12. Anthroposophy as a Spiritual Science and Contemporary Epistemology

Personal and non-Personal

When my “Philosophy of Freedom” was printed in 1894, I personally handed the book over to Eduard von Hartmann. At the time, I was very keen to engage in a scientific discussion with this man about the fundamental views on which the structure of ideas in my book was based. My expectations in this regard seemed justified, since Eduard von Hartmann had been truly friendly in his approach to my literary work from the very beginning. Every time I sent him my writings published before the “Philosophy of Freedom,” he delighted me with often extensive written responses. In 1889 I had the opportunity of a long conversation with him, the subject-matter of which was the epistemological questions agitating the philosophical world at that time. And I expected much from a discussion of my book, particularly because, on the one hand, I was a warm admirer of the idealism of his philosophy, an attentive observer of his treatment of important vital questions, and, on the other hand, his decided opponent in all essentials of the epistemological foundation of a world view. In one important point, however, I was in complete agreement with him: the philosophical ethics of unselfish devotion of the human soul to the historical process of humanity as an ethical motive. Of course, I could not be taken in by the naive belief that I could convert the creator of the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” to my points of view in fundamental matters. But Eduard von Hartmann was always inclined to respond in a truly loving way to views that were contrary to his own; and his responsiveness led to those fruitful confrontations that are desirable in the field of world-view striving. Besides, even then it was far from my mind to make the estimation of a personality dependent on the extent to which I could be an opponent or a supporter of his ideas. The esteem in which I held Eduard von Hartmann led me to ask him in 1891 to accept the dedication of my small writing: “Truth and Science. Prelude to a Philosophy of Freedom”. He agreed. And so I was able to have the words printed on the second page of this writing in all sincerity: “Dr. Eduard von Hartmann in warm admiration dedicated by the author.” This happened despite the fact that Eduard von Hartmann had to completely reject the content of the writing from the point of view of his worldview.

I was not mistaken in my expectations regarding a discussion of the “Philosophy of Freedom.” For a few weeks after the presentation of the book, Eduard von Hartmann not only honored me with a friendly letter, but he also sent me the copy of the book that he had received, with his comments and objections, some of which went into great detail. He had entered them almost page by page into the book. At the end he had summarized his overall impression in a few sentences. He had been so sharp in his judgment that I could see in his words the fate that my world view would have to meet within contemporary thought. By concluding the present remarks with a discussion of this judgment, it will be possible for me to show how, from the beginning of my literary career, I strove to establish the epistemological foundation for what I later attempted to present in a series of writings as “spiritual science” or anthroposophy and on whose development I continue to work to this day.

