space and succession in time; an aggregate of nothing but unrelated single entities. No one of the objects which there come and go has anything to... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Examination of the Content of Experience | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c05.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c05 |
This is the proper point at which to refer to a preconception, persisting since the time of Kant, which has been so absorbed into the very life of certain circles as to pass for an axiom. Whoever should presume to question it would be considered a dilettante, a person not yet advanced beyond the most rudimentary concep... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Correction of an Erroneous Conception of Experience As a Totality | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c06.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c06 |
We would avoid the fallacy of attributing a characteristic a priori to the immediately given, to the first form in which the outer and the inner world appear to us, and then establishing the validity of our reasoning on the basis of this presupposition. Indeed, by our very definition, experience is that in which thinki... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Reference to the Experience of the Individual Reader | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c07.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c07 |
Amid the unrelated chaos of experience — and, indeed, at first as a fact of experience — we find an element that leads us out beyond this unrelated-ness. This element is thought. Thought, as one of the facts of experience, assumes an exceptional position within experience.
As regards the rest of experience, so long as ... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Thinking as a Higher Experience within Experience | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c08.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c08 |
It appears, however, as if we ourselves had here introduced the very subjective element we were so determined to exclude from our theory of knowledge. Although the rest of the perceptual world does not possess a subjective character — so it might be deduced from our explanation — yet thoughts, even according to our own... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Thought and Consciousness | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c09.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c09 |
Let us draw one step nearer to thought. Hitherto we have been considering the place of thought in relation to the rest of the world of experience. We have reached the conclusion that it holds a unique position in that world, that it plays a central role. We shall for the present turn our attention elsewhere. We shall h... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | The Inner Nature of Thought | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c10.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c10 |
Knowledge permeates perceived reality with the concepts apprehended and worked through by our thinking. It supplements and deepens that which is passively received by means of what our mind through its own activity has lifted out of the darkness of the merely potential into the light of reality. This presupposes that p... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Thought and Perception | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c11.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c11 |
Thinking has a twofold function to discharge: first, to form concepts with sharply outlined contours; secondly, to unite the single concepts thus formed into a unified whole. In the first instance, we have to do with the activity of differentiation; in the second with that of combination. These two mental tendencies do... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Intellect and Reason | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c12.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c12 |
Reality has divided itself for us into two spheres: the spheres of experience and thought. Experience must be considered from a twofold point of view: — First, in so far as the total reality possesses, apart from our thinking, a form of manifestation which must emerge in the form of experience. Secondly, in so far as i... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | The Act of Cognition | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c13.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c13 |
Kant took a great step forward in philosophy in that he directed man's attention to himself. He must seek the reasons for certitude regarding his affirmations in that which is given to him as the capacities of his own mind, and not in truths forced upon him from without. Scientific conviction only through oneself, — th... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Cognition and the Ultimate Foundation of Things | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c14.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c14 |
The simplest form of action in Nature seems to us to be that in which an occurrence results wholly from factors external to one another. Here is an occurrence, or a relationship between two objects, not necessitated by an entity which manifests itself in the external forms of appearance — an individuality which exhibit... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Inorganic Nature | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c15.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c15 |
For a long time science came to a standstill in the presence of the organic. Its methods were not considered adequate to grasp life and its manifestations. Indeed, it was believed that every conformity to law such as is effective in inorganic Nature here ceases to exist. What was admitted with reference to the inorgani... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Organic Nature | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c16.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c16 |
We have exhausted the realm of the knowledge of Nature. Organics is the highest form of natural science. What lies still higher is the spiritual, or cultural, sciences. These require an essentially different attitude of the human mind toward objects from that characterizing the natural sciences. In the latter the mind ... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Introduction: Spirit and Nature | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c17.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c17 |
The first science in which the human spirit deals with itself is psychology. The mind here stands observing itself.
