Two things fill the soul with ever new and increasing awe and admiration, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. —philosopher Immanuel Kant, the 300th year anniversary of whose birth in 1724 is today
I would like to make a very personal comment at this point. As students, three of us friends founded a philosophical reading group that existed for over 15 years. We explicitly wanted to read philosophy and not anthroposophy. Over the years we read all of Plato and other Greeks and Romans, as well as Schopenhauer, Schleichermacher and others, but we couldn't make friends with Kant. Not because of Steiner's remarks about Kant, but because the Critique of Pure Reason and others seemed "unreadable" to us. Later as a teacher, however, I always gave Kant's definition of what enlightenment is in history, in the age of enlightenment.
Now, 40 years later, what has become of us? One of them was a development engineer at Porsche and now he is deep in the conspiracy theories: climate change is a hoax, 3 centuries in the early middle ages are an invention of the church etc. The other, a friend for several incarnations, has become agnostic and suffers greatly as a result. I am the only one still involved with anthoposophy.
It was probably more of a soliloquy than a communication of general importance.
The Porsche engineer was the most intellectually brilliant of the three of us. He immediately understood the most complicated texts. It's quite remarkable that it's not a question of intellectuality, intelligence or moral standards whether you fall for conspiracy theories. There have always been lies, but today there is a new quality of "lies". For me, it is no coincidence that today, at the same time, very widespread conspiracy theories, disinformation, fakes, "alternative facts and AI are emerging. I am sure that there is a common occult background!
From an exoteric point of view: Until now, people were individualized in their feeling and willing, or in other words, it was natural that people could feel differently and want different things. In thinking and speaking, this individualization, this fall from objectivity, from what people have in common, was not yet present. Now everything is drawn into the realm of personal opinion: You say there are 2 chairs, yes that's your opinion, for me that's a table and a third person says, yes, that's your opinion, I mean, that's a bench. Perception and scientific studies become private opinions.
Of course, this can also be expressed in an anthroposophical, esoteric way. In my personal circle, 80% or more of anthroposophists are more or less hardcore conspirators and of course you can't discuss this with them.
What I have in common with the other friend is that philosophical questions, questions about God and the meaning of life are absolutely deadly serious questions. I know people for whom anthroposophy is a beautiful playground, a decoration for the soul, just like going to the theater at the weekend. And there are so many beautiful themes in anthroposophy, you can talk about them so nicely, but no steps are taken on the path to moral perfection. I know whole groups of anthroposophists who strive for clairvoyance, with many exercises, but the question of charity and humility is never asked.
Again, this is very personal again. I do respect all other kinds of working with anthroposophy, even if some anthro sites on the internet look like a luciferic new age thing.
I also seem to remember a similar relationship over 15 years. The language barrier was thrust aside in favor of the Saturn Oracle. Kant's birth now represents 10 of these, which takes 300 years. On the smallest scale, 30 years is the time it takes to for a human being to travel the full circuit of the Zodiac, and reach a measure of the Cosmic Memory. The most recent occurrence in 2024 reaches back just 30 years to 1994. The last half was the period of time from 2009 to now, when the Saturn Oracle of Rudolf Steiner was proposed as the reason why he laid so much emphasis on the Karmic Relationships in the year of 1924, which also has its centennial this year. I, too, have remained close to Anthroposophy, and Ottmar knows it.
Thanks Max, for acknowledging this remark. I know it might appear mysterious and arcane, but it really happened between a German, fluent in his language, and an American, fluent in his own. In truth, it was all about anthroposophy, and the work that is appearing now on my SpiritLogic substack, which I am contributing based on your own great efforts that inspire.
Rudolf Steiner had an interesting assessment of Kant's three "Critiques", and how he needed to arrange them. Thus, Immanuel Kant clearly compelled the eventual breakthrough of the Enlightenment era.
"Today I shall try to give a wider view of a subject already often touched upon. I have frequently pointed out how, for modern man, moral and intellectual conceptions diverge. On the one hand we are brought, through intellectual thinking, to recognition of the stern Necessity of Nature. In accordance with this necessity we see everything in Nature under the law of Cause and Effect. And we ask also, when man performs an action: what has caused it, what is the inner or outer cause? This recognition of the necessity for all events has in modern times acquired a more scientific character. In earlier times it had a more theological character, and has so still for many people. It takes on a scientific character when we hold the opinion that what we do is dependent on our bodily constitution and on the influences that work upon it. There are still many people who think that man acts just as inevitably as a stone falls to the ground. There you have the natural scientific coloring of the Necessity concept. The view of those more inclined to Theology might be described as follows. Everything is fore-ordained by some kind of Divine Power or Providence and man must carry out what is predestined by that Divine Power. Thus we have in the one case the Necessity of natural science, and in the other case unconditioned Divine Prescience. One cannot in either case speak of human Freedom at all.
