"Our epistemology is the science that characterizes all the other sciences. It has made clear to us that what is gained by the individual sciences is the objective ground of world existence. The sciences arrive at a series of concepts; epistemology teaches us about the actual task of these concepts.”
“It
shows what the content of our thinking is; and it finds that
this what is at the same time the objective content of the world.”
“Just as
different eyes see one and the same object, so different consciousnesses think
one and the same thought-content. Manifold consciousnesses think one and the
same thing; only, they approach this one thing from different sides. It
therefore appears to them as modified in manifold ways. This modification is
not a differentness of objects, however, but rather an apprehending from
different angles of vision. The differences in people's views are just as
explainable as the differences that a landscape presents to two observers
standing in different places. If one is capable at all of pressing forward to
the world of ideas, then one can be certain that one ultimately has a world of
ideas that is common to all human beings.”
“Since our
epistemology has arrived at the conclusion that the content of our
consciousness is not merely a means of making a copy of the world ground. but
rather that this world ground itself, in its most primal state comes to light
within our thinking, we can do nothing other than to recognize directly in
human action also the undetermined action of that primal ground. We recognize
no world director outside ourselves who sets goals and directions for our actions.
The world director has given up his power, has given everything over to man,
abolishing his own separate existence, and set man the task: Work on. The human
being finds himself in the world, sees nature, and within it, the indication of
something deeper, a determining element, an intention. His thinking enables him
to know this intention. It becomes his spiritual possession. He has penetrated
the world; he comes forth, acting, to carry on those intentions. Therefore, the
philosophy presented here is the true philosophy of inner freedom.”
“1. The
things that confront us in experience as separate have an inner relationship to
each other. They are, in truth, held together by a unified world bond. There
lives in them all one common principle. 2. When our spirit approaches the
things and strives to encompass what is separate with a spiritual bond, then
the conceptual unity that our spirit establishes is not outside of the objects
but rather is drawn from the inner being of nature itself. Human knowledge is
not a process taking place outside of the things, not a process springing from
mere subjective arbitrariness, but rather: what arises there in our spirit as a
law of nature, what expresses itself within our soul, that is the heartbeat of
the universe itself.”
“Whoever
acknowledges to thinking its ability to perceive beyond the grasp of the senses
must necessarily acknowledge that it also has objects that lie beyond merely
sense-perceptible reality. The objects of thinking, however, are ideas.
Inasmuch as thinking takes possession of the idea, thinking fuses with the
primal ground of world existence; what is at work outside enters into the
spirit of man: he becomes one with objective reality in its highest
potency. Becoming aware of the idea within reality is the true communion
of man.”
“…man in himself, insofar as he uses his healthy senses, is the greatest and most accurate physical apparatus that there can be…”