Res Ipsa Loquitur: Kant vs. Goethe (and the World)

[Cleric K]

When a composer creates a new music, it is indeed a new musical idea, or does he simply read it from the pre-existing library of all musical ideas?

My sense is the Platonic view (timeless pre-existence of all possible ideas) makes the creation activity meaningless. Such activity would simply be searching through the library, nothing new is created. I'm involved in the creative work and my sense is that the universe of living ideas is continuously evolving and growing, both within the corporeal human realm and beyond it, with new ideas and meanings being constantly created and sprout from the already existing ones, and then shared across the universe. I can not prove it of course and I may be wrong, but this is how I fell.

This question doesn't really matter. Actually you don't need even to involve Platonism here. You can assign numbers to every musical notation symbol, pitch, etc., much in the same way Gödel did for mathematics. In this sense every musical composition receives its Gödel number. When you see it in this way it seems that every conceivable musical composition already exists because the numbers can be easily listed. So every new musical hit from now on, can be converted to its Gödel number and we can say: "see, nothing new under the Sun. This is simply song 983275923...(many..more..digits)....57893427934875." Should we feel disappointed that our new musical idea was already in the list?

There are many examples that can be given. If we take a block of stone can we say that the work of the sculptor is meaningless because every conceivable statue is already contained in the stone?

Here's a funny site https://keys.lol/bitcoin/random
It's a 'database' for all possible 256-bit Bitcoin private keys So if you have bitcoin wallet your private key is there too. Anyone can see it. The question is - can they find it among the 904625697166532776746648320380374280100293470930272690489102837043110636675 pages

I'm not saying that ideas are enumerable. Clearly, if real numbers (which are concepts) are not, what's left for ideas in general! We simply need to change the way we think about this. There are two Great Poles of existence between which Time integrates. In certain sense the alpha and omega points are known. The whole potential between them can also be said to exist all at once and eternally. But there are infinite ways that this potential can be traversed. Even though the unique path is sure to exist within the total potential, it's still a unique experience to walk this path. This is the apparent mystery - the integrated meaning of everything exists between the poles, yet to experience some of this potential in differentiated manner is a unique experience which cannot be known from the integrated perspective. So even though every musical piece is there in the eternal shelf, it's still a unique experience to create/differentiate it and hear it apart from all others. And thus, even though the seed-singularity from which the Infinite grows is the same seed to which everything flows in, there are Infinite different ways that this Time-evolution can be experienced.

Probably the stumbling stone here is to confuse the meaningful potential, for simultaneous experience of all infinite differentiated possibilities. In certain sense the experience of the potential really is the superposition of all possibilities but their simultaneous experience, even though meaningful in itself, is not as if we understand every possibility independently but somehow all at once. Probably light is the best symbol of this. White light contains all possibilities, yet it is not experienced as simultaneous consciousness of the distinct colors.

[Eugene I]

re: timeless perspective - these things really stretch the limits of our intellectual cognition. I would call this the "eternal" perspective (if we can even call it a "perspective"), which I have no reason to doubt can be attained through ideal evolution. What is it like to experience the eternal transperspectival state? I have no idea. But I have no reason to say it can be ruled out as a possible 1st-person state of experience.

Yeah, agree. I'm always looking for stretching the limits

[Eugene I]

So even though every musical piece is there in the eternal shelf, it's still a unique experience to create/differentiate it and hear it apart from all others. And thus, even though the seed-singularity from which the Infinite grows is the same seed to which everything flows in, there are Infinite different ways that this Time-evolution can be experienced.

Probably the stumbling stone here is to confuse the meaningful potential, for simultaneous experience of all infinite differentiated possibilities. In certain sense the experience of the potential really is the superposition of all possibilities but their simultaneous experience, even though meaningful in itself, is not as if we understand every possibility independently but somehow all at once. Probably light is the best symbol of this. White light contains all possibilities, yet it is not experienced as simultaneous consciousness of the distinct colors.

Thanks, Cleric, this is a good way to look at it.
(While typing that, I mistyped your name as "Clearic" )

[AshvinP]

re: timeless perspective - these things really stretch the limits of our intellectual cognition. I would call this the "eternal" perspective (if we can even call it a "perspective"), which I have no reason to doubt can be attained through ideal evolution. What is it like to experience the eternal transperspectival state? I have no idea. But I have no reason to say it can be ruled out as a possible 1st-person state of experience.

