Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)

[findingblanks]

Cleric,

Regarding the second long quote you provide by Steiner. Again, I'm sure you read that thinking of why I keep stressing why all the ways he updated his language are very significant. They point more and more directly to the phenomenology of what is actually taking place. They guide us better. The meditations we generate from them do not fall into the subtle traps that happen when we somewhat consciously seek something like 'pure experience'. Anyway, I'm assuming I've done well enough so that you realize those later descriptions are exactly the pathway I'm talking about.

To simply say that they are semantically equal to the earlier claims is an intellectual move that I think misses the more subtle we are doing in exploring the 'attaching' process.

Typically at this stage in my conversations on this topic, we move closer and closer to where people start the, "Well, once you have deepened your inner life appropriately you won't worry about these semantic issues."

Normally we are too sophisticated to put it that starkly, but I already see little hints we are stepping into that move. And I think it is very natural and understandable for many reasons. But not only is it a red herring, it is another symptom of the same fundamental misstep at the starting point.

"Otherwise our thinking is perceived in a way no different that the contemplation of leaves growing on a branch or blown by the wind - that is, as something that 'just happens' spontaneously, we simply witness the unfoldment of thinking. It is here that the contemplative mystic would argue that even the feeling of spiritual causation of thinking is present just as yet another perception and the ego emerges as a 'strange loop' that revolves around the illusion of causative spiritual activity."

Fortunately, we aren't trapped into making any dogmatic statements. We can share our experiences of the differences between deeply intentional states arising vs not-very-deep ones vs associations and habit-thoughts.

But if somebody wants to say there is a deeply intentional experiencing that isn't freely arising, they either do so dogmatically or they describe it in contrast to the shocking freedom we find that is intrinsic to even the most obscured cognitive activity, once we learn to actually see it.

"I need to work with my thinking in order to understand how the engine works. To understand this I need to find the proper concepts and relate them together. Here we can fully justifiably say that the concepts come out of thinking. They are symbolized in the diagram but by just looking at it I would have nothing but the concept of a pretty picture."

Yes, and clearly nothing I have said in any way denies that we have incredible experiences of struggling to make the space for thoughts to emerge, be studied, modified and either provisionally accepted or rejected. From the beginning I've fully embraced that those experiences exist importantly. At the beginning when somebody said that it is simply straightforward to understand that we don't recognize objects until we search, select, and find the right concept that we then 'attach' to it, I asked for a description of this straightforward fact. And I did this in the more specific context of people asking me to show sentences by Schop that make clear that he recognized 'cognitive activity' within/as the ontologically primary will. Many thinkers would realize why you mostly can't simply ask for that kind of thing in this context. So I asked to see which sentences in the early core texts (without the updates decades later) are where we see Steiner making clear that we are in error if we imagine an ontology of pure percepts or pure experience. The struggle to do so (a very very healthy one) fashions the capacity to see how Schopenhauer was doing something very similar (but mirror image because their schemas imply very different meanings to the very same terms in many cases) and, therefore, would require a similar kind of hunt. But why would anybody even have the intuition that Schopenhauer could have really meant X, if they simply say, "Well, he clearly calls it 'will', so why would we think he could have actually meant something other than 'will.' Cleary such a person is supplying their own use of 'will' in place of Schopenhauer and reading everything into how they already think of 'will' rather than letting Schopenhauer build the concept.

Same with somebody who reads Steiner and says, "Well, he clearly thinks that we first encounter reality in a form that is free from our cognitive actvity. He says so over and over and he praises Volket's and other's descriptions of this encounter." That person is missing (understandably!) a core understanding of the starting point. And they are right to say that Steiner insisted in four different places that 'We must start by imagining' what we experiences before any thinking has played a role. At the time, Steiner thought it was absolutely essential that we start there. That starting point is a huge problem. And he never went back and used that as a starting point. He felt much pressure to make sure that nothing essential had changed in his core understanding, so he didn't take out those implorations. But, nonetheless, it is very very rare to find an Anthroposophist who can speak clearly as to why it is not true 'that we must begin by' conceptualizing 'pure experience'. More and more are popping up, but slowly.

[findingblanks]

"I won't say that when we don't have the right concepts we have experience of chaos (although this is also possible)."

Of course, in fact, having the actual experience of 'chaos' MEANS that you have the right concepts of it. Again, this points to why we make a misstep of we think our epistemological practice must start by imagining a division of some kind where there is none.

