Thesis_Ginges_H.txt THE ACT OF KNOWING: RUDOLF STEINER

Transcription

Thesis_Ginges_H.txt
THE ACT OF KNOWING: RUDOLF STEINER
AND THE NEO-KANTIAN TRADITION
Hal Jon Ginges
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Thesis_Ginges_H.txt
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
University of Western Sydney
February 2012
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2 Certificate.txt
Certificate
This work has not been submitted previously for a higher degree at any other institution.
The work contained in this thesis is entirely my own, except for references to the works of
others as indicated in the text.
Signed:
Date:
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3 Abstract.txt
Abstract
A central claim of Kantian critical idealism is that our knowledge is limited to appearances,
and that we cannot show we have knowledge of things-in-themselves. All of our knowledge
of the given world is mediated to us through the sensory intuitions of space and time, and our
intellect is discursive rather than archetypal. As a result, we cannot know things
spontaneously, and we cannot have holistic knowledge of natural phenomena. Although
unmediated knowledge by way of intellectual intuition must be counted as a rational
possibility that is not a capacity we possess. Similarly, while an archetypal intellect must be
a rational possibility, according to Kant we do not have one.
Rudolf Steiner is well known as an educator. In his early career Steiner was trained as a
natural scientist, took a doctorate in neo-Kantian philosophy and sought to demonstrate that
we do have direct access to knowledge of essences. Steiner was greatly influenced by
Goethe and Fichte and attempted to overcome the limit Kant placed upon possible knowledge
by adapting Goethe’s concept of the archetypal phenomenon to claim that we do possess an
intellectus archetypus and by extrapolating from Fichte’s argument for intellectual intuition
to argue for what he calls intuitive thinking .
This dissertation examines Steiner’s arguments as a series of disjunctions from the
propositions of the critical philosophy. The thesis of the dissertation is that Steiner is
ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts to establish the capacities for an intellectus archetypus
and intuitive thinking from within the context of critical idealism, but that his work opens up
ways in which neo-Kantian scholarship may be further developed.
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Contents
4 CONTENTS.txt
Acknowledgements ii
Abbreviations iv
Texts and translations vi
Introduction:
Rudolf Steiner the Philosopher 1
PART 1
Chapter 1: Intuition and Archetype 23
Chapter 2: Goethe’s Way of Seeing 32
Chapter 3: The Kantian Legacy 58
PART 2
Chapter 4: Monism and Dualism 72
Chapter 5: Perceiving the Archetype 108
Chapter 6: Intellectual Intuition 155
Chapter 7: Intuitive Thinking 209
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Conclusion 247
Bibliography 254
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Acknowledgements
5 Acknowledgements.txt
I was introduced to the thought and work of Rudolf Steiner in about 1970, when I was an
undergraduate student at Sydney University. I have had an ambivalent relationship with
Steiner’s Anthroposophy ever since. I have been attracted from the start to the practical
aspects of Anthroposophy such as the Waldorf school curriculum, biodynamic agriculture
and Steiner’s socio-political concept of the threefold social order. I have met people I
admire and respect through Anthroposophy and have formed strong friendships with
some of them. At the same time my natural scepticism and my training in Philosophy
have made me incapable of accepting on faith much of the world view that many
anthroposophists take for granted.
My ambivalent relationship with Anthroposophy eventually drove me to read Steiner’s
Philosophy of Freedom carefully. I was astonished to find that this thinker, branded as a
theosophist and a mystic, displayed an impressive familiarity with the work of Kant, the
post-Kantians and his contemporary Neo-Kantians, and was attempting to argue for his
spiritual science as a philosopher. I wanted to know whether Steiner’s spiritual
science, and the practical activities which had arisen from it, could indeed be legitimised
as a form of knowledge from within the mainstream Western tradition. I was surprised,
though perhaps I ought not to have been, that there appeared to be almost no academic
work undertaken on the subject.
In late 2005 I approached Dr Michael Symonds at the University of Western Sydney
about his supervising a doctoral dissertation on the epistemology of Rudolf Steiner. I
commenced as a part-time student in 2006, and was awarded a scholarship by the
University from 2007 to mid 2009. Throughout the six years of my research I have
enjoyed Michael’s support and enthusiasm for the project, and have benefited greatly
from his helpful criticisms and his clear insights. I was able to visit the Goetheanum, the
international headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland in
January 2008 with assistance from the University. I wish to acknowledge with gratitude
the constant encouragement, well beyond the call of duty, which I have received from Dr
Michael Symonds and the support I have had from the Research Unit of the University.
Outside of the University I have received support and encouragement from persons
associated with Anthroposophy. The Eileen Mac Pherson Trust provided me with some
financial support, Dr Walter Kugler and his staff at the Rudolf Steiner Archiv in Dornach
were very accommodating, and Rudolf Steiner House in Sydney has assisted me by
arranging for me to lecture on Steiner’s epistemology in an open forum. Numerous of
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5 Acknowledgements.txt
my friends, including John Shaw, Arthur Marshall and Jacob van Gent have expressed a
continuing interest in my project and a desire to read the final product.
On a personal and on a practical level I wish to acknowledge the love and support I have
received from my wife, Heather. She has read my drafts and provided me with valuable
suggestions, and challenged me on many points so as to sharpen my thinking. She has
also had to carry the larger load of the responsibilities we bear towards our ever
expanding family, and I thank her for ensuring that I have had time available to me to
complete this labour of love. It only remains to thank our children and grandchildren for
their continuing love and interest in what Papa is doing despite his absences: thank you,
to all of you, for your kindness and understanding.
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Abbreviations
6 Abbreviations.txt
Fichte, J.
IWL Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre. Translated by D. Breazeale. (Cornell
University Press: Ithaca and London, 1992).
Goethe, J.
GOS Goethe on Science: An Anthology of Goethe’s Scientific Writings. (Floris Books:
Edinburgh, 2000)
GSW Goethes Sämtliche Werke. (Max Hesses Verlag: Leipzig).
Henrich, D.
FOI Fichte’s Original Insight. In Contemporary German Philosophy vol 1.
(Pennsylvania State University Press, pp15-53)
Kant, I.
CJ Critique of Judgment. Translated by W. Pluhar. (Hackett Publishing Company:
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6 Abbreviations.txt
Indianapolis, 1987).
CPR Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. (Palgrave
Macmillan: London, 1993).
CPrR Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Lewis White Beck. (Prentice Hall:
New Jersey, 1993).
GW The Moral Law: Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Edited by
Paton. (Hutchinson University Library: London, 1972)
KPV Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1974)
KRV Kritik der reinen Vernunft. (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1974)
KU Kritik der Urteilskraft. (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1974)
Steiner, R.
CML Autobiography: The Course of my Life. Translated R. Stebbing.
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6 Abbreviations.txt
(Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, NY, 1983)
GNS Einleitungen zu Goethes Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften, (Rudolf
Steiner Verlag: Dornach, 1999)
GWV Goethe’s World View. Translated by W. Lindeman. (Mercury Press: Spring
Valley, 2004)
ITSP Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. Translated by M. Lipson.
(Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, NY, 1995)
NOS Nature’s Open Secret. Translated by J. Barnes and M. Spiegler,
(Anthroposophic Press: Spring Valley, NY, 1995).
Ph F Die Philosophie der Freiheit. (Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach, 2005).
Ph FE The Philosophy of Freedom. Translated by M. Wilson. (Rudolf Steiner Press:
Forest Row, 2001).
RP Riddles of Philosophy. Introduced by F. Koelln. (Anthroposophic Press: Spring
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Valley, NY, 1973).
SK The Science of Knowing. Translated by W. Lindeman. (Mercury Press: Spring
Valley, NY, 1988).
TK Truth and Knowledge. Translated by R. Stebbing. (Steinerbooks: Blauvelt, NY,
1981).
WW Wahrheit und Wissenschaft. (Rudolf Steiner Online Archiv, 2010).
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Texts and Translations
7 Texts and translations.txt
Original sources
Rudolf Steiner’s works have been collected and authorised for publication by the Rudolf
Steiner Nachlassverwaltung in Dornach, Switzerland. Unless otherwise indicated
references to the original texts are to the volumes of the 7th edition of the Gesamtausgabe
published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach.
The texts used for the Kant’s Critiques are the 1974 Suhrkamp paperback editions
published by Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. The texts used for Goethe are the
Gesamtausgabe published by Max Hesse Verlag in Leipzig. Fichte’s works have not
been consulted in the original.
Sources in translation
Much of Steiner’s work has been translated into English. The principal publishers are in
the United Kingdom – London, Edinburgh and Forest Row – and at Spring Valley in
New York. Some of Steiner’s principal works are available in several translations and
editions. Philosophie der Freiheit was originally translated by Alfred Hoernle in 1916,
and published as Philosophy of Freedom. A revised edition, with a translation by
Hermann Poppelbaum was published in 1939 under the title The Philosophy of Spiritual
Activity. The original translation was revisited by Michael Wilson, whose 1964 edition
also restored the original title. Wilson’s translation is the accepted British version, and is
now in its seventh edition. In the United States a new translation by Michael Lipson has
been published recently under the title Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. Both the
Wilson and the Lipson translations have been consulted but citations are to the Lipson
translation.
Steiner’s introductions to Goethe’s scientific works were originally published in
translation by Anthroposophic Press as Goethe the Scientist in 1950. The more recent
American translation by J. Barnes and M. Spiegler is published as Nature’s Open Secret
Anthroposophic Press. This translation has been consulted throughout.
The translations of Kant’s three Critiques, which have been consulted, are respectively
the Kemp Smith, White Beck and Pluhar translations.
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7 Texts and translations.txt
Some of Goethe’s scientific work is available in translation, though much of it in an
incomplete form. Extensive use has been made of the anthology contained in Jeremy
Naydler’s Goethe on Science. At times this writer has undertaken his own translations.
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8 INTRODUCTION RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER.txt
INTRODUCTION: RUDOLF STEINER THE PHILOSOPHER
Rudolf Steiner is a fairly well-known figure in the intellectual life of Continental Europe
of the early 20th century. Steiner is most commonly associated with the Waldorf, or
Rudolf Steiner, schools for which he provided the curriculum and with biodynamic
(advanced organic) agriculture. Were this dissertation to be a study of some aspect of
Steiner’s educational philosophy or of the relative efficacy of Steiner’s form of organic
agriculture it would not be particularly remarkable. There are many academic and other
studies of Waldorf education,1 and there are numerous tracts on the efficacy of
biodynamic agriculture.2 Outside of these fields, however, and despite the substantial
volume of his work3 and his evident familiarity with the Western intellectual tradition
Steiner has largely been ignored by the academy.4 In his later career Steiner became a
theosophist and a spiritual scientist , and it seems that his contributions to neo-Kantian
philosophy have been judged by this later career and have therefore been overlooked.
1 See, for example, Carlgren, F. (2008) Education Towards Freedom: Rudolf Steiner Education, Floris
Books: Edinburgh; Mazzone, A. (2010) A Passionate Education, Griffin Press: Salisbury, South Australia.
2 See, for example, Pfeiffer, E. (1983) Biodynamic Gardening and Farming, Mercury Press: London.
3 There are about 400 volumes of the Gesamtausgabe published by the Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach.
4 Of this phenomenon see, for example, Davenport R. (1955) The Dignity of Man, Harper Bros: New York,
pp335-336: That the academic world has managed to dismiss Steiner’s works as inconsequential and
irrelevant, is one of the intellectual wonders of the twentieth century. Anyone who is willing to study
those vast works with an open mind (let us say, a hundred of his titles) will find himself faced with one of
the greatest thinkers of all time, whose grasp of the modern sciences is equaled only by his profound
learning in the ancient ones. Steiner was no more of a mystic than Albert Einstein; he was a scientist, rather
– but a scientist who dared to enter into the mysteries of life.
In his early career Steiner was an aspiring philosopher. He wrote on Kant and the neoKantian tradition in a way which reveals a clear understanding of the epistemological
problems within it, and which demonstrates a familiarity with the thinking and arguments
of his contemporary neo-Kantians and of more popular writers such as Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche.5 At that early stage Steiner’s primary interest was in knowledge in the
strictest sense of the word, and in finding a way to overcome the unsatisfying conclusion
of Kantian critical idealism, namely that we cannot claim to have knowledge of essences.
It is the thesis of this dissertation that Steiner is entitled to have his early work regarded
as a creditable attempt to address the epistemological issues which arise from the critical
project, and that his contributions to Continental epistemology carry the promise of
further developments in the idealist tradition.
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5Steiner, R. (1999) Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of my Life, Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, NY
hereinafter CML, p167: My affinity with Nietzsche allowed me to describe in my book about him my
relationship to him in the very words he uses to describe his relationship with Schopenhauer: I am among
those readers of Nietzsche who, once they read a page, know absolutely that they will read every page and
listen to every word he has ever spoken. I felt immediate confidence in him … I understood him as though
he had written in place of me, to clearly express me, though without presumption and foolishness.
Steiner’s book about Nietzsche is Friedrich Nietzsche, Ein Kämpfer gegen seiner Zeit GA5 Rudolf Steiner
Verlag: Dornach is translated as Friedrich Nietzsche: A Fighter against his Times and available in Steiner,
R. (1985) Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, Spiritual Science Library: Blauvelt, N.Y.
6 Steiner dedicates his doctoral thesis Wahrheit und Wissenschaft [Truth and Knowledge] To Dr Eduard
von Hartmann with the warm regard of the author.
Rudolf Steiner was born in 1861 in Krajkevic, Croatia, in what was then part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were Austrian, and the language of his written
works is therefore German. Upon finishing school Steiner studied natural science at the
University of Vienna and attended philosophy courses given by Franz Brentano. When
he graduated in 1882 he was offered a position as the editor of Goethe’s scientific works
for the Kürschner edition of German literature. This assignment took him to Weimar,
where he undertook research in the Goethe-Schiller archives, was drawn to the
transcendental realism of Eduard von Hartmann6 and to Nietzsche’s world view,
completed his doctoral thesis and published his principal philosophical works. Steiner’s
early career had unfolded within the arena of conventional intellectual life, and he sought
an academic post, but was unsuccessful in obtaining one. When he finished his work in
the Goethe-Schiller Archives, he moved from Weimar to Berlin, edited an avant-garde
magazine, Die Kommenden [The Coming Ones], was a member of the Bohemian literary
and artistic cafe scene and taught at the Workers’ Institute.
From 1901 Steiner began to publish a series of books and articles, in which he set out
what he claimed to be the results of his clairvoyant observations, and which he described
as knowledge of higher worlds . In these works Steiner describes a path of inner
development as a way of obtaining knowledge of essences. Steiner joined, and then
led, the German branch of the Theosophical Society, out of which he formed the
Anthroposophical Society in 1913. From then until his death in 1925 Steiner wrote and
lectured extensively on the results of what he called anthroposophische
Geisteswissenschaft [anthroposophical spiritual science]. His increasing reputation as a
public figure who claimed to have spiritual knowledge brought him a considerable
personal following, but it cost him the respect and friendship of many of his former
associations amongst philosophers and other intellectuals. Another consequence has
been that Steiner’s early work as a serious commentator on neo-Kantian epistemology
has been largely ignored or forgotten.
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Primary sources
Steiner’s epistemological works appeared in the last two decades of the 19th century, at a
time when there were strong neo-Kantian movements in the mainstream of German
philosophy. Between 1885 and 1897 Steiner wrote five works which might be said to
comprise his specifically epistemological output. They are Grundlinien einer
Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung mit besonderer Rücksicht auf
Schiller [Foundations of a theory of knowledge of Goethe’s world view with particular
reference to Schiller] (1885)7, Einleitungen in Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften
[Introductions to Goethe’s writings on natural science] (1885- 1897)8, Wahrheit und
Wissenschaft [Truth and Knowledge] (1892)9, Die Philosophie der Freiheit [Philosophy
of Freedom] (1894)10 and Goethes Weltanschauung [Goethe’s World View] (1897)11.
Steiner’s first publication was written while he was engaged in preparing commentaries
on Goethe’s scientific works, and is his first attempt to identify the theory of knowledge,
which he believed underlay Goethe’s approach to the study of nature. The second
publication is those commentaries themselves, which appeared in three batches between
1885 and 1897. Although the commentaries are intended as introductions to Goethe’s
scientific works they also set out some of the arguments central to Steiner’s own
epistemological position. The third is Steiner’s doctoral thesis, the fourth, Philosophy of
Freedom, is his principal philosophical work and the fifth is his last publication before
embarking upon spiritual science .
7Steiner, R (1999) Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheshen Weltanschauung mit besonderer
Rücksicht auf Schiller, GA 2 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach, now translated as Steiner, R.(1988) The
Science of Knowing, Mercury Press: Spring Valley, NY and hereinafter SK.
8Steiner, R. (1999) Einleitungen in Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften, GA 1 Rudolf Steiner
Verlag: Dornach, now translated as Steiner, R. (2000) Nature’s Open Secret, Anthroposophic Press:
Hudson, NY and hereinafter NOS.
9Steiner, R. (1999) Wahrheit und Wissenschaft , GA 3 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach, in translation as
Steiner, R. (1981) Truth and Knowledge, Steinerbooks: Blauvelt, NY hereinafter TK.
1010Steiner, R. (2005) Die Philosophie der Freiheit, GA 4 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach hereinafter PhF,
in translation as Steiner, R. (2001) The Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner Press: Forest Row,
hereinafter PhFE and as Steiner, R. (1995) Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, Anthroposophic Press:
Hudson, NY hereinafter ITSP. This is the translation most cited in the present work, largely because the
editor has helpfully enumerated the paragraphs.
11 Steiner, R. (1999) Goethes Weltanschauung, GA 6 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach in translation as
Steiner, R. (2004) Goethe’s World View, Mercury Press: Spring Valley, NY hereinafter GWV.
These first works are an attempt to create a theory of knowledge out of Goethe’s
scientific methodology and independent of the Kantian tradition. The following excerpt
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from the first section of The Science of Knowing demonstrates Steiner’s early antipathy to
Kantianism and his attachment to the cultural heritage represented by Goethe and
Schiller. At this stage he has not yet attempted to incorporate Goethean thinking into
neo-Kantianism, and could say:12
12 SK pp 17-18.
13 TK, p. 9.
14 TK pp 11-12.
In accordance with current scientific terminology, our work must be considered to
be one of epistemology. To be sure, the questions with which it deals will in
many ways be of a different nature from those usually raised by this science. We
have seen why this is the case. Whenever similar investigations arise today, they
take their start almost entirely from Kant. In scientific circles the fact has been
completely overlooked that in addition to the science of knowledge founded by
the great thinker of Koenigsberg, there is yet another direction, at least
potentially, that is no less capable than the Kantian one of being deepened in an
objective manner. In the early 1860’s Otto Liebmann made the statement that we
must go back to Kant if we wish to arrive at a world view free of contradiction.
This is why today we have a literature on Kant almost too vast to encompass.
But this Kantian path will not help the science of philosophy. Philosophy will
play a part in cultural life again only when, instead of going back to Kant, it
immerses itself in the scientific conception of Goethe and Schiller.
By the time Truth and Knowledge was published in 1892 Steiner has moved to
approaching the issue of the limits to knowledge from within the context of the Kantian
and post-Kantian traditions. Although he claims that present-day philosophy suffers
from an unhealthy faith in Kant ,13 Steiner sets up his argument as a response to the
foundations of critical idealism and as an extension of Fichte’s work on intellectual
intuition. He is also able to articulate the difference of perspective between his position
and the Kantian. In the Preface to Truth and Knowledge Steiner sets out his view of
knowledge and the act of knowing in the following terms:14
The outcome of what follows is that truth is not, as is usually assumed, an ideal
reflection of something real, but is a product of the human spirit, created by an
activity which is free; this product would exist nowhere if we did not create it
ourselves. The object of knowledge is not to repeat in conceptual form
something which already exists, but rather to create a completely new sphere,
which when combined with the world given to our senses constitutes complete
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reality. Thus man’s highest activity, his spiritual creativeness, is an organic part
of the universal world-process. The world-process should not be considered a
complete, enclosed totality without this activity. Man is not a passive onlooker in
relation to evolution, merely repeating in mental pictures cosmic events taking
place without his participation; he is the active co-creator of the world-process,
and cognition is the most perfect link in the organism of the universe.
This statement of Steiner’s epistemological position can also be read as an expression of
what Steiner took his life’s mission to be, namely the reunification of matter and spirit
within the sciences.
Steiner’s principal philosophical work, Philosophy of Freedom, appeared in 1894 and
contains the clearest expression of Steiner’s arguments against Kantian epistemology.
Philosophy of Freedom purports to be a demonstration that human beings are inwardly
(spiritually) free, but it, too, is written as a response to critical idealism. The first half of
the book argues for Steiner’s theory of knowledge against the backdrop of the dualism of
the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason]15, while the second half presents
Steiner’s argument for ethical individualism as a counter to Kant’s deontological
categorical imperative in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of Practical
Reason]16. Philosophy of Freedom has been reprinted many times both in German and in
English translation. Steiner recommended that the title be translated as The Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity, so as to avoid the socio-political connotations most commonly
15 Kant, I. (1974) Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt aM. The translation used is by
Lewis White Beck, annotated by Howard Caygill, (2003) Critique of Pure Reason, Palgrave MacMillan:
Basingstoke, Hampshire, hereinafter the First Critique and CPR.
16 Kant, I. (1974 ) Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt aM. The translation used
is by Lewis White Beck, (1993) Critique of Practical Reason, Prentice Hall: New Jersey, hereinafter the
Second Critique and CPrR.
associated with freedom in English. He did not appreciate that the connotations of
spiritual are equally likely to lead to misunderstanding.
The final specifically epistemological work is Goethe’s World View, which was
published in 1897. By this time Steiner had published his book on Nietzsche and the last
of his Introductions to Goethe’s scientific oeuvres, and was coming to the end of his time
in Weimar. In Goethe’s World View Steiner distinguishes his own epistemological
position from the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe’s natural science, argues that
Plato’s concept of forms and Ideas has been consistently misunderstood, and claims that
Goethe’s search for the archetypes in his perception of natural phenomena is the true
form of Platonism.
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Despite his turn to theosophy and esoteric wisdom at the beginning of the 20th century,
Steiner continued to publish works of a philosophical nature. These works tend to restate
Steiner’s epistemological position rather than develop it any further. Between 1899 and
1910 Steiner composed Die Rätsel der Philosophie [Riddles of Philosophy],17 which is an
overview of philosophical world views from classical Greece to the late nineteenth
century. At the conclusion of this work Steiner argues that the future of philosophy
does not lie in academic philosophy, but in his anthroposophy. This theme is continued
in the lectures collected as Philosophie und Anthroposophie, GA35 in the
Gesamtausgabe18, including Philosophie und Anthroposophie (1908)19 and Steiner’s
17 Steiner, R. (1973) Riddles of Philosophy, Anthroposophic Press: Spring Valley, NY hereinafter RP.
18 Steiner, R. (1984) Philosophie und Anthroposophie GA 35 Rudolf Steiner Verlag: Dornach.
19 Ibid, Philosophie und Anthroposophie pp 66-110 and available in translation as Steiner, R. (undated)
Philosophy and Anthroposophy, Kessinger Publishing: USA.
contributions to the 4th International Congress of Philosophy at Bologna in 1911.20
Riddles of Philosophy was reprinted in 1914 and again in 1918, when The Philosophy of
Freedom was also reprinted with some significant additions and alterations. Later
lectures, such as the series on Thomas Aquinas given in 1919 and available in translation
as The Redemption of Thinking,21 restate the argument of Goethe’s World View that
Plato’s concept of forms had been misunderstood until Goethe’s endeavours to perceive
the archetype.
20 Ibid, Die psychologischen Grundlagen und die erkenntnistheoretische Stellung der Anthroposophie
pp 111-144, Die Theosophie und das Geistesleben der Gegenwart, pp 145-151, Ein Wort über Theosophie
auf dem IV. Internationalen Kongreß für Philosophie, pp 152-155.
21 Steiner, R. (1983) The Redemption of Thinking, Anthroposophic Press: Spring Valley, NY.
22 SK pp 122-123.
Steiner’s claim that it is one and the same epistemological position, which he espouses in
all of his work, is repeated in the new edition of his first work, The Science of Knowing,
which was published in 1924, forty years after its first appearance. In a note to this
largely unaltered edition Steiner says of his position and of philosophy since the 1880’s:22
All these views [of philosophers], after all, presuppose that reality is present
somewhere outside of the activity of knowing, and that in the activity of knowing
a human, copied representation of this reality is to result, or perhaps cannot result.
The fact that this reality cannot be found by knowing activity – because it is first
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made into reality in the activity of knowing – is experienced hardly anywhere.
Those who think philosophically seek life and real existence outside of knowing
activity; Goethe stands within creative life and real existence by engaging in the
activity of knowing. Therefore even the more recent attempts at a world view
stand outside the Goethean creation of ideas. Our epistemology wants to stand
inside of it, because philosophy becomes a content of life thereby, and an interest
in philosophy becomes necessary for life.
Steiner can claim that his epistemological position has remained unchanged, but in the
forty years between 1884 and 1924 he had said a great deal else about the nature of life
and the cosmos, much of which did little to enhance his reputation as a philosopher.
Secondary sources in English
There is almost no secondary literature in English dealing with Steiner as a philosopher.
This is surprising, as Steiner qualifies for entries in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy
and the Penguin Companion to Philosophy, though the emphasis in both these compendia
is upon Steiner’s contributions to education and biodynamic agriculture, his involvement
with the Theosophical Society and founding of the anthroposophical movement.23 There
are occasional passing references to Steiner in studies of some of his contemporaries,
such as Brentano, Husserl and Nietzsche.24 Outside of the academy there are many
works about Steiner’s way of thinking and his engagement in various aspects of practical
life, but these, almost without exception, are uncritical presentations of Steiner’s world
view from within the orbit of the Anthroposophical Society or those who are sympathetic
to it. Some of these, particularly those by practising scientists25 and the Inkling-group
23See, for example, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy: … German anthroposophist. Steiner’s doctoral
dissertation from Vienna concerned the philosophy of Fichte; he also studied Goethe intensively. He
eventually evolved a speculative and oracular metaphysic, anthroposophy, akin to theosophy, and
postulating different levels of psychical and astral realms … ; and the Penguin entry: … German thinker
and theosophist, born in what was then Hungary and is currently Croatia. He held a prominent position in
the theosophical movement at the beginning of the century, but broke away to develop an alternative
system of thought, and of mental and bodily culture, which he called anthroposophy. Its organizational
centre in Dornach (near Basel) in Switzerland is named Goetheanum, a clear indication of the strong
influence of Goethe’s nature-philosophy on Steiner, who rejected mainstream mechanistic and materialistic
science, which he considered to be at best one-sided and in need of a more organic and spiritual
supplementation. Genuine knowledge, he thought, must always include intuitive and aesthetic elements.
Although Steiner’s anthroposophical system is replete with esoteric and occult mystifications, impartial
observers have found much of value in his ideas for schooling (including an emphasis on the development
of children’s aesthetic and creative potential), practised in the so-called Waldorf or Steiner schools. The
aim is to assist and encourage a many-sided and harmonious development of the individual’s potential.
24See, for example, Rollinger, R. Brentano and Husserl in Jacquette, D. (2004) Cambridge Companion to
Page 7
Brentano, Cambridge UP: Cambridge, pp255-276: [Husserl’s] rejection of mysticism in philosophy is also
to be found throughout his comments on Heidegger, Scheler and Steiner as well as others.
25 See, for example, Lehrs, E. (1985) Man or matter? Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature
based upon Goethe’s Method of Training, Observation and Thought, Rudolf Steiner Press: London.
writer and critic Owen Barfield26, do nevertheless demonstrate that Steiner’s way of
thinking can be adapted to inform the study of natural science, literature and etymology.
26See, for example, Barfield, O. (1965) Saving the Appearances, Harcourt, Brace and World: New York;
(1977) The Rediscovery of Meaning and other Essays, Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, Conn.
27 Welburn, A. (2004) Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy, Floris Books: Edinburgh.
28 Tarnas, R. (1993) The Passion of the Western Mind, Ballantine Books: New York.
29 Hammer, O. (2004) Claiming Knowledge, Brill: Leiden.
30 Tarnas’ more recent work is entitled Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View.
This writer has been able to locate only three substantial English-language secondary
sources, which overtly purport to locate Steiner’s work within the philosophical tradition.
Two of them are sympathetic to Steiner, and one is not. They are Andrew Welburn’s
recent Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy27, Richard Tarnas’ The Passion of the Western
Mind28and Olav Hammer’s Claiming Knowledge29. Welburn holds an academic post at
Oxford, and it is therefore perhaps noteworthy that his book is not published by a
recognised academic publishing house, but by an anthroposophical press, which
specialises in religious exegesis. His Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy offers a comprehensive
overview of Steiner’s world view, but it is an insider’s introduction to Anthroposophy for
a general audience rather than a critique of Steiner’s philosophical work. Welburn does
provide an account of Steiner’s epistemological work, but it is descriptive rather than
critical and takes the form of an appendix for the reader with a more specialised interest.
Richard Tarnas is a Californian philosopher, who appears to have a growing interest in
the less acknowledged strands of the Western intellectual tradition.30 The Passion of the
Western Mind is a broad canvas approach to Western thought from the pre-Socratics to
post-modernism. Tarnas is not writing specifically about Steiner, but he accords Steiner
a significant role in the development of modern Western thought. Tarnas claims Steiner
as the primary 20th century exponent of an alternative philosophical tradition. Having
sketched the inherent problems in Kantian dualism Tarnas introduces Steiner by saying:31
31 Tarnas (1993), p. 433.
Page 8
32Ibid., pp 433-434.
All of this suggests that another, more sophisticated and comprehensive
epistemological perspective is called for. Although the Cartesian-Kantian
epistemological position has been the dominant paradigm of the modern mind, it
has not been the only one, for at almost precisely the same time that the
Enlightenment reached its philosophical climax in Kant, a radically different
epistemological perspective began to emerge – first visible in Goethe with his
study of natural forms, developed in new directions by Schiller, Schelling, Hegel,
Coleridge, and Emerson, and articulated within the past century by Rudolf
Steiner. Each of these thinkers gave his own distinct emphasis to the developing
perspective, but common to all was a fundamental conviction that the relation of
the human mind to the world was ultimately not dualistic but participatory.
In the following paragraphs Tarnas qualifies his claim that what is being put forward is a
radically different epistemological perspective by identifying it as a variant of critical
idealism, which appears to encompass Fichtean subjective idealism, Schelling’s naturephilosophy and Hegelian absolutism. The position which Tarnas claims Steiner has
articulated within the last century is the following:32
In essence this alternative conception did not oppose the Kantian epistemology
but rather went beyond it, subsuming it in a larger and subtler understanding of
human knowledge. The new conception fully acknowledged the validity of
Kant’s critical insight, that all human knowledge of the world is in some sense
determined by subjective principles; but instead of considering these principles as
belonging ultimately to the separate human subject, and therefore not grounded in
the world independent of human cognition, this participatory conception held that
these subjective principles are in fact an expression of the world’s own being, and
that the human mind is ultimately the organ of the world’s own process of selfrevelation. In this view, the essential reality of nature is not separate, selfcontained, and complete in itself, so that the human mind can examine it
objectively and register it from without. Rather, nature’s unfolding truth
emerges only with the active participation of the human mind.
In addition to the claim that this alternative conception acknowledges the validity of
Kant’s critical insight and goes beyond it, Tarnas claims that it overcomes the evident
problems arising from the dualism inherent in any form of transcendental idealism.
Tarnas characterizes Steiner’s alternative conception as a modern form of participatory
consciousness:33
33 Ibid., pp 434-435.
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34 The others are the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky, the neo-theosophist Alice Bailey, the mentalist Edgar
Cayce and a cluster of representatives of the broadly described New Age movement.
This participatory epistemology, developed in different ways by Goethe, Hegel,
Steiner, and others, can be understood not as a regression to na„ve participation
mystique, but as the dialectical synthesis of the long evolution from the primordial
undifferentiated consciousness through the dualistic alienation. It incorporates
the postmodern understanding of knowledge and yet goes beyond it. The
interpretive and constructive character of human cognition is fully acknowledged,
but the intimate, interpenetrating and all-permeating relationship of nature to the
human being and human mind allows the Kantian consequence of epistemological
alienation to be entirely overcome.
Although Tarnas clearly locates Steiner within the mainstream philosophical tradition,
and adds some weight to the argument for Steiner to be taken seriously as a philosopher,
he, too, does not offer any critical analysis of Steiner’s epistemological contributions.
Olav Hammer is a Swedish philosopher of religion working in Denmark, whose field of
research includes an interest in what he calls the Modern Esoteric Tradition. Hammer
sees this tradition as commencing with the foundation of the Theosophical Society in
1880 and stretching to the various manifestations of the New Age movement of the 1970s
and beyond. Claiming Knowledge is a critique of five forms of modern esotericism, all
of which claim knowledge of essences on the basis of reconstituted histories and
traditions, supposedly scientific arguments and the immediacy of personal experience.
One of these traditions is Steiner’s Anthroposophy.34 Although Hammer’s interest is in
the cosmological, mystical and pseudo-religious aspects of Steiner’s legacy, his study
does also acknowledge and discuss Steiner as a neo-Kantian. Hammer purports to be
neither sympathetic to nor dismissive of his subjects, but the criterion against which the
respective traditions are measured is the empirical science of the Enlightenment. As a
consequence Hammer criticises Steiner’s epistemological position without examining the
arguments for it.
In addition to these three books there are recent papers published in journals or delivered
at conferences, which attempt to relate Steiner’s epistemological work to more familiar
trends in contemporary Continental philosophy. These papers include, for example,
studies of Goethean science with allusion to Steiner and a comparison between Steiner’s
concept of intuitive thinking and the re-examination of thinking in the later works of
Heidegger.35 Again, however, this writer has not been able to find any papers which
offer a critical analysis of Steiner’s position.
35See, for example, Fischer, L. (2011) Goethe contra Hegel: The Question of the End of Art, Goethe
Yearbook XVIII pp127-156; Dahlin, B. and Majorek, M. (2008) On the path towards thinking: learning
Page 10
from Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Steiner, EERA Conference in Gothenburg, Info3 Verlag; Frankfurt am
Main.
Secondary sources in German
There is a significantly larger secondary literature in German on Steiner as a philosopher.
Most of the material until quite recently is, like the English language corpus, merely
explicatory. It, too, is mostly written by anthroposophists or others committed to
Steiner’s world view. With few exceptions it does not attempt to offer any critique of
Steiner’s arguments and his epistemological position. One exceptional writer is Michael
Muschalle, who has published books, articles and an online newsletter, which attempt to
acknowledge and to respond to the philosophical problems in Steiner’s epistemology.
Commencing with his doctoral thesis, Die Beobachtung des Denkens [The Observation of
Thinking],36 through numerous articles37 and to his most recent Beobachtung des Denkens
bei Rudolf Steiner38 [Rudolf Steiner’s Observation of Thinking] Muschalle explores the
philosophical issues, which emerge from Steiner’s view of the nature of thinking.
Another recent contributor to Steiner exegesis is Michael Kirn, whose books Das grosse
Denk-Ereignis [The Turning Point in Thinking] and Freiheit im Leib? [Physically
Free?]39 are explorations of the philosophical implications of the first three chapters of
Philosophy of Freedom. Marcello da Veiga Greuel’s Wirklichkeit und Freiheit [Reality
and Freedom]40 is a comparative study of the concepts and methodologies of Fichte’s and
Steiner’s epistemologies. Although da Veiga Greuel is clearly sympathetic to Steiner
Wirklichkeit und Freiheit is the closest attempt this writer has found to a critique of
Steiner from within the context of the idealist tradition. Marek Majorek, the co-author of
one of the recent papers mentioned earlier, has published a work on the concept of
objectivity, in which he argues for Steiner’s spiritual science from within the context of
objectivity as a philosophical problem.41 In addition to these efforts to place Steiner
within his philosophical context there are criticisms of Steiner’s epistemology from those
attached to a perspective which it appears to challenge.42 The German secondary
literature appears to have reached the stage at which Steiner’s epistemological work is
36 Muschalle, M. (1988) Die Beobachtung des Denkens: Universitaet Bielefeld: online.
37 See, for example, Muschalle, M. (2007) Goethe, Kant und das intuitive Denken in Rudolf Steiners
Philosophie der Freiheit, Studien zur Anthroposophie: online; (2009) The Causality of Thinking, trans. T.
Boardman and G. Savier: online.
38 Muschalle, M. (2007) Beobachtung des Denkens bei Rudolf Steiner: Books on Demand GmbH:
Norderstedt.
39 Kirn, M. (1998) Das grosse Denk-Ereignis, Verlag am Goetheanum: Dornach; (1999) Freiheit im Leib?,
Verlag am Goetheanum: Dornach.
40 Veiga Greuel, M. da (1990) Wirklichkeit und Freiheit, Gideon Spicker Verlag: Dornach.
41 Majorek, M. (2002) Objektivitaet: ein Erkenntnisideal auf dem Prüfstand – Rudolf Steiners
Page 11
Geisteswissenschaft als ein Ausweg aus der Sackgasse [Objectivity: An ideal of knowledge on trial –
Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science as a Way out of the Dead End], Francke Verlag: Tuebingen & Basel.
42 See, for example, Dilloo-Heidger, E. (2005) Projekt: Grundlagen der Anthroposophie,
www.dilloo.de/anthroindex.htm; Dilloo-Heidger’s project is to assess Steiner’s early work hermeneutically,
and without reference to Steiner’s claims to intuitive sources for knowledge of higher worlds.
now the subject of serious intellectual argument. Even within the German corpus,
however, there still seems to be little attempt to subject Steiner’s philosophical arguments
to critical analysis.
Secondary sources in other languages
Although the largest part of the literature about Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy is
written in German and English, there is a growing literature in other languages, including
Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, the Scandinavian languages and Polish, Hungarian and
Russian. Most of the works this writer could decipher are translations of Steiner’s
primary texts or of secondary literature already long available in German and English.43
43 The author visited the library at the Goetheanum, which houses collections in these other languages.
44 Steiner frequently cites Volkelt, and often refers to Cohen and Windelband.
The Kantian context
In this dissertation the view has been taken that Steiner’s epistemological work is best
considered as a response to Kantian transcendental idealism, although Steiner would not
have regarded himself as a neo-Kantian. The citations in his early works demonstrate
that he was very familiar with the orientations of the Marburg and Baden schools of neoKantianism, though he distanced himself from them.44 His philosophical positions seem
to have been most strongly influenced by his personal contacts with Brentano and von
Hartmann and by his readings of the reinterpretations of Kantian idealism undertaken by
Fichte and Schopenhauer. The outcome of these influences upon Steiner has resulted in
an approach which Steiner, following on from Brentano, chooses to characterise as
phenomenological , but which also bears the hallmarks of strong Idealist tendencies.
Steiner is certainly not a phenomenologist in the style of Husserl or even of Brentano, for
it matters to Steiner to acknowledge the limits imposed upon possible knowledge by
critical idealism.
