Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)

[Cleric]

"Being a limitation or fragmentation of reality or truth, the process of thinking is always tending to return to its source or origin, and it is because of this that the disciplines of philosophy and science exist in our culture. Every thought process or the line of reasoning that a philosopher or scientist embarks upon is a process whereby the finite mind is tending to return to its source. That is why all philosophers and scientists desire one thing alone which is understanding. Their thoughts tend towards understanding. The experience of understanding is the dissolution of the process of thinking, into its source of consciousness. It is for this reason, contrary to popular belief, that for some people ‘thinking’ is a spiritual path. It is as legitimate spiritual path as any other path."

Rupert Spira

Thanks Starbuck! This really focuses the discussion well and has great potential to lead to something fruitful in the manner Ashvin intended in this thread.

Let's look at the above more closely. What is called the source or origin of thinking? In order not to be lost in abstractions let's try to follow the actual experiences and simply describe them.

Let's follow this thought dissolution process. We begin our meditation from the ordinary state. In the beginning we are in quite beta brainwave state, experiencing hectic reverberations of whatever we've been doing so far. As we relax our inner activity we gradually move more towards a more floaty state where we're still drawn by inner rhythms but in a little more relaxed way. For example, we reexperience some events of the day, we return to feelings that someone aroused in us with what they said, we continue to argue with someone in the forum and so on. Then we quiet down this too. We become free of these emotional and mental eddies and now we really see how until few minutes ago we were truly drawn by them and the sense perceptions. We were thinking about these perceptions, emotions, memories, ideas but we were not really free. They simply bubble up and in a way our "I" is forced to express its thoughts about them. Even this expression of thoughts is quite automatic for most people, just a torrent of mental verbal content. Once we raise above the eddies we really experience that we're in a higher position in relation to our everyday soul life. There are many observations that we can make from this standpoint. But we go even further. We completely dissociate from any soul content, let it float off, dissipate into space. Now this is what Spira calls dissolution of the thinking process.

So far so good. We are fully objective in the description of our meditative experience. We simply report the contents, we're not speculating what comes from where, what lies behind what and so on. Let's move on to the origin of thinking. When the thinking process has been dissolved there are many things that could be experienced depending on different factors. If we go gradually, once the thinking process is dissolved we find ourselves into something which we can describe as a laminar soul flow. Eugene calls it coming and going of phenomena. The characteristic thing is that there are no discrete thought-forms - words, symbols. If we go even further we can reach the void state but at this moment there's no need to go that far. Note that the above progression is described from a perspective of popular meditative approach. If we had spiritual-scientific training there are differences once the intellectual thought-process ceases but hopefully we'll address these in other posts.

So we've managed to dissolve the thought process and observe the laminar flow. From this position we can go back and forth and experience the emergence and dissolution of the thought process and thus investigate it. OK. So what do we call the source or origin of thinking? In most popular nondual terms we would receive the answer that the laminar soul flow (synonymous of consciousness) is the source of thinking. Here we must already be very alert. By saying something like this we already add certain ideas to the given through our thinking. Let there be no illusion about this. The experience of the laminar soul flow is what it is, it's a given experience we can attain to. But when we say that this flow is the origin of thinking we already add something extra to the given which colors it. We should really observe this very well because it is precisely this sort of things that falls completely in our blind spot. What is the fact of observation? That at one point we experience the unbroken soul flow and then rigid and isolated thought-forms begin to form. This is the certain thing. But when we say that the soul flow is the origin of thoughts, we assert something which is not a direct result of observation. This is a simple thinking error. It would be the same as to say that the ripples on the surface of the sea originate entirely from the water, that the water is the source of the the ripples. But we know that this is not the whole picture. There are fluid dynamics in the water volume but the picture becomes complete only when we account for the wind interacting with the water surface.