In the 1880s, when I began my writing career, people were confronted with a world view that had basically blocked any access to a world of true reality for human cognition. It seemed necessary to me, above all, to strive for a scientifically sound epistemological basis in matters of world view. The opinions one encountered in this field at that time could be characterized from a myriad of contemporary writings. The one of the poet and philosopher Robert Hamerling shall be cited here. This again for the reason that I found myself in the most fundamental epistemological questions in complete opposition to this personality, whom I highly revered and esteemed. Robert Hamerling was writing his significant “Atomistik des Willens” (Atomism of the Will) at that time. Right at the beginning of this book, we encounter the following thought: “Certain stimuli produce a smell in our olfactory organ... Thus a rose has no scent unless there is a smeller to smell it. Certain vibrations of the air produce a sound in our ear. Thus a sound has no existence unless there is an ear to hear it. The shot of a gun would not resound if no one heard it... Anyone who grasps this will understand what a naive fallacy it is to believe that in addition to the view or idea we call “horse”, there is another, the real “horse”, of which our view is a kind of image. Outside of me there is only – let me repeat it – only the sum of those conditions which cause an idea to arise in my mind that I call a “horse.” Hamerling adds to these sentences: “If this does not make sense to you, dear reader, and if your ‘mind’ rears up before this fact like a shy horse, then do not read a single line further; leave this and all other books dealing with philosophical and scientific matters unread; for you lack the necessary ability to grasp a fact impartially and hold it in your thoughts.” The thoughts that Hamerling expresses were so much a part of the thinking habits of epistemologists in the second half of the nineteenth century that as early as 1879 Gustav Theodor Fechner wrote about them in his book “Die Tagesansicht gegenüber der Nachtansicht” (“The Day View Compared to the Night View”): “They are the thoughts of the whole thinking world around me. No matter how much and about what they may quarrel, philosophers and physicists, materialists and idealists, Darwinians and anti-Darwinians, orthodox and rationalists all join hands in it. It is not a building block, but a cornerstone of today's world view... What we think we see and hear in the world around us is all just our inner appearance, an illusion that one can praise oneself for, as I read recently; but it remains an illusion. Light and sound in the external world, ruled by mechanical laws and forces and not yet penetrated by consciousness, are only blind, mute waves that cross the ether and the air from more or less agitated material points, and only when they reach the protein coils of our brain, or rather only when they reach a certain point of it, do they become visible through the spiritualist magic of this medium. and air, and only when they encounter the protein coils of our brain, or rather only when they encounter a certain point of it, are they transformed by the spiritualist magic of this medium into luminous, sounding vibrations. The reason, essence, and details of this magic are debated; the fact is agreed upon; and of all the theories of thought and knowledge, in which philosophy now wants to exhaust and empty itself, as if it wanted to give birth to another philosophy, , none of them leads to doubting the correctness of this fact, unless it is to declare the doubt insoluble or to shatter the world into tiny specks of dust that illuminate only themselves but not the world."

