95
ZOLLIKON SEMINARS, 1959-1969
we do not explicitly bring into view what was just said and what has been often pointed out, and as long as we do not constantly keep it in view, our efforts in this seminar will succeed only halfway. As long as this is the case, we also will be unable to understand what is already implied, although not thought out, in some extreme positions within modern science.
When, for instance, the assertion is made that brain research is a fundamental science for our knowledge of the human being, this assertion implies that the true and real relationship among human beings is a correlation among brain processes. Indeed, it implies that in brain research itself all that happens is that one brain, as the saying goes, "informs" another brain in a specific way, and nothing more. Then, when one is not engaged in research during semester vacation, the aesthetic appreciation of the statue of a god in the Acropolis museum is nothing more than the encounter of the brain process of the beholder with the product of another brain process, that is, the representation of the statue. Nevertheless, if during the vacation one assures oneself that one does not mean it that way, then one lives by double- or triple-entry bookkeeping. Of course, this does not coincide very well with the claim made elsewhere for the rigorous nature of science. This means that one has become so undemanding regarding thinking and reflecting that such double bookkeeping is no longer considered disturbing, nor is the complete lack of reflection upon this passionately defended science and its necessary limits considered in anyway disturbing. It seems to me that we should be allowed to demand from science, which attaches decisive importance to consistency, this same claim to consistency, especially where the meaning of the human being's existence is at stake.
Customarily, one labels the reference to this threatening self-destruction of the being of the human being within science (with its absolute claims) as hostility toward science. Yet, it is not a matter of hostility toward science as such, but rather a matter of critique regarding the prevailing lack of reflection on itself by science. But such a reflection includes, above all, an insight into the very method determining the character of modern science. We are now trying to clarify the peculiarity of this method and to do this in connection with questions indicating the direction of the method. By doing so, we will touch necessarily upon certain aspects of the phenomenon of the body, and we will finally encounter questions on the unfolding essence of truth. From my experience in all of our previous seminars, it has become increasingly clear to me that the discussion of particular problems and the isolated interpretation of selected phenomena have repeatedly come to a standstill. And this is because die guiding perspectives are insufficiently elucidated, and thus, thinking cannot turn explicitly to these guiding perspectives.