Greer post on philosophy

[AshvinP]

You forgot to post his response, Ash.
But anyway, his latest post says this:
"The mythology of progress I’ve critiqued at length in a variety of venues is only one form that this delusion took; you can find it equally often in spirituality, spanning the notional space from Rudolf Steiner at the century’s beginning to Ken Wilber at its end."

Thanks, Ben. For some reason I was not notified of the response by email. Here it is:

Ash, I plan on discussing Steiner in future posts, but I’m not yet sure if that’s one of the things I’ll be discussing at length, since the differences between his monist idealism and the Schopenhauerian critical idealism I prefer derive from first principles, and I’ve never seen an argument about those that went anywhere but around in circles. (There’s a case to be made, I think, for the suggestion that every philosopher’s account of the world is ultimately an autobiography, and the only proper response to one that seems false is “Well, that’s not how the world appears to me.”) What impresses me about Steiner is the energy with which he explored the possibilities that come open when you develop and use the imagination as an instrument of perception; if he made mistakes as a result, and overstated his case now and then, that’s a common issue with pioneers, and those who come after are tasked with correcting those problems and mapping out the territory that’s been opened up.

So it looks like he and BK have something in common, as they hold to Schopenhauer's critical idealism. I have also never seen an argument that does not go around in circles on this topic, but that has been for lack of understanding of what Steiner's argument actually is. It sounds like JMG is just going to skip over that most critical epistemic disagreement entirely. I see that he adopts Nietzsche's insight in bold, and also Nietzsche's shortcomings, the main one being he was tyrannized by Schop's uber-pessimistic philosophy. That would also explain why he writes off all forms of progress, i.e. cognitive evolution, as "myth". The question is, can he address the facts of cognitive evolution with reasoned logic or only write it off in a shadow-rationalist fashion? Ironically, it is the very refusal to look at the facts impartially that makes him feel it would be a waste of time looking at the facts, and that arguments can only go around in circles, because all power of Thinking to transcend abstract intellect has been removed from the outset.

The world is my idea." In this sentence Schopenhauer has summed up the thought of recent philosophy. Schopenhauer must be mentioned here, because his main work, The World as Will and Idea, ever since its publication in 1818, has most persistently determined the whole tone of all of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought - even where this is not immediately obvious, and even where Schopenhauer's statement is opposed. We forget too easily that a thinker is more essentially effective where he is opposed than where he finds agreement.

Even Nietzsche had to pass through a head-on confrontation with Schopenhauer; and despite the fact that his understanding of the will was the opposite of Schopenhauer's, Nietzsche held fast to Schopenhauer's axiom: "The world is my idea."

- Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?

Nietzsche revered Richard Wagner as a Dionysian spirit, and Richard Wagner can only be described as a Dionysian spirit as Nietzsche represented the latter in the above mentioned work. His instincts are turned toward the beyond; he wants to let the voice of the beyond ring forth in his music. I have already indicated that later Nietzsche found and could recognize those of his instincts which by their own nature were directed toward this world. He had originally misunderstood Wagner's art because he had misunderstood himself, because he had allowed his instincts to be tyrannized by Schopenhauer's philosophy. This subordination of his own instincts to a foreign spirit power appeared to him later like a sickness. He discovered that he had not listened to his instincts, and had allowed himself to be led astray by an opinion which was not in accord with his, that he had allowed an art to work upon these instincts which could only be to their disadvantage, and which finally had to make them ill.

- Rudolf Steiner, Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom (1895)

[AshvinP]

You forgot to post his response, Ash.
But anyway, his latest post says this:
"The mythology of progress I’ve critiqued at length in a variety of venues is only one form that this delusion took; you can find it equally often in spirituality, spanning the notional space from Rudolf Steiner at the century’s beginning to Ken Wilber at its end."

Ben,

I am posting my response to JMG in his latest essay (which incorporates some of Cleric's illustration from the other thread):

JMG,

"The mythology of progress I’ve critiqued at length in a variety of venues is only one form that this delusion took; you can find it equally often in spirituality, spanning the notional space from Rudolf Steiner at the century’s beginning to Ken Wilber at its end."


I assume you are referring to Steiner's understanding of spiritual evolution, i.e. the evolution of cognition over the epochs and moving forward. Are you familiar with The Automatic Earth? I wanted to mention that I wrote articles there for awhile. It is a blog focusing on financial and ecological collapse (mainly peak oil). That was when I also discovered you and The Archdruid Report. I wrote quite a few articles there and devoted a great deal of time to it. But, I was wrong! I was wrong for the same reason so many are wrong in the modern age - because my views were woefully incomplete. I stopped logically reasoning when I reached my desired conclusions. The reason why was simple - I had no trust in my logical reasoning to go any further, even though it had served me so well.