Yeah, agree. I'm always looking for stretching the limits

Just to clarify a little more, I take the pragmatic approach here - the first step ahead of us is transfiguring intellect into imaginative cognition, and it is a hefty step to take. As Cleric often points out, taking that step will practically assure us all subsequent evolution from here to eternity is possible if we don't get in our own way by refusing to evolve or seeking to skip over many stages and leap right into eternal state. For all intents and purposes, that state is unknowable for us now, so it really makes little sense to even think about it. I would say the Christ ideal is more than high enough a goal to set our sights on now

[Soul_of_Shu]

I would say the Christ ideal is more than high enough a goal to set our sights on now

Sure, insofar as crucifixion is now no longer the norm, and we don't live in Afghanistan

[Eugene I]

For all intents and purposes, that state is unknowable for us now, so it really makes little sense to even think about it. I would say the Christ ideal is more than high enough a goal to set our sights on now

Yeah, agree

[Lou Gold]

And so I, and perhaps some others, arrive again at the "Alone with the Alone" and grok:

Dearly Beloved!

Let us go toward union.
And if we find the road that leads
to separation,
We will destroy separation.

Let us go hand in hand,
Let us enter
the presence of Truth.

Let it be our judge,
and imprint its seal upon our Union forever.

[JustinG]

AshvinP wrote:
Marx famously remarked that he "turned Hegel on his head", and I would only add that he used Kant to do it.

Ashvin,

Marx used Feuerbach, not Kant, to invert Hegel (and in the process of doing so also refuted Feuerbach's materialism).

In any case, Hegel's philosophy led him to make the absurdly grandiose claim that history reached its culmination and Spirit attained absolute knowledge of itself when he wrote the closing pages of Phenomenology of Spirit, so I think he was in need of being turned on his head!

Steiner also inverts Hegel, but in a different way:

Steiner wrote:
I must attach special importance to the necessity of bearing in mind, here, that I make thinking my starting point, and not concepts and ideas which are first gained by means of thinking. For these latter already presuppose thinking. My remarks regarding the self-supporting and self-determined nature of thinking cannot, therefore, be simply transferred to concepts. (I make special mention of this, because it is here that I differ from Hegel, who regards the concept as something primary and original.)

It is interesting to compare the two inversions of Hegel by Marx and Seiner (incidentally, I have found Marcuse's Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Revolutio ... 157392718X to be a very useful and readable guide to Hegel). For Marx, it is intersubjective activity and societal relations, which I will call 'social being', which are primary, whilst for Steiner, thinking is primary.

So, we have:

Hegel: Concepts are primary, social being is secondary

-----> Marx: Social being is primary, concepts are secondary

Hegel: Concepts are primary, thinking is secondary

-----> Steiner: Thinking is primary, concepts are secondary

From a Steinerian perspective (at least based on my limited knowledge), the Marxian inversion of Hegel can result in a one-sided emphasis on, as you say, 'outer relationships of resources and power'. This results from neglecting the structuring of social being itself by thinking, and the mediation by thinking of the relationship between social being and concepts.

On the other hand, from a Marxian point of view, the Steinerian approach (again, based on my limited knowledge) may have a potential for one-sidedness if it neglects that the formation of concepts through thinking is, in most cases at least, mediated by social being.

I will try to illustrate the latter point by making reference to Scott's essay on Idealism vs Common sense (https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2017/07 ... sense.html). Scott asks the question of why people came to think of themselves as independent entities and speculates that the reason may be that Consciousness, in seeking to know itself, creates images of itself, creatures that are able to create. These creatures are thus endowed with free will and subsequently go through a stage of self-development believing they are independent entities.

From a perspective which privileges concepts (Hegel) or thinking (Steiner), this explanation may be perfectly valid. But from a perspective which emphasizes social being, an explanation, or at least a partial explanation, can be found there. Hence, for example, in his books Richard Seaford (https://www.amazon.com/Money-Early-Gree ... 0521539927 and https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Philosop ... B081HGKYBQ) traces the influence of the development of money and property systems on the evolution of consciousness and sense of self. He compares the development of philosophy in ancient India and Greece, and their correlation with the development of monetary systems. Moving forward to the scientific revolution and onward, Marx finds an explanation for the predominance of mechanistic and abstractive conceptualizing and alienation in commodity fetishism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism).

So which explanation is 'correct'? Perhaps they are both right in some sense but also incomplete, with the grounds of each explanation being dependent on what angle the phenomena is examined from, what percepts one applies one's thinking to. The usefulness of each type of explanation may also depend on what the explanation is being used for, the purpose to which it is put.

