{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 186/1918-12-14/p017","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"And, truth to tell, my dear friends, if you had told Avenarius and Mach that their philosophy was to be accepted by such people as the Bolsheviks, they themselves would have been still more astonished and angry than Berdiayeff. They would have been most indignant (both of them, as you know, are now dead) if they had lived to see themselves as the official philosophers of Bolshevism. Imagine Avenarius, the worthy bourgeois, who of course had always assumed that he could only be understood by people who—well, who wore at any rate decent clothes, people who would never do violence to anyone in the Bolshevist manner, in short, good “respectable” people, in the sense in which one used the expression in the sixties, seventies and eighties. And it is true, if we consider only the content of the philosophy of Avenarius, we are still more at a loss to understand how it happened. For what does Avenarius think? Avenarius says: Men labor under a prejudice. They think: within, in my head, or in my soul or wherever it is, are the ideas, the perceptions, they are there subjectively; outside are the objects. But, says Avenarius, this is not correct. If I were all alone in the world, I should never arrive at the distinction between subject and object. I am led to make the distinction only through the fact that other people are there too. I alone beheld a table, I should never come to the idea that the table is out there in space and a picture of it here in my brain. I would simply have the table, and would not distinguish between subject and object. I only distinguish between them because, when I look at the table with another man, I say to myself: He sees the table, and I too perceive it. The perception is in my head too. I reflect that what he senses I am also sensing. Such are partly theoretical considerations (I will not go into them more fully, you would say: All these things do not interest us) within which Avenarius' thought lives and moves. In 1876 he wrote his book *Conception of the World According to the Principle of Least Action*. For on such premises as I have here explained to you, he shows how the concepts we have as human beings have no real value, but that we only create them for the sake of mental economy. According to Avenarius, the concept “Lion,” for example, or the concept that finds expression in a “Natural Law” is nothing real, nor does it refer to anything real. It is only uneconomical if in the course of my life I have seen five or six or even thirty lions and am now to conceive them each and severally. I therefore proceed in a more economical way, and make myself a single concept “Lion,” embracing all the thirty. Thus all our forming of concepts is a mere matter of subjective mental economy.","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":498,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/186/1918-12-14/p017","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/p017"},{"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/p017","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. 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Denken Sie sich den braven bürgerlichen Avenarius, der da glaubte, nur in den reifsten Begriffen zu arbeiten, der selbstverständlich vorausgesetzt hat, daß ihn nur Leute verstehen können, welche - nun, sagen wir - anständige Röcke tragen, niemandem in bolschewistischer Weise etwas zuleide tun, kurz, ganz gesittete Menschen sind in dem Sinne, wie man in den sechziger, siebziger, achtziger Jahren sich «gesittete Menschen» gedacht hat. Nur unter solchen Menschen, hat sich Avenarius vorgestellt, könnte seine Philosophie Anhänger finden. Nun, wenn man erst eingeht auf den Inhalt dieser Avenarius-Philosophie, dann wird man das Faktum, daß Avenarius offizieller Philosoph der Bolschewisten ist, erst recht nicht begreifen. Denn was denkt Avenarius? Er sagt sich: Die Menschen leben unter dem Vorurteil, da drinnen in meinem Kopfe oder in meiner Seele oder wo immer sind subjektiv die Vorstellungen, die Wahrnehmungen; draußen sind die Objekte. Das ist aber nicht richtig. Würde ich allein auf der Welt sein, so würde ich überhaupt gar niemals auf den Unterschied kommen zwischen Objekt und Subjekt. Ich komme auf den Unterschied nur dadurch, daß andere Leute auch noch da sind. Ich würde, wenn ich allein einen Tisch anschaue, gar nicht zu der Idee kommen, meint Avenarius, daß der Tisch da draußen in einem Raum ist und ein Abbild davon in meinem Gehirn, sondern ich würde den Tisch haben und würde nicht unterscheiden zwischen Subjekt und Objekt. Die unterscheide ich nur, weil, wenn ich mit einem andern den Tisch anschaue, ich mir sage, der sieht den Tisch, ich nehme ihn wahr, da ist in meinem Kopf noch diese Wahrnehmung drinnen. Nun überlege ich mir, daß das, was er empfindet, auch ich empfinde. Also innerhalb solcher rein theoretischer Erwägungen - ich will sie Ihnen gar nicht alle vorsetzen, Sie würden sagen, das interessiert uns alles nicht -, innerhalb solcher erkenntnistheoretischer, rein abstrakter Erwägungen bewegt sich Avenarius. Er hat 1876 das Büchelchen geschrieben: «Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemäß dem Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftmaßes. » Denn aus solchen Voraussetzungen, wie ich sie Ihnen eben jetzt klargelegt habe, da zeigt er, daß unsere Begriffe, die wir als Menschen haben, überhaupt keinen rechten Wirklichkeitswert haben, sondern daß wir nur Begriffe schaffen zu dem Zwecke, um ökonomisch die Welt zusammenzuhalten. Der Begriff «Löwe» zum Beispiel oder der Begriff, der sich in einem Naturgesetz ausdrückt, ist überhaupt nichts Wirkliches, weist auch nach Avenarius nicht auf etwas Wirkliches hin, sondern es ist unökonomisch, wenn ich im Leben fünf, sechs oder dreißig Löwen gesehen habe und mir alle diese Löwen vorstellen soll; da mache ich die Sache ökonomischer, ich mache mir einen Einzelbegriff, der alle dreißig Löwen zusammenfaßt. Alle Begriffsbildung ist nur eine innere, subjektive Ökonomie.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":501,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/186/1918-12-14/p015"}],"english":["GA 186/1918-12-14/p017"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":501,"en_words":498,"ratio":0.99,"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/p015"],"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. 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