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Task as Peacemaker Among Variety Of World-Views

By Tom Last
Created 08/17/2007 - 5:05pm

We have in common a pursuit of truth, not the suppression of disagreement through a superficial niceness or the need to invalidate every view but our own. This may require more than an immediate reactive resonse but could involve some work.

A pursuit of truth involves seeking the truth-value in another's view and discovering which domain of existence it holds the key. The pursuit of narrow-mindedness involves invalidating the other view in an attempt to bolster one's own view or covering over an uncomfortable feeling about someone's position. The lectures that have helped me work with the individual world-views of others are Human and Cosmic Thought [1] by Rudolf Steiner. You find ideas such as this:

Accustom Ourselves to Different Points of View
"The world cannot be rightly considered from the one-sided standpoint of one single conception, one single mode of thought; the world discloses itself only to someone who knows that one must look at it from all sides. Just as the sun — if we go by the Copernican conception of the universe — passes through the signs of the Zodiac in order to illuminate the earth from twelve different points, so we must not adopt one standpoint, the standpoint of Idealism, or Sensationalism [1], or Phenomenalism [1], or any other conception of the world with a name of this kind; we must be in a position to go all round the world and accustom ourselves to the twelve different standpoints from which it can be contemplated. In terms of thought, all twelve standpoints are fully justifiable. For a thinker who can penetrate into the nature of thought, there is not one single conception of the world, but twelve that can be equally justified — so far justified as to permit of equally good reasons being thought out for each of them. There are twelve such justified conceptions of the world. " p.39

Each View is True in a Certain Domain of Existence
"For anyone who is not concerned to weld together into a single system all that he has been in a position to observe and reflect upon in a certain limited domain, and then sets out to seek proofs for it, but who wants to penetrate into the truth of the world, it is important to realize that broadmindedness is necessary because twelve typical varieties of world-outlook are actually possible for the mind of man. (For the moment we need not go into the transitional ones.) If one wants to come really to the truth, then one must try clearly to understand the significance of these twelve typical varieties, must endeavor to recognize for what domain of existence one or other variety holds the best key." p.41

Experience of Truth-Value in another View
"And now try, from what has been explained, to enter into the task confronting Spiritual Science: the task of acting as peacemaker among the various world-outlooks. The way to peace is to realize that the world-outlooks conjointly, in their reciprocal action on one another, can be in a certain sense explained, but that they cannot lead into the inner nature of truth if they remain one-sided. One must experience in oneself the truth-value of the different world-outlooks, in order — if one may say so — to be in agreement with truth." p.54


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