Those who have kept their thinking far removed from such considerations may regard them as worthless fantasies. In the individual sciences and in activities more directly related to everyday life, they do not appear in such a way that one would have to take them into account. But anyone who wants to have a say in questions of worldview must deal with them. In the second volume of my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” — in the section “The World as Illusion” — you will find a detailed description of the most essential forms in which these considerations have been expressed in recent times. Thirty years ago, it would have been fruitless to engage with the intellectual currents of the time without taking a position on these considerations. For it was on this basis that judgments were made as to whether a worldview had a legitimate starting point or not. Gideon Spicker, author of a stimulating work on “Lessing's Worldview,” who then published the two significant volumes “From the Monastery to Academic Teaching” and “At the Turning Point of the Christian World Period,” wrote to me in 1886, after the publication of my “Epistemology of Goethe's Worldview,” that it was necessary to finally stop constantly pondering the question of how and within what limits humans can know. It would be better to set about actually knowing something. However, observation of the circumstances of the time in this area made it seem futile to present a worldview that did not put forward its secure epistemological foundation.

The most diverse formulations of Schopenhauer's sentence: the world is my representation, presented itself at that time in all possible variations. Volkelt, the subtle dissector of Kant, the judicious author of the epistemological book “Erfahrung und Denken” (Experience and Thought), wrote at that time: “The first fundamental proposition that the philosopher must clearly realize is that our knowledge extends to nothing more than our ideas. Our perceptions are the only things we directly experience; and precisely because we experience them directly, not even the most radical doubt can rob us of the knowledge of them. By contrast, knowledge that goes beyond our perceptions – I am using this term here in the broadest sense, so that it includes all mental activity – is not protected from doubt. Therefore, at the beginning of philosophizing, all knowledge that goes beyond the representations must be explicitly presented as open to doubt.” Such assertions had become self-evident truths for philosophers in the last third of the nineteenth century; they still are for many today who are to be heard when it comes to judging whether a world view is based on legitimate ground or not.

One must familiarize oneself with the way of thinking that leads to such assertions if one wants to have a say in matters of world view in our time. It seemed to me that such familiarization showed that the fundamental questions about the process of knowledge must be posed quite differently from the way they are by many epistemologists, if the train of thought that is taken in such questions is not to lead to one standing at the end before a self-dissolution of that train of thought. To seek clarity in this area, clarity about the value and justification of the ideas under consideration, was the task I sought to solve through the research presented in my booklet “Truth and Science” and in my book “Philosophy of Freedom”. “Truth and Science” was intended as a ‘philosophizing consciousness coming to an understanding with itself’. This is also the title of the work as printed in the doctoral dissertation, which already contains its essential content.