Steiner appears to accept Kantian transcendental idealism as the necessary starting point
for any epistemological investigation, including his own.45 In his autobiographical The
Page 12
Course of my Life, Steiner tells of saving his pocket money to buy the First Critique and
reading it surreptitiously at school behind the covers of his history book.46 He then
describes the effect the Critique of Pure Reason had upon the development of his own
thinking:
45 See, for example, RP p. 445: Security and certainty of knowledge is being sought in many philosophical
systems, and Kant’s ideas are more or less taken as its point of departure.
46 CML, p. 33.
47 Ibid., p. 34.
... the question concerning the scope of the human power of thought occupied me
constantly. I felt that thinking could be developed into a power that truly includes
the things and processes of the world. Subject matter that remains beyond
thinking, as something merely reflected upon , was an unbearable idea to me. I told
myself again and again that what is in the thing must enter one’s thoughts.
This feeling clashed continually with what I read in Kant, but I hardly noticed this
conflict at the time. More than anything, through the Critique of Pure Reason I
wanted to obtain a firm foundation that would enable me to come to terms with my
own thinking. Whenever I went for walks during the holidays, I had to sit
somewhere quiet, and repeatedly make clear to myself the exact process involved in
the transition from simple surveyable concepts to mental images of natural
manifestations. My attitude toward Kant was very uncritical at the time, but I got no
further through him.47
Steiner subsequently distances himself from Kant, but he continues to use Kant’s
epistemological architectonic and concepts as the structural framework for his own. In
Truth and Knowledge Steiner stakes out his own ground by first criticizing the then
widespread acceptance of Kantian thinking within academic philosophy. In Philosophy
of Freedom his starting point is to show that any form of transcendental idealism is
untenable. In Riddles of Philosophy, in numerous lectures and in The Course of my Life,
Steiner returns time and again to Kant, so as to have a context, within which to explain
the positions of other philosophers and to account for his own. Indeed, Steiner seems to
regard this as almost inevitable, for he says:
One thing is certain; Kant offered his contemporaries innumerable points for
attack and interpretations. Precisely through his unclarities and contradictions,
he became the father of the classical German world conceptions of Fichte,
Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Herbart and Schleiermacher. His unclarities
became new questions for them. No matter how he endeavoured to limit
Page 13
knowledge in order to make place for belief, the human spirit can confess to be
satisfied in the true sense of the word only through knowledge, through
cognition.48
48RP, p. 122.
49CML, p. 33.
It is something of an irony that the subsequent neglect of Steiner as a philosopher appears
to have arisen from his own expectation that the findings of his spiritual science would
be regarded as knowledge and accepted on faith.
In Course of My Life Steiner describes his first encounters with the Critique of Pure
Reason and his life-long passion to demonstrate that much more is knowable than is
acknowledged within critical idealism. He describes his enthusiasm for Kant in the
following terms:
While Kant was coming into my sphere of thinking, I was completely ignorant of
his position in human intellectual history. All the views of him, whether for or
against, were completely unknown to me. My unbounded interest in the Critique
of Pure Reason arose entirely from my personal soul life. In my boyish way I
tried to understand to what degree human reason is capable of true understanding
of the nature of things.49
That enthusiasm had waned by the time Steiner published his doctoral thesis, the Preface
for which begins:
Present-day philosophy suffers from an unhealthy faith in Kant. This essay is
intended to be a contribution toward overcoming this. It would be wrong to
belittle this man’s lasting contributions toward the development of German
philosophy and science. But the time has come to recognize that the foundation
for a truly satisfying view of the world and of life can be laid only by adopting a
position which contrasts strongly with Kant’s.50
50 TK, p. 9.
51 RP, p. 101.
52 CML, p. 112.
Later, in Riddles of Philosophy Steiner says of the Kantian legacy: Kant found an
Page 14
answer that saved the truth and certainty of human knowledge by sacrificing human
insight into the grounds of the world. 51 In The Course of my Life Steiner claims for
himself a life-long interest in the problem of knowledge, and sums up his conception of
knowledge in this way:
My primary concern in bringing forth my own insights was to refute the theory
that there are limits to knowledge. I wanted to reject the path of knowledge that
looks at the sensory world and then wants to go outward through the sensory
world to break through to true reality. I wanted to show that true reality must be
sought by going more deeply into the inner human being, not by attempting to
break through toward the outer.52
The driving force of Steiner’s philosophical endeavours is to find a way to retain the truth
and certainty of knowledge, and at the same time to justify a human capacity for insight
into the grounds of the world .
Steiner therefore sees it as his task to show that the limits Kant imposes upon knowledge
can be overcome within the context of the Kantian architectonic. His approach is to
apply to Kant’s epistemology two interrelated concepts, which Steiner derives from
Goethe and Fichte. From Goethe he takes the idea that it is possible to identify the
archetypes, forms or Ideas of the sense-perceptible world within the perceived
phenomena. In Kantian terms the thing-in-itself does not lie in some other world, but
is the perceptible phenomenon viewed as an instance of its archetype. The other
concept is what Steiner calls intuitive thinking. Kant employed the concept of intuition,
but reduced its ambit to what he called sensory intuitions, our constructs of space and
time. Fichte expanded intuition to include intellectual intuition, by which he meant the
starting point of our conscious processes, the point at which we recognize a separation
between ourselves and the given, external world. Steiner adopts Fichte’s derivation of
intellectual intuition, and attaches the immediacy, spontaneity and primacy of intuition to
the cognitive process of thinking. Steiner’s intuitive thinking is the intellectual process
which allows for perception of the archetypes, and which is intended to overcome the
ontological distinctions between subject and object, and noumenon and phenomenon.
Dissertation
This dissertation is an examination of Rudolf Steiner’s responses to the limits Kant
imposes upon the range of possible human knowledge. The dissertation canvasses the
arguments Steiner mounts against the claims of critical idealism, and examines the extent
to which those arguments are successful in challenging the conclusions of the critical
philosophy. The thesis of the dissertation is that although Steiner is unable to extend the
range of possible knowledge from within the context of Kantian idealism he does identify
some points in the critical philosophy, from which the search for essences might be
Page 15
expanded. It is another question, of course, whether Steiner’s inability to arrive at
essences from within the neo-Kantian tradition demonstrates a fault in Steiner’s
epistemological project or in the enterprise of the critical philosophy.
There are two parts to this dissertation. Part 1 consists of three short introductory
chapters. The first of these, Intuition and Archetype, is provided as a background to the
two concepts, which are most central to Steiner’s contribution to epistemology. The
second, Goethe’s Way of Seeing, describes the methodology of Goethe’s natural science,
which Steiner sought to incorporate into Kantian idealism. The third introductory
chapter, The Kantian Legacy, describes how Steiner understood the critical project and
how he sought to respond to it. Steiner’s responses are described as disjunctions from
the critical philosophy.
Part 2 contains four chapters, each of which addresses a disjunction between Kantian
critical idealism and Steiner’s epistemological position. The chapters do not entirely
follow the order of publication of Steiner’s five main epistemological works. They
attempt instead to trace the argument of Steiner’s responses to Kant. The first chapter,
Monism and Dualism, examines the fundamental disjunction between Kant and Steiner,
namely Steiner’s rejection of the dualism, which is inherent in any form of transcendental
idealism. The next two chapters deal with the two concepts Steiner is endeavouring to
work into Continental idealism. The second chapter, Perceiving the Archetype, is
concerned with Steiner’s attempt to incorporate insights from Goethe’s natural science
into the critical philosophy. The third chapter, Intellectual Intuition, deals with Steiner’s
extrapolation from Fichte’s intellectual intuition to intuition as an enhanced form of
cognition. These two concepts, intuition and archetype, provide the ground from which
Steiner then sets out to argue that human beings are spiritually free, and that freedom
arises in the creativity of thinking. The final chapter, Intuitive Thinking, addresses
Steiner’s concepts of freedom and intuitive thinking, and shows that by the time Steiner
is arguing for intuitive thinking he has moved away from the philosophical tradition and
into his spiritual science .
The Conclusion of the dissertation points to recent developments in Continental idealism,
which display some similarities to Steiner’s work. They indicate that, although Steiner
did not succeed in reformulating critical idealism so that it could become the
epistemological ground for his own world view, his disjunctions may have drawn
attention to nodal points for further developments within the Kantian tradition.
Page 16
9 PART 1.txt
PART 1
Page 1
10 Part 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE.txt
PART 1 Chapter 1 INTUITION AND ARCHETYPE
It will become clear, in the course of this dissertation, that the concepts of intuition
[Anschauung] and archetype [Archtyp] play a central role in Steiner’s theory of knowledge.
For Steiner there is an inherent connection between the exercise of intuitive thinking and the
perception of archetypes. Kant also refers to intuition frequently, and makes occasional
reference to archetypes, but his understanding of these concepts is very different from
Steiner’s. Both terms are called upon from time to time within the general epistemological
lexicon, but they are both to some extent fringe concepts and are prone to ambiguity and
misinterpretation. There is also, of course, the issue of translation. When Steiner uses the
term Anschauung [intuition] he means something quite different from what Kant means by
Anschauung, and in addition Steiner introduces the term Intuition to convey a particular sense
of intuition. Steiner’s employment of archetype overlaps with Kant’s use of that term, but it
needs to be distinguished from the related Platonic concepts of Idea, Type and Form.
Steiner’s archetype is not the same thing, for example, as the Platonic Idea as it is usually
understood and as Kant understands it. It seems necessary, therefore, to say something at the
outset about what intuition and archetype have been taken to mean in this dissertation.
Intuition
The word intuition is generally used in the sense that it is a mode of coming to know, which
has some or all of the characteristics of spontaneity, immediacy, totality and inaccessibility to
the processes of rational thinking. These various characteristics, however, can lead to
unrelated or even contrary concepts of intuition. Three examples of attempts to define
intuition will serve to demonstrate the difficulty in describing what intuition denotes. The
first is to be found in the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, which offers three meanings for
intuition:
1. Immediate insight or knowledge, in contrast to insight or knowledge arrived at
discursively, by means of analysis or proof. This is how the term is used by
Descartes, Locke, Leibniz and Hume. Husserl saw the intuiting of essences as the
task of phenomenology. The contrasting term used by Descartes for knowledge by
way of analysis or proof was deduction, whereas Locke and Hume used
demonstration.
As with other epistemic terms there is an act/content ambiguity: intuition can denote
the manner in which something is known, or that which is known in a certain manner.
2. Direct perception of an object. This is roughly the meaning of intuition when used
to translate the German Anschauung in Kant and others. According to him we have
sensory intuitions, but no non-sensory, intellectual intuitions, and therefore no
knowledge of super-empirical facts. On this last point, Fichte and Schelling took the
opposite stand.
Page 1
3. Immediate, unreflected belief that we find ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to
reflect (Bertrand Russell). Intuitions, in this sense of the word, are simply noninferential beliefs. But the term is sometimes reserved for non-inferential beliefs
which are highly resistant, though not immune, to revision or rejection.1
1 Mautner, T. (2005) The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, Penguin: London, p. 310.
2 Nelson, L. (1970) Progress and Regress in Philosophy, Basil Blackwell: Oxford.
The second example is a discussion of varieties of intuition taken from Leonard Nelson’s
Progress and Regress in Philosophy,2 a study of neo-Kantian idealism. Nelson points out the
contradictory implications of definitions intuition understood as 1 and 3 above, as feeling and
intuition as perception:
People talk of grasping a truth intuitively’. This can mean one of two things. It can
express a contrast to logical mediation, i.e. to reaching the truth by inference from
some other truth. Thus it may be said that great scientific discoveries or important
artistic creations took place intuitively’. It is the contrast with conceptual thought
that is intended here.
We must distinguish this feeling-for-truth from another and more appropriate sense of
intuition’. If someone says that he has come to know some truth by intuition, this
may mean that he can give a perfectly good account of the grounds of his assertion, by
reference to perception, i.e. to a definite and immediate knowledge of the object, one
which is clear without any reflection. This is just the opposite of the other sense, in
which intuition’ denoted a claim to truth for which the claimant knew he could not
give the grounds.
We must therefore distinguish two sorts of intuition’ which are confused in common
speech and which are not usually separated in psychological analysis: the feeling, first,
which is simply our confidence that grounds for our judgment could be found, so that
through a dim awareness of the truth we just take those grounds for granted; and
secondly perception, which is a clear, definite and sufficient ground for the judgment.3
3 Ibid, pp88-89, writer’s emphasis.
4 Beck, L. W. (1965) The Fact of Reason: An Essay on Justification in Ethics, in Studies in the Philosophy of
Kant, The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc: Indianapolis.
The third comes from Beck. In The Fact of Reason: A Essay on Justification in Ethics Beck
is undertaking an analysis of the intuitive answer to what he calls the external question in
ethics, the question Why ought I to be moral? In the course of this discussion he engages
Page 2
in a more general discussion of intuition, and says:
While these truths are not, of course, seen with one’s physical eyes, the act of
apprehending them is more like seeing something than it is like thinking and inferring.
To call it seeing is to make use of a metaphor, and all the other words which name it
likewise seem to be metaphorical also: Anschauen, intueor, apprehend , grasp, see by
the lumen naturale , etc. I shall here use the word intuition to two senses, which I
shall distinguish as follows. An intuition in the real sense is a direct apprehension of an
objective truth, value, or state of affairs. An intuition in the putative sense is an act
which seems to be a real intuition but which in fact may or may not be.
... I submit that all we have in the way of data are intuitions in the putative sense, that
contradictory judgments of intuitions in the putative sense exist, and that there is no valid
intuitive means by which real intuitions can be distinguished from putative intuitions.4
Beck’s distinction between putative intuitions and real intuitions highlights the strength of the
Kantian position by emphasising the looseness and uncertainty of intuitions, that is, of
particular beliefs as to facts or values.
These various definitions provide some assistance in teasing out what Kant and Steiner mean
by intuition, but they also demonstrate why it is so difficult to come to a clear understanding
of what the term means. The distinction Nelson draws between intuition as feeling and
intuition as perception is clear until we consider the elaborations of that distinction in the
Penguin definitions. In the first definition, for example, intuition is defined as immediate
insight or knowledge, in contrast to insight or knowledge arrived at discursively ... , and it is
thereby being described as the content of something which is known, rather than as the
manner of knowing. The difficulty is that the term insight itself suffers from exactly the
same ambiguity as intuition , in that it, likewise, can denote both a manner of knowing and
the content of something known. It is true that we do not use insight as a transitive verb,
though we do say we can see into something. Insight is, however, a more literal
translation than intuit and intuition of the German anschauen [verb] and Anschauung
[noun]. It does not make things any clearer, therefore, to define intuition in terms of
insight .
The second definition is an attempt to present intuition in the way Kant uses the term, but it,
too, bundles together intuition as an act and intuition as content. The characterisation of
intuition as direct perception of an object could refer to either, but the remainder of the
definition limits intuition to the content of a process, namely the direct perception of a
sensory fact. This definition of intuition is doubly unfortunate, in that it bears little
resemblance to our everyday use of the term, and nor does it convey accurately what Kant
means by intuition. Indeed, this attempt at a definition suggests a limited understanding of
the Kantian project, which is to account for how it is, in the absence of a faculty for
intellectual intuition, that we do have knowledge of super-empirical facts.
The third definition is the non-technical meaning of intuition, which constitutes what Russell
calls a non-inferential belief . This vernacular use of the term takes the form of
expressions such as I had an intuition that you’d arrive today or She knew what to get for
his birthday, she’s very intuitive , and is not so much a non-inferential belief as a nonPage 3
inferential judgment. That is, intuition in this sense does not take the form of belief as
opposed to knowledge, but is knowledge arrived at by the conjunction of ideas or concepts in
a non-inferential judgment. Intuition, in this sense, is yet to be the subject of an
epistemological investigation, and it is not what either Kant or Steiner means by intuition.
Steiner’s concept of intuition in his epistemological work accords with the first of the
Penguin definitions, in that it emphasises the characteristics of knowledge known
immediately and spontaneously, and allows for the existence of a faculty of intellectual
intuition. Intuition is generally a translation of Anschauung in Steiner’s texts, but it should
be noted that, in certain sections of Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner also uses the word
Intuition. This writer has not been able to determine whether Steiner intends something
different when he uses Intuition rather than Anschauung in this context. There is another
context, however, in which Steiner does employ the term Intuition in a quite specific and
idiosyncratic way. In his later, anthroposophical works Steiner uses the term Intuition to
denote the final stage in the practice of spiritual science, following on from Imagination and
Inspiration.5
5 See, for example, Steiner, R. (1976) Knowledge of Higher Worlds: How is it achieved? Rudolf Steiner
Press:
London; (1997) An Outline of Esoteric Science, Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, N. Y.
6CPR, A19, B33 p. 65: In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to
objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means
is
directed. But intuition takes place only in so far as the object is given to us.
7 Ibid, B35-B36 pp 66-67: I term all representations pure (in the transcendental sense) in which there is
nothing
that belongs to sensation. ... In the course of this investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of
sensible intuitions, serving as principles of a priori knowledge, namely space and time.
8 Ibid, A734, B762 p590: Mathematics … derives its knowledge not from concepts but from the construction
of
them, that is, from intuition, which can be given a priori in accordance with the concepts.
Kant’s use of the term is also somewhat idiosyncratic. He begins the Critique of Pure
Reason with a definition of intuition6, describes space and time as intuitions [Anschauungen]
and as pure representations, and as our only pure sensible intuitions.7 The remainder of our
sensory intuitions are then described as having specific content within a spatiotemporal
manifold, and these are the direct perceptions of an object to which the second dictionary
definition refers. The other sense in which Kant speaks of intuitions relates to the formation
of mathematical concepts.8 For Kant intuitions are immediate and singular, in contrast with
concepts, which are mediated and general.9 There is some further development of the
concept of intuition in the Third Critique, but Kant is consistent in denying human
consciousness the capacity for non-sensory intellectual (non mathematical) intuition, which is
only available to God.10 In his A Kant Dictionary Howard Caygill points out that Kant’s
concept of intuition is a radical departure from Descartes and Spinoza, for both of whom
Page 4
intuition existed as a distinct form of knowledge.11 Caygill argues that Kant’s concept of
intuition amounts to a refinement of Aristotle’s use of the term12, but it is nevertheless an
unconventional application of it.
9 CPR, A320, B377 p. 314. For Kant the singularity of intuitions is a further reason there can be no
intellectual
intuitions for human cognition.
10 Ibid, B72, p 90: ... intellectual intuition seems to belong solely to the primordial being, and can never be
ascribed to a dependent being, which through that intuition determines its existence solely in relation to given
objects.
11 Caygill, H. (1995) A Kant Dictionary, Blackwell Publishers Ltd: Oxford pp 262-266.
12 Ibid. p 266: … the critical philosophy both respects the received Aristotelian distinction, while
reconfiguring
it in accordance with a doctrine of intuition which combines sensible and intelligible aspects.
Archetype
The concept of archetype will be familiar as a translation of the Platonic notion of the
form or Idea , which is claimed by Platonists to lie behind the sense-perceptible
phenomenon. For this reason it will generally be associated with the Platonic or the Idealist
tradition, or perhaps with the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself. Steiner’s understanding
of archetype comes, however, from Goethe’s use of the term in his scientific studies, and for
Steiner the archetype is almost the antithesis of Kant’s thing-in-itself: the archetype is
perceptible and knowable, while the thing-in-itself is neither. Again, in an attempt to clarify
what archetype is intended to mean in this dissertation, two definitions of archetype are
offered for consideration. They also demonstrate both the inherent difficulties in the term
archetype and the consequent lack of attention to it. The definitions are taken from the
Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy and Howard Caygill’s A Kant Dictionary.
The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy gives three accounts for archetype, the first of which
relates to its use in epistemology, and describes various uses of the term as follows:13
13 Mautner, op. cit., p 40.
14 Caygill, op. cit., pp 83-84.
The concept occurs in Descartes, Malebranche, Cudworth, Locke, Berkeley and
others. In the Meditations (III, 33), Descartes insists that a series of ideas that
generate one another must have a beginning in an archetype. Locke uses the word
pattern’ as a synonym, and takes an archetype to be that to which our ideas must
conform in order to be adequate (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2,20,1);
but he also holds that most complex ideas are archetypes of the mind’s own making
(4,4,5). In Malebranche and Berkeley, archetypes are ideas in God’s mind,
independently of and prior to their being perceived by a human mind. Correlated
term: ectype. An ectype relates to an archetype as a copy to its original.
Page 5
It will be seen that the kind of archetype to which Malebranche, Berkeley and Descartes refer
distinguishes between what is available to human cognition and what must be presumed to
emanate from outside of human cognition, while Locke uses the term to describe the
relationship between ideas and perceptions and ideas and each other. The Dictionary of
Philosophy definition does not associate archetype with the Platonic Idea, and there is no
mention of what archetype means for Kant. Nor is it suggested that archetypes are realities,
as they are for Goethe and Steiner, and by whom they are said to be available to heightened
forms of human perception.
Caygill, again, describes two ways in which Kant uses the term archetype - one relating to the
Platonic notion of forms, and the other to the archetype as a model for emulation of ethical
behaviour. Caygill says the following:14
The archetype [archetypon, Urbild] for Kant is to the ectype as original is to copy, or
as the possible holistic understanding of an intellectus archetypus to a discursive
understanding that has need of images [intellectus ectypus]’ (CJ s77). Underlying
these distinctions is a critical engagement with Platonism. In CPR Kant criticized
Plato’s mystical deduction’ of the ideas’ which hypostatized them by making them
into the archetypes of the things themselves’ (CPR A 313/B 370). Kant claims that
Plato’s flight from the ectypal mode of reflecting upon the physical world-order to
the architectonic ordering of it according to ends, that is, according to ideas’ (CPR A
318/ B 375) makes regulative principles’ for the systematic completion of knowledge
into constitutive principles of the origin of things. Kant’s critique of Plato’s practical
philosophy follows similar lines, by arguing for an idea of the good which would
serve as a regulative principle for any judgment as to moral worth’ but which would
not itself be an archetype. Yet this principle can serve as an archetype when it serves
as an ideal for imitation. In CPR Kant describes the wise man of the stoics as just
such an archetype which serves for the complete determination of the copy; and we
have no other standard for our actions than the conduct of this divine man within us,
with which we compare and judge ourselves, and so reform ourselves, although we
can never attain to the perfection thereby prescribed’ (CPR A 569/ B 597).
Caygill’s discussion of the ways in which Kant uses the term archetype provides some
explanation, but does not mention Kant’s more extensive discussions of Platonic Ideas, ideals
and archetypes in the later sections of the First Critique. In the first chapter of the
Transcendental Dialectic, The Ideal of Pure Reason, Kant identifies what he means by an
ideal with what Plato calls an Idea and relates both of these to the concept of an archetype.15
15 *
16 CPR A 811, B 839, p. 639: It is … only in the ideal of the supreme original good that pure reason can find
the ground of this connection, which is necessary from the practical point of view, between the two elements
of
the supreme derivative good – the ground, namely, of an intelligible, that is, moral world. Now since we are
necessarily constrained by reason to represent ourselves as belonging to such a world, while the senses
present
Page 6
to us nothing but a world of appearances, we must assume that moral world to be a consequence of our
conduct
in the world of sense … and therefore to be for us a future world. Thus God and the future life are two
postulates which, according to the principles of pure reason, are inseparable from the obligation which that
same
reason imposes upon us.
17 CPR A 838, B866, p. 657: Philosophy is the system of all philosophical knowledge. If we are to
understand
by it the archetype for the estimation of all attempts at philosophizing, and if this archetype is to serve for the
This thesis does not examine the other sense in which Kant uses the term archetype ,
archetype as moral exemplar, but it is interesting to note that in The Canon of Pure Reason of
the First Critique Kant appears to engage in what might be called the archetypal thinking
Steiner sets out to describe. Kant is providing the rational grounds for belief in God and an
afterlife, and argues to the existence of a supreme being from the practical possibility of the
supreme good, and the reality of a future life from the fact of a moral world independent of
the world of the senses.16 In the following Architectonic of Pure Reason Kant is delineating
the varieties of philosophy and uses the term archetype to characterise the idea of each
particular field of knowledge. Kant’s use of archetype in these contexts appears to be
consistent with the Platonic usage.17
estimation of each subjective philosophy, the structure of which is often so diverse and liable to alteration, it
must be taken objectively. Thus regarded, philosophy is a mere idea of a possible science which nowhere
exists
in concreto, but to which, by many different paths, we eneavour to approximate, until the one true path … has
achieved likeness to the archetype, so far as this is granted to [mortal] man.
18NOS, p. 45.
19Ibid., pp166 - 191.
20 GWV, pp 10-74.
Steiner refers to archetypes and archetypal thinking frequently. The concept of the archetype
as the form or Idea of the phenomena plays a central role in Steiner’s epistemological works
and arises from his studies of Goethe’s approach to nature. There is a discussion of Kant’s
distinction between the intellectus ectypus and the intellectus archetypus in the fourth of
Steiner’s introductions to Goethe’s nature studies,18 and a comprehensive account of the
distinction Steiner draws between types, archetypes and Ideas in the 16th introduction.19 The
last of Steiner’s epistemological studies, Goethe’s World View, contains an extended
argument for a reinterpretation of Plato’s concept of the archetype along the lines of Goethe’s
Urphaenomenon.20 To put it in Kantian terms, Steiner’s presentation of the archetype is an
attempt to collapse the distinction between regulative principles and constitutive principles,
Page 7
and to ground the archetype as a regulative principle within the phenomena. Some of the
background to Goethe’s concept of archetype is contained in Part 1 Chapter 2 following, and
Steiner’s understanding of the archetype is developed in Part 2 Chapter 4.
Page 8
11 Part 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE'S WAY OF SEEING.txt
PART 1 Chapter 2 GOETHE’S WAY OF SEEING
When he finished his studies in natural science at the University of Vienna in 1882,
Rudolf Steiner took up an offer to be the editor of Goethe’s scientific works in Joseph
Kürschner’s National German Literature. Steiner was engaged on this project until 1890
in Vienna, and then undertook similar work in Weimar as the editor of the scientific
section of the Weimar edition of Goethe’s collected works at the Goethe-Schiller archives
until he left Weimar for Berlin in 1897.1 Steiner published all of his primary
epistemological works over this period. It is not surprising, then, that Goethe’s
scientific essays can be identified as one of the principal sources upon which Steiner
draws for his responses to the epistemology of the critical philosophy. From early on
Steiner was convinced that the methodology Goethe had employed in observing natural
phenomena provided a way to reach beyond the limits to knowledge imposed by Kantian
idealism. The holism of Goethe’s approach to natural science also provided Steiner with
an intellectual grounding for his inherent aversion to dualism and to the Kantian notion
that human consciousness does not have access to knowledge of essences. As Steiner’s
epistemological arguments depend so much upon what he has taken from Goethe’s
phenomenology of nature it seems necessary, at this stage, to provide some background
about Goethe’s natural science and the methodology for the investigation of nature which
Steiner claims to have derived from it.
1CML, pp77-121.
1. Goethe’s concept of natural science
Although J. W. von Goethe is most known for his lyric poetry, his version of the Faust
legend and his other literary achievements, Goethe himself regarded his essays into the
investigation of nature as his greatest contribution to human culture. Like philosophers
and other intellectuals of the time, including Kant2 and many of the post-Kantians,
Goethe kept abreast of the rapid advances in science and technology of the late 18th and
early 19th centuries, and contributed to scientific debates and discussions. Goethe’s
orientation to natural phenomena was, however, much more practical than philosophical.
He gathered botanical specimens from the garden of his summer house, collected and
classified bones and minerals, attended anatomy lectures, performed autopsies and
experiments in light and optics, and corresponded with other amateur and professional
scientists. When it came to developing a theory to account for his observations Goethe’s
initial response was to turn to Kant for an explanatory method.3 Later on, however, it
became apparent that Goethe’s research method was very much at odds with Kant’s and
that of other contemporary scientists and philosophers.
2 Kant had a particular interest in cosmology. His earlier work included an extensive treatise on the
movement of the stars, which is acknowledged in references to the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula.
Page 1
3 Goethe, J. Campaign in France, cited in Naydler, J. (2000) Goethe on Science, hereinafter GOS, pp 5758: In Kant’s scientific writings I have grasped the idea that attraction and repulsion are essential
constituents of matter and that neither can be divorced from the other in the concept of matter. This led me
to the recognition of polarity as a basic feature of all creation, a principle permeating and animating the
infinite range of phenomena.
4 Bacon, F. Novum Organum 1, 46.265 cited in Quinton, A. (1980) Francis Bacon, OUP: Oxford: The
human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down … forces everything else to add
fresh support and confirmation; and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary,
yet either does not observe or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with
violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.
5 It is noteworthy that Kant dedicates the First Critique to Bacon and cites Bacon’s Great Instauration.
The research method for natural science which had come to be widely adopted by
Goethe’s time was the eliminative induction ,4 which had grown out of Francis Bacon’s
Novum Organum and other scientific treatises, and had been so successful in precipitating
the advancement of science and technology throughout the Enlightenment.5 This method
emphasizes quantitative analysis of observations, and focuses therefore upon spatial
measurement and systematic categorization as the primary tools for the investigation of
natural phenomena. Goethe reacted strongly against the notion that the scientific study of
nature should be founded only upon the assessment of quantities, and that what are
termed the secondary qualities of nature, such as colour, smell and taste, should be
regarded as unscientific and subjective , and be relegated to forming the subject
matter of poetry and art. For Goethe art and science were interdependent, and to him it
seemed unscientific and irrational to look to measuring instruments rather than the finely
tuned sensibilities of the human organism to explain natural phenomena.6 The gap
between Goethe’s approach to nature and conventional science grew to the point that, in
his late work on colour, the Farbenlehre [Theory of Colour]7, Goethe lampoons the
methodology and the conclusions of Newton’s Optics and, in more general terms,
criticises the scientific method of the Enlightenment.8
6 Goethe, J. The Human Being is the most exact Instrument cited in GOS, p. 29: In so far as we make use
of our healthy senses, the human being is the most powerful and exact scientific instrument possible.
7 Goethe, J. (1970) Theory of Colours, MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.
8Goethe’s approach to the observation of phenomena has found much more favour with 20th century
physicists than it did with his contemporaries and their successors. The expansion of physics from
Newton’s laws to relativity, quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has demanded of
physicists that they take account of the subject, as well, in the interpretation of subatomic phenomena.
Heisenberg was himself aware of Goethe’s scientific work, and the implications of it. Referring to
Goethe’s polemic against Newton he writes in Heisenberg (1979) Philosophic Problems of Quantum
Physics, Ox Bow Press: Woodbridge, Connecticut: It would be superficial to neglect this struggle as
unimportant; there is a good reason for one of the most eminent of men using all his power to combat the
Page 2
achievement of Newton’s optics. One can only charge Goethe with a lack of consistency. He should not
only have combated Newton’s views but he should have said that the whole of Newton’s physics, optics,
mechanics and gravitational theory was the work of the devil.
In his accounts of his observations of nature and his occasional essays into the
methodology of natural science Goethe claims it is possible to engage in a qualitative
approach to natural phenomena, which is nevertheless scientific. He also claims that the
proper study of nature requires the development of enhanced mental powers9 and the
opening up of new organs 10 of thinking and of perception. According to Goethe the
scientific observer is obligated to engage in a process of inner transformation herself
along with the phenomena which are being observed.11 This is an attitude towards the
undertaking of scientific enquiry which is evidently completely at odds with the
purportedly objective stance of conventional science.
9 GOS, p. 72: There is a delicate empiricism which makes itself utterly identical with the object, becoming
true theory. But this enhancement of our mental powers belongs to a highly evolved age , citing Goethe,
J. (1823) Maximen und Reflexionen, HA 12.509
10 Ibid, p. 102: Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us , citing Goethe,
J.(1823) Bedeutende Foerdenis, HA 13.41-42
11Ibid, p. 50: When something has acquired a form it metamorphoses immediately to a new one. If we
wish to arrive at some living perception of Nature we ourselves must remain as quick and flexible as
Nature and follow the example she gives , citing Goethe, J. (1817) Die Absicht eingeleitet, HA 13.54-56
12 Goethe, J. Einwirkung der neuen Philosophie [Effects of the New Philosophy] in Sämtliche Werke in
Max Hesses Verlag, vol 40, p. 27: Für Philosophie im eigentlichen Sinne hatte ich kein Organ
13 Ibid, pp 27-30.
14 Goethe, J. (1978) The Metamorphosis of Plants, op. cit., pp 51-53.
15 Foerster, E. (2001) Goethe and the Auge des Geistes , Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für
Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte pp 87-101.
Goethe claimed to have had no organ for philosophy 12 but was, in fact, very familiar
with contemporary developments in philosophical thinking, including Kant’s critical
philosophy.13 He corresponded with Fichte, and was on friendly terms with Hegel.
Goethe came to reject the Linnaean system of classifying plants, and Linnaeus’ theory of
anticipation 14, but that was only after he had, himself, made thousands of detailed
drawings and descriptions of natural phenomena. His objection to the style of thinking
underlying the philosophy and science of his time was a belief that it did injustice both to
the object of observation and to the observer. Goethe subsequently shared this concern
with those Romantics and post-Kantians, such as Schelling and Hegel, who also rejected
Page 3
the methodology of the science of their times, but for very different reasons.15 Unlike
these Naturphilosophen, however, Goethe opposed orthodox science not for its emphasis
upon careful observation, but for what he saw as its failure to observe carefully enough:
its failure to take proper account of the activities of the observer in the observation, and
the effect those activities had upon the information one could draw from the phenomena.
The organ for philosophy Goethe claimed to have lacked was what he saw as the
propensity of both the Kantians and their nature-philosophy opponents to theorise about
natural phenomena rather than to engage with them. The claim made by Steiner and
others who regard Goethe as a significant natural scientist16 is that Goethe had the
capacity to perceive the idea within the phenomena, and to enter into sense-perceptible
phenomena in such a way as to participate in the phenomenology of nature.
16 Arthur Zajonc, a physicist, and Craig Holdrege, a biologist, co-editors of two recent collections of essays
on Goethean science, are scientists who promote Goethe’s methodology as a legitimate scientific method.
17 Rorty, R. (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton U.P.: Princeton, p. 367: On the
periphery of the history of modern philosophy, one finds figures who, without forming a tradition ,
resemble each other in their distrust of the notion that man’s essence is to be a knower of essences. Goethe,
Kierkegaard, Santayana, William James, Dewey, the later Wittgenstein, the later Heidegger, are figures of
this sort. Goethe was not a systematiser, but Rorty is mistaken to claim that Goethe did not seek to be a
knower of essences .
18 Cassirer, E. (1979) The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Princeton U.P.: Princeton.
19 Cassirer, E. (1970) Rousseau Kant Goethe, Princeton UP: Princeton pp 61-97.
20 Cassirer, E. (1974) The Problem of Knowledge, Yale U.P.: New Haven.
In addition to Steiner there are some philosophers who have acknowledged Goethe’s
contribution to natural science and there has been a recent trend amongst some scientists
to rehabilitate Goethe’s scientific method. Of the philosophers Richard Rorty in
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature17 classes Goethe as one of his few edifying
philosophers and Ernst Cassirer in The Philosophy of the Enlightenment18, Rousseau
Kant Goethe19 and in The Problem of Knowledge20 explores the relationship between the
critical philosophy and Goethe’s way of looking at the world. Rorty does not explain,
however, what it is about Goethe’s way of seeing that earns Goethe his approbation, nor
why he qualifies Goethe as a philosopher at all. Cassirer, similarly, does not develop the
epistemological implications of Goethe’s scientific work nor the interplay between
Goethe’s methodology and the critical philosophy. Instead, in The Philosophy of the
Enlightenment Cassirer focuses upon an apparent harmony between the aesthetics of the
Page 4
Critique of Judgment and Goethe’s poetic works21, and in Rousseau Kant Goethe, upon
the tension between Kant’s mathematical metaphysics of nature and Goethe’s natural
science 22. In The Problem of Knowledge Cassirer does, however, hit upon a feature of
Goethe’s way of seeing with epistemological implications when he says:
21Cassirer, E. (1979), op. cit., pp 277-278; there is also considerable tension between Kant’s analysis of the
capacity for judgment and Goethe’s concept of anschauende Urteilskraft [intuitive judgment].
22 Cassirer, E. (1970), op. cit., p. 62 describes Goethe’s approach as …one continuous attack upon Newton
and Newtonian physics. This is something of an overstatement, for until the Theory of Colour Goethe’s
attack was not so much on Newton, or even on Newtonian physics, as on the tendency in the science of his
time to exclude qualities from scientific examination.
23 Cassirer, E. (1974), op. cit. p. 146.
24 Steiner, R. (2000) Nature’s Open Secret, op. cit., pp 86-87: Art was for [Goethe] one revelation of the
primal lawfulness of the world, science the other. For him, art and science spring from a single source.
Whereas researchers delve into the depths of reality to formulate its driving forces in the form of thoughts,
artists seek to imbue their medium with these same driving forces.
25 Foerster, E. (2001) , op. cit., pp 87-101.
There prevails in his writings a relationship of the particular to the universal such
as can hardly be found elsewhere in the history of philosophy or of natural
science.23
Steiner says something similar in Nature’s Open Secret 24 and Foerster develops the
interconnection between Goethe and the post-Kantians in Goethe and the Auge des
Geistes. 25
The recent trend amongst some natural scientists to rehabilitate Goethe as a scientist has
come a century and a half after Goethe’s death in 1832. Between then and Steiner’s
editorial introductions of the 1880’s and 1890’s Goethe’s scientific works were not taken
seriously by many thinkers,26 but over the last 30 years or so there has been a significant
reassessment of Goethe’s scientific work. Recent studies of Goethean science include
the sets of papers published as Goethe’s Way of Science27 in 1998 and Goethe’s Delicate
Empiricism published in 200828. Many of the authors of these papers refer to Steiner’s
work in bringing about recognition of Goethe’s contribution to scientific enquiry.29 It is
probable that popular works such as Sheldrake’s The Rebirth of Nature30 have also been
influenced by Steiner’s articulation of Goethe’s way of seeing. There are numerous
works by science teachers from Rudolf Steiner schools which present Goethe’s approach
to the study of nature.31 Overall it might be said that Goethe’s scientific work is now
sufficiently in the public eye to be the subject of critical assessment.32 The gravamen of
Steiner’s presentation of Goethe as a scientist is the claim that Goethe was able to steer a
Page 5
safe and intellectually sustainable course between the Scylla of scientific, but incomplete,
empiricism and the Charybdis of participatory, but inexact, mental imaging.
26 Exceptions included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who translated Goethe and promoted his scientific work,
and the naturalist T. H. Huxley, who used a poem of Goethe’s to introduce the first edition of the magazine
Nature in 1869.
27Seamon, D. & Zajonc, A. (eds) (1998) Goethe’s Way of Science, SUNY: New York.
28 Bywater, B. & Holdrege, C. (eds) (2005) Goethe’s Delicate Empiricism, Trivium Publications: Amherst,
New York.
