{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 63/1914-01-15/p017","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Now there is also another thinker, who tried to explore even further than Plotinus did into this, that is, in fact into the underground of being, which can only be reached after a certain development of the soul aimed at uplifting it to higher faculties of knowledge. Such a thinker was Jakob Böhme. And if one approaches Jakob Böhme, one approaches certainly a spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, into which not many nowadays even wish to penetrate, since today he is seen more as a kind of curiosity. Jakob Böhme tried to penetrate into the depths of the world and its appearance up to the point where he felt something like a kind of Theosophy rising up in himself, as a kind of vision of God in his own inner being; and he now tried to make clear to himself, how wickedness and evil are to be pursued into the deepest underground of the world, and how evil and wickedness are not something simply negative, but are in a certain way rooted in the underground of the world and of human existence. Jakob Böhme saw the divine being as something, that in him, as he said—we must first of all become accustomed to his way of expressing himself—one must enter “amicably.” A being that allows its activity to flow out into the world at the same time, could never manage to grasp its own self. This activity must, one would like to say, hit up against something. Basically, each morning in waking up we perceive this to a small degree, and that is what Jakob Böhme put into his imagination. When we wake up, we are in a position so to speak, to unfold our soul-spiritual being to an unlimited extent from our soul-spiritual activity. There we hit up against our environment with our soul- spiritual activity. Through this, that we hit up against our surroundings, we become aware of ourselves. In general, a human being is only self-aware in the physical world, in that he hits up against things. The divine being cannot be such that it hits up against others. It must set up its adversary, or as Jakob Böhme stated in several expressions, its “no” against its “yes” for itself. It must limit its endlessly out-flowing activity in itself. That is…it must “amicably” distinguish, it must at the same time at a certain point create its own opposite on the surrounding circle of its activity; so for Jakob Böhme it was necessary for the divine being, in order to become self-aware, for it to create its own adversary. Now through taking part in the being of a creature, Jakob Böhme thought, not only that which streams out of the diving being, but from what the divine being had to create necessarily as its adversary, wickedness arises: evil above all arose in the world. The divine being set itself up against its own adversary, in order to become self- aware. Therefore, we cannot speak of evil and wickedness, but only of the necessary conditions of the divinity for becoming self-aware. But since creatures arose, and those creatures are not simply embedded in out-flowing life, but take part in the adversary, evil and wickedness have arisen.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"7. Evil in the Light of Spiritual Knowledge","site_heading":null,"date":"1914-01-15","location":null,"word_count":539,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/63/1914-01-15/p017","alignment_confidence":"medium","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"eLib2015","book_title":"Spiritual Science as a Life's Work","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA063/English/eLib2015/19140115p02.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/63/1914-01-15/p017"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/63/1914-01-15/p017","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1914-01-15","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 63/1914-01-15/p018","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/63/1914-01-15/p018"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":493,"en_words":539,"ratio":1.09,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 63/1914-01-15/p018","passage_number":18,"text":"Nun gibt es ja auch andere Denker, die noch weiter als etwa Plotin hineinzuschürfen versuchten in das, was schon Untergründe des Daseins sind, die nur zu erreichen sind durch eine gewisse Entwickelung der Seele zu höherem Erkenntnisvermögen hinauf. Ein solcher Denker ist Jakob Böhme. Und nähert man sich Jakob Böhme, so nähert man sich allerdings einem Geiste des sechzehnten, siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, in den nicht viele mehr in unserer Zeit eindringen wollen, obwohl man ihn heute wieder als eine Art Kuriosität betrachtet. Jakob Böhme versuchte einzudringen in die Tiefen der Welt und ihre Erscheinungen bis dahin, wo er in sich selber etwas aufgehend fühlte wie eine Art Theosophie, von einer Art Gottesanschauung im eigenen Innern; und nun versuchte er sich klar zu machen, wie das Böse und das Übel hinein zu verfolgen sind bis in die tiefsten Untergründe der Welt, wie Übel und Böses nicht bloß etwas Negatives sind, sondern gewissermaßen in den Untergründen des Welt- und Menschendaseins wurzeln. Das göttliche Wesen sieht Jakob Böhme so an, daß in ihm, wie er sagt - man muß sich an seine Ausdrucksweise erst gewöhnen - eine «Schiedlichkeit» auftreten muß. Ein Wesen, welches gleichsam seine Tätigkeit nur hinausfluten läßt in die Welt, könnte nie zum Erfassen seiner selbst kommen. Es mußte sich diese Tätigkeit an irgend etwas, man möchte sagen, stoßen. Im kleinen nehmen wir im Grunde genommen jeden Morgen beim Aufwachen das wahr, was Jakob Böhme in diese seine Vorstellung einbezieht. Wenn wir aufwachen, sind wir gewissermaßen in der Lage, aus unserm Geistig-Seelischen in unbegrenzte Weiten hinaus unsere geistig-seelische Tätigkeit zu entfalten. Da stoßen wir mit unserer geistig-seelischen Tätigkeit an unsere Umgebung. Dadurch, daß wir an unsere Umgebung stoßen, werden wir unser selbst gewahr. Der Mensch wird überhaupt nur in der physischen Welt seiner selbst gewahr, indem er sich sozusagen an den Dingen stößt. Das göttliche Wesen kann kein solches sein, das sich an anderen stößt. Es muß seinen Widerpart, oder wie Jakob Böhme in vielen Wendungen sich ausdrückt, sein «Nein» seinem «Ja» gegenüber sich selbst setzen. Es muß seine ins Unendliche hinausflutende Tätigkeit in sich begrenzen. Es muß in sich «schiedlich», das heißt unterschieden werden, muß sich gleichsam an einem bestimmten Punkte des Umkreises seiner Tätigkeit den eigenen Gegensatz erschaffen; so daß sich für Jakob Böhme notwendig das göttliche Wesen, damit es seiner selbst gewahr werden kann, selbst seinen Widerpart erschafft. Durch die Teilnahme nun eines kreatürlichen Wesens, meint Jakob Böhme, nicht nur an dem, was von dem göttlichen Wesen herausströmt, sondern was sich das göttliche Wesen notwendigerweise als seinen Widerpart schaffen muß, entsteht das Böse, entstehen überhaupt alle Übel in der Welt. Das göttliche Wesen setzt sich seinen Widerpart, um seiner selbst 'gewahr zu werden. Da kann noch nicht vom Übel und vom Bösen gesprochen werden, sondern nur von den notwendigen Bedingungen des Gewahrwerdens des Göttlichen seiner selbst. Aber indem Kreatürliches entsteht, und indem dieses Kreatürliche sich nicht bloß hineinbettet in das hinausflutende Leben, sondern teilnimmt am Widerpart, entsteht das Böse und das Übel.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":493,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/63/1914-01-15/p018"}],"english":["GA 63/1914-01-15/p017"],"method":"length","confidence":"medium","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":493,"en_words":539,"ratio":1.09,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.07,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":10981,"original_word_count":10241,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"eLib2015","book_title":"Spiritual Science as a Life's Work","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA063/English/eLib2015/19140115p02.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing.","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":"ok","checked_against":["GA 63/1914-01-15/p018"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"medium","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. 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