Fichte assigned an existence to man only to the extent that man ascribes this to himself. In other words, human personality has only those traits, characteristics, capacities which it ascribes to itself t... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Psychological Cognition | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c18.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c18 |
Our view as to the sources of our knowledge cannot be with out influence upon our view in regard to practical conduct. Man behaves according to thought characterizations which lie within him. What he performs is directed according to purposes, goals, which he sets up for himself. But it is obvious that these goals, pur... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Human Freedom | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c19.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c19 |
We have seen that man is the central point of the world-order. As spirit, he attains to the highest form of existence, and in thought he achieves the most highly perfected world process. Things really are only as they are illuminated by him. This is a point of view according to which man possesses within himself the ba... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Optimism and Pessimism | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c20.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c20 |
Our theory of knowledge has rid cognition of the merely passive character often associated with it, and has conceived it as an activity of the human spirit. It is generally supposed that the content of knowledge is received from without; indeed, it is supposed that we preserve the objectivity of knowledge in proportion... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Scientific Knowledge and Artistic Creation | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_c21.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_c21 |
By the Translator
Date of publication of book: 1886
The Point of Departure . Philosophy alone, the central and unifying branch of knowledge, is uninfluenced by the great “classic age” of German thought — especially by Goethe. Hence, it fails to provide the inner certitude at present so deeply needed. Goethe possessed a... | THE SCIENCE OF KNOWING | Exposition in Brief | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1940/GA002_exposition.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA002_exposition |
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Rudolf Steiner's Die Philosophie der Freiheit was first published by the Emil Felber Verlag, Berlin. 1894 in a first edition of 1,000 copies. The second edition, revised and enlarged by the author, appeared under the imprint of the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, Berlin, 1918, and was foll... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Bibliographical Note | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_bnote.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_bnote |
Present day philosophy suffers from an unhealthy faith in Kant. This essay is intended to be a contribution toward overcoming this. It would be wrong to belittle this man's lasting contributions toward the development of German philosophy and science. But the time has come to recognize that the foundation for a truly s... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Preface | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_pref.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_pref |
The object of the following discussion is to analyze the act of cognition and reduce it to its fundamental elements, in order to enable us to formulate the problem of knowledge correctly and to indicate a way to its solution. The discussion shows, through critical analysis, that no theory of knowledge based on Kant's l... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Introduction | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_intro.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_intro |
Epistemology is the scientific study of what all other sciences presuppose without examining it: cognition itself. It is thus a philosophical science, fundamental to all other sciences. Only through epistemology can we learn the value and significance of all insight gained through the other sciences. Thus it provides t... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Preliminary Remarks | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_c01.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_c01 |
Kant is generally considered to be the founder of epistemology in the modern sense. However, the history of philosophy before Kant contains a number of investigations which must be considered as more than mere beginnings of such a science. Volkelt points to this in his standard work on epistemology, saying that critica... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Kant's Basic Epistemological Question | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_c02.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_c02 |
All propounders of theories of knowledge since Kant have been influenced to a greater or lesser degree by the mistaken way he formulated the problem of knowledge. As a result of his “a priorism” he advanced the view that all objects given to us are our representations . Ever since, this view has been made the basic pri... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Epistemology Since Kant | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_c03.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_c03 |
As we have seen in the preceding chapters, an epistemological investigation must begin by rejecting existing knowledge. Knowledge is something brought into existence by man, something that has arisen through his activity. If a theory of knowledge is really to explain the whole sphere of knowledge, then it must start fr... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | The Starting Point of Epistemology | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_c04.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_c04 |
Concepts and ideas, therefore, comprise part of the given and at the same time lead beyond it. This makes it possible to define what other activity is concerned in attaining knowledge.
Through a postulate we have separated from the rest of the given world-picture a particular part of it; this was done because it lies i... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Cognition and Reality | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_c05.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_c05 |
We have now defined the idea of knowledge. In the act of cognition this idea is directly given in human consciousness. Both outer and inner perceptions, as well as its own presence are given directly to the “I,” which is the center of consciousness. (It is hardly necessary to say that here “center” is not meant to deno... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Epistemology Free of Assumptions and Fichte's Science of Knowledge | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_c06.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_c06 |
We have established that the theory of knowledge is a science of significance for all human knowledge. The theory of knowledge alone can explain to us the relationship which the contents of the various branches of knowledge have to the world. Combined with them it enables us to understand the world, to attain a world-v... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Epistemological Conclusion | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_c07.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_c07 |
The aim of the preceding discussion has been to throw light on the relationship between our cognizing personality and the objective world. What does the possession of knowledge and science mean for us? This was the question to which we sought the answer.
Our discussion has shown that the innermost core of the world com... | TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE | Practical Conclusion | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/GC1981/GA003_c08.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA003_c08 |
Everything to be discussed in this book is oriented toward two root questions of human soul life. One question is whether a possibility exists of viewing the being of man in such a way that this view proves to be a support for everything else which, through experience and science, approaches him but which he feels cann... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Author's Preface to the Revised Edition, 1918 | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_preface.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_preface |
Is man, 1 Since English has not yet produced a neutral word for what we are (even “human being” has the word “man” in it), one must still ask the reader to remove any connotations of gender from such words. — Translator in his thinking and doing, a spiritually free being, or does he stand under the compulsion of an iro... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Conscious Human Action | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c01.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c01 |
Two souls alas! are dwelling in my breast; And each is fain to leave its brother. The one, fast clinging, to the world adheres With clutching organs, in love's sturdy lust; The other strongly lifts itself from dust To yonder high ancestral spheres.
