Thanks for the clarification Ashvin. I misinterpreted what you said because of your previous reference to the "new" idealist perspective of Cleric and yourself (I now see the relevance of the inverted commas). I can assure you that POF is on my reading list, but it may be some time before I get to it.AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 12:54 pmJustinG wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 8:00 amThe thing is Ashvin, if you or Cleric have made some major advance in idealist philosophy, why are you spending your time discussing it with non-specialists on an internet forum, instead of submitting papers to peer-reviewed journals (especially as you write so well)? The journal I managed to get published in (https://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal), despite only holding a Bachelor's degree, has a very broad scope, so you might want to try there.AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Sep 01, 2021 4:28 pm We need to go Beyond Flat MAL to Deep MAL (do not think of "alters" existing in a personal bubble of consciousness with hard separation from all other "alters") - viewtopic.php?f=5&t=279
In this regard, I think there can be dangers in Anthroposophy-oriented philosophies becoming disengaged from the praxis of the broader international philosophical community, as the situation with poor John David Ebert shows. Whilst discussions we have here are fun, it's good to remember they don't have much philosophical siginificance beyond the enjoyment they bring us. Even BK's name is mentioned only once in the forthcoming The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism (https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge ... 1138502819).
Justin,
1 - We have not made some major advance in idealist philosophy. Everything we say here about the phenomenology of Thinking is found in Rudolf Steiner's PoF written in 1895. I also show in my essays how various other 20th century thinkers reached similar intellectual conclusions from various different ways, such as Bergson, Jung, Heidegger, and a few others. (and of course Barfield, who brilliantly expanded on Steiner's phenomenology with philology). The lack of recognition that this philosophy even exists is simply a complete prejudicial blinding to it (for the same reason there is a prejudicial blinding to one's own Thinking role in the phenomenal world), and a lack of effort to overcome that prejudice. You just read Barfield's Saving the Appearances and somehow you still think we are advancing a completely different view, which goes to show the sheer strength of that modern prejudice against Thinking as spiritual activity.
2 - Your bolded nihilistic assertion is exactly what we are trying to overcome, at least in some small measure, within ourselves. We are hoping some others here on the forum, perhaps with the assistance of our essays and posts, recognize the need to overcome that nihilism as well. A world where the detailed structure of spiritual reality has no "praxis" or "philosophical significance beyond the enjoyment they bring us" is one heading straight for unconscious egoistic-fueled disasters of all sorts, as we can already see manifesting. It really disheartens me that someone as well-read and intelligent as yourself could make such an assertion, precisely because I know that mindset is so prevalent in our culture right now.
Your approach is a thoroughly materialist one, where fragmented knowledge, mechanistic thinking, and casual dismissal of spiritual realms is the norm. Steiner himself recognized why all of these things were so popular and possessing of the intellect in his day, and much of the same reasons apply in our day. If you were to ever read Steiner with an open heart and open mind, then you may actually see the inner logic of the spiritual world which comes to manifest in your materialist ideology which tries to appropriate metaphysical idealism for itself. These things need to be confronted with courage and honesty, otherwise they will continue lurking within the collective subconscious and haunting humanity with increasingly more devastating consequences.
Steiner wrote:To get a proper idea of current events one would have to take account of a number of things. One thing to be particularly taken into account however is connected with a fact I also mentioned in my first public lecture here. [ Note 20 ] It is the fact that when it comes to their frame of mind, particularly as regards the way they form ideas, present-day people are in many, many instances continuing in a way that was only suitable for the forming of ideas during the Middle Ages. That was a great and significant way of thinking, but it is now out of date. Some people have gone very intensely into the medieval way of developing sensibilities and forming ideas. These are the people who hold more or less socialist views, and there are many of them all over the globe. The ideas current among them come to expression above all in a belief in authority that is almost limitless. They cringe before anything that assumes authority by simply taking a strong line among them. This has made it possible for people like Lenin and Trotsky [ Note 21 ] to impose their tyranny on millions of people with the help of just a few thousand. That particular movement is spreading from Eastern Europe into Asia at an incredible pace. It imposes a tyranny worse than anything seen during the worst periods of oriental tyranny.
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Leninism knows how to put things cleverly, using rational ideas produced in the head, and there is a definite reason for this The cleverness of the human animal, the cleverness of human animal nature, is coming to the fore in human evolution through Leninism. Everything arising from human instincts, human selfishness, comes to interpretation in Leninism and Trotskyism in a form that on the surface seems very intelligent. The animal wants to work its way to the fore, to be the most intelligent of animals. All the Ahrimanic powers that aim to exclude the human element, to exclude everything that is specifically human, and all the aptitudes that exist within the animal kingdom — I have often stressed this — are to become the forces that determine humanity.
FYI - JDE, as far as I know, has never called himself an "Anthroposophist". Of course, whatever is happening with him is completely irrelevant to the truth or lack thereof of Steiner's spiritual science. This should go without saying, but apparently it needs to be said.
Regarding some of your other comments, I did think my post was in keeping with your remark elsewhere that it is important to avoid distraction from the goal of "eating, drinking, and being merry, for tomorrow we die".
I intend to start a thread in the formal section sometime and would appreciate your comments on that at some stage. Cheers.