Human History and the World Views of Civilized Nations

GA 353 — 14 May 1924, Dornach

On Kant, Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann

Mr. Burle: April 22 was the [200th] birthday of Kant. If I may ask Dr. Steiner to tell us something about Kant's teachings, what the differences would be, and whether they would be a contemporary anthroposophical teaching.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, gentlemen, if I am to answer this question, then you will just have to follow me a little today into a field that is difficult to understand. But Mr. Burle, who also asked the question about relativism, always asks such difficult questions! And so today you may have to be prepared for the fact that things are not as easy to understand as what I usually report. But you see, Kant cannot be presented in an easily understandable way because he is not easily understandable in himself. It is true that today the whole world, which is interested in such things at all (I don't want to say interested, because in reality very few people are interested in it, but the whole world pretends to be interested in it), talks about Kant as if he were something that concerns the world very much in the most fundamental sense. And you know, of course, that a whole series of articles have been written for this 200th birthday, which are supposed to make clear to the world what an enormous significance Immanuel Kant had for the entire intellectual life.

You see, even as a boy at school, I often heard from our teacher of literary history: Immanuel Kant was the emperor of literary Germany! – I once misspoke and said: the king of literary Germany. He immediately corrected me and said: the emperor of literary Germany!

Well, I have been studying Kant a great deal at the moment and – as I mentioned in my biography – I had a teacher of history for a while who actually only ever read from other books; I thought to myself, I can read that at home myself. And once, when he had stepped out, I looked up what he was actually reading and got hold of it myself. That was more economical. I got Kant's Critique of Pure Reason from Reclam's Universal Library; I unbound it and stapled it to my schoolbook, which I had in front of me during the lesson, and now read Kant while history was taught by the teacher. That is why I dared to talk quite a bit about Kant, who everyone actually always talks about in such a way that when you say something that has to do with the spiritual, people say, “Yes, but Kant said...” As one always says in theology: Yes, but the Bible says – so many enlightened people actually say: Yes, but Kant said. – I gave lectures twenty-four years ago; I met a person sitting in the auditorium who always slept, always listened asleep; sometimes, when my voice rose a little, he woke up, and especially at the end. I also said something about the spiritual there – he woke up again, jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and shouted: But Kant said! – Well, it is true that Kant makes an enormous amount of essence out of it.

Now let us try to imagine how Kant actually viewed the world. He said, with a certain amount of justification, that everything we see and feel, in short, everything we perceive through our senses, in other words all of nature outside of us, is not reality but appearance. But how does it come about? Yes, it arises from the fact – and this is the difficult part, so you must pay close attention – that something, which he called the “thing in itself”, that is, something completely unknown, of which we know nothing, makes an impression on us; and this impression is what we actually see, not the thing in itself.

So you see, gentlemen, when I draw it for you, it's like this: there is the human being – you could just as easily do it with hearing and feeling, if we want to do it with seeing – there is the thing in itself somewhere out there. But we know nothing about it, it is completely unknown, we know nothing about it. But this thing in itself now makes an impression on the eye. We don't know anything about that either, but it makes an impression on the eye. And inside the human being, an appearance is now created, and we inflate this appearance to the whole world. (Pointing to the drawing): We know nothing about the red, only about what we have as an appearance; what I now draw as violet, we know something about. So actually, according to Kant, the whole world is basically man-made. You see the tree. You know nothing about the tree itself; the tree only makes an impression on you, that is to say: something unknown makes an impression on you, and you form this impression into a tree, and you place the tree in your perceptions. So consider, gentlemen: here is a chair, an armchair - a thing in itself. What is actually there, you do not know; but what is there makes an impression on me. And I actually put the chair there. So when I sit on the chair, I do not know what kind of thing I am actually sitting on. The thing in itself, that which I sit on, that is actually what I put there.

You see, Kant speaks of the limits of knowledge in such a way that you can never know what the thing in itself is, because everything is actually only a world made by man. It is very difficult to make the matter seriously understandable. And when you are asked about this Kant, it is indeed the case that if you really want to characterize him, you have to say some very strange things. For when one looks at the true Kant, it is actually difficult to believe that this is the case. But it is the case that Kant simply asserts from theory, from thinking: No one knows anything about the thing in itself, but the whole world is made only from the impression we receive from things.

