Truth

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You will know the truth, and
the truth will set you free.

Truth (from Indo-European: *wēr- "trust, faithfulness, assent"; Latin: veritas; Greek: ἀλήθεια Aletheia, from α privativum and λῆθος, P.P.P. from λανθάνω, "conceal", thus literally meaning "that which is unconcealed") is a basic philosophical concept, but one that has been conceived very differently by different thinkers → truth.

„Truth, however, is not something about which one can have opinions. One knows a truth or one does not know it. No one can say that the three angles in the triangle are 725 degrees instead of 180.“ (Lit.:GA 93, p. 108)

What is truth?

Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Ge: What is truth? – Quid est veritas? (1890); Pontius Pilate to Jesus John 18:38.

Sense of truth

„All that we call inventing, discovering in the higher sense, is the significant exercise, activity of an original feeling for truth, which, formed long ago in silence, leads unexpectedly, with lightning speed, to a fruitful knowledge. It is a revelation coursing from its inner source to its outer unfolding manifestation, which makes man sense his likeness to God. It is a synthesis of world and spirit, which gives the most blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of existence.“

– J. W. Goethe:: Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre[1]

The question of Pilate

As long as men could still draw on the old wisdom of the gods, which they had received clairvoyantly, even if only through tradition, they did not need to ask the question of truth. Paul, when he was still Saul, still trusted completely in this old revelation. A last remnant of this attitude - which has meanwhile become insubstantial - still lives in the dogma of papal infallibility for all doctrines of faith and morals proclaimed ex cathedra, which was laid down in 1870. The source of truth here is not man, but an omnipotent God can, according to the claim of this dogma, bring about the infallibility of a man, namely the Pope.

Pilate, when he interrogated the Christ, could no longer be sure of the truth:

„33 Then Pilate went again into the praetorium, and called Jesus, and asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? 34 Jesus answered, 'Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me? 35 Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your people and the chief priests have delivered you up to me. What hast thou done? 36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now my kingdom is not of this world. 37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou therefore a king? Jesus answered, You say it, I am a king. I was born for this purpose and came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. He that is of the truth heareth my voice. 38 Said Pilate unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and saith unto them: I find no fault in him.“

Through Lucifer, man had been transferred to the earthly-sensual world. Through this he came at the same time more and more into the sphere of influence of Ahriman and fell into error and sin.

„Because man was prematurely transferred to the earthly sphere, because his earthly interests and desires forced him down, things turned out differently from what they would otherwise have been in the middle of the Atlantean era.

As a result, the Ahrimanic spirits, those spirits which can also be called Mephistophelian spirits, mixed themselves into what man was able to see and comprehend. As a result, man fell into error, fell into what one could actually call conscious sin. So from the middle of the Atlantean period onwards, the host of Ahrimanic spirits has acted upon man. What has this host of ahrimanic spirits, so to speak, seduced man into doing? It has seduced him into thinking that what is in his environment is material, that he does not see through this materiality to the true substratum of the material, to the spiritual. If man were to see the spiritual in every stone, in every plant and in every animal, he would never have fallen into error and thus into evil, but man, if only the advancing spirits had worked upon him, would have remained preserved from those illusions to which he must always fall prey if he relies only on the testimony of the sense world.“ (Lit.:GA 107, p. 244ff)

Only after man had learned to make use of his own intellect, which, however, can also be subject to error through the influence of Ahriman, does the question arise again and again, which Pontius Pilate also had to ask: "What is truth?"

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Berliner Ausgabe. Kunsttheoretische Schriften und Übersetzungen [Band 17–22], Band 18, Berlin 1960 ff, S. 564 Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer. In: Zeno.org.
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