When I wrote these papers, I believed, and still believe today, that the fundamental error of many theories of knowledge lies in the fact that the process of cognition is viewed in a completely wrong way from the outset. One first thinks of the contrast between man and the world. One forms a mental image of the world acting upon man. He receives impressions from it. From these impressions, he forms the worldview in which he lives imaginatively. From this thought, it is then an almost self-evident line of reasoning to the opinion that everything that occurs within human consciousness is merely a product of consciousness. Every thing or being in the external world lies beyond consciousness; for only when the unknown, unconscious aspects of the external world are taken up by consciousness do they become part of the human world view. How things or beings outside of consciousness are is a question that transcends human cognitive ability. This way of thinking appears in various philosophies, constricted into a veritable tangle of concepts that are often conceived in such an unoriginal form, far removed from their source, that many who have become accustomed to them cannot help but regard anyone who would like to reduce these concepts to their simple form as a dilettante.

It cannot be denied that the train of thought described appears so firmly established from a certain point of view that an objection becomes almost impossible, and that Hamerling could say with some justification that anyone who does not accept this view lacks the ability to perceive a fact impartially and to retain it in thought. My aim was not to refute or criticize this way of thinking in the usual sense. I did not ask the question: to what extent is this line of thought incorrect? Rather, I tried to answer the other question exhaustively: to what extent is it correct? And it became clear to me that the epistemologists had made the mistake of not completing the answer. They had stopped halfway. A further progression leads from their starting point to different results than those asserted by them. Anyone with a sense for certain more subtle laws of human logic and psychology knows that one very often fails to recognize the truth value of a thought by allowing oneself to be captivated by refuting ideas that arise prematurely in the soul. In this way, fatal traps arise for an unbiased way of looking at things, which can prevent one from arriving at the right cognitive goals. In contrast, it is often better to immerse oneself in a train of thought and follow its course. If one does not lose sight of the scope and range of the individual thought processes, and does not allow oneself to be overwhelmed by the striving for one-sidedness that so many trains of thought entail, then even one-sided and imperfect thoughts can lead to the realm of truth.

Starting from these premises, I attempted to arrive at epistemological conclusions. What I found still seems completely certain to me today. Just as humans are placed in the world, they must admit that their worldview is given to them as required by the nature of their organization. On this basic idea, one can agree with Kantians, Neo-Kantians, physiologists, and their followers. One can confess with them: what appears to human consciousness appears as required by the conditions of the perceiving human being. If one now clings to this mental image and pursues it one-sidedly in thought, without connecting it with the reality of the human being as one progresses, then one blocks oneself from accessing a true understanding of the capacity for knowledge. I attempted to explain this in detail in my two aforementioned writings. The first form in which a person's worldview is given to them can be followed by a mental process within the person that transforms this worldview insofar as it removes its subjective character and allows cognition to submerge into the objective. One may, of course, be of the opinion that this process is merely a continuation, a kind of intellectual or methodological reworking of the given worldview. If one holds this view, then one will be unable to see anything in everything that can occur within consciousness other than a kind of effect on consciousness of the true reality that remains beyond cognition. I have now endeavored to show that, as it progresses, cognition overcomes the form given to the worldview by the human organism when it first appears. However, in order to be aware of this fact, cognition must achieve an activity that I have called pure thinking. This activity is disputed from the outset by many epistemologists. However, to paraphrase Hamerling, one could say that anyone who does not accept the view that it is possible to engage in an activity within one's inner thought experience, which moves only in inner, living thought processes and which uses the mental images of the sensory world not as images but only as illustrative pictures, lacks the ability to perceive a fact impartially and to hold it in their thoughts. My epistemological research led to the conclusion that, through their organization, humans initially cut themselves off from true reality in a sense, and that in the further course of their cognition, in their elevation to pure thinking, they reinsert themselves into this true reality. My books mentioned above aim to show that human cognition remains incomprehensible if one wishes to regard it as an image indifferent to the objective world process and then has to admit that it cannot be such. Cognition appeared to me as a developmental process rooted in the nature of human beings, which leads this nature from one stage to another. In his cognitive interaction with the outside world, man initially experiences his own nature incompletely, in that his organization presents him with an incomplete picture of reality. In his further inner experience, he transforms the initial form of his worldview, which is an incomplete image of the outside world, so that his inner experience stands in true reality. Viewed in this way, the process of cognition appears to be fundamentally different from that of many epistemologists. A comparison can clarify what is being considered here. It is, of course, meant with all the reservations that apply to all comparisons. One can examine the substantial nature of the cereal plant with reference to the extent to which cereal is suitable as human food due to the substances it contains. This examination can be conducted in a very scientific manner. And yet, from a certain point of view, one can say that such an investigation says nothing about the essence of the plant insofar as this essence is expressed in the processes that lead to growth, flowering, and fruit bearing. However, the inner essence of the plant is revealed in these processes. And what the plant becomes as human food is, in a certain sense, a side effect that falls outside the plant's essence. The human process of cognition is, in its essence, a link in human development. What happens through it has its significance within this development. The fact that, at a certain stage of this development, a reflection of the outside world also emerges in the activity of thoughts and ideas is not intrinsic to the process of cognition in the same sense as the entry of grain into the human diet. If one believes that the main question of epistemology must be posed in such a way that one only looks at the extent to which cognition is a reflection of the external world, one shifts the focus in the same way as one would shift the main question of botany if one wanted to seek the essence of plants through food chemistry.