I once said: if you don't know what the thing in itself is, then it could be anything; it could consist of pinheads, for example! – And that's how it is with Kant. You could easily say that, according to him, the thing in itself could consist of anything. But now comes the rest: If you stop at this theory, then all of you here, as I see you here, are only my appearance; I have placed all of you on the chairs here, and what is behind each of you as a thing-in-itself, I do not know. And again, when I stand there, you also do not know what kind of thing-in-itself it is, but you see the appearance that you yourself place there. And what I am talking about is what you are listening to yourself! So, what I am actually doing there – the thing in itself, what that is actually doing there, you all don't know; but this thing in itself makes an impression on you. You then project this impression here; you basically hear what you yourself are doing!

Now, taking this example, if we speak in a Kantian sense, we could say something like the following: You sit out there having breakfast and say, “Yes, now we want to go into the hall and listen to this and that for an hour.” We cannot know what the thing in itself is that we hear; but we will look at the stone there, so that we have this phenomenon - at least for an hour - and afterwards we will listen to what we want to hear. That is actually what Kant says first of all, because he claims: We never know anything about the thing in itself!

You see, one of Kant's successors, Schopenhauer, found the matter so clear that he said: There's no doubt about it! - That is absolutely certain, he says, that when I see blue, something out there is not blue, but the blue comes from me when a thing in itself makes an impression on me. If I hear someone out there moaning and suffering pain, then the pain and the moaning come not from him but from me! That, says Schopenhauer, is actually quite clear. And when a person closes his eyes and sleeps, then the whole world is dark and silent; then there is nothing there for him.

Now, gentlemen, according to this theory, you can create the world in the simplest way and then remove it again. You fall asleep, the world is gone; and you wake up again: and you have recreated the whole world - at least the one you see. Apart from that, only the thing in itself is there, of which you know nothing. Yes, Schopenhauer found that quite clear. But Schopenhauer did feel a little queasy about it. He was not entirely comfortable with the assertion. So he said: At least something is outside - blue and red, and all cold and warmth is not outside; when I feel cold, I myself create the cold - but what is outside is the will. Will lives in everything. And the will, that is a completely free demonic power. But it lives in all things.

So he has already put a little something into “the thing in itself”. He also regarded everything we imagine as a mere appearance that we ourselves make; but at least he has already endowed the thing in itself with the will. There were many people and there are still many people today who do not really realize what the consequences of Kant's teaching are. I once met a person who was really - as one should be when one has a doctrine - completely imbued with this Kantian doctrine, and he said to himself: I made everything myself: the mountains, the clouds, the stars, everything, everything, and I also made humanity myself, and I made everything in the world myself. Now, however, I don't like what I have made. I created everything; but now I don't like it. Now I want to get rid of it again. - And then he said that he had started by killing a few people - he was just insane; he said that he started killing a few people in order to fulfill his desire to get rid of the people he had made himself. I told him he should just think about what kind of difference it makes: He has a pair of boots; according to Kant's teachings, he also made them. But he should just think about what, in addition to what he is now doing as an appearance of the boots, the shoemaker has also done!

Yes, you see, that's how it is: the most famous things in the world are often the most nonsensical! And people cling to the most nonsensical with the greatest obstinacy. And, curiously enough, it is the enlightened who cling to it.

What I have told you in a few words, which are already quite difficult to understand, must be read in many books when reading Kant; for that is what he has now peeled apart in long, long theories; and he begins his book “Critique of Pure Reason” - that is what he calls it - by first proving that Space is not outside in the world, I make it myself, I spin it out of myself. So first of all: space is an appearance. Secondly: time is also an appearance. Because it is said: there was once an Aristotle – yes, but I put him into time myself, because I make all of time myself!

Now he has written this great book, the “Critique of Pure Reason”; it makes quite a nice impression. Now if some Philistine comes along and gets hold of a thick book called Critique of Pure Reason, he'll think it's really something, because it's terribly clever. You become a kind of god on earth yourself when you read something like that! But then, after the introduction, it says: Part One. Transcendental Aesthetics. – Well, no, it says: Transcendental Aesthetics. – If someone opens my Philosophy of Freedom, then the chapter title might just be: Man and the World. – Oh, Man and the World, that's something ordinary, you don't even read that. But transcendental aesthetics! – When the philistine opens such a book, he does so with the feeling that it must be something quite tremendous! He does not usually think about what transcendental aesthetics is, but that is just as well for him; it is a word that makes him trip over his tongue a little when he speaks it. That is the main title.