So what Spira describes amounts to: "science and philosophy's ultimate goal is the realization that the thought-forms that constitute them exist as ripples on the laminar soul flow and the flow is the reality". Let us be clear. What the dissolution of thoughts really tells us is that there's a more general medium of our soul in which the ripples of the thought-forms emerge. This medium is most often simply called consciousness. So we have "consciousness is the source/origin of thoughts". But what does this really tell us? Not much actually. It's just as useful as the materialist's "the brain is the origin of the thoughts". The latter imagines the thoughts as pixels commanded by inaccessible (to direct experience) hardware. The former attains to the experience not only of the pixels but to the screen (which is found to exist even if all the pixels go off) and it's decided that the screen (which is called consciousness) is the source of thoughts.

What both of the above positions miss is that we have another factor which is simply not recognized in most cases - it falls into the blind spot. It's the fact that there's something else which we can call the source of thoughts and it is our spiritual activity. It is the wind above the soul water surface. It's not a coincidence that the ancients spoke of breath, which is related to the air element and is generally synonymous to spirit. When we say "consciousness is the source of thinking" we really project the source of thinking to something belonging to the phenomenal world (world of perceptions). And no doubt this is an experiential fact for many people. They are really thinking machines, they hear in their heads torrents of words but they say that either the brain thinks or consciousness thinks. They put the source of thinking outside of themselves. To experience the source of thinking within ourselves we must want to do it. Nothing external can force us to. If we experience meditatively a thought like "I think the words" we can experience something which is nowhere else to be found - a causative idea. This should be grasped well. The popular slogan is 'there's no thinker, there's only false identification with thoughts'. But this simply uses thinking to pass ignoring judgment to something which we can't derive from anywhere else.

Let us end with this. We should meditate on this distinction. On one hand we have the popular idea that thoughts simply bubble up as if from the cosmic microwave background radiation. In other words we place the cause of thoughts to something mysterious and unknown. We reduce our spiritual position to that of a passive observer which has right conception of itself when it avoids to identify with thoughts and instead says 'the thoughts think themselves'. On the other hand we have an observation, something of the given, which can be justifiably called a cause. Actually it is the only cause of something within the World Content that we know from direct experience. When we experience our thinking (and not only the thoughts) we have the clear experience of causative spiritual activity, it's the wind that creates ripples within the soul flow. We should really be clear that there's no point to call this spiritual activity an 'illusion' or 'false identification with thoughts'. It could be described as illusion if we could show the reality from which this illusion emerges but we can't do that. There's no such causative activity within the soul flow itself. So we make quite an arbitrary assertion if we say that the causative spiritual activity is a mere illusion emerging from the soul flow. It's just as hard problem as 'consciousness is illusion created by neurons'.

So I hope that with the above we have a more concrete pointer to what we consider to be thinking in the deeper sense. It's not an abstract speculation, it's a living experience that anyone can have, if they have the good will to do so. We only need to allow ourselves to experience how our spirit-breath creates the thought ripples. If this is understood we should really say "I, the spiritual being which utters these very words, am the actual source of them. I think the word-forms. Any attempt to explain the thoughts as originating from something other than me, simply alienates me from the very thing that I produce. I simply refuse to take responsibility for my own creations."

Let's see now who will allow themselves to experience their thinking spiritual being and who will use the freedom of their spiritual being only to produce the thought which denies responsibility for all other thoughts - "I don't think. The thoughts think themselves".

[Cleric]

First things first, I've posted many many posts in which I praise Bernardo. I'm sorry you haven't seen those and that has caused you take my more cirtical remarks as a fixation of some kind.

But even if you have only seen my critical remarks, I am surprised you interpret it as 'hatred'. If you are being serious, I'm not sure there is much point in trying to have a productive conversation as I imagine you'll take disagreement as hatred. I don't share that stance. I thought you put together a very fun thought experiment.

Anyways....

Steiner says:

"As far as the will is concerned, it can be regarded only as the expression of the activity of our finite personality”

Steiner is making an assumption that he does not explain and that carries presuppositions. Sure, we can just flately say he's right or wrong, but I notice he doesn't motivate the claim. Or, worse (and I am NOT claiming he is doing this) it could be begging the question. If his first use of 'will' in that sentence complies to his conclusion than he begging the question. But it is hard to know because he doesn't explain the claim.