This is where the secular 'myth of progress' comes from - an inability to perceive man as woefully incomplete but capable of completion through inner effort (rather than blind faith) - but the myth of progress has its shadow dimension as well. The latter expresses itself in the myth of 'limits to Thinking', mostly clearly in the Kantian and Schopenhauer 'critical idealism' which subequently influenced all modern thought.


"'The world is my idea.' In this sentence Schopenhauer has summed up the thought of recent philosophy. Schopenhauer must be mentioned here, because his main work, The World as Will and Idea, ever since its publication in 1818, has most persistently determined the whole tone of all of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought - even where this is not immediately obvious, and even where Schopenhauer's statement is opposed. We forget too easily that a thinker is more essentially effective where he is opposed than where he finds agreement.

Even Nietzsche had to pass through a head-on confrontation with Schopenhauer; and despite the fact that his understanding of the will was the opposite of Schopenhauer's, Nietzsche held fast to Schopenhauer's axiom: 'The world is my idea.'"

- Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?


The popular understanding of the world is as if human individuals are like free electrons in Brownian motion. They refuse to be aligned by external EM field. We should be deeply aware that this view presupposes the fundamental separation of the particles, as did Kant's epistemology. Seen in this way, it sounds only logical that free individuals can produce nothing but chaos. And in a certain sense, without deep understanding of human nature, it is inevitable that chaos should result. If everyone submits to their Brownian impulses it is inevitable that collisions and friction will arise.

This is the tragedy of critical [intellectual] thinking which is not deepened by self-knowledge. As soon as there's friction, an unsolvable situation is encountered. If two electrons move against each other, they collide. One says "This is my free will". The other says "Well, this is my free will too". What is universally shared among all these views which either hold the myth of progress or the myth of inevitable collapse/chaos? That we cannot penetrate to deeper layers of our inner being with Thinking. Therefore we are destined to either have blind faith in ceaseless progress or to adopt a seemingly justified uber-pessimism, like Schopenhauer.

The core of PoF is that we begin by questioning the hidden impulses behind our thinking, feeling, and willing.
If a person moves in a direction, it is not enough to simply say "This is my will". Why is our will this and not other? We don't know. In this way, someone born in a prison, will apply his will to go around his cell in circles but he has no awareness that his will is already severely limited and shaped by external factors. At the heart of PoF is not some anarchic stubbornness to do whatever we whim while we're ignorant of the constraints within which we operate. Instead it is about the continual unveiling of the deeper 'geometry' within which our spiritual conduct flows.

If we rule out this capacity from the outset, under pervasive influence of critical idealism, which is actually most effective in the secular culture of progress, then naturally we will conclude Steiner is yet another form of the progress myth. Ironically, yet also tragically, we have cut off the only avenue which would allow us to question the starting assumptions as Steiner did in PoF. We have determined that our logical reasoning is not equal to the task of questioning the intellect's assumptions, because the intellect is practically equated with Reason. Goethe, Hegel, and Steiner perceived the deep flaw in this outlook. And, if you disagree, I am hoping you will include some arguments on why in some subsequent posts or in the comments.

Thanks for the stimulating essays, as always!

[AshvinP]

I assume you are referring to Steiner's understanding of spiritual evolution, i.e. the evolution of cognition over the epochs and moving forward. Are you familiar with The Automatic Earth? I wanted to mention that I wrote articles there for awhile. It is a blog focusing on financial and ecological collapse (mainly peak oil). That was when I also discovered you and The Archdruid Report. I wrote quite a few articles there and devoted a great deal of time to it. But, I was wrong! I was wrong for the same reason so many are wrong in the modern age - because my views were woefully incomplete. I stopped logically reasoning when I reached my desired conclusions. The reason why was simple - I had no trust in my logical reasoning to go any further, even though it had served me so well.

This is where the secular 'myth of progress' comes from - an inability to perceive man as woefully incomplete but capable of completion through inner effort (rather than blind faith) - but the myth of progress has its shadow dimension as well. The latter expresses itself in the myth of 'limits to Thinking', mostly clearly in the Kantian and Schopenhauer 'critical idealism' which subequently influenced all modern thought.


"'The world is my idea.' In this sentence Schopenhauer has summed up the thought of recent philosophy. Schopenhauer must be mentioned here, because his main work, The World as Will and Idea, ever since its publication in 1818, has most persistently determined the whole tone of all of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought - even where this is not immediately obvious, and even where Schopenhauer's statement is opposed. We forget too easily that a thinker is more essentially effective where he is opposed than where he finds agreement.

Even Nietzsche had to pass through a head-on confrontation with Schopenhauer; and despite the fact that his understanding of the will was the opposite of Schopenhauer's, Nietzsche held fast to Schopenhauer's axiom: 'The world is my idea.'"

- Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?


