VI. The Present State of Philosophy and Science

What I have characterized for physiology, I could characterize for biology, for history and cultural history. There you see a field of work that lies ahead of us, that needs to be cultivated. There you see the situation of contemporary philosophy and science in relation to what we have, I would say, through the favor of circumstances, through our human karma, in terms of positive results. All around us, the most beautiful results have been achieved through research into facts. Anyone who familiarizes themselves with these facts will see a wonderful development. What is missing is the sharp urgency, the energy of philosophical thinking, which only when it is applied – but courageously applied to the facts – can then present these facts in their true light. This was stated epistemologically in my fundamental epistemological writing 'Truth and Science'. There you will find references to the kind of epistemology that takes into account that our epistemology does not remain without objective significance, but must occur in such a way that there is a fertilization of our epistemological subject in the epistemological results, so that it can submerge into what is given to us by the rest of the situation of science. If we work in the right way with seriousness and dignity in this field, as in all fields of science, on the basis of the beginnings that should develop out of our spiritual scientific movement, if we do not remain with a certain theosophical dilettantism, but immerse ourselves strictly in what is also scientifically given, we shall arrive at having a metaphysic which, through the weapons of a productive theory of knowledge, invades the supersensible through the outer field of sense perception, instead of having, as is really the case today, a metaphysic without transcendental conviction. Then it will have conviction because it will rest on a theory of knowledge, because it will be able to fertilize the human cognitive subject. Logic will acquire its content because the laws of thinking will become world laws. Ethics will also be able to have what one could call bindingness, because productive knowledge pours into our impulses. We will have an ethic with bindingness. Then we will also have what is not a psychology without soul, but a psychology with the soul, because the human desire for knowledge is based on the questions about the soul and its destiny in the world.