The substance of thinking
byMieke Mosmuller
23-08-2017
2 comments
As a foundation of spiritual science we have to come to the substance of thinking. Every-day thoughts, also scientific thoughts, are just images – whether true or not, right or not. This is the characteristic of intellectual thinking. We don't have to make greater discretion in the word 'thinking'. Every thought is an image and it has no being at all. That is why lies are so easily told, because they seem not to be real. One can think and speak whatever seems to come in handy. Thinking has no substance, no 'matter', it produces images.
We have seen that this lack of substance has to do with the lack of willpower in thinking. Even hard thinking in science gives only a very small little bit of will in our thoughts. They drift away like the air. Thoughts, in their best form - in science - are images of form, of notion and they are opposite to matter, to substance. Outside, the things are material; inside, in my thoughts, there is only form. Even if I were to succeed in understanding everything there is in the world, if I had found the complete realm of forms, I would be missing something: matter. This is the Aristotelian position. Aristotle couldn't find a bridge between form and matter. All the same, he pointed at this bridge in his writings about God, about the unmoved mover, about actuality. But this point didn't become substantial itself.
And so human history had to work through many ways of thinking, to see a young man in the last years of the 19th century, who found the solution, which is not an image itself again, but which is a world miracle, an enormous step in the development to true humanity.
Of course, the big world hasn't seen this, and where it has been seen it has been fought against heavily. Only very few people have understood it and still fewer have followed the challenge. Maybe the time has now come to change that...
The young man, Rudolf Steiner, found that Fichte gave in his philosophy the missing link. He described the human I. And he perceived that the I can become active through its own will. But he failed to describe clearly what kind of activity the I can 'will'. Steiner found the answer: The I posits thinking. Here is not meant the associative thoughts that come and go, but the true thinking, by means of which we come to knowledge. The 'nature' of the I is the setting for thinking and the positing of notions, of concepts. Thus Steiner could write:
'The I is freely able to become active of itself, and therefore it can also produce the category of cognition through self-determination; in the rest of the world, by objective necessity the categories are connected with the given corresponding to them. It must be the task of ethics and metaphysics to investigate the nature of this free self-determination, on the basis of our theory of knowledge. These sciences will also have to discuss whether the I is able to objectify ideas other than those of cognition. The present discussion shows that the I is free when it cognizes, when it objectifies the ideas of cognition. For when the directly given and the thought-form belonging to it are united by the I in the process of cognition, then the union of these two elements of reality — which otherwise would forever remain separated in consciousness — can only take place through a free act.‘ (GA 3)
But this was not the only thing. This kind of unfolding thoughts out of free-ness could still produce only forms and never matter. But Fichte was the philosopher who could accomplish addressing the riddle of form and matter. Because the I is not only form, it is something real - although modern philosophy contradicts this and posits it in the realm of 'just an image'. We don't have to believe that the I is something real from the beginning, we can try to find the concept of the I. But by doing so, the I has to become strong, much stronger than it naturally is. And by this becoming stronger, it becomes a substantial thought, the first form that brings forth its matter. That is not a theory anymore, it can be perceived. And this perception goes beyond all other perceptions in our life. I could begin to sing a hymn here. And maybe I should really do that and count the blessings, the mercy of the I that finds its form and brings on its matter, here, in an article next week
Not yet translated in EnglishThe substance of thinking by Mieke Mosmuller
We have seen that this lack of substance has to do with the lack of willpower in thinking. Even hard thinking in science gives only a very small little bit of will in our thoughts. They drift away like the air. Thoughts, in their best form - in science - are images of form, of notion and they are opposite to matter, to substance. Outside, the things are material; inside, in my thoughts, there is only form. Even if I were to succeed in understanding everything there is in the world, if I had found the complete realm of forms, I would be missing something: matter. This is the Aristotelian position. Aristotle couldn't find a bridge between form and matter. All the same, he pointed at this bridge in his writings about God, about the unmoved mover, about actuality. But this point didn't become substantial itself.
And so human history had to work through many ways of thinking, to see a young man in the last years of the 19th century, who found the solution, which is not an image itself again, but which is a world miracle, an enormous step in the development to true humanity.
Of course, the big world hasn't seen this, and where it has been seen it has been fought against heavily. Only very few people have understood it and still fewer have followed the challenge. Maybe the time has now come to change that...