[findingblanks]

"This is also the reason that it's not always easy to show somebody what more can be found by enriching our spiritual life. The superficial mind is completely filled with the concepts it experiences, it doesn't experience that there's something missing unless it develops real interest in the World."

Sure, but a superficial mind can have very rich and deep experiences of the world. It's superficiality isn't marked by the depth of experience so much as by its inability or unwillingness to notice the way it's most treasured and obvious experiences are being shaped by prior assumptions. Not merely intellectual assumptions, but active habits that form all sorts of blind-spots. But not ONLY blind-spots. The same assumptions are what sharpen certain capacities and allow for certain clear seeings. That's why they become problematic.

It is this kind of blind-spot that has ensured that even 130 years after The Philosophy of Freedom was written there are no Anthroposohical journals or robust conversations that explore the problems associated with some of these core aspects of the starting point. Instead, you get guru-like figures emerging now and then that remind us that the text is sacred and that some people have developed and practiced enough to reveal why not a sentence could be misunderstood if really grasped in 'living thought.' If Steiner had been told that his book would still be treated this way in 2021, that there would be no disgusted experiences associated with digging into it's deep structure and relating it to the living experience of cognition, he'd be deeply disturbed. Not the young man who wrote it and was almost certain that many of his contemporaries would agree with him. No, the Steiner closer to his death who still felt he wasn't able to find the right words to characterize his starting-point and, therefore, was unwilling to publish Anthroposophy- A Fragment. That man's intuitions, once they got the 'refresher' of death, would certainly come back to read PoF in the same passionately 'destructive' way that Steiner read Kant and Fichte and all the other's he loved and 'destroyed' to make a new kind of space from the modern human's starting point.

[findingblanks]

"1/ I fully acknowledge that we can't experience 'pure percept' without any meaning/ideal element. I agree that from what you quoted it sounds that Steiner insists on precisely the opposite - that we can have pure experienced devoid of thinking. This would be modified in case of (1). Yet as seen from other parts of the book, the essential nature of the knowing process is intact. He even agrees that mere looking is always accompanied with effortlessly experienced meaning.
2/ The above shouldn't prevent us from recognizing that nonetheless the conceptual world that our consciousness accesses, grows. This doesn't mean that before that, perceptions existed as free floating 'pure experiences' without ideal element. They do have some kind of meaning experienced together with them but it's clear that this meaning evolves as thinking continues to work with them."

Thanks. And would you agree that many active and well studied Anthroposophists imagine that if they were concentrated enough they could 'catch'/experience the moment that their thinking 'meets' (as Steiner says many times in the early texts) the element that has not yet been touched by thought?

[findingblanks]

Regarding your summary that characterizes the core differences between Steiner and Schupenhauer, all I can say is that we are back to the beginning hte sense that I think that what seems to you like an fairly clear contrast is being partially shaped by all sorts of complex assumptions. I don't think the real point of our dialog has been about reconciling this. All I can say is that I can clearly see it from your point of view, and, perhaps, over time you'll see that I wasn't being as unclear or incoherent as you've repeatedly claimed And you'll even maybe see that the length I went to wasn't merely a function of my confusion. But I certainly see your way of framing them and I would have agreed 100% at a time.

[AshvinP]

Informed consent manifests also in following manner:

Law informes that if that I don't obey the law, I will be physically harmed by the law. The cause = threat. The effect = consent to tyranny, e.g. consent to steal and murder in the name of law.

In this example, knowing the cause is the opposite of freedom. Also, in the Nuremberg case, consent of "just obeying orders" was not considered sufficient argument for the defence.

This is not the type of freedom that we speak of in spiritual context. I already hinted that at the end of the previous post. In our age freedom is equated with lack of restrictions. Human laws are very convoluted topic and we'll never get to agreement unless we grasp the more fundamental situation.

The first step is to realize that spiritual freedom doesn't imply simply the momentary feeling of being unconstrained. Freedom takes into consideration spiritual activity as it extends in time. For example, superficially it might be considered that I'm more free if I'm able to drink a cup, without knowing that there's poison in it. In that case one would argue "knowledge of the fact that there's poison in the cup takes away degrees of freedom from me, it restricts the palette of choices. Without the knowledge I'm free to drink or not the cup, while with the knowledge I'm much more likely not to drink it. Effectively, by virtue of this knowledge, I've lost a degree of freedom - the freedom to drink the poison."

