Pamphlet on Mathilde Ludendorff's philosophy, "Basic Thoughts on the Meaning of Life" by the Ludendorff publishing house

Table of Contents

Below is a pamphlet on Mathilde Ludendorff's philosophy published by the Ludendorff publishing house Hohe Warte called "Basic Thoughts on the Meaning of Life".

https://ludendorff.info/uebersicht/grundgedanken-zum-sinn-des-lebens/

FORWARD 

Dear Reader!

There are various introductions to the philosophy of Mathilde Ludendorff. Each has its own style and will appeal to others who are open to it.

Here an attempt was made to summarize the basic ideas of the philosopher as simply and vividly as possible.

However, the present compilation should not be understood as a God-knowledge "light". It can never replace the reading of the original works, it can never do justice to the comprehensive, often poetic wording and the depth of the philosopher's way of expressing herself. These lines remain far too much on the surface for that.

This booklet is mainly intended for those who do not have much time for books but still want to get a first brief insight into Mathilde Ludendorff's views.

May it then let you reach for the first and fundamental work of Mathilde Ludendorff's "Triumph of the Will of Immortality" in order to close many a gap and clarify many a thing that remained unclear.

We hope you enjoy reading

Your publishing house Hohe Warte

BASIC IDEAS OF MATHILDE LUDENDORFF'S PHILOSOPHY

I would like to take you on a journey through the philosophy of Mathilde Ludendorff, which she herself describes as the "knowledge of God".

Their philosophy is not concerned with any abstract mind games, but stands on the ground of reality and answers the most important questions in a person's life, namely:

• according to the meaning of life,
• about the meaning of having to die
• according to the meaning of human imperfection
• according to the boundary between duty and voluntary, and
• the importance of the peoples and much more.

The knowledge of God is based on the history of development as well as on individual insights of the philosophers Plato, Kant and Schopenhauer, which are recognized as correct. In addition, it is in line with the scientific findings of our time.

For our hike we need some signposts, without which we will get lost.

These consist in the definition of some of the terms on which philosophy is based. They are a necessary prerequisite for understanding.

Each explanation of the term leads further into Mathilde Ludendorff's world of thought.

REASON AND INTUITION

According to Kant, there are two sides to the world. Mathilde Ludendorff bases her philosophy on this insight.

The first is the outer, visible side, this world, the appearance, everything that can be demonstrated. In order to grasp it, man needs reason. Through its properties, it enables us to classify all phenomena in space and time, to check them for cause and effect (judgment), to form an idea of it (imagination), to keep it in our memory (power of memory) and to imagine something mentally (imagination).

With the help of reason (research) we arrive at scientific knowledge.

The faculties necessary for reason, the power of thought and judgment, the powers of imagination, imagination and memory, can be developed, but also paralyzed. Rational knowledge can be learned and transmitted, but under certain circumstances – albeit rarely – it can be experienced intuitively. In this case, however, they must always receive confirmation from the laws of nature after the fact.

However, we remain lifelong incapable of error with regard to our knowledge of reason.

Without reason and its insights, we would not be able to live life the way we do today. It helps us to facilitate the struggle for existence by recognizing the laws of nature. Let us only think of the use of electricity, the means of transport and communication.

With the help of reason, man can defend himself against ignorance and abuse of soul. For this reason, the development of reason is also given great importance in education.

However, rational cognition is not applicable to all areas. She cannot and must not form an idea of what is not an appearance. Here lie the limits of reason recognized by Kant (Critique of Pure Reason).

This brings us to the other side of the world.

If Kant still believed that this second, inner, invisible side of the world, the non-appearance, the "thing-in-itself," as he calls it, or the hereafter, as Mathilde Ludendorff calls it, could not be grasped by man, he was mistaken. It is the merit of the philosopher to have discovered the second cognitive power of man: the ego of the human soul, which experiences this essence of appearance consciously, but intuitively.

WHAT, THEN, IS THE "ESSENCE OF APPEARANCE" 

you might ask. It was here that Plato paved the way, naming moral ideals and virtues in his search for the timeless. The philosopher recognized his idea of the good and its virtues – wisdom, bravery, prudence and justice – as the "essence of appearance", which she describes – more comprehensively – as the good, the beautiful, the true and a love of humanity guided by it. These "ideals" can only be experienced. Their experience can be spontaneous, but it can also be stimulated, for example, by noble deeds, such as the liberation of a people from oppression, by true words that are not taken back even by the threat of death, by works of art or nature. A description of this experience is not possible, because it cannot be grasped with reason and its possibilities. Nor can it be forced, practiced, or persuaded into anyone.