Over against this stands the whole Moral world. Man feels of this world that he cannot so much as speak of it without postulating the freedom of the decisions of his will; for if he has no possibility of free voluntary decision, he cannot speak of a morality of human action. He does however feel responsibility, he feels moral impulses; he must therefore recognize a moral world. I have mentioned before how the impossibility of building a bridge between the two, between the world of Necessity and the world of Morals, led Kant to write two critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason in which he applies himself to investigating the nature of simple Necessity, and the Critique of Applied Reason in which he inquires into what belongs to Moral Cosmogony. Then he felt compelled to write also a Critique of Judgement which was intended as an intermediary between the two, but which ended in being no more than a compromise, and approached reality only when it turned to the world of beauty, the world of artistic creation. This goes to show how man has on the one side the world of Necessity and on the other the world of Free Moral Action, but cannot find anything to unite the two except the world of Artistic Semblance, where—let us say, in sculpture or in painting—we appear to be picturing what comes from Natural Necessity, but impart to it something which is free from Necessity, giving it thus the appearance of being free in Necessity.
The truth is, man is not able to build a bridge between the world of Necessity and the world of Freedom unless he finds the way through Spiritual Science. Spiritual Science, however, requires for its development a fulfillment of the aphorism which won respect centuries ago, the saying of the Greek Apollo: “Know Thou Thyself!” Now this admonition, by which is not intended a burrowing into one's own subjectivity but a knowledge of the whole being of man and the position he occupies in the Universe—this is a search that must find a place in our whole spiritual life."
It is always good to be reminded of these centennials of great Thinkers. I was reminded this morning that it was on the 150th anniversary of Kant's birth that a new edition of Critique of Pure Reason was published, and Rudolf Steiner just had to have it. He would go on to devour everything that Kant wrote, and also his 19th century followers, all long forgotten now, as Steiner wrote to Edouard Schure in a short biographical sketch in September 1907. Thus, Kant was the springboard to Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, and then the special assignment given to research Goethe's scientific writings.
I would like to make a very personal comment at this point. As students, three of us friends founded a philosophical reading group that existed for over 15 years. We explicitly wanted to read philosophy and not anthroposophy. Over the years we read all of Plato and other Greeks and Romans, as well as Schopenhauer, Schleichermacher and others, but we couldn't make friends with Kant. Not because of Steiner's remarks about Kant, but because the Critique of Pure Reason and others seemed "unreadable" to us. Later as a teacher, however, I always gave Kant's definition of what enlightenment is in history, in the age of enlightenment.
Now, 40 years later, what has become of us? One of them was a development engineer at Porsche and now he is deep in the conspiracy theories: climate change is a hoax, 3 centuries in the early middle ages are an invention of the church etc. The other, a friend for several incarnations, has become agnostic and suffers greatly as a result. I am the only one still involved with anthoposophy.
Ottmar
what do you make of these developments? coincidence, or?
I don't know what to make of it.
It was probably more of a soliloquy than a communication of general importance.
The Porsche engineer was the most intellectually brilliant of the three of us. He immediately understood the most complicated texts. It's quite remarkable that it's not a question of intellectuality, intelligence or moral standards whether you fall for conspiracy theories. There have always been lies, but today there is a new quality of "lies". For me, it is no coincidence that today, at the same time, very widespread conspiracy theories, disinformation, fakes, "alternative facts and AI are emerging. I am sure that there is a common occult background!
From an exoteric point of view: Until now, people were individualized in their feeling and willing, or in other words, it was natural that people could feel differently and want different things. In thinking and speaking, this individualization, this fall from objectivity, from what people have in common, was not yet present. Now everything is drawn into the realm of personal opinion: You say there are 2 chairs, yes that's your opinion, for me that's a table and a third person says, yes, that's your opinion, I mean, that's a bench. Perception and scientific studies become private opinions.
Of course, this can also be expressed in an anthroposophical, esoteric way. In my personal circle, 80% or more of anthroposophists are more or less hardcore conspirators and of course you can't discuss this with them.
What I have in common with the other friend is that philosophical questions, questions about God and the meaning of life are absolutely deadly serious questions. I know people for whom anthroposophy is a beautiful playground, a decoration for the soul, just like going to the theater at the weekend. And there are so many beautiful themes in anthroposophy, you can talk about them so nicely, but no steps are taken on the path to moral perfection. I know whole groups of anthroposophists who strive for clairvoyance, with many exercises, but the question of charity and humility is never asked.
