74. The Riddle of Death as a Riddle of Life

GA 246/1916-03-03/p056 ·1916-03-03 · 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.

Yes, I ask you, what can a person do if he is organized in such a way that he has acquired an occipital lobe that is too small and thus becomes a criminal? Doesn't professing a worldview that looks only at this mean introducing criminal justice as a mere lie? Can you still punish someone if you can say to yourself: A person must become a criminal if he has too small an occipital lobe! Does it make any sense to punish people then? Or is it not rather only sensible to say to oneself: Yes, if it depends on someone becoming a criminal because he has too small an occipital lobe, then being a criminal is just as necessary as rain and sunshine; and just as one does not punish the rain or the sea - unless one is Xerxes and has it whipped through, isn't it, when it becomes unpleasant - so one cannot punish a criminal. The whole criminal justice system would become a lie! And yet what Professor Benedikt said is true: It is true that all criminal brains have an occipital lobe that is too short.

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Cite: GA 246/1916-03-03/p056 · edition English