Schopenhauer, in my opinion (and, as you say, in many other people's opinion) doesn't just 'say' that the same will is looking through your eyes as mine, he motivates and explains it. Doesn't mean we have to agree with him, but I take his arguments (to the extent I grasp them) and Bernardo's (and others who argue for this kind of spiritual monism) to strong and at the very least plausible. And I think Steiner's later work actually is more in line which the idea that in actually there is only one true will and it is that will which we grasp cognitively if we truly are grasping our actual nature.

And, then, Steiner says:


"As far as the will is concerned, it can be regarded only as the expression of the activity of our finite personality. Schopenhauer wants to avoid making “abstract” thinking the bearer of unity in the world, and seeks instead something which presents itself to him immediately as real."

As Steiner says later, what he means by thinking is one and the same with a new understanding of 'will,' that thinking/feeling/will are united in the insight he is pointing towards.

I do not believe that Schopenhauer is referring to his desire to eat pizza as what he has cognized as the will that works through all of reality. Thanks, and to the extent that I haven't adequately praised Bernardo in each of my posts, I'm more than happy to repeat here that I consider his work to be some of the most significant stuff taking place in the world of thought these days. And where I disagree with him, I do not make it personal and I know he appreciates the debates.

I love BK!

I just think Steiner clearly misrepresented Schopenhauer.

Oh I am sure you do, but I have also never seen you start a thread which was not "hating" on him

I do not think Steiner misrepresents Schopenhauer at all and I know at least Cleric and Scott agree, so there is good debate to be explored there. I am curious, though, do you have a stance on what you believe Schopenhauer actually claimed, i.e. agree or disagree with him on this topic?

To understand the quotes of Steiner that you provide we must read them in their context. And the context is "where do we find the noumenon?" What does it mean to find the noumenon (which Kant says we can never experience directly)? It would mean to find something within the World Content which is not merely appearance (mental image) but the actual thing-in-itself. If I see a color I don't know why I perceive it. The very perception approaches me as a riddle, I feel there's something missing in it. This motivated Kant to say that we only see the appearance but the missing part, which he called the noumenon, can never be experienced. So we're looking for something which doesn't stand as a question mark urging us to go further in order to understand it but presents itself as something complete. The argument of Schopenhauer is that the Will is this element which combines appearance with the actual thing. The appearance is the bodily perceptions of the movements and the actual thing is the willing spiritual activity. But how does he know this? He thinks it. Without thinking he would never even know that bodily will exists. We take this for granted but our spiritual willing activity is not the same as the bodily perceptions. It is enough to imagine a paralyzed limb in order to realize the difference between the willing intent and the perception of bodily movement. If we grasp this deeply we'll understand that our willing activity (for the human stage of today) is one of correlation. We're simply used to perceive our body moving in correlation with our spiritual willing intents. But to say that the bodily movement perceptions are the will, simply doesn't stand up to closer scrutiny. So this is one thing that we unknowingly add to the given through thinking. The other thing is that in our normal state we don't experience the Will of a plant or a growing crystal. We only know the Will through the movement of our own body. In this sense we know the Will only within the extents of our finite personality. To extend the Will as a World force we can only do through thinking, by stitching this idea to the World Content. This doesn't mean that the idea of World Will is wrong. It might be confirmed at some point but the fact is that in the given we don't perceive World Will.

The only place where appearance and the thing-in-itself are inseparably united is our thinking. If we experience thinking in the way of my post above, we find it to be complete - we have both the appearance (thought-forms) and the noumenon (the ideas). We need nothing outside thinking in order to understand our thoughts. They are complete in themselves. We can use thinking to ask questions about everything, including thinking itself but the actual process of thinking doesn't raise questions, we don't need to analyze our thoughts in order to understand what we are thinking. This doesn't make sense because the analyzation itself would be thinking which would itself need to be analyzed, thus we would need recursive analyzation and never reach actual understanding of our thoughts. Instead, the thought perceptions (words, symbols, etc.) and their ideal meaning are inseparably united. The phenomenon and noumenon are one in the process of thinking.

