Philosophical Speculations

This essay addresses the unconscious dimension of modern self-perception and its impact on all our quest for knowledge. It aims to present the mode of thinking that leads to the worldviews we are familiar with today and analyze these, rather than focusing on the content of specific worldviews. It has become somewhat circular, and many ideas and intuitions I couldn’t put into writing, but I believe it can serve as a good starting point for the topic of a potentially new way of thinking.

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The Picture

A picture held us captive, said Wittgenstein in his *Philosophical Investigations*. What is this picture that holds us captive? What is meant here is not that we hold certain false propositions to be true, which remain dogmatic and unquestioned, but that the context that embeds our propositions remains unquestioned and (even worse) unconscious. This leads to our entire theorizing and search for answers—even the way we perceive and understand the world—being directed from the hidden. What is this unconscious assumption (its not a articulated one) that "imprisons" us so strongly? It is the assumption of being a subjective observer who perceives the objective world from a neutral perspective. We could also call it the "observer-from-nowhere" perspective.

This dualism, inspired by Descartes, has shaped the modern "Common Sense" and defines the way we think about the world and understand ourselves. Our culture and science are based on this assumption, which, however, remains hidden. It is like the frame that provides a particular structure to a picture. Like the artwork, attention is focused on the picture, while the frame remains outside of what is perceived (this is only meant as an analogy). We should first begin to explain this frame and bring it into the full light of our contemplation.To illuminate this frame, we will attempt to make the form of our pursuit of knowledge more conscious. We begin with the following question: How does the thinker of today approach the matters to be considered (the themes we try to understand through thinking)? We begin to perform a mental operation by attempting to grasp the object of our question. This is a very vague description, but we must start superficially before capturing the details. The mental operation, with all its contents, is attributed to the subject, who tries to make a certain aspect (or several in relation) understandable and to discover its truth. The object of our investigation is something that does not belong to the subject, but something it encounters, something it confronts as a mystery. The operation aims to make the object in question (the studied subject) understandable to the subject and to grasp it (here, only a very general description of the process is given to sketch the attributes of thinking).

A well-known dichotomy emerges here clearly, namely the sharp division between subject (I) and object (world), which gives shape to our pursuit of knowledge. It is this separation that is implicitly embedded in the thinking of our (contemporary) culture and leads the course of our thinking. The (subject-object) dichotomy is our fundamental understanding of our being (as subject) in relation to the world (the object), which is not a propositional system that only exists in philosophical reflection, but the fundamental understanding that provides us with inarticulated orientation. It is the way the (modern) person orients themselves in the world, their basic sense of being, and not an abstract thought system. It is "pre-worldview." This inarticulated understanding, which has been articulated here and called the subject-object dichotomy, clearly determines the form of knowledge, that is, what knowledge is. We are therefore dealing with something of fundamental importance here.

We, as subject, are closed within ourselves, with no clear boundary between "I" and "world." The subject is "inner," thinking and conscious, while the worldly (objective) is external, quantitative, and unconscious. The world appears to the subject as a mystery that raises questions. In order to gain knowledge of the outer world, the only option left to us is to create mental representations (images) of worldly reality, which can be compared with the objective world in the form of propositional systems to verify their truth. Another way of knowing is not considered, because the sharp and essential dichotomy of subject and object means that our being as subject is fundamentally different from that of the objective reality of the question (thinking I – inanimate mechanical world), and due to this difference, it has no other access to them than in the form of mental representations. What can true knowledge bring in this contrast, except a faithful depiction of the dynamic metamorphosis of the world? Even if we base it on the concept of matter and say that the subject is an epiphenomenon of matter, they are essentially different. For the subject experiences itself as a conscious being with intentions, feelings, and thoughts—properties that are not attributed to the world (the object). Even if both consist of the same substance, they are fundamentally different in nature. The "I" stands before a world that confronts it with its "otherness." For our sharp self-consciousness, we must pay the price of alienation. Even if it is hypothesized that we consist of the same substance, this does not erase the alienation, because this material equality is merely a propositional explanation of the genesis of our being, in the form of an articulated belief, but it does not change our experience, which is more fundamental than the "explanation" and makes it possible in the first place.

This dualism, which shapes our thinking, is rooted in Descartes' ontological "body-soul" dualism. He introduced a sharp division between nature and humanity, the self and the world, when he claimed that the soul is a specific substance, while nature is another such substance. He called the soul "Res cogitans" and the outer world "Res extensa." This separation of substances is considered outdated. We have eventually overcome Descartes' dualism because there is only one substance, called matter. (It should be noted here that Descartes introduced a new understanding of substance, which, under the Aristotelian view, was something with a specific telos, that actualized and embodied something. This understanding was replaced with the belief that substance is something mechanical, inanimate, and meaningless. Descartes denied the meaningful aspect of matter and shifted it to the subject, so that the previous understanding, which had been the dominant perspective, changed entirely.)


Of course, the ontological category called the soul has been discarded. But our consideration would lack precision if we were to stop here and believe that we have overcome dualism. We are still fully embedded in it and are guided by it, perhaps without even noticing. Conceptually distinguishing between two different categories (soul-matter, subject-object, etc.) is merely a symptom of a deeper understanding, namely the experience of being a closed subject in contrast to a world full of objects. This sense of self and world is the condition that makes it possible to postulate two different ontological substances in the first place. To remove one ontological substance does not lead to true monism but only to a conceptual one. Our way of experiencing the self and the world is not thereby altered. And this way of experiencing the self and the world is the context, the framework, that determines our understanding of all other “things.” Thoughts become subjective copies that the subject generates within itself in order to imitate the external world. Knowledge becomes a depiction of the world's metamorphosis, which the subject forms into propositional systems, and then checks against the behavior of nature to assess its truth. Meaning becomes something that exists only within the subject; the external world, without the subject, would be a meaningless interaction of a cosmic and random machine. Creating worldviews becomes the only form of knowledge that is truly secure, when it is compared with the world. Nature becomes a mere tool that the subject can use for its purposes. What is truly essential and should be emphasized here, however, is the form of thinking that is so strongly shaped by this dualism, yes, dragged into its tracks.

Thinking, which is a faculty attributed solely to the subject, thinks about everything in the form of objects that it contemplates before its "mental point/eye." When it thinks about the world, it has compressed the world into point-like concepts that encompasses the objective world, which is separate and independent from it. It imagines the world as an object before its mind, free from any context, as the world appears in its experience. The concepts become abstract, removed from their true appearance, which confronts humans from their real, everyday perspective. They are abstracted and reified, contemplated before the "mental eye." To clarify this point, which is essential, we will discuss concepts in order to make the above-described form of thinking clearer. We will consider the concept of the world for this purpose. We ask the question: What is the world? A planet made of rock, earth, and various materials, on which we live and have created a certain structural system? We have given an answer, which we can now investigate in order to clarify how we thought. In the moment we reflect on the question, we create a separation. We enter contemplation and imagine the object in question. What kind of knowledge does this mode of thinking bring us?