The young man, Rudolf Steiner, found that Fichte gave in his philosophy the missing link. He described the human I. And he perceived that the I can become active through its own will. But he failed to describe clearly what kind of activity the I can 'will'. Steiner found the answer: The I posits thinking. Here is not meant the associative thoughts that come and go, but the true thinking, by means of which we come to knowledge. The 'nature' of the I is the setting for thinking and the positing of notions, of concepts. Thus Steiner could write:
'The I is freely able to become active of itself, and therefore it can also produce the category of cognition through self-determination; in the rest of the world, by objective necessity the categories are connected with the given corresponding to them. It must be the task of ethics and metaphysics to investigate the nature of this free self-determination, on the basis of our theory of knowledge. These sciences will also have to discuss whether the I is able to objectify ideas other than those of cognition. The present discussion shows that the I is free when it cognizes, when it objectifies the ideas of cognition. For when the directly given and the thought-form belonging to it are united by the I in the process of cognition, then the union of these two elements of reality — which otherwise would forever remain separated in consciousness — can only take place through a free act.‘ (GA 3)
But this was not the only thing. This kind of unfolding thoughts out of free-ness could still produce only forms and never matter. But Fichte was the philosopher who could accomplish addressing the riddle of form and matter. Because the I is not only form, it is something real - although modern philosophy contradicts this and posits it in the realm of 'just an image'. We don't have to believe that the I is something real from the beginning, we can try to find the concept of the I. But by doing so, the I has to become strong, much stronger than it naturally is. And by this becoming stronger, it becomes a substantial thought, the first form that brings forth its matter. That is not a theory anymore, it can be perceived. And this perception goes beyond all other perceptions in our life. I could begin to sing a hymn here. And maybe I should really do that and count the blessings, the mercy of the I that finds its form and brings on its matter, here, in an article next week
Not yet translated in EnglishThe substance of thinking by Mieke Mosmuller
Comments
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From Ron Breland @Brady stresses that "Since in this same chapter Steiner speaks of the unification of ideas with their corresponding given as an “objectification” (Objectivierung) of the ideas, the objectification of the idea of cognition can only be the production of the "actuality" of cognition. After all, the idea [of cognition] has no necessary connection to anything "before cognition becomes actual", and "its actualization is [therefore] that of the [creation of our own] consciousness.
Fichte did not study cognition itself, focusing entirely on the free self-determination of the I. The I, he insists, “posits its own existence.” Steiner accepts the notion of self-determination but then points out that Fichte has not thought this claim through. Fichte begins from the intuited truth that “the I can begin to be active only through an 'absolute original decision.'”
But for Fichte it is impossible to find the actual content of the original activity posited by the I. He had nothing toward which this activity could be directed or by which it could be determined. The I is to do something, but what is it to do? Fichte did not formulate the concept of knowledge that the I is to realize, and in consequence he strove in vain to identify any further activity of the I beyond the original deed. (p. 76)
40
If the freedom of the originating deed of the idea [of cognition] is to mean something, it must possess specific content.
Even if the I is free insofar as its own activity is concerned, nevertheless the I cannot but posit something. It cannot posit “activity, as such, by itself,” but only a definite activity ... Unless the I sets to work on something given which it posits, it can do “nothing,” and therefore cannot posit either. Fichte’s own principle actually shows this: the I posits its existence. Existence is a category. This means we have arrived at our principle: the activity of the I is to posit, by a free decision, the concepts and ideas of the given. Fichte arrives at this conclusion only because he unconsciously set out to prove that the I “exists.” Had he worked out the concept of cognition, he would have arrived at the true starting point for a theory of knowledge, namely: the I posits cognition. (p. 80)
Steiner’s criticisms actually reveal how close Fichte came to important discoveries. Fichte argues, for example, that one must
Attend to yourself: turn your attention away from everything that surrounds you and toward your inner life; this is the demand that philosophy makes on its disciple. Our concern is not with anything that lies outside, but only with yourself. (p. 81)
because
This science presupposes a completely new inner sense organ, through which a new world is revealed which does not exist for the ordinary man at all. (p. 82) Ron Brady, "How We Make Sense of the World" (quotes and parentheses my emphasis, rb ). -
From Margareta Bannmann @Ja, liebe Mieke, sing Dein Loblied. Ich freu mich sehr darauf. Liebe Grüße!
Margareta