A concrete example will help here. Take this quote from Hegel:AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jul 23, 2021 12:16 pmI don’t understand what you mean by "fundamental substance"? Let's think of our own experience of living activity - is there a fundamental substance that sums up who we are and what we do? Certainly we cannot resort to any material descriptions for that. So then we say we are evolving psychic processes and meta-processes centered around an Ego-Self. But is that really a satisfactory characterization of who we are and what we do (which, in my view, are basically two ways of pointing to the same Reality)? When using conventional language in these forums, the best way I find to characterize our essence is to say that we are the meaning of all those principles and archetypal processes. What we experience as "meaning" when we contemplate those processes is who we are and what we do, albeit only as shadowy reflections of the true meaning when contemplating with normal cognition. I would rather not call that essential meaning a "substance" for a variety of reasons, but what matters is not the label, only our understanding of what it is pointing to. The meaning of the meaning. Monism is essential label IMO bc only it captures the essential continuity of meaning. There is no activity we engage in, no experience we partake in, that is essentially disconnected from other activities and experiences. That disconnect crops up a lot in Western philosophy including idealism, so it's important to be clear on that.Squidgers wrote: ↑Fri Jul 23, 2021 12:58 amWhy couldn't everything you say is going on be the very nature of a substance? Ie. Positing a fundamental substance doesn't necessitate static entities. Process could still be what a substance is doing, while also leaving space for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of processAshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Jul 22, 2021 11:10 pm
I am talking of idealist monism - all is ideating activity (which also shows it is all dynamic process in essence, not static substance). That activity can be considered a Tri-Unity of Willing-Feeling-Thinking activities, but, in essence, we are actually speaking of the activity of living beings, who are not other than us in essence. What we call "meaning" in conventional language of modern age, like the meaning we experience when perceiving a color or a tree or a bird, is the shadowy reflection of that activity. It is the qualia of our experience. That phenomenal meaning, however, is not pointing us to something other than meaning in the noumenal realm - it is pointing us to much deeper and enriched meaning of those essential activities. Something more akin to the meaning we experience when we are with a loved one, but even that is a shadowy reflection of the noumenal (spiritual) meaning it is pointing to.
The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
To sum up the essential meaning at very low resolution, living essence is "that which ceaselessly metamorphoses to bring forth all potential Perfection and Wholeness - Goodness, Beauty, and Truth - from fragmented appearances". In my view, all is alive and therefore has living essence. To dig deeper into our own role in the living essence, which is also that of the "Spirit", consider this quote from Steiner:
It is quite arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing through bare perception as a totality, as the whole thing, while that which reveals itself through thoughtful contemplation is regarded as a mere accretion which has nothing to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud today, the picture that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, I shall tomorrow get a very different picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see today's state change continuously into tomorrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages.
The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance cross-section of an object which is in a continual process of development.
- Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom (1894)
The meaning here is, "the human spiritual activity of Thinking weaves back together the fragmented experiences of form-progressions into an organic unity which satisfies our need for harmonious knowledge". The other key thing to understand is that, as long as we continue searching for essential meaning within the realm of abstract conceptual thinking, we will remain unsatisfied. That conceptual space simply cannot enrich the meaning of the above to its true qualitative essence. We do not need to actually go beyond the abstract concepts to recognize the truth of that assertion - and recognition of its truth is very helpful when considering all of these various philosophical frameworks people propose. You will find that materialists, dualists, idealist philosophers of Will, certain mystical frameworks, etc. have that one thing in common - they simply fail to notice or actively deny this distinction between abstract thinking and higher cognition. That is because a) they are thinking abstractly and have never considered such a higher cognitive perspective could exist and/or b) they sense semi-consciously that all of their objections to idealist philosophy of Thinking (which is always intimately tied to Western spirituality) will evaporate once that distinction is admitted.