We adopt a perspective that we can describe as the "perspective from outside." We interrupt our usual everyday state, in which we live our lives unreflectively, accomplishing tasks, making plans, pursuing our work and interests, and always living from the real perspective of our "ego". We separate from this, assume the form of an observer who imagines the world as an object (placing it before ourselves/ Vor-stellen) and contemplates it, torn from the context of its real appearance. When I am separated from the world, which exists independently of me, and try to understand it as a contemplative subject, my knowledge becomes a description. For I cannot question the object, connect with it, or adopt "its way of being," but can only attempt, from my separate perspective, to create an accurate description of the changes and behavior of the world, which will then lead me to infer how further developments proceed in a lawful manner. We are dealing here with models that the subject creates in order to gain an understanding of the objective world and manipulate it. This gives rise to another dualism, the dichotomy between our abstract models, which describe the world from an imaginary perspective only possible during philosophical reflection, and our experience as conscious beings in the world. Since we perceive ourselves as a closed subject, we take the abstract models and place them in the position of truth, while our experience in the world is viewed as an epiphenomenon of this modeled "reality," which remains inaccessible to us as subjects. The subject experiences a subjectively tinted image of this fundamental, objective reality, within the sphere ascribed to it. It is astonishing that the models created from experience are seen as objective truth, while the experience that is necessarily the condition for these models is considered secondary. Yet this is understandable when the subject is seen as separate and distinct from the world.

Here we are dealing with models that the subject creates in order to gain an understanding of the objective world and to be able to manipulate it. Another dualism emerges here, the dichotomy between our abstract models, which describe the world from an imaginary perspective that is only possible during philosophical reflection, and our experience as conscious beings in the world. Since we designate ourselves as a closed subject, we take the abstract models and place them in the position of truth, while our experience in the world is viewed as an epiphenomenon of this modeled “reality,” which remains inaccessible to us as subjects. The subject experiences a subjectively tinted image of this fundamental, objective reality, within the sphere ascribed to it. It is astonishing that the models, which are created from experience, are regarded as objective truth, while the experience, which is the necessary condition for these models, is considered secondary. Yet, this is understandable when the subject is seen as separate and distinct from the world.

Thus, the human being withdraws from the lived world and imagines it as an object in order to create a description of its properties and changes within itself. This is then called objective knowledge. However, the dualism between the I and the world precedes the articulation sought here and already determines what knowledge is from the very beginning. Our knowledge is therefore determined by this initial feeling, which is not a timeless fact but a self-feeling of the modern era. The goal of this short writing is not to refute this feeling or point out its flaws, for this is not a theory or an explanation, but a pre-rational feeling. However, it should be noted that this feeling was different in past eras, revealing a different understanding of the human being, the world, and knowledge. The old understanding of humanity, which is now considered unscientific, was based on a different “self and world” feeling, just as our current scientific models are based on this described feeling, which determines what knowledge, the human being, and the world are. A more detailed explanation would, however, exceed the scope entirely.

We have seen how this separation significantly influences the way we think. It is not that we are constantly bringing this separation into our consciousness or can always be aware of it. In everyday life, this separation is also present, though much weaker than in the academic pursuit of knowledge, where this separation shows its full impact. The questioner thinks about the world as a thing, objectifying everything, abstracting the contents of his experience from their context, and imagining them as objects before his perspective “From Nowhere.” He leaves behind his experience as a living being in the world, in which he lives in a world full of meaning and possibilities, where the world is the context of his life, providing him with opportunities and limiting him, and objectifies this in his pursuit of knowledge. He describes this objectified world and creates models of it, which are useful to him for manipulating it to fulfill his needs. These models are representations and reside in the subject. These models are used to “explain” everything, even the experience of the human being, which is actually the primal condition for the latter. Thinking is merely the copying ability of the subject and has no relevance or reality outside of it. The world is a meaningless machine, which can be exploited by the subject to fulfill its goals and desires. Morality is a subjective value system that has no reality in the world. The subject is separated and alienated, it is closed within itself, alone, and detached from everything. The only objective (in this sense valuable) thing is material, the good life is the accumulation of material possessions. The human being and his life are merely a product of a cosmic machine, which randomly brought forth the human, just as the kidneys produce urine.

Everyone has their own idea about the nature of the world. There are religious people who invoke God as the creator of the world, as well as atheists who deny this and see the world as a random product of a meaningless evolution. In philosophy, some thinkers postulate matter as the ontological primitive, others the spirit, and still others try to connect both. In physics, there are numerous interpretations of specific experiments and many different theories that are supposed to explain the great questions of the universe. In neuroscience and neurophilosophy, factions have formed; one claims that the brain produces consciousness, while the other claims that the brain is a receiver (like a radio, for example). Numerous debates are held discussing whether the world is “real” or whether we live in a dream or a matrix. Nothing seems certain. All we have are propositional thought systems that compete against each other in the public space and battle it out by trying to detect errors in the other system. Everything seems relative. Perhaps there is no truth, only truths that everyone must determine for themselves. The best thing still seems to be to mathematize the world and manipulate it; anything else makes no sense. “Shut up and calculate!” is the motto. The lost world without meaning and significance often causes nostalgia for times that were full of meaning, when humans were still embedded in a meaningful order, when there was a universal truth. The seeker is overwhelmed by the multitude of truths, which leads to everything remaining uncertain.

By chance, the main character of the dualistic revolution, Descartes, was an excellent skeptic. He even doubted the reality of the external world and found his point of foundation in “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am). He used methodical doubt to find a secure point that could not fall prey to doubt. We will attempt to shed some light on the darkness and strive to explore the cause of our current “uncertainty.” We have defined knowledge within the Cartesian paradigm, i.e., the subjective representation (depiction) of the independent and objective external world. We have seen that it describes and models the world, and now we will take one last look at the imitations of this way of thinking and explore the conditions for the epochal uncertainty.

When we observe the universe, we see that it is expanding. From this expansion, we infer that it had a tiny starting point. We observe a law-like dynamic behavior of the universe, which we have confronted and reflected upon. In this encounter (Be-gegnung), it behaves "as though" it had a small starting point and then expanded. We take the observation, tear it from its context, and search for a narrative that explains this observation. We detach it from the context by forgetting that this observation is an understandable phenomenon from the perspective of a human being, and we assume that the universe, which appears to us from our ego-perspective, also exists as it appears (whether in great detail or not is irrelevant here), without any perspective. Better said, we detach ourselves from the context. This assumption is unprovable because we can never speak of a world that does not appear from a perspective. It is a mere inference. But for now, let us not pay attention to this (though it is an important fact). What we have here again is an observation of objective reality, which does not reveal its secret (which appears to us). We find ourselves compelled to form a subjective proposition and then explain it through further propositions. Thus, it seems logical to postulate a tiny starting point in order to place the phenomenon in an explanatory context. However, we cannot travel back to the time of the Big Bang, situate ourselves outside of the universe, and observe a (presumed) process that spans billions of years to attain certainty. We can only say that things behave as though it had been this way. We have created a narrative in the subject, which has arisen by tearing certain “things” from the context of their appearance, creating a mental representation of them in the form of propositions, and then explaining them through logical possibilities. What we are dealing with here is a mental conviction in the subject, if we honestly keep to the facts. It would be true to say: “The universe behaves as if it originated from a tiny primordial mass, which has since expanded.” Now we can conduct further experiments, make more observations, and create models. If these behave as though our theory is correct, we can maintain it. However, even if further observations behave as though our theory were correct, it remains a subjective conviction, a thought system within the subject, which attempts to represent objective reality. We are by no means dealing with firm knowledge. But what if the universe, as it appears to humans, would not be as it is in its appearance without them? What if we live in a matrix? Even if everything seems to suggest that our theory offers a reasonable explanation, must we discard it if it turns out that one of these two questions is true? Can we truly rule out these doubts?