Try to get another person to think something is beautiful. If he doesn't like something, no persuasion helps. At most, he can be induced to hypocrite or be made to do so by suggestive influences.

Reflections on what is the use of the beautiful, good, true, and divinely directed feeling, for what purpose it would be best used, or what consequences it might entail, destroy the value of these ideals. They want to be lived and experienced for their own sake, spontaneously and voluntarily.

The "essence of the apparition" cannot be defined, but it can be conveyed through parables, such as music, poetry, painting, sculptures or buildings, which allow the viewer or listener – who is open to it – to relive the otherworldly or transcendent content of this work or what moved its creator.

The conscious experience of the ego is therefore nothing mystical; it is only beyond the cognitive power of reason and thus eludes the categories of reason: time, space and causality. You can understand this when you try to define beauty. Perhaps you will still arrive at some laws of harmony, i.e. statements of reason, but these always describe only a part of the visible and can never fully grasp the essence of the beautiful. It is the same with love, goodness, nobleness or dignity. The human being experiences it intuitively, but not through reason, but only through the "divinely sensing ego of the human soul", as Mathilde Ludendorff puts it

Only truth, as the correspondence of what is imagined or commanded with the actual, is still so close to reason that it can be applied to the phenomenal world and put into words. For with the help of the thinking power of reason we try to fathom the truth.

Reason and appearance belong together just as much as intuition and the essence of appearance. The two powers of cognition must not be confused and applied to the wrong field.

WHAT IS GOD? 

You were just reading the phrase "God-sensing I."

Mathilde Ludendorff uses the ancient term "God" (used in primeval times as the epitome of perfection) and understands it to mean something quite different from the well-known world religions. In their philosophy, this does not mean a personal God. God, the divine, the absolute or the beyond, the genius or the "thing-in-itself" embraces the essence of appearance, that is, the beautiful, the good, the true, and a love of humanity guided by it. The so-called pride of God as an experience of divine dignity and sublimity as well as the ability to love parents (especially motherly love) are also inherent in the ego and have a connection to the divine. They possess a number of qualities, such as the pursuit of freedom, the joy of performance, but also a willingness to take responsibility and caring. God embraces everything for which intuitive cognition or the ego of the human soul is responsible.

God is not to be proven and not to be defined, but only to be experienced. It is only when the Divine expresses itself in a phenomenon, becomes a work, a word or a deed, that reason can grasp it.

Example:

Everything ingenious/divine that moved him to create his works cannot be described, it eludes reason. But his experience has paved its way into the world of apparition, as his music has been brought to paper by him through musical notation. Since then, his work has been reproduced by musicians and thus accessible to others through the senses. Of course, the inner-soul experience of the performer (as well as the listener) also eludes reason, but he can determine which laws the piece of music follows. In this way, he can grasp the work from the outside with the help of reason.

One's own experience of God or the Divine is independent of any instruction and cannot be trained or even forced. It must be voluntary. Even the uneducated can experience God.

Each personality has its own special access to the Divine, shaped by its nature, and experiences it according to the degree of its openness to it. As diverse as the manifestations of human idiosyncrasies are, as diverse is this experience of the afterlife of human beings. For this reason alone, the experience of God is not transferable.

The longing for ideals is innate. This is shown to us by the little children with their delight in flowers, the noble figures of fairy tales and their initial inability to lie. This longing has been around since the first human being. Early on, everyday objects were decorated, attempts were made to make one's own surroundings as beautiful as possible, as evidenced by the discovered cave paintings. And what explanations are there for the fact that 3000 years ago there were people who buried their dead on meadow flowers? These are all behaviors that have nothing to do with utility.

Each of our four faculties of consciousness is outshone by one of the divine desires: the perception of beauty, the thinking of truth, the action of good, and the feeling of divinely directed love and hate.

The conscious recognition of an experience of the beautiful, the good, the true and the divinely directed love of humanity, i.e. of absolute values, which, by the way, know no concessions, has already led us right into the middle of Mathilde Ludendorff's knowledge of God.

WHAT, THEN, IS THE MEANING OF HUMAN LIFE?

Proceeding from the laws of physics and chemistry, the meaning of human life must be fulfilled before death, since it is bound up with man's consciousness. Once this has disappeared, the cells decompose into the building blocks from which they were once formed, and organic material is transformed back into inorganic material. Thus, it is no longer possible to continue to live in the soul.