The popular understanding of the world is as if human individuals are like free electrons in Brownian motion. They refuse to be aligned by external EM field. We should be deeply aware that this view presupposes the fundamental separation of the particles, as did Kant's epistemology. Seen in this way, it sounds only logical that free individuals can produce nothing but chaos. And in a certain sense, without deep understanding of human nature, it is inevitable that chaos should result. If everyone submits to their Brownian impulses it is inevitable that collisions and friction will arise.

This is the tragedy of critical [intellectual] thinking which is not deepened by self-knowledge. As soon as there's friction, an unsolvable situation is encountered. If two electrons move against each other, they collide. One says "This is my free will". The other says "Well, this is my free will too". What is universally shared among all these views which either hold the myth of progress or the myth of inevitable collapse/chaos? That we cannot penetrate to deeper layers of our inner being with Thinking. Therefore we are destined to either have blind faith in ceaseless progress or to adopt a seemingly justified uber-pessimism, like Schopenhauer.

The core of PoF is that we begin by questioning the hidden impulses behind our thinking, feeling, and willing.
If a person moves in a direction, it is not enough to simply say "This is my will". Why is our will this and not other? We don't know. In this way, someone born in a prison, will apply his will to go around his cell in circles but he has no awareness that his will is already severely limited and shaped by external factors. At the heart of PoF is not some anarchic stubbornness to do whatever we whim while we're ignorant of the constraints within which we operate. Instead it is about the continual unveiling of the deeper 'geometry' within which our spiritual conduct flows.

If we rule out this capacity from the outset, under pervasive influence of critical idealism, which is actually most effective in the secular culture of progress, then naturally we will conclude Steiner is yet another form of the progress myth. Ironically, yet also tragically, we have cut off the only avenue which would allow us to question the starting assumptions as Steiner did in PoF. We have determined that our logical reasoning is not equal to the task of questioning the intellect's assumptions, because the intellect is practically equated with Reason. Goethe, Hegel, and Steiner perceived the deep flaw in this outlook. And, if you disagree, I am hoping you will include some arguments on why in some subsequent posts or in the comments.

Thanks for the stimulating essays, as always!

JMG's response:

Ash, I’m delighted that you recognize the importance of Schopenhauer in this discussion! As I see it, his ideas and those philosophical approaches that unfolded from those were one widespread response to the twilight of the Axial Age confidence in reason, which reached crisis in the writings of Kant. The other was the attempt to escape into idealist monism, with Hegel leading the way — and of course Steiner was an unusually thoughtful attempt to move in the same direction. One figure on Schopenhauer’s side of the line, however, whose work is not usually recognized — largely because it’s so forthrightly occult — is Eliphas Lévi, whose world as will and imagination is clearly inspired by Schopenhauer’s world as will and representation. What makes Lévi crucial, to my mind, is that he accepts the limits of human cognition Kant traced out, and builds his understanding of spirituality on that basis, making the imagination a central element of his understanding without claiming for it an objective reality it doesn’t have. His discussion of faith as the appropriate response in those many cases where human cognition runs up against its own hard limits is also crucial. But all that’s a subject for a post of its own — as is a critique of your claim that critical idealism somehow limits self-knowledge, and a discussion of the central role that monist idealism (and the broader attempt to insist that human cognition can gain direct knowledge about anything but its own creations) played in creating the myth of progress. (As a taster, take a look at the role of Hegelian philosophy in Marxism, the supreme political manifestation of the progressivist myth.)

(I will post my response to the above later today)

[AshvinP]

JMG's response:

Ash, I’m delighted that you recognize the importance of Schopenhauer in this discussion! As I see it, his ideas and those philosophical approaches that unfolded from those were one widespread response to the twilight of the Axial Age confidence in reason, which reached crisis in the writings of Kant. The other was the attempt to escape into idealist monism, with Hegel leading the way — and of course Steiner was an unusually thoughtful attempt to move in the same direction. One figure on Schopenhauer’s side of the line, however, whose work is not usually recognized — largely because it’s so forthrightly occult — is Eliphas Lévi, whose world as will and imagination is clearly inspired by Schopenhauer’s world as will and representation. What makes Lévi crucial, to my mind, is that he accepts the limits of human cognition Kant traced out, and builds his understanding of spirituality on that basis, making the imagination a central element of his understanding without claiming for it an objective reality it doesn’t have. His discussion of faith as the appropriate response in those many cases where human cognition runs up against its own hard limits is also crucial. But all that’s a subject for a post of its own — as is a critique of your claim that critical idealism somehow limits self-knowledge, and a discussion of the central role that monist idealism (and the broader attempt to insist that human cognition can gain direct knowledge about anything but its own creations) played in creating the myth of progress. (As a taster, take a look at the role of Hegelian philosophy in Marxism, the supreme political manifestation of the progressivist myth.)