29 Holdrege, C. Doing Goethean Science; Wahl, D. Zarte Empirie : Goethean Science as a Way of
Knowing; Sims, E-M. Goethe, Husserl and the Crisis of the European Sciences; and Root, C. The Proteus
Within: Thoreau’s Practice of Goethe’s Phenomenology in Bywater, B. & Holdrege, C., op. cit., refer to
Steiner’s contribution.
30 Sheldrake, N. (1990) The Rebirth of Nature, Century: London.
31 See, for example, Bortoft, H. (1996) The Wholeness of Nature, Lindisfarne Books: Great Barrington,
Mass.; Edelglass, S. (2006) The Physics of Human Experience, Adonis Press: Hillsdale, NY.
32 Goethe claimed credit for the discovery of the intermaxillary bone in the human skeleton. Both the
claims that there is a human intermaxillary bone and that the discovery was Goethe’s have been
challenged in Wells, G. (1967) Goethe and the Intermaxillary Bone, The British Journal for the History of
Science, vol 3, no 12 pp 348-361.
2. Goethe’s nature studies
Goethe’s scientific writings include occasional essays, notes and aphorisms on science
and scientific method, longer essays on plant and animal morphology, and treatises on
optics and the theory of colour. The longer essays and the treatises contain detailed
descriptions of Goethe’s observations and the results of his exhaustive experimentation.
Many of the catch-phrases which are said to distinguish Goethe’s scientific method from
the conventional are contained in shorter notes and occasional commentaries. Goethe’s
major scientific works include Die Metamorphosen der Pflanzen [The Metamorphosis of
Plants] (1790)33, his essay on method, Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt
[The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject] (1793)34, Osteologie
(Osteology) (1795), Morphologie [Morphology] (1807)35, and the Farbenlehre [Theory
of Colour] (1810)36. The following sections on the metamorphosis of plants, the essay
on method and the theory of colour are provided to demonstrate Goethe’s approach to
natural phenomena and the aspects of Goethe’s methodology from which Steiner could
draw his epistemological implications.
Page 6
33 GSW vol 38 p. 13; in translation, Goethe, J. (1978), op. cit., p. 20.
34 GSW vol 40 p. 7; in translation, GOS, pp 75-83.
35 GSW vol 38, p. 5 and p. 152.
36 GSW 41-44; in translation Theory of Colours (1990), MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.
2.1 The Metamorphosis of Plants.
Goethe’s interest in the forms of plants engaged him from the time he moved to Weimar
in 1775. It was an abiding preoccupation throughout his Italian journey from 1786 to
1788. Goethe visited botanic gardens, and compared the plants he saw with the plants
with which he was familiar from northern Europe. He kept extensive diaries of botanic
descriptions and drawings, and conveyed them to acquaintances who shared his interest
in scientific investigation. Goethe’s findings are set out in his diarised Italienische Reise
[Italian Journey]37 and in his letters to Herder and others. Early in the journey Goethe
hypothesises about discovering the form of the Urpflanze [archetypal plant]:
37 Goethe, J. (1970) Italian Journey Penguin Books: London.
38 Ibid, p. 71, Padua 27th September, 1786.
39 Ibid, p. 310, Naples 17th May, 1787; this translation from NOS, p. 17.
40 Ibid, p. 366, Rome July 31, 1787.
Here, where I am confronted with a great variety of plants my hypothesis that it
might be possible to derive all plant forms from one original plant becomes
clearer to me and more exciting. Only when we have accepted this idea will it be
possible to determine genera and species exactly.38
Subsequently he tells Herder he is close to describing the archetypal plant:
Moreover, I must confide to you that I have come very close to the secret of the
generation and organization of plants and that it is the simplest thing one can
imagine … The archetypal plant will be the most extraordinary creature in the
world, for which nature herself will envy me. With this model and the key to it
one will then be able to invent plants ad infinitum that must be consistent. In
other words, even if they do not exist, they could exist and are not merely
painterly or poetic whims but possess an inner truth and necessity. It will be
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possible to apply the same law to all living things.39
Finally he claims to have discovered the principle of organic metamorphosis:
While walking in the public gardens of Palermo it came to me in a flash that in
the organ of the plant which we are accustomed to call the leaf lies the true
Proteus, who can hide or reveal himself in vegetal forms. From first to last the
plant is nothing but leaf, which is so inseparable from the future germ that one
cannot think of one without the other.40
With these two ideas – the archetypal form of the plant and the principle of
metamorphosis - Goethe embarks upon a phenomenology of nature. The first stage of
scientific enquiry remains the accurate observation of the physical phenomena. The
second stage is the recognition of the Gestalt [form] and Bildung [development], which
constitute the Vorstellungen [mental images] of the spatial and temporal blueprints of the
observed phenomena. In the case of plant life this will amount to recognition of the
principle of metamorphosis. As the archetypal plant is neither the original plant’ nor
any specific physical plant it can best be understood as a particular instance of the
Urphänomen [archetypal phenomenon]. Identification of the archetypal phenomenon
becomes the third, and final, stage of abstraction from the perceived phenomena. The
task of the scientist, therefore, will be the uncovering of the archetypal phenomenon
within the specific aspect of nature under investigation.
In The Metamorphosis of Plants Goethe traces the growth of annual plants from seed to
flower, to fruit and to seed again, and identifies six sequential stages: seed (and seedleaf), stem-leaves, flower (calyx), corolla, stamens (nectaries, style and stigma) and fruit.
Goethe observes that each stage metamorphoses into the next and that, therefore, all the
plant’s organs can be seen to be variations on the leaf. There is also an alternation from
expansion to contraction and back to expansion, and a progression towards ever greater
refinement: the seed expands out into the stem-leaf, which contracts and concentrates its
energy to produce the calyx and flower; the calyx expands out to produce the corolla,
which then contracts into the sexual organs; they expand into the fruit, and the fruit
contracts, finally, back into the seed.
Goethe does not articulate in any systematic way how he has come to conceive of plants
as he does. To some extent, however, the method emerges from the language he
employs. The following paragraphs from the chapter The Fruits is an example of
Goethe’s way of approaching the observation of nature:41
Page 8
41 Goethe, J. (1978), op. cit. pp40-42.
74. It is now the fruit which we have to observe, and we shall soon be convinced
that this too originates in the same way as the previous parts and is subject to
the same laws. We speak here really of those vessels or capsules formed by
Nature to enclose the so-called covered seeds, or rather to develop through
fructification within these vessels a greater or lesser number of seeds. It will
be easy to show that these vessels may likewise be explained according to the
nature and organisation of those parts of the plant we have already
considered.
75. It is once more the retrogressive metamorphosis which brings to our notice
this law of Nature. …
76. Furthermore even in normal and constant formations Nature reveals in
manifold ways the fruitfulness that lies hidden in the leaf. …
77.
78. If we keep observations in mind we shall not fail to recognise the leaf-form in
all seed-vessels, in spite of their manifold formations, their peculiar
modifications and combinations.
79. Nature conceals this likeness to the leaf-form most when she forms soft and
juicy or hard and woody seed-forms. But even then it will not escape our
notice if we know how to follow this development carefully through all its
transitions. Here it is enough to have indicated the general idea and to have
shown by means of a few examples Nature’s unity of purpose.
These paragraphs indicate the following aspects of Goethe’s method:
(1) Observations of other parts of the plant have led Goethe to laws , which he
anticipates will be evident in fruit as well;
(2) Having deduced the phenomenon of metamorphosis, Goethe applies it both
progressively and retrogressively;
(3) Having concluded that every organ of the plant is a transformation of the leaf,
Goethe seeks the leaf in formations, in which it is not immediately observable;
(4) There is a general idea within the phenomena, which are a manifestation of
Nature’s unity of purpose .
The method, in essence, requires a perception of the general, from which Goethe
proceeds back to the particular. In this respect it runs counter to the usual understanding
of the methodology of conventional natural science, which is held to be inductive, and
which claims to develop its laws by proceeding from the particularity of experimental
observation to the general. Goethe’s approach is more akin to deduction which, as a
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method for obtaining knowledge, is usually said to be limited to pure mathematics, or to
the truths Kant categorised as the analytic a priori.
2.2 Goethe’s essays on method
Goethe wrote a few short essays on method, two of which have particular significance in
relation to an enquiry into the theory of knowledge which the method implies. One of
these, Die Absicht eingeleitet [The Intention Introduced], is an introduction to his
botanical writings, and in it Goethe relates his observations of organic phenomena to
several of the concepts he employs, such as Anschauung [intuition], Bildung [form] and
morphology.42 The other is Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt [The
Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object], which is Goethe’s most complete
attempt to describe and to justify his scientific method.43 The following is an extract
from the former essay, in which Goethe contrasts his approach to the observation of
natural phenomena with conventional scientific method:44
42 Goethe, J. (1817) Die Absicht eingeleitet, HA 13.54-56.
43 Goethe, J. (1823) Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt, HA 13.10-20.
44 Goethe, op. cit., cited GOS, pp 49-50.
In observing objects of Nature, especially those that are alive, we often think the
best way of gaining insight into the relationship between their inner nature and the
effects they produce is to divide them into their constituent parts. Such an
approach may, in fact, bring us a long way toward our goal. In a word, those
familiar with science can recall what chemistry and anatomy have contributed
toward an understanding and overview of Nature.
But these attempts at division also produce many adverse effects when carried to
an extreme. To be sure, what is alive can be dissected into its component parts,
but from these parts it will be impossible to restore it and bring it back to life.
This is true even of many inorganic substances, to say nothing of things organic in
nature.
Thus scientific minds of every epoch have also exhibited an urge to understand
living formations as such, to grasp their outward, visible, tangible parts in context,
to see these parts as an indication of what lies within and thereby gain some
understanding of the whole through an exercise of intuitive perception. It is no
doubt unnecessary to describe in detail the close relationship between this
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scientific desire and our need for art and imitation.
Thus the history of art, knowledge and science has produced many attempts to
establish and develop a theory which we will call morphology’. The historical
part of our discourse will deal with the different forms in which these attempts
have appeared.
The Germans have a word for the complex of existence presented by a physical
organism: Gestalt [structured form]. With this expression they exclude what is
changeable and assume that an interrelated whole is identified, defined and fixed
in character.
But if we look at all these Gestalten, especially the organic ones, we will discover
that nothing in them is permanent, nothing is at rest or defined – everything is in a
flux of continual motion. This is why German frequently and fittingly makes use
of the word Bildung to describe the end product and what is in process of
production as well.
Thus in setting forth a morphology we should not speak of Gestalt, or if we use
the term we should at least do so only in reference to the idea, the concept, or to
an empirical element held fast for a mere moment of time.
When something has acquired a form it metamorphoses immediately to a new
one. If we wish to arrive at some living perception of Nature we ourselves must
remain as quick and flexible as Nature and follow the example she gives.
In The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object Goethe moves from a
psychology of observation to the standpoint of the scientific observer and to the
constituents of experimentation.45 This work reads as if were intended as a discussion
paper, but although it is dated April 28, 1792 it was not published until 1823. The
essay argues for the fairly uncontroversial proposition that science depends upon
repeated, and not just repeatable, experiments:
45Goethe, op. cit., cited in GOS, p. 75: (1) As we become aware of objects in our environment we will
relate them to ourselves, and rightly so since our fate hinges on whether these objects please or displease us
… (2) This yardstick of pleasure and displeasure, attraction and repulsion, help and harm, we must now
renounce absolutely; as a neutral seemingly godlike being we must seek out and examine what it is, not
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what pleases. The constituents of experimentation are found in GSW, vol 40 pp 7-15, and translated in
GOS, pp 75-83.
(13) The main value of an experiment lies in the fact that, simple or compound, it
can be reproduced at any time given the requisite preparations, apparatus, and
skill. After assembling the necessary materials we may perform the experiment
as often as we wish. …
(14) As worthwhile as each experiment may be, it receives its real value only
when united or combined with other experiments. … Two phenomena may be
related, but not nearly so closely as we think. Although one experiment seems to
follow from another, an extensive series of experiments might be required to put
the two into an order actually conforming to nature.46
46 Goethe, op. cit., pp 10-11, translated in GOS p. 78.
47 Ibid., pp 11-13, translated in GOS pp 79-80
48CPR B xiii, p 20: Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which alone concordant
appearances can be admitted as equivalent to laws, and in the other hand the experiment which it has
Goethe is alluding to his experiments rearranging the order of leaves, so as to show their
metamorphoses, and to deficits he claimed to have identified in the methodology of
Newton’s Optics. He also cautions against the imposition of theoretical constructs upon
observed phenomena:
(18) Every piece of empirical evidence, every experiment, must be viewed as
isolated, yet the human faculty of thought forcibly strives to unite all external
objects known to it. It is easy to see the risk we run when we try to connect a
single bit of evidence with an idea already formed, or use individual experiments
to prove some relationship not fully perceptible to the senses but expressed
through the creative power of the mind. …
(24) Nothing happens in living Nature that does not bear some relation to the
whole. The empirical evidence may seem quite isolated, we may view our
experiments as mere isolated facts, but this is not to say that they are, in fact,
isolated. The question is: how can we find the connection between these
phenomena, these events? 47
On the face of it Goethe’s conception of the experiment is in stark contrast with the
relationship between observer and phenomenon Kant recommends in the First Critique,
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for which the scientist compels [nature] to answer questions which he has himself
formulated. 48 The opposition between Goethe and Kant as scientists is also highlighted
in Goethe’s well-known description of his first meeting with Schiller.49
devised in conformity with these principles, must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not,
however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of
an appointed judge who compels the witnesses to answer questions which he has himself formulated.
Goethe, in his note on types of humans, says something surprisingly similar: Naydler, op cit p38: By
proceeding from ideas, [the comprehenders] simultaneously express the unity of the whole, and it is almost
the obligation of Nature to conform to the ideas.
49 Goethe, J. Poetry and Truth, translated in GOS pp 96-97: Schiller had moved to Jena, where, as before,
I saw nothing of him. It was about this time that Batsch, with unbelievable enterprise, had founded a
scientific society, with fine collections and impressive apparatus. I usually attended its periodic meetings
and one time found Schiller there. By chance we were left in the hall together, and began a conversation.
He appeared to be interested in the lectures, but remarked with great insight, and to my pleasure, that such
mangled methods regarding Nature could only repel a lay person who might otherwise be willing to
venture into the subject. I answered that perhaps even to express such a method would be uncongenial and
that there might be another way of considering Nature, not piecemeal and isolated but actively at work, as
she proceeds from the whole to the parts. Schiller expressed the desire to have the point clarified through
discussion, though not concealing his doubts and refusing to grant that my views owed their origins to
experience.
We had reached his house; the conversation had lured me in. I gave a spirited explanation of my theory
of the metamorphosis of plants with graphic pen sketches of a symbolic plant. He listened and looked with
great interest, with unerring comprehension, but when I had ended he shook his head, saying, That is not
an empiric experience, it is an idea. I was taken aback and somewhat irritated, for the disparity in our
viewpoints was here sharply delineated. The statement from his essay On Grace and Dignity in Literature
occurred to me again; the old antipathy was astir. Controlling myself, I replied, How splendid that I have
ideas without knowing it, and can see them before my very eyes.
Schiller, who had far greater tact and urbanity than I, ... replied in the manner of a trained Kantian. My
stubborn realism gave rise to a lively argument, and a great battle ensued. Though later an armistice was
called, and neither could consider himself the victor, yet each considered himself invincible. Sentences
like the following made me quite unhappy: How could any experience ever be gauged an idea, for the
characteristic thing about an idea is that it can never be congruous with an experience. Yet if he termed
an idea what I called an experience, then there must certainly be something negotiable, something in
common between us.
50 The final, didactic section of Theory of Colour is, admittedly, an unrelenting attack on Newton’s Optics.
2.3 The theory of colours
Goethe worked on the Theory of Colour from 1790 until 1810. He was familiar with
Newton’s Optics50, which conceives of the colours as the manifestations of progressive
refractions of white light. Goethe was averse to the reduction of colours to the status of a
secondary quality, and to the description of them as quantifiable angles of what Newton
called refrangibility . He also rejected the counter-intuitive assertions that the colour
white contains all the other colours, and that black is not a colour at all. In the Theory of
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Colour Goethe embarks upon a phenomenology of the colours, both as to their senseperceptible appearance and as to the psychological and moral effects of the colours.
He replicates Newton’s colour experiments, obtains different results from Newton, and
lambasts Newton for what Goethe sees as the imposition of a theory upon the
phenomena, and a failure to let the phenomena speak for themselves. Although the
Theory of Colour does display some of the characteristics of amateur science – there are
ad hominem attacks upon Newton, and appeals to the common sense of the reader - it
also demonstrates in a very clear fashion the distinction Goethe is attempting to draw
between looking at and looking into natural phenomena, between perceiving the
phenomenon and apperceiving the Urphaenomenon [archetypal phenomenon] of which it
is an instance.
This distinction might best be demonstrated by comparing Goethe’s colour-chart with
Newton’s. Newton famously observed the spectrum of colours created when a source of
light was refracted through a prism. The prism produced the familiar rainbow colours,
and Newton concluded that pure white light consists of all the colours, that black is the
absence of colour and that the colours can be designated by their respective angles of
refraction. Goethe repeated Newton’s experiments, but also noted that the rainbow
spectrum arose from the refraction of light through a prism onto the border between a
white screen and a black background. Goethe inverted the experiment by placing a black
screen against a white background. The effect was that the colours now ran from the
blue end of the spectrum to yellow, contained the colour magenta between violet and red,
and did not contain green. Goethe’s conclusion was that the colours do not represent the
incremental changes in the angles of refrangibility of white light, but arise at the borders
of light and dark, and as a result of the interplay between darkness and light. Goethe
notes that we cannot look directly at the sun, which we understand to be made up of pure,
white light, but see it as yellow. We believe space to be empty, and when we look at it
unilluminated, it appears to be black. On a clear, illuminated day, we see the sky as
blue. We observe that blue arises when light is applied to darkness, and yellow arises
when darkness confronts white light. The Urphaenomen, therefore, is that colours arise
from the interplay between light and dark, which are opposing forces. Blue is the first
lightening of the dark, yellow is the first darkening of the light, green is the natural
union of blue and yellow, and magenta is the outcome of the intensification of blue and
yellow. Goethe’s colours are depicted as a circle rather than as a spectrum, with
graduations between twelve colours.
Throughout the Theory of Colour Goethe attempts to articulate the difference between his
way of observing natural phenomena and Newton’s. In the Preface he claims there is an
inevitable coalescence of theory and sense-experience, and says:
An extremely odd demand is often set forth but never met, even by those who
make it: that is, that empirical data should be presented without any theoretical
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context, leaving the reader, the student, to his own devices in judging it. This
demand seems odd because it is useless simply to look at something. Every act
of looking turns into observation, every act of observation into reflection, every
act of reflection into the making of associations; thus it is evident that we theorize
every time we look carefully at the world. The ability to do this with clarity of
mind, with self-knowledge, in a free way, and (if I may venture to put it so) with
irony, is a skill we will need in order to avoid the pitfalls of abstraction and attain
the results we desire, results which can find a living and practical application.51
51 Goethe, J. (1990) Theory of Colours translated by Miller, cited in GOS and edited by Judd, D., translated
by Eastlake, C., M. I. T. Press: Cambridge, Mass pp xl-xli.
The steps Goethe describes in the progression from looking to observation to reflection
and to the forming of associations forms the basis for what might be described as the
methodology of his natural science.
3. The methodology of Goethe’s natural science
The methodology of Goethe’s natural science does not fit readily into any of the
conventional categories of scientific method. It is clearly not inductive, for while Goethe
made very careful observations of natural phenomena, he did not simply move from his
observations to a hypothesis and then seek to draw conclusions from the observations he
had made. His methodology requires somewhat greater involvement of the observer, yet
is far too empiricist to be regarded as deductive, and nor is it what is described as
Popper’s hypothetico-deductive methodology.52 As Naydler points out there is a
fundamental difference between Goethe’s approach and any inductive or deductive
methodology, for:
52 Popper, K. (1968) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson: London p32: According to the view
that will be put forward here, the method of critically testing theories, and selecting from them according to
the results of tests, always proceeds on the following lines. From a new idea, put up tentatively, and not yet
justified in any way – an anticipation, a hypothesis, a theoretical system, or what you will – conclusions are
drawn by means of logical deduction.
53 GOS, p. 71.
54 Uberoi, J.(1984) The Other Mind of Europe: Goethe as a scientist, Oxford UP: Delhi.
What links inductivism and hypothetico-deductivism is the assumption that the
Page 15
human mind necessarily operates in a separate sphere from nature, formulating its
ideas and theories from a position of relative detachment from phenomena.
Goethe’s methodology, by contrast, is based on the assumption that the human
mind has the capacity to enter into the essence of phenomena, and lay hold of
principles which, once grasped, alter one’s perception of – and relationship to –
these phenomena.53
Goethe’s methodology for natural science requires the engaged participation of the
scientist. It is what Uberoi in The Other Mind of Europe: Goethe as a Scientist 54 refers
to as participant observation . The scientist, in observing nature, must take account of
her own part as a natural phenomenon and observe herself in the act of observing. She
must also develop her inner capacities as a scientist. Holdrege, in his introduction to
Goethe’s Delicate Empiricism, suggests that Goethean science is actually a form of inner
training:
Although Goethe is often portrayed in opposition to science, he viewed his efforts
as a further refinement of scientific method. What has made this Goethe-inspired
evolution of science both enticing and forbidding is that it involves, in Frederick
Amrine’s words, the metamorphosis of the scientist . Goethe knew that his
delicate empiricism entailed an enhancement of our mental powers and for that
very reason it still remains in its infancy. It entails becoming aware of the
object view of the world that so strongly informs both our everyday and
scientific thinking. When we leave this natural attitude (Husserl) behind, we
can begin to see how we participate within the world and then work to gain new
bearings for our thinking and perceiving.55
55 Holdrege, C., Editorial, Bywater & Holdrege, op. cit., p. 12-13.
56 sinnlich, sensorial, as opposed to geistlich, intellectual; Phantasie is not the fantasy of wild imagination,
but the imaginative recreation of the actual.
In The Metamorphosis of Plants, in Theory of Colours, in his short pieces on scientific
method and in several aphorisms Goethe attempted to describe what it was that underlay
his approach to nature. Although it was left to Steiner to provide a coherent account of
Goethe’s methodology it is possible to identify features of a methodology from Goethe’s
works and to distinguish these features as four separable phases in a process. The first of
these is indistinguishable from the methodology of conventional science, and amounts to
making what might be called exact sensorial observations. The second stage
acknowledges the inherent theoretical aspect of any observation, but takes it further by
requiring the conscious creation of an imaginative picture, which is extracted from the
observed phenomena. This stage is characterised by Goethe’s term exakte sinnliche
Phantasie [exact sensorial imagination]56. The third stage requires the scientist to
recognize the idea or the archetype within the imaginative picture, and might be
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described by Goethe’s term anschauende Urteilskraft [intuitive judgment]57. The final
stage, in which the scientist unites the idea with the original observed phenomena, might
be characterised as objektives Denken [objective thinking], a term applied by another, but
endorsed by Goethe, to describe Goethe’s way of thinking.58 Goethe described his
overall approach to Nature as eine zarte Empirie [a delicate empiricism].59 Exact
sensorial imagination, intuitive judgment and objective thinking require some further
explanation.60
57 This expression is the title of an essay, in which Goethe claims to have developed the capacity to employ
the intellectus archetypus described by Kant in the second part of the Critique of Judgment.
anschauende is generally translated as intuitive, but is literally looking into ; Urteilskraft is the capacity
for making judgments.
58 In Goethe, J. Significant Help given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase, cited in Wahl, op. cit. p. 70.
Goethe acknowledges Johann Heinroth as the author of this description.
59Goethe, J. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, cited in NOS, op. cit. p. 72: There is a delicate empiricism
which makes itself utterly identical with the object, thereby becoming true theory. But this enhancement
of our mental powers belongs to a highly evolved age.
60 These stages are discussed in Wahl, op. cit. pp 61-65.
61 Cited in Zajonc, op. cit., p. 26.
3.1 Exact sensorial imagination
Goethe’s requirement that the scientist engage in exact sensorial imagination requires
that there first be exact sensorial observation of natural phenomena, and that the scientist
then form an imaginative picture out of the observations which have been made. The
observations must be free of any presuppositions. Goethe warns against introducing
assumptions about cause and effect into the observations, and says: ... man in thinking
errs particularly when enquiring after cause and effect; the two constitute the indissoluble
phenomenon. 61 To do this actually requires a considerable capacity to withhold from
forming judgments, for as Goethe also recognises, [e]very act of looking turns into
observation, every act of observation into reflection, every act of reflection into the
making of associations; thus it is evident that we theorize every time we look carefully at
the world. 62 Exact sensorial observation, then, is already more than a mere looking
into the world, but should amount to no more than to look carefully at the world .
62 Goethe, (1990), op. cit., pp xl-xli.
63 Goethe, J. (1809) Der Kammerberg bei Eger trans Stephenson (1984) and cited in GOS, p. 128.
64 CPR A94 p127: There are three original sources (capacities or faculties of the soul) which contain the
conditions of the possibility of all experience, and cannot themselves be derived from any other faculty of
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the mind, namely, sense, imagination, and apperception. Upon them are grounded (1) the synopsis of the
manifold a priori through sense; (2) the synthesis of this manifold through imagination; finally (3) the unity
of this synthesis through original apperception. All these faculties have a transcendental (as well as an
empirical) employment which concerns the form alone, and is possible a priori. In the B edition of the
First Critique imagination is subsumed into apperception.
When Goethe next speaks of imagination [Phantasie], in the context of exact sensory
imagination , he is referring to a specific faculty of the mind, which is to be distinguished
from thinking and intuition. Goethe sees imagination as a kind of helpmate to thinking
in the formulation of truly representative concepts:
Intuitive perception (Anschauung) gives us at once the complete concept of an
achieved form; the faculty of thought (Denk-Kraft), not wishing to lag behind, shows
and articulates in its own way how such a form could and must be achieved …
Since [the faculty of thought] does not feel entirely adequate to the task, it calls on the
imagination for help; and in this way conceptual entities (entia rationis) gradually
arise whose great advantage it is to lead us back to perception and to pressure us into
greater attention and complete insight.63
Goethe’s notion of imagination is thus nothing of the sort of free-floating imagination or
the exercise of the power of imagination as a creative, artistic activity. It is the exercise
of imagination as image-forming, and for the purpose of representing natural phenomena
with a degree of accuracy unavailable to ideas and concepts. Although this dissertation
does not extend to an enquiry into the faculty of imagination itself, it is interesting to note
that, in the first edition of the Transcendental Deduction of the First Critique, Kant
includes imagination as a separate faculty of cognition.64
3.2 Intuitive judgment
The phrase anschauende Urteilskraft [intuitive judgment] appears as the title to a short
essay by Goethe on Kant.65 It is clear from the text that the title is a play on Kant’s Kritik
der Urteilskraft [critique of judgment], but the expression does also seem to convey
Goethe’s claim that thought and observation may be combined more immediately than in
a sequential thinking about an observation. The sense of anschauende Urteilskraft is that
intuitive activity is somehow contained within the cognitive process of judgment.
Goethe’s essay is intended as a rejoinder to Kant’s claim that there are objectively
defined limits to knowledge, and that what Kant calls the intellectus archetypus
[archetypal intellect] is not available to a human consciousness. The essay is only short,
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and because of its relevance to the thesis of this dissertation the following translation of it
is offered:
65 Goethe, J. Sämtliche Werke in Max Hesses Verlag edition, vol 40 pp 30-31.
When I tried to apply Kant’s teaching, if not to penetrate the meaning of it, I
couldn’t resist the thought at times, that the dear man was proceeding in a
mischievously ironic fashion, in that at the one time he seemed to be attempting to
limit our capacity for knowledge in the narrowest way possible, and yet was
pointing, with a wink and a nod, over the boundaries he had himself constructed.
… In this sense the following part seemed to me to be highly significant:
We can imagine a kind of understanding, which, because it is not
discursive like ours, but is intuitive, could move from the synthetic
universal to the particular, observing the whole as such, and moving from
the whole to the parts. With this, it is not necessary to show that an
intellectus archetypus is possible, but only that, in the formulation of our
discursive, image-dependent understanding (intellectus ectypus) and the
chance that we are led, to be consistent, to that idea of an intellectus
archetypus, that no contradiction is implied.
It is true that the author seems to refer here to a divine intellect. However, if in
fact we seek, in the moral sphere – through faith in God, virtue and immortality –
to raise ourselves up into a high realm and to approach the primal being, then may
we not also, in the intellectual sphere – through the contemplation of an ever
creating nature – make ourselves worthy of active [geistig] participation in her
productions? Since I had, after all, ceaselessly pressed on, at first unconsciously
and out of an inner urge, toward the archetypal, the typical, since I had even
succeeded in demonstrating how it unfolds in accordance with the laws of nature,
there was nothing to stop me now from boldly embarking on the adventure of
reason, as the sage of Königsberg himself called it.66
66 Goethe, op. cit.; writer’s translation, except for the last paragraph, which is adapted from John Barnes’
translation: NOS, p. 49. Geistig is rendered here as active, instead of as spiritual, which would seem to
give a misleading sense to the text.
67 Goethe, J. Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase cited in Wahl, op. cit. p. 70: Here he
[Johann Heinroth] means that my thinking is not separate from the objects, that the elements of the object,
the perceptions of the object, flow into my thinking and are fully permeated by it; that my perception itself
is a way of thinking, and my thinking a perception.
68Goethe, J. Posthumous Notes, cited in NOS pp 37-38.
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Steiner accepts that Goethe has indeed succeeded in demonstrating how [the archetypal]
unfolds in accordance with the laws of nature and attempts to apply Goethe’s intuitive
judgment to the argument of the Third Critique. Steiner’s work in this area is discussed
in Part 2 Chapter 5 of this dissertation.
3.3 Objective thinking
The expression objektives Denken [objective thinking] was applied to Goethe’s
methodology by a contemporary, and was endorsed enthusiastically by Goethe as an
accurate description of the fulfilment of his scientific method.67 The implication of the
term is that Goethe had developed a way of engaging in thinking, which provides the
thinker with an immediate and direct relationship with the objects of the world and in
which thinking is no longer separated from sense experience. What Goethe appears to
mean by objective thinking also emerges from notes he made in 1790, in which he
distinguishes different types of humans , differing in their attitudes to their asking
questions of nature:68
To orient ourselves somewhat among these various types [of human beings], let
us divide them thus into four spheres: utilizers, fact-finders, contemplators, and
comprehenders:
(1) The utilizers, advocates and seekers of things practical, are the first to plough
the field of science, metaphorically speaking, and they aim at practical results.
Self-confidence derived from experience gives them assurance; necessity
gives them a certain breadth.
(2) Fact-finders, those who crave knowledge for its own sake, require a calm,
disinterested gaze, an inquisitive unrest, a clear mind. They are in contrast
with the first group, but work out the results from the scientific point of view
exclusively.
(3) The contemplators are somewhat more original, for the mere increase of
knowledge unwittingly fosters interpretation and crosses over into it. Even
the fact-finders, however much they may make the sign of the crucifix at the
very thought of imagination, before they realize it are compelled to call upon
this selfsame power for assistance.
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(4) The comprehenders – in a deeper sense they might be called creators – are
original in the highest sense of the term. By proceeding from ideas, they
simultaneously express the unity of the whole, and it is almost the obligation
of Nature to conform to the ideas.69
69 cited in NOS, pp37-38.
The utilizers are asking questions of Nature only to exploit her, and their questions are
neither scientific nor methodological. The fact finders, epistemologically, are what
might be called na„ve empiricists, and their scientific method is induction – they work
from specific observations to a generalising theory. The contemplators are the
rationalists, and Goethe’s description of them suggests that deduction will be their
scientific method. In the 20th century deduction may have acquired a degree of renewed
respectability in the form of Popper’s hypothetico-deductivism . Popper and others
have argued that although scientists do not always recognize it, this is the way in which
they do, in fact, do their science. Goethe’s comprehenders adopt an approach to nature,
which goes beyond the empiricists and the rationalists, for while they proceed from
ideas , they simultaneously express the unity of the whole . When this stage is
reached, according to Goethe, it is almost the obligation of Nature to conform to the
ideas because the ideas live within Nature.70
70 The intimate association Goethe claims between the practice of science and the effect upon the scientist
is reflected by a conversation Eckermann records between Goethe and Hegel:
The conversation turned to the nature of dialectics. Basically, said Hegel, it is nothing more than the
regulated and methodically cultivated spirit of opposition inherent in every human being as a talent which
shows its greatness in the distinction of the true from the false.
If only, interrupted Goethe, such intellectual arts and skills were not frequently misused and
misemployed to make true what is false and false what is true!
I suppose that sort of thing is done, answered Hegel, but only by people who are intellectually sick.
That is why I prefer the study of nature, said Goethe, which does not allow such sickness to arise. For
there we have to do with infinite and eternal truth that immediately rejects anyone who does not proceed
neatly and honestly in observing and handling his subject. I am also certain that many a person who is
dialectically sick could find a beneficial cure in the study of nature.
71 Foerster, E. Die Bedeutung von ss76,77 der Kritik der Urteilskraft, Teil II in Zeitschrift für
philosophische Forschung, Band 56 (2002), 3 pp 321-345, discusses the influence of Goethe on Fichte,
Schelling and Hegel.
Page 21
4. The epistemological implications of Goethe’s way of seeing
Although Goethe wrote some pieces on the methodology of his natural science, it cannot
be said that he succeeded in formulating the epistemological implications of his way of
seeing. Goethe was not interested in acquiring an organ for philosophy and there is
no evidence to suggest that he drew any epistemological conclusions from his objective
thinking or that he invited his philosopher friends, who included Schiller, Fichte,
Schelling, Hegel and Friedrich and Wilhelm Schlegel, to do so. It is clear that Fichte
and Hegel were greatly influenced by Goethe, but their interest lay in developing their
own systems rather than incorporating Goethe’s insights into the Kantian tradition.71 It
therefore remained for Steiner to apply the methodology of Goethean science to the
critical philosophy and to make a connection between Goethe’s claim to be able to
perceive archetypes and Kant’s references to an illusory intellectus archetypus in the
Third Critique.
Steiner was quick to appreciate the epistemological implications of Goethe’s scientific
work, as he demonstrates in the Introduction to Nature’s Open Secret, when he says:72
72 NOS, p. 3.
What is significant in the metamorphosis of plants, for example, is not the
discovery of the single fact that leaf, calyx, corolla, and so on, are identical
organs; rather, it is the magnificent thought structure of a living whole consisting
of mutually interpenetrating, formative principles. This dynamic thought
structure, which arises from that discovery, determines out of itself the details and
individual stages of plant development. The greatness of this idea, – which
Goethe then sought to extend to the animal world as well – dawns on us only
when we try to bring it to life in our own mind and attempt to rethink it. That is
when we become aware of how this thought is the very nature of the plant itself,
translated into the form of an idea, and living in our mind just as it lives in the
object. We observe also that we bring an organism to life for ourselves - right
down to its smaller parts – when we picture it not as a dead, finished object, but as
evolving and becoming and never at rest within itself.
The question for Steiner, then, will be whether he can show that in speaking of the
translation of the very nature of the plant into the form of an idea he is speaking the same
language as Kant does, when he speaks of ideas – and the related notions of intuitions,
archetypes and concepts – in the First and Third Critiques. In order to answer this
question Steiner will need to show that there are certain points in the critical philosophy
which might be seen as openings for an extension beyond the limits Kant purports to set
to possible knowledge.
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12 Part 1 Chapter 3 THE KANTIAN LEGACY.txt
PART 1 Chapter 3 THE KANTIAN LEGACY
Steiner’s epistemological work is very much a response to the Kantian legacy, the limits
Kant imposes upon possible knowledge and the prevailing neo-Kantian schools of
Steiner’s time.1 In the Preface to the published version of his doctoral thesis, Truth and
Knowledge, Steiner laments that present-day philosophy suffers from an unhealthy faith
in Kant .2 Steiner’s aim is to undermine that faith in Kant, and in particular in the
Kantian notion that there are limits to knowledge. His aim is to lay a foundation for
overcoming the subjectivism inherent in all theories of knowledge based on Kant’s
philosophy 3 and thereby to show that everything necessary to explain and account for
the world is within the reach of our thinking. 4 The task Steiner has set himself is what
he sees as the need to redirect the epistemological discourse of the critical philosophy, for
all propounders of theories of knowledge since Kant have been influenced to a greater or
lesser degree by the mistaken way he formulated the problem of knowledge. 5 The final
preliminary point to be addressed in this dissertation, therefore, is to identify what Steiner
sees as the mistakes in the Kantian formulation of the problem of knowledge. In order to
do this something will need to be said about the nature of the critical project, its
methodology and the context in which it arose. It should also be said at the outset that
this writer is not presuming to contribute anything to Kantian scholarship, but merely to
express in general terms what it is about the critical philosophy that leads Steiner to
attempt to challenge it in the way that he does.
1 Steiner appears to have been familiar with the work of his contemporaries. He frequently refers to and
cites the neo-Kantians Johann Volkelt and Otto Liebmann and dedicates Truth and Knowledge to Eduard
von Hartmann.
2TK, p. 9.
3 Ibid, p. 11.
4 Ibid, p. 10.
5 Ibid, p. 39.
1. The critical project
On the face of it the First Critique appears to be no more or less than an account of the
operation and the limitations of pure reason. It has certainly been read that way by some
neo-Kantians and Kantian scholars.6 Were the critical philosophy no more than a logic
derived from the architectonic of the mind, however, it is unlikely that Steiner would
have embarked upon his own epistemological project by setting out to prove that Kant
had formulated the problem of knowledge in a mistaken way. He could simply have
built upon what he had taken from Goethe and Fichte. The need to respond to the
critical project arises from Steiner’s perception that Kant, in setting the limits to the
operation of pure reason, is also setting the limits to knowledge of essences and of any
metaphysical propositions.
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6 See, for example, Nelson, op. cit. Nelson argues that the true descendent of Kant is not the recognized
post-Kantians, but Jakob Fries, who took a purely methodological view of the critical project.
7 The present writer is aware that there are many views about Kant’s intentions in the critical philosophy,
ranging from the purely sceptical and methodological interpretations to those which emphasise Kant’s
continuing metaphysical interests. Within all of these interpretations however there still remains the
tension between these two tendencies of Kant’s.
8 CPR B xxii, p. 25: This attempt to alter the procedure which has hitherto prevailed in metaphysics, by
completely revolutionising it in accordance with the example set by the geometers and physicists
[i.e. Kant’s Copernican revolution ], forms indeed the main purpose of this critique of pure speculative
reason. It is a treatise on the method, not a system of the science itself. But at the same time it marks out
the whole plan of the science [of metaphysics], both as regards its limits and as regards its entire internal
structure.