Finally, I'd like to thank yourself and Cleric for your persistence in emphasizing the significance of Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, which is a ground-breaking book. I am slowly working my way through it, but have become sidetracked by Bortoft's wonderful book on Goethean science (https://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Nature ... 0863152384). I am enjoying this detour as it is also consolidating what I've read so far of PoF.

[AshvinP]

Justin,

Thank you for the detailed response. Just to be clear, although the essay sets up as Kant v. Goethe and mentions other thinkers, the core spirit of Goethe's approach is to rely on one's own knowing capacity when confronting the phenomena and not other people's thought-systems. It is about building up trust in our living Reason to approach all phenomena, from single 'objects' to entire cultural epochs, and begin discerning their deeper layers of numinous meaning with the assistance of the phenomena themselves, i.e. from what they disclose to us upon thoughtful observation. I myself have the bad habit of getting into the endless compare-and-contrast mode of intellectual thought-systems between thinkers, because it is an enjoyable thing to do, but ultimately it only matters to the extent that it builds up confidence in our own capacity to Reason through the seemingly disjointed phenomena and render ever-more complete constellations of ideal meaning.

AshvinP wrote:
Marx famously remarked that he "turned Hegel on his head", and I would only add that he used Kant to do it.

Ashvin,

Marx used Feuerbach, not Kant, to invert Hegel (and in the process of doing so also refuted Feuerbach's materialism).

In any case, Hegel's philosophy led him to make the absurdly grandiose claim that history reached its culmination and Spirit attained absolute knowledge of itself when he wrote the closing pages of Phenomenology of Spirit, so I think he was in need of being turned on his head!

Steiner also inverts Hegel, but in a different way:

Steiner wrote:
I must attach special importance to the necessity of bearing in mind, here, that I make thinking my starting point, and not concepts and ideas which are first gained by means of thinking. For these latter already presuppose thinking. My remarks regarding the self-supporting and self-determined nature of thinking cannot, therefore, be simply transferred to concepts. (I make special mention of this, because it is here that I differ from Hegel, who regards the concept as something primary and original.)

It is interesting because I have generally found a major critique of Hegel to be that he places too much emphasis on collective phenomena, like historical and cultural transformations, rather than the immanent application of his phenomenology to the individual soul's experience. So he and Marx share that in common - they are forced to abstract greatly from individual experience because they are mostly interested in collective phenomena over human history. That's how we end up with "labor theory of value" in Marx, even though any individual can verify this is not how objects of our desire are actually valued in our experience. There is very little if any rational calculation of labor's contribution to value in this process. And much of Marx's analysis of capitalism is founded on that LTV.

So Marx and Hegel share some similar rationalist flaws in that regard and Marx simply makes it materialist instead of ideal, while they are both interested in "social being". Personally, I think Hegel understood his own abstract concepts more concretely than it would appear at first glance. In a more poetic sense, we have reached the end of history as such in our current epoch through the evolution of Spirit, because abstract linear time is now being transfigured into more holistic Time-experience, where beginning and end lose much of their relevance. The old Newtonian view of cause preceding effects in linear time is quickly dying out, and one can perceive how 'later' events concretely influence 'earlier' events. Hegel mentions this explicitly. This is what Steiner calls Imaginative cognition. Steiner is not "inverting" Hegel so much as concretizing his system and broadening its scope to encompass our immanent individual cognitive experience as well.

From a Steinerian perspective (at least based on my limited knowledge), the Marxian inversion of Hegel can result in a one-sided emphasis on, as you say, 'outer relationships of resources and power'. This results from neglecting the structuring of social being itself by thinking, and the mediation by thinking of the relationship between social being and concepts.

On the other hand, from a Marxian point of view, the Steinerian approach (again, based on my limited knowledge) may have a potential for one-sidedness if it neglects that the formation of concepts through thinking is, in most cases at least, mediated by social being.

I will try to illustrate the latter point by making reference to Scott's essay on Idealism vs Common sense (https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2017/07 ... sense.html). Scott asks the question of why people came to think of themselves as independent entities and speculates that the reason may be that Consciousness, in seeking to know itself, creates images of itself, creatures that are able to create. These creatures are thus endowed with free will and subsequently go through a stage of self-development believing they are independent entities.

From a perspective which privileges concepts (Hegel) or thinking (Steiner), this explanation may be perfectly valid. But from a perspective which emphasizes social being, an explanation, or at least a partial explanation, can be found there. Hence, for example, in his books Richard Seaford (https://www.amazon.com/Money-Early-Gree ... 0521539927 and https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Philosop ... B081HGKYBQ) traces the influence of the development of money and property systems on the evolution of consciousness and sense of self. He compares the development of philosophy in ancient India and Greece, and their correlation with the development of monetary systems. Moving forward to the scientific revolution and onward, Marx finds an explanation for the predominance of mechanistic and abstractive conceptualizing and alienation in commodity fetishism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism).