Faust I, Sc. 2 (Priest translation)
With these words Goethe expresses a... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | The Fundamental Desire for Knowledge | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c02.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c02 |
When I observe how a billiard ball that is struck communicates its motion to another, I remain thereby completely without influence on the course of this observed occurrence. The direction of motion and the velocity of the second ball are determined by the direction and velocity of the first. As long as I act merely as... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Thinking in the Service of Apprehending the World | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c03.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c03 |
Through thinking, concepts and ideas arise. What a concept is cannot be said in words. Words can only make the human being aware of the fact that he has concepts. When someone sees a tree, his thinking reacts to his observation; to the object there comes then an ideal counterpart, and he regards the object and ideal co... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | The World as Perception | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c04.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c04 |
It follows from the preceding consideration that it is impossible, through investigation of the content of our observation, to prove that our perceptions are mental pictures. This was supposedly proven by showing that if the process of perception does take place in the way one pictures it in accordance with the naive-r... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | The Activity of Knowing the World | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c05.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c05 |
The main difficulty in explaining mental pictures is found by philosophers to lie in the fact that we are not ourselves the outer things, and yet our mental pictures must still have a form corresponding to the things. On closer examination, however, it turns out that this difficulty does not exist at all. We are not, t... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Human Individuality | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c06.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c06 |
We have established that the elements needed for the explanation of reality are to be taken from the two spheres: perceiving and thinking. As we have seen, it is because of our organization that full, total reality, including our own subject, appears to us at first as a duality. The activity of knowing overcomes this d... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Are There Limits to Knowing? | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c07.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c07 |
Let us recapitulate what we have won in the preceding chapters. The world approaches man as a multiplicity, as a sum of single things. One of these single things, a being among beings, is he himself. We designate this form of the world as simply given , and insofar as we do not develop this form through conscious activ... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | The Factors of Life | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c08.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c08 |
The concept of a tree, for my activity of knowing, is conditional upon my perception of the tree. With respect to a particular perception I can lift only one particular concept out of my general system of concepts. The connection between concept and perception is indirectly ad objectively determined by thinking in acco... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | The Idea of Spiritual Activity | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c09.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c09 |
The naive person, who considers real only what he can see with his eyes and grasp with his hands, also requires for his moral life incentives that are perceptible to the senses. He requires a being who communicates these incentives to him in a way understandable to his senses. He will let these incentives be dictated t... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Monism | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c10.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c10 |
Among the manifold streams in the spiritual life of mankind, there is one we can follow which may be described as the overcoming of the concept of purpose in realms where it does not belong. Purposefulness has its own particular nature within the sequence of phenomena. It is a truly real purposefulness only when, in co... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | World Purpose and Life Purpose | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c11.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c11 |
The free spirit acts according to his impulses, that is, according to intuitions chosen from the whole of his world of ideas through thinking. For the unfree spirit , the reason he isolates one particular intuition from his world of ideas in order to base an action upon it lies within the world of perceptions given to ... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Moral Imagination | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c12.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c12 |
A counterpart to the question of the purpose and determinants of life (see page 172ff.) is the question as to its value. We meet two opposing views regarding this, and, in between, every imaginable attempt to reconcile them. One view says the world is the best imaginable, and that our living and acting in it are a gift... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | The Value of Life | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c13.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c13 |
Against the view that the human being has it in him to be a complete, self-contained, free individuality, there seems to stand the fact that he appears as a part within a natural whole (race, ancestral line, folk, family, male or female gender), and that he is active within a whole (state, church, and so on). He bears ... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Individuality and Species | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c14.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c14 |
The explanation of the world as a unity, or what is meant here by monism, takes from human experience the principles it needs to explain the world. It likewise seeks the sources of man's actions within the world of observation, namely within the human nature accessible to our self-knowledge, and more particularly withi... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | The Consequences of Monism | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_c15.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_c15 |
Certain objections raised from philosophical quarters immediately after the appearance of this book move me to add the following brief comments to this new edition. I can very well imagine that there are readers interested in the content of this book who will nevertheless regard the following as a superfluous, remote, ... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | First Appendix | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_appendix1.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_appendix1 |