[findingblanks]

"yeah Steiner gets shorter shrift than any other philosopher I can think of... even his strictly philosophical works which don't mention spiritual things are mostly ignored."

I love Steiner and his entire project. He gets misunderstood for many reasons. But some of the reasons are directly connected to the fairly substantial changes of language and conceptualization he makes in the 1918 edition. While I understood why he felt it important not to integrate his better articulations and conceptualizations into the text itself, I think it would have gone a long way towards somewhat minimizing the short shrift he got. But there are so many different reasons Steiner's work is hard to integrate into the kind of discourse that shrifts him shortly.

[Eugene I]

The only place where appearance and the thing-in-itself are inseparably united is our thinking. If we experience thinking in the way of my post above, we find it to be complete - we have both the appearance (thought-forms) and the noumenon (the ideas). We need nothing outside thinking in order to understand our thoughts. They are complete in themselves. We can use thinking to ask questions about everything, including thinking itself but the actual process of thinking doesn't raise questions, we don't need to analyze our thoughts in order to understand what we are thinking. This doesn't make sense because the analyzation itself would be thinking which would itself need to be analyzed, thus we would need recursive analyzation and never reach actual understanding of our thoughts. Instead, the thought perceptions (words, symbols, etc.) and their ideal meaning are inseparably united. The phenomenon and noumenon are one in the process of thinking.

Cleric, you finally clarified exactly what you mean by noumenon and why you think the Kantian gap to noumenon is closed by thinking. I wish you could do that earlier So yes, of course, with such definition of noumenon everything becomes consistent in your paradigm: thinking can know both the perceptions (phenomenon) and the ideal meanings (noumenon), Kantian gap is closed, nothing is left over.

Or is it? The issue is: your paradigm is consistent but incomplete, because that noumenon+phenomenon (by your definition) is not the whole reality, it is only the ideal and perceptual content of it, the forms. In addition to ideas and thinking, there is "something" (often called "formless") that experiences these ideas, and that something can not be an idea (because ideas do not experience each others or themselves). But because that "something" is not an idea, thinking also can not know it (because thinking can only think ideas). So, if we approach Reality with thinking only, then THAT which actually experiences the ideas and thinking simply can not even be found. But it still definitely exists, because there must be "something" that experiences all ideas. And if it exists but is unknown to thinking, should not it also be qualified as "noumenon" (or perhaps we call it meta-noumenon)? And if it does, how do we now close the Kantian gap to that unknown dimension of the meta-noumenon?

But should we even care to find that missing "something" and close that "extra" Kantian gap? It's actually up to us, there is no mandate. You can live perfectly happily in the world of ideas and thinking of ideas, integrate into their unity, there is nothing wrong with that. But if you are a curious person, would not you still wonder what is this "something" that experiences thinking and ideas? Isn't it who you actually ARE? Why would not you be interested to find out who/what you actually ARE: that "something" that experiences the ideas? Would not you be interested to know the noumenon in its fulness and completely close the Kantian gap with nothing left? The good news is: it is possible (if you are interested of course, but if not, that's fine too). And it is possible because THAT which experiences all ideas is of the nature of "conscious experiencing" and by virtue of it can actually directly experience itself, closing any remaining Kantian gap. Once such direct experience is realized, thinking can also reflect it with an idea of "THAT", however, such idea is not the same as "THAT" in itself, it is only an ideal reflection of it. And because such idea is only a reflection, THAT can ever be fully understood by thinking and reason, even though it can be directly and intimately experienced, so it always remains ineffable to reason and thinking. And finally, there is no gap between THAT which experiences, and THAT which is experienced - all ideas and forms are no other that THAT, they are all united by THAT by nature. This is where the actual ontological unity is, there is nothing in the entire world which is apart from THAT or anything other than THAT. In every act of experiencing (of ideas, forms) it is THAT which experiences itself though its own ideas and forms, with no "gap" in between whatsoever.

