{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 186/1918-12-14/p014","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"A Russian author and philosopher of the name of Berdiayeff recently wrote an interesting article on the philosophical evolution in the Russian people in the second half of the nineteenth century and until the present day. There are two remarkable things in this essay of Berdiayeff's. One is that the author takes his start from a peculiar prejudice, proving that he has no insight into those truths, with which you must by now be thoroughly familiar—I mean the truth that in the Russian East, preparing for the Sixth Post-Atlantean Age (the age of the evolution of the Spiritual Life [the German: *Geistselbst*, the spirit self]), altogether new elements are on the point of emerging, though today they are only there in embryo. Berdiayeff being ignorant of this fact, his judgment on one point is quite incorrect. He says to himself (and as a Russian philosopher he must surely know the facts), he says: It is strange that in Russia as against the Western European civilizations we have no real sense (especially in philosophy) for what in the West they call the Truth. Russians have been much interested in the philosophy of the West, yet they have no real feeling for it inasmuch as it strives towards “The Truth.” They only take up the truths of philosophy inasmuch as they are serviceable for life, inasmuch as they are directly useful to some conception of life. The Socialist, e.g., is interested in philosophy because he imagines that this or that philosophy will provide him with a justification for his socialism. Similarly the orthodox Believer will interest himself in some philosophy, not, like a Western man because it is the Truth, but because it gives him a justification or a basis for his Orthodox Belief. And so on. Berdiayeff regards this as a great failing in the Folk-Soul of modern Russia. He says: In the West they are far in advance of us. They do not imagine that Truth must follow life; they really believe that Truth is *Truth*; the Truth is there, and life must take its direction from it. And Berdiayeff actually adds the extraordinary statement (albeit not extraordinary for the men of the present day, who will take it quite as a matter of course, but extraordinary for the Spiritual Scientists) he adds the statement: The Russian socialist has no right to use the expression “bourgeois science,” for bourgeois science contains the truth; it has at last established the concept of Truth, and that is a thing that cannot be refitted. It is therefore a failing on the part of the Russian Folk-Soul to believe that this Truth too can be transcended!","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"II. The Logic of Thought and the Logic of Reality","site_heading":null,"date":"1918-12-14","location":null,"word_count":442,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/186/1918-12-14/p014","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"C52","book_title":"The Fundamental Social Demand of Our Times","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA186/English/C52/19181214p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"source_says_translator_unknown","note":"The source page itself says the translator is unknown. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/186/1918-12-14/p014"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/186/1918-12-14/p014","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1918-12-14","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 186/1918-12-14/p012","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/186/1918-12-14/p012"}],"bead_confidence":"high","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":396,"en_words":442,"ratio":1.12,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 186/1918-12-14/p012","passage_number":12,"text":"Ein russischer Schriftsteller und Philosoph, Berdjajew, hat jüngst einen ganz interessanten Aufsatz geschrieben über die philosophische Entwickelung des russischen Volkes von der zweiten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts bis jetzt. In diesem Aufsatze von Berdjajew ist zweierlei recht merkwürdig. Eines ist, daß der Autor von einem merkwürdigen Vorurteil ausgeht, welches beweist, daß er keinen Einblick in diejenigen Wahrheiten hat, die uns jetzt schon sehr geläufig sein müssen, in die Wahrheiten, daß im russischen Osten für den sechsten nachatlantischen Zeitraum, für den Zeitraum der Entwickelung des Geistselbstes, überhaupt ganz neue Elemente im Auftauchen begriffen sind, die heute erst im Keime vorhanden sind. Weil er das nicht weiß, beurteilt er einen Punkt ganz falsch. Er sagt sich, es ist doch merkwürdig — und als russischer Philosoph muß er das wissen —, daß man in Rußland, anders als im Westen der europäischen Zivilisation, für dasjenige, was man im Westen Wahrheit nennt, gerade in der Philosophie eigentlich keinen rechten Sinn hat. Man hat sich zwar viel für die Philosophie des Westens interessiert, aber man hat keinen rechten Sinn für die Philosophie des Westens, insofern sie «Wahrheit» anstrebt; sondern man nimmt philosophische Wahrheit auf, insofern sie dem Leben dient, insofern sie nützlich ist für eine unmittelbare Lebensauffassung. Der Sozialist zum Beispiel interessiert sich für die Philosophie aus dem Grunde, weil er glaubt, daß ihm diese oder jene Philosophie eine Rechtfertigung seines Sozialismus gibt. Ebenso interessiert sich der Orthodoxe für irgendeine Philosophie nicht so wie der Westler, weil sie Wahrheit ist, sondern er interessiert sich dafür, weil sie ihm eine Grundlage, eine Rechtfertigung gibt für seinen orthodoxen Glauben und so weiter. Das betrachtet Berdjajew als einen großen Mangel der heutigen russischen Volksseele. Denn er sagt: Die im Westen wären weit voraus, die glauben nicht, daß sich die Wahrheit nach dem Leben richten müsse, sondern die Wahrheit sei Wahrheit, und sie sei da, und das Leben müsse sich nach der Wahrheit richten. Dazu setzt er ausdrücklich den merkwürdigen Satz merkwürdig allerdings nicht für einen Menschen der Gegenwart, denn ein Mensch der Gegenwart findet ihn selbstverständlich -, aber den für den Geisteswissenschafter höchst merkwürdigen Satz: der russische Sozialist habe kein Recht, den Ausdruck «bürgerliche Wissenschaft», «Bourgeois-Wissenschaft», zu gebrauchen, denn die Bourgeois-Wissenschaft enthalte die Wahrheit, sie habe endlich den Wahrheitsbegriff aufgestellt; und das sei eben die unumstößliche Wahrheit. Daher sei es ein Mangel der russischen Volksseele, wenn sie glaube, daß auch diese Wahrheit überwunden werden könne.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":396,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/186/1918-12-14/p012"}],"english":["GA 186/1918-12-14/p014"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":396,"en_words":442,"ratio":1.12,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.09,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":9153,"original_word_count":8380,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"C52","book_title":"The Fundamental Social Demand of Our Times","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA186/English/C52/19181214p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"source_says_translator_unknown","note":"The source page itself says the translator is unknown. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing.","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 186/1918-12-14/p012"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}