The goal is not to escape into pathological doubt through these questions. They are merely used to demonstrate the uncertainty of the methodology being employed. Even though it seems that perceptions of nature can be explained through certain subjective narratives, the nature of the narratives is always subjective, something that belongs to the subject, and they can never exclude questions of doubt or guarantee absolute certainty. What if there is a completely unknown reason for the expansion of the universe that remains entirely hidden from us? Science and its methods are capable of mathematizing nature, creating a model of it, describing it, and manipulating it through those models, even producing technology, but their ability ends there. They are strongly limited in this regard. They cannot answer (at least not with certainty) how the universe came to be, why the universe exists, what humans are, what the nature of the “material world” is... These questions elude modeling and description, questions that go beyond what is revealed, as the methodology of thinking described here can only deal with the revealed world by modeling and manipulating it. However, when these questions exceed its capacity for understanding, the very methodology of science becomes its limit. The uncertainty discussed here is possible because of the conditions of the assumed methodology (of thinking/knowledge-seeking).

What remains to be discussed is the condition for this epistemological uncertainty. It has been shown how our quest for knowledge takes shape. Here, the reason for the discussed uncertainty can be identified. The subject is separate from the world, and even though we say that it shares the same substance as the objective world, it is fundamentally different from it. The belief that the world is a material machine also suggests that it is unconscious, meaningless, and not thinking. The subject, on the other hand, is feeling, thinking, intentional, and conscious. Even if, according to modern belief, it emerged from a material substrate, it is essentially different from the world. It possesses entirely different properties and characteristics. The subject is closed in on itself, it is enclosed. It is the subject that seeks to understand the object; the object asks no questions and has no will. Subject and object do not overlap; there is no point of contact. The subject perceives the object and forms representations, but they do not “meet.” Since the subject is embedded in a particular domain and has no contact with the objective world except by creating representations of it, it can never find anything essential about nature (the objective world) within itself, since this resides on the “other side” of existence (in the objective). It can only form an image, but the image is not the essence that the subject is seeking; it is only an image. The subject would need to find something within itself that is also found in the world and constitutes it in order to speak with certainty about the essence of the world (with “essence” referring to the essential nature of nature, that which constitutes its condition for existence, for generation, and can answer the “what” questions). However, in this case, the subject would no longer be a subject in the classical sense; it would be connected with the world, there would be a reunion of subject and world. Since this (according to current understanding) is not the case, and the subject has no real connection to the world, it can only create a virtual one by describing and modeling it internally. It now has a subjective image of the laws of the world and can exert a certain influence on it. Nevertheless, it remains trapped within itself and can gain no other knowledge than in the form of propositional systems. This is the only form of knowledge that is fundamentally available to the subject under the treated understanding; thus, there will never be certain knowledge, only increasingly better mental thought systems that more faithfully represent the transformation of the world. It will never be able to answer the questions about the essential nature of things; it cannot answer what humans are, it can only provide a description of the human body but loses the essence of the human: thinking, feeling, and willing, conscious experience. What the human is, what constitutes their essence, what their role in the world is — these questions will never be answered, and for some people, they are even regarded as irrelevant, although these questions burn in the souls of many. Yet, these questions are relegated to the realm of speculation, while the descriptions of nature and the invention of explanatory narratives are pushed into the category of “hard” science. This is understandable, for our methodology of thought can accomplish no more than to answer these questions through speculation; this is its limitation.

The isolated and torn-from-the-world subject, which is fundamentally different from the world it encounters, can only make a copy of the appearing world but cannot recognize anything certain about its essence. This leads to doubt and uncertainty, which is nurtured by this methodology of thinking. Although this may sound pessimistic, this realization is a step forward; it enables us to understand what knowledge is under this conception, how this conception determines and limits knowledge. We now have the opportunity to seek, to search for another form of knowledge. Those who mock such a statement do so for ideological and dogmatic reasons, for as has been shown, the methodology of modern knowledge does not rest on “hard” facts and does not allow for certain knowledge. Most often, it is narratives and beliefs that are sold as facts. In order to fulfill our quest for knowledge, we should ask ourselves whether we might find something within us that also belongs to nature, after all, we somehow belong to it, even though we feel so alienated from it. If we were to find such a thing, this would be the possibility of attaining true knowledge of the world through self-knowledge. What would happen if we could make our unconscious assumptions and thought patterns conscious and free ourselves from their grasp? Would we not be able to redefine knowledge?

Many questions arise, but they cannot be answered here. However, these questions will become central themes of future investigations. Attempts will be made to find a new understanding, a new way of thinking, that grants us certainty and knowledge. New currents of thought have emerged that seek to overcome this limitation, such as those of Heidegger, Deleuze, and Rudolf Steiner. These will be addressed in other writings.

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 12:59 pm This essay addresses the unconscious dimension of modern self-perception and its impact on all our quest for knowledge. It aims to present the mode of thinking that leads to the worldviews we are familiar with today and analyze these, rather than focusing on the content of specific worldviews. It has become somewhat circular, and many ideas and intuitions I couldn’t put into writing, but I believe it can serve as a good starting point for the topic of a potentially new way of thinking.

Thanks for sharing this essay, Guney! I really like your approach here - to adopt the common perspective on 'knowledge' and reveal the nihilistic direction in which it must necessarily lead. Indeed it is very important for modern souls to thoroughly make this confession about their current knowing perspective, and everything they imagine they already know. We should start to feel like we are trapped in a tissue of our own mental pictures and how they click together between themselves, from that perspective. That is why I also appreciate thinkers like Felipe who have taken the modern perspective to its logical solipsistic conclusion (although he keeps the problematic 'remainder'). The problem, of course, is that this is naturally treated as an ending point of philosophy/science because no alternative possibility of conducting our knowing activity can be imagined, as you pointed out. Yet if we invert our perspective and begin treating it as a starting point from which our true participatory knowing efforts can begin, then it is redeemed as a very useful foundation for attaining spiritual sight.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 2:47 pm

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 12:59 pm This essay addresses the unconscious dimension of modern self-perception and its impact on all our quest for knowledge. It aims to present the mode of thinking that leads to the worldviews we are familiar with today and analyze these, rather than focusing on the content of specific worldviews. It has become somewhat circular, and many ideas and intuitions I couldn’t put into writing, but I believe it can serve as a good starting point for the topic of a potentially new way of thinking.

