Blanks,
It's more than clear that every fruit of the Spirit appears in certain historical and metamorphic context. It would be foolish to believe that PoF is the final word and should become a bible set in stone till the end of time. For one, PoF speaks about many things that had to balance the widespread erroneous conceptions of the day, at the turn of the 20th century. The first chapter of PoF, for example, is of this kind, which can be only properly understood if one can feel the philosophical context of the time. In that chapter he was practically leading a dialog with various philosophers in order to outline the problems that are to be tackled in the following pages.
If PoF was completely enough, Steiner wouldn't bother to develop the science of Initiation. Yet there's also something within the essence of PoF that endures even in the higher forms of cognition. This is also the reason that, as you know, when Steiner was asked if all his work was to burn without a trace in history and only one book is allowed to survive, which one he would choose, he answered without hesitation: PoF.
It's little sad that we spend so much time and energy on this splitting of hairs. We're wasting time on discussing the various way that PoF can be
misunderstood, instead of helping people to
understand it. Unfortunately, I suspect that there are people in the forum who now think that it's useless to read PoF because it's 'outdated', it is incorrect, misleading, etc.
I still maintain that the
essence of PoF can be grasped even from the first edition. Or even in prior works (like ToK). The simple fact is that the closer we approach to the Core of thinking, the more it becomes necessary to experience it and not only to think about that core abstractly. From this we can already see that there's simply no perfect formulation of these ideas. You can be pretty sure that even if you take on to rewrite PoF in the language that you find more precise, there still won't be a shortage of people who will misunderstand it. Why? Because what you're describing can never be put into words as simply as "I'm here, thinking and perceiving are there in front of me, it's all about finding the the most precise words". This is not how it works. The more thinking approaches itself, the more it begins to twist, chasing its own tail. It is at this point that it's crucial to understand the role of the exceptional state and the fact that all our perceptible thoughts are already in the past compared to our current thinking. Yet this can no longer be described in the comfortable way where the things pictured sit calmly before us, as if independently from our activity. In certain sense, when we speak about thinking, we speak parables, even though parables with very precise forms. We only understand the thoughts contained in PoF when we are able to produce them out of ourselves.
As far as the quotes - you're correct - I can't point at a place where he says in clear text "There's no such thing as pure perception or pure experience". But I still maintain that the careful reader who strives for the essence of the things, will not at all be tempted to imagine pure perceptions devoid of ideal element (concept, meaning). I'm sure that you won't be satisfied by the following but nevertheless:
Steiner wrote:
What, then, is a perception? This question, when asked in a general way, is absurd. A perception always arises as an entirely specific one, as a definite content. This content is directly given, and is all that is in the given. One can only ask with respect to this given, what it is besides perception, i.e., what it is for thinking. Thus, the question about the “what” of a perception can only refer to the conceptual intuition that corresponds to it.
The big question here is, why does he speak of perception as 'something' if it's impossible to behold it apart from concept? Because it makes a great difference in the way we unfold our inner stance. The whole chapter (and the previous) aim to draw a distinction between what Steiner speaks of and the erroneous understanding of idealism (which is still very strong today) as if the whole world content is only a
mental picture. We
must speak of perceptions if we are to balance this out. The bolded part above makes it clear (even though you'll probably object that it is not clear
enough) that we always experience in relation to a perception our ideal intuition of it (even if only very vaguely). Yet we're justified of speaking of perceptions because we can recognize in the very dynamics of our own thinking, that we're confronting with our intuitions (concepts) something objective - in the sense that it is not merely a subjective mental picture. There's something that resists our thinking, that our activity 'rubs against'. This is tremendously important and it fully justifies the differentiation between concepts and perceptions. One can protest against this differentiation only if all World Content is viewed as mental pictures. Then one asks "why divide what is already united?" Yes, our actual mental pictures are united but when we think about what is independent of our own activity, our thinking confronts certain resistance, just like our fingers feel resistance when we touch something in the dark. What we experience is the conceptual intuition (the bolded text) of the sense of touch but we also understand that these experiences are not simply something that we summon ourselves but result from our activity confronting something. That's why we can speak of perceptions. Not in order to postulate another subjective element independent of concepts but to point attention to the fact that our thinking (and the intuitions it experiences) takes its shape as the result of a two-way interaction - on one side it's our willing of the thinking, on the other is the perceptual resistance we confront. I agree that a whole other book can be written to make these things more clear. For example, even if we think mathematically we confront some resistance, although, I have to use terms from spiritual science, we now live through the resistance of the etheric body, and not the sense organs. It's obvious that these fine differentiations were not possible in PoF, so there's no point in objecting that it doesn't go in the full resolution of things. Whoever strives for the full resolution would simply continue further into spiritual science.
