24. On Scotus Eriugena
GA 87/1902-04-26/p011
·1902-04-26
·
English
MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
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: «Auch wenn die Mitschrift noch nicht die später übliche Genauigkeit aufweist» (Even though the transcript does not yet have the accuracy usual later). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 87), which calls the cycle the earliest of which a listener's transcript exists. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
There are two different views: "positive theology" and "negative theology". The primary source of the former is sensory perception. One sees, hears, feels this being, this thing; this thing has these and those properties. Negative theology, however, says that behind what we see, hear and so on lies the original source of existence. Nothing can lead us to penetrate it completely; it is only the [inner] life that leads us on the path to penetrating that primordial existence.
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