Thanks for sharing this essay, Guney! I really like your approach here - to adopt the common perspective on 'knowledge' and reveal the nihilistic direction in which it must necessarily lead. Indeed it is very important for modern souls to thoroughly make this confession about their current knowing perspective, and everything they imagine they already know. We should start to feel like we are trapped in a tissue of our own mental pictures and how they click together between themselves, from that perspective. That is why I also appreciate thinkers like Felipe who have taken the modern perspective to its logical solipsistic conclusion (although he keeps the problematic 'remainder'). The problem, of course, is that this is naturally treated as an ending point of philosophy/science because no alternative possibility of conducting our knowing activity can be imagined, as you pointed out. Yet if we invert our perspective and begin treating it as a starting point from which our true participatory knowing efforts can begin, then it is redeemed as a very useful foundation for attaining spiritual sight.

Thank you Ashvin! That’s true. Once we become aware of our habitual unconscious thinking, we can choose between staying silent, or to seek deeper ways of knowledge, and hopefully find the deeper layers of knowledge, that are necessarily there, but in the blind stop. That’s why I’m fascinated with Heidegger. He really seems to have reached intuitive thinking. Henri Bergson whom you mentioned very often seems to approach the same direction, firstly they try to deconstruct our “knowledge”, and then try to articulate a new way of knowing. I’ll read “matter and memory” next. Deleuze has written a book about him too which is articulated very well. The newest philosophy seems to approach the threshold in some way, they start to instinctively reach new ways of thinking (intuitive thinking). Somehow it seems to be evolution tasking it’s course trough these thinkers. We will we what the future role of the philosopher will be. Felipe seems to stop with Kant. But there is really philosophy which is gone further.

But I found clerics thought the most important. His essays and correspondence here were really eye opening for me. It helped me even to understand other philosophers more clearly. For example the intuitive context Clerics mentioned is designated by Heidegger with the term Being. This post http://metakastrup.org/viewtopic.php?p=13631#p13631 really opened a new way of thought, more freedom in thinking for me. This thinking here is what Heidegger instinctively does. Poetic thought is equivalent to intuitive thinking (I don’t think it is equivalent to imaginative cognition, this was discussed by JW and you on the old thread). Thinking is really the place where critical (not in a bad sense) changes happen.

Ps. There is a book on German which compares Rudolf Steiners work with that of Husserl, Brentano, Derrida and Heidegger which is very illuminating but not that deep (the reason is it only has 230 pages, for a deeper reflection of all these works a book must have more than 1000 pages). I do t know if they have translated it in English. The author is called Otto Jachmann.

Do you have read matter and memory by Bergson?If yes I would be interested in discussing his ideas with you(:

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 3:53 pm Thank you Ashvin! That’s true. Once we become aware of our habitual unconscious thinking, we can choose between staying silent, or to seek deeper ways of knowledge, and hopefully find the deeper layers of knowledge, that are necessarily there, but in the blind stop. That’s why I’m fascinated with Heidegger. He really seems to have reached intuitive thinking. Henri Bergson whom you mentioned very often seems to approach the same direction, firstly they try to deconstruct our “knowledge”, and then try to articulate a new way of knowing. I’ll read “matter and memory” next. Deleuze has written a book about him too which is articulated very well. The newest philosophy seems to approach the threshold in some way, they start to instinctively reach new ways of thinking (intuitive thinking). Somehow it seems to be evolution tasking it’s course trough these thinkers. We will we what the future role of the philosopher will be. Felipe seems to stop with Kant. But there is really philosophy which is gone further.

In a certain sense, none of these philosophers have truly gone further than Kant, since they all fail to suspect that the real-time thinking activity which intuits the deeper meaning and artistically renders that meaning in conceptual form can itself be investigated. I can certainly appreciate that Heidegger and the postmodern philosophers like Deleuze, Derrida, etc. have reached deep intuitive connections that we also find in spiritual science, but we should also notice how, at the end of the day, for the former it remains a tapestry of mental pictures projected on the 'personal soul wall'. In other words, the underlying cognitive experience of the subject-world duality has not shifted too much, although there is a bit more leeway between the higher Spirit and its intellectual mask, such that more insightful mental pictures occasionally precipitate. I quoted one such insight from Deleuze in the last essay (added later so it may have been missed) - "The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities."

Instead of thinking of it as a linear philosophical progression, a helpful image is that certain individualities in the flow of history establish an ideal sphere or arena which overarches at least a few centuries (or longer) of thinking development, and then other individualities work out various extensions, elaborations, refinements, etc. within that arena (this is also related to the TC spectrum). Kant was one such individuality and I would say the postmodern philosophers are still working within his ideal arena with their philosophical frameworks, certainly pushing up against its boundaries and challenging those boundaries. Yet Steiner was the only one to establish a new idea arena which expanded the boundaries of Kant's arena, such that our spiritual activity can consciously flow within the ideal curvatures that shape the philosophical mental pictures - or as Cleric put it, "the fully conscious spiritual activity which learns to focus the meaningful light of the formless into forms", and hopefully soon we will have more and more philosophers, scientists, artists, etc. working within that arena (we have already had some, like Ben-Aharon and Hicks, for example).

But I found clerics thought the most important. His essays and correspondence here were really eye opening for me. It helped me even to understand other philosophers more clearly. For example the intuitive context Clerics mentioned is designated by Heidegger with the term Being. This post http://metakastrup.org/viewtopic.php?p=13631#p13631 really opened a new way of thought, more freedom in thinking for me. This thinking here is what Heidegger instinctively does. Poetic thought is equivalent to intuitive thinking (I don’t think it is equivalent to imaginative cognition, this was discussed by JW and you on the old thread). Thinking is really the place where critical (not in a bad sense) changes happen.

Ps. There is a book on German which compares Rudolf Steiners work with that of Husserl, Brentano, Derrida and Heidegger which is very illuminating but not that deep (the reason is it only has 230 pages, for a deeper reflection of all these works a book must have more than 1000 pages). I do t know if they have translated it in English. The author is called Otto Jachmann.

Do you have read matter and memory by Bergson?If yes I would be interested in discussing his ideas with you(:

Indeed, Cleric's essays and posts are greatly elaborating and refining within Steiner's arena! We can do no better than to continually revisit such posts as we progress in our intuitive development. The images, illustrations, etc. will gain more and more life in our thinking as we do so and we will thereby discover new degrees of freedom.

I have not read that Bergson book, but I am sure I could still discuss the ideas with you. I started reading Hicks' book, by the way. I have to say that I am ambivalent about it, similar to Ben-Aharon's books. I think they both too liberally adopt the rather indulgent writing style of postmodern philosophy, which makes it harder to focus on the core issues they are speaking to. Many paragraphs seem like he is simply repeating the same thought in each sentence with different words. In any case, there are certainly many valuable quotations of Steiner and postmodern philosophers and I think he introduces some helpful metaphors and illustrations as well. I will try to continue with it later.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:44 pm

Güney27 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 3:53 pm Thank you Ashvin! That’s true. Once we become aware of our habitual unconscious thinking, we can choose between staying silent, or to seek deeper ways of knowledge, and hopefully find the deeper layers of knowledge, that are necessarily there, but in the blind stop. That’s why I’m fascinated with Heidegger. He really seems to have reached intuitive thinking. Henri Bergson whom you mentioned very often seems to approach the same direction, firstly they try to deconstruct our “knowledge”, and then try to articulate a new way of knowing. I’ll read “matter and memory” next. Deleuze has written a book about him too which is articulated very well. The newest philosophy seems to approach the threshold in some way, they start to instinctively reach new ways of thinking (intuitive thinking). Somehow it seems to be evolution tasking it’s course trough these thinkers. We will we what the future role of the philosopher will be. Felipe seems to stop with Kant. But there is really philosophy which is gone further.

