Re: Steiner's anarchism
Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 11:14 am
Probably the bolded part is one of the sources of confusion here. It is true that Steiner never says (neither in PoF, nor anywhere else in his later work) that higher cognition is necessary for free actions. But this fact usually causes one to imagine that the two underlined parts above can be taken to be completely independent of each other. This is simply not the case.JustinG wrote: ↑Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:35 am Thanks for the further comments Ashvin. I thought I made it clear that I don't think Tucker's pamphlet exhausted everything Steiner thinks about advancing spiritual freedom. I was also using intuitively determined action in the sense that Steiner uses it, and disagree that PoF states that higher cognition is necessary for free action. It's good to see that you are now acknowledging that Steiner was an anarchist in the true sense of the word.
Anyway, I have some other things to do, and also hope to try and find some time to reread the latter sections of PoF, so I am going to bow out of this discussion for the time being. Of course, others are more than welcome to continue the discussion in this thread.
First, I think it should be beyond doubt that Steiner very explicitly speaks of a shared spiritual world in PoF:
Unless the above is grasped, we'll always snap back to our materialistic conceptions, where we see every form of thinking as completely local to a brain and correlatable with other local minds only through externally agreed upon protocol.AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:57 amSteiner, PoF, Chapter 9 wrote:The difference between me and my fellowman does not lie at all in our living in two completely different spiritual worlds, but rather in the fact that he receives other intuitions than I do out of the world of ideas common to us both. He wants to live out his intuitions, I mine. If we both really draw from the idea, and follow no outer (physical or spiritual) impulses, then we can only meet each other in the same striving, in the same intentions.
We can approach this through an analogy. The shared ideal/moral structure of the Cosmos can be pictured as our shared physical world. Currently, we can develop 'tactile' perception of the ideal world by 'touching' its structure with our thinking. Not to think about an imagined ideal world but to realize that the very dynamics of our thinking, the way it is constrained and shaped (which we can investigate only through living observation of the thinking process), implicitly inform us of the higher order, similarly to the way the movement of a planet informs us of the curved spacetime geometry.
Intuitively determined action proceeds from thinking which livingly feels the curvature of meaning of the ideal order. It is like we're blindfolded but we can nevertheless touch the world with our fingers and gradually build a picture of it. This is key. Intuitively determined doesn't mean to chose actions which feel sympathetic or desirable without having any idea why we do that. We know very well that the impure heart wishes for many things which only lead to trouble. It's the role of intuitive thinking, to probe the invisible order such that even impure desires can be corrected if needed.
Higher cognition perceives the same world that intuitive thinking probes. This is the most critical realization. We attain to higher cognition when our thinking no longer probes the ideal landscape through mineral-like concepts but when our spirit begins to flow with the higher order geometry of the same that landscape. This spiritual activity is so meaningfully dense that we can fully justifiably say that it can be compared to seeing, while intuitive thinking corresponds to blindfolded touching (language holds something of this when we understand something and say "I see"). This is also the reason why thinking is perfectly capable of understanding everything derived from higher seeing. The reason is that when we think livingly through the images, we touch the very same geometry which the seer has grasped in a more holistic manner and communicated in pictures.
So it is true that Steiner doesn't speak explicitly above higher cognition in PoF. But we must be perfectly clear that intuitive thinking (moral intuition), moral imagination, moral technique (all of which part of PoF) are the means of drawing the impulses for our T, F, W life from the same invisible and shared ideal landscape, which is also explored in a more encompassing way through the methods of higher order cognition.
We can develop our freedom of spiritual activity without working on higher cognition ourselves. In fact, in our age the former should be the primary concern. Higher cognition should come only as a natural continuation of that process if we feel ourselves called upon that task. But everyone should understand that what PoF explores through pure thinking, spiritual science explores further with other modes of consciousness. Yet the ideal order is one and the same. If this is not understood, certain abnormalities in development are bound to occur. An artificial divide is created. If we say "I'm only interested in intuitive thinking, I don't care about deeper facts", it's like saying "I care only about the chemical composition of man, I don't care that he's a living being, breathing, eating, feeling, thinking, moving". And in certain sense that's OK. We can certainly narrow down the scope of our research. But if we act as if the chemicals we investigate have nothing to do with living, breathing and thinking beings, we're creating an artificial divide of which much of our contemporary sciences suffer. Even if we chose to restrict ourselves in studying chemicals, we still need to be aware that they exist in very complicated holistic context.
In the same way, imagining that we can be free by drawing intuitions which concern only our physical life (governed by politics and economics) without at least being aware that this life is only the shadow of a higher order reality (just like the chemicals are only the mineral shadow of thinking, feeling and willing beings), is bound to turn into another form of materialism.