It is a theme running through Rudolf Steiner's philosophical writings that we need to trust in our own thinking; and that if we do not - then we are lost; because we can trust nothing
When I read this line of reasoning; I experienced an immediate sense of recognition and affirmation: I felt that I knew exactly what he meant, and why it was so important.
In a positive sense; it recognizes that all logical, evidential and systematic constructs ought to be built on top of (and consistent with) intuition (or direct knowing) - thinking-intuition conscious and explicit, and explicitly recognized as such.
In a negative sense; it recognizes that someone who has ceased to trust in his own thinking has become a mere puppet, a hollow simulacrum; mentally paralyzed and a conduit for the ideas of others.
And I also saw that to induce and make habitual a distrust of one's own thinking is a major strategy of modern ideology and propaganda - over several centuries and escalating.
The aim of much modern culture and lifestyle is to induce doubt about even one's own strongest, deepest and clearest intuitions; to encourage a lack of trust of personal insight; to feel plagued by the uncertainty of every intuition.
Now, of course, modern habits of mind immediately seize upon doubt and uncertainty about 'how can we know?' whether this intuition is real - it might be wrong.
We tend feel certain and sure and confident only about the 'fact' that intuitions are often wrong (that old paradox of relativism!).
And what about 'other people' who 'claim' to have solid and lucid intuitions - might they be mistaken, lying, crazy, manipulative?... Maybe we ourselves are those things? How can we know?
And how can we know for sure that intuition really is the bottom line anyway; how can we be certain that we really ought to trust thinking - what is the proof?
(All of which just goes to show what happens when we do not recognize that we must trust our own best thoughts - and when we do not trust our-selves to know our own best thoughts.)
What such thinking actually arises from is a mistrust in our motivations; and that may well arise from the evil of our own motivations because we do not know the truth.
Someone who rejects true knowledge of God the loving creator (and us his children) has refused or violated his own intuitive knowing about that which just-is primary and foundational - and such a one surely cannot trust his thinking on other matters.
(When we don't get first things right, second things do not follow.)
Because all unreflective and passive modern Men have accepted false metaphysical assumptions regarding the basic nature of reality by default - and that is where intuition needs to start.
Of course; our ability to know is limited - and may be relatively small; but we (each personally) cannot do any better than what we personally think, and directly-know.