Now comes the subtitle: First Section. The transcendental deduction of space. - Now, you can't think of anything better for a Philistine than to have a chapter like that. And afterwards it begins in a way that he doesn't really understand. But for more than a hundred years everyone has been saying: Kant is a great man. - So when he reads that, he gets a little something out of it himself, and so he gets a little delusions of grandeur.

Then comes the second section: the transcendental deduction of time. - If you have now fought your way through the transcendental deduction of space and time, then comes the second major section: the transcendental analytics. - And in the transcendental analytics, the main thing is to prove that man has transcendental apperception.

Well, gentlemen, I was asked, and I have to tell you these things, the story of transcendental apperception. You have to read through many hundreds of pages to get everything that is contained in this chapter on transcendental apperception. With transcendental apperception, it is meant that man makes his ideas and is a unity in this presentation. So if everything is just an idea, the whole world, then actually now through this transcendental apperception the whole world must be spun out of the nothingness of one's own being. Yes, that's roughly how it is presented there.

So now we come to it: In the chapter on transcendental apperception, Kant spins the whole world with all its trees, clouds, stars and so on out of himself. Yes, he spins them out – that's what he says. But what he actually spins out and what one always has to deal with in this whole wide chapter are the same ideas, only translated a little later, which I recently wrote down for you on the Sephiroth Tree, but only in the form of a mere alphabet, not in such a way that one can read with it, know something! And what's more: at least there it was something very concrete. But Kant spins it out in such a way that he says: the world consists, first, of quantity, second, of quality, third, of relation, fourth, of modality. Now, each of these concepts in turn has three sub-concepts; for example, quantity: unity, multiplicity, allness. Now, quality has: reality, negation, limitation, and so on. There were twelve concepts – three times four is twelve – and you can spin the world out of them. Good old Kant didn't spin the world out of them at all, but actually only spun out twelve concepts with transcendental apperception. So he actually only created twelve concepts, not the world.

If there were any truth in the story, something would come of it! But the Philistines don't even notice that nothing comes of it, that only twelve terms come out, but they now go around the world with a full stomach and with Kantian philosophy, saying, “Nothing can be grasped!” Well, that can be understood with the Philistines; they feel honored when they are told, If they do not understand anything, it is not because of them, but because of the whole world. If you believe that you know nothing, you are right; but that is not because you can do nothing, but because the whole world can know nothing. - And so these twelve concepts come out. That is then the transcendental analytics.

But now the really difficult chapters are coming. Then there is the big chapter entitled: Of the Transcendental Paralogisms. - That's how it goes on in general. In Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason” you get title after title! It says: There are people who claim that space is infinite. This proves how people who see that space is infinite prove it. But there are also people who say: space is limited. This is also proved, just as the people prove it. So you will find in the “Critique of Pure Reason” - in the later chapters it shows two opposing sides everywhere - on the one hand it is proved: space is infinite; on the other hand it is proved: space is finite. Then it is proved again: time is infinite, is an eternity. Then it is proved that time had a beginning and will come to an end. And so on, gentlemen. Then it is proved that man is free. And on the other hand, man is not free.

What does Kant mean by providing the evidence for these two opposing assertions? He means to say: we cannot prove anything at all! We might just as well assert: space is infinite as well as finite; time is eternal, time will come to an end! - We might just as well say: man is free, or: he is unfree. - So that boils down to the fact that in modern times you have to say: think as you want to think, you will not arrive at the truth, but for you humans everything is the same.

Then you also get instructions on how to think in this way, taught in transcendental methodology. In this way, one can first take on a book by Kant. So one can ask: Why did Kant actually undertake all this? Then one comes to what Kant actually wanted. You see, up to Kant, people who did philosophy didn't really know much either, but at least they claimed: There is some knowledge about the world that can be known. This was countered by what had already come from the Middle Ages, because, as I have shown you, in the Middle Ages the old knowledge was lost. What had already been grasped in the Middle Ages as a thought was that one can only know something of what the senses represent, and cannot know anything of what is of the spirit. You have to believe that. And so, through the Middle Ages and up to Kant, the assertion arose: You cannot know anything about the spiritual; you can only believe something about the spiritual.

