Submenu: Legal Life
Legal system, political system, international, regional, communities Setting up rules and an organization for the coexistence of people. Which are combined in a community, an organization, a society or a state. Just as a human being is a microcosm that resembles the macrocosm, so too a human society resembles a being. Such a state and community organism resembles in its ideal beingness the tripartite human being / microcosm and the world / macrocosm. It is now up to the people of today's age of consciousness to build up state, communal organisms so healthy and viable that they correspond to people, the world and the future development of humanity. Just as man has a spiritual, mental and physical member, the social organism also has a spiritual, legal and economic member. In the spiritual sphere freedom should apply, in the legal sphere equality and in the economic sphere fraternity. In the legal sphere, equality of people before the law should apply. Every person should have the certainty of being treated equally, regardless of social status, origin, ideology, religion and gender. Equal rights for all. This is a striving of human beings brought in by the Christ impulse. "Men have all accepted the urge for equality, before which man today stands in spiritual life. Christianity has brought the message of equality before God. Such equality did not exist in earlier centuries. What I say now, I do not say in a derogatory way, I say it with the same sober objectivity with which I would speak about any scientific problem. The same soul that once absorbed into itself as an impulse "equal before God and before humanity", if we consider its very soul, and everything that causes external inequality has no meaning before the spiritual life", (B222, 26.10.1905). Every human being is an eternal individuality created equal by God and before God; his I is a drop from the divine being. "... each one is equal before God. This is a Christian principle. But men cannot fully understand this as long as they are caught up in materialism and egoism. The French Revolution then carried out the consequence of Christian doctrine in a secular sense. The spiritual teaching of Christianity: all men are equal before God, was translated by the French Revolution into a purely secular teaching: all are equal here. The new age has translated this even more into the physical", (B103, 4.11.1904). This equality of men before God and in the spiritual world has its counterpart in the "equal right for all" in the legal organism. There it can be justifiably applied. But equality before God and the law cannot mean that all human beings are equal, or the view of different materialistic ideologies that all human beings must now be declared equal, or that attempts must be made to make all human beings equal, to make them equal, to level them to a uniform measure, to deny all differences. On the one hand the legal link has its limits, because in the spiritual and the economic link people can live out their very different abilities, dispositions and professional and spiritual development. Because each person is an individual and has developed differently over time, his present life and his previous embodiments. For the harmonious living together of human beings, it is necessary to have the knowledge of the spiritual science of karma and rebirth. This inner striving of people for justice, for "equal rights for all" can be understood from the impulses of Christianity, and from spiritual science the limits of the legal member of the social organism can be recognized. Rudolf Steiner described this from people of ancient Egyptian times, in which people were able to recognize a sense of human destiny in the contemplation of their pre- and post-natal life. "Because they knew that this life is one among many. Everyone said to themselves: The one who commands me to work is one like the one I will be one day. This life must be balanced in different embodiments, for it is regulated by these realizations. The law of karma is connected to it. What I have experienced in one life is deserved, or it will be rewarded in later times", (B222, 26.10.1905).The human legal system is intended to guarantee the experience of earthly justice before the law. Man can then have justice before fate only under the awareness of several embodiments on earth, the necessity of living out karma and the realization of higher godly goals. The good gods whose ideal is the development of mankind and the wise guidance of man and the destiny of mankind. An experience of justice in the earthly sphere of law and wise good destiny guidance by the good gods. If people can connect themselves in their intuition with the wise guidance of the world then the freedom of the individual begins, which can also respect and preserve the freedom of the fellow human being. "Because today's man is actually lacking any real divine social trust, because people cannot comprehend the following, the most important thing for our time, and that is this: If one really makes man speak from his innermost being, then harmony among people will come not through his will, but through the divine arrangement of the world. The disharmony comes from the fact that people do not speak from within themselves. (B171,13.6.1921). It is the abilities of moral intuition that enable us to receive moral impulses and ideas from the spiritual world. These then harmonize with the wise world guidance with the divine world development. This is how divine harmony can come between people. What the legal system is develops out of such impulses. The judicial system must develop in such a way that it is impulses from the free spiritual life. "It will be that judges are not appointed out of state needs, but that the reasons for appointing a judge are similar to those that are invoked in free spiritual life for bringing the best educator to any place. Becoming a judge will be something similar to becoming a teacher and educator", (B223, 26.10.1919). And justice will be administered and interpersonal problems will be solved, from a real life practice. In this way, law can develop independently of economic life and can have an ordering and limiting effect on economic life. This means that "... in the social organism, legal life must be kept completely separate from economic life", (B179, p. 67). In order to be able to carry out its task of healthy limitation of the economic sphere. After all, equality before the law and the laws, as the Ten Commandments already were, serve the education of the human race. But a social organism cannot be a healthy organism by laws alone, but will also become healthier and healthier the more people fulfil their duty. In the future it will come to an increasing extent that people will see that their duties are fulfilled. "Duty is the opposite concept of right... more in a later future, there will be movements where less and less emphasis will be placed on the legal requirement, but more on the duty requirement. More will be asked then: What are the duties of a woman or a man in this or that position? In this way the era of mandatory demands will replace the era of legal demands", (B176, 22.11.1914). Human development is the descent from the spiritual world in order to gain the freedom to find self-consciousness in the earthly world, to go through a foreign and self-education and then, out of self- and world-knowledge, to go back into the spiritual world. As a duty towards fellow human beings and the spiritual world. As a selfless love of duty to return the gift. "Beautifully expressed