Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)

[SanteriSatama]

We are operating off of different assumptions. I do not assume any fundamental discontinuity between intellectual thinking and higher order metamorphosed Thinking that is required for perceiving the "whole new relational network". It's true, we cannot simply derive the latter from the former, any more than we can derive the form of the butterfly from the form of the caterpillar. Yet we still know one naturally unfolds from the other. I know the ancient Greeks did not experience the world or their own Thinking as I do, or even the great medieval Thinkers, but I also know they are the ancestral foundation of my current abstract intellectual thinking. A lot of differing conclusions come from these differing assumptions. From the metamorphic assumption, I conclude that no conceptual framework which has come from sound abstract intellectual thinking in the West is "very wrong" when viewed in the light of higher spiritual illumination. None of it has to be abandoned in its essential meaning, which we all receive from shared spiritual realm, only in its superficial perception by rigid intellect. Now I am not exactly sure how that applies to the mathematical frameworks you are referring to, since I am very poor at comprehending those things, but I suspect it does apply.

I'm not assuming fundamental discontinuity. On the contrary, I'm trying to save continuity from the fundamental discontinuity in the current standard paradigm, which Badiou calls 'set theoretical ontology', and which manifests as discontious fragmentation.

What Hegel called 'Aufhebung' (aka sublation aka deconstruction) is a continuous movement in dialectic. Schmachtenberger gives good description as well as example (in the form of his thinking process) of Aufhebung.

[findingblanks]

Beyond the intellectual distinctions that necessarily fall out from these kinds of examinations, we can notice that when an act of thinking is intuited, we know that there is no difference between what some call God's will and the essence of our being. The intuition is the recognition.

Some people's prior schemas will cause them to accurately interpret this as meaning that God is aware of itself cognitively .

Other people's prior schemas will require different explications. For instance, they will be more inclined to give "The Father" more of a 'will' element, the 'son' a feeling element, and the 'spirit' a cognitive element.

I am not as drawn to the latter kind of distinguishing because I feel parsimony and phenomenology point towards a 'reduction base' that is names quite squarely the "Not I, but Christ in me lives" which is the true nature of intuitive thinking, so long as we don't get caught up its particular content in a given context of understanding.

[AshvinP]

We are operating off of different assumptions. I do not assume any fundamental discontinuity between intellectual thinking and higher order metamorphosed Thinking that is required for perceiving the "whole new relational network". It's true, we cannot simply derive the latter from the former, any more than we can derive the form of the butterfly from the form of the caterpillar. Yet we still know one naturally unfolds from the other. I know the ancient Greeks did not experience the world or their own Thinking as I do, or even the great medieval Thinkers, but I also know they are the ancestral foundation of my current abstract intellectual thinking. A lot of differing conclusions come from these differing assumptions. From the metamorphic assumption, I conclude that no conceptual framework which has come from sound abstract intellectual thinking in the West is "very wrong" when viewed in the light of higher spiritual illumination. None of it has to be abandoned in its essential meaning, which we all receive from shared spiritual realm, only in its superficial perception by rigid intellect. Now I am not exactly sure how that applies to the mathematical frameworks you are referring to, since I am very poor at comprehending those things, but I suspect it does apply.

I'm not assuming fundamental discontinuity. On the contrary, I'm trying to save continuity from the fundamental discontinuity in the current standard paradigm, which Badiou calls 'set theoretical ontology', and which manifests as discontious fragmentation.

What Hegel called 'Aufhebung' (aka sublation aka deconstruction) is a continuous movement in dialectic. Schmachtenberger gives good description as well as example (in the form of his thinking process) of Aufhebung.

Let's relate it to science of GR and QM in the 21st century. I think we all agree that the standard physicalist interpretations are all incorrect and need to be abandoned. But do those interpretations follow from the experiments, mathematical expressions, etc. or are they the artifact of flawed assumptions which then prevent scientists from viewing those theories in the proper light? I say it is the latter, and when viewed in the proper light, i.e. the light of the spiritual essence they are pointing to, their inherent meaning, which was always there, is revealed to us. What do you think?