Man is imperfect; Anyone who has seen some people ruined by alcohol, drugs, or work will probably agree with this statement. Quarrels, vindictiveness, malice, envy, greed and the many wars also make man appear anything but perfect, although he is the only living being on earth who possesses consciousness and is therefore the most highly developed.

Apparently, reason fails him in certain situations. In her search for the trigger for such self-harming or absurd actions, Mathilde Ludendorff first came across Schopenhauer's intuitive insight that the essence of the entire universe is the will, which all inanimate substance shows just as much as every living being, which becomes all the more evident the higher the living being is developed. This will expresses itself in the fact that he wants a stone to preserve its form, a living being its life. In animals, this desire to survive is ensured by instincts, i.e. guaranteed by an innate compulsion. It has no choice but to act differently. But man has a choice, namely, for good and for bad, for saving as well as for harmful, for what is useful as well as for what is stupid. With the help of reason, he can imagine all the consequences, store them in his memory and draw conclusions. Since he knows what to expect, he tries to act in such a way that the expected does not become too unpleasant for him. His will to self-preservation is therefore tied to the ability to avoid unpleasant things and to seek pleasant solutions, even if this is at the expense of his own health or his own soul. Man has become imperfect.

If you know your "weaker self", then you know what is meant!

In the meantime, this striving has also been recognized by other psychologists as "pleasure maximization". Mathilde Ludendorff speaks philosophically of the God-forsaken, imperfect or even pleasure-enslaved will to self-preservation.

We encounter this peculiarity of the will to self-preservation at every turn.

Let's think about when we get angry, resentful or in a bad mood! Namely, when something did not go according to our ideas, when we received a rebuke or lost something, i.e. when we had a life of displeasure. In contrast, we are happy when something has succeeded, or when it has played out the way we imagined or wished. Power also gives pleasure and is the trigger for many deeds. Power is not only obtained through wealth, influence, and knowledge; actions that cause harm to others also trigger pleasant feelings, satisfaction, or feelings of power.

This God-forsaken will to self-preservation is now the antagonist of the God-sensing ego of the human soul.

This will be illustrated by the example of truth:

A person's divinely dividing ego wants to follow the ideal of truth and tell the truth. But the will to self-preservation, with its extremely earthly quality, enslaved to pleasure, knows that a truth can have unpleasant consequences, which it wants to avoid. Thus, he prefers avoidance to truth.

The force that is most pronounced at the moment, just before the deed, will bring about the decision.

Your justified objection that man would have no freedom of will at all,

and thus be innocent of his behavior, the philosopher counters with reference to rest periods in which a person can think about himself, refine his conscience (see below) and change this balance of power in such a way that the starting point for the next decision is different. Of course, innate and acquired character traits also play a role in all decisions, but these can also be changed in the way described.

The development of these two antagonists, i.e. the dependence on lust and fear of suffering, can now take very different paths in the course of a human life:

Dependence can last a lifetime and be silenced only occasionally in hours of exaltation, in times of harmony with divine desires. Again and again, man falls back into dependence on pleasure and suffering, changes from divine to anti-divine action. He remains as he was born: he remains imperfect.

If the divine wishes become nothing more than an empty phrase for him, he decides exclusively according to what is useful to him or is connected with some purpose, if he has "coffined" his soul, he has become what Mathilde Ludendorff calls the "babbling dead".

However, this imperfect will to self-preservation can also be tamed by working on oneself. The strong desire to change, the recognition of one's own weaknesses – self-knowledge that does not deceive itself – is a prerequisite. Self-control is just as much a part of it as an honest examination of conscience (see below). Then, more and more often, it is no longer the God-forsaken will to self-preservation, which always includes purpose and benefit, that decides the deed, but it is more and more often guided by the divine desires.

It is not asceticism or escapism from the world that leads to this, nor the killing of joy and sorrow. On the contrary: through the internalization of divine values, the experience of joy and sorrow becomes deeper, but also the view for the noble is sharpened. With the overcoming of lust and fear of suffering, the will to self-preservation and an internalization of the divine desires, a human being has become "perfect". He does not withdraw, but remains in the middle of life.

With this we have already mastered a large part of our hike:

A life consciously led in accordance with the divine desires, and indeed without exception and unconditionally, exalted above and unapproachable to all that is bad, ugly and untrue, that is the meaning of being.

