{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 4/l13/p050","lang":"en","edition":"RSP1964","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"An ethics built on pessimism arises from the disregard of moral imagination. Only if one considers that the individual human spirit is itself incapable of giving content to its striving can one expect the craving for pleasure to account fully for all acts of will. A man without imagination creates no moral ideas. They must be given to him. Physical nature sees to it that he strives to satisfy his lower desires. But the development of the *whole* man also includes those desires that originate in the spirit. Only if one believes that man has no such spiritual desires can one declare that he must receive them from without. Then one would also be entitled to say that it is man's duty to do what he does not want. Every ethical system that demands of man that he should suppress his own will in order to fulfill tasks that he does not want, reckons not with the *whole* man but with one in which the faculty of spiritual desire is lacking. For a man who is harmoniously developed, the so-called ideals of virtue lie, not *without*, but *within* the sphere of his own being. Moral action consists not in the eradication of a one-sided personal will but in the *full* development of human nature. Those who hold that moral ideals are attainable only if man destroys his own personal will, are not aware that these ideals are wanted by man just as he wants the satisfaction of the so-called animal instincts.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"13. The Value of Life (Pessimism and Optimism)","site_heading":null,"date":null,"location":null,"word_count":251,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l13/p050","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":null,"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["AP1986","GPP1916","RSP1964","RSPC1949","RSPI1963"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/4/l13/p050"},{"lang":"en","edition":"RSP1964","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l13/p050"},{"lang":"en","edition":"AP1986","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l13/p050?edition=AP1986"},{"lang":"en","edition":"RSPC1949","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l13/p050?edition=RSPC1949","paragraph_aligned":true},{"lang":"en","edition":"RSPI1963","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l13/p050?edition=RSPI1963","paragraph_aligned":true}],"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.11,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":9123,"original_word_count":8228,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"status":"unknown","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":"not_checkable","note":"No verified paragraph alignment covers this passage, so its names cannot be compared with the German."},"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."}}