And notice that this mysterious "THAT" is not the same as the Schopenhauer's "Will", the "Will" is only one of the aspects of it. Nowhere in his works Schopenhauer actually even mentioned that the "Will" is THAT which experiences. At best, it can be attributed to the volitional ability of Reality (Consciousness), and that ability is definitely one of the fundamental faculties of Consciousness. The Will (volition) is definitely one of the creative "forces" of Consciousness, so, Schopenhauer was not completely wrong. But his view is again incomplete, because he also missed THAT which is willing and which is experiencing its own volitions and ideas and everything else there is to reality (including itself).

[findingblanks]

"If I see a color I don't know why I perceive it."
I kindly and softly and full of love and good humor think this is an error. I understand why people obviously need to be able to speak this way in their day to day language. An animal clearly doesn't just 'see a color' not does a child. Adults can easily believe that they do but a closer phenomenology will show that there is much more going on than 'red' when they say, "I was just seeing a color." A sophisticated adult may do concentration exercises and slowly but surely learn to focus and pin-point their attention so strongly that they will say, "I was able to reduce my experience of the apple to the point where the only experience I was having was red," or, "I was able to imagine nothing but redness in my mind." I myself have the experience that often gets explicated in terms somewhat like that and I used to think they were accurate. But they miss the ways in which all sorts of active ideas are functioning in the perception that allow it to appear cut off from a wider numinal context. This will sound like hair-splitting, no doubt, to most people. That's okay. But it connects to the ways that Steiner and Schopenhauer were 'talking' past each other. It helps explain why Steiner was convininced that he demolished a great thinker and phenomenologist by simply showing an error in logic. People do the same thing to Steiner all the time. They point out a way his words can imply that he overlooked a very obvious contradiction and this means that Steiner's whole edifice is groundless. It's a college type move. These guys may not have always articulated themselves in the best way, but if you think you demolish either of their works (as Steiner does) by showing a simple contradiction it means you need to read them more closely. I know it can feel great to take down Steiner with logic and all that, but... ugh.

"The very perception approaches me as a riddle..."

Yes and the riddle comes after you've applied a concept like 'red', obviously. In fact the riddle requires a very intricate cognitive activity on your part and the nature of the riddle (there can be probably countless ways to puzzle of a given perception) will be mainly the result of your own background and presuppositions, some of which you'll be conscious of and some of which not. I'm sure we agree here. No I'm not.

"So we're looking for something which doesn't stand as a question mark urging us to go further in order to understand it but presents itself as something complete."

Yes, as long as we take the above metaphorically, that probably captures some of it. But many people would read that and think you mean that the thing we are conceptualizing before us (I am seeing a tree, I am hearing Mozart, that is a dead cat...) 'presents itself as complete.' Of course Barfield helps us to see clearly that if we are having the actual experience that something stands complete and outside of us that something is an idol of the study. The degree to which we experience any aspects of its implicit reality or/and any degree to which we are active in how it stands, we are engaged in some version of participation. Notice that I went out of my way to assume you probably did not mean the above literally.

"The argument of Schopenhauer is that the Will is this element which combines appearance with the actual thing."

As a student of Steiner's I am very aware that his students, along with Steiner himself, tend to speak epistemologically (and ontologically) in terms of 'attaching' and 'combining' and 'linking' something to something else in order to restore reality. I am not at all suggesting Schopenhauer did not also talk in terms of the will 'combining' this to that but I'll need to look again at his work directly. But, until I know more about his expression and what you mean by yours, I can only say that the above does not match how I understand Schopenhauer. Again, I doubt I need to underline my reference to my own complicity in this kind of misunderstanding. There is a happiness that can sort of overwhelm us when we keep in mind what we are really doing throwing our all these fancy words.

In order not to be 'hated', I need to probably preface my following comments by saying that I am NOT making the freshman college philosophy move that I'm somewhat pointing to, nor am I claiming that is what you did in making your move:

"The appearance is the bodily perceptions of the movements and the actual thing is the willing spiritual activity. But how does he know this? He thinks it."