But is it so? My knowledge in itself doesn't prevent me to drink the cup. It only informs me of the consequences. So now superficially it seems I'm limiting myself but seen on a larger scale this actually ensures my freedom for everything else. If I choose to drink the cup out of spite, just to prove to the World that I'm unrestrained, I'll get sick or even die, thus severely limiting any future expression of my spiritual activity.

As said, I agree that human laws are sticky matter, devised out of the most varied interests and agendas. But even in that case I don't see how knowing the laws (even if they are the most inhumane and unfair) limits our freedom. This could be the case only if we are lied about the consequences of transgressing the laws, while in reality there are no such consequences. This is clearly how things look for those who see in religions only lies aiming to restrict freedom through fear. There's no doubt that in all ages people have been manipulated by lies. But it is naive to believe that if we're ignorant of the laws (human, natural or Divine), we're freer. This might be true in the limited cases where in fact some laws are manipulative lies. In that case, coincidentally, we benefit from the fact that we don't know anything about them because we're not limited by fake constraints. But the vast majority of laws have real repercussions and in that case we benefit from knowledge, because only in that way we can unfold our activity such that it remains free and even becomes freer in the long run. In other words, we reach again the importance of Thinking. Being ignorant of the laws in order to avoid fake constraints is like playing lottery because we don't have any means to recognize fake laws from real ones. Subduing blindly to laws will save us from most troubles but we can also fall victim to manipulation. Only through Thinking we have the chance to trace the origins of the laws and recognize those proceeding from spiritual reality and those devised by deceitful spiritual activity of other humans.

Sure, the law discussion is a sidestep from the discussion of spiritual freedom, in response to Ashwin's law-argument. In concrete nodes of spiritual freedom and social laws, psychadelics remain illegal, and many if not most on this forum are criminals from the perspective of law. And from the perspective of spiritual Golden/Silver rules (which are very complex issue involving reciprocal reflections etc. but are NOT laws), those who enforce the laws against psychadelic experiences are the violators of a higher order of learning and integrating with Spirit. And to add another layer complexity, laws function also as reverse psychology, and affect what kinds of characters obey to law or are attracted by reverse psychology.

Spiritually and more generally, it can be argued from Zen etc. perspectives that belief that "there exists objective and universal laws (ie. karma)" is as such ignorance, and attached ignorance of "knowing" such laws is an obstacle of freedom. The Zen-type argument does not need even be dependent from notions of "negative freedom", "positive freedom", "degrees of choice" etc. relative freedoms, it can be absolute freedom as liberation from cause and effect.

What I just said can be also an ignorant caricature of Zen. The Wild Fox Koan would seem to suggest so.

There was no "law-argument". I was merely using a common point of reference for most people which makes clear the connection between true knowledge and freedom. A person who cannot trace their actions back to their source, because of lack of knowledge (they are not "informed"), is intuitively deemed unfree, and the legal concept of "informed consent" is just one pretty common expression of that. Your response is yet another example of thinking to get out of Thinking. It says, "let's ignore the underlying principle being spoken of and instead focus on all sorts of specific hypothetical situations which muddies up that principle". That is a common thing we do in the modern age. Instead of dwelling in thought with the archetypal meanings of phenomenon, we focus on all the fragmented manifestations in the world which obscure that underlying meaning. Philosophy of cynical deconstruction in that sense, ironically, is much more modern than "post-modern".

[findingblanks]

"But did we really choose that color? Or we simply find it as a peculiarity of our character, just like we find the color of our hair? We are free only when we attain to the spiritual foundations which explain why exactly this is our favorite color and not some other. We wouldn't be free if we have that knowledge only as something theoretical. For example, a neuroscientist can tell us "Your favorite color is this because these and these neurons fire in this particular way". But this doesn't at all change my inner experience. When through spiritual development we attain to the deeper strata of consciousness we live within the actual living forces which imbue certain color with sympathetic feeling. Now we're free because at that level we can actually alter the way these forces work. Even if we don't 'switch' our favorite color, we're still free to experience what it could be to temporarily have other colors as equally sympathetic. So this is the kind of freedom we're talking about. Not simply about feeling unrestricted, even though we have no clue why we would choose exactly the things we choose, but about attaining to the spiritual forces and beings that constitute our organism, and from whence we can alter our metamorphic process in ways impossible if we were simply flowing along in blissful ignorance."