In a certain sense, none of these philosophers have truly gone further than Kant, since they all fail to suspect that the real-time thinking activity which intuits the deeper meaning and artistically renders that meaning in conceptual form can itself be investigated. I can certainly appreciate that Heidegger and the postmodern philosophers like Deleuze, Derrida, etc. have reached deep intuitive connections that we also find in spiritual science, but we should also notice how, at the end of the day, for the former it remains a tapestry of mental pictures projected on the 'personal soul wall'. In other words, the underlying cognitive experience of the subject-world duality has not shifted too much, although there is a bit more leeway between the higher Spirit and its intellectual mask, such that more insightful mental pictures occasionally precipitate. I quoted one such insight from Deleuze in the last essay (added later so it may have been missed) - "The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities."

Instead of thinking of it as a linear philosophical progression, a helpful image is that certain individualities in the flow of history establish an ideal sphere or arena which overarches at least a few centuries (or longer) of thinking development, and then other individualities work out various extensions, elaborations, refinements, etc. within that arena (this is also related to the TC spectrum). Kant was one such individuality and I would say the postmodern philosophers are still working within his ideal arena with their philosophical frameworks, certainly pushing up against its boundaries and challenging those boundaries. Yet Steiner was the only one to establish a new idea arena which expanded the boundaries of Kant's arena, such that our spiritual activity can consciously flow within the ideal curvatures that shape the philosophical mental pictures - or as Cleric put it, "the fully conscious spiritual activity which learns to focus the meaningful light of the formless into forms", and hopefully soon we will have more and more philosophers, scientists, artists, etc. working within that arena (we have already had some, like Ben-Aharon and Hicks, for example).

But I found clerics thought the most important. His essays and correspondence here were really eye opening for me. It helped me even to understand other philosophers more clearly. For example the intuitive context Clerics mentioned is designated by Heidegger with the term Being. This post http://metakastrup.org/viewtopic.php?p=13631#p13631 really opened a new way of thought, more freedom in thinking for me. This thinking here is what Heidegger instinctively does. Poetic thought is equivalent to intuitive thinking (I don’t think it is equivalent to imaginative cognition, this was discussed by JW and you on the old thread). Thinking is really the place where critical (not in a bad sense) changes happen.

Ps. There is a book on German which compares Rudolf Steiners work with that of Husserl, Brentano, Derrida and Heidegger which is very illuminating but not that deep (the reason is it only has 230 pages, for a deeper reflection of all these works a book must have more than 1000 pages). I do t know if they have translated it in English. The author is called Otto Jachmann.

Do you have read matter and memory by Bergson?If yes I would be interested in discussing his ideas with you(:

Indeed, Cleric's essays and posts are greatly elaborating and refining within Steiner's arena! We can do no better than to continually revisit such posts as we progress in our intuitive development. The images, illustrations, etc. will gain more and more life in our thinking as we do so and we will thereby discover new degrees of freedom.

I have not read that Bergson book, but I am sure I could still discuss the ideas with you. I started reading Hicks' book, by the way. I have to say that I am ambivalent about it, similar to Ben-Aharon's books. I think they both too liberally adopt the rather indulgent writing style of postmodern philosophy, which makes it harder to focus on the core issues they are speaking to. Many paragraphs seem like he is simply repeating the same thought in each sentence with different words. In any case, there are certainly many valuable quotations of Steiner and postmodern philosophers and I think he introduces some helpful metaphors and illustrations as well. I will try to continue with it later.

I wouldn’t necessarily conclude that. Deleuze for example highlights his thinking experience. Bergson seems to use intuitive thought as a method. Heidegger too, in his later work he often use a meditative thinking method. It’s true however, that non of them really (maybe deleuze had) touched the heart of all philosophy intensively, I.e our thinking activity.

However there are philosophers who touched it after Steiner, for example Herbert witzenmann. He takes Steiners philosophy and builds his own approach. Our local university has his books in the library, so I’ll dive deeper into his thought too.

Did you read Kants critique of pure reason ?

Güney27 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:14 am I wouldn’t necessarily conclude that. Deleuze for example highlights his thinking experience. Bergson seems to use intuitive thought as a method. Heidegger too, in his later work he often use a meditative thinking method. It’s true however, that non of them really (maybe deleuze had) touched the heart of all philosophy intensively, I.e our thinking activity.

However there are philosophers who touched it after Steiner, for example Herbert witzenmann. He takes Steiners philosophy and builds his own approach. Our local university has his books in the library, so I’ll dive deeper into his thought too.

Did you read Kants critique of pure reason ?

Yes, the bold is what I mean. Their philosophical systems invariably end up searching for the 'reality' of thinking within their mental pictures about thinking, intuition, etc., rather than using philosophical-scientific concepts as a means of self-consciously experiencing real-time thinking as it unfolds into those concepts. This is the threshold of the soul world which continually repels our merely philosophical efforts to understand real-time thinking activity.

Interestingly, Bergson was one of the contemporary phenomenological philosophers who Steiner actually commented on. For example:


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA073/En ... 08p01.html

I thus call ‘will’ a very real experience and have merely shown that something we know at the most common, everyday level can only be grasped if we use meditative thinking to go down into the world from which usually only dreams, which are remote from us, arise. Here a natural scientific method has merely been transferred to the spiritual sphere, but it does need to be understood in a different way from a mere fact perceptible to the senses. Bergson’s elan vital is mere fantasy, mere abstraction. Taking the sequence of phenomena, thinking is applied to what is happening. We do, of course, have many reasons to think our way into what is happening, but that is not the way of a true science of the spirit. That way is one where facts, even if only spiritual facts, everywhere point to where we can find something, where something lies. It is not a matter of taking hypotheses, things one has merely thought up, into the world of phenomena.

Bergson’s intuition is essentially nothing but a special case of the way which I have firmly rejected today as not being fruitful in spiritual scientific terms. I characterized how the spiritual investigator will know the mystic way, and have the mystic experience, but will show that the mystic way cannot guide him to true insight. Bergson only uses thinking, on the one hand, though it is evident that this does not penetrate to true reality. He gives an extensive description, characterizing it in every respect. He then abandons this thinking. In the science of the spirit we do not abandon this thinking but experience, in all intensity, an abyss into which this thinking appears to lead. We do not deny this thinking, which is what Bergson ultimately does, but look for another way. This is the way of getting out of the abyss which I have characterized, the way to rise again in a spiritual, a supersensible reality. Bergson simply says that thinking does not take us to the reality. He therefore continues his search by pursuing a special mystic way through inward experience.