Despite the clinical appearance of the critical philosophy Kant’s Prefaces to both editions
and to the Introduction to the First Critique demonstrate a tension between its skeptical
orientation and an underlying desire to find a justification for certain metaphysical
propositions.7 Indeed, Kant indicates that the express purpose of the critical philosophy
is to investigate whether the possibility of formulating metaphysical propositions might
better be determined by first establishing the parameters of pure reason.8 Kant does not
offer any conclusions as to the system of the science [of metaphysics] in the First
Critique, but it is clear that what motivates his enquiry is a search for the ground for three
specific metaphysical propositions, the reality of human moral freedom, the existence of
a supreme intelligence and continuing existence of the soul.9 Kant will not allow the
critical project to be contaminated by any unfounded metaphysical assumptions, but it is
the science of metaphysics which is his interest.10 It is the tension between his
commitment to the rigour of the critical project on the one hand and his need to allow for
the possibility of metaphysical propositions on the other that allows Kant to say, in the
Preface to the second edition of the First Critique, and in reference to the requirements of
practical reason: I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make
room for faith. 11 Steiner had reason to think, therefore, that for the critical philosophy,
there could be no knowledge of essences or of the metaphysical.
9 Ibid, A3 B7, p. 46: These unavoidable problems set by pure reason itself are God, freedom and
immortality. The science which, with all its preparations, is in its final intention directed solely to their
solution is metaphysics ...
10 Ibid, B xxxi, p. 30: It is therefore the first and most important task of philosophy to deprive
metaphysics, once and for all, of its injurious influence, by attacking its errors at their very source.
11 Ibid, B xxx, p. 29.
12Ibid, A 3-10, B6-14, pp 45-51.
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13 Ibid, B14-18, pp 52-55. For Kant theoretical sciences of reason means mathematics, the natural
sciences and metaphysics.
Such an impression is re-enforced by the way in which Kant frames his question as to
possible forms of knowledge. Kant devotes the Introduction to the First Critique to the
well-known categorization of knowledge into the a priori and the a posteriori and
judgments into the analytic and the synthetic,12 before he arrives at the perplexing fact
that in all theoretical sciences of reason synthetic a priori judgments are contained as
principles .13 He then formulates the critical project in the form of what he calls the
general problem of pure reason , namely How are synthetic a priori judgments
possible? 14 It is this formulation of the problem of knowledge which Steiner regards as
mistaken. From Steiner’s perspective the mistake is to assume that certain forms of
knowledge are problematic and then to discount them, rather than to accept that all forms
of knowledge are available to human consciousness and then to enquire into how that
knowledge is to be attained. In Truth and Knowledge, therefore, Steiner recognizes that
he will have to respond in a direct way to the critical philosophy and says in the
Preface:15
14 Ibid, B19, p. 55.
15 TK, p. 11.
16 CPR, A xiv, p. 10: Yet they [my pretensions] are incomparably more moderate than the claims of all
those writers who on the lines of the usual programme profess to prove the simple nature of the soul or the
necessity of a first beginning of the world. ... The subject of the present enquiry is the [kindred] question,
how much we can hope to achieve by reason, when all the material and assistance of experience are taken
away.
17Loc. cit.
The aim of the following enquiry is to remedy the lack [in the systems of the postKantians] described above. Unlike Kant, the purpose here is not to show what
our faculty of knowledge cannot do, but rather to show what it is really able to
achieve.
Steiner is right to think that he has no choice but to find a way of responding to the
critical project and his contemporary neo-Kantians if he is to argue for knowledge of
essences and metaphysical truths. He is wrong, however, to have believed that Kant
was not also trying to show what our faculty of knowledge is really able to achieve.16
Something also needs to be said at the outset about the methodology of the critical
philosophy, because Steiner’s responses to it conclude with an argument for a new way
Page 3
of thinking, which, Steiner claims, resolves the fundamental dualism of Kantian idealism.
Kant describes his methodology in the Preface to the First Edition of the First Critique
and says of it:17
I have to deal with nothing save reason itself and its pure thinking; and to obtain
complete knowledge of these, there is no need to go far afield, since I come upon
them in my own self. Common logic itself supplies an example, how all the
simple acts of reason can be enumerated completely and systematically.
Common logic leads Kant to deduce the pure intuitions of space and time of the
Transcendental Aesthetic and then the Transcendental Logic, which generates the
Transcendental Analytic and the Transcendental Dialectic in the completed enumeration
of the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements. Kant does not appear to question the
assumptions of his methodology in the bulk of the First Critique,18 but in the remaining
division, the Transcendental Doctrine of Method, he offers a systematic enumeration of
the simple acts of reason. Here again Steiner would have concern about both the
negative orientation of Kant’s methodology and the results of its application. Kant
cautions against the temptation to circumvent the discipline of pure reason and imagine
we can know more than we do19; and in discussing disputation as to possible knowledge
he returns to the distinction he draws in the Second Preface and says:20
18 Kant does not, for example, question the mind’s capacity to observe itself and does not appear to
consider that the distinction he draws between the phenomena and the noumena of the sense-perceptible
world might also apply to self-consciousness. These and other related methodological considerations are
taken up by Fichte and Steiner, and are discussed in Part 2 Chapter 3 of this dissertation.
19 Ibid, A709, B737, pp 574-575: But where the limits of our possible knowledge are very narrow, where
the temptation to judge is great, where the illusion that besets us is very deceptive and the harm that results
from the error is considerable, there the negative instruction, which serves solely to guard us from errors,
has even more importance that many a piece of positive information by which our knowledge is increased.
20 Ibid, A745, B773, p. 597.
For although we have to surrender the language of knowledge, we still have
sufficient ground to employ, in the presence of the most exacting reason, the quite
legitimate language of a firm faith.
It is understandable that Steiner would be looking for a different methodology from
Kant’s so that he can find his way to knowledge of essences and metaphysical truths.
The final point to mention about the critical project is the philosophical and intellectual
context in which it was formulated. It is well-known that Kant was educated into the
Page 4
rationalist tradition of Continental philosophy and that he claimed the British empiricist,
David Hume, had awoken him from his dogmatic slumbers . What is not so wellknown is that Kant, for a time, felt it necessary to respond to the claims of the
Continental mystical metaphysical tradition, which was closely interwoven with
academic philosophy and the intellectual life of central Europe. The strength of that
tradition, and the threat it posed to a philosophical system constructed on the lines of
Enlightenment science, is demonstrated by the efforts Kant made shortly before he
embarked upon the critical project to discredit any form of mysticism, and to distance
himself from it. In Träume eines Geistessehers [Dreams of a Spirit-Seer]21 Kant
parodies Swedenborg, whose mixture of pseudo-science and parapsychology styling itself
as metaphysics had acquired a very large popular following. Kant is at pains to
protect his philosophical enterprise, and especially the metaphysics he ultimately wants to
legitimize, from any source of irrationality, and sets up the critical project in such a way
that its methodology will have the appearance of being the philosophical equivalent of
Newtonian physics.22 It is no doubt for this reason that Kant insists that the results of
21 Kant, I. (1838) Träume eines Geistessehers in Kant, I. Sämtliche Werke, vol 7, Leopold Voss: Leipzig.
22 Kant discusses Swedenborg and the importance of metaphysics in a pre-critical letter to Mendelssohn of
April 8, 1766 cited in Kant, I. (1967) Philosophical Correspondence, University of Chicago Press:
Chicago, pp54-55: I don’t know whether, in reading this rather untidily completed book, you noticed
certain indications of my reluctance to write it. For I saw that my prying inquiry into Swedenborg’s
visions would make a great stir among people who knew him personally …
I am far from regarding metaphysics itself, objectively considered, to be trivial or dispensable; in fact I
have been convinced for some time now that I understand its nature and its proper place in human
knowledge and that the true and lasting welfare of the human race depends on it …
the critical project will have universal and lasting application.23 For this reason, as well,
Steiner must find a new methodology in order to overcome the limitations Kant imposes
upon possible knowledge. Steiner, like Kant, is drawn to mysticism and metaphysics,
but unlike Kant he is convinced that it is possible to know essences and determined, at
least in his early career, to find a path to knowledge of essences and metaphysical truths
from within the context of the idealist tradition.
23 CPR, B xxxviii, pp 33-34: This system will, as I hope, maintain, throughout the future, this
unchangeableness. It is not self-conceit which justifies me in this confidence, but the evidence
experimentally obtained through the parity of the result …
24 TK, p. 39.
25 Ibid, p. 34.
2. Steiner’s disjunctions from the critical project
It will be remembered that, in Truth and Knowledge, Steiner claims that Kant had
formulated the question of knowledge incorrectly.24 Kant’s mistake, according to
Page 5
Steiner, was not to recognize that the question: How are synthetic a priori judgments
possible? contains within it two presuppositions which Kant has taken over from
dogmatic epistemology. These presuppositions are that we need other means of gaining
knowledge besides experience and that all knowledge gained through experience is
only approximately valid. 25 It will be clear from this that Steiner will be proposing an
epistemology within which analytic a priori truths also arise from a form of experience
and that knowledge which arises from experience is not merely an approximation of
knowledge of things-in-themselves. It is also clear that, despite his very different view
of the extent of possible knowledge, it matters to Steiner that his epistemological position
is cast as a response to the critical project.
Once Steiner’s form of response to the critical project, and the tensions within the critical
philosophy itself are taken into account, it becomes apparent why Tarnas should want to
argue that Steiner had articulated an epistemology, which … did not oppose the Kantian
epistemology but rather went beyond it, subsuming it in a larger and subtler
understanding of human knowledge. 26 There is a considerable degree of overlap
between the two. If it is accepted that Kant’s ultimate endeavour is to find some solid
ground for metaphysical propositions then it might also be said that the critical project
itself is embedded in a larger and subtler understanding of human knowledge, and that
Steiner’s essentially ontological argument is best understood as an extrapolation from the
critical philosophy. Indeed, despite Steiner’s claims that The Philosophy of Freedom is
written from personal experience, and that his approach is phenomenological,27 the text is
structured as if it were a response to the First and Second Critiques, with the first seven
chapters devoted to epistemological issues and the second seven chapters to ethics.
Unlike the post-Kantians and his neo-Kantian contemporaries, however, Steiner does not
attempt to create an improved version of the Kantian system. What he does, rather, is to
identify certain specific junctions within the arguments of the Critiques from which he
sets out in a different direction in an attempt to demonstrate that it is possible for human
minds to have knowledge of essences. Steiner’s epistemology is not a system in its own
right, but a kind of localized corrective to the critical project.
26 Tarnas, op. cit., p. 433.
27 T Ph F subtitle: Some results of introspective observation following the methods of Natural Science
Steiner does not set out his argument in this way, but it seems to this writer that his
response to the critical project can be seen as a series of four distinct disjunctions from it.
They are described as a series, because Steiner’s inability to resolve the dilemmas within
each of his disjunctions leads him on to the next one. The first disjunction is a challenge
to the dualism which informs the whole of the transcendental philosophy. Steiner is
committed to a world view which is monistic, and needs to show that the divisions Kant
creates between phenomena and things-in-themselves, between intuitions and concepts
and between thinking and experience are unsustainable and illusory. Steiner is,
Page 6
however, unable to show that any form of dualism is unsustainable, and then seeks out
those points in the critical philosophy which are amenable to extrapolation. The second
disjunction arises from Kant’s suggestive claim in the Third Critique that, although there
must be the possibility of an intellectus archetypus, such an intellect is not available to
human consciousness. Steiner argues for a human intellectus archetypus and the
capacity to perceive archetypes, but is unable to make out his claims for those
propositions. He then returns to the First Critique, in which Kant had made similar
statements about the existence, but the unavailability, of intellectual intuition. Steiner
had studied Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre closely, and was aware that Fichte’s form of
transcendental idealism depends upon the availability of intellectual intuition. In the
third disjunction Steiner adopts Fichte’s derivation of intellectual intuition, but then parts
ways from Fichte at the point of determining what the activity is that generates and is
generated by the intuition of self-consciousness. The fourth disjunction follows on from
the third, and at this final stage Steiner argues that it is the activity of thinking, in the
form of intuitive thinking, which leads us to knowledge of essences. By the time he has
argued for intuitive thinking, however, Steiner can be seen to be departing from the
discipline of philosophy and embarking upon the methodology and practice of what he
subsequently calls anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft [anthroposophical spiritual
science]. Steiner’s arguments for the four disjunctions are discussed in detail in Part 2 of
this dissertation. The following is an outline of the approach taken by this writer to those
arguments.
2.1 Monism and dualism
The most fundamental objection Steiner has to Kant’s critical philosophy is the dualism,
which is inherent in any form of transcendental idealism.28 Steiner simply cannot accept
that there is anything about which we could never have certain knowledge. It is essential
for Steiner, therefore, to find a way of demonstrating that we have can knowledge of
essences. Steiner’s first response to the critical project is to argue against dualism and for
monism as a world view. Steiner recognizes that Kant’s methodology is also dualistic,
and he therefore proposes a monistic methodology, which is his intuitive thinking.
Steiner discusses the contrast between dualism and monism in The Science of Knowing
and devotes substantial portions of several chapters of The Philosophy of Freedom to a
refutation of dualism.
28Kant acknowledges this in the A version of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason, CPR A370, p. 346: The
transcendental idealist, on the other hand, may be an empirical realist or, as he is called, a dualist …
Chapter 4 sets out Steiner’s arguments for monism and against dualism. The argument
of the chapter is that the differences between Kantian dualism, and what Steiner calls
monism , are not as great as Steiner makes them out to be. It is suggested that the
dualism of the critical project is contingent, and that nothing could have given Kant more
satisfaction than to have it demonstrated to him that our knowledge of appearances is also
knowledge of things-in-themselves. It is suggested that the monism Steiner espouses
Page 7
itself rests upon an initial dualism, which operates as a device to facilitate understanding.
The chapter concludes that the difference between Kant’s depiction of the cognitive
process and Steiner’s is not so much the difference between dualism and monism as
between an emphasis upon different stages in the construction of an understanding of that
process.
2.2 Perceiving the archetype
In the second part of the Third Critique Kant gives some attention to the logical
possibility of what he variously calls architectonic understanding ,29 intuitive
understanding 30 and the intellectus archetypus 31. Kant distinguishes the intellectus
archetypus from the intellectus ectypus (representational intellect), which, he argues, is
the form of reasoning to which we are constrained. Kant introduces the intellectus
archetypus to cover the range of logical possibilities, but not to imply that it is available
to human consciousness. Steiner seizes upon the intellectus archetypus as a source of
access to knowledge of essences. In The Science of Knowing, Nature’s Open Secret and
Goethe’s World View Steiner claims that human consciousness has access to the
perception of archetypes, and that in perceiving archetypes thinking functions as a sense
organ.
29 Kant, I. (1987) Critique of Judgment, hereinafter CJ, Hackett Publishing Company: Indianapolis, p. 269.
30 Ibid, p. 290.
31 Ibid, p. 292.
Chapter 5 shows how Steiner attempts to construct a theory of archetypal apperception
from Goethe’s way of seeing. It explains what Kant means by the intellectus archetypus
as a kind of intuitive understanding and how Steiner associates the intellectus archetypus
with the perception of a reconstructed version of Platonic forms. The chapter sets out
Steiner’s argument for the proposition that archetypes are apperceived by thinking in the
same way as spatial objects are perceived by sight, but concludes that this disjunction
does not give Steiner access to essences, as thinking is not a sense organ.
2.3 Intellectual intuition
Page 8
In the First Critique Kant refers to another kind of intuitive understanding, intellectual
intuition, which he also regards as logically possible but unavailable to human cognition.
The post-Kantians disagreed with Kant in this regard, and Steiner was familiar with
Fichte’s arguments for intellectual intuition in the Wissenschaftslehre. In Truth and
Knowledge Steiner retraces Fichte’s arguments for intellectual intuition and relies on
Fichte to claim that intellectual intuition is a generative element of consciousness, and
that the activity which generates intellectual intuition is the activity of thinking.
Chapter 6 describes Fichte’s derivation of intellectual intuition and what Henrich32 calls
Fichte’s original insight before agreeing with Steiner that there is a sustainable
argument for intellectual intuition within the critical tradition. The chapter examines the
steps Steiner takes in Truth and Knowledge to set the groundwork for the derivation of
what he calls intuitive thinking from intellectual intuition. It argues that Steiner will
have some way to go, however, before he can show that the activity Fichte identifies
within intellectual intuition amounts to the same thing as Steiner’s intuitive thinking.
32 Henrich, D. (1982) Fichte’s Original Insight in Contemporary German Philosophy Vol. 1Pennsylvania
State UP, hereinafter FOI, pp 15-53.
2.4 Intuitive thinking
By the conclusion of Truth and Knowledge it has become clear that Steiner will be
seeking to derive freedom from thinking, and to characterise his intuitive thinking as the
source of human freedom. Kant takes a very different view of the nature of freedom and
of its association with thinking. For Kant freedom is not so much a concept within the
architectonic of cognition as a factor of practical reason.
Chapter 7 examines Kant’s concepts of thinking and freedom and Steiner’s derivation of
freedom in Truth and Knowledge and Philosophy of Freedom. It contrasts Kant’s
conceptions of thinking and freedom with Steiner’s and sets out the steps Steiner takes to
move from intellectual intuition to intuitive thinking through his claims about the nature
of thinking and the derivation of freedom. The chapter concludes by showing that the
arguments Steiner employs to derive freedom from his critique of the observation of
thinking and intuition are ultimately unsatisfactory, and that he cannot demonstrate that it
is possible to arrive at essences through the extrapolation from intellectual intuition into
intuitive thinking. The consequence for Steiner is that he must depart from philosophy
as an academic discipline and embark upon the practice of his spiritual science .
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13 PART 2.txt
PART 2
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14 Part 2 Chapter 4 MONISM AND DUALISM.txt
PART 2 Chapter 4 MONISM AND DUALISM
The first disjunction between the critical philosophy and Steiner’s approach to epistemology,
which will be considered, is the distinction between Steiner’s monism and the dualism
inherent in any form of transcendental idealism. This disjunction represents the fundamental
rift between Steiner and Kant and his contemporary neo-Kantians, because dualism implies
that there is some part, or some layer, of the given world which will remain unknowable, and
Steiner makes it clear throughout his early work that his agenda is to show there are no limits
to knowledge.1 It is also a disjunction to which Steiner returns throughout his philosophical
writings, and which is most fully articulated in Philosophy of Freedom along with Steiner’s
other arguments for his epistemological position. It is examined first for, had Steiner been
successful in demonstrating dualism is fundamentally untenable, it could be said he would
not have needed to take his epistemological project any further. He would have shown that
human cognitive capacities allow for access to essences, and any further epistemological
work of his could then have been directed to his other particular interest, which was to be the
development of those capacities.
1 See, for example, TK, p. 10: … everything necessary to explain and account for the world is within the
reach
of our thinking ; ITSP, Ch7 [7], p. 107: It follows from the concept of cognizing, as we have defined it, that
we cannot speak of limits to cognition
The thesis of this chapter is that although Steiner offers an attractive account of monism as a
world view he is unable to demonstrate that the dualism inherent in transcendental idealism is
untenable either ontologically or as the methodology of the critical project. As a result, if he
is to counter neo-Kantianism from within the idealist tradition Steiner will need to identify
and then pursue further disjunctions from the critical philosophy to show that there are no
limits to knowledge and that we have access to essences. The argument of the chapter is
developed over four sections. There can be no doubt that the critical philosophy appears to
be fundamentally dualistic. The first section examines some passages from the First
Critique, which confirm the dualism of the critical project, but which also show why it is that
a mere assault upon the critical philosophy because it is dualistic will not demonstrate that
human cognition extends to knowledge of essences. The second section sets out Steiner’s
responses to dualism and especially his more extended arguments against dualism in
Philosophy of Freedom. It is suggested that Steiner’s arguments are not sufficiently
compelling to discredit dualism. In Philosophy of Freedom Steiner also explains and
develops the argument for his own monistic world view. The third section examines
Steiner’s arguments against other forms of monism and his presentation of a monistic view,
in which the central role in cognition is taken by the unifying activity of thinking. The
fourth section explains what it is about Steiner’s conception of thinking that leads him to look
to thinking, in his further disjunctions from the critical philosophy, as the vehicle for access
to essences.
1. The dualism of Kantian idealism
Throughout his philosophical writings Steiner identifies dualism with Kantian epistemology
Page 1
and characterises dualism and dualistic thinking as fundamentally misguided. It will be
remembered that he complains, in Truth and Knowledge, that present day philosophy suffers
from an unhealthy faith in Kant. 2 Steiner is referring here to his contemporary neo-Kantians,
and it is they he cites, rather than Kant, when he attacks dualism in Philosophy of Freedom.
His reading of Liebman and Volkelt tells him that the Kantian view 3 is that we are so
organised that we can learn only of modifications in our own self, not of the things-in2 TK, p. 9.
3 Ph F, Ch 4 [23], ITSP pp 62-63; Steiner cites Otto Liebmann’s On the Analysis of Reality and Johannes
Volkelt’s Immanuel Kant’s Epistemology as evidence that the Kantian view is dualistic.
themselves that cause them. 4 Steiner also traces dualistic methodology within contemporary
epistemology back to Kant and attributes dualistic ontological positions to Kant’s
methodology when, further into his argument in Philosophy of Freedom, he says:5
4 Ph F, Ch 4 [23]; ITSP, p. 61.
5 Ph F, Ch 7[2]-[3]; ITSP, p. 105.
6 CPR, B xx, p. 24.
7 CPR, B xxvii, p. 28: But if our Critique is not in error in teaching that the object is to be taken in a twofold
sense, namely as appearance and as thing in itself … then there is no contradiction in supposing that one
and the
Dualism rests on a false conception of what we call cognition. It separates the whole
of existence into two regions, each of which has its own laws, and lets those regions
confront one another outwardly.
The distinction between the perceived object and the thing-in-itself, which Kant
introduced into science [Wissenschaft] and which has not been overcome to this day,
originates from this kind of dualism.
There can be no doubt that Steiner understood Kantian idealism to be irretrievably dualistic.
It is clear from the First Critique that the world view Kant is presenting is indeed inherently
dualistic and that Kant is employing reason in a way that amounts to what might be termed
methodological dualism. Kant acknowledges as much in the Preface to the Second Edition
(the Second Preface) of the First Critique, when he is reviewing the success of the
experiments he has devised for the critical method and says:6
This situation yields, however, just the very experiment by which, indirectly, we are
enabled to prove the truth of this first estimate of our a priori knowledge of reason,
namely, that such knowledge has to do with appearances, and must leave the thing in
itself as indeed real per se, but as not known by us.
That experiment is the test, which demonstrates the irreconcilable distinction between the
Page 2
conditioned world of experience and the unconditioned nature of things-in-themselves. Kant
next refers to the distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves when he is
discussing the twofold nature of freedom,7 and reinforces the distinction throughout the First
Critique with repeated bifurcations within of the argument of the critical philosophy.
same will is, in the appearance, that is, in its visible acts, necessarily subject to the law of nature, as so far
not
free, while yet, as belonging to the thing in itself, it is not subject to that law, and is therefore free.
8 CPR A 19, B 33, p. 65: In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to
is
directed.
9 CPR A 20, B 34, p. 65: The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected
by
it, is sensation. That intuition which is in relation to the object through sensation, is entitled empirical. The
undetermined object of an empirical intuition is entitled appearance.
10 CPR A 20, B 34, p. 66: That in the appearance which corresponds to sensation I term its matter; but that
which so determines the manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered in certain relations, I term the
form of appearance.
11 Loc Cit.
12 Kant’s dualism is said by some commentators to be the consequence of his desire to embrace scientific
naturalism without being committed to mental materialism. See, for example Guyer, P. Absolute idealism and
the rejection of Kantian dualism in Ameriks, K. (ed) (2000) The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism,
Cambridge UP: Cambridge .
The form of argument in the opening paragraphs of the Transcendental Aesthetic of the First
Critique is sufficient to demonstrate that the way of thinking of the critical philosophy is
dualistic, both as to the mode of employment of reason and as to the world view being
developed. The Transcendental Aesthetic begins with the juxtaposition of a mode of
knowledge [eine Erkenntnis] against objects.8 Objects are then broken down into a twofold distinction between objects per se and how they appear to us.9 Next the appearances
themselves are broken down into a further two-fold distinction between form and matter10,
matter being given to us a posteriori and through sensation, and form a priori and in the
mind.11 Kant continues to employ the same form of either-or reasoning and process of
definition throughout the argument of the First Critique, to the point that it is almost possible
to open the First Critique at any page and find examples of it.12
The proofs of the critical philosophy also have a fundamentally dualistic quality to them.
Kant’s style of argument throughout the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements of the First
Critique is to juxtapose one argument of a polarity against another, demonstrate the logical
flaws in one side of the argument and thereby prove the truth of the other. Kant refines this
process further in the antinomies of the Transcendental Dialectic, which are constructed so as
Page 3
to give the appearance that neither argument can readily overcome the other. Underlying all
of these dichotomies is the sharp demarcation Kant appears to have drawn between the given
world of sense-perceptible phenomena and the unknowable realm of things-in-themselves,
which is itself the consequence of a division of possible forms of knowledge into analytic and
synthetic. In addition to this there is the purportedly objective perspective from which
Kant appears to be engaging in the critical philosophy, and which implies that there will also
be an unbridgeable dichotomy between the observing, knowing subject and the objects of
knowledge.
Yet although the methodology and the world view of the critical philosophy appear to be
clearly dualistic it would nevertheless be possible to interpret the critical method as a
technique, which has been devised to analyse the act of knowing, but to lead back ultimately
to a unified, monistic world view. It may be, in other words, that the whole critical enterprise
is a device for what Tarnas calls a larger and subtler understanding of human knowledge. 13
Indeed, a consideration of the following passages from the First Critique suggests that what
Steiner regards as the dualism inherent in the critical philosophy might plausibly be seen as a
methodological device Kant has employed to clear a passage free of all presuppositions to
certain specific metaphysical truths. That is, it may not be, as Steiner seems to think, that
Kant is making a claim that there are no metaphysical truths, or that the world cannot be
understood as a unified whole. Rather, what Steiner regards as Kant’s ontological and
methodological dualism may be Kant’s way of demonstrating that only a portion of the
totality of experience is accessible to the demands of pure reason.
13 Tarnas, op. cit., p. 433.
1.1 Kant’s ontological dualism
An examination of the principal argument of the First Critique lends support to the
proposition that Kant’s purported dualism is not his final position, and that Kant is erecting a
dualistic framework for the specific purpose of avoiding unwarranted metaphysical
assumptions. Indeed, the language of the Prefaces and the Introductions to the first and
second editions of the First Critique, the discussion of metaphysical propositions in the
Canon of Pure Reason and the descriptions of methodology in the Transcendental Doctrine
of Method all strongly suggest that Kant, like Steiner, is engaging in an epistemological
investigation, the ultimate purpose of which is to find a rational way into metaphysics and a
unified world view.14 While the three Critiques proscribe the limits of reason, understanding
and judgment they do so in such a way as to allow room for moral freedom, God and
immortality of the soul. The critical philosophy, then, appears to serve two complementary
purposes for Kant. One is that it establishes criteria for the elimination of irrational and
unprovable propositions from the domain of philosophy altogether. The other is that, in so
doing, it allows for the establishment on rational grounds of specific metaphysical
propositions. It might be said that in the Critique of Practical Reason Kant opens the door
to freedom, in the Critique of Judgment to teleology and in Religion within the Bounds of
Reason Alone to some of the essentials of Kant’s Christian faith, namely God and
immortality of the soul. On this interpretation of the underlying motif of the critical
philosophy the apparent dualism with which it is suffused could be seen as a technique for the
Page 4
justification of a fundamentally monistic world view.
14 CPR, A xx, pp13-14: [Metaphysics] is nothing but the inventory of all our possessions through pure
reason,
systematically arranged.
Kant’s motivation is apparent from comments he makes in the Prefaces to the first (A) and
second (B) editions of the First Critique. In the First Preface Kant introduces the critical
philosophy as a criterion for metaphysical judgments. The critique of pure reason will
decide as to the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics in general, and determine its
sources, its extent and its limits – all in accordance with principles. 15 It will also provide a
unified framework for the whole field of metaphysical enquiry.16 As a consequence, no
further work will need to be done for metaphysics to be a complete and unified science, and:
15 CPR A xii, p. 9.
16 Ibid, A xiii, p.10.
17 Ibid, A xx, pp 13-14.
18 CPR, B xvi, p. 22: We should then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus’ primary
hypothesis.
Failing of satisfactory progress in explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that
they
all revolved round the spectator, he tried whether he might not have better success if he made the spectator
to
revolve and the stars to remain at rest.
19 CPR, B xx11, p. 25: This attempt to alter the procedure which has hitherto prevailed in metaphysics, by
completely revolutionizing it in accordance with the example set by the geometers and physicists, forms
indeed
the main purpose of this critique of pure speculative reason.
20 CPR, B xxvii, p. 28.
21CPR, B xxiii, p. 26: Consequently, metaphysics has this singular advantage, such as falls to the lot of no
other
science which deals with objects (for logic is concerned only with the form of thought in general), that should
it,
through this critique, be set upon the secure path of a science, it is capable of acquiring exhaustive
knowledge of
its entire field.
Metaphysics, on the view we are adopting, is the only one of all the sciences which
dare promise that through a small but concentrated effort it will attain, and this in a
short time, such completion as will leave no task to our successors save that of
Page 5
adapting it in a didactic manner according to their own preferences, without their
being able to add anything whatsoever to its content. For it is nothing but the
inventory of all our possessions through pure reason, systematically arranged.17
In the Second Preface Kant confirms that his primary concern remains metaphysics. It is
here that Kant makes his well-known comments about the critical philosophy amounting to
an epistemological Copernican revolution .18 The rationale for engaging in such a
revolution is to find a way of rescuing metaphysics.19 In the course of that rescue it will be
necessary to teach that the object is to be taken in a twofold sense, namely as appearance and
as thing in itself ,20 but the main purpose remains the demonstration of the unity and totality
of metaphysics.21
Kant’s explanation of the purpose of the critical philosophy is resumed in the later parts of
the First Critique, in which he returns to what might be termed its metaphysical framework.
This is particularly so in the second part of the Critique, the Transcendental Doctrine of
Method, in which Kant is building the passage from the exclusion of metaphysical truths in
the First Critique to the bases for their justification in the Second and Third Critiques. In
The Canon of Pure Reason Kant argues for the existence of God and the afterlife from the
fact of the moral law. The following passage demonstrates both the essentially metaphysical
import of the critical philosophy and the striving within it for a unified, monistic world
view:22
22 CPR, A 811, B 439, p. 639.
Morality, by itself, constitutes a system. Happiness, however, does not do so, save
insofar as it is distributed in exact proportion to morality. But this is possible only in
the intelligible world, under a wise Author and Ruler. Such a Ruler, together with
life in such a world, which we must regard as a future world, reason finds itself
constrained to assume; otherwise it would have to regard the moral laws as empty
figments of the brain, since without this postulate the necessary consequence which it
itself connects with these laws could not follow. Hence also everyone regards the
moral laws as commands; and this the moral could not be if they did not connect a
priori suitable consequences with their rules, and thus carry with them promises and
threats. But this again they could not do, if they did not reside in a necessary being,
as the supreme good, which alone can make such a purposive unity possible.
What Kant appears to be straining to do, more than anything else, is to demonstrate the
purposive unity of the manifold of experience. That is, although the critical method
requires Kant to propose a division between the world of appearances and the world of
things-in-themselves, it is another matter whether Kant’s ontological position necessarily
follows from his epistemological method.
1.2 Kant’s methodological dualism
It is clear from the argument of the excerpts from the First Critique cited above that Steiner is
also justified in describing the methodology of the critical philosophy as dualistic. It might
however be said that Steiner’s criticism of Kant’s methodology as dualistic is nevertheless
unwarranted, and that Kant’s methodology is nothing other than the intrinsic form of rational
Page 6
argument. It is, after all, not only Kant, who within the critical tradition employs the
dualistic operations of disjunctions, paradoxes and dichotomies as the methodological
structures by which to advance his argument. Fichte’s critique of cognition as he presents it
in the various formulations of the Wissenschaftslehre, for example, might also be described
as dualistic, and it is put forward by Fichte as the natural and unavoidable progression in the
realization of consciousness. Fichte has his own conception of what logic is, but he too
commences from the intellectual intuition of an initial distinction between I and not-I ,
and progresses by way of further dichotomising operations to a conception of selfconsciousness as the antithesis of the given world.23 It could be argued that methodological
dualism is the form of any rational observation and any rational argument.
23 Fichte, J. G. Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre in IWL p. 83: To think and to determine an
object (in the previously indicated sense of object ): these are one and the same act. The two concepts are
identical. Logic furnishes us with the rules that govern the act of determining an object; therefore, I should
think, logic presupposes, as a fact of consciousness, this act of determining as such. That every act of
thinking
has an object is something that can be shown only within intuition. Think, and while you are thinking, pay
attention to how you do this. You will undoubtedly discover in this case that you also posit an object of this
act, which you posit over against or in opposition to this same act of thinking.
24 Ph F Ch 1 [1]; ITSP, p. 5.
25 Ph F Ch 1 [8]; ITSP, p. 12: If there is a difference between a conscious motive and an unconscious drive,
then the conscious motive will bring with it an action that must be judged differently from an action done out of
blind impulse. Our first question will concern this difference. The position we must take on freedom itself
will depend on the result of this enquiry.
An initial examination of Steiner’s methodology within Philosophy of Freedom would
suggest that his form of argument as well is fundamentally dualistic. Indeed, Steiner
introduces the whole of the argument of Philosophy of Freedom with a disjunction: Is a
human being spiritually free, or subject to the iron necessity of purely natural law? 24 The
first chapter of Philosophy of Freedom then proceeds, in a conventionally logical fashion, to
present, consider and reject several arguments for the proposition that the human being is not
free. This leads Steiner to a standpoint, from which he contrasts conscious motives with
unconscious drives,25 and from this disjunction he generates the epistemological concern of
Philosophy of Freedom: What does it mean to have knowledge of the motives of one’s
actions? 26 As that question implies an understanding of the nature of thinking27 Steiner has
arrived at the point from which he can embark upon his primary purpose, which is to show
that thinking can be intuitive , and that intuitive thinking is the source of freedom. The
methodology Steiner has employed in the construction of his enquiry is the methodology of
conventional rational argument. Steiner also acknowledges that the way we are organised
is fundamentally dualistic:28
26 Ph F Ch 1[9]; ITSP, p. 12.
Page 7
27 Ph F Ch 1[17]; ITSP, p. 16: … what is the origin and significance of thinking? For without understanding
the soul’s activity of thinking, no concept of knowledge of anything, including an action, is possible.
28 Ph F Ch 5 [26]; ITSP, p. 89: For us, the world-whole splits into above and below, before and after, cause
and
effect, object and mental picture, matter and force, object and subject, and so forth.
29 SK, p. 28; it is Berkeley, and not Kant, who argues that the world exists only so long as we keep our
senses
open
2. Steiner’s arguments against dualism
Steiner presents his argument against dualism most fully in Philosophy of Freedom, but there
are attempts to counter dualism in some of the early Goethe studies and in Truth and
Knowledge. In The Science of Knowing, for example, in a section entitled Correcting an
Erroneous Conception of Experience as a Whole, Steiner makes a first reference to Kantian
transcendental idealism by characterising it as a preconception . At this stage Steiner does
not appear to have appreciated the difference between Kantian dualism and Berkeleian
subjectivism, for he says:29
At this point we must indicate a preconception, existing since Kant, which has already
taken root so strongly in certain circles that it is considered axiomatic. If anyone
were to question it, he would be described as a dilettante, as one who has not risen
above the most elementary concepts of modern science [Wissenschaft]. The
preconception I mean is the view: It is already established from the very beginning
that the whole world of perception, this endless manifoldness of colours and shapes,
of sounds and warmth differentiations, etc, is nothing more than our subjective world
of mental pictures [Vorstellungen], which exists only as long as we keep our senses
open to what works in upon them from a world unknown to us. This view declares
the entire world of phenomena to be a mental picture inside our individual
consciousness, and on the foundation of this presupposition one then erects further
assertions about the nature of our activity of knowing.
Steiner juxtaposes this misrepresentation of Kantian dualism with a naive realist view of the
world30 so as to demonstrate that dualism is both implausible and counterintuitive, but he
does not develop the argument any further or make claims for any specific form of monism.
What these and similar early allusions to dualism show, therefore, is that Steiner harbours an
inherent aversion to dualism, but does not as yet appreciate the strength of the arguments of
the critical philosophy which must lead to the positing of a dualistic world view .31
30 SK, p. 29. This simple reflection – that the naive person notices absolutely nothing about things that could
bring him to this view – shows us that in the objects themselves there lies no compelling reason for this
assumption. What is there about a tree or a table itself that could lead me to regard it as a mere configuration
of
mental pictures? At the very least this cannot therefore be presented as an obvious truth.
Page 8
31 Steiner’s inherent aversion to dualism is evident in others of his early works. See, for example, Steiner, R.
(1985) Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom, p. 55: Out of suffering and sick longing, the belief in the
yonder world is born; out of the inability to penetrate the real world all acceptances of things in themselves
have originated; RP p301: The dualistic mode of conception, which declares that the organic and the
inorganic
has to be explained according to two different principles, gives way to a monistic mode of conception, to a
monism that has only one uniform mode of explanation for the whole of nature.
32 Loc Cit.
It is apparent that Steiner’s appreciation of the difficulties in countering dualism had grown
by the time of Truth and Knowledge. In making his comment about the unhealthy faith in
Kant Steiner means that the neo-Kantianism of his contemporaries is predicated upon, and
hampered by, the dualism inherent in transcendental idealism. In his summary of the critical
project Steiner then says of Kant:32
He showed that the foundation of things lying beyond the world of our senses and our
reason, and which his predecessors sought to find by means of stereotyped concepts,
is inaccessible to our faculty of knowledge. From this he concluded that our
scientific efforts must be limited to what is within reach of experience, and that we
cannot attain knowledge of the supersensible foundation, of the thing-in-itself . But
suppose the thing-in-itself and a transcendental ultimate foundation of things are
nothing but illusions!
Steiner recognises that he will need to counter the concept of a transcendental ultimate
foundation of things , but in Truth and Knowledge he does not do this by way of developing
an argument. He moves, instead, to a consideration of the activity of thinking, which will lie
at the core of all his epistemological work. In Truth and Knowledge Steiner claims that ...
everything necessary to explain and account for the world is within the reach of our
thinking 33 and that the subjectivism and dualism of Kantian idealism can then be
contextualised as ... a necessary transitional stage which is overcome in the very process of
knowledge. 34 For Steiner the very process of knowledge takes place within our thinking,
and the act of knowing is a creative, rather than a replicative, engagement with the given
world. His argument then is that the dualistic appearance of the world is an illusion, because
in the very act of knowing we in fact overcome what otherwise appears to be a bifurcation
between the objects of perception and our knowledge of them.35
33 TK, p. 10.
34 TK, p. 15.
35 TK, pp 11-12: … truth is not, as is usually assumed, an ideal reflection of something real, but is a product
of
the human spirit, created by an activity which is free; this product would exist nowhere if we did not create it
ourselves. The object of knowledge is not to repeat in conceptual form something which already exists, but
rather to create a completely new sphere, which when combined with the world given to our senses
constitutes
complete reality. Thus man’s highest activity, his spiritual creativeness, is an organic part of the universal
Page 9
world-process. The world-process should not be considered a complete, enclosed totality without this activity.