This work on oneself, this self-refinement, is called "self-creation" by Mathilde Ludendorff. Every human being has the power and the ability to make his soul perfect. But whether he does so is his free and very own decision, and it must always remain so. For there is no one to examine, evaluate, reward, or punish him. He is only responsible to himself. However, his personal talents or limits of talent remain unaffected by self-creation. That is why Mathilde Ludendorff occasionally speaks of "conditional perfection" that a human being can achieve.

Every human being is capable of experiencing God, regardless of his or her genetic makeup, fate and education. At the same time, the divine is exalted above the number of people who experience it. Even people's striving for values and ideals ennobles them. Not only the rare perfect, but also the many imperfect ones fulfill their longing for the Divine in hours of exaltation. And above all, they help to prevent a people from dying out.

But there are still questions to be answered:

WHY DO WE HAVE TO DIE? 

The longing for immortality plays a role in almost all religions. To explain this, it is helpful to take a look at the history of development. Thus, at the beginning of evolution, there was a living being that did not know old age, that did not have to die if it did not starve, fall ill or have an accident. It could theoretically live forever; it possessed, so to speak, the power of immortality. That was our great-great-great-great-great... ancestor, the potentially immortal single-celled organism (protozoan), whose genetic material we still carry within us, which – one could say – is responsible for this longing, for this hereditary memory.

Of course, Mathilde Ludendorff wondered why there had been any further development in the first place. Because the single-celled organism actually had everything it needed and was well equipped for survival. He was, as the philosopher put it, "desaturated". Darwin had no explanation for this.

So why did it come to the next level?

The explanation is that the goal of creation had not yet been reached. Mathilde Ludendorff's intuitive insight was that a living being that possesses consciousness and can consciously experience God is the goal of creation. The single-celled organism was still a long way from achieving this. There were limits to its variations and size. So something different, something new had to happen. It was not until the division into body cells and germ cells, i.e. the multicellular organism, that further development was achieved. At the same time as the first multicellular organism, its temporal limitation, death, appeared, which has accompanied all life ever since. The quest to escape it has exploded the development of new, higher species. So having to die seems to have been the price of this goal.

But what is the significance of death for man?

Man, as the culmination of this development, is, by virtue of his consciousness, the only living being of creation who knows his fate, who knows that he must die at some point.

This knowledge of the limitation of his existence sets temporal limits for man, drives him – if he does not think only materially – to spiritual development, and thus makes the fulfilment of the meaning of life possible for the first time. Endless existence, on the other hand, does not force development.

Let's imagine the opposite case! Just like the first single-celled organism, humans would never age. Wouldn't endless existence as a conscious individual, i.e. eternal life, be torture rather than a gift? Wouldn't that lead to weariness and weariness? And wouldn't it then be quite cramped on earth? This would limit the number of people. At some point, new personalities would no longer emerge or at best would be extremely limited. Only murder and manslaughter or epidemics could make room. The will to multiplicity, which is proper to the Divine, could not be fulfilled. There would be limits to the diversity of expressions of divine experience. The eternal preservation of an individual personality would mean too much narrowness for the Divine. It is protected from this by the need to die. Thus, as sad as it may be for those who are left behind, the need for death has a divine meaning.

So far, the question of the meaning of human imperfection has remained unanswered.

SENSE OF HUMAN IMPERFECTION

We had already made the statement "man is imperfect" before.

But could not man have been created perfect? Then the world would have been spared much suffering and misery!

To explain the meaning, we need to go back to the evolutionary history and take a look at the subconscious animal.

This is still perfect.

Maybe you're wondering? The animal, which is far below man, is supposed to be perfect? This is because it knows no addiction, no "demographic problem" and no malice. Everything it does to defend its herd, to reproduce, to look for its food, to protect its brood, to secure its territory, is entirely for its self-preservation and the preservation of its species. It is well equipped for this by its instincts. Poisonous plants are instinctively avoided. The enemy will only be fought as long as it is within range. With the disappearance from view, he is already forgotten again. If it comes to deviant behavior, it is usually the human who has intervened (bloodlust of the marten in the chicken coop). The more highly developed an animal is, the less it is genetically determined, the more a young animal has to learn, the more adaptable and varied its behaviour becomes, whereas the simpler animal species often have only one possible course of action.

An animal cannot act differently from what its genetic make-up tells it to do. His actions, bound by instincts, are not free, but they are perfectly adapted to his natural environment.

