Re: Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)
Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2021 11:48 pm
And everyone here has only taken it in the latter sense of polar distinction from the beginning. It needs to be distinguished in Barfield's philosophy because he is trying to show the variable relationship which evolves over human history and what that implies for ascending back to our spiritual heights. That is the same reason it needs to be distinguished in Steiner's philosophy.findingblanks wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 9:37 pm "Barfield describes the "immemorial and inextricable interpenetration" of perceiving-thinking."
Yes, but not everybody recognizes that the above statement can be interpreted in two fundamentally different ways. One way presupposes that there really is a core distinction between perception and thinking, whereas the other realizes that while we must make distinctions in our exploration of this reality, we must not lose sight that we are speaking of a unified event/process. The latter can still speak of how this event will express itself polarically, but it won't even slightly imagine there is perception interwoven with cognition or visa versa. To imagine either one as something that exists even slightly outside the other is to miss the reality they express as polarities. .
"There is no perception without some element of conceptual meaning, even if that meaning is "blooming buzzing confusion".
And I think we must agree that there is no historical or ontological 'blooming buzzing confusion' that precedes the act of cognition, regardless of what we find Steiner saying, yeah?
There technically could be ontological "blooming buzzing confusion" because that still carries a conceptual meaning, but we all agree there is no ontological state without any conceptual meaning.
No at this stage he has already distinguished between perception and cognition for purposes of his argument. He is precisely trying to show how one pole was much more prevalent than the other in ancient times and also today. So it makes no sense to conflate them back together as "cognitive perception" in the context of Barfield's argument."looking backward down a perspective which reveals more and more of perception and less and less of thought". He then asks, "if we allow our fancy to approach the kind of consciousness that would be all perception and no thought, what do we come to?".
Yes, but we must remember that when he says 'more and more perception' he is describing a cognitive perception. He is not describing a 'more and more perception' that should be understood to be 'more and more' of our current experience of perception. This is a perception alive with meaning, not because meaning is threaded into it but because the perception is the meaning.
So this 'more and more perception' is only a 'less and less thought' in the sense that it has nothing to do with our modern experience of having an outer world of perception set against an inner world of thought. Hopefully we agree on the 'more and more perception' aspect.
Agreed, we are never "stepping outside" of the polarity into a state with ontically no conceptual or perceptual element, and Barfield's statement is reflecting the relative lack of perceiving meaning today."and it has now metamorphosed into nearly all "conceptual element" and no perceptual element."
Again, we can say it this way as long as we realize that by 'all conceptual, no perceptual' we don't really mean that we have suddenly stepped outside of the polarity that his always metamorphosing. I'm okay using clunky language as long as we agree that 'no perception' simply means that we don't have the kind of meaning-inherent perception of original participation. I'll assume that is what you mean unless you state otherwise.
Cleric responded to the last question. It is the observation of one's own thinking - this is obviously "exceptional" if we consider how someone can go an entire lifetime in the modern world without engaging in such observation."That is the situation we are at now, and that is the place from which Steiner begins his phenomenology of Thinking in PoF."
I don't fully agree because I think Steiner started from a very early and forceful expression of final-participation. However, I don't think he had clearly differentiated his intuitions and insights regarding experiential starting point from those aspects of his experience that still were embedded in the idols. This is why when he was a young man he stressed over and over to the reader that it was an utter necessity to start by understanding the supposed nature of 'pure experience.' He doesn't just say this is a thought experiment that can be helpful. He goes out of his way to explain why he insists it is the only way to truly grasp his starting point. He varies this slightly in each of the core books. And this is why it is easy to find many of his students today who echo him and talk about a relationship between a realm of experience supposedly devoid of any thinking and a realm of experience that is pure thinking devoid of perception. Of course, Steiner utterly abandoned this exhortation later in life because he had much more accurate ways of indicating his starting point. Those ways however haven't been clearly taken up by his students or, almost worse, they are blended with the idea of 'pure experience.'
It has been interesting over the years when I've presented PoF students with Volkelt's 'excellent characterization' of pure experience but out of context. Just conversationally stating that the only way I notice the milkman is heading to my door is by first encountering a set of pure percepts and then attaching the correct concepts to them. Almost always, PoF students, in THAT context, quickly correct me and point out that it isn't the case that this two-step occurs in order for me to make that kind of observation. But when we are explicitly talking about Steiner's texts, that's when it goes in the kind of circles we've seen above.
"By engaging deeply with the "exceptional state" of observing our own Thinking process."
Just to be clear; you are not suggesting that the 'exceptional state' that Steiner defines early in PoF is the intuitive experience of thinking as activity, right?
As for the rest, I think we are making progress from the "did Steiner say this or that?" approach and getting to the essence of what everyone is trying to discuss, so let's avoid the former. I know I brought up Steiner's PoF phenomenology and you were simply responding, so that was my mistake.