The thing is that as long as one strives to grasp the essence, all these details become comprehensible in the right way. Here's the place to say that Steiner didn't simply 'thought out' PoF by experimenting with arrangements of thoughts. Let's not forget that he already had from young age the experiences of higher cognition. In a sense, PoF proceeded as a testimony for a living spiritual experience. And that's why things are quite different in Steiner and Schop. Steiner had the spiritual experiences and his whole life was a process of development of vocabulary for these experiences and its refinement (which in itself propels spiritual vision even further). It's only natural that through the years he would find better ways to put things into words. The fact remains, though, that these higher experiences are the actual source and inspiration for everything in PoF. That's why I keep repeating that as long as one grasps the essence, one can perfectly well understand what he meant even if the wordings are considered imperfect. This is the important thing - nothing of the refinement of these wordings doesn't change the essence. This is key. And to grasp the essence we need to encompass each of these books as something
whole.
Now you claim that the same can be said about Schop, although in the reverse direction. But there's difference. We lose track of the big picture only when we indulge in splitting hairs over technicalities.
Consider what is changing in Steiner's works through the years. It's the refinement of the words and expansion of spiritual perception. If we consider the deeper impulse, we see that it is completely consistent all through. It has always been to guide man to experience his rightful place within spiritual reality, as a free being. Yes, when this is not grasped, one can go into a dead end if they focus in isolation on something like "perceptions devoid of concepts". If things are grasped as a whole, the whole by itself corrects the details and one sees things in the way they were intended and not in the way they can be misunderstood.
It's not quite the same with Schop. Let's imagine that he could have lived several more decades and he could continue his own refinement. If he would pursue the cognitive element inherent in will, into the depths of the human being he would find the fully conscious spiritual world. There he would find that the Will of Nature is not at all blind but is the activity of fully conscious beings that implement certain ideas in everything they do. Now how could this potential experience of Schop be integrated with all his previous work? How would that integrate with the whole mood of pessimism, for example? His pessimism stemmed directly from the fact that the cognitive part of man was grafted on top of the blind giant. His only consolation was the beauty of the pure ideal forms. Now how could one remain a pessimist if he penetrates in a world that is weaved out of meaning through and through? How could he remain a pessimist if he glimpses at the fact that man's real life hasn't even begun? That what we experience at the moment is nothing but the labor pain of humanity's birth as a free spiritual being that is destined to weave creatively in the Cosmos? There are so many things that change! Instead of advocating ascetic distancing from the meaningless social organism, one is filled with Love and strength to participate in the development of Cosmic Man. You see, Schop would have to revisit his life long work not simply be refining the wordings. The whole
philosophy of life turns upside down. He would never be able to rectify these things by patching few addendums under line in the new edition of
The World as Will and Representation. Instead, he would have to write new books which would express radically different soul mood. The least of which would be that his pessimism would be transformed into full blown optimism and joy when glimpsing at the potential future in front of humanity.
In Steiner these impulses of optimism, freedom and cognitive penetration into reality were present from very young age. Thus his life progression was about the perfection of these impulses. You are right that in his next incarnation he would have things to say about PoF. But even thousands of years from now, the core of PoF will remain valid. As you know PoF is not simply a collection of philosophical musings but represents a living description of the blossoming of the consciousness soul on the soil of the intellectual soul. So in certain sense PoF is a very complicated description of an objective milestone of evolution, just as the changing of the teeth is a specific stage of human development. So in the far future, PoF will be a thing of the past but not something that will be considered incomplete and replaced by something else. It will be embedded eternally in the metamorphic process of humanity as a seed point from which the consciousness soul will blossom (or would have blossomed when seen by men of the future). I hope it's clear that when I say PoF I don't mean simply the book but the living organ within the body of Cosmic Man, of which the book is only a historical account.