Now man has come into being. Man is the only living being who possesses (I) consciousness. That is, he can perceive, think, feel, sense and act. He can see himself separately from the environment, think about his existence, think abstractly and remember all sorts of things. Man is the only living being in the universe capable of experiencing divine traits within himself (the good, the true...). He can shape his whole life accordingly, and let his experience radiate to his contemporaries and posterity, as happens through the works of great artists. But man is also the only living being in the universe who can ruin himself physically and mentally, who is able to make life difficult for himself and his fellow human beings or even to destroy them. Its self-preservation and species preservation is no longer secured by instincts.

Why?

In favor of the possibility of experiencing the divine, this attachment to compulsive actions has been severed, man has been given freedom of choice, his actions have become "free". Because: the divine desires only receive their value when they are fulfilled spontaneously and voluntarily by one's own decision. Thus, man must have the choice of becoming a decent man, a diabolical man, or one of the intermediate forms. In favor of this freedom, man's will to self-preservation has become imperfect, whereby he can recognize, remember, and strive for what gives pleasure and avoids suffering with the help of reason and its faculties.

Imperfection is the price of freedom to experience God.

Let's imagine the opposite case:

If we were perfect from birth, if we had never had the freedom to decide for ourselves, to make our own choices, then our behavior would have been coercive. Coercion, however, is incompatible with the Divine. One of the essences of the Divine is freedom!

Thus, this imperfection has divine meaning. Therefore, humans will continue to be born imperfect as long as they exist.

But man is not helplessly exposed to this imperfection. Through experience, it can replace the lost animal instinct bond for self-preservation and national preservation. For this purpose, he has been given the abilities to perceive, think, feel and will. In this way, he can acquire knowledge and use reason to use it, and this should be done as sensibly as possible in order to become a full-fledged substitute for the instincts that have been lost. However, only the experience that is truthfully transmitted is valuable. However, their use is also subject to human lust and fear of suffering.

In this context, Mathilde Ludendorff was particularly concerned with conscience, which in many religions is considered a reliable inner standard for decisions. But this is exactly what she warns against and points out how often in our history the worst deeds have been done with a clear conscience. (Example: Inquisition and witch burnings, which were associated with the most cruel tortures). The perpetrators of that time also had a clear conscience in their work.

In the question of the cause of this, we again encounter human reason, which, however, is exposed to the pleasure-seeking and suffering-avoiding action of the imperfect will to self-preservation. She has access to the conscience and tends to come up with motives before or after a deed or to pick them up from the outside, which are supposed to protect against unpleasant experiences and maintain a good conscience. Reason, then, engages in self-deception in order to save its own peace of mind. To persuade oneself, or to allow oneself to be persuaded, that such acts of violence would take place for the good and salvation of the Christian faith, helped to silence many a bad conscience, if it still stirred at all.

Therefore, a certain amount of mistrust of a good conscience is always appropriate.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PEOPLES 

Peoples are not, like the individual human being, subject to the necessity of death. Contrary to what some might say, they can be immortal if they do not perish through disease, violence, accident or extinction. Peoples are communities of destiny that are held together not only by an external bond, history, nor by an inner, spiritual bond, i.e., by a common subconscious genetic material. Mathilde Ludendorff calls this the people's soul. Sometimes one hears or reads in the media that "the people's soul was boiling", which describes a shared experience, usually an indignation. But this already indicates that the people of a people show common spiritual peculiarities in which they differ from other peoples.

This subconscious genetic material has various tasks and effects:

It advises all the faculties of consciousness, i.e. perceiving, thinking, feeling and acting. Then people speak of "a hunch they have or an instinctive urge." In special situations, e.g. in the case of a general emotional upheaval or in agony, the subconscious genetic material, the national soul, even forces itself to gain access to consciousness and influences actions. And in all those who possess it and in which it has not been buried. This happened, for example, in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War; this happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when the Deutschlandlied was spontaneously sung in the Bundestag. But this is very rare.

It is responsible for the different character traits of the peoples: some are more rooted in the familiar, sedentary and bring their homeland to bloom, others are attracted by the depth of space and the joy of discovery to explore the wide world. For some, the preservation of personal honor is the highest good, while others prefer to bend over backwards to survive. For some, there is a pronounced sense of privacy, while others need the immediate proximity of their fellow human beings. The variety is almost infinite.

