Truth and Science
Rudolf Steiner

Truth and Science by Rudolf Steiner stands as a prelude to his The Philosophy of Freedom, and also as a first public exposition of the conceptual content of his doctoral thesis of 1891. Steiner presents his argument as a refutation of the Kantian precept that the nature of the human senses sets a limit to human knowledge - i.e. that the senses can only convey sense-conditioned impressions of the world and that as our senses are the only means of perceiving the world, we can never know the "thing-in-itself". Reality therefore must always lie outside the reach of human knowledge.

Steiner initiates his thesis from a different starting point: the nature of knowing and the ability of consciousness to observe reality free of the senses within consciousness itself. Human cognitive activity, argues Steiner, is not just image replication of an outer world, but trained to self-examine, in full consciousness, free of all drives, passions and even personal orientation, can apprehend the primal ground of being, of which the sensory world is a particular level of expression. Though the senses are limited, the soul's experience in pure thought places it into the realm of reality which lies behind the world conveyed by the senses, including the make-up of the senses themselves. Thus thought, cultivated to its highest and truest nature, transcends the limits set by the senses and becomes a higher perceptual faculty, one that is spiritual in nature and which can access the spiritual reality behind the apparent world as conveyed to consciousness by the senses.

Mercury Press
translated by William Lindeman; GA 3
70pp; paperback
ISBN: 0-936132-95-7

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