{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 4/l14/p014","lang":"en","edition":"GPP1916","edition_basis":"Steiner 1894 first edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"text":"> This leads us to the question, What is the right method for striking the balance between the credit and the debit columns? Edouard von Hartmann asserts that reason holds the scales. It is true that he says ( *Philosophie des Unbewussten*, 7th edition, vol. ii. p. 290): “Pain and pleasure exist only in so far as they are actually being felt.” It follows that there can be no standard for pleasure other than the subjective standard of feeling. I must feel whether the sum of my disagreeable feelings, contrasted with my agreeable feelings, results in me in a balance of pleasure or of pain. But, notwithstanding this, van Hartmann maintains that “though the value of the life of every being can be set down only according to its own subjective measure, yet it follows by no means that every being is able to compute the correct algebraic sum of all the feelings of its life—or, in other words, that its total estimate of its own life, with regard to its subjective feelings, should be correct.” But this means that rational estimation of feelings is reinstated as the standard of value.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"XIV. The value of Life (Optimism And Pessimism)","site_heading":null,"date":null,"location":null,"word_count":191,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l14/p014?edition=GPP1916","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":"en","edition":"GPP1916","edition_basis":"Steiner 1894 first edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l14/p014?edition=GPP1916"}],"witness_completeness":{"ratio":6.5,"band":"fuller_than_original","note":"This witness is longer than the original — paraphrastic or padded. That makes it a less faithful witness to wording, not a more complete one. Verify quotations against the original.","word_count":8867,"original_word_count":1364,"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."}}