In the following there is given again, in all its essential points, what stood as a kind of preface to the first edition of this book. Since it gives more the mood of thought out of which I wrote the book twenty-five years ago than the book's content, I bring it here as an “appendix.” I do not want to leave it out enti... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Second Appendix | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_appendix2.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_appendix2 |
The goal of this translation is to give the reader an experience as close as possible to that presented by the original book. Rudolf Steiner, in fact, made every possible effort to write his books “in such a way that they can be translated into other languages.” (January 5, 1922; GA 303) His writing is archetypal in it... | THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY and freedom | Translator's Appendix | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_tappendix.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA004_tappendix |
American readers have known the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche in English for somewhat less than fifty years. The first translations of Nietzsche's works began appearing in this country shortly after the turn of the century. Since then, almost without interruption American publishers' lists have included collections o... | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM | Introduction: Friedrich Nietzsche and Rudolf Steiner | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/English/RSPI1960/GA005_intro.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA005_intro |
When I became acquainted with the works of Friedrich Nietzsche six years ago, ideas had already formed within me which were similar to his. Independently, and from completely different directions, I came to concepts which were in harmony with those Nietzsche expressed in his writings: Zarathustra , Jenseits von Gut and... | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM | Friedrich Nietzsche, A Fighter Against his Time | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/English/RSPI1960/GA005_preface.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA005_preface |
When I became acquainted with the works of Friedrich Nietzsche six years ago, ideas had already formed within me which were similar to his. Independently, and from completely different directions, I came to concepts which were in harmony with those Nietzsche expressed in his writings: Zarathustra , Jenseits von Gut and... | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM | Preface to the First Edition (1895) | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/English/RSPI1960/GA005_preface.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA005_preface |
Friedrich Nietzsche characterizes himself as a lonely ponderer and friend of riddles, as a personality not made for the age in which he lived . The one who follows such paths as his, “meets no one; this is a part of going one's own way. No one approaches to help him; all that happens to him of danger, accidents, evil a... | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM | The Character | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/English/RSPI1960/GA005_c01_1.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA005_c01_1 |
All striving of mankind, as of every living thing, exists for the satisfying, in the very best way, of impulses and instincts implanted by nature. When human beings strive toward morality, justice, knowledge and art, this is done because morality, justice, and so forth, are means by which these human instincts can deve... | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM | The Superman | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/English/RSPI1960/GA005_c01_2.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA005_c01_2 |
We have presented Nietzsche's opinion about supermen as they stand before us in his last writings; Zarathustra (1883-1884), Jenseits von Gut und Böse , Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Genealogie der Moral , Genealogy of Morals. (1887), Der Fall Wagner , The Case of Wagner (1888), Götzendämmerung , The Twilight of Idols (1... | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM | Nietzsche's Path of Development | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/English/RSPI1960/GA005_c01_3.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA005_c01_3 |
From the Wiener Klinische Rundschau, 14th Year, No. 30, 1900
These lines have not been written to add to the statements of the opponents of Friedrich Nietzsche, but with the intention to offer a contribution to the understanding of this man from a point of view which, no doubt, comes into consideration in passing judgm... | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM | The Psychology of Friedrich Nietzsche as a Psychopathological Problem | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/English/RSPI1960/GA005_c02.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA005_c02 |
From the Wiener Klinische Rundschau, 14th Year, No. I, 1900
As the psychic processes act parallel with the brain stimulae, so physiological psychology goes side by side with brain physiology. Where the latter does not as yet offer sufficient knowledge, physiological psychology may make purely provisional investigation ... | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM | Friedrich Nietzsche's Personality and Psychotherapy | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/English/RSPI1960/GA005_c03.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA005_c03 |
A Memorial Address Given in Berlin on September 13, 1900
it is strange that with the infatuation for Nietzsche in our day, someone must appear whose feelings, no less than those of many others, are drawn to the particular personality, and yet who, in spite of this, must constantly keep before him the deep contradiction... | FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM | The Personality of Friedrich Nietzsche, A Memorial Address | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA005/English/RSPI1960/GA005_c04.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA005_c04 |
In 1897 I undertook to describe in this book the Goethean world view; I wanted to draw together what the study of the Goethean spiritual life over the course of many years had given me. The “Preface to the First Edition” gives a picture of what I felt my goal to be back then. Were I writing this preface today I would n... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Preface to the New Edition, 1918 | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_pre1918.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_pre1918 |
The thoughts which I express in this book are meant to contain the fundamental elements that I have observed in Goethe's world view. In the course of many years I have contemplated the picture of this world view again and again. There was a particular appeal for me in looking upon what nature had revealed of its being ... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Preface to the First Edition | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_preface.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_preface |
If one wants to understand Goethe's world view, one cannot content oneself with listening to what he himself says about it in individual statements. To express the core of his being in crystal-clear, sharply stamped sentences did not lie in his nature. Such sentences seemed to him rather to distort reality than to port... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Introduction | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_intro.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_intro |