Before I speak to where we have a clear difference about the notion of 'choice,' I want to say that much of what you say there resonates with me and I think is very well put, especially the degree you are willing to notice that most of what we feel we are 'choosing' to do is merely a beautiful blend of activity that carries forward our personality and intentions through the world.

But in my opinion, your analysis starts too far downstream and, therefore, ensures that you can simply point to a 'spot' on the timeline and say, "Ah, this is when I made the free choice!" So, for instance, you could say that I never was really choosing to prefer blue until I transformed by consciousness and was able to experience an equal preference for other colors momentarily. I'm not sure you yet see my point about starting too far downstream?

Anyway, we certainly made progress regarding what Steiner may or may not mean when he says we must grasp the nature of pure experience before we can grasp the necessary starting point. I don't think it is simply straight forward when he says that a percept exists that has not yet received it corresponding concept, and I think struggling to see why will play a key role in new streams within the movement, streams that certainly won't have the coziest relationship with the one that currently still dominates, the one in which there is still no living imagination of the Steiner is shredding through the problems with such a starting point, even if the student only somewhat believes in something like 'pure experience'. Thanks for playing.

[findingblanks]

Santeri,

I have a hunch you agree with me that an action as simple as passing the butter to your child can be free, yes?

Or tying your shoe. Or reaching for a tissue to sneeze. How you greet a person as they enter the room.

A certain kind of assumptions as to do a lot of work to comfortably understand why such things are often as free as any action we ever take.

When Steiner said that in general the most free people he met were the least educated people working in fields and factories, I think he could see this because he didn't really associate a free deed with a conscious grasping of 'the' motivation/reason to act.

Yes, we can read PoF and see why and how he phrased 'free action' there. In the context and the time he was speaking, we can see why he wanted to contrast a certain kind of known-action from unknown ones. Sure.

But my hunch is that you would agree with me that even a sudden smile dawning on your face can be an express of genuine freedom.

[findingblanks]

Ashvin,

You took that bolded part and somehow saw it as the opposite of my point. I even think Cleric may have understood me there

I was clearly saying that Barfield's work helps explain why the ancients didn't just stand there and see the idols of the study.

Barfield showed us clearly the reason why modern consciousness believes in attaching concepts to supposedly pure percepts.

Barfield's work helps us understand what has to be assumed in order to imagine there must be a 'pure experience' that is in need of concepts to be grasped.

I don't think I misunderstand this aspect of his work at all.

And so when we come across a modern thinker who either implicitly or explicitly insists that 'we must begin by' realizing the disticntion between a purely perceptual environment that needs to thinking to 'find a point of attack' so that it can begin selecting and attaching the correct concepts to that environment, we can let Barfield stand very close to us and remind us the more subtle ways that The Idols of The Study will shape what seems like an obvious and clear starting point.

Not all modern thinkers express this kind of thinking the same way. In fact, they all will find their own unique way of expressing it and it won't be conscious. It is presupposed in the very structure of their figuration itself.

That is why it is so *obvious* to them. That is why we should have radars that go off when we read a philosopher say something like, "Everyone can see this is at once the case." or "Nobody could argue with this unless they are willfully..." Those are all indications that we may be near the Idols of The Study or some other deep unrecognized assumptions.

Steiner's comments of praise for Volket's description of so-called 'pure experience (and others whom he praised for recognizing this essential 'fact') are just one helpful way of getting to this spot.

[SanteriSatama]

There was no "law-argument". I was merely using a common point of reference for most people which makes clear the connection between true knowledge and freedom. A person who cannot trace their actions back to their source, because of lack of knowledge (they are not "informed"), is intuitively deemed unfree, and the legal concept of "informed consent" is just one pretty common expression of that. Your response is yet another example of thinking to get out of Thinking. It says, "let's ignore the underlying principle being spoken of and instead focus on all sorts of specific hypothetical situations which muddies up that principle". That is a common thing we do in the modern age. Instead of dwelling in thought with the archetypal meanings of phenomenon, we focus on all the fragmented manifestations in the world which obscure that underlying meaning. Philosophy of cynical deconstruction in that sense, ironically, is much more modern than "post-modern".

You are "thinking" to avoid Thinking, you are post-modern, you are what you say I am, because you are self-reflecting loop.

But sincerely, I simply don't agree with definition that Thinking is a self-reflecting loop and nothing else. I think differently, and IMO better.