In the final section of the second volume of my “Riddles of Philosophy” one finds a “sketchy presentation of an anthroposophy” (written in 1914). In it I attempt to show that a completely organic progression must be conceived, from the basic epistemological views of my writing 'Truth and Knowledge' and my 'Philosophy of Freedom', to the content of 'spiritual science' or 'anthroposophy', as I have further developed them. But anyone who reads these earlier writings of mine with an open mind will be able to see that the results developed in them have been obtained through purely philosophical research, and that therefore agreement with what is asserted in them is not dependent on the position that someone takes on the “spiritual science” I represent. In those books I consciously used only the means of thought and methodology that one is accustomed to finding in philosophical works. Thus it seems to me that the kind of research I call “spiritual science” has a secure philosophical foundation in my epistemological presentations, but that the philosophical judgment of this foundation can be kept quite independent of the spiritual-scientific superstructure. But for me there is a clear path from my epistemology to “spiritual science”. Anyone who is able to see without bias what kind of research underlies the content of my later books or the brief presentations in the first and fourth books of this journal will find that the possible epistemological difficulties are cleared up by my earlier writings.

In my spiritual scientific writings, I present those cognitive processes that lead, through spiritual experience and observation, to ideas about the spiritual world in the same way that the senses and the mind bound to them lead to ideas about the sensory world and the human life in it, then, in my opinion, this could only be presented as scientifically justified if it could be proved that the process of pure thinking itself proves to be the first stage of those processes by which supersensible knowledge is attained. I believe I have provided this proof in my earlier writings. I have tried to show in the most diverse ways that man, by living in the pure process of thinking, does not merely perform a subjective activity that is turned away from and indifferent to world processes, but that pure thinking is an event that leads beyond subjective human activity, in which the essence of the objective world lives. It lives in it in such a way that man, in true knowledge, grows together with the objective essence of the world. Anyone who is willing to consider my earlier writings impartially, including the introductory essay I wrote in the 1880s about Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's German National Literature, will feel the weight of the sentence I wrote in 1897 in my book 'Goethe's World View'. “He who speaks of the coldness of the world of ideas can only think ideas, not experience them. He who lives the true life in the world of ideas feels within him the essence of the world at work in a warmth that cannot be compared with anything.” In my recently published book, ‘The Riddle of Man,’ I have described the ‘seeing consciousness’ — in reference to Goethe's idea of the ‘contemplative power of judgment.’ By this I understand the human being's ability to bring a spiritual world to immediate contemplation and observation. My earlier writings treat pure thinking in such a way that it is evident that I include it among the activities of the “contemplative consciousness”. In this pure thinking I see the first, still shadowy, revelation of the stages of spiritual knowledge. Everywhere in my later writings one can see that I regard only those as higher spiritual powers of knowledge that a person develops in the same way as pure thinking. I reject as belonging to the domain of the spiritual powers of cognition every human activity that leads to mere thinking, and I recognize only that which leads beyond pure thinking. No supposed form of knowledge that does not recognize pure thinking as a kind of model and that does not, in the same sphere, possess the same level of deliberation and inner clarity as thinking that is sharp in its ideas, can lead to a real spiritual world. My position regarding the spiritual powers of human cognition, which presupposes the lawfulness of pure thinking for all cognition, placed me in a special position with regard to the kind of thinking that is sometimes called mysticism. If we define mysticism as a form of knowledge through which a person experiences their own being as connected to the essence of the world, then I must apply this definition to my own understanding of true knowledge. I must say that genuine mysticism can only be attained if the epistemological foundations that I believe I have developed are recognized. On the other hand, when I look at what is often referred to as mysticism and what precisely avoids the composure and clarity that characterize the thought process, then I see myself compelled to characterize such mysticism as I did in my book “Goethe's Worldview”: “Mysticism aims to find the source of things, the Godhead, in the human soul. The mystic, like Goethe, is convinced that the essence of the world will reveal itself to him in inner experiences. Only, immersion in the world of ideas is not considered the inner experience that matters. He has roughly the same view of the clear ideas of reason as Kant. For him, they stand outside the creative whole of nature and belong only to the human mind. The mystic therefore seeks to attain the highest knowledge by awakening special powers. He seeks to develop unusual states, for example through ecstasy, to achieve a higher kind of insight... The mystic immerses himself in a world of unclear sensations and feelings; Goethe immerses himself in the clear world of ideas. The mystics despise the clarity of ideas. They consider this clarity to be superficial. They have no inkling of what people feel who have the gift of immersing themselves in the living world of ideas. It freezes the mystic when he surrenders himself to the world of ideas.” This mysticism, which I have to characterize in this way, I must place far outside the realm in which I seek the powers of knowledge that open up the spiritual world. This mysticism drives the life of the human soul into a realm in which it becomes more dependent on the human organization than it is in ordinary sensory perception and in intellectual activity. But the true spiritual faculties of knowledge lead the life of the soul into a realm in which it acquires greater independence from the organization than in sensory perception and imagination, and which is entered with pure thinking even in its simplest form. The cognitive activity by which I think I am building the “spiritual science” has nothing in common with the dreamy, half-conscious soul-life of false mysticism. Unfortunately, the opponents and also those who want to be followers of this spiritual science all too often confuse it with false mysticism, although this confusion is that of a thing with its opposite. Those who do not cling to words and fashion arbitrary creations out of them will see everywhere in my writings where I am aiming at the relatively justified part of the definition of mysticism and where I am rejecting the confusions of false mysticism.