Goethe tells of a conversation that once unfolded between Schiller and himself after both had attended a meeting of the society of natural research in Jena. Schiller showed himself little satisfied with what had been presented in the meeting. A fragmented way of looking at nature had met him there. And he remarked that... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Goethe's Place in the Development of Western Thought | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c01_1.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c01_1 |
Goethe tells of a conversation that once unfolded between Schiller and himself after both had attended a meeting of the society of natural research in Jena. Schiller showed himself little satisfied with what had been presented in the meeting. A fragmented way of looking at nature had met him there. And he remarked that... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Goethe and Schiller | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c01_1.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c01_1 |
With the admirable boldness characteristic of him, Plato expresses this mistrust of experience: the things of this world, which our senses perceive, have no true being at all; they are always becoming but never are . They have only a relative existence, they are, in their totality, only in and through their relationshi... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | The Platonic World View | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c01_2.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c01_2 |
In vain did Aristotle protest against the Platonic splitting of the world picture. He saw in nature a unified being, which contains ideas just as much as it does the things and phenomena perceptible to the senses. Only within the human spirit can the ideas have an independent existence. But in this independent state th... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | The Consequences of the Platonic World View | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c01_3.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c01_3 |
I have described the development of thought from Plato's time to Kant's in order to be able to show what impressions Goethe had to receive when he turned to the results of the philosophical thoughts to which he had recourse in order to satisfy his powerful need for knowledge. For the innumerable questions to which his ... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Goethe and the Platonic World View | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c01_4.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c01_4 |
Man learns to know the outer side of nature through perception; its deeper-lying driving powers reveal themselves within his own inner life as subjective experiences. In philosophical contemplation of the world and in artistic feeling and creating, his subjective experiences permeate his objective perceptions. What had... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Personality and World View | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c01_5.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c01_5 |
Goethe's world view attained its highest level of maturity when there arose for him the view of the two great driving wheels of nature: the significance of the concepts of polarity and of enhancement ( Steigerung ). (See the essay, “Commentary to the Essay Nature .”) Polarity is characteristic of the phenomena of natur... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | The Metamorphosis of World Phenomena | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c01_6.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c01_6 |
Goethe's relationship to the natural sciences cannot be understood if one confines oneself merely to the single discoveries he made. I consider the words which Goethe addressed to Knebel on August 18, 1787 from Italy to be the guiding point of view in looking at this relationship: “To judge by the plants and fish I hav... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Goethe's View on the Nature and Development of Living Beings | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c02.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c02 |
Goethe's relationship to the natural sciences cannot be understood if one confines oneself merely to the single discoveries he made. I consider the words which Goethe addressed to Knebel on August 18, 1787 from Italy to be the guiding point of view in looking at this relationship: “To judge by the plants and fish I hav... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Metamorphosis | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c02.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c02 |
The feeling that “men's great works of art are brought forth according to true and natural laws” continuously moved Goethe to seek out these true and natural laws of artistic creation. He is convinced that the effect of a work of art must depend upon the fact that a natural lawfulness shines forth from it. He wants to ... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | The Contemplation of the World of Colors | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c03.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c03 |
The feeling that “men's great works of art are brought forth according to true and natural laws” continuously moved Goethe to seek out these true and natural laws of artistic creation. He is convinced that the effect of a work of art must depend upon the fact that a natural lawfulness shines forth from it. He wants to ... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | The Phenomena of the World of Colors | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c03.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c03 |
Through his involvement with the Ilmenau mine, Goethe was stimulated to study the realm of the minerals, rocks, and types of stone, as well as the superimposed strata of the earth's crust. In July 1776 he accompanies Duke Karl August to Ilmenau. They wanted to see whether the old mine could be started up again. Goethe ... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Thoughts About the Developmental History of the Phenomena of earth and Air | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c04_1.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c04_1 |
Through his involvement with the Ilmenau mine, Goethe was stimulated to study the realm of the minerals, rocks, and types of stone, as well as the superimposed strata of the earth's crust. In July 1776 he accompanies Duke Karl August to Ilmenau. They wanted to see whether the old mine could be started up again. Goethe ... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Thoughts about the Developmental History of the Earth | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c04_1.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c04_1 |
In 1815 Goethe becomes acquainted with Luke Howard's Attempt at a Natural History and Physics of the Clouds . He is stimulated by it to sharpen his reflection about cloud formations and atmospheric conditions. He had in fact already made many earlier observations about these phenomena and recorded them. But he lacked “... | GOETHE'S WORLD VIEW | Observations about Atmospheric Phenomena | https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA006/English/MP1985/GA006_c04_2.html | Dornach | September 1925 | GA006_c04_2 |
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