The intuition at which Bergson arrives essentially does not lead to anything which is real. Today I have only been able to characterize the way of spiritual science. In the next three lectures I am going to characterize definite results, specific results that one gets, results that serve life and the whole of our humanity. Bergson keeps revolving around this: We cannot think, we must grasp the world inwardly. He keeps referring to intuition. But nothing enters into this intuition; it remains an indefinite, darkly mystical experience.

Many people are comfortable with this today, for it means they do not have to undergo what I said was exactly what is demanded for the science of the spirit—a truly radical change of mind, where one does not just want to indulge oneself mystically, but seeks to penetrate in all seriousness into everything of which people are afraid in their minds, because of certain premises, and in which they are not interested, which is all subconscious. Essentially Bergson does not even overcome his lack of interest but actually encourages it. Nor does he let go of his fear. For these intuitions do not lead to real understanding of the spiritual world; they do not go beyond an inward experience.

Now Bergson continued to develop his approach after Steiner departed, so perhaps the latter would have given him credit for making some progress beyond an 'indefinite, darkly mystical experience' of intuitive thinking, but I think the above can stand in as a general critique for other postmodern philosophers as well. We have illustrated this tendency to 'abandon thinking' with the oscillating hysteresis, the magnetic pendulum that keeps bouncing around, etc. I think we should be clear that even the seemingly most 'advanced' philosophical thinkers of the 20th century remained at this stage, which is basically where Kant ended up and concluded that, because he could not penetrate further into the 'things-themselves' (the true life of thinking), it must be impossible.

I have skimmed parts of CPR. After discussing for awhile with Felipe, I feel like I have encountered the most essential quotes

AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 1:30 pm

Güney27 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:14 am I wouldn’t necessarily conclude that. Deleuze for example highlights his thinking experience. Bergson seems to use intuitive thought as a method. Heidegger too, in his later work he often use a meditative thinking method. It’s true however, that non of them really (maybe deleuze had) touched the heart of all philosophy intensively, I.e our thinking activity.

However there are philosophers who touched it after Steiner, for example Herbert witzenmann. He takes Steiners philosophy and builds his own approach. Our local university has his books in the library, so I’ll dive deeper into his thought too.

Did you read Kants critique of pure reason ?

Yes, the bold is what I mean. Their philosophical systems invariably end up searching for the 'reality' of thinking within their mental pictures about thinking, intuition, etc., rather than using philosophical-scientific concepts as a means of self-consciously experiencing real-time thinking as it unfolds into those concepts. This is the threshold of the soul world which continually repels our merely philosophical efforts to understand real-time thinking activity.

Interestingly, Bergson was one of the contemporary phenomenological philosophers who Steiner actually commented on. For example:


https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA073/En ... 08p01.html

I thus call ‘will’ a very real experience and have merely shown that something we know at the most common, everyday level can only be grasped if we use meditative thinking to go down into the world from which usually only dreams, which are remote from us, arise. Here a natural scientific method has merely been transferred to the spiritual sphere, but it does need to be understood in a different way from a mere fact perceptible to the senses. Bergson’s elan vital is mere fantasy, mere abstraction. Taking the sequence of phenomena, thinking is applied to what is happening. We do, of course, have many reasons to think our way into what is happening, but that is not the way of a true science of the spirit. That way is one where facts, even if only spiritual facts, everywhere point to where we can find something, where something lies. It is not a matter of taking hypotheses, things one has merely thought up, into the world of phenomena.

Bergson’s intuition is essentially nothing but a special case of the way which I have firmly rejected today as not being fruitful in spiritual scientific terms. I characterized how the spiritual investigator will know the mystic way, and have the mystic experience, but will show that the mystic way cannot guide him to true insight. Bergson only uses thinking, on the one hand, though it is evident that this does not penetrate to true reality. He gives an extensive description, characterizing it in every respect. He then abandons this thinking. In the science of the spirit we do not abandon this thinking but experience, in all intensity, an abyss into which this thinking appears to lead. We do not deny this thinking, which is what Bergson ultimately does, but look for another way. This is the way of getting out of the abyss which I have characterized, the way to rise again in a spiritual, a supersensible reality. Bergson simply says that thinking does not take us to the reality. He therefore continues his search by pursuing a special mystic way through inward experience.

The intuition at which Bergson arrives essentially does not lead to anything which is real. Today I have only been able to characterize the way of spiritual science. In the next three lectures I am going to characterize definite results, specific results that one gets, results that serve life and the whole of our humanity. Bergson keeps revolving around this: We cannot think, we must grasp the world inwardly. He keeps referring to intuition. But nothing enters into this intuition; it remains an indefinite, darkly mystical experience.

Many people are comfortable with this today, for it means they do not have to undergo what I said was exactly what is demanded for the science of the spirit—a truly radical change of mind, where one does not just want to indulge oneself mystically, but seeks to penetrate in all seriousness into everything of which people are afraid in their minds, because of certain premises, and in which they are not interested, which is all subconscious. Essentially Bergson does not even overcome his lack of interest but actually encourages it. Nor does he let go of his fear. For these intuitions do not lead to real understanding of the spiritual world; they do not go beyond an inward experience.

Now Bergson continued to develop his approach after Steiner departed, so perhaps the latter would have given him credit for making some progress beyond an 'indefinite, darkly mystical experience' of intuitive thinking, but I think the above can stand in as a general critique for other postmodern philosophers as well. We have illustrated this tendency to 'abandon thinking' with the oscillating hysteresis, the magnetic pendulum that keeps bouncing around, etc. I think we should be clear that even the seemingly most 'advanced' philosophical thinkers of the 20th century remained at this stage, which is basically where Kant ended up and concluded that, because he could not penetrate further into the 'things-themselves' (the true life of thinking), it must be impossible.

I have skimmed parts of CPR. After discussing for awhile with Felipe, I feel like I have encountered the most essential quotes

I don’t know if we should take Steiner criticism, that doesn’t go into details as a fundamental answer. I’m reading the first pages of MaM and I find it very enlightening. Of course Bergson didn’t become an initiate, but we can learn also much from his intuitions and use his metaphors. In GA 3 Steiner uses a critical method to find a suitable foundation point. Philosophy nowadays uses a metacritical approach, I.e they critically analyze the critical approach. Instead of finding a foundational point, we should focus on our agency as embedded in a world, which must precede any reflection (for example the epistemological reflection of the given ). If that’s true Steiners work would be interesting at best. But Steiners point isn’t so much a starting point in the sense of other philosophers (like Descartes for example), he tries to show that every proposition about anything (and every philosopher and scientist must work with propositions about something) forgets that the proposition is born out of our thinking activity. So there is something unique in Steiners philosophy because he is not focused on the „what“ but on the „How“. So it seems that besides deleuze he is the only one (I can’t say for sure, because I’m reading deleuze since a couple weeks and he is insanely difficult, I find him more difficult to understand than Heidegger, so I can misunderstand him) to tackle the activity which makes philosophy possible in the first place.