Again, this is very personal again. I do respect all other kinds of working with anthroposophy, even if some anthro sites on the internet look like a luciferic new age thing.
I also seem to remember a similar relationship over 15 years. The language barrier was thrust aside in favor of the Saturn Oracle. Kant's birth now represents 10 of these, which takes 300 years. On the smallest scale, 30 years is the time it takes to for a human being to travel the full circuit of the Zodiac, and reach a measure of the Cosmic Memory. The most recent occurrence in 2024 reaches back just 30 years to 1994. The last half was the period of time from 2009 to now, when the Saturn Oracle of Rudolf Steiner was proposed as the reason why he laid so much emphasis on the Karmic Relationships in the year of 1924, which also has its centennial this year. I, too, have remained close to Anthroposophy, and Ottmar knows it.
Thanks Max, for acknowledging this remark. I know it might appear mysterious and arcane, but it really happened between a German, fluent in his language, and an American, fluent in his own. In truth, it was all about anthroposophy, and the work that is appearing now on my SpiritLogic substack, which I am contributing based on your own great efforts that inspire.
Rudolf Steiner had an interesting assessment of Kant's three "Critiques", and how he needed to arrange them. Thus, Immanuel Kant clearly compelled the eventual breakthrough of the Enlightenment era.
"Today I shall try to give a wider view of a subject already often touched upon. I have frequently pointed out how, for modern man, moral and intellectual conceptions diverge. On the one hand we are brought, through intellectual thinking, to recognition of the stern Necessity of Nature. In accordance with this necessity we see everything in Nature under the law of Cause and Effect. And we ask also, when man performs an action: what has caused it, what is the inner or outer cause? This recognition of the necessity for all events has in modern times acquired a more scientific character. In earlier times it had a more theological character, and has so still for many people. It takes on a scientific character when we hold the opinion that what we do is dependent on our bodily constitution and on the influences that work upon it. There are still many people who think that man acts just as inevitably as a stone falls to the ground. There you have the natural scientific coloring of the Necessity concept. The view of those more inclined to Theology might be described as follows. Everything is fore-ordained by some kind of Divine Power or Providence and man must carry out what is predestined by that Divine Power. Thus we have in the one case the Necessity of natural science, and in the other case unconditioned Divine Prescience. One cannot in either case speak of human Freedom at all.
Over against this stands the whole Moral world. Man feels of this world that he cannot so much as speak of it without postulating the freedom of the decisions of his will; for if he has no possibility of free voluntary decision, he cannot speak of a morality of human action. He does however feel responsibility, he feels moral impulses; he must therefore recognize a moral world. I have mentioned before how the impossibility of building a bridge between the two, between the world of Necessity and the world of Morals, led Kant to write two critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason in which he applies himself to investigating the nature of simple Necessity, and the Critique of Applied Reason in which he inquires into what belongs to Moral Cosmogony. Then he felt compelled to write also a Critique of Judgement which was intended as an intermediary between the two, but which ended in being no more than a compromise, and approached reality only when it turned to the world of beauty, the world of artistic creation. This goes to show how man has on the one side the world of Necessity and on the other the world of Free Moral Action, but cannot find anything to unite the two except the world of Artistic Semblance, where—let us say, in sculpture or in painting—we appear to be picturing what comes from Natural Necessity, but impart to it something which is free from Necessity, giving it thus the appearance of being free in Necessity.
The truth is, man is not able to build a bridge between the world of Necessity and the world of Freedom unless he finds the way through Spiritual Science. Spiritual Science, however, requires for its development a fulfillment of the aphorism which won respect centuries ago, the saying of the Greek Apollo: “Know Thou Thyself!” Now this admonition, by which is not intended a burrowing into one's own subjectivity but a knowledge of the whole being of man and the position he occupies in the Universe—this is a search that must find a place in our whole spiritual life."
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA201/English/RSP1972/19200409a01.html
It is always good to be reminded of these centennials of great Thinkers. I was reminded this morning that it was on the 150th anniversary of Kant's birth that a new edition of Critique of Pure Reason was published, and Rudolf Steiner just had to have it. He would go on to devour everything that Kant wrote, and also his 19th century followers, all long forgotten now, as Steiner wrote to Edouard Schure in a short biographical sketch in September 1907. Thus, Kant was the springboard to Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, and then the special assignment given to research Goethe's scientific writings.