12. Philosophy and Theosophy

GA 246/1908-08-17/p016 ·1908-08-17 · English High

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.

Aristotle had not only spread in the West, but also in the East; and everything that had been brought to Europe via Spain by the Arabs was saturated with Aristotelianism in terms of thought. In particular, it was a certain form of philosophy, of natural science, extending into medicine, which had been brought over there and which was imbued with Aristotelian thought in the most eminent sense. From there, the opinion had formed that nothing else could follow as a consequence of Aristotle than a kind of pantheism, which had emerged from a very vague mysticism, especially in philosophy. Thus, in addition to the one reason that Aristotle had lived on in the technique of thought, there was another reason to deal with him: In the interpretation of the Arabs, Aristotle appeared to be an opponent, an enemy of Christianity.

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Cite: GA 246/1908-08-17/p016 · edition English