(I will post my response to the above later today)

My response:

"Ash, I’m delighted that you recognize the importance of Schopenhauer in this discussion! As I see it, his ideas and those philosophical approaches that unfolded from those were one widespread response to the twilight of the Axial Age confidence in reason, which reached crisis in the writings of Kant."


JMG, thanks for the reply.

I understand the above is a Nietzschean / Schopenhauer way of looking at what has emerged from the time of Socrates. Perhaps it is the correct perspective on it. But I think we should also acknowledge that Steiner did not merely try to provide an alternative perspective - he tried to *integrate* them all, i.e. explain why all of these perspectives arose to prominence at their respective moments in the ceaseless metamorphoses of the Spirit's organism. Hegel made a similar endeavor, but at a very abstract and collective (transcendent) level, and simply assumed the modern age was the very culimination of the Spirit. Steiner took the benefit of another century of spiritual insights and development, and made the metamorphic involution-evolution process very concrete and immanent to individual experience, without forsaking the cultural and Cosmic scales.


JMG: "The other was the attempt to escape into idealist monism, with Hegel leading the way — and of course Steiner was an unusually thoughtful attempt to move in the same direction. One figure on Schopenhauer’s side of the line, however, whose work is not usually recognized — largely because it’s so forthrightly occult — is Eliphas Lévi, whose world as will and imagination is clearly inspired by Schopenhauer’s world as will and representation. What makes Lévi crucial, to my mind, is that he accepts the limits of human cognition Kant traced out, and builds his understanding of spirituality on that basis, making the imagination a central element of his understanding without claiming for it an objective reality it doesn’t have. His discussion of faith as the appropriate response in those many cases where human cognition runs up against its own hard limits is also crucial. But all that’s a subject for a post of its own — as is a critique of your claim that critical idealism somehow limits self-knowledge, and a discussion of the central role that monist idealism (and the broader attempt to insist that human cognition can gain direct knowledge about anything but its own creations) played in creating the myth of progress. (As a taster, take a look at the role of Hegelian philosophy in Marxism, the supreme political manifestation of the progressivist myth.)"


I am certainly interested in hearing more about Levi, as I am unfamiliar and his work sounds very spiritually creative. Of course, we are still beating around the bush of Kant's limits to cognition and whether they are valid. I hope I am at least presenting considerations against that argument which are not 100% familiar to you. I have no interest in defending Hegel's phenomeneology of Spirit over Steiner's, for reasons stated above, and I agree with what you say about Marxism.

re: criticial idealism limiting self-knowledge - that is a very rich topic. Schopenahuer certainly limits it less than Kant - he at least points to possibilities of direct and immanent knowledge of universal Will through music, for ex. The problem here is the lack of *depth structure* 'between' our current intellectual egoic perspective, and the eternally unified Will (I mean 'between' in an essentially non-spatial manner). Just as 'between' my current vision through my physical eye there exists the rest of Earth beyond the limits of that vision, the upper atmosphere, Earth's orbit, the Moon, the other planets and their moons, the Sun, the constellations, etc., does any similar depth structure exist beyond my intellectual thinking vision, my current spiritual "I"? If so, why is it forever opaque to my Thinking?

[AshvinP]

From JMG's new article on "The Doctrine of High Magic" - https://www.ecosophia.net/the-doctrine- ... chapter-8/

JMG,

Excellent essay, thank you! Levi sounds like a very interesting thinker to contemplate.

The thing to keep in mind about these analogies is that they may start out as abstractions but they don’t remain that way for long. Again, the conceptions of the world of thoughts and ideas take on form in the astral light, for good or ill, and become powers that influence human consciousness. The astral light, as Lévi points out, is the expression of the intellectual light, as the intellectual light is the expression of the divine light—or, more precisely, the intellectual light can express the divine light. It can also express the diabolical darkness, or for that matter the whole spectrum of color between these two poles. Its forms can be pure or debased, they can lead to regeneration or degeneration, and to a galaxy of other destinations as well.

I especially liked this section. Whenever someone speaks of analogies perceived by poetic Thinking between the spiritual and the physical, I am reminded of the master of such analogies, Ralpho Waldo Emerson. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention, however, that the above is hard to square with Kant’s limits to Reason ; )

“What is true of proverbs, is true of all fables, parables, and allegories. This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men. It appears to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not blind and deaf; “Can these things be, And overcome us like a summer’s cloud, Without our special wonder?” for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle." - Emerson

Ash, au contraire, we use analogies precisely because the limits on human cognition are as unshakable as they are. We think in analogies — what are all our representations but analogies? — because we have no direct access to reality, only to its forms, similitudes, and shadows. Those are, in Emerson’s fine phrasing, the riddles the Sphinx asks us — and they are riddles precisely because the best we can do is guess at their answer. Optimist that he was, Emerson exaggerated when he said that the universe becomes transparent to imaginative insight; translucent would be a better word, which is why every prophet who claims to answer the Sphinx gives a different answer. The translucency of the cosmos in spiritual states of cognition is a gain over the opacity of ordinary states of awareness, no question, which is why prophets always find a hearing; it’s when they make the mistake of seeing that they’ve gazed on absolute reality itself that we get the inevitable squabbles between competing visions that have so often drenched the world in blood."

