Yes, we are back once again, in the warm summer we did withdraw somewhat, as far as the videos are concerned at least, and now I am going to try to pick up the thread again. I wanted, to begin with, to discuss a feeling, a perception that is becoming increasingly stronger. In, well, I think that must have been the nineties, I tried to arrive, together with a professor of Eastern philosophy, at a dissertation topic relating, on the one hand, to the ethical individualism of Rudolf Steiner, and on the other hand, to the theory of communicative action of Jürgen Habermas.

For that I had approached a professor who had introduced and made known the theory of Habermas in the Netherlands, and he had encouraged me to do that, but there only had to be someone who could illuminate more the spiritual side of this opposition. What it is about for me now is that I discovered at that time, I really did not know that, because I am not a professional philosopher, not someone who has done a philosophical study at the university – I am of course by now really a philosopher, but not in the sense that I can produce a doctoral examination.

I am a doctor. But I discovered then, and that is nevertheless something quite different from when you learn it from the books, that the phenomenon of truth is no longer recognized in philosophy. This Utrecht professor, who had introduced Habermas, wrote to me then that my book Seek the Light… showed independent thinking, but that it proceeds from the assumption that there is a prima philosophia, that it exists.

And in modern philosophy, this is no longer recognized; there are no foundational philosophical truths, such as you find in the logic of Aristotle. That, in that sense, is not recognized. Truth is recognized that is jointly assumed as true through communicative principles. I had of course understood that in Habermas’s books, but that it goes so far that truth in itself is no longer recognized as an existing principle, not to say essence, that was something I only really discovered at that time.

And so, once again, not by reading books, but by experiencing that with what you could call a truth, which arises because you can assess the various thoughts that are combined in such a way that, on the basis of that, you say that something is true. And that really is philosophy, isn’t it? I mean, natural science needs external facts, but philosophy does not base itself on that; it bases itself on thoughts, on ideas, and as far as I am concerned, it is as clear as anything that you can also become aware of truth from the correct combination of ideas. That is, after all, also how I know that what Rudolf Steiner brought as spiritual science is truth. That cannot simply be confirmed through perception, because you do not have the clairvoyance that Rudolf Steiner had, but you do have the faculty of thinking that can recognize truth in the combining of ideas.

Well, that is what I discovered, that this is no longer recognized, that principle which lives in the human being. And that is of course actually also a condition for ultimately being able to arrive at a humanization of artificial intelligence. When you use it, it is clear that it is based exclusively on data.

It combines the data and there is of course always written underneath: AI can make mistakes. Well, that sometimes becomes very poignantly clear, but as a human being you can then establish that, while the system, basing itself on data, could quite well be right in a combination that is of such a nature. So, in fact, as a foundation for the wish that artificial intelligence can ultimately reach human heights, what you need is to deny the sense of truth in the human being, to say that it does not exist.

Look, then of course artificial intelligence is indeed the boss in many respects. Because when you see what a memory it already has access to and how it can make use of that, by searching the whole internet in a few seconds for answers to a question you ask, that is of course not comparable with what you, as a human being, have to try very laboriously to draw from that deeply rooted memory within yourself which is then human. So for facts you can certainly turn to artificial intelligence.

But when you start thinking that there is also a principle of truth in it, you will not think that, because you have already abolished it. But if you had maintained that, then the correct position of artificial intelligence would be self-evident. Namely, a grandiose dossier, but no possibility of establishing truth.

Now it is the case that we do not have that dossier function and we are also not expected to have the truth. In the twenty years that have passed, thirty years by now, this has changed dramatically, that feeling of the human being that he could be in the truth. It is also continually confirmed outwardly that there is no truth.

You are constantly, I do not want to say deceived, but it is something like that, you are constantly put on the wrong track, but a certain moral coercion is also indicated with it that that is the truth, while truth does not exist. We live in such a community, and if you are not spiritually gifted, or let me say, if you do not believe in the spirit at all – I cannot say that I believe in the spirit, but I become aware of the spirit, that is a truth. But if you do not have that, then you can still think, well yes, okay, through consultation we arrive, which is very nice, together at conclusions and we designate those as valid, we all abide by them, because only together can we achieve something.

That is then established by a number of people, in for example a think tank; that is not a truth, but that is a provisional agreement, until something else occurs to us that is important. Well, you live in that, and if you do not live in spirituality, but you have only natural science or you have only public opinion, well yes, okay, then you will presumably accept that and then you just go along with that current and that current and somewhere inside yourself you feel, well, I do agree with this and I do not agree with that, but that this would have something to do with truth, that probably does not come very much into the experience. If, on the other hand, you do live in the spiritual reality of existence, then you have to live in a continual discrepancy between the world of truth and the lie in which you are continually immersed.

Perhaps it also has to do with getting older, but I think it is much more the development of the social structure. It is becoming increasingly difficult to endure that, apart from the content. Even if the content appeals to you and it is not based on a spiritual reality, but on opinions and judgments that are temporary, then that too gradually becomes unbearable.

I would like to plead, or whatever you want to call it, for a return of the general awareness that the human being is the bearer of the possibility of truth. I do not want to say that he is always in the truth. That is of course not so, because then this could not happen as it is happening now.

But we do have the possibility. And although life becomes more or less unbearable from time to time, because you have as a concrete experience how you are lied to, and how that, let me put it this way, collides with the actual being of truth, which is also human truth, although that experience is becoming increasingly difficult, on the other hand there is of course nevertheless the awareness and the experience, the being permeated by it, that the human being is essentially a being of truth, a very great bliss. With that I will leave it for this first time.

And I hope that this beautiful summer allows us to once again live toward the autumn with very much courage and activity.