It’s true that Bergson didn’t tackle this point, but he tries to find a point of the given in MaM from where it seems he starts his investigation bu I’ll see. The thing with philosophy is that seems that everyone can disagree with everything said, Heidegger disagrees with husserl and the other way around, both are very intelligent and educated. Philosophers can now decide who they find more attractive in terms of their argument and start debates which are word games most of the time. The thing nobody can disagree with is that thinking is presupposed in every proposition, one can only disagree with explanations of what thinking fundamentally is. So why not study thinking directly instead of thinking unconsciously about different topics? That’s my thought on this issue.

Can you explain more about the arena of Kant, since I have very basic knowledge about his position (analysis of the limitation of reason/ Representational thinking) and how you think that Steiner opens up a new arena which isn’t recognized in academic philosophy of today?

Güney27 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 12:38 pm I don’t know if we should take Steiner criticism, that doesn’t go into details as a fundamental answer. I’m reading the first pages of MaM and I find it very enlightening. Of course Bergson didn’t become an initiate, but we can learn also much from his intuitions and use his metaphors. In GA 3 Steiner uses a critical method to find a suitable foundation point. Philosophy nowadays uses a metacritical approach, I.e they critically analyze the critical approach. Instead of finding a foundational point, we should focus on our agency as embedded in a world, which must precede any reflection (for example the epistemological reflection of the given ). If that’s true Steiners work would be interesting at best. But Steiners point isn’t so much a starting point in the sense of other philosophers (like Descartes for example), he tries to show that every proposition about anything (and every philosopher and scientist must work with propositions about something) forgets that the proposition is born out of our thinking activity. So there is something unique in Steiners philosophy because he is not focused on the „what“ but on the „How“. So it seems that besides deleuze he is the only one (I can’t say for sure, because I’m reading deleuze since a couple weeks and he is insanely difficult, I find him more difficult to understand than Heidegger, so I can misunderstand him) to tackle the activity which makes philosophy possible in the first place.

It’s true that Bergson didn’t tackle this point, but he tries to find a point of the given in MaM from where it seems he starts his investigation bu I’ll see. The thing with philosophy is that seems that everyone can disagree with everything said, Heidegger disagrees with husserl and the other way around, both are very intelligent and educated. Philosophers can now decide who they find more attractive in terms of their argument and start debates which are word games most of the time. The thing nobody can disagree with is that thinking is presupposed in every proposition, one can only disagree with explanations of what thinking fundamentally is. So why not study thinking directly instead of thinking unconsciously about different topics? That’s my thought on this issue.

Can you explain more about the arena of Kant, since I have very basic knowledge about his position (analysis of the limitation of reason/ Representational thinking) and how you think that Steiner opens up a new arena which isn’t recognized in academic philosophy of today?

I think we can simplify things a bit. We can consider that Cleric's essays, for example, are within Steiner's arena and are only possible because of what he pointed to in that quote, i.e. a method that "does not abandon this thinking but experience, in all intensity, an abyss into which this thinking appears to lead." I have also been pointing to that abyss in the recent essays, for example:

To help avoid the habit of seeking this inner process in the same way we seek other encompassed perceptions, it is important to get a feel for how elusive it is. We know how it feels to simulate speech and actions in our mental pictures, to rehearse the words we want to speak with our inner voice or the physical movements in our imagination before deciding whether to speak or act them out. But what should we do if we want to ‘rehearse’ the inner voice itself, i.e. to think before we think? In that case, we may try to cheat by thinking in a soft whispering inner voice and, after we approve our words, to repeat them in our mind with a louder voice. The problem, however, remains exactly the same, we have only shifted it a little – our softer inner voice still manifests as something that we hear for the first time at the moment of thinking. These words are only the final testimonies of a deeper inner process which, however, unfolds imperceptibly across the ‘event horizon’ of our simulation space.

Can we imagine Bergson, Heidegger, et al. writing something like the inner space stretching essays? If not, why not? There is clearly a different feel to such essays than Bergson's writings even though the words and concepts may not be any more unique than those employed by Deleuze and others. That different feel comes from the fact that the concepts are direct testimonies for consciously discerned inner experiences, the illustrations and reasoning are ways of living into those inner experiences. The writing does not reflect nebulous intuitions about 'how reality works', but tries to anchor our experience of the unfolding reality in the only place where it is to be found as intuitive experience, i.e. our real-time spiritual activity.

Over time it becomes easier to sense what philosophically minded people are working within this sort of arena (not necessarily initiates) and who is still working with nebulous intuitions about thinking, memory, intuition, etc. The former generally gravitate toward phenomenological explorations of spiritual activity - they start discussing the elusive horizon of that activity, the condensation of perceptible experience, the imaginative hysteresis rhythm, the contextual architecture of spiritual experience, the soul constellation, sympathies and antipathies, and so on. Of course, not in a theoretical way through elaborate systems and models, but with concrete illustrations and examples. They invite us to participate in the exploration and to freely confirm the inner realities as they manifest in our own stream of experience (which is naturally distasteful for many people, especially when exploring the soul spectrum) .

None of that is to say we can't gain enormous value from engaging with other philosophical works from a living (symbolically recursive) perspective, because, after all, they were also born of spiritual activity exploring its contextual depths even if only instinctively. And they were all led my specific karma into this area of work and into particular methods of approach. I clearly do a lot of that engagement in my own spiritual pursuits. We should only try to remain as clear as possible where the distinctions reside because these distinctions are the flesh of our real-time evolutionary story, the story that we are living through in the here and now. We are all trying to discover that elusive horizon where philosophy becomes art and science, and a method of deeply moral transformation. In any case, I am interested to hear more about MaM and how you interact with the ideas presented.

Kant's arena is simply everything 'below' the elusive horizon of real-time spiritual activity - he thought through every possible way of philosophically-scientifically understanding reality (empiricism, rationalism, realism, etc.) and critiqued how they all run into obstacles and remained trapped within the 'a priori categories of understanding'. They say Kant ushered in the 'Copernican revolution' of philosophy, since he made the human intellectual ego (analogous to the Sun, in his view) the center of all perceptible experience, the ultimate source of all lawful dynamics of experience. And even though many philosophers after him have challenged and questioned that, pointing out its flaws, none save Steiner (and those working within his arena) were able to bring the intellectual ego to a lucid and systematic experience of its higher Logos nature.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 2:27 pm

Güney27 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 12:38 pm I don’t know if we should take Steiner criticism, that doesn’t go into details as a fundamental answer. I’m reading the first pages of MaM and I find it very enlightening. Of course Bergson didn’t become an initiate, but we can learn also much from his intuitions and use his metaphors. In GA 3 Steiner uses a critical method to find a suitable foundation point. Philosophy nowadays uses a metacritical approach, I.e they critically analyze the critical approach. Instead of finding a foundational point, we should focus on our agency as embedded in a world, which must precede any reflection (for example the epistemological reflection of the given ). If that’s true Steiners work would be interesting at best. But Steiners point isn’t so much a starting point in the sense of other philosophers (like Descartes for example), he tries to show that every proposition about anything (and every philosopher and scientist must work with propositions about something) forgets that the proposition is born out of our thinking activity. So there is something unique in Steiners philosophy because he is not focused on the „what“ but on the „How“. So it seems that besides deleuze he is the only one (I can’t say for sure, because I’m reading deleuze since a couple weeks and he is insanely difficult, I find him more difficult to understand than Heidegger, so I can misunderstand him) to tackle the activity which makes philosophy possible in the first place.

