Stranger wrote: ↑Tue May 02, 2023 12:42 am
And I would think this is what Steiner meant in this phrase "Thinking must precede ideas" - he just reflected upon a simple phenomenologically experiential observation without making any ontological statements. This experiential observation is the basis for the panentheistic paradigms where the "source" (Thinking) is prioritized with respect to the forms/ideas (Thought).
In the Christian theology the Trinity is an inseparable unity, however the poles are not equal: both the Son and the Holy Spirit are "sourced" from the Father (the Son is "begotten" from the Father and the Holy spirit "proceeds" from the Father), and in Catholic Church they even consider the Holy Spirit proceeding for the Son as well (which is the main split between the Orthodox and Catholic church). So, the Christian theology is clearly panentheistic, and that view is rooted in Gospels:
"When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, [that is] the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me" (John 15:26)
But anyway, even if we accept Ashvin's scheme of the Trinity of Thinking-I-Though where all these aspects are existentially equal, there is still oneness of the "I" in this Trinity (because there is only one I in the whole reality) , and it is inseparable and unavoidable pole/aspect of reality. So, either way, we arrive at oneness which is inseparable from the manyness and not prioritized over it.
The purpose of a phenomenology, such as Steiner's, is to establish facts of experience and use these as portals to continue our investigation, not to make them into foundations for a formal metaphysical system. We can't only look at our experience or only use our reason when investigating these questions, but instead
continually use both together in harmony. If we experience 'thinking precedes ideas' and then stop there and declare, 'there we have it, thinking is prior to and more essential than thought', we have stopped reasoning. It is a fact that thinking must precede thought, but it is also a fact that there is never thinking in the absence of thought-perception. One must positively obscure the latter from view to reach such a conclusion. It is like a person shooting an arrow and then immediately turning around and walking away, refusing to look at the result of where it lands. Phenomenology is overall something to be experienced and
lived, not to be contemplated as a self-enclosed system.
Steiner (PoF) wrote:The process looks different when we examine knowledge, or rather the relation of man to the world which arises within knowledge. In the preceding chapters the attempt has been made to show that an unprejudiced observation of this relationship is able to throw light on its nature. A proper understanding of this observation leads to the insight that thinking can be directly discerned as a self-contained entity. Those who find it necessary for the explanation of thinking as such to invoke something else, such as physical brain processes or unconscious spiritual processes lying behind the conscious thinking which they observe, fail to recognize what an unprejudiced observation of thinking yields. When we observe our thinking, we live during this observation directly within a self-supporting, spiritual web of being. Indeed, we can even say that if we would grasp the essential nature of spirit in the form in which it presents itself most immediately to man, we need only look at the self-sustaining activity of thinking.
When we are contemplating thinking itself, two things coincide which otherwise must always appear apart, namely, concept and percept. If we fail to see this, we shall be unable to regard the concepts which we have elaborated with respect to percepts as anything but shadowy copies of these percepts, and we shall take the percepts as presenting to us the true reality. We shall, further, build up for ourselves a metaphysical world after the pattern of the perceived world; we shall call this a world of atoms, a world of will, a world of unconscious spirit, or whatever, each according to his own kind of mental imagery. And we shall fail to notice that all the time we have been doing nothing but building up a metaphysical world hypothetically, after the pattern of our own world of percepts.
This is generally why the polar relation is sundered - so we have a reason to avoid looking at how our thinking continually incarnates and impresses its activity into the World-state, which, when made conscious, we become concretely responsible for compensating. That is why it becomes such a problem to remain at this abstract resolution - the overall living experience, as individuals and collectives, is quickly lost sight of. If we get in the habit of treating these ontological discussions as simply exercises for refining our thinking and accustoming it to new habits, then we won't seek to wrap up the mysteries of Cosmic evolution in a neat little bow in the course of a few comments. We won't convince ourselves that we now understand the essential nature of thinking, consciousness, oneness, or anything similar, but instead will see how fundamentally
limited our experience and reasoning capacity is and how much more room there is to grow them both. We could replace "hermetic" below with "polaric" and it applies just as well.
In so far as the intellectualisation of Hermetic philosophy is of the nature of commentary and corollary, it is legitimate and even indispensable. For then one will translate each arcanum into many univocal concepts—three for example—and, by this very fact, one will help the intellect to habituate itself to think Hermetically, i.e. in multi-vocal concepts or arcana. But when the intellectualisation of Hermetic philosophy pursues the aim of creating an autonomous system of univocal concepts without formal contradiction between them, it commits an abuse. For instead of helping human reason to raise itself above itself, it would set up a greater obstacle for it. It would captivate it instead of freeing it.)