If the process of cognition is recognized as an experience of human development, then one can no longer admit the possibility of pointing to a reality that lies beyond all consciousness by means of mere logical conclusions or hypotheses, through concepts and ideas derived from the perceptions of the senses. One can then speak of a world that lies beyond the senses only in the sense that such a world reveals itself to the “visionary consciousness” in the same way as the world of the senses reveals itself to sensory perception. By making this view my own, I found myself in complete opposition to those philosophies that reject any experience of the realms of reality that lie beyond the sensory world and at most want to admit that there is a logical necessity to hypothetically assume a reality that is alien to consciousness. Within these philosophies, Eduard von Hartmann's “transcendental realism” occupies a particularly characteristic position. From his point of view, the given world picture of man, including all experiences attainable in thinking, appears as the result of the subjective human organization. But Eduard von Hartmann emphasizes the necessity, following from the nature of this world picture itself, to hypothetically conclude from the subjective, conscious to an objective reality, which, however, must be decidedly thought of as remaining in the field of the unconscious. In my “Philosophy of Freedom” I try to show that this is a mistaken way of arriving at a metaphysics. I strove for a unified world view and attributed the apparent dualistic form of it to the fact that man, in mere sensory perception, separates an imperfect form of this image from its whole essence, only to overcome this imperfection in the further progress of cognition. Eduard von Hartmann asserts an epistemological dualism that cannot be overcome by human consciousness and that makes all ideas about the nature of the world those that are conceived in terms of dualism. From my point of view, the metaphysical is that which is not unconscious by nature, but is only not seen by the bearer of consciousness as long as the powers of perception are not laid bare, which allow that which lies beyond sense perception to be experienced just as physical reality is for the senses. It hardly needs to be emphasized that the one who speaks in this way of the supersensible does not claim that with the exercise of the “seeing consciousness” all the secrets of the spiritual world are suddenly revealed to man. It is only that knowledge is extended beyond the sense world into a realm that offers explanatory foundations for this sense world and for human life in this world. The essential thing is to enter into the mode of existence of the spiritual, even if one must be convinced that the part of the spiritual world that can be recognized first is only a small area in its wide expanse. Nor should it be overlooked that the investigation of the details of the spiritual world truly requires no less care and scientific conscientiousness than that of the physical world.

In elaborating my two works based on epistemology, it seemed to me that the rejection of any metaphysics that was merely imagined and filled with content that could not be spiritually experienced was to be linked to Eduard von Hartmann's transcendental realism because I warmly approved of the way in which, regardless of this epistemological point of view, this philosopher was able to demonstrate the spirit in the form of the idea in all phenomena of the world and of life. What compelled me to always recognize Hegel's philosophy in its full value, and yet to lead my own understanding beyond it, applied to me in another respect to Eduard von Hartmann as well. In Hegel I saw how he had grasped the content of thinking in its spiritual reality, but was only able to hold it in such a form that thinking could not become the living initial link in a spiritual process of knowledge that opens up the supersensible world. In Hegel's system, the idea is spiritual reality; but as such it is only a means of expressing the sense-perceptible world and the life in it. Therefore, Hegel's philosophy has nothing to say about a spiritual world; its content is only the world of nature and history.

My position in relation to Hartmann's philosophy was that I was able to agree with his idealistic illumination of the sensory world and human life in it in many things; but that I had to see in his fundamental epistemological views not only a only a theoretical contrast to what I consider to be truth, but also a way of thinking that practically deprives human thought of the possibility of discovering and applying the cognitive powers of the “visionary consciousness” that lie dormant in the soul. That is why, in the second volume of my exposition of Goethe's scientific writings (in Kürschner's German National Literature) in 1887, I was able to write the following sentences about Eduard von Hartmann's idealistic illumination of the sensory and historical world with the utmost sincerity: “With his objective idealism, Eduard von Hartmann stands squarely on the ground of the Goethean worldview... He does not want to be a mere idealist. But where he needs something positive in order to explain the world, he does call on the idea for help... But not much is achieved by distinguishing between the conscious and the unconscious... But one must tackle the idea in its objectivity, in its full content; one must not only see that the idea is unconsciously effective, but what this effectiveness is. If Hartmann had stopped at the idea that the idea is unconscious, and had explained the world from this unconscious, that is to say from a one-sided characteristic of the idea, he would have added a new monotonous system to the many systems which derive the world from some abstract formal principle. And his first major work cannot be said to be entirely free from this monotony. But Eduard von Hartmann's mind is too intense, too comprehensive and penetrating to have failed to recognize that the idea cannot be grasped merely as unconscious; rather, one must delve into what one has to address as unconscious, one must go beyond this quality to its concrete content and derive the world of individual phenomena from it.