JMG, let's reason through this carefully. If there was an absolute limit to human cognition which separates it from discernment of the noumenon, how can we make analogies which appear to 'marry' the phenomenon with the noumenon, i.e. point to some concrete qualities of its meaning, through our imaginative thinking? The ability to use such analogies *presupposes* that our reasoned thinking can perceive what is greater than itself. It can perceive its own future evolution. That is the other critical piece missing here - human cognition has been and will continue to evolve. There is a gradient of spiritual thinking activity, a depth structure, from the dualistic rational intellect to the eternal Divine Thinking. Unless we hold to a metaphysical dualism, there must be continuity within this gradient as well. So I don't think it is reasonable to equate the analogies with "guesses" - they are imaginatively informed and consistently applicable metaphors which give us a concrete sense of the meaningful Reality they are pointing to. The inevitable squabbles so often drenched in blood result precisely because we have cut ourselves off from the one integral activity which could bring about truly shared understanding, shared intentions, shared goals, etc. - our higher Thinking activity. Without that possibility, the abstract intellectual remains in firm control and destines itself to perpetual fragmentation, isolation, alienation, and tribal conflict.


"But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import—so conspicuous a fact in the history of language—is our least debt to nature. It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope.
...
Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence... And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these analogies, *but that they are constant, and pervade nature*."

- Emerson, Nature

[AshvinP]

JMG: "Ash, but we don’t make the analogies. That’s exactly it. We encounter phenomena, the way Oedipus encountered the sphinx on the road to Thebes, and only through reflection realize that they are analogies and not truths. The process Barfield called figuration transforms the scattered percepts of the senses into what we call “objects,” which are not things as they are but only things as we perceive them. Then abstraction gets into the act, and we lump the objects together into verbally labeled categories we call “concepts,” which are also not things as they are but solely things as we classify them. Both those processes are partly hardwired into our biology, partly built into our cultures, and partly up to the individual. That can be unpacked by a third activity, reflection, but that doesn’t give us direct access to the truth either; the answer to the riddle of the sphinx is always “man,” because so much of we think we see outside us is what we’ve unthinkingly put there through our mental activities. So we can know the products of our own minds, and to some extent we can know ourselves, but the objective universe? Not on our workbench."


JMG,

What Steiner was trying to point attention to in PoF, more than anything else, was our inability to perceive our present Thinking. More and more, I am seeing why it was such a crucial insight. We are the ones asking questions about the "things as they are", the "objective universe", so we are beings who are not satisfied with mere fragmented perceptions, desires, and feelings. But that unique desire does not mean we are licensed to actually attain our desire. Granted. So then, as time moves on, we begin perceiving the way in which images of the world can point back to something beyond themselves. Myth and folklore is born. But these are still symbolic images, and we are not perceiving the "things as they are". Granted. Then, we begin asking ourselves why we can't perceive directly what makes the analogies possible through the images of the sense-world. Modern philosophy and epistemology is born. Finally, we get someone like Kant who says, "I know what it means 'to know', and we simply can't know." (because he desires to preserve Christian faith). Due to extreme abstraction, the fact that the person's *thinking* is making the claim about what it means "to know" is lost in the entire process. Thinking is denying its own reliability and, in the wake of Kant, its own existence. Among idealists and materialists alike, it is implicitly considered an illusory activity. This can only be done by ignoring the role of one's own Reason while philosophizing and assuming a 'neutral observer' perspective which simply doesn't exist. 

Meanwhile, throughout this whole process, humanity is becoming more integrated through its capacity to think; more united in its ability to perceive archetypal meaning. The Imagination is born. Our mode of perceiving and thinking is clearly evolving, just as the individual from infancy to adolescence to adulthood. Yes, there are clearly 'squabbles', and they become rather nightmarish in the wake of Kant and Schopenhauer. Yet there remains the capacity for people such as yourself to unite people *in thought*. Your insights in response to me are all the result *of thought*. The meaning of, "Only by accepting that nobody has privileged access to the truth", is imbued by our *thinking*. This may seem an 'unfair' argument because it is so simple, but that does not make it any less true. And I agree, no one has privileged access to the truth. But that doesn't mean everyone must be consigned to thinking which is unable to escape a tyranny of the senses. It could mean everyone has the equal ability to develop their own Thinking to become more 'sense-free'. It could mean those who are fortunate enough to perceive the truth, by virtue of this grace, will be motivated to help others seek their own core spiritual activity without any coercion whatsoever. The only thing preventing anyone from developing this capacity is their own assumption that it is impossible. Plato perceived this analogical truth, with his own thinking, 2,500 years ago. 