It’s true that Bergson didn’t tackle this point, but he tries to find a point of the given in MaM from where it seems he starts his investigation bu I’ll see. The thing with philosophy is that seems that everyone can disagree with everything said, Heidegger disagrees with husserl and the other way around, both are very intelligent and educated. Philosophers can now decide who they find more attractive in terms of their argument and start debates which are word games most of the time. The thing nobody can disagree with is that thinking is presupposed in every proposition, one can only disagree with explanations of what thinking fundamentally is. So why not study thinking directly instead of thinking unconsciously about different topics? That’s my thought on this issue.

Can you explain more about the arena of Kant, since I have very basic knowledge about his position (analysis of the limitation of reason/ Representational thinking) and how you think that Steiner opens up a new arena which isn’t recognized in academic philosophy of today?

I think we can simplify things a bit. We can consider that Cleric's essays, for example, are within Steiner's arena and are only possible because of what he pointed to in that quote, i.e. a method that "does not abandon this thinking but experience, in all intensity, an abyss into which this thinking appears to lead." I have also been pointing to that abyss in the recent essays, for example:

To help avoid the habit of seeking this inner process in the same way we seek other encompassed perceptions, it is important to get a feel for how elusive it is. We know how it feels to simulate speech and actions in our mental pictures, to rehearse the words we want to speak with our inner voice or the physical movements in our imagination before deciding whether to speak or act them out. But what should we do if we want to ‘rehearse’ the inner voice itself, i.e. to think before we think? In that case, we may try to cheat by thinking in a soft whispering inner voice and, after we approve our words, to repeat them in our mind with a louder voice. The problem, however, remains exactly the same, we have only shifted it a little – our softer inner voice still manifests as something that we hear for the first time at the moment of thinking. These words are only the final testimonies of a deeper inner process which, however, unfolds imperceptibly across the ‘event horizon’ of our simulation space.

Can we imagine Bergson, Heidegger, et al. writing something like the inner space stretching essays? If not, why not? There is clearly a different feel to such essays than Bergson's writings even though the words and concepts may not be any more unique than those employed by Deleuze and others. That different feel comes from the fact that the concepts are direct testimonies for consciously discerned inner experiences, the illustrations and reasoning are ways of living into those inner experiences. The writing does not reflect nebulous intuitions about 'how reality works', but tries to anchor our experience of the unfolding reality in the only place where it is to be found as intuitive experience, i.e. our real-time spiritual activity.

Over time it becomes easier to sense what philosophically minded people are working within this sort of arena (not necessarily initiates) and who is still working with nebulous intuitions about thinking, memory, intuition, etc. The former generally gravitate toward phenomenological explorations of spiritual activity - they start discussing the elusive horizon of that activity, the condensation of perceptible experience, the imaginative hysteresis rhythm, the contextual architecture of spiritual experience, the soul constellation, sympathies and antipathies, and so on. Of course, not in a theoretical way through elaborate systems and models, but with concrete illustrations and examples. They invite us to participate in the exploration and to freely confirm the inner realities as they manifest in our own stream of experience (which is naturally distasteful for many people, especially when exploring the soul spectrum) .

None of that is to say we can't gain enormous value from engaging with other philosophical works from a living (symbolically recursive) perspective, because, after all, they were also born of spiritual activity exploring its contextual depths even if only instinctively. And they were all led my specific karma into this area of work and into particular methods of approach. I clearly do a lot of that engagement in my own spiritual pursuits. We should only try to remain as clear as possible where the distinctions reside because these distinctions are the flesh of our real-time evolutionary story, the story that we are living through in the here and now. We are all trying to discover that elusive horizon where philosophy becomes art and science, and a method of deeply moral transformation. In any case, I am interested to hear more about MaM and how you interact with the ideas presented.

Kant's arena is simply everything 'below' the elusive horizon of real-time spiritual activity - he thought through every possible way of philosophically-scientifically understanding reality (empiricism, rationalism, realism, etc.) and critiqued how they all run into obstacles and remained trapped within the 'a priori categories of understanding'. They say Kant ushered in the 'Copernican revolution' of philosophy, since he made the human intellectual ego (analogous to the Sun, in his view) the center of all perceptible experience, the ultimate source of all lawful dynamics of experience. And even though many philosophers after him have challenged and questioned that, pointing out its flaws, none save Steiner (and those working within his arena) were able to bring the intellectual ego to a lucid and systematic experience of its higher Logos nature.

Ok I see what you mean and your right. There is something very unique in Steiners philosophy that none other has. That’s the thing that is clear. But the approach goes at least in the right direction in a couple of „new“ philosophers. Heidegger approached many similar things as in Clerics essay „FOTHC“. But nevertheless in heideggers case it has not the same clarity and depth.

I have a collection of essays which are published by gadamer into a huge book format, where philologist and philosopher explain the context of words from the Greeks. It’s very astonishing that the meaning and understanding of words has changed so dramatically. I somehow find these sort of books more fascinating and helpful than philosophical texts. In Heidegger there is a good of both, he often tries to elucidate the old understanding of words, which are now abstract and which philosophers trough around like toys. I don’t can extract much value from philosophy and often start reading books and then leaving them aside. In Steiners case it different, sometimes it gets really hard (GA 3 for example) and I take a break, but then I’m back because his writings are highly practical.


Today I read Bergson for a couple hours (MaM) and can’t say anything definitive about him. He starts with framing the hard problem and the problem of idealism. He describes that the material world is nothing more than a picture at the end, and we isolate a part of it (brain) and make it responsible for the whole of the picture. He goes in detail about these topic and tries to Modell of a new theory, that overcomes the hard problem and the idealistic problems. It’s very sophisticated and deep thought. I will read more to comment more about it but in the end it’s he tries to explain perception in the form of a (I must say that he really has interesting insights so that’s no critique or something like that, I only try to understand the limitations of his approach) theory. One problem is that he states that the world/universe a picture, which I think is true, but he forgets the cognitive aspect that makes it possible to state this fact, and which makes possible to live our lives in our current condition.


In a sense we then still navigate trough a Cartesian arena. We feel like subjects watching trough our eyes what is there outside and independent. I came across one in the library of the local university, where is a professor has written a almost thousand page critique of Steiners philosophy. I will read it when I have read the books I’m reading now. His name is Hartmut Traub. It seems like a criticism that tries to show that steiners philosophy is nothing original but a copy of various elements of German idealists. But I’ll see.

Ps. I wanted to add a quote from cleric since you mentioned the focusing of the formless: „We must insert ourselves as creative spiritual activity between these two poles and experience how we participate in the transduction of meaning into the symbol.“

I was thinking about this quote and the idea came up that this is the new way of philosophy, when philosophers became conscious (or interested) in studying thinking, instead of speculating about it.