Man is not a passive onlooker in relation to evolution, merely repeating in mental pictures cosmic events
taking
place without his participation; he is the active co-creator of the world-process, and cognition is the most
perfect
link in the organism of the universe.
Steiner’s principal response to dualism is contained in Philosophy of Freedom. Steiner
devotes the larger part of four of the fifteen chapters of Philosophy of Freedom to a
discussion of dualism and monism, and criticizes dualism in several others. In Chapter 2 he
describes how dualistic and monistic world views arise. In Chapter 7 he sets out to
demonstrate that Kantian idealism and other dualistic epistemological positions, as well as
three common forms of monism, are unsustainable. In Chapter 10 he argues that
unsophisticated forms of ethics are fundamentally dualistic and that the exercise of moral
freedom implies a monistic world view. The concluding chapter, Final Questions, is also
given the heading The Consequences of Monism, and in it Steiner attempts to link the
argument of the previous chapters to his overriding purposes, namely to show that human
beings are inwardly free and that they have a capacity to engage in intuitive thinking .
In Chapter 2 of Philosophy of Freedom Steiner introduces dualism and monism as the two
natural attitudes, which arise from a search for the foundations of knowledge. He describes
them as the two possible attitudes in the sense that the world will be understood either as one
coherent knowable unity or it will not. His initial exposition argues both that dualism is
fundamentally flawed, and that monism in its common forms is equally unsatisfactory.
Steiner begins with an account of how both world views derive from the same act of
awakened consciousness, and says of the process of cognition:36
36 Ph F Ch 2 [2]-[4]; ITSP, pp 19-21.
That which we seek in things [i.e. an explanation of the facts], over and above what is
given to us immediately, splits our entire being into two parts. We become aware of
standing in opposition to the world, as independent beings. The universe appears to
us as two opposites: I and world.
We set up this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as consciousness
lights up within us. ... Only when we have made the world content into our thought
content do we rediscover the connection from which we have sundered ourselves. ...
The whole relation between I and the world that I have portrayed here meets us on the
stage of history in the contrast between a unitary worldview, or monism, and a twoworld theory, or dualism. Dualism directs its gaze solely to the separation that
human consciousness effects between the I and the world. Its whole effort is a futile
struggle to reconcile these opposites, which it may call spirit and matter, subject and
object, or thinking and phenomenon. ... Monism directs its gaze exclusively to unity,
and seeks to deny or erase the opposites, present though they are. Neither monism
nor dualism is satisfactory, for neither does justice to the facts. Dualism sees spirit
(I) and matter (world) as two fundamentally different entities, and therefore it cannot
Page 10
understand how the two can affect one another. ... Yet, to the present day, things are
hardly better with monism which, until now, has attempted three solutions: either it
denies spirit and becomes materialism; or it denies matter, seeking salvation through
spiritualism [Spiritualismus]; or else it claims that matter and spirit are inseparably
united even in the simplest entity, so that it should come as no surprise if these two
forms of existence, which after all are never apart, appear together in human beings.
This characterisation of the deficiencies in familiar world views then generates Steiner’s
quest for a credible form of monism, that is, one which does not amount merely to a denial of
matter or spirit or an unsubstantiated claim that they are inherently united.
The process Steiner adopts is to elaborate the weaknesses in the three variants of monism he
has put forward before reconsidering and then rejecting dualism. It is then open to him to
claim that the only way out of the dilemma is to return to what he variously describes as
nature or the world or the facts as the starting-point for a more satisfactory form of
monism. It is we, he reminds us, who separate ourselves from the native ground of nature
and place ourselves as I in opposition to the world .37 Despite that separation Steiner
postulates that there must be something of nature within us.38 This then leads him to embark
upon an enquiry into nature outside us and nature within us, and to further postulate that there
must be an inherent consistency between these two manifestations of nature.39 This
postulation may seem a little surprising after Steiner has just rejected that form of monism,
for which matter and spirit are inseparably united [and] appear together in human beings .
The explanation is that Steiner is attempting to establish the groundwork for a critique of
what he takes to be nature within us - the activity of thinking - as the starting point for his
epistemological project.
37 Ibid [10]; ITSP, p. 25.
38Ibid [12]; ITSP, p. 25: To be sure, we have torn ourselves away from nature, but we must still have taken
something with us into our own being. We must seek out this natural being within ourselves, and then we
shall
also rediscover the connection to her.
39 Ibid [12]; ITSP, p. 25: We can only find nature outside us if we first know her within us. What is akin to her
within us will be our guide.
A particular concern for Steiner in what he perceives as the dualism of Kantian idealism is
the ontological status of things-in-themselves. This is because Steiner is convinced that
there are no limits to knowledge, and that, therefore, there can be no things-in-themselves
separate from the observable phenomena of the given world. Kant, on the other hand,
makes it clear that we can say nothing of things-in-themselves, because our capacity for
knowing is limited to representations constituted from our sense impressions. The fact that
we can say nothing of things-in-themselves means that we cannot determine whether or not
there are things-in-themselves, and if there are things-in-themselves whether they are
different from or identical with the appearances, which make up the given world. Steiner
does not consider whether, within the context of Kantian idealism, it may be that the
Page 11
appearances are the things-in-themselves. That is, he does not allow for the possibility that
the dualistic methodology of the critical philosophy may nevertheless lead to a unitary world
view.
In Chapter 4 of Philosophy of Freedom Steiner introduces Kant’s concept of representations
[Vorstellungen] as the content of cognition. It is clear that the ontological status of
representations must be different from that of things-in-themselves. Representations are, by
definition, what is known of the sensory manifold and things-in-themselves are likewise, by
definition, what remains unknown. Steiner contrasts representational theory with Berkeley’s
esse est percipe, and then describes the Kantian distinction between representations and
things-in-themselves in the following way:40
40 Ph F Ch 4 [23]; ITSP, pp 61-62; Steiner is citing from a contemporary neo-Kantian, Otto Liebmann.
Berkeley’s view stands in contrast to the currently prevailing Kantian view. This
also limits our knowledge of the world to our mental pictures. But it does not do so
because of the conviction that no things except these mental pictures exist. Rather,
the Kantian view believes us to be so organised that we can learn only of
modifications in our own self, not of the things-in-themselves that cause them. From
the circumstance that I know only my mental pictures, the Kantian view draws the
conclusion not that there is no existence independent of these mental pictures, but
only that the subject cannot directly receive such an existence into itself. This view
then concludes that only through the medium of its subjective thoughts can it
imagine, fantasize, think, cognize, or even perhaps fail to cognize this existence.
This (Kantian) view believes it is saying something absolutely certain, something that
is immediately evident without any proof.
Steiner draws on Volkelt, von Hartmann and the physiologist, Mueller, to sketch what the
proof might be before arguing that representational theory inevitably collapses into
nothing .41
41Ph F Ch 4 [24-26]; ITSP, pp 62-66.
42Ph F Ch 4 [27]; ITSP, p. 68: From now on, I must treat the table itself – which I used to believe affected
me,
and produced a mental picture of itself within me – as a mental picture [Vorstellung]. But then to be consistent
my sense organs and the processes in them must also be only subjective. I have no right to speak of a real
eye,
only of my mental picture of the eye. It is the same with nerve conduction and brain processes, and no less
so
with the process, in the soul itself, by which things are supposedly built up out of the chaos of the various
sensations.
43 Ph F Ch 4 [28]; ITSP, p. 69.
Steiner argues that there are both a category flaw and a lacuna in the reduction in which the
critical philosophy engages. The category flaw is that the critical philosophy places
observation of external phenomena and observation of internal phenomena in different
Page 12
categories without providing any justification for reducing the given world to representations,
but at the same time acknowledging the sense organs and other elements of the process of
perception as objectively real.42 The lacuna arises between the forms of observation the
critical philosophy engages in for the perception of external phenomena and for the
comprehension of internal states. Steiner notes:43
Moreover, there is a gap in the whole train of argument. I am in a position to follow
the processes within my organism, up to the processes in my brain, even though my
assumptions become ever more hypothetical the closer I come to its central processes.
The path of external observation ends with the processes in my brain; more precisely,
it ends with what I would perceive if I could examine the brain with physical and
chemical means and methods. The path of inner observation begins with sensation
and goes as far as the construction of things from the material of sensation. At the
point of transition from brain process to sensation, the path of observation is
interrupted.
From these arguments Steiner believes he has shown that the critical philosophy is
untenable.44 He does not consider the arguments, which might be made in response to his
objections to critical idealism.
44 Ph F Ch 4 [29]; ITSP, p. 69-70: Critical idealism seeks to prove that percepts have the character of
mental
pictures, while naively accepting the percepts of one’s own organism as objectively valid facts. What is more,
it fails to notice that it is throwing together two fields of observation between which it can find no connection.
45 Ph F Ch 4 [31]; ITSP, p. 70: Soviel ist hieraus gewiss: durch Untersuchungen innerhalb des
Wahrnehmungsgebietes kann der kritische Idealismus nicht bewiesen, somit die Wahrnehmung ihres
objektiven
Charakters nicht entkleidet werden.
So far as the category flaw is concerned the critical idealist might argue in response that there
is in fact a difference between representations of sense-perceptible phenomena of the given
world and perception by the organs of sense. It is true that, observed externally, I do have no
right to speak of my real eye, but only of my mental picture of the eye. From the point of
view of the activity of the eye in seeing, however, there is a category difference, in that the
activity of the eye is the very process, which generates the mental pictures of all other
phenomena. Bearing in mind the emphasis Steiner places upon the activity of thinking in the
act of knowing it is surprising that he seeks to make an argument of this kind against critical
idealism. So far as the lacuna argument is concerned the critical philosopher might say in
response that the gap in the chain between the path of external observation and the path of
internal observation is the very problem, which led Kant to propose the critical method and to
provide all observations with the same ontological status as representations.
Steiner concludes his initial arguments against critical idealism by asserting: This much,
then, is certain: investigation in the perceptual realm can neither prove critical idealism, nor
strip the percept of its objective character. 45 The conclusion that perceptual investigation
cannot prove critical idealism seems to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of the
critical philosophy, for which the issue is not whether its soundness may be proven or
disproved, but whether it is successful as a method for determining which questions can be
Page 13
asked, and which cannot. It is not a part of the critical philosophy to attempt to prove
critical idealism by means of investigation in the perceptual realm at all. The critical
philosophy is not a set of metaphysical propositions to be proven, but a method of enquiry.
This aspect of Steiner’s attack on critical idealism does therefore appear to be misguided, and
to arise from his aversion to ontological dualism, which he sees as one inevitable
consequence of it.
The next chapters of Philosophy of Freedom are devoted to an account of thinking as the
essential activity of nature within us. In these chapters Steiner argues that it is the activity of
thinking, which is the source of human freedom.46 It is thinking, which generates concepts
and which makes possible the cognitive act of reuniting percepts47 and concepts. These
chapters are taken up with an explanation of the natures of and relationships between the
cognitive elements of thinking, perceiving, ideas and concepts. In Chapter 7 of Philosophy
of Freedom Steiner returns to his critique of dualism. He acknowledges that we are so
organised that the full, total reality (including that of ourselves as subjects) initially appears
to us as a duality. 48 For the monist this appearance of duality is readily resolved into a unity
by the process of cognition. For the dualist, however, the appearance of a duality signifies
the reality of two worlds that are absolutely distinct from one another. 49 Instead of
recognising that the process of cognition overcomes the initial apparent duality, dualism
46 Ph F Ch 3 [18]; ITSP, p. 37: For in thinking we observe something of which we ourselves are the
producers.
47The term percept is used in both ITSP and T Ph F as the translation for Wahrnehmung. What Steiner
means
by a percept is set out most clearly in a second edition addendum to Chapter 7: It should also be kept in
mind
that the idea of the percept, as developed in this text, must not be confused with that of external sense
perception, which is only a special case of it. Readers will see from what has been said, but still more so from
what will be said later, that everything both sensory and spiritual that meets a human being is here taken to
be a
percept until it is grasped by the actively elaborated concept. Senses of the kind normally meant by the
word are not necessary to have percepts of soul or spirit [Wahrnehmungen seelischer oder geistiger Art].
ITSP,
pp 124-125.
48 Ph F Ch 7 [1]; ITSP, p. 104.
49 Loc Cit.
separates the whole of existence into two regions, each of which has its own laws, and lets
those regions confront each other outwardly. 50 Dualism, Steiner concludes, arises from a
false conception of cognition and has led to the unfortunate Kantian distinction between
appearances and things-in-themselves.51 Steiner’s conception of cognition is that it consists
in the thinking activity of assigning concepts to percepts. The fallacy in Kantian dualism is
to imagine another world of percepts for which there are no available concepts.52 The
Page 14
consequence is that ... dualists, working with a completely contentless concept of the initself, cannot arrive at an explanation of the world. 53
50 Ph F Ch 7 [2]; ITSP, p. 105.
51 Loc. Cit: The distinction between the perceived object and the thing-in-itself, which Kant introduced into
science [Wissenschaft, knowledge] and which has not been overcome to this day, originates from this kind of
dualism.
52 Loc. cit: But if we consider the sum of all percepts as one part of the world, and then oppose to these
percepts a second part, the things-in-themselves, we are philosophizing into thin air. We are just playing a
game with concepts. We construct an artificial contrast and then can find no content for its second term –
since
such content can be created for a separate, particular thing only out of perception.
53 Ph F Ch 7 [5]; ITSP, p. 107.
54 Loc. cit: It follows from the concept of cognizing, as we have defined it, that we cannot speak of limits to
cognition.
55 Ph F Ch 7 [7]; ITSP, p. 108: The preconditions for cognizing exist through and for the I. The I itself poses
the questions of cognition. In fact, it draws them from the element of thinking, which is completely clear and
transparent within itself. If we ask ourselves questions that we cannot answer, their content cannot be clear
and
distinct in every aspect. It is not the world that poses questions to us; we pose them to ourselves.
56 Ph F Ch 7 [10]; ITSP, pp 108-109.
From Steiner’s point of view, then, the unifying activity of thinking in the process of
cognition demonstrates both that any dualistic account of cognition will be inadequate, and
that it is possible to arrive at an explanation of the world – that is, that there are no limits to
knowledge. Indeed, Steiner believes he has shown there are no limits to knowledge by
definition.54 This appears to be because the very act of asking questions of the world
implies a capacity within the enquirer to find the answer.55 It is also because Steiner seems
to believe that our capacities for perception and thinking are fundamentally unlimited, and he
claims:56
Our cognition involves questions that emerge for us because a conceptual sphere,
pointing to the totality of the world, confronts a perceptual sphere conditioned by
place, time and subjective organisation. Our task is to balance these two spheres,
both of which we know well. This has nothing to do with a limit to cognition. At a
particular time, this or that might remain unexplained because the place of our
vantage point in life prevents us from perceiving the things in question. But what is
not found today may be found tomorrow. The limits determined in this way are only
temporary, and they can be overcome by progress in perception and thinking.
Steiner also claims that the fallacy in dualism is a failure to recognise that the fundamental
Page 15
polarities in theory of knowledge between subject and object, and concept and percept, are
merely devices for understanding cognition. Once thinking is applied to cognition, he
believes, these distinctions disappear. The dualist, however, sees them as absolute. Steiner
explains how this error arises in the following way:57
57 Ph F Ch 7 [11]; ITSP, p. 109.
58 Kant splits the cognitive process into five: 1) the object in itself, 2) the subject’s percept of the object, 3)
intuitions, 4) understanding and 5) concepts; CPR A 19: Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and
it
alone yields us intuitions; they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise
concepts
59 Ph F Ch 4 [16], ITSP, p. 55: From the na„ve standpoint, if we see the sun appear in the morning as a disc
on
the horizon and then follow the progress of this disc, we believe all of this exists and occurs just as we
observe
it. We cling fast to this belief until we meet other percepts that contradict the first.
Dualism mistakenly transfers the contrast between objects and subjects, which has
meaning only within the perceptual realm, to purely imagined entities outside this
realm. But things separated in the perceptual field are separate only as long as the
perceiver refrains from thinking – for thinking suspends all separation and reveals it
to be merely subjective. Therefore a dualist is really transferring – to entities behind
the percepts – categories that have no absolute but only a relative validity, even for
the percepts. A dualist splits percept and concept, the two factors involved in the
cognitive process, into four: 1) the object in itself, 2) the subject’s percept of the
object, 3) the subject, and 4) the concept that relates the percept to the object-initself.58
It should be noted that Steiner does much the same thing, in that he distinguishes between the
object and the percept of the object - and criticizes the naive realist for not doing so59 – and
distinguishes the cognizing subject from the concept. Indeed, Steiner’s picture of the process
of cognition also distinguishes concepts from ideas, which he defines as more generalized
concepts.60
60From Steiner’s perspective it would be more correct to say that the critical idealist identifies six factors in
the
cognitive process, namely 1) the object in itself, 2) the subject’s percept of the object, 3) the subject’s mental
picture of the percept of the object, 4) the subject, 5) the idea of the object and 6) the concept that relates the
percept to the object-in-itself.
61 Ph F Ch 7 [11], ITSP, pp 109-110.
62 Ph F Ch 5 [22], ITSP, p. 85: The act of knowing (cognition) is the synthesis of percept and concept. Only
percept and concept together make up the whole thing.
The dualist, Steiner claims, mistakenly attributes reality to distinctions, such as that between
Page 16
subject and object, which arise from – and are subsequently resolved by – the activity of
thinking. Steiner argues that the dualist’s initial distinction between subject and object is
compounded by a bifurcation in the act of knowing, which the dualist cannot resolve.
Steiner depicts the idealist dualist argument as follows:61
For the dualist, the relationship between an object and a subject is a real one; the
subject is really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real process is said not
to emerge into our consciousness [nicht in unser Bewusstsein fallen]. It is supposed
to evoke a response in the subject to the stimulus proceeding from the object. The
result of this response is supposed to be the percept, which alone emerges into
consciousness. The object is supposed to have an objective reality (that is, a reality
independent of the subject), while the percept is supposed to have a subjective reality.
This subjective reality supposedly relates the subject to the object. That relationship
is said to be ideal (conceptual). Thus, dualism splits the cognitive process into two
parts. One of them, the creation of the perceptual object out of the thing-in-itself, is
assigned a place outside consciousness, and the other, the connection of the percept to
the concept and the relation of the concept to the object, is assigned a place within
consciousness.
As with the elements of cognition, it is fair to say that Steiner engages in the same form of
argument himself. He also divides the world into subject and object, and he also
distinguishes between inner and outer elements in the process of cognition.62 Indeed, the
essential difference between Steiner and the critical idealist would appear to be not so much a
distinction between monistic and dualistic views of the world, but a distinction as to the point
in the cognitive process where the divisions are to be drawn. For the dualist that point is
between the given world and representations in consciousness, while for Steiner it is within
the activity of thinking itself.
A further argument Steiner employs against the critical idealist expression of dualism is that
any variety of representational epistemology must be logically flawed, because it depends
upon a naive realist view of the operations of the organs of perception while insisting that
knowledge derived from those organs is merely representational. Steiner sets out the steps in
the act of knowing from a naive realist point of view, and then retraces them from the
perspective of representational epistemology. Having described the physiological processes
from nerve endings to brain, Steiner draws the following epistemological conclusions:
... I must treat the table itself – which I used to believe affected me, and produced a
mental picture of itself within me – as a mental picture. But then to be consistent my
sense organs and the processes in them must also be only subjective. I have no right
to speak of a real eye, only of my mental picture of the eye. It is the same with nerve
conduction and brain processes, and no less so with the process, in the soul itself, by
which things are supposedly built up out of the chaos of the various sensations. If I
run through the elements of the act of cognition once again, assuming the correctness
of that first [naive realist] circuit of thoughts, then the cognitive act reveals itself as a
tissue of mental pictures that, as such, can have no effect on one another.63
63 Ph F Ch 4 [27]; ITSP, p. 68.
Page 17
64 mental picture is the translation here of Vorstellung, which is also often rendered as representation and
occasionally as idea .
Steiner is right, of course, to recognise that there is a logical non sequitur in any theory of
knowledge, which consists only of a tissue of mental pictures64 , and which yet claims to
provide an account of the given world as the object of cognition. He would be wrong,
however, were he to attribute such an error to Kant, and to interpret Kant as claiming that
the table itself is as much a mental picture as the representation of it, which arises from the
manifold of sense impressions.
Steiner argues that, in order to avoid this embarrassment, the critical idealist reverts to a naive
realist conception of the organs of perception and accepts one’s own organism as something
that exists objectively. 65 As a consequence the critical idealist then becomes inconsistent
in the treatment of percepts, and ... makes the error of characterizing one percept in exactly
the same way as the naive realism it had ostensibly refuted. 66 Steiner summarises his
argument against the apparent logical inconsistency in critical idealism by saying:
65 Ph F Ch 4 [30]; ITSP, p. 70.
66 Ph F Ch 4 [29]; ITSP, p. 69.
67 Ph F Ch 4 [29]; ITSP, pp 69-70.
68 CPR A xiii, p.10: In this enquiry I have made completeness my chief aim …
Critical idealism seeks to prove that percepts have the character of mental pictures,
while naively accepting the percepts of one’s own organism as objectively valid facts.
What is more, it fails to notice that it is throwing together two fields of observation
between which it can find no connection.67
That is, to put it in terms of the framework of Steiner’s own enquiry, it fails to recognise the
coherence between nature within us and nature outside of us.
The response which could be made to this attack upon critical idealist’s dualism is that it
appears to assume the critical idealist is engaged in the same kind of project as Steiner
himself has embarked upon – that is, in the demonstration of the coherence of a particular
point of view. It is clear from the outset that Steiner’s investigation will lead in a
predetermined direction, and that Steiner has something in mind he wishes to prove, namely
that it is possible to arrive at a coherent and comprehensive, but monistic world view. Kant,
on the other hand, claims to be engaging in a transparent and open-ended investigation into
the elements of cognition, the preconditions for the act of knowing. From time to time in the
course of that investigation he tells the reader of the First Critique he does not know where it
will lead. His methodology takes the form of a systematic examination of every rational
possibility.68 The outcome is not predetermined, but one consequence of what Kant takes to
be the prolegomena for any future metaphysics is a world view, which in the event happens
to be fundamentally dualistic. Because he takes it as a given that there is a correspondence
between nature within us and nature outside of us, Steiner assumes there ought to be a similar
Page 18
correlation between the observation of mental pictures and of other percepts. Kant, however,
is arguing that different factors come into play within each of these forms of observation, for
he explains:69
69 CPR A 89, B 122; pp 123-124.
70 Ph F Ch 2 [4] – [9]; ITSP, pp 21-25.
The categories of the understanding, on the other hand, do not represent the
conditions under which objects are given in intuition. Objects may, therefore, appear
to us without their being under the necessity of being related to the functions of
understanding; and understanding need not, therefore, contain their a priori
conditions. Thus a difficulty such as we did not meet with in the field of sensibility
is here presented, namely, how subjective conditions of thought can have objective
validity, that is, can furnish conditions of the possibility of all knowledge of objects.
For the Kantian critical idealist there may be an a priori relationship between objects of
observation and the functions of the understanding, but the methodology of critical idealism
leaves open the possibility that there may not be such an association.
3. Steiner’s arguments for a monistic world view
Steiner’s presentation of monism in Chapter 2 of Philosophy of Freedom already assumes
that there will be a form of monism which provides for a coherent and comprehensive
account of perception, cognition and possible knowledge. Because he is arguing towards his
own version of monism, he begins in Chapter 2 by discounting the three possible versions of
monism which arise from an initial division of experience into matter and spirit . These
three versions either deny spirit to become materialism, or deny matter to become something
akin to Fichte’s subjective idealism, or deny that there really is a division between matter and
spirit, because they are always found together.70 Steiner’s description of materialism as an
inadequate account of the ground of cognition will not meet with any opposition from neoKantians. His explanation of the spiritualist view does however require further discussion,
particularly as Steiner’s understanding of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre forms a central aspect
of his own critique of critical idealism. It is examined in Part 2 Chapter 3 of this thesis. The
third form of monism has matter and spirit united in the simplest entity (the atom) , and
refers presumably to Leibnitz’s concept of the monad. The difficulty here, Steiner claims, is
that the problem is merely displaced to a different arena , for if it is an indivisible unity,
how does a unitary entity manage to express itself in a twofold way? 71 Putting aside the
weakness of Steiner’s argument for the moment,72 it could be said that both the second and
third forms of monism he describes might otherwise be seen as varieties of mysticism. As
Steiner is himself often characterised as a mystic , and as his attitude to mysticism
throughout his works appears to be somewhat ambivalent,73 something needs to be said about
Steiner’s view of mysticism as a form of epistemological monism.
71 Ph F Ch2 [9]; ITSP, pp 24-25.
72 The criticism Steiner is making of Leibnitzian monism applies equally to his own argument, namely that
Page 19
cognition is an indivisible unity, which expresses itself in the twofold forms of perception and thinking.
73 Despite his criticisms of mysticism as a source of knowledge in Philosophy of Freedom, and which are
retained in the 1918 second edition, Steiner published Christianity as Mystical Fact shortly after the
appearance
of the first edition.
74NOS, p. 115.
75Loc. Cit: Schelling assumed that it is possible to experience a positive meaning of the world without ever
being convinced that it exists. This and his conviction that we can know of existence only through higher
experience seems inconceivable to self-reflective thinking; we are led to assume that in his later years
Schelling
could no longer understand his earlier views, which had such an impact on Goethe.
Mysticism is discounted by Steiner as a credible epistemological position in the 10th
Introduction of Nature’s Open Secret. Having surveyed other epistemological positions
Steiner says of mysticism:
We are left with a third possibility – the assumption that we are able to reach an
unthinkable yet very real world by means other than thinking or perception. This
assumption leads us directly to mysticism. We do not need to concern ourselves here
with this, because we are interested only in the relationship between thinking and
being, idea and reality. Let the mystic write the epistemology of mysticism.74
Steiner criticises Schelling’s later work for its mystical quality75, and can see no merit in
mysticism, because it cannot offer any greater understanding of the nature of things than can
accurate observation supplemented by the capacity to grasp ideas. Mysticism is revisited in
Chapter 8 of Philosophy of Freedom, where Steiner characterises mysticism as the
philosophy of feeling , and says of it:76
76Ph F Ch 8 [3]; ITSP, p. 130.
77 Ph F Ch8 [7]; ITSP, p. 131.
78 Ph F Ch 4 [32]; ITSP, pp 70-71. Steiner responds to Schopenhauer’s the perceived world is my idea by
arguing: This whole proposition collapses in the face of the fact, noted above, that the eye and hand are
percepts no less than the sun and the earth. And thus, in Schopenhauer’s sense, and using his style of
expression, we could answer: My eye, which sees the sun, and my hand, which feels the earth, are mental
pictures in exactly the same way as the sun and the earth are. With this insight and without further ado, it is
clear that I cancel out Schopenhauer’s proposition.
79 Ph F Ch8 [7]; ITSP, pp 131-132.
A mystical view based solely on feeling errs in wanting to experience what it ought to
know; it wants to make something that is individual, feeling, into something universal.
It is open to question whether mysticism is necessarily the philosophy of feeling , but a
Page 20
characteristic of any claim to mystical knowledge does appear to be the reliance upon the
immediacy of experience as against the reflective quality of thinking. Steiner is right to
recognize that the universalisation of the experience of, or feeling for, mystical knowledge
will also need to be expressed in thinking, and this leads to an epistemological position in
which ... both kinds of cognition, thinking and perceiving, remain side by side without any
higher mediation between them. 77 There is, as Steiner shows, a logical inconsistency and
an infinite regression in the cognitive implications both of mysticism and what Steiner calls
the metaphysics of will , by which he means world views akin to that expressed by
Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Idea.78 Steiner summarises the logical difficulties
in mysticism and will-based philosophy as follows:79
Beside the conceptual principle attainable through knowledge, there is supposed to
exist a real principle of the world that can be experienced, but not grasped by
thinking. In other words, because they subscribe to the proposition that what is
directly perceived is real, mysticism of feeling and the philosophy of will are both
types of naive realism. Yet, compared to the original naive realism, they commit the
further inconsistency of making a specific form of perceiving (feeling or willing) into
the sole means of cognizing existence but they can do so only by subscribing to the
general proposition that what has been perceived is real. On that basis, however, they
would also have to ascribe an equivalent cognitive value to external perceiving.
Mysticism and metaphysics of the will , then, are both forms of naive realism and are
essentially dualistic, despite their initial appearance as monistic world views. Steiner has
earlier argued that naive realism cannot provide an adequate account of cognition,80 and he
believes he has demonstrated the inadequacies in any form of dualism. From Steiner’s point
of view mysticism may, therefore, be discounted as the basis for a coherent epistemology.
80 Steiner discusses naive realism and naive consciousness in Chapters 4 and 5 of Philosophy of
Freedom as
the bases to various forms of idealism. His opinion as to the adequacy of naive realism can be gleaned from
the
following: When someone builds a house and the ground floor collapses during construction of the second
floor, then the second floor falls along with it. Naive realism is to critical idealism as this ground floor is to the
second floor. Ph F Ch5 [2]; ITSP, p. 74; Kant offers his own more confident, and more eloquent, building
analogy at the beginning of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method: If we look upon the sum of all knowledge
of pure speculative reason as an edifice for which we have at least the idea within ourselves, it can be said
that
the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements we have made an estimate of the materials, and have determined
for
what sort of edifice and for what height and strength of building they suffice. We have found, indeed, that
although we had contemplated building a tower which should reach to the heavens, the supply of materials
suffices only for a dwelling-house, just sufficiently commodious for our business on the level of experience,
and
just sufficiently high to allow for our overlooking it. CPR, A 707, B 735, p. 573.
81 CPR, A 23, B 37; pp 67-68: By means of outer sense, a property of our mind, we represent to ourselves
objects as outside us, and all without exception in space. ... and everything which belongs to inner
determinations is ... represented in relations of time. Time cannot be outwardly intuited, any more than space
Page 21
can be intuited as something in us.
It is clear from the outset that Steiner is arguing for a particular form of monism, which will
arise from a reinterpretation, or a displacement, of the point of departure in our coming to
understand the cognitive process. It is as if an incision has to be made in the manifold of
inner and outer experience to find entry into the act of knowing, and that Kant and other
critical idealists choose to make that incision at the meeting point of cognizing subject and
perceived object. In the First Critique Kant certainly takes it as given that there is such a
fundamental split between subject and object.81 This assumption also forms the starting
point of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, for which the act of knowing commences with the
positing by the self-posited I of a non-positing posited not-I or other. The
Wissenschaftslehre is the other principal source of Steiner’s early philosophical work.
Having rejected dualism and the three categories of monism he describes, Steiner believes he
can ground a coherent monistic world view by choosing to effect an incision in the manifold
of experience at a different point from the disjuncture between subject and object, or positing
I and non-positing posited other .
Despite the central role it plays in his argument, Steiner’s introduction to the concept of
monism in Chapter 2 of Philosophy of Freedom is somewhat perplexing. We are introduced
to monism as if it were the only alternative to dualism:82
82 Ph F Ch 2 [4]; ITSP, p. 20.
83 Loc Cit.
84 Ph F Ch 2 [4]; ITSP, p. 21.
85 Loc. cit; RSV p. 25: Der Monismus richtet den Blick alleiin auf die Einheit und sucht die einmal
vorhandenen Gegensaetze zu leugnen oder zu verwischen.
86 Loc Cit.
87 Ph F Ch 2 [12]; ITSP, p. 26.
88 Loc Cit.
The whole relation between the I and the world that I have portrayed here meets us on
the stage of history in the contrast between a unitary world view, or monism, and a
two-world theory, or dualism.
In contrast with dualism, which directs its gaze solely to the separation that human
consciousness effects between the I and the world 83, the monism Steiner describes directs
its gaze exclusively to unity, and seeks to deny or erase the opposites, present though these
are. 84 Steiner’s choice of language85 suggests that monism is no more adequate than
dualism, and this impression is confirmed by his comment that (n)either monism nor
dualism is satisfactory, for neither does justice to the facts. 86 It soon becomes apparent,
however, that Steiner is referring only to the existing versions of monism and that he purports
to be setting out another form of monism, which will offer a credible and comprehensive
Page 22
account of cognition. That form of monism will be uncovered through a return to nature
and a wish to descend into the depths of our own being .87 The investigation, Steiner
claims, will come to a point where we can say to ourselves: Here I am no longer merely I.
There is something here that is more than I. 88 That point will be the point at which the key
to the act of knowing will be revealed.
Steiner arrives at the crux of his epistemological argument in Chapter 3 of Philosophy of
Freedom. So far as the argument for a satisfactory form of monism is concerned, Steiner
indicates in this chapter that the starting point for his theory of knowledge – the point at
which he makes his incision into the given world - will be the interplay of observation and
thinking. Steiner contrasts this with the departure points of other monistic and dualistic
forms of idealism, and says:89
89 Ph F Ch3 [4]; ITSP, p. 30.
90 The philosophers Steiner has in mind appear to be respectively Plato, Descartes, Kant, Fichte,
Schopenhauer,
Brentano, Haeckel and von Hartmann.
Insofar as we are conscious of it, observation and thinking are the two points of
departure for all human spiritual striving [geistige Streben des Menschen]. The
workings of both common human understanding and the most complicated scientific
investigations rest on these two pillars of spirit. Philosophers have proceeded from
various primal oppositions [Urgegensaetzen; RSP primary antitheses] such as idea
and reality, subject and object, appearance and thing-in-itself, I and Not-I, idea and
will, concept and matter, force and substance, conscious and unconscious – but it can
easily be shown that the contrast between observation and thinking precedes all of
these as the most important antithesis for human beings.
Like the philosophers to whom he appears to be alluding,90 Steiner will also need to reunite
the bifurcations created by the acts of observation and thinking if his form of monism is to
represent any advance on the reductionist and mystical forms he criticises. He will need to
show that his critique of observation and thinking leads to a credible monistic view of the
world, and that his methodology is something other than the dualistic methodology of
Kantian idealism.
4. Steiner’s concept of thinking
For Steiner it is the activity of thinking which both creates the illusion that the world is a
duality and which subsequently resolves that apparent dualism and unifies the observed
object and the observer in the act of knowing. This leitmotif of Steiner’s world view first
appears in The Science of Knowing,91 recurs repeatedly throughout his other epistemological
works, and is reformulated in a note to the new edition of The Science of Knowing published
in 1924, in which Steiner says:92
91 SK, p. 35: With the rest of experience I must penetrate the shell in order to arrive at the kernel: with
thinking,
Page 23
shell and kernel are one undivided unity.
92 SK, p. 124.
The sense world, in its manifestation to human contemplation, is not reality. It
attains its reality when connected with what reveals itself about the sense world in
man when he thinks. Thoughts belong to the reality of what the senses behold; but
the thought-element within sense existence does not bring itself to manifestation
outside in sense existence but rather inside of man. Yet thought and sense perception
are one existence. Inasmuch as the human being enters the world and views it with
his senses, he excludes thought from reality; but thought then just appears in another
place: inside the soul. The separation of perception and thought is of absolutely no
significance for the objective world; this separation occurs only because man places
himself into the midst of existence. Through this there arises for him the illusion that
thought and sense perception are a duality.
Steiner develops his characterisation of thinking in Philosophy of Freedom. Steiner’s
depictions of thinking also form the basis for the further disjunctions between Steiner and
Kant, which are taken up in the remaining chapters of this thesis. In claiming that there is a
living quality to thinking Steiner compares thinking with the growth of a plant, and in this
regard his argument arises from the incorporation of Goethe’s natural science into his
epistemology (Chapter 2 following). Steiner’s discussion of the dynamic, dividing and
reuniting, activity of thinking has its roots in his understanding of Fichte’s concept of
intellectual intuition (Chapter 3). The depiction of thinking as a creative force, which brings
about the totality of things in the world, allows Steiner to claim that thinking is the source of
freedom (Chapter 4).
Steiner elaborates his concept of thinking in Chapter 5 of Philosophy of Freedom. He
commences by comparing the relationship between thinking per se and perception with that
between waking and dreaming,93 and then argues that thinking is the unacknowledged
element in all forms of representational epistemology. It is thinking, which links perceived
phenomena to mental images:94
93 Ph F Ch 5 [8]; ITSP, p. 78: ... there is, in fact, something that relates to mere perception as experiences in
the
waking state relate to dreaming. That something is thinking.
94 Ph F Ch 5 [9]; ITSP, pp 78-79.
95 Ph F Ch 5 [10]; ITSP, pp 79-80.
Regardless of whether or not the percept, in the form given to me, persists before and
after my mental picturing, it is only with the aid of thinking that I can say anything
about it. If I say that the world is my mental picture, then I have spoken the result of a
process of thinking, and if my thinking is not applicable to the world, then that result
is an error. Between the percept and any kind of statement about it, thinking inserts
itself.
Page 24
Thinking, therefore, is not merely an additional, further element in the process of cognition
beyond the objective phenomenon: it is integral to the phenomenon itself. Steiner attempts
to explain his concept of thinking by integrating it into the observation of a living plant. In
response to the contrary position of a naive realist Steiner asks:95
By what right do you declare the world to be finished without thinking? Does not
the world bring forth thinking in human heads with the same necessity as it brings
forth blossoms on the plant? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts forth roots and stem.
It unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Set the plant before you. It links itself to a
specific concept in your soul. Why does this concept belong to the plant any less than
leaves and blossoms do? You might reply that leaves and blossoms are present
without a perceiving subject, while the concept appears only when a human being
confronts the plant. Very well. But blossoms and leaves arise in the plant only
when there is earth in which the seed can be laid and light and air in which leaves and
blossoms can unfold. Just so, the concept of the plant arises when thinking
consciousness approaches the plant.
A difficulty with this explanation is that it is no explanation at all in terms of the discursive
thinking, which constitutes rational argument. Steiner moves from one analogy – does not
the world bring forth thinking in human heads with the same necessity as it brings forth
blossoms on the plant? – to another – But blossoms and leaves arise in the plant ... Just so,
the concept of the plant arises when thinking consciousness approaches the plant as if to
prove that the necessity of cognitive engagement with the world implies that the concept of a
plant is a part of the plant. Steiner’s explanation is only plausible if it is understood as an
imaginative and pictorial account of the relationship between concepts and percepts. Seen in
that light, it becomes apparent that Steiner’s explanation is not intended to be a discursive,
rational argument but is in itself an exercise in the engagement of the intellectus archetypus.
That is, Steiner is portraying images of nature in transformation so that the reader will also be
engaged in thinking imaginatively and intuitively as he, Steiner, argues for the very
possibility of intuitive thinking as a cognitive process.
Thinking, Steiner claims, is not an accidental incident to an object of perception, but is active
in the same sense in which natural growth itself is active. Steiner next gives the example of
observing a rose bud on consecutive occasions, and compares the resulting sequence of
mental pictures with the transformations of the rosebud itself:96
96 Ph F Ch5 [11]; ITSP, p. 80.
97 Ph F Ch 5 [19]; ITSP, p. 84.
If I am given a rosebud today, then the picture that offers itself to my perception is
limited to the present moment. But if I put the bud in water, then I will get a
completely different picture of my object tomorrow. And if I keep my eyes turned
toward the rosebud, then I shall see today’s state change continuously into
tomorrow’s through countless intermediate stages. The picture offering itself to me
in a specific moment is but an accidental cross-section of an object that is caught up in
Page 25
a continual process of becoming. ...