JMG: "As for the notion that the evolution of consciousness will somehow fix that, that’s Hegel’s gimmick, borrowed by Steiner and by everyone else who tried to do an end run around the limits to human cognition. It involves a deliberate misreading of Kant, because Kant wasn’t just saying that the intellect has these limits — so do the senses, so does the imagination, so does every other activity of which the human mind is capable. As for the proof of that, why, look at what happens to everyone who claims, as both Hegel and Steiner did, that they have access to a faculty of mind that gives them objective awareness of reality: they end up founding movements characterized by constant squabbles about whose “objective awareness of reality” is the right one "


I don't get why it matters what "Kant says". The basis of Goethe, Hegel and Steiner's critique is that Kant was ignoring his own thinking in the process of declaring thinking unreliable in pursuit of truth. They aren't claiming Kant forgot about Imagination or Intuition. They are claiming he even underestimates Reason, the same Reason he uses to develop his entire philosophy. The same Reason we are using to discuss Kant, Hegel, Steiner, etc. and how their views compare. Again, Steiner's central insight in PoF is that we do not perceive our own present Thinking precisely because it is our own intimate activity. Just as our physical eye cannot perceive itself when observing the world, the spiritual "I" cannot either. It can only perceive its own reflection in the mirror of past thinking and thought-forms. Our present thinking is our most trusted intuition, even if, or especially when, we fail to acknowledge it.

I think we must also admit that the existence of "constant squabbles" is not really "proof" of anything. Since Steiner's PoF, only 120 years have elapsed. That is not even how quickly Steiner thought Imaginative cognition would evolve in broader society. But, regardless, we can't declare disagreements among human beings "proof" that the ideas they are disagreeing over are fundamentally incorrect. Jung, Gebser, Spengler, Teilhard de Chardin, Aurobindo, Barfield, and quite a few others have documented the evolution of consciousness extensively in their writings and mostly independently of each other. If we want to discount all of their collective analysis as wishful thinking or "end runs" around Kant, I think we need more than simply the existence of squabbles.

[AshvinP]

JMG: "Ash, Goldenhawk et al., please see the words above the comment screen: “Courteous, concise comments relevant to the topic of the current post are welcome.” I have a fairly strict rule about not permitting endless discussion on old posts, especially when, ahem, it’s not that relevant to the subject of the post. I’d encourage the two of you, and anyone else who wants to join in, to find another venue."


I didn't realize one or two comments exchanged was "endless". It goes to show, when attention is pointed to the perosn's own thinking activity and its role in everything they claim about thinking activity, the discussion must end for the intellect. By continuing and engaging directly, the intellect implicitly admits there is a Thinking power higher than its own and which is reponsible for its own limited power.

I posted another comment directing people here if they want to discuss further.

[AshvinP]

JMG: “Let’s take a moment to make sense of this. Each of us, in earliest infancy, encounters the world as a “buzzing, blooming confusion” of disconnected sensations, and our first and most demanding intellectual challenge is the process that Owen Barfield has termed “figuration”—the task of assembling those sensations into distinct, enduring objects. We take an oddly shaped spot of bright color, a smooth texture, a kinesthetic awareness of gripping and of a certain resistance to movement, a taste, and a sense of satisfaction, and assemble them into an object. It’s the object we will later call “bottle,” but we don’t have that connection between word and experience at first. That comes later, after we’ve mastered the challenge of figuration.”


I think it should be pointed out that this is not exactly Barfield’s view of “figuration”. As you probably know, Barfield’s view of the perception-cognition relation was the same as that of Steiner’s, as the latter conveyed it in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Barfield was also an Anthroposophist, so he adhered to the underlying spiritual explanations of how the Ego-“I” descends into the child’s physical-etheric-astral bodies at a certain age. But, leaving all that aside, the basic view was that our Thinking (Spirit) is a sense-organ which perceives meaning in the world content, like our eyes perceive colors. The difference is that these meaningful perceptions appear to arise from ‘within’, while the sensations you mention appear to arrive from without. So our young mind is not assembling the outer sensations together to form the objects, but rather the latter stimulate the inner perception of meaning which naturally unites them into coherent experiences. The meaning is like the ‘glue’ which holds the fragmented perceptions together in a lawful way (according to the structure of Logic). This really changes our whole understanding of what the sense-world, with its objects (partial negative images of archetypal meaning), and how it relates to our logical reasoning faculty. I know you disagree with this view based on the previous posts re: Kant, but I just wanted to clarify Barfield’s concept of “figuration” as he meant it.