Since I was in such a frame of mind and in such scientific opposition to Eduard von Hartmann, his overall judgment of my “Philosophy of Freedom” seemed significant to me in 1894. Given the position that Hartmann's philosophy occupies in the intellectual world, it cannot seem offensive that I share this judgment, which was intended only for me at the time, here and discuss it. This may be considered all the more justified since it is clear from the above that I have a high regard for the personality and philosophical significance of Hartmann. At the time, I already foresaw in this judgment the difficulties that my world view would have to face within contemporary thought. All the confusion with other ways of thinking, which I myself reject and which my striving for is also thought to meet with in the unintentional – and now also intentional – combating of it: they were all basically anticipated in Hartmann's judgment. But I had before me the judgment of a personality whom I esteemed and whose scientific seriousness I could acknowledge, despite her rejecting my way of thinking. Eduard von Hartmann wrote: “In this book, Hume's phenomenalism, absolute in itself, is not reconciled with Berkeley's phenomenalism, based on God; nor is this immanent or subjective phenomenalism reconciled at all with Hegel's transcendental panlogism, nor is Hegel's panlogism reconciled with Goethe's individualism. There is an unbridgeable gulf between any two of these components. Above all, however, it is overlooked that phenomenalism leads with inevitable consistency to solipsism, absolute illusionism and agnosticism, and nothing is done to prevent this slide into the abyss of unphilosophy, because the danger is not recognized at all.” - What is it in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom’ that Eduard von Hartmann seeks to attack with this judgment? Absolute phenomenalism, as it was realized in Hume's philosophy, appears to have been overcome by the attempt to characterize thinking in such a way that, through this, the phenomenal character of the sensory world view is lost and it is made into an appearance of an objective world; Berkeley's subjective phenomenalism loses its justification in the face of this view , in that it is shown that in thinking man grows together with the objective world and that therefore the assertion loses all meaning that world phenomena do not exist outside of being perceived; in contrast to Hegel's Panlogism, thinking is seen as the initial link for purely spiritual human cognitive abilities, not as the final link of ordinary consciousness, which only reflects the sensory world in shadowy ideas; Goethe's individualism is developed by showing how the understanding of human freedom is only possible through a world view that is based on the epistemological foundations of the “Philosophy of Freedom”. Only when the objective essence of the world of thought is recognized and the soul connection of man with ethical motives as a supersubjective experience comes to light, can the essence of freedom be grasped. It is this understanding that I also tried to make culminate in the presentation of my book. The accusation of solipsism against my world view is unfounded because it assigns thinking its place in the objective course of the world, thus directly pointing to the means of knowledge that makes the fall into solipsism impossible. Only someone who misjudges the reality value of the living thinking that I characterize can fall prey to the mention of the danger of absolute illusionism and agnosticism in relation to my “Philosophy of Freedom.” And this happens unconsciously, because they are foisting their view of thinking onto me. If one sees only what Eduard von Hartmann sees in thinking, then, upon rejecting transcendental realism, illusionism and agnosticism do indeed result, whereas my view of thinking leads precisely to making all illusionism and agnosticism impossible through the power and scope of thinking. And at the end of his judgment Eduard von Hartmann senses that my fundamental epistemological view leads out of the conceptual as a mere reflection of the sensible and historical world. For him, all philosophy and all possible striving for a worldview ends at this point; for me, it is the point where human cognitive powers enter the world of spiritual science. He calls this the “slide into the abyss of unphilosophy”; I characterize it, as I did in my book “Vom Menschenrätsel” (The Human Riddle), as the ascent from ordinary to “visionary” consciousness.

I shall explain later on that my arguments concerning the world view of Friedrich Nietzsche and Haeckel, as they appear in my writings from the 1890s, are a direct continuation of the path that leads from my “Philosophy of Freedom” to the “spiritual science” or “anthroposophy” that I advocate. Anyone who is bent on finding contradictions and then constructing a system of contradictions — perhaps a very spiteful system — will easily find contradictions in the structure of a world view if that world view itself is not based on words and word definitions in a formulaic way, but seeks to draw from the fullness of life with all its contradictions. Such a contradiction-fisherman could indeed reproach the world itself with its contradictions. However, some opponents of my world view are clearly prevented from properly assessing what they call contradictions by their obvious lack of knowledge of the development of philosophical science. Attacks on my world view, even from dubious quarters, cannot appear incomprehensible to me, since I was confronted a long time ago with the judgment in question from a serious and highly esteemed source, and I saw myself confronted with all the difficulties that this world view must face in many circles.