12. Philosophy and Theosophy
GA 246/1908-08-17/p004
·1908-08-17
·
English
HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Nach zum Teil bruchstückhaften Mitschriften» (From transcripts that are in part fragmentary). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 246), which also speaks of "fragmentarischen Hörernotizen und Vortragszusammenfassungen". The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
Philosophy is generally regarded by those who practise it as something absolute, not as something that had to arise in the course of human development. It is precisely with regard to philosophy that one is able to indicate, even from external historical documents, when it as such took and had to take its origin within the evolution of mankind. Most, especially the older, depictions of the history of philosophy have done this quite well. In all these accounts you will find that it begins with Thales and then progresses from him to our time.
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