JMG: "Ash, good. Of course it’s not exactly Barfield’s view of the nature of figuration. He did everyone interested in cognition a favor by coining the word — before then there was a lot of discussion about the results (think of R.M. Bucke’s taxonomy of “percepts,” “recepts,” and “concepts” in Cosmic Consciousness as one example of many), but Barfield redefined it very usefully as a process. Of course he framed it in terms of his own monist-idealist viewpoint, and I frame it in terms of my very different view; I’ve discussed elsewhere at quite some length the relations between figuration, abstraction, and reflection, in terms informed by Kant, and I may want to discuss them again in more detail in the light of several more readings of Schopenhauer’s Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason."


JMG,

Thanks, I look forward to your further commentary on this issue. I really can't fault Kant for their epistemologies. I take the evolution of perception-cognition outlined by people such as Barfield, Steiner, Gebser, etc. to a very real and concrete process, microcosmically expressed during our individual lives and even our daily experience, so I don't think Kant was in a position to observe and Think about their own thinking in the way that later thinkers were able to, including Hegel, early Fichte, and early Schelling. Schopenhauer, though, was a major setback on that path and has practically influenced all of analytic philosophy since.

It is in the observation of our own thinking where the activity and the product of that activity is united. It requires no assumption about what "thinking" is, in its essence, or what the objects of thinking are, in their essence. We simply observe that what we observe (thinking) and how we observe it (also thinking) is of the same essence, whatever it is. We continue observing and reasoning through observations without adding any assumptions along the way. If at any point in the process we say "but all of what I am doing here is just illusion or mere representation", then we have added a metaphysical assumption. The concept of "illusion" or "representation" relies on an abstract metaphysical conception of what is "real" or "thing-in-itself".


"The ‘I’ posits itself, and it is by virtue of this mere positing of itself; and conversely: The ‘I’ is, and posits its existence, by virtue of its mere existence. It is at the same time the one acting and the product of its action; the active one and what is brought forth by the activity; action and deed are one and the same; and therefore the ‘I am’ is the expression of an active deed."

- Gottlieb Fichte, The Vocation of Man

[AshvinP]

(1) How can the meaningful content of phenomena we perceive in the world considered less “real” than any other property it discloses, such as shape, size, color, taste, etc., without adding in metaphysical assumptions (such as dualism or naive realims) from the outset?

2) Do you agree that we cannot ever perceive our present Thinking but we are, nevertheless, always engaging it when evaluating the world content?

3) If you agree that perception-cognition has evolved over the epochs, then what is the principle limit to potential modes of cognition in the future? Why can’t there be a mode of thinking which transcends subject/object dualism, i.e. abstract spatiotemporal perception, and functions more like our audial or even touch-sense, like an octopus which mimics its environment through its tentacles?

JMG: “Ashvin, by all means. 1) It seems to me that you’re presupposing what you want to prove by this question. Shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes are what Bucke called “percepts,” that is to say, sensory stimuli that are assembled into objects by the process of figuration. Thoughts — for example, the thought that I’m trying to communicate here — are sequences of abstractions; they’re not part of the objects they attempt to describe, any more than the word “rock” is actually a rock! As we see from the history of philosophy, the process by which reflection differentiates abstractions from their component figurations, and then differentiates figurations from the percepts that are their raw material, is a slow one, and it happens in each tradition of philosophy as that works through its life cycle — Lao Tsu points out that the description of a process is not the process itself in the opening line of the Tao Te Ching, a realization it took another 2000 years for Western philosophy to reach. Each starts from a different set of cultural presuppositions; each arrives at a broadly common realization — which Western philosophy, in the usual way of things, is still struggling not to grasp.”


We must differentiate between “thoughts” and meaning. The former, like perceptions (thoughts can become perceptions), is a reflection of that meaning. The abstract thoughts are far removed from the world content, although still continuous with it, but not the meaning. The intuitive meaning of a thought is given to our thinking-sense just as immediately as any quantiative or qualitative property is given to an object of our perception. My question was about the meaning. Take Schopenhauer’s assertion, “the World is *only* universal Will, reflected in my direct experience of bodily movements and endogenous experience”. The truth of that assertion can only be valid if the meaning of it, i.e. its semantic content, discerned by Thinking, is downgraded to some illusory sphere of experience, while the bodily movements and endgoneous experiences are considered more “real”. If that does not occur, then the assertion must at least be modified to “the World is both universal Will and Thinking”. (not representational thinking)


JMG: “2) I agree that thinking is always part of our evaluation of the world we experience — the paired processes of figuration and abstraction are always at work, assembling the paired “buzzing, blooming confusion” of sensation and mentation into a coherent subjective world. I don’t agree that we can never perceive our thinking — au contraire, that’s the whole point of reflection, and in a more focused way, of meditative practice.”