[findingblanks]

Thinking a pencil, if it is actually thought, means thinking God's love.

A debate as to who captures this understanding in the more accurate terms is already a lost cause. But the degree to which that debate points towards the understanding itself is the degree to which the debate is functioning according to that will. Or that knowing, so to speak.

So, yes, why not start with pencils. Or hammock. I prefer the latter

[AshvinP]

Beyond the intellectual distinctions that necessarily fall out from these kinds of examinations, we can notice that when an act of thinking is intuited, we know that there is no difference between what some call God's will and the essence of our being. The intuition is the recognition.

Some people's prior schemas will cause them to accurately interpret this as meaning that God is aware of itself cognitively .

Other people's prior schemas will require different explications. For instance, they will be more inclined to give "The Father" more of a 'will' element, the 'son' a feeling element, and the 'spirit' a cognitive element.

I am not as drawn to the latter kind of distinguishing because I feel parsimony and phenomenology point towards a 'reduction base' that is names quite squarely the "Not I, but Christ in me lives" which is the true nature of intuitive thinking, so long as we don't get caught up its particular content in a given context of understanding.

OK but do you also recognize that philosophers such as Schopenhauer, and many others in both materialist-dualist and idealist camps of the modern age, would say nothing about Christ or the Trinity illuminates the nature of the fundamental Reality. We argue that this dismissal of such important foundations of Western culture is a direct consequence of downgrading Thinking and its unique role to mere "ripples on a lake", to the merely personal ideation about appearances which have no true connection to the noumenal realm. Steiner refers to these philosophers conceiving of Thinking as a Fata Morgana. You seem to conclude that this entire stream of philosophical thought related to downgrading of Thinking and/or upgrading of "blind Will" does not really exist and therefore is a straw man created by Steiner and ourselves, but I have no idea how you reach that conclusion.

[Ben Iscatus]

So, yes, why not start with pencils. Or hammock. I prefer the latter

You could start with a hammock. But eventually, I think you'd need to move on to something less obviously a product of love: a medieval rack, perhaps; or maybe something humans had no obvious part in, like the smallpox virus or a tapeworm.

[SanteriSatama]

Let's relate it to science of GR and QM in the 21st century. I think we all agree that the standard physicalist interpretations are all incorrect and need to be abandoned. But do those interpretations follow from the experiments, mathematical expressions, etc. or are they the artifact of flawed assumptions which then prevent scientists from viewing those theories in the proper light? I say it is the latter, and when viewed in the proper light, i.e. the light of the spiritual essence they are pointing to, their inherent meaning, which was always there, is revealed to us. What do you think?

GR - which is utterly failed and wrong also by their own standards - and QM are complex negotiation-dialectics between mathematical theories and their foundational implications (with loads of other complexities) and how those are reflected-created in complex layering of measuring-creation.

Those in mathematical physics who have some honesty left, are well aware that all they gut is wire and bubblegum made of deeply problematic mathematical foundation.

But if they were honest about that with politicians and the "general audience", the funding would drie up...

[findingblanks]

"Right, so the "next step" in your ontology is that "percept" and "concept" do not need to be "put back together" because they never exist separately? Do you mean that in essence they do not exist separately, or even in our normal experience of the world they never exist separately?"

I mean that there is no such think as a 'pure percept'.

I don't mean this from the point of view of 'there is no such thing as gold coin shaped as a duck; I know because I've searched the universe with every possible instrument of finely tuned perception.'

I mean this in the sense that there is no such think as a 'married bachelor', and we know this because we can carefully intuited the reason why as it is contained in the reality of the claim itself.