It is completely unrealistic to grasp at accidental elements and to declare, of the
picture revealed at a particular time: that is the thing.
Thinking, then, has the capacity for being alive , and it is also universal. The concept I
form for association with a percept or set of percepts will be the same as yours and that of all
other thinkers. In returning to one of Kant’s geometric examples Steiner concludes:
The single, unitary concept of a triangle does not become many by being thought of
by many thinkers. For the thinking of many thinkers is itself a unity.97
Thus, in thinking we are given the element that unites us with the whole of the cosmos. 98
98 Ph F Ch 5 [20]; ITSP, p. 84.
99 Ph F Ch 5 [21] – [22]; ITSP, pp 84-85.
From the perspective of thinking, Steiner claims, the very act of knowing is a consequence of
a need on the part of thinking itself to reconnect us with the universe. The outcome of any
act of knowing, therefore, is also the reunification of percept and concept. From a
cosmological point of view cognition is the process, which allows for the universe to become
whole:99
The urge for knowledge arises in us because thinking in us reaches out beyond our
separateness and relates itself to universal world existence. Beings without thinking
do not have this urge. Other things remain external to such beings. For thinking
beings, a concept arises from the encounter with an external thing. The concept is
that part of a thing that we do not receive from without, but from within. Knowledge,
cognition is meant to accomplish the balance or union of the two elements, inner and
outer.
A percept, then, is not something finished or closed off. It is one side of the total
reality. The other side is the concept. The act of knowing (cognition) is the
synthesis of percept and concept. Only percept and concept together make up the
whole thing.
In the act of knowing, according to Steiner, each human being is participating in the creation
of the cosmos.
In the final chapter of Philosophy of Freedom, which he entitles Final Questions: The
Consequences of Monism, Steiner recapitulates his argument for ontological monism and
articulates the relationship between ontological monism and his form of methodological
monism, which is achieved by engagement in what Steiner now calls intuitive thinking .
The recapitulation focuses on the role of thinking and endeavours to demonstrate the
ontological and cognitive unity of the world. At this point in his argument Steiner widens
his perspective somewhat and claims that thinking forms the link between each individual
Page 26
and the cosmos. While individuals might live with different ideas, union arises in the world
of ideas, for:100
100 Ph F Final Questions, hereinafter FQ, [2] ITSP, p. 236; Steiner does not develop his concept of God in
Philosophy of Freedom beyond asserting that For us, neither a human, personal God, nor force, not matter,
nor
even the idealess will (Schopenhauer) can be considered the universal element of the world. Ph F Ch5 [23];
ITSP, p. 85.
101 Ph F FQ [1]; ITSP, p. 231.
102 Loc Cit.
103 Ph F FQ [1]; ITSP, p. 232.
Each person’s thinking embraces only a part of the total world of ideas and, to that
extent, individuals also differ through the actual content of their thinking. But the
contents exist within a self-enclosed whole that contains the thought contents of all
human beings. The universal, primordial Being permeating all humanity thus takes
hold of us through our thinking. Life within reality, filled with thought content, is at
the same time life in God. The merely inferred, not-to-be-experienced transcendent
realm is based on a misunderstanding by those who believe that what is manifest does
not bear within itself the reason for its existence. They do not realise that, through
thinking, they can find the explanation for perception that they seek.
In addition to this, what Steiner terms the experience of thinking observation 101 is the
means by which the urge for cognition is able to fulfil itself:102
Monism refuses to seek the ultimate causes of the world that appear to our perceiving
and thinking by making abstract inferences about something outside that world. For
monism, the unity brought to the manifold multiplicity of percepts through the
experience of thinking observation is both what our human urge for cognition
demands, and the means by which this urge for cognition seeks entry into the physical
and spiritual regions of the universe.
At this point Steiner’s perspective appears to have left epistemology and moved to more
metaphysical and cosmological considerations.
In Final Questions Steiner provides some additional formulations of the role thinking plays in
overcoming the inadequacies in ontological and methodological dualism. Although thinking
per se appears to be sufficient to demonstrate the benefits of a monistic world view, intuitive
thinking is required to provide a sufficient account of knowing and being. Steiner introduces
his central epistemological concept of intuitive thinking by claiming:103
Only through the experience of intuitive thinking [intuitives Denkerlebnis] can we
find our total, self-contained existence within the universe. Thinking destroys the
illusion of perceiving and integrates our individual existence into the life of the
cosmos. The unity of the conceptual world, which contains objective percepts, also
includes the content of our subjective personality. Thinking gives us the true form of
Page 27
reality, as a unity enclosed within itself, while the multiplicity of percepts is only an
illusion conditioned by our organisation.
What Steiner means by intuitive thinking here appears to be some combination of observation
and thinking. This has already been expressed in the form of the experience of thinking
observation , which implies both the act of combining thinking and observation and a
conscious awareness of the process. As will become apparent in the following chapters, the
primary sources for Steiner’s concept of intuitive thinking would appear to be Goethe’s
anschauende Urteilskraft [intuitive judgment]104 and Fichte’s depiction of self-consciousness
as an activity in which an eye is inserted .105
104 GSW vol. 40, pp 30-31.
105 Cited in FOI
106 Ph F Ch 3 [4]; ITSP, p. 29: Insofar as we are conscious of it, observation and thinking are the two points
of
departure for all human spiritual striving.
107 Ph F FQ [1]; ITSP, p. 234.
The strategy Steiner adopts to claim intuitive thinking as his central epistemological concept
appears to be to move away from his earlier depictions of observation and thinking as the two
primary and separate sources of cognition,106 and to substitute in their places perceiving and
intuition, for in Final Questions he says:107
Our mental organization tears reality into these two factors. One factor is apparent to
perceiving; the other to intuition. Only the union of the two – the percept integrating
itself lawfully into the universe – is full reality.
He then returns to thinking and observation, but now as the unified process of thinking
observation [denkende Beobachtung], as the faculty which enables us to comprehend the
totality of the real.108 Finally thinking alone, in a form in which we observe with thinking
[denkend beobachten], is adopted as the central process in the act of knowing:109
108Ph F FQ [1]; ITSP, p. 234: Reality lies in thinking observation that does not one-sidedly examine either
concepts or percepts by themselves, but rather considers the union of both. Steiner has earlier described
thinking observation as organizing [percepts] within the conceptual system of our concepts and ideas. Ph
F
Ch 5 [23] ; ITSP, p. 87.
109Ph F FQ [2]; ITSP, p. 234.
Monism ... shows that thinking is neither subjective nor objective, but a principle that
spans both sides of reality. When we observe with thinking, we execute a process
that itself belongs to the order of events. Through thinking, we overcome, in
Page 28
experience itself, the one-sidedness of mere perceiving.
It is clear that for Steiner monism and intuitive thinking are interdependent. It is the activity
of thinking which provides for a unifying methodology and it is monism which shows that
thinking is neither subjective nor objective. It is also clear that Steiner will need to show
how it is possible to combine perceiving and intuition, or observation and thinking, to arrive
at a credible claim for intuitive thinking as the means for access to essences. Steiner’s
arguments for combining perceiving and intuition are considered in Chapter 5 following and
his argument for combining observation and thinking in Chapters 6 and 7.
Page 29
15 Part 2 Chapter 5 PERCEIVING THE ARCHETYPE.txt
PART 2 Chapter 5 PERCEIVING THE ARCHETYPE
The second disjunction between the epistemological consequences of critical idealism and
Steiner’s concept of cognition arises from Steiner’s conviction that it is possible to perceive
archetypes. It is as a result of this conviction that Steiner asserts that the distinction between
phenomena and noumena may be dissolved and that there are no limits to the range of human
knowledge. It will be remembered that Kant specifically excludes archetypal thinking from
the range of human cognitive capacity by acknowledging the possibility of an intellectus
archetypus as a divine cognitive capacity, yet distinguishing that capacity from the discursive
form of human reason.1 Although Kant discusses intellectual intuition in the First Critique2
he does not allude to an intuitive understanding, or the intellectus archetypus, until the
Dialectic of Teleological Judgment of the Third Critique, in which he compares the absence
of a human capacity for intellectual intuition with the absence of intuitive understanding. It
is the peculiarity of the human understanding to seek out purpose in nature, which leads Kant
to draw this comparison:3
1 CJ s77 [405] – [410]; pp 289-294.
2 CPR B xl, fn p35: If, with the intellectual consciousness of my existence, in the representation I am , which
accompanies all my judgments and acts of understanding, I could at the same time connect a determination
of
my existence through intellectual intuition, the consciousness of a relation to something outside me would not
be required. But though that intellectual consciousness does indeed come first, the inner intuition, in which
my
existence can alone be determined, is sensible and is bound up with the condition of time. As only God is not
bound up with the condition of time, only God can have access to intellectual intuition. CPR B72, p90: …
such
intellectual intuition seems to belong solely to the primordial being, and can never be ascribed to a dependent
being, dependent in its existence as well as in its intuition, and which through that intuition determines its
existence solely in relation to given objects.
3 CJ s77 [405]; p. 289.
Hence this distinguishing feature of the idea of a natural purpose concerns a
peculiarity of our (human) understanding in relation to the power of judgment and its
reflection on things of nature. But if that is so, then we must here be presupposing
the idea of some possible understanding different from the human one (just as, in the
Critique of Pure Reason, we had to have in mind a possible different intuition if we
wanted to consider ours as a special kind, namely, as an intuition for which objects
count only as appearances).
For Steiner the process of reasoning is just the reverse: out of the experience of form
(archetypes) in nature he deduces that human understanding includes a capacity for intuitive
judgment, and likewise for intellectual intuition, with the result that there is no longer any
justification for thinking of the objects of the given world as counting for nothing more than
Page 1
appearances.
Steiner’s conviction that it is possible to perceive archetypes is evident in his earliest
epistemological works, The Science of Knowing and the Introductions which comprise
Nature’s Open Secret, and it remains a leitmotif of his epistemological position. The
attachment to archetypes arises largely from Steiner’s study of the methodology of Goethe’s
scientific works, although it also has its roots in Steiner’s familiarity with Kantian and postKantian idealism. There is, however, no mention of the perception of archetypes in
Steiner’s next studies, his two most conventionally philosophical works, Truth and
Knowledge and Philosophy of Freedom. In these works Steiner appears to be more
concerned to argue for the intuitive nature of thinking than to characterise the objects of
thought. Steiner has nevertheless not abandoned the concept of the archetype, for he returns
to it, with particular reference to Platonic forms, in the last work of his early philosophical
period, Goethe’s World View, published in 1897.
The argument of this chapter is divided into five sections. The first section examines what
is to be understood by Kant’s concept of the intellectus archetypus in the Third Critique as a
type of intuitive understanding. The context in which Kant introduces and discusses
archetypal thinking, the cognition of organic nature, invites the suggestion taken up by
Goethe and then by Steiner that some corrective may be required to the rejection in the First
Critique of any form of intuitive understanding. The second section of this chapter presents
Steiner’s argument in Goethe’s World View that the division between rationalism and
empiricism, which the critical philosophy seeks to resolve, arises in any case from a
misunderstanding of the Platonic conception of forms and the style of observation intended
by Aristotelian empiricism. If it is possible for human consciousness to engage an
archetypal understanding it must also be possible to characterise and describe it. The third
and fourth sections of this chapter deal with Steiner’s elaborations of Goethe’s concept of the
archetype in The Science of Knowing and Nature’s Open Secret. If, as Steiner is arguing,
archetypes may be perceived in the same way as Goethe claimed to see his ideas then he is
making claims about the nature of thinking as an organ of perception. The fifth section sets
out Steiner’s concept of the percept and the steps he is making towards the claim that
thinking operates as an organ of perception.
1. Intuitive understanding and the intellectus archetypus
The second part of the Third Critique, which includes Kant’s discussion of the intellectus
archetypus, concerns our understanding of nature. Kant appears to accept that mechanistic
thinking may be inadequate to account for the seeming purposiveness of organic nature, and
this suggests to him that another kind of causality might need to be contemplated. Kant
therefore sets up an antinomy between mechanistic and teleological judging. He distinguishes
between purposiveness as a form of thinking, and purpose in nature itself, and warns against
the extension of purpose as reflective judgment to the idea that purposes are determinative of
nature:
Yet we are right to bring teleological judging into our investigation of nature, at least
problematically, but only if we do this so as to bring nature under principles of
observation and investigation by analogy with the causality in terms of purposes,
without presuming to explain it in terms of that causality. Hence teleological judging
Page 2
is reflective, not determinative. ... Suppose, alternatively, that we attributed to nature
causes that act intentionally, and thereby based teleology not merely on a regulative
principle for merely judging appearances, a principle to which we could think nature
as being subject in its particular laws, but based teleology also on a constitutive
principle [that would allow us] to derive nature’s products from their causes. On this
alternative, the concept of a natural purpose would belong no longer to reflective but
to determinative judgment. But then it would not be judgment’s own concept (as is
the concept of beauty, i.e. of formal subjective purposiveness); instead it would be a
rational concept and hence would introduce a new causality into natural science, even
though in fact we only borrow this causality from ourselves and attribute it to other
beings without wishing to assume that they and we are of the same kind.4
4 CJ pp 236-237.
5 Ibid, p. 236.
6 Ibid, p. 250.
7 Ibid [399]; p. 282.
8 Loc. cit: For purposes in nature are not given to us by the object: we do not actually observe purposes in
nature as intentional ones, but merely add this concept [to nature’s products] in our thought, as a guide for
judgment in reflecting on these products.
9 Loc. cit: The purposiveness that we must presuppose even for cognizing the inner possibility of many
natural
things is quite unthinkable to us and is beyond our grasp unless we think of it, and of the world as such, as a
product of an intelligent cause (a God).
Throughout the second part of the Third Critique Kant continues to argue in the same vein,
suggesting that mechanical explanations may be inadequate to account for natural
phenomena, from the structure of birds,5 to the growth of a tree,6 or even a mere blade of
grass 7, though he cautions, at the same time, against any extension of the recognition of
purpose as an explanatory device into a belief that purposes are to be found as constitutive of
nature itself.8
Kant’s claim that purposiveness can be seen as regulative, but not as constitutive, of nature
arises from two features of the critical philosophy. One is that the limitations to our
cognitive capacities preclude us from having noumenal knowledge of natural phenomena,
and could never, therefore, demonstrate that nature is purposeful in itself. That capacity
would only be available to an intelligent cause ; indeed, although we are unable to form a
judgment one way or the other, the appearance of nature as purposeful, is an argument for the
existence of such an intelligent being.9 The other feature of the critical philosophy, which
precludes us from perceiving purpose as constitutive of nature, is Kant’s conception of reason
and understanding as interdependent and discursive operations of the mind. At this juncture
in the Third Critique Kant reminds us that reason without understanding is merely
Page 3
regulative,10 and claims that understanding discovers and confirms that human cognitive
capacity does not extend to archetypal thinking.11 Thus, although we can conceive of an
intuitive understanding12 or an intellectus archetypus, we cannot claim to possess one. As a
result:
10 Ibid [401]; p. 284: But without concepts of the understanding, to which objective reality must be given,
reason cannot make objective (synthetic) judgments at all. As theoretical reason it has absolutely no
constitutive principles of its own, but merely regulative ones.
11 Ibid [401]; p. 284: … understanding restricts the validity of these ideas [of reason] to this condition: that,
given the nature of our (human) cognitive ability, or even given any concept we can form of the ability of a
finite rational being as such, all thinking must be like this and cannot be otherwise – though we are not
asserting
that such a judgment has its basis in the object.
12 Ibid [406]; p. 290: … we can conceive of an intuitive understanding as well (negatively, merely as one that
is
not discursive), which, [unlike ours,] does not (by means of concepts) proceed from the universal to the
particular and thus to the individual.
13 Ibid [410]; p. 294.
14 NOS, pp 45-46.
... for external objects as appearances we cannot possibly find an adequate basis that
refers to purposes, but it seems instead that, even though this basis also lies in nature,
we must still search for it only in nature’s supersensible substrate, even though all
possible insight into that substrate is cut off from us: hence it seems that there is
absolutely no possibility for us to obtain, from nature itself, bases with which to
explain combinations in terms of purposes...13
The tension which is evident at this point in the critical philosophy is at the core of Steiner’s
second disjunction from Kantian epistemology, for it is precisely the capacity to perceive
archetypes, which Steiner claims Goethe demonstrated in his natural science. Steiner
highlights the contrast between Goethe’s archetypal perception of organic morphology and
the Kantian view in the Fourth Introduction of Nature’s Open Secret. Having argued that
Goethe had taken the human capacity for knowledge into organic nature, Steiner explains his
objection to the Kantian view as follows:14
We can comprehend the magnitude of Goethe’s achievement when we consider the
fact that Kant, the great reformer of recent philosophy, not only shared that old
erroneous concept [that only inorganic nature could be explained through itself] fully,
but even sought for a scientific reason why the human mind would never be able to
explain organic entities. He did, in fact, acknowledge the possibility of an intuitive
intellect (intellectus archetypus) capable of grasping the connection between concept
Page 4
and sensory reality both in organic beings and in the inorganic realm. But he denied
humankind the possibility of such an intellect. According to Kant, the human
intellect can conceive of the unity, or concept, of a thing only as arising from the
interaction of its parts, as an analytical generalization arrived at through abstract
reasoning, but not in such a way that each part appears as the result of a definite,
concrete (or synthetic) unity – that is, as the result of an intuitive concept.
Consequently, he considered it impossible for the human intellect to explain organic
nature, the activity of which must be viewed as emanating from the whole into the
parts. Kant said:
Thus, our intellect has this peculiarity with regard to our power of judgment:
namely that, in cognition by it, the particulars are not determined by the
universal and cannot, therefore, be derived from it alone. (Critique of
Judgment, paragraph 77)
According to this, when studying organic entities, we would have to give up the
possibility of knowing the necessary relationship between the idea of the whole
(which can only be thought) and what appears to our senses in space and time.
According to Kant, we would have to be content with knowing that such a
relationship exists; but we could not satisfy the demand of our logical thinking to
know how the general thought, or idea, steps out of itself and manifests as sensory
reality. We would have to assume, instead, that concept and sensory reality confront
each other without mediation, having been brought about by an influence external to
both, such as when a person assembles some composite object – say, a machine –
according to an idea. Thus any possibility of explaining the organic world was
denied – in fact, its impossibility seemed to be proven.
In the course of their discussions of the intellectus archetypus Kant and Steiner use a number
of terms which appear to carry overlapping meanings and which require some explanation.
Kant identifies the intellectus archetypus with intuitive understanding [intuitives
Verstand]15, while Steiner refers to it also as intuitive intellect [intuitive Intellekt]16. If
these terms are intended to designate the capacity to perceive archetypes they will also need
to be distinguished from the intellectual intuition [intellektuelle Intuition], to which Kant
refers in the First Critique.17 Intellectual intuition may be a related concept, but it refers to
15 CJ [406] – [408], pp 290-293: Hence we can conceive of an intuitive understanding [einen intuitiven
Verstand] as well (negatively, merely one that is not discursive), which, [unlike ours,] does not (by means of
concepts) proceed from the universal to the particular and thus to the individual … And [to make these points]
we do not have to prove that such an intellectus archetypus is possible.
16 NOS, p. 45.
17 The first reference appears in a footnote to the Preface to the Second Edition: If, with the intellectual
consciousness of my existence, in the representation I am’, which accompanies all my judgments and acts of
Page 5
understanding, I could at the same time connect a determination of my existence through intellectual intuition,
the consciousness of a relation to something outside me would not be required.
18 Förster, E. (2009) The Significance of s76 and s77 of the Critique of Judgment for the Development of
postKantian Philosophy (Part 1), Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal vol 30 no 2, p7 characterises the
distinction
in the following way: ... Kant brings not one, but two alternative cognitive capacities into play, which are by
no
means reducible to one another: a non-sensible, i.e., intellectual intuition, for which possibility (thought) and
actuality (being) coincide; and an intuitive understanding, which proceeds from the intuition of the whole to
the
parts and hence knows of no contingency in the connection of the parts to the whole. The latter is discussed
in
s77 [of the Third Critique], the former in s76. Although both are always identified with one another in the
literature, they are not the same: in the first case the alternative is between receptivity and spontaneity, in the
second case the alternative is between a discursive and intuitive understanding.
19 CJ, p. 293fn. 27: [The archetypal understanding would present originals (things in themselves); our
ectypal understanding, with the help of images (perceptions) gained from our intuition, presents derivatives
(things as appearances) of those originals.]
20 GWV, p. 5, Preface to the First Edition: I have therefore stated without reserve that in my view the
Goethean
way of thinking has its limit, that there are regions of knowledge which remain closed to it.
an altogether different faculty.18 Intellectual intuition, it will be remembered, is the
antithesis of sensory intuition and is, therefore, a purported capacity for the forming of
judgments independently of sensory perception. Although intellectual intuition and the
intellectus archetypus can be clearly distinguished, for Kant they share the attribute that each
is the necessary logical corollary to an existent capacity (the capacities for sensory intuition
and the intellectus ectypus respectively), neither of which is available to human cognition, but
which is constitutive of a divine intellect. Because he does not acknowledge a human
intellectus archetypus Kant does not develop the concept of an archetype, and commentators
identify the Kantian concept of an archetype with the thing-in-itself.19 It is an essential
element of Steiner’s argument for the perception of archetypes that Kant is recapitulating a
fundamental misconception of Platonic forms, which from the earliest times has pervaded
Western philosophy. Steiner elaborates this argument in Goethe’s World View.
2. Steiner’s claim that Platonic forms have been misunderstood
By the time Steiner published Goethe’s World View in 1897 he was able to contextualize
Goethe as a thinker and to separate his own epistemological stance from Goethe’s.20 The
first section of Goethe’s World View, Goethe’s Place in the Development of Western
Thought, identifies Goethe as a Platonic thinker, but distinguishes Goethe’s thinking from
Page 6
what Steiner describes as the unhealthy element of one-sided Platonism 21. The remainder
of the work elaborates Goethe’s thinking as it applies to organic nature, colours, geology,
palaeontology and atmospheric pressure, and as it is similar to, and might be distinguished
from, idealism as conceived by Hegel. As this description of it suggests, Goethe’s World
View is neither a tightly constructed nor a comprehensive presentation of Goethe’s
understanding of life: in particular, it does not contain any detailed discussion of Goethe’s
world view as it reveals itself in his literary works.22 Despite its loose construction Goethe’s
World View does nevertheless contain a number of arguments, which demonstrate both the
developing nature of Steiner’s own thought and his movement away from a purely Goethean
conception of intuition and archetype.
21 Ibid, p. 19.
22 Ibid, pp 155-156: In the Epilogue to the New Edition of 1918 Steiner meets this criticism with the argument
that, while Goethe’s world view could also be extracted from his literary works or his art history, it is most
distinctive in his view of nature.
23 Ibid, p. 14.
24 Ibid, pp 14-15: What alone can be called truly existing, because they always are, but never become nor
pass
away, are the ideal archetypal images of those shadow images, are the eternal ideas, the archetypal forms of
all
things … Of them alone, therefore, is there actual knowledge, since only that can be the object of such
knowledge which always and in every respect is, not that which is, but then again is not, depending on how
one
looks at it. Steiner does not say which Dialogue he is citing.
Steiner introduces his argument by locating Goethe’s approach to knowledge within the
Platonic tradition, but not as that tradition is generally understood. He begins with a
conventional description of Platonic epistemology:
The Platonic view tears the picture of the world-whole into two parts, into the mental
picture of a seeming world and into a world of ideas to which alone true eternal reality
is thought to correspond.23
Steiner then distances himself from the conventional representation of the idealist tradition,
for which the world of ideas, forms or archetypes constitutes a reality separate from
phenomena. Steiner cites Plato to show how it is that such an interpretation has arisen.24
This, Steiner then argues, is not a statement about the nature of knowledge – as ideal rather
than phenomenal – but about how knowledge is derived. Steiner returns to the conception of
knowing he advances in Philosophy of Freedom, and says:
The separation of idea and perception is justified only when one speaks of how human
knowledge comes about. The human being must allow things to speak to him in a
twofold way. They tell him one part of their being of their own free will. He need
only listen to them. This is the part of reality that is free of ideas. The other part,
Page 7
however, he must coax from them. He must bring his thinking into movement, and
then his inner life fills with the ideas of things.25
25 Ibid, p. 15.
26 ibid, e.g. p. 16: … the question, What relationship exists outside of man between idea and sense world?
is
an unhealthy one ; p. 17: In order to see the full extent of the deep significance of this direction of thought,
which Goethe felt to be unhealthy … ; p. 19: What lives in many of the thoughts that Goethe developed …
was
rejection of that stream of Platonism that he experienced as unhealthy.
27 ibid, e.g. p17: … this Platonism has grown stronger through a one-sided philosophical apprehension of
Christian truth … ; p. 18: The one-sided view of Platonism is extended over Christianity itself.
That is, the ideas of things are not ideas independent of the phenomena – they are a hidden
part of the phenomenon perceptible only through the organ of thinking. Plato’s distinction
between phenomenon and archetype is a device for apprehending the ideas within the
perceptible world. It has been the failure to exercise thinking in such a way as to uncover the
ideas within the phenomena which has led, according to Steiner, to what he repeatedly refers
to as an unhealthy 26 or one-sided 27 version of Platonism.
Steiner offers an historical rationale for his argument by tracing the development of
Platonism in Western thought. He identifies the way in which Platonism has been taken up
by the Church as the primary reason for its having become unhealthy and one-sided. The
Christian juxtaposition of the life of the senses and the life beyond this world has led, Steiner
argues, to a juxtaposition of experiences against ideas, of phenomena against archetypes, and
to the identification of Ideas with the divine. For the Christian thinker:
The world becomes the imperfect reflection of the perfect world of ideas resting in
God. The archetypal images of all things begin to be thought of as contained within
the divine spirit. The human soul, then, as the result of a one-sided apprehension of
Platonism, becomes separated from the relationship of idea and reality .28
28 Ibid, p. 18.
29 Loc. cit.
30 Redding, P. (2009) Continental Idealism, Routledge: London pp 67-69 refers to the misinterpretations of
Plato.
31 GWV, p. 21.
32 Loc. cit.
In support of this conception of the Christian world view Steiner cites Augustine, for whom
thinking cannot provide access to archetypal ideas, which must remain within the exclusive
provenance of God:
Page 8
Without wavering we want to believe that the thinking soul is not of the same nature
as God, for He allows no community, but that the soul can, however, become
enlightened through taking part in the nature of God. 29
The consequence of this view of the limits to the power of thinking, according to Steiner, has
been that for over a millennium Plato has been misunderstood and the Western tradition has
suffered from setting itself, and seeking to resolve, meaningless questions.30
Steiner argues that the Church’s misrepresentation of Platonic thinking has been carried over
into a corresponding misrepresentation of Aristotelian epistemology. Steiner portrays
Aristotle’s more empiricist way of thinking as if it were very much more akin to the way in
which he characterises that of Plato and Goethe, and says of Aristotle:
He saw in nature a unified being, that contains ideas just as much as it does the things
and phenomena perceptible to the senses.31
Steiner argues that Aristotle’s investigation of sense experience made Christian philosophers
and theologians uncomfortable, for it places the highest active principle into the world of
our experience .32 Thomas Aquinas, Steiner claims, resolved their discomfort by
reinterpreting Aristotle, and arguing that the proper use of Aristotelian reasoning was not to
acquire knowledge, but to confirm the divine revelation of it. The consequence of this, as
with the one-sided taking up of Plato, was a further unhealthy skewing of Western thought in
an opposite and complimentary direction.33 The result, from within the perspective of the
history of epistemology, has been the apparently irreconcilable conflict between empiricism
and idealism.
33 Loc. cit.
34 Ibid, p. 22.
35 Ibid, p. 23.
36 Loc. cit.
It is in the context of this as the background that Steiner characterises subsequent theories of
knowledge as ill-fated attempts to unscramble the Church’s distortions of Platonic idealism
and Aristotelian empiricism. Steiner identifies Bacon and Descartes as the first to set about
founding an epistemology on human powers, and both, as Steiner sees it, had also acquired,
as heritage of a degenerate thought world, the pernicious way of looking at the relationship of
experience and idea. 34 Bacon has no sense of the idea within experience, but merely of the
particulars of nature. He gathers a multiplicity of particulars, sorts them and measures them,
and abstracts from their similarities and differences to arrive at ideas. Steiner describes
Bacon’s thinking, therefore, as Platonism in reverse and says of it:
Plato sees reality only in the world of ideas, Bacon only in the world of perception
without ideas. Within Bacon’s conception there lies the starting point for that
attitude of thinkers by which natural scientists are governed right into the presentPage 9
day.35
Descartes is likewise affected by one-sided Platonism, and is afflicted in addition with what
Steiner calls the original sin of Western thought , namely mistrust toward the unbiased
observation of nature .36 Descartes’ radical doubt, as much as Bacon’s quantitative
empiricism, is the consequence of an artificial division between experience and idea. For
Descartes neither experience nor idea can be a reliable source of knowledge, and the only
sure ground lies in our consciousness of thinking itself.
Steiner then sketches what he sees as similar imbalances in the epistemological position of
Spinoza and Hume, before arriving at Kant. The consequence of Descartes’ reliance upon
thinking to produce conviction was that …it became the striving of Descartes’ successors to
determine the whole compass of the truths that thinking can develop out of itself and prove. One
wanted to find the sum total of all knowledge out of pure reason. 37 Spinoza’s Ethics is, therefore,
constructed on the model of Euclidean geometry, with no attention given to sense-perceptible reality.
For Steiner Spinoza’s epistemology can be seen as the reductio ad absurdum of misconstrued
Platonism:
37 Ibid, p. 24.
38 Ibid, p. 25.
39 Ibid, pp 25-26.
Spinoza regards only the knowledge arising through this activity, foreign to reality, as one
that corresponds to the true being of the world, as one that provides adequate ideas. The
ideas that spring from sense perception are for him inadequate, confused, and mutilated. It is
easy to see that also in this world conception there persists the one-sided Platonic way of
conceiving an antithesis between perceptions and ideas. The thoughts that are formed
independently of perception are alone of value for knowledge.38
For Hume, by way of contrast, it is only the phenomena and the things of the world of which we can
have knowledge. The ideas we attach to them, and the relationships between them (the appearances
of cause and effect), are mere habits of thought. Hume’s analysis extends to the relationship
between mind and body:
The human being is habituated further to seeing that a movement of his body follows upon a
thought of his spirit. He explains this to himself by saying that his spirit has caused the
movement of his body. Human ideas are habits of thought, nothing more. Only perceptions
have reality.39
This might therefore be seen as the reductio ad absurdum of Bacon’s Platonism in reverse .
The end result, according to Steiner, is that the radical epistemological positions, which arise from
unhealthy, one-sided Platonism and from a corresponding misunderstanding of Aristotelian
empiricism find their synthesis in Kant. Kant, Steiner says, brings to his critique three
preconceptions, which constitute the roots of the Kantian thought structure :40
Page 10
40 Ibid, p. 26.
41 Loc. cit: this writer’s summary of Steiner’s argument
42 ibid, pp 27-28.
(1) there are necessary truths, which are produced by pure thinking free of any experience – the
truths of mathematics and pure physics;
(2) experience cannot provide necessary truths, and the world of perception is not to be trusted;
and
(3) as Hume has shown, the ideas into which thinking combines the individual perceptions do not
stem from experience, but thinking adds them to experience.41
If the ideas of experience do not stem from experience they must be necessary truths of pure thinking,
and our knowledge of experience can be nothing more than the contingent perceptions of appearances.
We can therefore have no knowledge of things-in-themselves. In coming to these conclusions
Kantian critical idealism, according to Steiner, represents the dead end of a continuum of progressive
distortions of Plato’s account of the ground for knowledge. Steiner concludes:
One-sided Platonism brought forth in Kant a fruit that paralyses knowledge. Plato turned
away from perception and directed his gaze upon the eternal ideas, because perception did not
seem to him to express the being of things. Kant, however, renounces the notion that ideas
open any real insight into the being of the world, just so they retain the quality of the eternal
and necessary. Plato holds to the world of ideas, because he believes that the true being of
the world must be eternal, indestructible, unchangeable, and he can ascribe these qualities
only to ideas. Kant is content if only he can maintain these qualities for the ideas. Ideas
then no longer need to express the being of the world at all.42
Although Steiner does not cite Kant in Goethe’s World View it may be that support can be found for
Steiner’s position within other sections of the critical philosophy. Kant’s discussion of Plato in the
introductory section to the Analytic of Teleological Judgment of the Third Critique suggests, however,
that Kant also acknowledges that Plato claimed an inherent connection existed between ideas and
being:43
43 CJ, pp 240-241.
44 Kant also warns against the dangers in a misinterpretation of Plato. Referring to the apparent
purposefulness
in nature and the desire of the human intellect to find purpose, Kant says: Surely it is pardonable if, as the
result of a misunderstanding, this admiration [of nature] gradually increased to the point of fanaticism [for pure
intuition]. CJ, p. 241.
Plato, himself a master of [geometry], was overcome by enthusiasm [when he saw] that the
Page 11
original character of things is such that it can be discovered without any experience whatever,
and that the mind is able to derive the harmony of beings from their supersensible principle;
(to [these beings] we must add the properties of numbers, with which the mind plays in
music). It was this enthusiasm that lifted Plato above empirical concepts to ideas that he
thought could be explained only by an intellectual community [between ourselves and] the
origin of all beings. No wonder he turned away from his school everyone who was ignorant
of geometry; for what Anaxagoras inferred from objects of experience and their connection in
terms of purposes, Plato meant to derive from the pure intuition residing within the human
intellect [Geist].
Kant argues for a more fundamental distinction between ideas and sense perceptible experience than
Plato (except for the synthetic a priori truths of geometry and arithmetic), but he does not appear to
have misunderstood Plato in the manner Steiner suggests.44 Indeed, Kant appears to have understood
Plato in the same way as Steiner does; the difference between them is that Kant is careful not to infer
that purpose is constitutive of organic nature from the regulatory function of the pure intuition
residing within the human intellect , while Steiner sees the capacity for pure intuition as confirmation
that there must be forms (archetypes) within nature itself, and that these forms must be available to
cognition.
3. Steiner’s adaptation of Goethe’s conception of archetypes
In Part 1 of this thesis an account was given of how Goethe conceived his way of seeing nature (Part 1
Chapter 2), and what might be understood by the concept of an archetype (Part 1 Chapter 3).
Goethe’s use of the concept of the archetype arises in the context of his observations of natural
phenomena, and is limited to his conception of the living quality of nature. Goethe did not claim to
be putting forward a methodology for the perception of all phenomena, and nor did he claim
to be offering a critique of Kantian idealism. Steiner is making both of these claims. He is
also claiming that Goethe’s conception of archetypes may be adapted to resolve the
ontological split between noumena and phenomena inherent in transcendental idealism. The
way in which Steiner understands archetypes, therefore, is as a ground for appearances within
the phenomena, and as a perceptible form, which renders the concept of the thing-in-itself
unwarranted and unnecessary.
As Steiner is endeavouring to incorporate archetypes into the idealist tradition, it is
unsurprising that the first record of archetypes in his epistemology arises from before his
work on the Introductions to Nature’s Open Secret and The Science of Knowing. In a letter to
a friend of January 1881 Steiner reports having found confirmation for his own belief in
essences in an observation made by Schelling:45
45 Steiner, R. (1987) Briefe, Vol. 1, p. 13, translated by Irene Czech and Regina Erich, cited in König, K.
(2008)
Karl König: My Task, Floris Books: Edinburgh
Dear trusted friend! It was on the night of January 10 to 11 when I did not sleep for
one moment. I finally lay down on my bed after working until half past midnight on
a number of philosophical problems. My intention, last year, had been to establish
whether Schelling’s statement was true, when he says: We all have the secret and
wonderful capacity to withdraw from transience and, above all, from everything that
Page 12
comes towards us from outside, into our innermost, unclothed selves and therein to
behold eternity’s unchanging permanence in us.’ I believed then and still believe
now that I then discovered in clarity that inner capacity – having already sensed it for
a long time. The whole philosophy of idealism now stood before me in an essentially
modified form. What is a sleepless night compared to such a discovery!
In contrast with Fichte, for whom the given world is posited by consciousness, Schelling
conceives of nature as an independent ground of being, which generates a dialectic operation
between the real and the ideal, and thereby produces the activity of consciousness.
Schelling’s grounding of knowledge in nature, and in our capacity to behold eternity’s
unchanging permanence in us reinforces Steiner’s conviction that it must be to possible to
justify an epistemology that does not leave the world divided between appearances and
essences.
Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is nevertheless the intellectual product of an aesthetic form of
transcendental idealism. It is not at all a philosophy of nature in Goethe’s or in the modern
sense of the term, in that it does not rely upon any close observation of nature. Like Goethe
and Steiner Schelling claims that there is no unbridgeable split between phenomena and
noumena, and that this is because the intellectual activity which generates knowledge is not
reason, but intuition. For Fichte intuition describes the state of consciousness, which
necessarily precedes reason. For Schelling intellectual intuition is not only a precondition of
cognition: it generates an aesthetic intuition , and culminates in the capacity to create works
of art. In the System of Transcendental Idealism Schelling asserts:
The whole of philosophy starts, and must start, from a principle which, as the absolute
principle, is also at the same time the absolutely identical. An absolutely simple and
identical cannot be grasped or communicated through description, nor through concepts at
all. It can only be intuited. Such an intuition is the organ of all philosophy. – But this
intuition, which is an intellectual rather than a sensory one, and has as its object neither
the objective nor the subjective, but the absolutely identical, in itself neither subjective
nor objective, is itself merely an internal one, which cannot in turn become objective for
itself: it can become objective only through the second intuition. This second intuition is
the aesthetic.46
46Schelling, F. (1978) System of Transcendental Idealism, cited in Schelling, F. (1989) The Philosophy of Art,
translator’s introduction at xxxiii. Steiner is less enthusiastic about Schelling by the time of the publication, in
1890, of the second batch of Introductions to Nature’s Open Secret: NOS, p. 115: Schelling assumed that it
is
possible to experience a positive meaning of the world without ever being convinced that it exists. This and
his
conviction that we can know of existence only through higher experience seems inconceivable to
self-reflective
thinking: we are led to assume that in his later years Schelling could no longer understand his earlier views,
which had such an impact on Goethe.
Steiner develops his adaptation of Goethe’s conception of archetypes in The Science of
Page 13
Knowing and in the Introductions, which comprise Nature’s Open Secret. The first five
Introductions were published at about the same time as Nature’s Open Secret (1884), the
second batch (Introductions 6 to 14) in 1887, Introductions 15 and 16 in 1890 and
Introductions 17 and 18 in 1897, at around the same time as the publication of Goethe’s
World View. The Introductions which deal most with Steiner’s conception of archetypes are
Introductions 4, 9, 10, 11 and 16.