When Steiner comes to realize that thinking is the ontological ground of his philosophy, how does he come to know this? He wills himself to think. Without the thinking he'd have no inside, but that thinking is grounded in and utterly dependent upon the will pervading it's origin, moment of grasping truth, and then taking that truth further.

And this is why we should never reduce Steiner or Schopenhauer to a quick phrase of logic. They and their adherents can ALWAYS get out of such 'catching,' just a good student of Steiner won't blink at what I said above, neither will a sturdy Schopenhaurian be terrified to learn that Schopenhauer 'thought' the nature of the will. And both would be right to somewhat roll their eyes when the other 'catches' them in a logical twist of phrase. The degree to which they are somewhat zealot followers will be the degree to which they will insist theirs is not the same kind of move. So be it. And ever shall be. But I know there is more depth to the point you are making regarding what is underemphasized (or may seem to be) in Schopenhauer. Just as their is more depth in in Schopenhauer's account than Steiner's dismissal allows for.

"But to say that the bodily movement perceptions are the will, simply doesn't stand up to closer scrutiny."

I'll need to see that Schopenhauer makes this technical point. As with many of Steiner's summary points, to avoid being rediculed or shown to have blind-spots, they typically need reference to much wider written context. A side side: if we zapped the will element out of the experience of any activity we were doing (reading, walking, talking, doing math), I wonder if we could say we'd still be having any experience at all. Yes, to answer this we will need to think

"To extend the Will as a World force we can only do through thinking, by stitching this idea to the World Content."

To the extent that thinking is the fundamental starting point of our ontological or epistemological investigations, we can initiate, grasp, and carry forward this claim only by willing. I know, I know. But people really do think this kind of thing is how you understand these thinkers.

"This doesn't mean that the idea of World Will is wrong. It might be confirmed at some point but the fact is that in the given we don't perceive World Will."

I agree with Barfield that for 97% of our existence we certainly directly participated (or, as you say, 'perceive') the 'energy' (was one of Barfield's favorite ways of generalizing what original and final participation 'feel/think') that could easily be called the will of the Father or any other term that does the trick for you. And even our desiccated experiences of the 'idols of the study' contain traces of both original (fading fast) and final (barely starting) participation. And even modern physicalism acknowledges that the dead 'stuff' out there is only noticed by our activity (beta-thinking).

"The only place where appearance and the thing-in-itself are inseparably united is our thinking."

And just as Steiner realized over 20 years after writing PoF that he need to say explicitly that when he talks about 'thinking' he means 'willing,' I can imagine a similar clarification that Schopenhauer either made or would have made if given the right context. Would I be shocked if somebody who has read every word of Schopenhauer said that Schopy did indeed make clear (or clealry implied) that cognition was a special case of will? Nope. Some people thought they showed Steiner was wrong in PoF because he didn't explicitly acknowledge that his thinking is identical with a form of willing. And so, yeah, he decided to make clear that even though he never said that in PoF or any of his early works, it was implied in his core points. Fair enough. I think both guys deserve the same kind charitable and cautious readings.

"we have both the appearance (thought-forms) and the noumenon (the ideas). We need nothing outside thinking in order to understand our thoughts."

We need willing both to lead us to, grasp, and extend those very thoughts. Yeah yeah, Steiner means 'willing' when he speaks of this kind of thinking. He makes that clear 20 years after saying 'nothing but thinking.' I'm glad he did and I understand why he wishes his readers hadn't needed him to speak explicitly of the way thinking and willing are identical in this context. Schopy probably felt the same about many of the things people said he didn't state outright. The ego can really enjoy spotting 'holes' in these guys, especially if it is as simple as showing the strings of words they said and didn't say, a very 'materialistic' way of approaching great thinkers if you ask (you didn't) me.