The only reason a thinker would ever claim that we must 'imagine' either:

1) being who has never encountered a specific environment
or
2) what we would 'experience' if our everyday consciousness was stripped of all so-called 'concepts'

Is if they presuppose that there is a 'moment' during which a percept is encountered that is in need of a concept.

That presupposition would need to be a part of wider structure of concepts about the nature of reality.

It isn't enough to say that reality is a whole that our organization 'splits' apart.

That is start and it can be shown to be true in all sorts of various ways. But to merely claim it and then use that claim to say that obviously we are faced with percepts on the one side and concepts on the other that thinking needs to 'weave back together' is not empirical or has it been justified.

But, believe me, if you talk to enough of us Steiner students for long enough, you will realize that the vast majority believe that literally there is a 'pure percept' that has yet to be touched by thinking and attached 'back' to its concept.

If you see directly that the notion of this 'encounter' is the result of prior assumptions, then you can see why Steiner's 1918 language goes much further to not merely giving us a better phenomenology (the percept hides thinking thinking within itself) but a cleaner starting point that is free from the assumptions that lead people to believing in pure percepts.

My original question can be restated as asking to see the specific ways PoF (in the non-1918 edition) make clear that thinking is already within any given experience.

And after that we can find ways to speak about the prior union of what differentiate as the bodily intellect and the bodily will.

Intuitively grasping thinking both reveals the essential nature of reality and creates it's next creative step in evolution. This might be taken as a paradox by the intellect. The intellect could say that it is a contradiction to claim that it 'reveals what is always already the case' AND 'creates something utterly new', but Barfield, Coleridge, Steiner and others have their own ways of showing why even the highest functions of the intellect have no choice but to see contradictions in polaric truths.

One place you see people lost in this is when they debate that "God" must either be non-self-conscious or self-conscious. This somewhat relates to why Schopenhauer's characterization must strike other groups as obviously leaving out cognition as understood by them.

So when Schopenhaer says things like:


"But what kind of knowledge is concerned with that which is outside and independent of all relations, that which alone is really essential to the world, the true content of its phenomena, that which is subject to no change, and therefore is known with equal truth for all time, in a word, the Ideas, which are the direct and adequate objectivity of the thing in-itself, the will?"

You can immediately know which groups of thinkers will declare he is not recognizing the will as essentially cognitive. These thinkers are basically forced (by how they hold their terms/ideas) to believe that what Schop calls 'ideas' here stand fundamentally outside of the will rather than being its intrinsic nature, and, therefore, graspable by the human's most essential nature.

A debate will never end that beings with even tacitly assuming there is a 'correct' way to speak about the essence.

[findingblanks]

Hi Ben,

"You could start with a hammock. But eventually, I think you'd need to move on to something less obviously a product of love: a medieval rack, perhaps; or maybe something humans had no obvious part in, like the smallpox virus or a tapeworm."

Yes, indeed. Starting with a medieval rack is a wonderful exercise because of the intense pressure to equate the context of the creation with an essence of the 'tool' that can transcend any context.

If only we had portions of the new testament where it almost sounded as if Jesus claimed we could find beauty in anything our eyes alight upon. He came close! And Steiner certainly gives us explicit behind-the-scenes stories.

[SanteriSatama]

Thinking a pencil, if it is actually thought, means thinking God's love.

A debate as to who captures this understanding in the more accurate terms is already a lost cause. But the degree to which that debate points towards the understanding itself is the degree to which the debate is functioning according to that will. Or that knowing, so to speak.

So, yes, why not start with pencils. Or hammock. I prefer the latter

"The pen is mightier than the sword" does not yet guarantee that the pen is ethically better. Pen is just a part of a feather, not the whole bird.

'Hammock' is in Finnish 'riippumatto' (literally 'hanging carpet). When we translated Democritus into Finnish, the book title became 'Riippumaton vapaus'.

The title is a word play with double meaning, which translates both as: "Independent Freedom" and "Freedom of Hammock". (To become a flying carpet?)

So sorry, hammock is also already ruined.