The churches, of course, got away very well with this teaching that one cannot know anything about the spiritual, one must believe that, because then they can dictate what man should believe about the spiritual!

Now, as already mentioned, there were philosophers – Leibniz, Wolff and so on – who, up to Kant, asserted that at least some of the spiritual things in the world can be known by mere reason. Kant now said: It is all nonsense to believe that one can know anything of the spiritual, but one must merely believe all of the spiritual! Because the spiritual lies in the “thing in itself”. You cannot know anything about the 'thing in itself'. Therefore, everything that refers to the spiritual must be believed. And Kant also betrayed himself when he wrote the second edition of his 'Critique of Pure Reason'. In this second edition there is a curious sentence in it; it says: 'I had to stop knowing in order to make room for believing.' That is the confession, actually, gentlemen! That is what led to the unknown thing in itself! That is why Kant called his book “Critique of Pure Reason”: reason itself was to be criticized, that it cannot know anything. And in this sentence: “I had to abandon knowledge in order to make room for faith,” in this actually lies the truth of Kant's philosophy. But that opens the floodgates to all faith. And in fact all positive religion could refer to Kant! But those people who do not want to know anything at all can also refer to Kant, who say: Why do we not know anything? Because one cannot know anything! - You see, so actually the teaching of Kant has become a support of faith. Therefore, it was quite natural that I myself had to completely reject Kant's teachings from the very beginning; although I read the whole Kant as a schoolboy, I always have to completely reject Kant's teachings for the simple reason that one would then simply have to stop at what people believe about the spiritual world and never have any real spiritual knowledge. Kant is actually the one who excludes all spiritual science the most and only wants a certain belief.

So Kant first wrote this first book: “Critique of Pure Reason.” In this “Critique of Pure Reason” it is thus proved: we know nothing of the thing in itself. We can only have a belief about what the “thing in itself” is.

Then he wrote a second book: “Critique of Practical Reason.” He then wrote a third book: “Critique of Judgment,” but that is not so important. So he wrote “Critique of Practical Reason” as his second book. There he has now outlined his own belief. So, first of all, he wrote a book of knowledge: “Critique of Pure Reason”; in it he proved that one can know nothing. Now the Philistine can put the book down; it is proved to him that one can know nothing. Then Kant wrote the “Critique of Practical Reason”; there he now builds his faith. How does he build his faith? He says: If man looks at himself in the world, he is an imperfect being; but to be so imperfect is not really human; so there must be a greater perfection of man somewhere. We know nothing about it; but we believe that there is a greater perfection of man somewhere within the earth, we believe in immortality.

Yes, you see, gentlemen, that is indeed quite different from the scientific considerations I give you for what survives in man when he passes through death! But Kant does not want any such knowledge at all; he simply wants to prove from man's imperfection that man should believe in immortality.

Then he proves in the same way that one should only believe that one cannot know anything about freedom, but should believe that man is free; because if he were not free, he would not be responsible for his actions. So one believes that he can be responsible for being free.

Kant's doctrine of freedom often reminded me of another doctrine that a professor of jurisprudence always mentioned at the beginning of his lectures. He said: “Gentlemen, there are people who say: Man is not free. But, gentlemen, if man were not free, then he would not be responsible for his actions. But then there could be no punishment either. But if there are no punishments, then there can be no science of punishment. I present the science of punishment myself – so then I could not exist either. But I do exist, so there is also a science of punishment, consequently there is also a punishment, consequently also a freedom – so I have proved to you that there is a freedom! What Kant says about freedom reminds me very much of the professor's speech. And Kant speaks of God in the same way. He says: We cannot know anything about any power in itself. But I cannot make an elephant; so I believe that someone else can make it, someone who can make more than I can. So I believe in a God.

Now Kant has written this second book, the “Critique of Practical Reason”. In it, he says that we as human beings should believe in God, freedom and immortality. We cannot know anything about it, but we should believe it. Just think about what an inhuman idea this actually is: first, it is proven that knowledge is actually nothing; secondly, that one should believe in God, in whom one cannot know anything, in freedom and immortality! So Kant is basically the greatest reactionary. People use fine words; that is why they called him the destroyer of everything. Yes, knowledge, he destroyed everything, but only as one destroys toys. Because the world still remains, of course! And faith, he actually supported it in a very considerable way.