the Schiller who spoke the word that man has the most beautiful relationship to duty when he learns to love duty at the same time", (B176, 22.11.1914). Today, on the one hand, we have worldviews and political ideologies that are impulses from materialism, which, out of a fundamental lack of understanding of the world and of being human, want to turn the social organism into a caricature of itself and transform an overpowering economic sector of legal and intellectual life into merchandise, thus depriving it of its free and equal development. "In the sense of those attempts to solve the social questions meant here, every individual human being has his social task in the present and in the near future." (B179, "II. The real attempts to solve the social questions and necessities demanded by life"). With some attention one can recognize how much the present humanity and all striving people still have to develop and work on in order to create a society that is suitable for humanity. With a little attention one can see how much the present humanity and all striving people still have to develop and work on in order to achieve a social organism that is in accordance with the human condition. Nowadays, man has put a lot of consciousness, thought and work into the development of the economic sector, the spirit is recognized where technical or organizational innovations bring about, the law should be subordinated to the development of worldwide trade zones. But in a social organism, the legal member should limit economic life on one side, contain it "Economic life is thus subjected to its necessary conditions from two sides: from the side of the natural basis, which humanity must accept as it is given to it, and from the side of the legal basis, which is to be created from the legal consciousness on the ground of the political state independent of economic life", (B179, "II. The Realistic Attempts at Solutions to Social Questions and Necessities Demanded by Life"). If legal life has too little influence on economic life, the latter expands too much and takes away people's rights to work, to live, to shape their lives, and transforms the right into a commodity. If legal life has too strong an effect on economic life, the latter is inhibited and damages it. Through too many regulations, laws, approval procedures, and occupational health and safety rights, which make it difficult to work economically. By being contradictory, confusing and hostile to practice, they deprive the value-added sector of labour or block economic activity. So it is up to the design of the social element of the legal and state system to enable people to experience how their rights to life and fate are guaranteed by the social organism that makes a dignified existence possible. "And on the existence of the feeling of an inhumane existence all shocks in the social organism are in fact based. (B179, "II. The real attempts demanded by life to solve social questions and necessities"). If this leads to a constant experience of inhuman conditions through an economic system of fraternity incapable of the necessary performance, an unjust and unequal legal system and a misguided, errant or suppressed free spiritual life, then such societies and states are vulnerable to social unrest. Legal system as an agreed moral foundation The value-added process, the exchange of goods, the consumption are events that take place between people. The economic exchange at the moment of the transition of money and goods ideally takes place when this results in an advantage for all participants. However, the selfishness at work leads to the behaviour of wanting to achieve one's own advantages in each case. Thus it comes to the attempt in all areas to carry out the exchange of goods, money and possessions for the benefit of one side and disadvantage of the other. So there is a leeway between a mutual balance of advantages and disadvantages or a complete imbalance, up to deliberate theft, fraud and corruption. This behaviour, which corresponds to the human being, occurs naturally in the most different kinds. Whether deliberate fraud, forced deprivation of property, monopoly-like offer, taxation without consideration, waste of tax money, giving away social benefits to unauthorized strangers, all conceivable variations come into play. Thus, a legal system has been established by the respective community (state or community of states), according to the respective moral understanding, which strives to direct human economic life into generally accepted channels. "Anyone who sees through such a fact of life without bias will understand that it must find its expression in the institutions of a healthy social organism. As long as goods are exchanged for goods in economic life, the value of these goods remains independent of the legal relationship between persons and groups of persons. As soon as goods are exchanged for rights, the legal relationship itself is affected. ... but it is a matter of the fact that by exchanging the right with the goods the right itself is turned into a good when the right arises within economic life. This is prevented only by the fact that in the social organism there exist, on the one hand, institutions which aim only to bring about the circulation of goods in the most expedient manner and, on the other hand, those which regulate the rights of the producing, trading and consuming persons living in the exchange of goods", (B179, "II. The Realistic Attempts to Find Solutions to Social Questions and Necessities Required by Life"). An economic life without fraternity is not viable, but at present we have an economic life which is fraternal to very fraternal, depending on the region of the world, culture, type of person or state. Corruption, the law of the strongest or cultures of injustice make people experience monstrous fraternities in trade, goods and money exchange. Goods are transformed into right, but this right can be taken not only by means of goods, but also by power or force, this plays into it again and again, for example a state wants raw materials, to get them it uses its military power to invade another state, and to acquire the right to its raw materials (e.g. invasion of the USA on Iraq). Not the brotherly welfare of the fellow human being, but only the own advantage counts then. For every morally or morally sensitive person these are serious experiences of injustice. It is the task of economic life to recognize from its inner being the essential importance of brotherhood. And it is the task of legal life to work for its observance. "If I damage or promote my fellow man by selling a commodity, this belongs to the same area of social life as damage or promotion by an activity or omission which is not directly expressed in an exchange of goods. (B179, "II. The Realistic Attempts to Find Solutions to Social Questions and Necessities Required by Life"). And it is the beautiful task of spiritual life to carry the impulses of morality, morals and virtue into the social organism. A new system of justice must develop from the spiritual-moral impulses and practical experience, so that fraternity in economic life will increasingly supplant ruthlessness, deceit, overreaching or deception. Then it will be possible to see how an increasingly fraternal economic life will also be an increasingly healthy economic life. Without moral, virtuous people and without a legal system, an economic system based on the division of labour and money exchange is not possible. Extract from the book "Mensch" Download (german) from the book "Mensch"(PDF)