The question here was about our *present* Thinking activity. Here is a reference from Steiner’s PoF, and I am asking if you agree with his assertion.

“The reason why we do not observe the thinking that goes on in our ordinary life is none other than this, that it is due to our own activity. Whatever I do not myself produce, appears in my field of observation as an object; I find myself confronted by it as something that has come about independently of me. It comes to meet me. I must accept it as something that precedes my thinking process, as a premise. While I am reflecting upon the object, I am occupied with it, my attention is focussed upon it. To be thus occupied is precisely to contemplate by thinking. I attend, not to my activity, but to the object of this activity. In other words, while I am thinking I pay no heed to my thinking, which is of my own making, but only to the object of my thinking, which is not of my making.

I am, moreover, in the same position when I enter into the exceptional state and reflect on my own thinking. I can never observe my present thinking; I can only subsequently take my experiences of my thinking process as the object of fresh thinking. If I wanted to watch my present thinking, I should have to split myself into two persons, one to think, the other to observe this thinking. But this I cannot do. I can only accomplish it in two separate acts. The thinking to be observed is never that in which I am actually engaged, but another one. Whether, for this purpose, I make observations of my own former thinking, or follow the thinking process of another person, or finally, as in the example of the motions of the billiard balls, assume an imaginary thinking process, is immaterial.” (Steiner, PoF Ch 3)


JMG: “3) There are at least two serious problems with this claim of yours — and of course it’s not yours alone; it’s essential not only to Steiner but to the entire movement of European philosophy of which he was so creative and interesting an example. On the one hand, it’s based on a fundamentally mistaken notion of the nature of evolution. Evolution is not teleological in any sense. It’s simply adaptation to changing circumstances, and its results are not progressive but radiating in all directions, finding available niches. As Spengler shows, using classic Goethean morphological methods, this is as true of cultures as it is of species. On the other, the claim you’re making is rather reminiscent of the famous stock prospectus during the South Sea Bubble: “An enterprise of great advantage, but no one to know what it is.” Proving a negative is exceedingly hard, and so you can demand that others prove in advance that there won’t be some mode of thinking someday that might somehow winkle itself out of the limits binding human cognition, rather than offering any reason to think that (a) it will happen, and (b) Steiner, rather than Hegel or Fourier or any of the other people who made that argument, is right about its nature. As Schopenhauer pointed out acerbically about Hegel’s parallel claims about “intellectual intuition,” no doubt it seems very convincing to those who claim to have this capacity, but to the rest of us, it bears a remarkable resemblance to utter hogwash.

Steiner’s work is a lot less problematic in that regard than Hegel’s — can you think of any social or political movement based on Hegel’s ideas that didn’t turn into a total flop in practice? I can’t — but he scored his share of misses; try mapping his account of the development of the Earth onto what’s known about the development of the solar system, for example, and it’s painfully clear that Steiner was far more dependent on the scientific notions of his own day, and far less connected to some objective source of truth, than he realized. That doesn’t mean that his work is worthless; it means that his insights need to be tested against other sources of information, and taken in their proper context, rather than turned into some sort of holy writ against which all other experiences are to be tested.”


Yes, I agree that my mere question is not positive evidence of higher direct cognition which moves beyond Kantian limits. That requires much more discussion. But, in my experience, mostly we never get to that discussion, because people are opposed to the very possibility of higher cognition. Once it is admitted as a possibility, which the “utter hogwash” reference makes me think we still have not reached that stage, then we can start to examine how it has already manifested, again assuming we have not foreclosed on the possibility of our Reason being equal to the task of assessing the likelihood of such things, given all the facts we have surrounding it. I would say the evidence for fully conscious Imagation is overwhelming, but also there is a good deal for conscious Inspiration and Intuition. Jean Gebser, in the The Ever-Present Origin, documents extensively how the reductive view of evolution simply does not hold given the facts we have, and the integral view of cognitive evolution holds quite well over the last 5,000 or so years.

re: Steiner’s cosmology – well, if we reject spiritual science and higher cognition outright, then yes none of his scientific claims will make any sense. Although, secular scientific models of the solar system and its evolution are entirely inadequate and incomplete, given the lack of accounting for our qualitative experience, regardless of our position on higher cognition and spiritual sight.

[Ben Iscatus]

An interesting discussion.

In a way, it's odd that you and JMG disagree. He thinks he has a handle on aspects of higher cognition (for instance his regular astrological forecasts), yet, by saying that there is no teleology, speaks as if he doesn't really believe in it. Perhaps he believes that "the stars incline, but do not compel" and that we're not yet advanced enough to avoid the inclination. (Mind you, he totally missed the COVID epidemic.)