3.1 Archetypes in The Science of Knowing
Steiner’s first presentation of archetypes occurs in a section of The Science of Knowing
entitled The Activity of Knowing Nature.47 Steiner deals separately with the activities of
knowing inorganic and organic natural phenomena. In his discussion of inorganic nature
Steiner identifies what he calls the archetypal phenomenon with the laws of nature. He
gives as an example the factors, which determine the path of a stone thrown horizontally, and
establishes that these will include 1) the propelling force that I exert; 2) the force with which
the earth draws the stone; 3) the force of air resistance. 48 In this example ... the first two
forces are the essential ones, which determine the particular nature of the path, whereas the
third force is secondary 49 and it is the essential forces that constitute the archetype:
47 SK, pp 75 – 100.
48 ibid, p. 78.
49 ibid, p. 79.
50ibid, p. 80; writer’s emphasis as to had to occur
Such a phenomenon, now, in which the character of the process follows directly and
in a transparently clear way out of the nature of the pertinent factors, is called an
archetypal phenomenon (Urphaenomen) or a basic fact (Grundtatsache).
This archetypal phenomenon is identical with objective natural law. For in it is
expressed not only that a process has occurred under certain conditions, but also that
it had to occur.50
Steiner does not say how it is he knows that the first two forces are the essential ones – that
is, whether he is simply drawing upon his knowledge of Newtonian physics, or whether his
characterisation of the laws of nature as archetypal phenomena implies the exercise of an
enhanced form of thinking, or some form of intuition, for their apprehension. So far as
inorganic nature is concerned, if the archetypal is nothing more than a description of
objective natural law, what had to occur , then there is nothing about it which would justify
the postulation of any form of knowing nature other than the Newtonian physics accepted by
Kant as a scientific method consistent with a critique of reason.51
51 CPR, B xiii-xiv, p. 20: Even physics, therefore, owes the beneficent revolution in its point of view entirely
to
Page 14
the happy thought, that while reason must seek in nature, not fictitiously ascribe to it, whatever as not being
knowable through reason’s own resources had to be learnt, if learnt at all, only from nature, it must adopt as
its
guide, in so seeking, that which it has itself put into nature.
52 SK, pp 84-100.
53 Ibid, p. 85: At the end of the eighteenth century the universally prevailing view was that there was no
science
to explain living phenomena in the sense in which physics, for example, is a science that explains things.
Kant,
in fact, tried to establish a philosophical basis for this view.
54 Loc. Cit.
Steiner’s argument is of greater interest when the enquiry moves onto organic nature.52
Steiner notes that, until the early 19th century, scientists did not attempt to account for the
lawfulness of living organisms, because it was assumed that all life was created purposively
by a being operating outside of nature.53 As a consequence of this, philosophers of science
excluded organic nature from the field of scientific enquiry. Seen in this context Kant’s
argument in the Critique of Judgment against the availability of the intellectus archetypus to
human consciousness becomes the justification for not extending scientific enquiry further
into the organic sciences. Instead, as Steiner points out, organic nature then becomes
explicable only in terms of the regulative demands of consciousness:54
(Kant) considered our intellect to be such that it could go only from the particular to
the general. The particular, the individual, things are given to him, and from them he
abstracts his general laws. Kant calls this kind of thinking discursive, and
considers it to be the only kind granted to the human being. Thus in his view there is
a science only for the kinds of things where the particular, taken in and for itself, is
entirely without concept and is only summed up under an abstract concept. In the
case of organisms Kant did not find this condition fulfilled. Here the single
phenomenon betrays a purposeful, i.e. a conceptual arrangement. The particular
bears traces of the concept. But, according to the Koenigsberg philosopher, we lack
any capacity to understand such beings [solche Wesen]. Understanding is possible
for us only in the case where the concept and individual thing are separated, where the
concept represents something general, and the individual thing represents something
particular. Thus there is nothing left us but to base our observations about organisms
upon the idea of purposefulness: to treat living beings as though a system of intentions
underlay their manifestation. Thus Kant has here established non-science
scientifically, as it were.
Steiner records that in the later 19th century, as the notion of purposeful creation died away,
organic nature did become the subject of scientific enquiry. The problem now, however, was
that the methodology of inorganic nature was simply transferred to the study of living
organisms, and as a result:
Page 15
One considered the method employed here to be altogether the only scientific one,
and thought that for organics to be scientifically possible, it would have to be so in
exactly the same sense in which physics is, for example. The possibility was
forgotten, however, that perhaps the concept of what is scientific is much broader than
the explanation of the world according to the laws of the physical world ...
... All this comes from the erroneous view that the method of a science is extraneous
to its objects of study, that it is not determined by these objects but rather by our own
nature. It is believed that one must think in a particular way about objects, that one
must indeed think about all objects – throughout the entire universe – in the same
way.55
55 Ibid, pp 86-88.
56 CJ, s77, pp 288-294 bears the heading: On the Peculiarity of the Human Understanding that makes the
Concept of a Natural Purpose possible for us .
57 SK, pp 96-97: The kind of thinking in which the content appears in direct connection with the formal
element has always been called intuitive .
In putting the case against the use of the same scientific method for organic nature as for
inorganic nature in this way Steiner is exaggerating the distinction between his approach and
Kant’s. It is true that Kant argues that the method of a science is determined by our own
nature ,56 but Steiner’s argument also includes a critique of the possible modes of cognition.
Steiner has not yet fully developed his concept of intuitive thinking by the time of The
Science of Knowing, but he refers to intuition for the first time, and argues for the availability
of Goethe’s version of the intellectus archetypus, intuitive judgment [anschauende
Urteilskraft], as the mode of cognition for the perception of archetypes.57
Intuition appears repeatedly as a scientific principle. The English philosopher Reid calls it an intuition if, out
of our perception of outer phenomena (sense impressions), we were to acquire at the same time a conviction
that
they really exist. Jacobi thought that in our feeling of God we are given not only this feeling itself but at the
same time the proof that God is. This judgment is also called intuitive. What is characteristic of intuition, as
one can see, is always that more is given in the content than this content itself; one knows about a thoughtcharacterization, without proof, merely through direct conviction. ...
... Our power of judgment must be a thinking beholding, and a beholding thinking. We have to do here, as
was
expounded by the first time by Goethe, with a power to judge in beholding (anschauende Urteilskraft). Goethe
thereby revealed as a necessary form of apprehension in the human spirit that which Kant wanted to prove
was
something the human being, by his whole make-up, is not granted.
58 Ibid, p. 90: In inorganic nature we perceive a fact and see, in order to explain it, a second, a third fact and
so
on; and the result is that the first fact appears to us to be the necessary consequence of the other ones. In
Page 16
the
organic world this is not so. There, in addition to the facts, we need yet another factor. ...
But what is that basic factor? It can, after all, be nothing other than what manifests in the particular in the
form of the general. In the particular, however, a definite organism always manifests. That basic factor is
therefore an organism in the form of the general: a general image of the organism, which comprises within
itself
all the particular forms of organisms.
59 CJ, [406]-[407]; p. 291.
The essence of the mode of cognition for the perception of archetypes, according to Steiner,
is that the mind has the capacity to move from the general to the particular.58 In
characterising the mode of consciousness for perceiving archetypes in this way Steiner is in
agreement with Kant. Steiner believes, however, that the universality of nature confirms the
availability of anschauende Urteilskraft or the intellectus archetypus. For Kant the
universality and diversity of nature remain something of a quandary, for they require him to
postulate the possibility of an intellectus archetypus, yet regard it as unavailable to human
cognition:59
Therefore our understanding has this peculiarity as regards judgment: when cognition
occurs through our understanding, the particular is not determined by the universal
and therefore cannot be derived from it alone. And yet this particular in nature’s
diversity must (through concepts and laws) harmonize with the universal in order that
the particular can be subsumed under the universal. But, under these circumstances,
this harmony must be very contingent, and must lack a determinate principle as far as
the power of judgment is concerned.
How then can we at least conceive of the possibility of such a harmony – one that is
presented as contingent and hence as possible only through a purpose that aims at it –
between the things of nature and our judgment? To do this, we must at the same time
conceive of a different understanding: without as yet attributing any [concept of a]
purpose to this understanding, we can then present this harmony between the
[particular] natural laws and our judgment as necessary relative to that understanding,
[even though] our own understanding can conceive of this harmony only as mediated
by purposes.
It is tempting to think that the as yet suggests Kant may also arrive at a point at which he,
too, can allow for a human intellectus archetypus, but that is not what the original implies.60
60 KU, p. 360: Um nun gleichwohl die Möglichkeit einer solchen Zusammenstimmung der Dinge der Natur
zur
Urteilskraft (welche wir als zufällig, mithin nur durch einen darauf gerichteten Zweck als möglich vorstellen)
wenigstens denken zu können, müssen wir uns zugleich einen anderen Verstand denken, in Beziehung auf
welchen, und zwar vor allem ihm beigelegten Zweck, wir jene Zusammenstimmung der Naturgesetzte mit
unserer Urteilskraft, die für unseren Verstand nur durch das Verbindungsmittel der Zwecke denkbar ist, als
notwendig vorstellen können.
61 SK, p. 90.
Page 17
62 Ibid, pp 90-91.
63Ibid, p. 91: Just as natural law provides us with the possibility of recognizing each individual occurrence as
a
part of one great whole, so the typus puts us in a position to regard the individual organism as a particular
form
of the archetypal form.
Steiner then argues in The Science of Knowing that the starting point for knowledge of
organic nature is ... a general image of the organism, which comprises within itself all the
particular forms of organisms. 61 He describes this general image, the typus, in the following
way:62
This typus is not developed in all its completeness in any single organism. Only our
thinking, in accordance with reason, is able to take possession of it, by drawing it
forth, as a general image, from phenomena. The typus is therewith the idea of the
organism: the animalness in the animal, the general plant in the specific one.
... The typus is something altogether fluid, from which all the particular species and
genera, which one can regard as subtypes or specialized types, can be derived. The
typus does not preclude the theory of evolution. It does not contradict the fact that
organic forms evolve out of one another. It is only reason’s protest against the view
that organic development consists purely in sequential, factual (sense-perceptible)
forms. It is what underlies this whole development. It is what establishes the
interconnection in all this endless manifoldness. It is the inner aspect of what we
experience as the outer forms of living things. The Darwinian theory presupposes
the typus.
Steiner concludes that The typus is the true archetypal organism ... [which] plays the same
role in the organic world as natural law does in the inorganic. 63 The way in which the typus
and natural law are similar is that they are both said to underlie sense perceptible phenomena,
but otherwise they are very different. Kant’s concept of a natural purpose is characterised
as identifiable with natural law, but Steiner conceives of the typus as perceptible to the
senses.
Steiner also attempts to describe the mode of cognition required to perceive the typus in The
Science of Knowing. His method is to contrast this mode of cognition with the reasoning
applied to derive laws of nature in the inorganic sciences:
There it was a matter of showing that a particular sense-perceptible fact can occur in
this and in no other way, because this or that natural law exists. The fact and the law
confront each other as two separate factors, and absolutely no further spiritual work is
necessary except, when we become aware of a fact, to remember the law that applies.
This is different in the case of a living being and its manifestations. Here it is a
matter of developing, out of the typus that we must have grasped, the individual form
arising in our experience. We must carry out a spiritual process of an essentially
different kind. We may not simply set up the typus, as something finished in the way
Page 18
the natural law is, over against the individual phenomenon.64
64 Ibid, pp 92-93.
65 Ibid, p. 93.
The essentially different process is first to grasp the typus and then to work from the
general (the typus) to the particular and develop ... the individual form arising in our
experience. To achieve this development we must also treat the relationship between typus
and organism as more fluid than the relationship between law and phenomenon:
With the typus we must develop the particular case confronting us out of the
archetypal form. We may not place the typus over against the individual form to see
how it governs the latter; we must allow the individual form to go forth out of the
typus. A law governs the phenomenon as something standing over it; the typus flows
into the individual being; it identifies itself with it.65
Steiner is alive to the criticism that his account might appear to be unscientific in the
conventional sense.66 He compares and contrasts organic science, therefore, with the
paradigmatic inorganic sciences, mechanics and physics, and argues:
66 Ibid, p. 94: It is possible to make an objection here. If the typical form is altogether something fluid, how is
it at all possible to set up a chain of sequential, particular types as the content of an organic science?
67 Ibid, pp 93-95.
If an organic science wants to be a science in the sense that mechanics or physics is, it
must therefore know the typus to be the most general form and must then show it also
in diverse, ideal, separate shapes. Mechanics is indeed also a compilation of diverse
natural laws where the real determinants are altogether hypothetically assumed. It
must be no different in organic science...
Just as in the inorganic we lead a phenomenon back to a law, so here we develop a
specific form out of the archetypal form...
Just as mechanics is a system of natural laws, so organic science is meant to be a
series of developmental forms of the typus...
An organic science is possible which, like mechanics, is science in altogether the
strictest sense. It is just that the method is a different one. The method of mechanics
is to prove things...
But we can do nothing with this proving method in organic science. The typus ...
does not point, like a natural law, beyond itself. The particular organic forms can
therefore be developed only out of the general typus form, and the organic beings
[organischen Wesen] that arise in experience must coincide with one such derivative
Page 19
form of the typus. The developmental method must here take the place of the
proving one.67
Steiner’s contrast between the proving method’ and the developmental method’ will need
some unpacking. What he has told us so far about the developmental method is that it
requires us to grasp the typus rather than to place the typus over against the individual
form to see how it governs the latter . The typus which is grasped must coincide with the
organic forms under observation. Steiner will need to say more about the sense in which the
typus is grasped, and in what sense this amounts to a perception of the typus rather than the
derivation of a concept in the same manner as a natural law is derived. He will also need to
explain the process, which allows for the typus to coincide with the organic phenomena under
observation if the relationship is to be different from that between inorganic phenomena and
the natural laws which govern them.
At the end of the section of The Science of Knowing devoted to the activity of knowing nature
Steiner summarises the difference between observation of inorganic and organic nature as
follows:68
68 Ibid, p. 100.
69 Loc. cit.
70 Ibid, p. 90: But what is that basic factor? It can, after all, be nothing other than what manifests in the
particular in the form of the general.
The ideal of inorganic science is to grasp the totality of all phenomena as a unified
system, so that we approach every phenomenon with the consciousness of recognising
it as a part of the cosmos. In organic science, on the other hand, the ideal must be, in
the typus and in its forms of manifestation, to have with the greatest possible
perfection what we see develop in the sequence of single beings. Leading the typus
through all the phenomena is what matters here. In inorganic science it is the
system; in organic science it is comparison (of each individual form with the typus).
Steiner then refers to the developing method as the comparing method employed by
Goethe. 69 Both of these depictions of Steiner’s method – the developing method and the
comparing method - are amplifications of his original description of the basic factor in the
perception of archetypes as the purported capacity of the mind to move from the general to
the particular.70 Beyond what has been said about the developing method earlier Steiner does
not argue for these amplifications in The Science of Knowing. By the end of The Science of
Knowing we are left with the impression that Steiner has taken Kant’s concept of the
intellectus archetypus as the starting point for an elaboration of Goethe’s anschauende
Urteilskraft and his scientific method, but that he has not been able to demonstrate the
actuality of it.
4. Archetypes in Nature’s Open Secret
Page 20
In 1882 Steiner was invited to edit Goethe’s scientific writings for the publication of
Kürschner’s National Literature71. Steiner began the work while he was still in Vienna, but
did not complete it until he had been in Weimar for some years, and was about to leave for
Berlin in 1897. In the course of that period Steiner also wrote his specifically
epistemological works. Steiner’s commentaries consist of 18 Einleitungen [Introductions],
which are now reprinted as Einleitungen zu Goethes Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften72, and
comprise the first of the 362 volumes of Steiner’s collected works. They are available in
English as Goethe the Scientist73, Goethean Science74 and most recently as Nature’s Open
Secret. The first five Introductions were published in 1884 along with The Science of
Knowing. Introductions 6 to 14 appeared in 1887 and Introductions 15 and 16 in 1890,
before Truth and Knowledge and Philosophy of Freedom. The final two Introductions, 17 and
18, did not appear until 1897, at around the time of the publication of Goethe’s World View.
Most of the Introductions are directed to consideration of Goethe’s scientific discoveries in
the specific domains referred to in Part 1 Chapter 2 of this thesis. Introductions 4, 9, 10, 11
and 16 contain extended accounts of the epistemological implications of Goethe’s scientific
method, and in particular the concept of the archetype and of Goethe’s notion of anschauende
Urteilskraft.
71 Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited by Rudolf Steiner, Union Deutsche Verlagsgeselleschaft,
Stuttgart-Berlin-Leipzig, 1884-97 (1921), four volumes
72 Steiner, R. (1999) Einleitungen zu Goethes Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften, Rudolf Steiner Verlag:
Dornach , hereinafter GNS
73 Steiner, R. (1950) Goethe the Scientist, Anthroposophic Press: Spring Valley, NY
74 Steiner, R. (1988) Goethean Science, Mercury Press: Spring Valley, NY
4.2 Introduction 4
In the first group of Introductions Steiner presents the concept of the archetype and relates it
to Kant’s discussions of intuitive understanding and the intellectus archetypus in s76 and s77
of the Third Critique. In Introduction 2 Steiner says of the archetype:75
75 NOS, pp 17-18.
76 Ibid, p. 45, cited at pp 5-6 above.
77 Ibid, p. 44.
Now, when we consider this archetypal plant itself, we can say:
Anything that is alive is a self-contained whole that brings forth its various states out
Page 21
of itself. Both in the spatial juxtaposition of its members and in the succession of its
stages over time every living entity manifests interrelationships that do not appear to
be determined by the sense perceptible characteristics of its members, nor by some
kind of mechanical causality through which earlier stages determine later ones.
These interrelationships are governed, rather, by a higher principle that stands above
its members and stages. It is inherent in the nature of the whole that a specific stage
arises as the first, another as the last; and the sequence of the intermediary stages is
also determined within the idea of the whole; what comes before is dependent on what
comes later, and vice versa. In short, in a living organism there is development of
one thing out of another, transition from one stage into another - there is no finished,
completed existence of any one particular, but rather continuous becoming.
Steiner elaborates the contrast he presents here between the higher principle within living
entities and mechanical causality in a footnote to Introduction 4. The footnote appears
shortly before the account given by Steiner76 of Kant’s rejection of the intellectus archetypus
as a faculty of human cognition. In the footnote Steiner elevates the distinction between
organic and inorganic nature to one of principle, and says of it:77
Herein lies the difference between organisms and machines. What is essential in the
machine is only the interaction of its parts. The unifying principle that governs that
interaction does not exist in the object itself but outside it as a plan in the head of its
builder. Only the most extreme shortsightedness can deny that the difference
between an organism and a mechanism is precisely the fact that in a machine the
determining principle governing the interrelationship of its parts is external (and
abstract), whereas in an organism it assumes a real existence in the object itself.
Thus, the sense-perceptible conditions of an organism do not appear merely to follow
one from another, but are governed by an inner principle that is imperceptible to the
senses. In this sense this principle is no more perceptible to the senses than the plan
in the builder’s head, which is also present only to the mind. Essentially, it is such a
plan, except that it has entered the organism’s inner being and affects it directly, not
through a third party, the builder.
The archetype is not a mere intellectual construct for Steiner: it is external to the observer,
and it inhabits the object.
The distinction Steiner is drawing here between an external principle and a principle which
assumes a real existence in the object itself is what requires him to postulate both the
archetype as such and a distinct human capacity to perceive the archetype. It also leads him
to draw a distinction between ideas and concepts, which he derives from Goethe, and for
which the idea appears to be the equivalent of the archetype, or the typus in the case of
organic nature:
The idea is not a summary of experience; it produces experience. Goethe expresses
this as follows: A concept is the sum of experience, an idea is its result; to
understand a concept requires intellect, to comprehend an idea requires reason.
… The relationship between what we perceive – the material element in our
knowledge given through the outer senses – and the concept – or formal means of
Page 22
recognizing the necessity of what we perceive – is their objective need for each other.
But this relationship is such that the concept does not live in the particulars of an
experienced event but in the interrelationship of those particulars.
… In organic nature the diverse particulars of an organism do not have such an
external relationship to one another. The unity manifests in what is perceived; it
comes into existence together with the diversity and is identical with it. … The
concept does not merely play the role of a summarizing element with its object
outside itself; it has united with its object completely. The object of our perception is
no longer different from the concept through which we think it; we perceive that
concept itself as idea.78
78 Ibid, pp. 52-53.
In distinguishing as he does between concepts of inorganic and organic nature Steiner is
proposing something beyond Goethe’s distinction between the sum and the result of
experience. For Steiner concepts of organic nature dissolve into, and are themselves
perceived as, ideas.
It is interesting to compare Steiner’s characterisation of ideas and concepts with what Kant
has to say about the matter. In Book 1 of the Transcendental Dialectic of the First Critique
Kant is about to introduce transcendental ideas, and in doing so explains what he means by
concepts and ideas. For Kant there are two kinds of concepts, namely concepts of reason
and concepts of understanding, the distinction between them being that: Concepts of reason
enable us to conceive, concepts of understanding to understand – ([as employed in reference
to] perceptions). 79 Steiner’s distinction is not this one, but can be seen as a further division
of concepts of understanding into concepts of understanding inorganic and organic nature
respectively. Kant begins his discussion of ideas by referring to Platonic ideas, which he
describes as archetypes of the things themselves, 80 and concludes it with a categorisation of
the various forms of representations in an effort to ... preserve the expression idea’ in its
original meaning, that it may not become one of those expressions which are commonly used
to indicate any and every species of representation, in a happy-go-lucky confusion, to the
consequent detriment of science. 81 Kant then equates ideas with concepts of reason.82
One manifestation of this second disjunction between Steiner and Kant, then, is that Kant
insists that ideas be identified with concepts of reason, while Steiner identifies ideas with the
concepts of understanding of organic nature.
79 CPR, A311, B367, p. 308.
80 Ibid, A313, B370, p. 310: For Plato ideas are archetypes of the things themselves, and not, in the manner
of
the categories, merely keys to possible experiences. In his view they have issued from highest reason, and
from
that source have come to be shared in by human reason ...
81 Ibid, A319, B376, p. 314.
82Ibid, A320, B376, p. 314: The concept is either an empirical or a pure concept. The pure concept, in so far
as it has its origin in the understanding alone (not in the pure image of sensibility), is called a notion. A
Page 23
concept
formed from notions and transcending the possibility of experience is an idea or concept of reason.
These differing notions of the relationship between ideas and concepts also account for why it
is that Kant can postulate an intellectus archetypus but deny that we have a capacity for it,
while Goethe and Steiner insist that such a capacity must exist. Kant understands that Plato
regarded ideas as archetypes of the things themselves , but it is clear he has rejected that
notion when he identifies ideas with concepts of reason. Goethe and Steiner, on the other
hand, identify ideas respectively with the results of experience and with concepts of the
understanding. They therefore need to argue for a mode of cognition, which extends beyond
the discursive reasoning of Kant’s intellectus ectypus, because they are postulating ideas as
perceptible phenomena and for ideas to be perceptible there must be a sense organ to perceive
them. For Goethe the solution lies in the refinement of the faculty of judgment into intuitive
or perceiving judgment [anschauende Urteilskraft], so that through the idea the observer
becomes identified with the phenomenon. Steiner describes Goethe’s approach as follows:
(Goethe) maintained that, when dealing with objects of experience, the idea is an
organ for apprehending the necessary interrelationships or phenomena that would
otherwise be perceived blindly as random occurrences in space and time. Because
the idea may not add anything new to the object, it follows that the object in its actual
essence is of an ideal nature; in fact, all of empirical reality must have two sides – one
through which it is of a particular, individual nature, and another through which it is
of an ideal, universal nature.83
83 NOS, p. 67.
84 SK, pp 96-97: The kind of thinking in which the content appears in direct connection with the formal
element has always been called intuitive.
Steiner’s own solution is to retain the separation between the idea as sense organ and as sense
perceptible phenomenon (or archetype), and to elaborate Kant’s intellectus archetypus as the
organ for the perception of archetypes in such a way that it takes on the characteristics of
Goethe’s anschauende Urteilskraft.
It would seem to be for this reason that Steiner now introduces intuition, which, as we have
seen, also enters into the argument of The Science of Knowing.84 Steiner refers to intuitive
intellect, intuitive concept and intuitive knowledge as a way of describing the form of
understanding necessary for the perception of archetypes. In Introduction 4, published
around the same time as The Science of Knowing, Steiner writes:
We need a kind of thinking that can give a thought a substance not derived from outer
sensory perception, a thinking that comprehends not only what is perceived externally
by the senses, but also apprehends pure ideas apart from the sensory world. A
concept that is not abstracted from the sensory world but whose content develops out
of itself and only out of itself can be called an intuitive concept [intuitiven Begriff],
and the comprehension of such a concept may be called intuitive knowledge . What
follows from this is clear: A living organism can be comprehended only through an
Page 24
intuitive concept. Goethe actually demonstrated that it is in fact possible for us to
know in this way.85
85 NOS, p. 50.
86GNS, p83: Man kann nun einen Begriff, der nicht durch Abstraktion aus der Sinnenwelt genommen ist,
sondern der einen aus ihm und nur aus ihm fließenden Gehalt hat, einen intuitiven Begriff und die Erkenntnis
desselben eine intuitive nennen.
87 SK, p. 96.
88 NOS, p78: Thinking relates to ideas as the eye relates to light and the ear to sound; it is an organ of
perception. … What is given to the senses is only half of the given. The other half consists of ideas, which
are also objects of experience – and accessible to the organ of thinking.
Intuition consists here in a thinking that ... apprehends pure ideas apart from the sensory
world and out of which intuitive concepts may be generated. Steiner does not explain what
he means by intuitive concepts , nor whether these would be concepts of reason or concepts
of understanding. It may be that they are not concepts of understanding, for Steiner adopts
the term intuitive’ rather than use anschauende’, which is also translated into English as
intuitive’, and which would more readily refer back to Goethe’s purported faculty of
anschauende Urteilskraft.86 It is evident from all of this that Steiner has not yet arrived at
the notion of intuitive thinking as such, but his argument for an intuitive form of
understanding has advanced from his introduction of intuition in The Science of Knowing,
where he identifies it merely as those occasions when more is given in the content than this
content itself. 87
4.2 Introduction 9
Although there is some reference to his developing understanding of perception and thinking
in Introduction 688, it is not until Introductions 9, 10 and 11 that Steiner makes further major
statements about his epistemological position and, therefore, about the perception of
archetypes. In Introduction 9, as an entry into Goethe’s theory of knowledge, Steiner claims
there has been a certain confusion … that has unfortunately persisted since Kant. 89 The
confusion is said to lie in the questions Kant sets himself in the Introduction to the First
Critique as to the possibility of particular forms of knowledge.90 Steiner does not cite Kant,
but summarises the critical project in the following way:91
89 NOS, p. 91.
90 CPR, B19-B23, pp 55-57: How are a priori synthetic judgments possible? How is pure mathematics
possible? How is pure science of nature possible? How is metaphysics, as natural disposition, possible? How
is
metaphysics, as science, possible?
91 NOS, p. 91.
92CPR, A19, B33, p. 65: In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to its
Page 25
is
directed.
93NOS, pp 91-92: We cannot, however, determine the possibility of knowing before we have found out what
knowing is. Thus the question, What is knowing? becomes the primary concern for any theory of knowledge.
94 NOS, p. 92: True knowing must acknowledge that the immediate form of the given sense-perceptible
world
is not yet in its essential form, which reveals itself to us only in the process of knowing. Knowing must provide
us with what sense experience withholds, but which is nevertheless real.
Kant believed that philosophy before him had strayed by seeking to know the
essential nature of things without first asking how such knowledge is possible in the
first place. He saw the fundamental malady of all philosophizing that preceded him in
the fact that thinkers thought about the nature of an object before examining our
human cognitive capacities. He therefore proceeded to examine this fundamental
philosophical problem, thereby inaugurating a new trend in thought. ... As a result,
however, epistemology – which has become the central scientific question of the day
– is assumed to be no more than a comprehensive answer to the question, How is
knowledge possible?
Steiner is mistaken to think that Kant is enquiring into the possibility of all forms of
knowledge. As is evident from the opening words of the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant
assumes some knowledge is possible, and is enquiring into how we can arrive at judgments
which are not determined by sense perceptions.92 The point Steiner wants to make is
nevertheless an important one, and it is that any enquiry into the possibility of knowledge
should be predicated upon an enquiry into the act of knowing.93 Steiner argues that
knowledge is not of an object by a subject: it requires elements of both and arises as a product
of the act of knowing.94 There is a more intimate relationship between the knower and the
known than is allowed for in the categories of reason of the First Critique, and one instance
of that relationship occurs in the perception of archetypes.
In order to arrive at an epistemology which allows for the perception of archetypes Steiner
believes he must show that our knowledge of the given world consists of more than
representations [Vorstellungen] of it. Steiner therefore rejects the Kantian95 concept of the
representation or mental picture as the content of our knowledge. Steiner’s rejection of the
Kantian analysis appears, however, to arise from a misreading of the description of sense
impressions as mental pictures . Steiner takes Kant to be assuming that sense impressions
are nothing more than a multiplicity of mental pictures of various kinds , because our
immediate experience of our sense impressions is constituted as mental images. What Kant
says is actually quite different. In the opening, definitional section of the Transcendental
Aesthetic Kant does not define representations, but describes them in relation to sensibility
and sensation, and says of them:96
95 NOS, p93: Steiner cites the neo-Kantian, Johannes Volkelt, rather than Kant.
Page 26
96 CPR, A19, B33-34, p. 65.
97 CPR, A320, B376, p. 314: There is no lack of terms suitable for each kind of representation, that we
should
thus needlessly encroach upon the province of any one of them. Their serial arrangement is as follows. The
genus is representation in general (repraesentatio). Subordinate to it stands representation with
consciousness
(perceptio). A perception which relates solely to the subject as the modification of its state is sensation
(sensatio), an objective perception is knowledge (cognitio).
The capacity (receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode in which we
are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility.
The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected by
it, is sensation.
That is, we receive representations as the effects of objects and we can identify our sensations
with those effects. Later, in the introduction to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant makes it
clear that representation’ is a generic term for all forms of apperception.97 He does not
make the claim that we have access to nothing other than mental images, and were he to do
so Steiner would be warranted to ask:98
98 NOS, p. 94.
99 NOS, p. 96: Thinking should therefore not be conceived of as adding something to the essence of reality.
It
is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the
ear
hears sounds, thus thinking perceives ideas. Idealism is therefore perfectly compatible with the principle of
empirical research. Ideas are not the contents of subjective thinking but the results of research.
100 NOS, pp. 94-97: The three angles a, b and c maintain a constant relationship; together they make a
straight
angle or two right angles (180o). This is a mathematical statement. What is perceived is the angles a, b and
c.
The above judgment is reached on the basis of thoughtful consideration. This judgment establishes a
relationship between three perceptual images. There is no question of reflecting about any object behind the
mental picture of the triangle.
101 NOS, p. 97; Kant makes a similar point in the A version of the Transcendental Deduction,: CPR A105
p135:
Thus we think a triangle as an object, in that we are conscious of the combination of three straight lines
according to a rule by which such an intuition can always be represented. This unity of rule determines all the
manifold, and limits it to conditions which make unity of apperception possible. The concept of this unity is the
representation of the object = x, which I think through the predicates, above mentioned, of a triangle.
Page 27
If our perceptions are mental images, then all our knowledge is of mental images and
the question arises: How is it possible for a mental image to coincide with the object it
is supposed to represent?
Steiner’s rejection of mental images as the content of knowledge leads him to argue for the
removal of mental images entirely from the phenomenology of cognition. He is in any case
committed to the Goethean notion that the ideal is within the real, so that thinking might be
understood as an organ for the perception of ideas rather than as the creator or receiver of
mental images.99 Steiner now argues that mental images are nothing beyond concepts or
what he describes as percepts’, the objects of perception. He criticises the neo-Kantian claim
that for every individual percept there is a specific, irreducible idea and gives as an example
the idea of the triangle.100 He contrasts Volkelt’s view with his position and says:
We now ask, Do the consequences of this widely held view correspond with the facts?
Not at all. My single concept of the triangle encompasses all individual, perceived
triangles; no matter how often I bring it to consciousness, it always remains the same.
My various mental pictures of the triangle are all identical. I have only one concept
of the triangle.101
Steiner is equating concepts with mental pictures, and appears to be missing the point that we
may well have only one concept of a triangle, but have different mental pictures of the
varieties of triangles. Indeed, referring now to what he calls percepts, Steiner himself makes
a similar point:
The question now arises, What is the actual source of the identity of the concept? It certainly
cannot be its manifestation as mental picture, for Berkeley was completely justified in
maintaining that my present mental picture of a tree has nothing whatsoever to do with the
mental picture I will have of it a minute later if I close my eyes in the meantime …102
102 Loc. cit.
103 It will be remembered that Kant accords mental pictures (representations) a central role as the genus of
ideas.
CPR, A320 B376, p. 314.
104 NOS, p. 97.
105 Ibid, pp 98.
106 Ibid, pp 98-99.
In arguing as he does Steiner has demonstrated that the notion of the mental picture may be
used both as the equivalent of a concept and a percept, but he has not succeeded in showing
that there is no place for mental pictures in a critique of cognition.103
Having rejected mental images Steiner is left with what appears to be an unsatisfactory
Page 28
account of the relationship between percept and concept. He begins by returning to the …
fundamental insight that places the percept, in its particularity, over and against the concept
in its universality .104 Because he characterises the relationship between percept and
concept in this way and has rejected any role for mental images, Steiner know(s) of no
intermediary between percept and concept 105 and is led to conclude that (w)hat constitutes
the particularity of an object cannot be grasped conceptually, but only perceived. 106 As
Steiner is also seeking the archetype within the phenomenon he then dissolves the percept
into the concept, and says:
What actually distinguishes the percept from the concept is essentially just this element that
cannot be conceptualized but must simply be experienced. Thus concept and percept stand
juxtaposed as two different aspects of the world that are nevertheless identical in their
essential nature. And because, as we have shown, the percept calls for the concept, it
follows that its essence lies not in its particularity, but in its conceptual universality. With
regard to its appearance, however, this universality must first be found in the subject; for
while it cannot be derived from the object, it can indeed be found by the subject as the latter
investigates the object.107
107 Ibid, p. 99, writer’s emphasis
108 Loc. cit, this writer’s emphasis; our own spontaneous spiritual activity is an approximate translation of
the
original im Geiste durch dessen eigenes spontanes Verhalten , which does not introduce the notion of
spiritual
activity, but refers to the spontaneous acts of our mind: GNS, p.155.
109 Ibid, p. 94: There is no question of reflecting about any object behind the mental picture of the triangle.
Steiner does not explain what he means by the essential nature of the concept and the
percept, except that it includes universality. His claim that this universality must first be
found in the subject is his argument both for locating the archetype within the phenomenon
and for establishing that the subject must be possessed of an organ for perceiving the
archetype. Steiner has, in effect, divided mental images [Vorstellungen] into an intellectual
part [concept] and a sensual part [percept], and is now required to reconsider other elements
in the act of knowing.
One element to be reconsidered is perception. In a continuation of his critique of concept
and percept Steiner reduces perception to a passive form of thinking and imbues concepts
with the variety and complexity of the given world, for he says:
The concept is just as individual as the percept, its content just as rich. The only
difference is that, to grasp the essence of the percept, nothing is required but the open
senses, a purely passive relationship to the external world, whereas the ideal
significance of the world must arise through our own spontaneous spiritual activity if
it is to appear at all.108
This appears to fly in the face of his view that every variety of a triangle is sufficiently
described by the one concept triangle .109 It is also contrary to our common experience that
Page 29
there is a certain amount of ordering, in even the simplest act of perception, and a great deal
of ordering when we move, for example, from seeing to observing or hearing to listening. It
is doubtful that sentient beings can ever be said to have a purely passive relationship to the
external world , or that there is such a thing as what Steiner terms pure sense perception .110
It seems Steiner is denying the inherent intermingling of perception and consciousness, so
that he can distinguish percept and concept clearly, point to their complementarity, and then
demonstrate their essential unity. An effect of his argument, however, is that perception
seems to lose its identity as a cognitive function distinguishable from thinking, and
perceiving archetypes comes to be identifiable with thinking about archetypes. Steiner’s
way of expressing the relationship between thinking and perception also suggests that he is
really talking about mental images:
110 Ibid, p. 102.
111 Loc. cit.
112 Steiner’s description appears to correspond with the empirical concept of Kant’s categorization of
representations [Vorstellungen]; CPR, A320, B377, p. 314.
113 NOS, p. 120.
To explore a thing’s essential nature means to proceed from the centre of our thoughtworld and to work our way outward until there arises before our soul a thoughtconfiguration that appears to be identical with our outer experience.111
A thought-configuration that appears to be identical with our outer experience would seem
to be a fairly concise description of at least one form of mental image.112
4.3 Introduction 10
Introduction 10 is the longest of the Introductions and contains sections on methodology and
epistemology. In the third section, The System of Science, Steiner returns to his
consideration of Goethe and introduces Goethe’s distinction between three methods of
scientific research – common empiricism, rationalism and rational empiricism.113 Common
empiricism is the mere taking of an empirical inventory. Rationalism looks for the causes
behind the phenomena, but is said to be in danger of establishing connections where none
exist. For Goethe, rational empiricism is the highest scientific method , and Steiner claims
it … deals with pure phenomena that are identical with objective, natural laws. 114 That is,
like Steiner’s idealism that is at the same time realism ,115 Goethe’s rational empiricism is
a synthesis of the subjective and the objective, which is achieved by objectifying the
subjective. Just as Steiner claims that ideas and the activity of thinking form part of the
given, objectively identifiable phenomena, so Goethe’s rational empiricism has it that the
connecting power of the spirit unites with natural objects. That is, there is a symbiosis
between the observed phenomena, including archetype and typus, and the organ which is to
perceive them:
Page 30
114 Ibid, p. 121.
115 Ibid, p. 116.
116 Loc. cit.
117 Ibid, p. 124.
Because natural objects manifest as separate, we need the synthesizing power of the
spirit to show us their inner unity. And because the unity of reason is itself empty, it
needs natural objects to fill it. Thus, in the third stage [rational empiricism],
phenomena and spiritual capacities meet and become one. Only now is the spirit
fully satisfied.116
The impression Steiner gives of the cognitive process is that thinking, as an organ of
perception, is in need of objectified ideas (archetypes) for it to perceive.
Having provided an outline of methodology Steiner revisits the Kantian concept of limits to
knowledge. In a section entitled On the Limits of Knowledge and the Formation of
Hypotheses Steiner puts an argument against there being any limits to knowledge and says:
If we consider the fact that the object to be explained is a given, it should become
clear that the given itself cannot limit us in any way. Before it can demand
explanation or understanding, it must present itself to us within the world of given
reality. Whatever remains outside the realm of the given does not need explaining.