It finds its expression in culture. In doing so, the philosopher distinguishes between two different sources from which this can arise:

a) If it owes its origin to the subconscious, if it was created from an emotion or upheaval, then this is folk culture: all folk songs, costumes, folk dances, folk poems, many buildings, sculptures or

paintings, customs and traditions belong to folk culture, which has an unmistakable character. It also causes a stirring of emotion in the co-experiencer, who possesses the same soul heritage. This not only strengthens the innate, but also connects without many words. Think about what you feel when you hear an old German folk song and an Arabic song! One's own folk heritage is familiar, seems at home, moves the soul, the different is unfamiliar, remains strange, without access or is sometimes even perceived as unpleasantly shrill. Conversely, other peoples also feel the same way when they experience German folklore. Thus, it is responsible for the nature of the emotional experience. Folk culture is generally "understood" only by people with the same common or related subconscious hereditary characteristics.

b) If cultural works arise from the experience of the divine, they can also be relived by people from other cultures and with a different mentality, although they bear traits of the personality of the creator and his subconscious heritage. This explains why Mozart's music is so loved and played by others, especially Asian peoples.

Even in the direct worship of the divine, you will find the most diverse ways of expressing the subconscious heritage: Greek temples reflect different experiences than the sacred groves of the Germanic peoples. The Gothic domes are quite different from the Asian pagodas. The Arab Kaaba or the Islamic mosques are an expression of yet another experience of God. Every people experiences certain traits of the Divine particularly intimately. Some are more interested in the beautiful, others more in the good. Some feel familiar with the divine and equal to it, others humbly bow down to it, loving the security under the higher. Some experience God in rapture, others in contemplation.

Mathilde Ludendorff calls all the experience of the beautiful, the good and the true that is expressed in one's own culture and that has its roots in the subconscious of each individual and has a connecting effect across all personal heritage.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION

Perhaps you would like to ask for a more precise distinction between the terms "culture" and "civilization"? The distinction made by the philosopher Mathilde Ludendorff is clear, but unusual in common parlance.

Culture is the already described experience of God or the emotional experience of a people, which has become words, deeds and works. Culture is "useless", has no purpose, if it is honest. Mathilde Ludendorff, by the way, poetically refers to it as the "song of God". The philosopher clearly distinguishes the culture created out of an inner experience from civilization, to which everything conceived by reason is owed, that is, everything that is useful or serves a purpose, especially that which facilitates everyday life. Of course, there is overlap between the two, because even a useful item can be beautiful.

If a culture, a "song of God" disappears from the choir of the nations, because a people dies out, then the world becomes poorer for a form of expression of divine experience, the diversity of conscious experience of God in the world becomes less, and indeed irretrievably. However, as already mentioned, multiplicity is one of the characteristics of the Divine. The disappearance of a people is thus tantamount to an impoverishment of the divine.

Therefore, every human being has a double task in his life: preservation of the people and preservation of God.

WHERE IS THE LINE BETWEEN COMPULSORY AND VOLUNTARY? 

In fact, there are areas of life in which we are obliged to act in a certain way and others that must remain our very own business.

A precise demarcation can be found again in Mathilde Ludendorff's. It distinguishes between moral law and morality. Even philosophical dictionaries do not show this accuracy.

A person acts morally when this is done in accordance with the desire for the good, the true, the beautiful and a love of humanity guided by it. This, because it concerns the development of the soul, is his own personal affair (but in the case of a lie, only in so far as no one else is harmed); for this he must have absolute freedom, i.e. he must never be forced to behave in a certain way from the outside, rewarded or punished for it, if only for the sake of authenticity.

By moral law, the philosopher understands all duties and regulations that ensure the protection of existence, property, self-preservation, clan and national preservation, as well as the possibility of fulfilling the meaning of life. It is the task of the state to create the framework for this. The moral law must be a substitute for the instincts of self-preservation and species preservation of animals, since these have become imperfect in man at the expense of his consciousness. However, there are limits to this moral law, for it must never interfere with the spiritual development of the individual and must not make demands that are immoral. Thus, the moral law is subordinate to morality.

The observance of the moral law is merely – as Mathilde Ludendorff puts it – "moral zero point". That is, its observance must not be rewarded. It is just as natural as stopping at a red light. However, failure to do so is an injustice and must be punished.

The moral law is always connected with duty – morality with voluntariness.

On the basis of all these remarks, I am sure you can understand that Mathilde Ludendorff asks that every true believer be respected, that she refuses to destroy his own faith. In doing so, she opposes any zeal for conversion.

Only searching people can be pointed to the "knowledge of God".

A conviction of people of other faiths, on the other hand, can only ever happen by example. The only thing the philosopher resents a believer is calculating hypocrisy.

With these trains of thought, we have arrived at the end of our hike.

These basic ideas are the beginning of a series of "philosophical walks" that will appear little by little and that will lead you along similar paths through the various thematic areas of Mathilde Ludendorff's philosophy.