6. Spiritual Scientific Findings on the Ideas of Freedom and Social-moral Life

GA 72/1917-11-30/p062 ·1917-11-30 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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Now it turns out that if one wants to observe what really happens in the course of human history, what drives historical life forward, one cannot observe it with scientific ideas; for this historical life is not experienced in a field where scientific ideas can be applied. The whole of history is not really impulsed by human beings with waking ideas, but is dreamed. This is the important thing to bear in mind — still a completely paradoxical truth today, just as Copernicanism was a paradox when it first appeared — historical life is not created from the kind of ideas we are accustomed to in natural science. Sociological, social life does not arise from an impulse such as we understand in natural science, but is dreamed. Human beings dream social life.

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Cite: GA 72/1917-11-30/p062 · edition English