"{Our thoughts} are complete in themselves."
Again, I won't play gottcha and claim your sentence *means* you are wrong. But that way of speaking reflects an approach towards meaning that I find to be very materialisticly shaped, even by people who don't believe in matter. I might better say a line of thinking and experiencing that bows to the idols of the study. To simply point towards a different discussion, I would say that Steiner's core insight regarding the experience of the activity of thinking is that any idea truely grasped will include a specific aspect of its 'becoming' nature along with the relative context in which it is being grasped. That said, it is easy to overlook this unfinished-incomplete aspect of living thinking as we stand in awe of the wholeness of the idea. The Idols of The Study want us to experience wholeness as something that isn't in a state of metamorphosis. There are ways to argue that the concept of a triangle never changes. Sure, fine. But Steiner also could speak very directly to why the direct grasping of the concept will have ever changing differences from epoch to epoch, and that these changes are not merely cosmetic or due to different folks using different words to express 'triangle'.

I agree with much of those final sentences you wrote and find them quite beautifully put. Some of my concerns above can apply lightly to them, but I really get the main gist of 'em and agree.

[findingblanks]

Cleary I am on both teams. I don't think Kastrup has enough context to understand Steiner's epistemology in this context and I don't think Steiner had grasped Schopenhauer. If he had grasped him better, I don't think he would have thought he completely demolished Schopenhauer's core insights by the simple logical contradiction he points out. Steiner was not one to purposefully oversimplify a great thinkers work the way people love to do to Steiner or to whomever else they wish to mock and feel superior to, even if they disguise it with very stoic, "I respect Steiner/Schopenhauer, I simply feel that my commitment to truth requires that I show how their sentences in this paragraph reveal a very basic mistake they made and did not notice..." Yawn. Kind of.

Anyway, I'm not sure what could make me decide that one of these two is right or wrong when it comes to the fundamental nature of 'thinking/will'. But I enjoy the conversation very much.

[ScottRoberts]

The question whether the formlessness can exist without ideal content is irrelevant here, we are discussing a different problem. And I agree that all the reality of the ideal content (forms) is reducible to ideas with nothing left out (taking the "ideas" in a broadest sense). However, the formless is not reducible to ideas and it is not an idea, that is what I'm talking about here. And because formless is also an aspect of reality, this means that the wholeness of reality (together with formless and forms) is irreducible to ideas.

The question is: is my ontology incomplete because it leaves out formlessness (or some other "adverbial aspect"), and to this question the question of whether formlessness can exist without ideal content is very relevant. My ontology from the top:

There is all and only conscious activity. Another name for "conscious act" is "idea". An idea is the tetralemmic polarity of formlessness and form I call 'mumorphism'. Another name for 'form' is 'ideal content'. Another name for 'formlessness' is "the power to think".

Neither formlessness nor form exists except in conscious acts (ideas). If we ask "is formlessness an idea?" the answer is no, because an idea is the polarity of formlessness and form. Likewise if we ask "Is a form an idea?" the answer is also no, for the same reason. In other words, the "no" answers simply follow from the definition of "idea". The ontology includes formlessness because formlessness is embedded in the idea of "idea".

But here is the thing: the Knowing/Experiencing of ideas and of all ideal content, as well as the conscious activity (thinking, willing) of producing the ideas, and also the Beingness of ideas, are not ideas by themselves, but "adverbial aspects" (in John Vervaeke terms), prerequisites and fundamental realities that make ideas possible to exist and to be known. Those aspects are what belongs to "formless" side/aspect of reality. And as such, these formless adverbial aspects are irreducible to ideas.

I just don't see these "adverbial aspects" as being left out. A conscious act is of course conscious, so saying there is always consciousness is tautological. Likewise, saying there is always being -- there are always conscious acts. The only reason I can see your making an issue of it is if there is a bias toward the permanent over the impermanent. In my ontology, permanence/impermanence is a polarity, so there is no bias of one over the other.

They are no more fundamental or prerequisite in making ideas exist than are ideal contents. There is nothing to "Knowing/Experiencing" of ideas that is not inherent in the claim "there are ideas". To be is to be an idea is to be known. Conscious activity is "the ideas" (conscious acts), not a prerequisite. As I see it, the whole concept of "adverbial aspects" is just a case of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Right, exactly, but since the Knowing of the ideal content is not an idea, then it can not be reduced to ideas and ideal content, which goes back to the second option:

the reality cannot be fully known through thinking

where "the reality" is taken in its the wholeness including both forms/ideas and formless.

