AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Aug 21, 2022 11:11 pmFederica wrote: ↑Sun Aug 21, 2022 8:17 pm
Ok Ashvin, sorry for having implied that you had not read properly. Thank you for the comments, I have to revisit them further. I admit that while I see that I have transposed my experience to reality, I can't properly connect every piece and close the circle. Also I have this very strong sense, conviction or whatever the right word is, standing in the way, that there is something very off with interpreting the typographic spaces in that way, and I have to find out, even if I am wrong, where this sense comes from…
No worries. The most likely culprit is always what we refer to as the 'Kantian divide' or duality. This is a deeply ingrained habit of thinking in the modern age. Kant as a personality was simply the original and most influential vehicle of its expression. If we consider it in terms of the TC spectrum, we could say the idea of the Kantian divide is still precipitating its influence into our thinking states of being. It doesn't matter if we have heard of Kant or know anything about philosophy, it is still active in all of us. Why does this habit keep reasserting itself?
1) Convenience - it is easier to have hard and fast rules which we use to conceptualize the world phenomena. We then have a certain epistemic confidence in the face of unending complexity of the world forms, such as spoken and written languages. Each new particular form doesn't need to evaluated on its own merit, so to speak.
There is definitely great value in such a conceptualization process. In my law practice, when I come across a new 'fact pattern' for a client, the first thing I do is try to discern what overarching statute, rule of law, etc. is most applicable to it. This directs my attention to the resources I will need to further evaluate the situation. Yet if I stop there, then I could easily miss significant issues at play in the fact pattern which are not so evident at first. I should also pay more attention to the specifics of any given case.
Bergson wrote:How much more instructive would be a truly intuitive metaphysics, which would follow the undulations of the real! True, it would not embrace in a single sweep the totality of things; but for each thing it would give an explanation which would fit it exactly, and it alone. It would not begin by defining or describing the systematic unity of the world: who knows if the world is actually one?
Experience alone can say, and unity, if it exists, will appear at the end of the search as a result; it is impossible to posit it at the start as a principle. Furthermore, it will be a rich, full unity, the unity of a continuity, the unity of our reality, and not that abstract and empty unity, which has come from one supreme generalization, and which could just as well be that of any possible world whatsoever. It is true that philosophy then will demand a new effort for each new problem. No solution will be geometrically deduced from another. No important truth will be achieved by the prolongation of an already acquired truth. We shall have to give up crowding universal science potentially into one principle.
2) Addiction - this goes back to the essay on dualism and Cleric's post. Our habits are deeply entrenched and, in the case of this particular habit, unlike a substance addiction, we have no experience of what it means to think without being entrenched in the habit. Everything in our modern environment, from education to academia to entertainment to technology, is structured so as to reinforce the habit from the moment we are able to start thinking independently.
3) Secret desire - if we are addicted to smoking or drinking, and we find it terribly difficult to quit, we do well to ask ourselves how much we actually desire to free ourselves from it? Freeing ourselves from the habit means more responsibility and our modern environment, especially mechanistic technology, is likewise structured to give us ways of surviving with the least amount of creative responsibility possible. Our inner life has become adapted to this condition of perpetual addiction, seemingly free of responsibility.
Steiner wrote:Of course, man does not become conscious of the fact that such forms produce quite definite effects; they occur in the unconscious. He cannot be rationally clear about what is happening in his soul. Many people believe that the materialism of our modern time arises because so many materialistic writings are read. The occultist, however, knows that this is only one of the lesser influences. What the eye sees is of far greater importance, for it has an influence on soul processes that more or less run their course in the unconscious. This is of eminently practical importance, and when spiritual science will one day really take hold of the soul, then will the practical effect become noticeable in public life. I have often called attention to the fact that it was something different from what it is today when one in the Middle Ages walked through the streets. Right and left there were house façades that were built up out of what the soul felt and thought. Every key, every lock, carried the imprint of him who had made it. Try to realize how the individual craftsman felt joy in each piece, how he worked his own soul into it. In every object there was a piece of soul, and when a person moved among such things, soul forces streamed over to him. Now compare this with a city today. Here is a shoe store, a hardware store, a butcher shop, then a tavern, etc. All this is alien to the inner soul processes; it is related only to the outer man. Thus, it generates those soul forces that tend towards materialism. These influences work much more strongly than do the dogmas of materialism. Add to these our horrible art of advertising. Old and young wander through a sea of such abominable products that wake the most evil forces of the soul. So likewise do our modern comic journals. This is not meant to be a fanatical agitation against these things, but only indications about facts. All this pours a stream of forces into the human soul, determining the epoch that leads the person in a certain direction. The spiritual scientist knows how much depends upon the world of forms in which a man lives.
Everything really comes back to the depths of our soul-plumbing in the end, and the fear of what we may find when attempting to clean it out. Now I want to be clear, I am not saying any of the above is 100% responsible for your line of thinking on this thread. It is just the most likely culprit in these situations where discontinuities pop up between ideas and perceptions. I am sure there are aspects of the essay which fall short, perhaps over-emphasizing the visual spaces without enough of a conceptual/metaphorical foundation for why they matter. You are certainly correct to identify the overall abstract, prosaic nature of our outer world today, including our written language, which apparently removes it from the sphere of our creative soul life. The main takeaway should be that, the destiny of abstracted and prosaic forms in the outer world lies in our own thinking consciousness and how much we free the soul from these mechanized habits of thinking. In aesthetics, like poetry, as well as technology, we can clearly discern the seeds of a perceptual world shaped much more by our own creative ideation, for worse or for better.
There was no other way of developing the manifold capacities of Man than by placing them in opposition to each other. This antagonism of powers is the great instrument of culture, but it is only the instrument; for as long as it persists, we are only on the way towards culture.
...
As surely as all human individuals, taken together, with the power of vision which Nature has granted them, would never succeed in observing a satellite of Jupiter which the telescope reveals to the astronomer, so beyond question is it that human reflection would never have achieved an analysis of the infinite or a critique of pure reason, unless Reason had become dismembered among the several relevant subjects, as it were wrenched itself loose from all matter and strengthened its gaze into the Absolute by the most intense abstraction...
But can Man really be destined to neglect himself for any end whatever? Should Nature be able, by her designs, to rob us of a completeness which Reason prescribes to us by hers? It must be false that the cultivation of individual powers necessitates the sacrifice of their totality; or however much the law of Nature did have that tendency, we must be at liberty to restore by means of a higher Art this wholeness in our nature which Art has destroyed.
- Friedrich von Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795)
I am yet again finding great value in these last comments and quotes, or at least I am under such an impression, thank you.