This went on throughout the entire 19th century and into the 20th, and today, of course, people everywhere are writing about Kant's 200th birthday! And in reality, Kant is an example of how little people actually think. Because what I have told you now is simply a pure presentation of Kant's teachings! But what people say – that Kant was the greatest philosopher, that Kant cannot be refuted, and so on – well, if you take this example, you really get a good idea of how Kant, in particular, can be used by opponents of spiritual science. Simply because they can then say: Yes, we do not start from religion, but we start from the most enlightened philosopher! But it is really the case that Kant could just as easily be the starting point for the most dogmatic teacher of religion as for any enlightened person.

Then Kant wrote other works, one of which was about the question: How will metaphysics be possible as a science in the future?, in which he actually proves again that it is impossible and so on. You actually have to say: All of science in the 19th century actually suffered from Kant; Kant was basically a disease of science.

Now, if you take Kant as an example of how nonsensical intellectual development sometimes is, then you have taken him in the right way. But then you will also say to yourself: one really has to be careful in knowledge, because the world is terribly bent on perpetrating the very greatest nonsense in knowledge. And you can well imagine the difficult position in which a representative of spiritual science finds himself: not only do you have the representatives of religion against you, but also all the other philosophers and those who have been infected by them, and so on. Every philistine comes and says: Yes, you claim this about the spiritual world; Kant has already proved – so they say – that one cannot know anything about it! – That is actually the best general objection one can make. Some people say: I don't want to hear anything at all about what Steiner says, because Kant has already proved that one cannot know anything about all this.

Are you satisfied?

Mr. Burle says he mainly wanted to hear what Kant meant. It is as Dr. Steiner says: one hears so much about Kant, but nothing positive. It is true that one has to work hard to understand it.

Dr. Steiner: The matter then had consequences. In 1869, a book appeared by someone who was inspired by Kant, 'The Philosophy of the Unconscious', which in turn caused a huge stir. And Eduard von Hartmann was already a very clever person! If Eduard von Hartmann had lived before Kant, if Kant had not had such an influence on him, much more would probably have come of him. But he could not actually go beyond this strong prejudice that one has of Kant. So it was, just as Schopenhauer before, also clear to Eduard von Hartmann that one knows nothing of the whole world but one's own ideas, that which one puts out there oneself. But in addition, he had accepted the Schopenhauerian doctrine that one must equip the thing in itself with the will. Now the will is everywhere inside. I once wrote an article about Eduard von Hartmann, and in it I also mentioned Schopenhauer. Now Schopenhauer said: We know nothing of the thing in itself; we have only ideas about it. Only the ideas are intelligent; the will is stupid. So that actually everything we know about ourselves is nothing more than the stupid will.

In the article in which I mentioned Schopenhauer, I said: According to Schopenhauer, everything in the world that is clever is actually the work of man; because man creates everything in the world; and what is behind it is the stupid will. So the stupidity of the deity is the world. But they confiscated it at the time! It was supposed to be published in Austria.

The thing is this: Eduard von Hartmann assumed that the thing in itself must be endowed with will; but the will is actually stupid, and that is why things are so bad in the world. And that is why Eduard von Hartmann became a pessimist, as they say. That is why he had the view that the world is no good, is not good, but is basically bad, very bad. And not just what people do, but everything in the world is bad. He said: You can calculate that the world is bad. You just have to put on one side, on the debit side, everything you have in life in terms of happiness and pleasure and so on, and on the other side, everything you have in terms of suffering and so on: There is always more on the other side. The balance is always negative. So the whole world is bad. - That's why Hartmann became a pessimist.

But you see, Eduard von Hartmann was, first of all, basically a clever person and, secondly, someone who then also drew the consequences. He said: Why do people still live? Why don't they prefer to kill themselves? If everything is bad, it would be much wiser if one day general human suicide were decided upon; then all this that is created would be gone. But Eduard von Hartmann said, on the other hand, “No, you can't manage to set such a general day of world suicide. And even if we set it - people have emerged from animals; the animals would not kill themselves; then people would emerge from the animals again! So we can't manage it that way. Therefore, he came up with something else. He said to himself: If you really want to wipe out everything in the earthly world, then you can't do it by people committing suicide, but you have to thoroughly exterminate the whole earth. We do not yet have the necessary machines for this today; but people have already invented many machines; therefore, all wisdom must be applied to inventing a machine that can be used to drill into the earth, so that one goes deep enough, and then, by means of a special dynamite or similar device, blows up the whole earth, so that the debris flies out into the world and turns to dust. Then the real ultimate goal will have been achieved.