On the contrary, the knowing of an ideal content is an idea. Again, you are not distinguishing between "idea" and "ideal content". Think of an idea as a living thing (an act), while its ideal content, abstracted, is the corpse of that idea.

However, the adverbial aspects of reality can still be known by directly consciously experiencing of them, known not by "thinking", but by experiential (gnosis) way, even though thinking can accompany such experience and reflect it with appropriate reflective ideas. And it is this direct Gnosis that closes the Kantian divide.

I believe this has been addressed by Cleric (in one way) and me (by another). My way is to say that in ordinary subject/object consciousness we are focused on ideal content. This is, in a sense, an inadequate way of experiencing, as the formless pole is obfuscated. An experience of formlessness is, then, just a shift in polarity to focus on the formlessness with the ideal content obfuscated, and so also an inadequate way of experiencing.

Cleric's way is to say that in the experience of formlessness there are ideal contents, but they are of such a nature that they cannot be noticed by the limited consciousness we have, but with higher cognition they can be. Nishida Kitaro's "logic of place" also has something interesting to say along these lines. He puts forth the idea of "relative nothingness" (which I read as "no-thingness", i.e., formlessness). That is, what we (in our current stage of conscious development) experience mystically as "nothingness" is just a nothingness relative to our current stage of development.

[Eugene I]

I believe this has been addressed by Cleric (in one way) and me (by another). My way is to say that in ordinary subject/object consciousness we are focused on ideal content. This is, in a sense, an inadequate way of experiencing, as the formless pole is obfuscated. An experience of formlessness is, then, just a shift in polarity to focus on the formlessness with the ideal content obfuscated, and so also an inadequate way of experiencing.

Exactly, eloquently stated! So, why do we need to either focus on ideal content and obfuscate formlessness, or focus on formlessness and obfuscate ideal content? Why can't we embrace both with equal value? That would be the "integration" I've been talking about here, and true non-duality that embraces and integrates the wholeness of reality.

The reason I keep talking about those "adverbial aspect" is only to draw attention to them. Of course they do not exist in isolation from ideal content. The key is not to isolate anything from anything, and not to prioritize anything to anything else, but to include and embrace the wholeness of reality without neglecting or leaving over any aspects of it.

[AshvinP]

Cleary I am on both teams. I don't think Kastrup has enough context to understand Steiner's epistemology in this context and I don't think Steiner had grasped Schopenhauer. If he had grasped him better, I don't think he would have thought he completely demolished Schopenhauer's core insights by the simple logical contradiction he points out. Steiner was not one to purposefully oversimplify a great thinkers work the way people love to do to Steiner or to whomever else they wish to mock and feel superior to, even if they disguise it with very stoic, "I respect Steiner/Schopenhauer, I simply feel that my commitment to truth requires that I show how their sentences in this paragraph reveal a very basic mistake they made and did not notice..." Yawn. Kind of.

Anyway, I'm not sure what could make me decide that one of these two is right or wrong when it comes to the fundamental nature of 'thinking/will'. But I enjoy the conversation very much.

First of all, great other post! Obviously I don't mean the contenf which I mostly disagree with, but the deep consideration which reflects clearly in your detailed responses! We desperately need more such critical egforts in relation to these philosophical topics if we are to penetrate them at deeper and deeper levels, so thank you!

Secondly, we should remember (or now take notice) that Steiner discusses Schopenhauer's philosophy in many different books and lectures, not just that short passage from PoF. Like you said yourself, he was not one to oversimplify any philosopher's thought, and he certainly did not wirh Schopenhauer. He is discussed in PoF at more length, in Goethean Science, The Science of Knowing, lectures on Hegel vs. Schopenhauer, and a few more I am missing or have not come across yet.

[findingblanks]

"Secondly, we should remember (or now take notice) that Steiner discusses Schopenhauer's philosophy in many different books and lectures, not just that short passage from PoF."

I may have a file of all of Steiner's specific comments on Schopenhauer. I'll check.