So which explanation is 'correct'? Perhaps they are both right in some sense but also incomplete, with the grounds of each explanation being dependent on what angle the phenomena is examined from, what percepts one applies one's thinking to. The usefulness of each type of explanation may also depend on what the explanation is being used for, the purpose to which it is put.

The problem here is when we abstract "concepts" and "thinking" into the mineralized thought-forms we experience in the modern age. That is exactly the abstracting phenomenon Scott is pointing to in his essay. Then it will definitely seem as though these thought-forms cannot completely explain all of the major historical-cultural developments, such as the development of money and property systems. But that is not the understanding of "idea" and "thinking" that Steiner is pointing us towards. Rather he is pointing us towards a much more concrete and living understanding of our own Thinking activity. I think that, as you make your way through PoF, this will become more clear. Cleric also pointed to this understanding of Thinking recently:

"If the Cosmos is non-dual, if consciousness is a Mobius strip, if meaning is intrinsic aspect of reality, then the natural consequence of all this is that there should be such perspectives (clearly of higher order beings) from which the Cosmos looks like an act of spiritual activity, which reflects meaning, similarly to the way we, on our microcosmic scale, reflect meaning into thought-perceptions."
...
If you do admit, it should be logical that the only way we can approach higher states of consciousness would be through transfiguration of thinking. Thinking is the only place where we find a microcosmic image of the creative principle of the Divine, where meaning becomes phenomena. If we don't seek the higher states by starting from that point where we already have some overlap with the creative principle, where do you expect to find it?

Finally, I'd like to thank yourself and Cleric for your persistence in emphasizing the significance of Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, which is a ground-breaking book. I am slowly working my way through it, but have become sidetracked by Bortoft's wonderful book on Goethean science (https://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Nature ... 0863152384). I am enjoying this detour as it is also consolidating what I've read so far of PoF.

No problem. As always, we are available for questions on PoF. I am not sure if you are aware, but Steiner also wrote a book called Goethean Science a couple years before PoF. It is a very useful resource to read once you get a chance, or maybe even before completing PoF, since you are already pursuing that Goethean approach to Thinking in another book.

[Lou Gold]

Justin,

Thank you for the detailed response. Just to be clear, although the essay sets up as Kant v. Goethe and mentions other thinkers, the core spirit of Goethe's approach is to rely on one's own knowing capacity when confronting the phenomena and not other people's thought-systems. It is about building up trust in our living Reason to approach all phenomena, from single 'objects' to entire cultural epochs, and begin discerning their deeper layers of numinous meaning with the assistance of the phenomena themselves, i.e. from what they disclose to us upon thoughtful observation. I myself have the bad habit of getting into the endless compare-and-contrast mode of intellectual thought-systems between thinkers, because it is an enjoyable thing to do, but ultimately it only matters to the extent that it builds up confidence in our own capacity to Reason through the seemingly disjointed phenomena and render ever-more complete constellations of ideal meaning.

AshvinP wrote:
Marx famously remarked that he "turned Hegel on his head", and I would only add that he used Kant to do it.

Ashvin,

Marx used Feuerbach, not Kant, to invert Hegel (and in the process of doing so also refuted Feuerbach's materialism).

In any case, Hegel's philosophy led him to make the absurdly grandiose claim that history reached its culmination and Spirit attained absolute knowledge of itself when he wrote the closing pages of Phenomenology of Spirit, so I think he was in need of being turned on his head!

Steiner also inverts Hegel, but in a different way:

Steiner wrote:
I must attach special importance to the necessity of bearing in mind, here, that I make thinking my starting point, and not concepts and ideas which are first gained by means of thinking. For these latter already presuppose thinking. My remarks regarding the self-supporting and self-determined nature of thinking cannot, therefore, be simply transferred to concepts. (I make special mention of this, because it is here that I differ from Hegel, who regards the concept as something primary and original.)

It is interesting because I have generally found a major critique of Hegel to be that he places too much emphasis on collective phenomena, like historical and cultural transformations, rather than the immanent application of his phenomenology to the individual soul's experience. So he and Marx share that in common - they are forced to abstract greatly from individual experience because they are mostly interested in collective phenomena over human history. That's how we end up with "labor theory of value" in Marx, even though any individual can verify this is not how objects of our desire are actually valued in our experience. There is very little if any rational calculation of labor's contribution to value in this process. And much of Marx's analysis of capitalism is founded on that LTV.