Yes, this is no joke, gentlemen! This is really the teaching of Eduard von Hartmann, that one should invent a machine that can, one might say, blow up the whole Earth, atomizing and splintering the Earth.

Interjection: In America, they want to build cannons that can shoot the moon down!

Dr. Steiner: But what I have told you is a real philosophical teaching from the 19th century!

Now you will say: There was such a clever man - how can that be? He must have been stupid to have said that! - No, truly, Eduard von Hartmann was not stupid, but he was cleverer than all the others. I can prove that to you right away. But precisely because he was cleverer than the doctrine inspired by Kant, this stupidity arose from the machine with which one is to hurl the world into nothingness. This was asserted by a very clever man, only thoroughly corrupted by Kant.

Now he has written this “Philosophy of the Unconscious”. In this “Philosophy of the Unconscious” he said: Yes, it is quite true that humans have developed from animals; but spiritual forces were also involved. Now these forces are forces of will, not clever but stupid forces. And he presented this very cleverly, and in doing so he presented something that contradicted Darwinism.

Now, back then – just imagine, this was in the 1860s! – there was this clever philosophy of the unconscious by Hartmann and the Darwinism that Haeckel, Oscar Schmidt and others represented, but which was the cleverest thing since sliced bread for the rest of humanity. Now all those who were again stubborn Darwinists, came forward and said: This Eduard von Hartmann, he must be thoroughly refuted; he knows nothing about science! But what did Hartmann do? The following shows what he did at the time. After the others had shouted themselves hoarse – that is, on printing paper – a book also appeared: “The Unconscious from the Point of View of Darwinism”. A thorough refutation of Eduard von Hartmann from the point of view of Darwinism! – But no one knew who it was from.

Well, gentlemen, now the natural scientists were all pleased, because it contained the refutation of Eduard von Hartmann. Even Haeckel said: “Let such a person who has written this against Hartmann call himself to us, and we will consider him one of our own, a naturalist of the first rank!” And sure enough, the book was sold very, very quickly and a second edition appeared: the author named himself - it was Eduard von Hartmann himself! He had written it against himself. But now they stopped praising him; the matter did not become very well known! So he proved that he was cleverer than all the others! But you see, the news that people are given is silent about these stories. But such a piece in the history of ideas must be told; then one comes to this: Eduard von Hartmann was a person who was corrupted by Kant, but who is extremely clever.

Now, if I told you that he wants to blow up the world with a big machine that someone is supposed to invent, you might quite rightly say that he may have been terribly clever, Eduard von Hartmann, but for those of us who have not yet studied Kant, it seems like a stupid thing to do after all. And you might well believe that, however cleverly I describe Eduard von Hartmann, he must have been stupid. You could easily believe that. But then you would have to tell and think that the others were even stupider; and then I am satisfied for my own sake! But it can be proved historically that the others were even more stupid than one who proves that the earth should be blown up.

It is important to know such a thing, because today there still exists this peculiar worship of everything that is printed. And since Kant appeared in the “Universal Library” - I was only able to read him because of it, because otherwise I couldn't have bought him; but he was cheap, even though the books are so thick - since then, there's been even more of a devil's mess with Kant than before, because since then everyone has been reading Kant. That is, they read the first page, but they don't understand anything. Then they hear that Kant is “the emperor of literary Germany”; so they think: Gosh, now that we know about Kant, we're smart people ourselves! And most of them are such that they admit: Yes, I have to say that I understand Kant, because otherwise the others will say I'm stupid if I don't understand Kant. In reality, people don't understand him, but they don't admit that; they say, “I have to understand Kant because he's very clever.” So I say, “I understand something very clever when I understand Kant!” Then it also impresses people.

But really, gentlemen, although it was difficult to present this question in a somewhat popular way, I am nevertheless glad that it was chosen as the question, because it showed what is actually going on in the so-called intellectual life of people, and how careful people actually have to be when something like this affects them, which itself leads to the fact that now in all newspapers a lot is made of the 200th birthday of Kant. I am not saying that Kant should not be celebrated – others are celebrated as well – but the truth is as I have told you.

We will continue our discussion next Saturday at nine o'clock.