Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYB. Scientific ConsiderationsI. The Human Aspect1. Conflict between the State and the Curiosity CreatureOne of the most important questions in this trial will be whether theworks I have published are scientific in nature, hence whether I am protectedby the civil right of freedom of science. In this regard I wish tothoroughly address the question of what science actually is. For this Iwill subsequently refer to diverse leading intellectuals and quote themat length so that it will become clear that these opinions are not homegrown“on my own little compost pile,” but rather run like a goldenthread through the intellectual history of mankind.I would like to start with the question of what it actually is thatmakes us human. For my first quotation I go all the way back to theGreek philosopher Socrates, who observed: 58“The unexamined life is not worth living.”Aristotle, the equally world-famous ancient Greek philosopher, wasexpressing the same thought when he observed: 59“All men by nature desire to know.”“[…] for men, therefore, the life according to reason is best andpleasantest, since reason more than anything else is men.” 60The renowned Spanish sociologist José Ortega y Gasset was a littlemore thorough: 61“Life without Truth cannot be lived. […] Without mankind thereis no truth, but also in reverse: without truth there is no mankind.One can define man as the creature that has absolute need for truth,and in reverse: truth is the only thing that ineluctably needs man.Man is truth’s sole absolute necessity. All of man’s other needs, includingfood, are necessary only under the condition that there issuch a thing as truth, which is to say that there is meaning in life.58596061Socrates, Apologia, Sec. 38.Aristotle, Metaphysics, book 1, chapter 1, first sentence; Richard Keon (ed.), The Basic Worksof Aristotle, Random House, New York, 1941, p. 689.Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics book X, chapter 7; ibid., p. 1105.Humans are omnivores, though; GR. José Ortega y Gasset, Aufstand der Massen, DVA,Stuttgart 1958, p. 48; this essay is not contained in the English edition of this collection, Revoltof the Masses, Allen & Unwin, London 1961.51