So Marx and Hegel share some similar rationalist flaws in that regard and Marx simply makes it materialist instead of ideal, while they are both interested in "social being". Personally, I think Hegel understood his own abstract concepts more concretely than it would appear at first glance. In a more poetic sense, we have reached the end of history as such in our current epoch through the evolution of Spirit, because abstract linear time is now being transfigured into more holistic Time-experience, where beginning and end lose much of their relevance. The old Newtonian view of cause preceding effects in linear time is quickly dying out, and one can perceive how 'later' events concretely influence 'earlier' events. Hegel mentions this explicitly. This is what Steiner calls Imaginative cognition. Steiner is not "inverting" Hegel so much as concretizing his system and broadening its scope to encompass our immanent individual cognitive experience as well.

From a Steinerian perspective (at least based on my limited knowledge), the Marxian inversion of Hegel can result in a one-sided emphasis on, as you say, 'outer relationships of resources and power'. This results from neglecting the structuring of social being itself by thinking, and the mediation by thinking of the relationship between social being and concepts.

On the other hand, from a Marxian point of view, the Steinerian approach (again, based on my limited knowledge) may have a potential for one-sidedness if it neglects that the formation of concepts through thinking is, in most cases at least, mediated by social being.

I will try to illustrate the latter point by making reference to Scott's essay on Idealism vs Common sense (https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2017/07 ... sense.html). Scott asks the question of why people came to think of themselves as independent entities and speculates that the reason may be that Consciousness, in seeking to know itself, creates images of itself, creatures that are able to create. These creatures are thus endowed with free will and subsequently go through a stage of self-development believing they are independent entities.

From a perspective which privileges concepts (Hegel) or thinking (Steiner), this explanation may be perfectly valid. But from a perspective which emphasizes social being, an explanation, or at least a partial explanation, can be found there. Hence, for example, in his books Richard Seaford (https://www.amazon.com/Money-Early-Gree ... 0521539927 and https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Philosop ... B081HGKYBQ) traces the influence of the development of money and property systems on the evolution of consciousness and sense of self. He compares the development of philosophy in ancient India and Greece, and their correlation with the development of monetary systems. Moving forward to the scientific revolution and onward, Marx finds an explanation for the predominance of mechanistic and abstractive conceptualizing and alienation in commodity fetishism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism).

So which explanation is 'correct'? Perhaps they are both right in some sense but also incomplete, with the grounds of each explanation being dependent on what angle the phenomena is examined from, what percepts one applies one's thinking to. The usefulness of each type of explanation may also depend on what the explanation is being used for, the purpose to which it is put.

The problem here is when we abstract "concepts" and "thinking" into the mineralized thought-forms we experience in the modern age. That is exactly the abstracting phenomenon Scott is pointing to in his essay. Then it will definitely seem as though these thought-forms cannot completely explain all of the major historical-cultural developments, such as the development of money and property systems. But that is not the understanding of "idea" and "thinking" that Steiner is pointing us towards. Rather he is pointing us towards a much more concrete and living understanding of our own Thinking activity. I think that, as you make your way through PoF, this will become more clear. Cleric also pointed to this understanding of Thinking recently:

"If the Cosmos is non-dual, if consciousness is a Mobius strip, if meaning is intrinsic aspect of reality, then the natural consequence of all this is that there should be such perspectives (clearly of higher order beings) from which the Cosmos looks like an act of spiritual activity, which reflects meaning, similarly to the way we, on our microcosmic scale, reflect meaning into thought-perceptions."
...
If you do admit, it should be logical that the only way we can approach higher states of consciousness would be through transfiguration of thinking. Thinking is the only place where we find a microcosmic image of the creative principle of the Divine, where meaning becomes phenomena. If we don't seek the higher states by starting from that point where we already have some overlap with the creative principle, where do you expect to find it?

Finally, I'd like to thank yourself and Cleric for your persistence in emphasizing the significance of Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, which is a ground-breaking book. I am slowly working my way through it, but have become sidetracked by Bortoft's wonderful book on Goethean science (https://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Nature ... 0863152384). I am enjoying this detour as it is also consolidating what I've read so far of PoF.

No problem. As always, we are available for questions on PoF. I am not sure if you are aware, but Steiner also wrote a book called Goethean Science a couple years before PoF. It is a very useful resource to read once you get a chance, or maybe even before completing PoF, since you are already pursuing that Goethean approach to Thinking in another book.

Justin and Ashvin,

Thank you both for this dialogue. I learned from it. Much appreciated.