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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 231 through 240 of 458

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165. On the Duty of Clear, Sound Thinking 01 Jan 1916, Dornach
Translator Unknown

We can quite correctly compare this with the images which we see in the mirror; for the impressions are also images. Thus in the Lange and Kant train of thought we have a quite correct assertion—that man is concerned with images and that therefore, he cannot come into touch with anything real, with any actual ‘thing in itself.’
During the past year I have often communicated certain things to you from a celebrated thinker—Mauthner, the great critic of language. Kant occupies himself with Critique of Idea. Mauthner went further, (things that follow must always go further)—he wrote a Critique of Speech.
191. Fundamentals of the Science of Initiation 17 Oct 1919, Dornach
Translator Unknown

On the other hand, you may perhaps also know that for certain thinkers there has always been a kind of abyss between that which is given, on the one hand, by the knowledge of Nature, and on the other hand, by ethical knowledge. The philosophy of Kant is based upon this abyss, which he is unable to bridge completely. For this reason, Kant has written a Critique of Theoretical Reason, of Pure Reason, as he calls it, where he grapples with natural science, and where he says all that he has to say about natural science, or the knowledge of Nature.
210. Old and New Methods of Initiation: Lecture XI 26 Feb 1922, Dornach
Translated by Johanna Collis

Herder was certainly not an intellectual; hence his anti-Kant attitude. He led Goethe beyond what—in a genuinely Faustian mood—he had been endeavouring to discover in connection with ancient magic.
5 . Johann Gottfried Herder, 1744-1803. Called Kant's system ‘a kingdom of never-ending whims, blind alleys, fancies, chimeras and vacant expressions.’
323. Astronomy as Compared to Other Sciences: Lecture IV 04 Jan 1921, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

The development in this direction reaches a culminating point—conceived, admittedly, with genius and originality—in Laplace, where it leads to a genetic explanation of the entire cosmic system (as you will convince yourselves if you read his famous book Exposition du Systeme du Monde ), or again in Kant, in his Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. In all that has followed in this trend we see the effort constantly made to come to conclusions based on the thought pictures that have thus been conceived of the connections of the celestial movements, and resulting in such explanations of the origin of the universe as the nebular theory and so on.
Upon these two thought-pictures,—that the orbital planes of the planets lie in the proximity of the plane of the Sun's equator, and that the orbits are eccentric ellipses,—Kant, Laplace and their successors built up the nebular hypothesis. Follow what emerges from this. At a pinch, and indeed only at a pinch, it is a way of imagining the origin of the solar system.
75. The Relationship between Anthroposophy and the Natural Sciences: Anthroposophy, Its Essence and Its Philosophical Foundations 08 Jul 1920, Bern

I must say that for decades I had to wage a stubborn battle against Kantianism – a stubborn battle against Kantianism, which, in my opinion, has misunderstood the epistemological problem and thus the fundamental philosophical problem of my conviction. I don't have enough time to go into Kant's philosophy or epistemology, but I can say a few words about what it is philosophically that is at stake when we really want to understand the human being.
It is necessary so that we can develop the power of love within us, in our entire human organization. Not what Kant raised in the “Critique of Pure Reason” and the like, but what we develop within us as the power of love, that is what prevents us from making things transparent in an intellectualistic way.
It is therefore due to our organization – in a somewhat different way than Kant described it – that we must first grow beyond what organizes us in ordinary life if we want to penetrate into the depths of nature that can be aspired to and longed for.
61. The Origin of the Animal World in the Light of Spiritual Science 18 Jan 1912, Berlin
Translator Unknown

If we must say that such developments in recent mental life can show us—so to speak—how notable thinkers standing firmly upon the grounds of natural science, not only with regard to their convictions but also their comprehension, do not refer to the earth at all as the glowing liquid lifeless gas ball of the Kant-Laplace, but look upon the earth at its origin as a huge living being, in order to be able to explain that what is living today, this fact can, in some respects, teach us that it is, indeed, not so easy to trace back the living to the lifeless.
On the other hand, however, we must emphasize again and again that no explanation will succeed in making it logically plausible, if only to some extent, that the manifoldness of the living beings could have, in earth evolution, developed out of a mere nebular organization, as assumed by Kant-Laplace's theory; unless we had, so to speak, to take up the expedients of the most recent mental attitude, if we would reconcile the origin of the organic or animal world with this idea.
In a certain regard, Spiritual Science shows us something similar to what Fechner and Preyer have pictured to themselves by mere intellectual conclusions (deductions); namely, that the earth at and since its beginning has been a living being, which contained in itself gas and vapor, not only in a lifeless manner, as the theory of Kant-Laplace assumes. This theory can be explained very easily to the simplest pupil by saying: Look here, by mere rotation something can split off from a drop of a liquid, if we let it rotate, and as a little drop is thrown off it rotates around the big drop—thus in this way we originate a world system on a small scale.
335. The Crisis of the Present and the Path to Healthy Thinking: Questions of the Soul and Questions of Life: A Contemporary Speech 15 Jun 1920, Stuttgart

It becomes so that one loves the spiritual that underlies our morality, our ethics, our morals, our religious impulses, as one loves a loved one, so that what would otherwise remain abstract becomes completely concrete like a being of flesh and blood. Therefore, Kant's categorical imperative, which already disturbed Schiller, had to be overcome by the “Philosophy of Freedom.” Because this categorical imperative intrudes into human life like something to which one submits. And what Kant says, proceeding from a consciousness that must be overcome today if we want to make progress: “Duty!
Schiller was disturbed by the inhuman categorical imperative of Kant, and he said: “I am happy to serve my friends, but unfortunately I do it with inclination. And so it often bothers me that I am not virtuous.” — “There is no other advice, you must try to despise it, and then, with disgust, do as duty bids you.”
109. From Buddha to Christ II 14 Jun 1909, Vienna

Is not Theosophy just as much a world view, a philosophy as any other, say that of Haeckel, Kant and Schopenhauer? No, that is not Theosophy. Those are incorporated, poured into certain forms, say dogmas; they represent a certain system.
2. The Science of Knowing: The Inner Nature of Thinking
Translated by William Lindemann

[ 4 ] The fact that one has failed to do this in the epistemological studies basing themselves on Kant has been disastrous for science. This failure has given a thrust to this science in a direction utterly antithetical to our own.
36. Collected Essays from “Das Goetheanum” 1921–1925: Alois Mager's writing “Theosophy and Christianity”

He borrowed from the oriental mystery religions, from the Gnostic and Manichaean teachings. The Kant-Laplacean Urn Nebula served as a model for his spiritual primeval world being... This conclusion drawn by Mager about my anthroposophy is a complete objective untruth, in view of the true facts.

Results 231 through 240 of 458

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