Any limit would arise only when, confronted by a given reality, we lacked the means
to examine it.117
Steiner takes it to be a part of the given that there is complementary relationship between
sense-perceptible phenomena and the concepts and ideas, which arise within us. This,
Steiner claims, is because the very act of thinking in the process of cognition is what divides
reality into the objective given and the subjective concept of it. If this is so, he is claiming,
then it must be possible to know any given, and the very notion of a limiting boundary to
knowledge is therefore inconceivable. Steiner expresses the relationship between object and
cognising subject in terms of explanation, and says:
Our need to explain arises precisely because the way we wish to define the given – the
explanation we wish to give to it – appears on the horizon of what our thinking
presents to us. It is not that the explanation – the essence of the thing to be explained
– is unknown to us; far from it – it is its emergence in our mind that requires the
explanation. The thing that demands the explanation and our means to explain it are
both available to us. We only need to establish the connection between the two. The
explanation is not a quest for an unknown but a clarification of the interrelationship
between two knowns. It should never occur to us to explain a given in terms of
something that we do not already know. In principle, this means that there can be no
limits to explanation.118
118Loc. cit.
Page 31
119Loc. cit: It may happen that we have an inkling that some external reality exists, but that it is removed
from
our field of perception. We perceive its traces, its effects, and we presume that it exists.
120 Ibid, p.125: Hypotheses about central scientific principles have no value. When a thing cannot be
explained through a known, concrete principle, it is not explicable, not does it call for an explanation.
If there are no limits to explanation, as Steiner claims, there will be no limits to knowledge.
The only limit to knowledge Steiner will allow occurs when we are prevented from
perceiving something, which we know’ must exist.119 When this occurs, however, we are
able to construct a hypothesis to accord with what we cannot yet perceive. This, according to
Steiner, is the proper function of hypotheses, which should not be seen as a substitute for
scientific principles.120
4.4 Introduction 11
Introduction 11 contains a comparison of Goethe’s way of thinking with Kant’s and that of
prominent post-Kantians. In the course of summarising the critical project Steiner identifies
two presuppositions of Kant’s, which determine how the project is undertaken and why it is
that there is no place in it for the perception of archetypes. Steiner’s claim is this:121
121 Ibid, p. 141.
122 CPR, A19, B33, p. 65: In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to
is
directed. But intuition takes place only in so far as the object is given to us : writer’s emphasis.
123Loc. cit: Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions; they are thought
through the understanding, and from understanding arise concepts. But all thought must, directly or indirectly,
by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no
other way can an object be given to us.
124 NOS, p. 141.
According to Kant, we determine given reality; it is the way it is because we conceive
it that way. Kant actually skips over the real epistemological question. At the
beginning of his Critique of Pure Reason, he takes two steps that he doesn’t justify,
and his whole philosophical edifice suffers as a result. He simply distinguishes
between subject and object without investigating the significance of the fact that our
intellect makes such a distinction between two forms of reality – in this case, the
knowing subject and the object to be known. He then attempts to formulate
conceptually the mutual relationship between these two domains, again without
inquiring into the meaning of such a formulation.
Page 32
The two presuppositions are the division between subject and object and the subsequent
conceptual formulation of the relationship between them. It is true that Kant appears to
assume the distinction between object and cognising subject from the outset in the First
Critique.122 He does not enquire into the origin of that division. It is also apparent that
Kant’s assumptions about the process of cognition do imply that there can be no immediate
relationship between subject and object.123 The conclusion Steiner draws from this is that
there remains an underlying unity between all the elements of cognition:124
If Kant hadn’t viewed this central epistemological question from a skewed
perspective, he would have noticed that the distinction between subject and object is
only an intermediate step in the process of cognition, that underlying them both is a
unity perceptible by reason, and that the qualities we ascribe to a thing are not merely
subjective. A thing is a unity constituted by reason, and it is the intellect that
distinguishes between the thing in itself and the thing according to us. It is
simply inadmissible to say that what we attribute to the thing in one case can be
denied it in another. Whether I see the same thing from one point of view or from
another, it nevertheless remains a unified whole.
Steiner appears to be assuming that there is a unity perceptible by reason . For Steiner this
unity extends to include the existence of archetypes as perceptible objects and thinking as the
organ for their perception. The very point of the critical project, as Kant explains in the
Preface to the Second Edition of the First Critique, is to put aside any presuppositions and to
enquire into the possibilities of knowledge without assumptions about the capacities of
reason.125 Steiner is well aware of this. It may be, therefore, that his unity perceptible by
reason is a derivation from Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception ,126 though the
implications of it are very different.127
125 CPR, B xvi, p. 22: Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all
attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means
of
concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have
more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge.
126 CPR, A 108, p. 136.
127 Loc. cit; Kant is referring to the mind’s capacity to integrate discrete sense perceptions from the manifold
of
experience into one body: This transcendental unity of apperception forms out of all possible appearances,
which can stand alongside one another in one experience, a connection of all these representations
according to
laws.
4.5 Introduction 16
Introductions 15 and 16 were published in 1890, at around the time Steiner was working on
his doctoral thesis, Truth and Knowledge. Introduction 16, Goethe as Thinker and
Researcher, is an account of Goethe’s approach to natural science as an alternative to
Newtonian physics and mechanics. It contains some of Steiner’s arguments for the
Page 33
perception of archetypes. In the second section Steiner turns to the archetypal phenomenon.
He begins by investigating the connection between the experience of a sensation – he uses the
example of seeing the colour red – and the cause of that sensation.128 Steiner’s argument
is that, viewed phenomenologically, it is the sensation, which is the cause , in that the
sensation of seeing red passes through the vibratory medium of the air to effect the
perception of an object:
128 NOS, pp 171; in choosing perception of red Steiner may be referring to Kant’s warning at the conclusion
of
his categoristion of representations: CPR A320, B377, p. 314: Anyone who has familiarised himself with
these
distinctions must find it intolerable to hear the representation of the colour, red, called an idea. It ought not
even be called a concept of understanding, a notion.
129 Ibid, p. 172.
130 Ibid, p. 173.
This reveals a truth well suited to illuminate the whole theoretical foundation of
physics and physiology. What do I learn by investigating something involved in a
process that enters my consciousness as a sensation? All I really learn is how that
particular thing responds to the action that proceeds from the sensation. In other
words, the way a sensation expresses itself in a particular object of the world of space
and time. Far from being the cause that initiates the sensation within me, the spatialtemporal process is the effect of the sensation in a thing that exists in space and time.
I could include any number of things along the path from the stimulus to the organ of
perception; each will respond in a way that is both determined and limited by its own
nature. It is thus the sensation itself that expresses itself in each of the processes.129
Whatever is transmitted in the path from the stimulus to the sense organ will be experienced
as further perceived sensations. Steiner concludes that (t)he perceived world is nothing
other than an aggregate of metamorphosed perceptions. 130 Archetypes and archetypal
phenomena, then, are also nothing other than metamorphosed perceptions. If this is so,
however, it is difficult to see that there is any distinction between the perception of
archetypes and the perception of any other phenomena, or why there is a need to argue for
thinking as an organ of perception.
In the third section of Introduction 16, The System of Natural Science, Steiner sets out to
present what he calls the inner architecture of Goethe’s way of thinking. At the core of this
inner architecture is the interaction between sensory perception and concepts through the
mediation of thinking. Steiner’s introduction to the section indicates that he has not yet
separated thinking from concepts and ideas, as he does in his later epistemological work, and
nor has he yet identified the intuitive nature of thinking.131 Steiner describes the goal of
thinking as the relating of concepts to percepts and of percepts to each other. He establishes
the non-conceptual nature of perception by pointing out, that … there is no way for me to
communicate the colour red to a colour-blind person, no matter how I describe it
Page 34
conceptually 132 and concludes that:
131Ibid, p. 179: It might seem as though, by limiting the task of thinking to the ordering of perceptions, our
investigations are now calling into question the very autonomy of concepts and ideas which we advocated so
strongly to begin with. Further reflection will show that this is not the case; after all, what is the goal of
thinking when it establishes connections between perceptions?
132 Loc. cit.
133 Loc. cit.
134 Ibid, p. 180.
135 Ibid, p. 181.
There is an aspect of the sensory perception that never enters into the concept – something
that must be experienced before it can become an object of cognition at all.133
Steiner explains that what can never enter the concept is how something appears, for concepts
are limited to what something is. That what will differ according to whether we are
investigating inorganic or organic nature. The observation of inorganic nature, as he argued
in The Science of Knowing, leads to the uncovering of laws of nature, and these are laws
which arise from perception of the archetypal phenomenon and … lie outside the perceived
multiplicity. 134 The type (typus), which is the conceptual part of organic nature, …
appears as a principle within the sensory multiplicity instead of existing outside of it as a
law. 135
At this point in the development of his epistemology Steiner is not yet clear about the way he
wishes to see the relationship between different manifestations of what he calls the idea ,
nor how he is to characterise the relationship between percept, concept and thinking. He
identifies natural law, type and concept all with the idea136 and reiterates, but without arguing
for it, the notion that concepts and ideas are objects of perception.137 In the concluding
section of Introduction 16, Goethe, Newton and the Physicists, Steiner returns to Goethe’s
discovery of the Urpflanze, and to the generalisation from that observation to the notion that
there are perceptible archetypes of all natural phenomena. Steiner characterises Goethe’s
way of seeing as empirical idealism 138, which he describes in the following way:
136 Loc. cit: Natural law, type and concept are the three forms of the idea.
137 Loc. cit: The concept is present in a form that can be perceived. In human consciousness, the concept
itself
is perceptible. Observation and idea coincide; we actually perceive the idea.
138 Ibid, p. 188.
139 Loc. cit.
… when observing the multiplicity of things that arise for the senses, to the extent that
Page 35
those things are similar, we can find a spiritual unity [geistige Einheit] at their
foundation, which is the source of all their similarities.139
The spiritual unity is, presumably, another way of referring to the idea or the archetype. The
implication of it, however, is that there will be an inherent unity between the perceptible archetype
itself and an organ, which is designed to perceive it.
5. Thinking as an organ of perception
Steiner’s characterisation of archetypes as perceptible phenomena leads him to argue that
there must be an organ with which to perceive them. In The Science of Knowing and the
first batch of Introductions Steiner equates archetypes of inorganic nature with laws of nature,
which are conceived of as ideas outside of the phenomena, and which therefore require
nothing other than the exercise of pure reason. With organic nature, however, Steiner claims
that the typus is to be found within the phenomenon, but has not yet established how these
archetypes are to be perceived. In a section of The Science of Knowing concerning Thinking
and Perception Steiner hints at thinking as an organ of perception, though at the same time he
regards thinking as the non-sensory half of cognition and experience:140
140 SK, pp 53-54.
141NOS, p. 105.
We would have to renounce our thinking entirely if we wanted to keep to pure
experience. One disparages thinking if one takes away from it the possibility of
perceiving in itself entities inaccessible to the senses. In addition to sense qualities
there must be yet another factor within reality that is grasped by thinking. Thinking
is an organ of the human being that is called upon to observe something higher than
what the senses offer. The side of reality accessible to thinking is one about which a
mere sense being would never experience anything. Thinking is not there to rehash
the sense-perceptible but rather to penetrate what is hidden to the senses. Sense
perception provides only one side of reality. The other side is a thinking
apprehension of the world.
By the time of the second batch of Introductions to Nature’s Open Secret Steiner argues that
thinking must be the organ for perceiving archetypes. Steiner introduces the notion of
thinking as a sense organ in Introduction 9. In the course of a discussion about the nature of
ideas (archetypes) Steiner claims that the nature of thinking is not to create ideas but to
perceive them, and says:
The idea-content of the world is based on its own foundations, it is complete and
perfect within itself. We do not create it; we only seek to comprehend it. Our
thinking does not create it; it perceives it. Thinking is not a producer but an organ of
apprehension.141
Thinking, therefore, gives us entry into the world of ideas. Steiner takes a literal view of the
Page 36
notion of a world of ideas and depicts the relationship between thinking and ideas as
indivisible in space and time:
My consciousness that I am standing inside a thing is only the result of its objective
nature, of the fact that it contains its own principle. By taking possession of the idea,
we gain entry into the centre of the world. What we grasp here is the source from
which everything springs. We become one with this principle; therefore the idea –
what is most objective – appears to us, at the same time, as most subjective.142
142 Loc. cit.
143 Goethe. J. Propitious Encounter cited in GOS, p. 96: I gave a spirited explanation of my theory of the
metamorphosis of plants with graphic pen sketches of a symbolic plant. He listened and looked with great
interest, with unerring comprehension, but when I had ended, he shook his head, saying: That is not an
empiric
experience, it is an idea.’ I was taken aback and somewhat irritated … Controlling myself, I replied, how
splendid that I have ideas without knowing it, and can see them before my very eyes.’
144 NOS, p. 96: Thinking should therefore not be conceived of as adding something to the essence of
reality. It
is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the
ear
hears sounds, thus thinking perceives ideas.
145Loc. cit: Sense-perceptible reality is, in fact, such a riddle to us for the very reason that we do not find its
centre within it. It ceases to be so enigmatic when we realize that it has the same centre as the thought-world,
which comes to manifestation within us.
146 The Science of Knowing contains a large section on thinking and thought, in which Steiner objectifies
thought and emphasizes the interconnecting activity of thinking: SK, pp 43-44: With regard to objectivity, the
work of the thinker can very well be compared with that of the mechanic. Just as the mechanic brings the
forces of nature into mutual interplay and thereby effects a purposeful activity and release of power, so the
thinker lets the thought-masses enter into lively interaction, and they develop into the thought-systems that
comprise our sciences.
147 NOS, p. 78: Whoever attributes to thinking a perceptive capacity that goes beyond that of the senses,
must
also acknowledge that this capacity directs itself toward objects that lie beyond sense-perceptible reality. The
objects of thinking, however, are ideas. When our thinking comprehends an idea, it unites with the
foundations
of universal existence.
Steiner also appears to have taken a literal view of Goethe’s riposte to Schiller that he could
see his ideas.143 For Steiner thinking is to ideas exactly as the eye is to the visual world
and as the ear is to sound.144 Indeed, in Nature’s Open Secret Steiner regards the
relationship between the idea (archetype) as percept and thinking as the organ of perception
as more immediate than that between sense-perceptible phenomena and other organs of
Page 37
perception.145
Steiner’s characterisation of thinking as a sense organ creates some difficulties for him, and
raises questions about how the other functions of thinking are now to be regarded. Thinking
is generally related to concepts rather than to percepts, and the primary function of thinking is
usually understood to be the organising activity of relating concepts to sense perceptions or to
each other. Steiner himself expresses views about thinking to this effect in The Science of
Knowing146 and Nature’s Open Secret.147 When Steiner speaks of thinking as an organ of
perception he does not say whether he means by this that thinking retains its organising,
correlating and other functions, or whether he is putting forward a conception of thinking as
nothing other than an organ of perception. It is no doubt for good reason that Kant’s
discussion of thinking in the First Critique is undertaken in the form of I think’, which Kant
identifies as the vehicle of all concepts.148 Because Kant recognises the centrality of I think’
in every judgment149 it may be that the relationship between thinking and concepts might be
seen as analogous to the relationship between sense organs and percepts, but not that thinking
is itself an organ of perception.
148 Kant addresses thinking in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason, pp 327-383: CPR, A341, B399 p. 329: We
now
come to a concept which was not included in the general list of transcendental concepts but which must yet
be
counted as belonging to that list, without, however, in the least altering it or declaring it defective. This is the
concept or, if the term be preferred, the judgment, I think’. As is easily seen, this is the vehicle of all
concepts…
149 CPR, B406, p. 368: Since the proposition I think’ (taken problematically) contains the form of each and
every judgment of understanding and accompanies all categories as their vehicle …
Even the notion that the relationship between thinking and concepts might be analogous to
the relationship between seeing and objects, or between hearing and sounds, creates
difficulties for Steiner. Consider the difference between active and passive engagements of
these sense organs. We can draw a distinction between using the organ of sight simply to
see something, and the active, conscious mode of observing it. Similarly we can distinguish
between hearing a sound and actively listening to a piece of music. The difference is that
observing and listening are forms of perceiving which already contain an element of thinking
within them. How, then, would it operate with ideas as the sense perceptible objects of
thinking? Thinking about an idea will always involve an element of thinking. It does not
make sense to speak of a passive form of perceiving with thinking as the sense organ,
because thinking of itself is the very activity. Thinking, then, is not analogous to seeing and
hearing and it is not a sense organ.
Steiner will need to seek out another approach to the apperception of archetypes. One other
approach would be not to regard archetypes as sense perceptible phenomena, but as
phenomena which are accessible to thinking by some other means. Thinking would then
also no longer be regarded as an organ of perception. If archetypes are not sense perceptible
then they might be seen as ideas, which are not perceived by thinking, but are accessible to
Page 38
a mode of thinking operating differently from the discursive thinking of pure reason. There
is an opening to this suggestion in the non-discursive mode of thinking outlined by Kant in
the Third Critique, the thinking of the intellectus archetypus. Steiner takes up this opening,
and in Truth and Knowledge and Philosophy of Freedom adopts Fichte’s notion of
intellectual intuition and develops it into intuitive thinking.
Page 39
15 Part 2 Chapter 6
PART 2 Chapter 6 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION
INTELLECTUAL INTUITION.txt
The third and fourth disjunctions between Steiner’s early work and Kantian epistemology
have to do with the role of intuition in cognition. In Part 1 Chapter 1 an account was given
of the concept of intuition in philosophical discourse and of Kant’s rather idiosyncratic use of
the term. It will be remembered that, early in the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant
determines that the only intuitions are the sensory intuitions of space and time.1 Kant
specifically excludes intellectual intuition as a faculty of human cognition, though – as with
the intellectus archetypus – he allows that there may be such a thing as a divine intellectual
intuition.2 Kant’s rejection of intellectual intuition as a faculty of human cognition was
immediately challenged by the post-Kantians. Schelling saw intellectual intuition as the
faculty through which the human ego identifies itself with the world of nature.3 For Fichte
the process of coming to consciousness, which for him precedes knowledge of any particular
things, commences with a spontaneous intellectual intuition.4 Steiner also argues for the
actuality of intellectual intuition. For Steiner intellectual intuition is a means by which he
seeks to extend possible knowledge beyond the limits imposed by Kant and, as became clear
at the end of the previous chapter, Steiner remains in need of some means to characterize the
apperception of archetypes. The means he ultimately chooses is the intuitive thinking
outlined at the end of Part 2 Chapter 7. To arrive at intuitive thinking Steiner proceeds by
way of two steps. The first is to demonstrate the actuality of intellectual intuition, and the
second is to argue from intellectual intuition to intuitive thinking. In Truth and Knowledge
1 CPR, A19, B33, p. 65: Objects are given to us by means of sensibility and it alone yields us intuitions ...
2 CPR, B72, p, 90: … intellectual intuition seems to belong solely to the primordial being, and can never be
ascribed to a dependent being …
3 Schelling, F. (1989) The Philosophy of Art, op cit, translator’s introduction at xxxiii: The whole of philosophy
starts, and must start, from a principle which, as the absolute principle, is also at the same time the absolutely
identical. An absolutely simple and identical cannot be grasped or communicated through description, nor
through concepts at all. It can only be intuited. Such an intuition is the organ of all philosophy. – But this
intuition, which is an intellectual rather than a sensory one …
4 IWL, p. 46: Intellectual intuition is the name I give to the act required of the philosopher: an act of intuiting
himself while simultaneously performing the act by means of which the I originates for him.
Steiner restates and adopts Fichte’s arguments for the availability of intellectual intuition in
human cognition, and in Philosophy of Freedom he attempts to develop intellectual intuition
into intuitive thinking. This chapter addresses Steiner’s adaptation of Fichte’s concept of
intellectual intuition and the following chapter deals with Steiner’s arguments for intuitive
thinking.
The argument of this chapter is divided into five sections. The first section explains what
Page 1
15 Part 2 Chapter 6 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION.txt
Kant means by intellectual intuition in the First Critique and sets out the reasons for his
rejection of intellectual intuition as a faculty of human cognition. In asserting the actuality
of intellectual intuition Steiner is relying heavily upon the arguments developed by Fichte.
The second section outlines Fichte’s arguments for intellectual intuition in the several
versions of the Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte’s argument is complex and the structure of it has
been examined closely by Dieter Henrich in an article on Fichte’s Original Insight. Because
Steiner’s concept of intuitive thinking is so dependent upon the viability of Fichte’s argument
for intellectual intuition the third section of this chapter is given over to an examination of
Henrich’s discussion of Fichte’s original insight. The fourth section presents Steiner’s
derivation of intellectual intuition in Truth and Knowledge. The final section of this chapter
sets out the steps Steiner takes in Truth and Knowledge towards a derivation of intuitive
thinking from intellectual intuition.
1. Kant’s rejection of intellectual intuition
Kant makes occasional reference to intellectual intuition in the First Critique, and explains at
several points in the Transcendental Dialectic why it is that intellectual intuition must be
discounted as a faculty of human cognition. Intellectual intuition is introduced in a footnote
to the Preface to the second edition of the First Critique, in which Kant describes intellectual
intuition and our relationship to it as follows:5
5CPR, B xl, fn. p35.
If, with the intellectual consciousness of my existence, in the representation I am ,
which accompanies all my judgments and acts of understanding, I could at the same
time connect a determination of my existence through intellectual intuition, the
consciousness of a relation to something outside me would not be required. But
though that intellectual consciousness does indeed come first, the inner intuition, in
which my existence can alone be determined, is sensible and is bound up with the
condition of time.
Kant does not define what he means by intellectual intuition, intellectual consciousness and
inner intuition either here or elsewhere, except as they relate to each other. Here Kant
appears to be saying that intellectual consciousness is a way of describing consciousness of
the self in the process of cognition devoid of any positive judgments about one’s existence,
and that this is to be distinguished from inner intuition, which is the consequence of
observing the self as an object and then forming a judgment about the actuality of one’s own
existence from within the manifold of sensible intuitions. The distinction Kant is drawing
between consciousness of self and observation of self demonstrates that, for him, cognition
must be passive and objective. It follows that, as we cannot establish the actuality of our
existence except as an object of the manifold of sensible intuitions, we cannot speak of
ourselves as being capable of intellectual intuition.
Kant’s subsequent discussions of intellectual intuition in the Transcendental Aesthetic of the
First Critique, like this first one, tend to build up a fairly comprehensive account of what
intellectual intuition is not, and why it is not available to human consciousness as a mode of
Page 2
cognition. Indeed, he argues, it must be unavailable to human cognition, because it must lie
outside of the determinations of space and time (or else it would merely constitute a form of
sensible intuition), and as only God is not constrained within the pure intuition of time, only a
divine or primordial being can have access to intellectual intuition.6 In his study of the First
Critique Heinrich Cassirer explains that a primary reason for Kant’s rejection of intellectual
intuition is that Kant sees cognition as essentially passive, while intellectual intuition would
of necessity be active.7 Thus, were we to have access to intellectual intuition as a faculty of
cognition:
6 CPR, B72, p. 90: … such intellectual intuition seems to belong solely to the primordial being, and can
never
be ascribed to a dependent being, dependent in its existence as well as in its intuition, and which through that
intuition determines its existence solely in relation to given objects.
7 Cassirer, H. (1954) Kant’s First Critique, George Allen and Unwin: London pp 12-13: (Kant) holds it to be
characteristic of all human knowledge, inasmuch as it is direct or immediate, that it is essentially passive; and
he
holds likewise that there is something profoundly significant about the fact that the factor in knowledge which
he calls intuition should be found to exhibit the property of sheer passivity. In this way he is led to make a
distinction between what he terms sensible intuition, on the one hand, and on the other, intellectual
operations
which he considers never to be wholly passive. Moreover, he contrasts the type of intuition with which we are
familiar with a faculty of intuition which would involve an element of activity, and which would by itself give
rise to knowledge. To indicate its nature, he speaks of intellectual intuition’ or intuitive understanding’, while
emphasizing at the same time that he does not mean to assert the actual existence or even the possibility of
such
a form of knowledge which could be met with only in a consciousness wholly different from ours.
8 Ibid, p. 46.
9 Loc. cit.
10Ibid, p. 47: What is to be signified by things-in-themselves’ are realities such as would concern only a
mind
fundamentally different from our own, that is to say, one which was endowed with a faculty of intellectual
intuition.
(1) Whenever the idea of an object was entertained, this alone would be sufficient to
guarantee its reality; and
(2) The mere conceiving of an object by the mind would be enough to provide knowledge
of that object.8
These two elements, according to Cassirer, are inseparably linked, for it is because the
entertaining of the idea of an object would suffice to assure the mind of its reality, that the
Page 3
object would at once become known in the very act of being conceived of .9 And, in
addition, a quality of such a mind is that it would be capable of knowing the things-inthemselves. Indeed, Cassirer concludes, the very nature of a thing-in-itself would be that it
is that part of the object of cognition which is accessible to intellectual intuition.10
In the ensuing Transcendental Analytic of the First Critique Kant sets out how he
understands the relationships to be between the intuitions [Anschauungen] he has identified in
the Transcendental Aesthetic, the representations or mental images [Vorstellungen], which
comprise our perception of phenomena and the process of thinking [Das ich denke ]. To
establish these relationships Kant also introduces the concepts of self-consciousness
[Selbstbewusstsein] and apperception [Apperzeption]. Kant’s description of these elements
of the process of cognition commences with the actuality of mental images and concludes
with the claim that he has established the original synthetic unity of apperception.11
Although there is reference to intuitions there is no specific reference to intellectual intuition.
It will be noticed that the overlap between Anschauung as sense-perceptible observation and
Anschauung as intellectual intuition allows Kant to claim that the limits of perception are
contained within the mental images of appearances, and do not extend to the things-inthemselves. As for thinking, Kant’s approach is to place it in the nominative form of I
think (das: Ich denke) as a construct of self-consciousness, rather than to examine the act of
thinking itself. As a consequence, Kant does not undertake an analysis of the process of
thinking, the activity of pure reason, either here or elsewhere in the First Critique. As with
11 CPR, B132, p. 153: It must be possible for the I think’ to accompany all my representations; for otherwise
something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that
the
representation would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me. That representation which can be
given
prior to all thought is entitled intuition. All the manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the
I think in the same subject in which this manifold is found. But this representation is an act of spontaneity,
that is, ii cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility. I call it pure apperception, to distinguish it from
empirical apperception, or, again, original apperception, because it is that self-consciousness which, while
generating the representation I think’ (a representation which must be capable of accompanying all other
representations, and which in all consciousnesses is one and the same), cannot itself be accompanied by
any
further representation. The unity of this apperception I likewise entitle the transcendental unity of selfconsciousness, in order to indicate the possibility of a priori knowledge arising from it. Here is seems
necessary to cite the original, because of the denseness of Kant’s arguments:
KRV, p. 136: Das: Ich denke, muß alle meine Vorstellungen begleiten können denn sonst würde etwas in mir
vorgestellt werden, was gar nicht gedacht werden könnte, welches eben so viel heißt, als die Vorstellung
würde
entweder unmöglich, oder wenigstens für mich nichts sein. Diejenige Vorstellung, die vor allem Denken
gegeben sein kann, heißt Anschauung. Also hat alles Mannigfaltige der Anschauung eine notwendige
Beziehung auf das: Ich denke, in demselben Subjekt, darin dieses Mannigfaltige angetroffen wird. Diese
Vorstellung aber ist ein Actus der Spontaneität, d. i. sie kann nicht als zur Sinnlichkeit gehörig angesehen
werden. Ich nenne sie die reine Apperzeption, um sie von der empirischen zu unterscheiden, oder auch die
Page 4
ursprüngliche Apperzeption, weil sie dasjenige Selbstbewußtsein ist, was, indem es die Vorstellung Ich denke
hervorbringt, die all andere muß begleiten können, und in allem Bewußtsein ein und dasselbe ist, von keiner
weiter begleitet werden kann. Ich nenne auch die Einheit derselben die transzendentale Einheit des
Selbstbewußtseins, um die Möglichkeit der Erkenntnis a priori aus ihr zu bezeichnen.
intuition Kant portrays thinking as receptive and content-less: these are the limiting constructs
of the mind.
As he does with the intellectus archetypus Kant establishes the possibility of intellectual
intuition only to claim that there can be no such actual source of knowledge for human
consciousness. Some Kant scholars have nevertheless attempted to flesh out what Kant’s
apparent acknowledgement of the possibility of intellectual, or spontaneous, intuition might
imply. Paton, for example, reminds us that Kant’s characterization of intellectual intuition is
intertwined with a distinction Kant wants to sustain between the mind of man and the mind of
God. In Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience Paton explains:
Kant’s arguments apply only to human experience, and he regards as conceivable a
knowledge which depends, not on sensuous, but on intellectual, intuition.
Intellectual intuition would not, like sensuous intuition, depend on objects given to it
from without: its objects would be given, or produced, by the very act of intuition itself.
Of such an intellectual intuition space and time would not be forms. They are forms of
sensuous intuition alone. Hence if we conceive the divine mind as possessing
intellectual intuition, the divine experience, if it can be called experience, would not be
spatial or temporal.12
12 Paton, H.(1970) Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, George Allen and Unwin Ltd: London , p. 178.
What Paton’s observation reminds us is that Kant’s rejection of intellectual intuition as a
human capacity arises from the unspoken metaphysics lurking in the background of the
critical philosophy. Kant has to allow for differences of kind between the mind of man and
the mind of God, and one difference will be that the divine mind is productive of the objects
of its consciousness while the human mind is not. Kant does not, however, demonstrate that
the human mind is incapable of producing any of the objects of its consciousness (as an
acceptance of the actuality of intellectual intuition would require), and nor does he explain
how the human mind arrives at thoughts, ideas and concepts if it does not itself produce them.
Kant returns to a discussion of intellectual intuition, it will be remembered, in s.76 of the
Third Critique, when he is dealing with our understanding of organic nature. Here he also
appears to associate intellectual intuition, or intuitive understanding, with the intellectus
archetypus in s77 of the Third Critique. Kant argues that our reliance upon concepts to
cognize sensory phenomena means that any intuitive capacity we have must be of a receptive,
rather than a spontaneous, nature. What Kant now refers to as a power of complete
spontaneity of intuition or an intuitive understanding, like the intellectual intuition he
alludes to in the First Critique, is a notional possibility, but is again not available to human
cognition. Kant draws on the characteristics of both intellectual intuition and the intellectus
archetypus when he says:
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
Now [all] cognition requires [not only understanding] but also intuition; and a power
of complete spontaneity [as opposed to receptivity] of intuition would be a cognitive
power different from, and wholly independent of, sensibility: thus a power of
complete spontaneity of intuition would be an understanding in the most general sense
of the term. Hence we can conceive of an intuitive understanding as well (negatively,
merely one that is not discursive), which, [unlike ours,] does not (by means of
concepts) proceed from the universal to the particular and thus to the individual. For
such understanding there would not be that contingency in the way nature’s products
harmonize with the understanding in terms of particular laws. It is this contingency
that makes it so difficult for our understanding to unify the manifold in nature so as to
[give rise to] cognition. This task, which an intuitive understanding does not need to
perform, can be accomplished by our understanding only through a harmony between
natural characteristics and our power of concepts; and this harmony is very
contingent. 13
13 CJ, pp 290-291.
From the Preface to the First Critique to the second part of the Third Critique Kant retains
his position that the only possible intuition is sensory intuition and that what he describes
variously as intellectual intuition, intuitive understanding and the intellectus archetypus can
never be anything more than a notional possibility. For Fichte, in contrast, intellectual
intuition is the starting point of all philosophy.
2. Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre
Fichte’s derivation of intellectual intuition is a central plank of his epistemology and his
whole philosophical system, which, despite the possible ambiguities, is probably best
described simply as the Wissenschaftslehre [theory of knowledge]14. Steiner’s philosophical
work owes a considerable indebtedness to Fichte, which rivals his indebtedness to Goethe.
That indebtedness is most evident in Steiner’s dissertation, Truth and Knowledge, in which
Steiner argues that Fichte was on the right track, but stopped short of arriving at the logical
conclusion of his own investigations, namely that thinking is the activity at the core of
intellectual intuition. In the conclusion to the Preliminary Remarks of Truth and Knowledge
Steiner demonstrates his indebtedness to Fichte by saying of his doctoral project:15
14 IWL, Editor’s Introduction, ix: Over the course of his career Fichte produced no fewer than sixteen
different
expositions of the first principles of his system, many of which differ utterly in format, structure and vocabulary
from all of those that preceded and followed. One must therefore exercise caution when referring to Fichte’s
Wissenschaftslehre. For the term Wissenschaftslehre does not refer to any particular stage or presentation
of
Fichte’s philosophy, and still less to any particular book; it refers instead to Fichte’s overall system, to the
general orientation of his thinking in the broadest and most encompassing sense.
15 TK, pp 28-29; Wissenschaft would be better translated here as knowledge.
16 RP, pp 122-131and The Spirit of Fichte Present in our Midst, lecture, Berlin, 16 December 1915 contain
Page 6
extended discussions of Fichte’s role in post-Kantian thinking.
17CML, pp 40-41: I had reached a point in my study of Kant where I could formulate an idea (though
immature) of how Fichte wanted to take a step beyond Kant. But that was not the main reason for my interest
in Fichte. It was most important that I find ways to express, in clearly defined thoughts, the living activity of
the human soul. My efforts concerning natural scientific concepts had finally brought me to see that the
activity of the human I is the only possible starting point for true knowledge. I told myself that something
spiritual is immediately present in one’s consciousness when the I actively observes this activity itself. I felt it
was necessary to express such observations as clear, surveyable concepts. To this end, I stuck to Fichte’s
Science of Knowledge. But I also had my own ideas. Page by page, I rewrote the Science of Knowledge. The
The discussion which follows aims so to formulate the problem of cognition that in
this very formulation it will do full justice to the essential feature of epistemology,
namely, the fact that it is a science which must contain no presuppositions. A further
aim is to use this philosophical basis for science [Wissenschaft] to throw light on
Jacob Gottlieb Fichte’s philosophy of science [Wissenschaftslehre].
Steiner often refers to Fichte in his later works,16 and in his autobiographic Course of my Life
he gives an amusing account of his youthful efforts to improve upon the argument of the
Wissenschaftslehre.17 The most comprehensive attempt to date to offer a critique of
result was a long manuscript. Previously, I had agonized over finding concepts that apply to natural
phenomena, from which one could then derive a concept of the I. Now my goal was just the opposite;
beginning with I-being, I wanted to penetrate the creative processes in nature. Spirit and nature manifested
before my soul in full contrast.
18 Veiga Greuel, M. (1990) Wirklichkeit und Freiheit, Gideon Spicker Verlag: Dornach
19 IWL, p. 7: I still owe the reader the following remarks: I have always said, and here I repeat, that my
system
is none other than the Kantian system. i.e., it contains the same view of the subject, though it proceeds in a
manner that is entirely of Kant’s presentation.
20 Ibid, p. 52: … the author of the Wissenschaftslehre has prefaced his presentation with the claim that this
philosophy is in complete accord with Kant’s and is nothing other than the Kantian philosophy properly
understood.
21 CPR, B1, p. 41: There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. Kant does not
mean
to imply that the only source of knowledge is sense experience, for he adds: But though all our knowledge
begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience. For it may well be that even our
empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through impressions and of what our own faculty of
knowledge (sensible impressions serving merely as the occasion) supplies from itself.
Steiner’s early work from within the academy happens to be a comparison between the use of
certain central epistemological concepts by Fichte and by Steiner.18 The argument of Fichte’s
Wisssenschaftslehre will therefore be an essential element to be considered in any critical
examination of Steiner’s epistemology.
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
Fichte presented the Wissenschaftslehre in several forms, including the serialised First and
Second Introductions of 1797/1798 to the Public Announcement of a New Presentation of
1800. In the Preface to the First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre Fichte claims that he
will be doing nothing more than making Kant intelligible and responding to
misunderstandings, which had developed around the critical philosophy.19 He repeats this
claim somewhat further into his argument in the Second Introduction.20 It is very apparent,
however, that Fichte’s whole orientation is entirely different from the position adopted by
Kant in the First Critique. If the starting point of epistemology for Kant is that knowledge
commences ineluctably from experience,21 Fichte has it that all knowledge arises from an
originating activity, namely the positing activity of the self-conscious I or ego. The ego
(consciousness) becomes aware of itself ( I ) as distinct from what lies outside of itself ( not-
I ), which the ego posits, therefore, as the non-positing non-ego of the given world.22 It is
then not much further into the Wissenschaftslehre before Fichte reveals that his desire is to
accomplish a complete revolution in the way we think , and that he is operating well outside
of the Kantian position.23
22 IWL, p. 42: Let us begin by looking at the I that is being observed. What is this self-reverting act of the I?
Among which class of modifications of consciousness should it be posited? It is not an act of comprehending
anything by means of concepts. It first becomes an act of comprehension only when it is opposed to a Not-I
and only insofar as the I itself is determined within this opposition.
23Ibid, pp4-5: My writings are not meant to explain Kant’s, nor are they intended to be explained by his
writings. They must stand on their own without any reference whatsoever to Kant. To state my own position
as plainly as possible: I am not concerned to rectify nor to bring to completion any set of philosophical
concepts
that may already be in circulation – be they anti-Kantian or Kantian .
24 Ibid, p. 46: Intellectual intuition is the name I give to the act required of the philosopher: an act of intuiting
himself while simultaneously performing the act by means of which the I originates for him. Intellectual
intuition is the immediate consciousness that I act and of what I do when I act.
25 Ibid, p. 186.
26 Ibid, p. 189.
A central feature of this independence from Kant is Fichte’s reinstatement of intellectual
intuition as an element in cognition. Fichte’s presentation of intellectual intuition
commences with a definition of it in the Second Introduction as a moment in cognition.24 By
the time of the Public Announcement of a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre it has
broadened into the methodology of … a thoroughly new discovery, the very idea of which
did not exist previously and can be obtained only from the Wissenschaftslehre itself .25
Fichte expresses his new discovery in the following way:
Right up to the time of Kant, philosophy has been considered to be a form of rational
cognition based on concepts, and for this reason it is contrasted with mathematics,
which is considered to be a form of rational cognition based on intuitions. …
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
Such a view of the nature of philosophy fails to take into account several things.
First of all, since there is certainly supposed to be a kind of rational cognition based
on intuitions (for this is what one claims mathematics is), then – so long as all
cognizing and thinking is not supposed to come to an end with this sort of cognition,
and indeed, so long as it is supposed to be possible for us even to assert that there is
such cognition – there must, in addition, be some cognition of this cognition. And
since an intuition, as such, can only be intuited, this latter sort of cognition must itself
be based on intuition.26
The consequence of this new discovery, Fichte asserts, is that any critique of reason must
ultimately be based upon a ground of unmediated intuition. Fichte then expresses this
seemingly paradoxical deduction as follows:
A critique of reason involves a cognition of reason, which is here the object of
cognition; and thus reason has been assigned the task, prior to anything else, of
cognizing itself. Only after it has done this can it then go on to examine how it may
be able to cognize anything beyond itself. Consequently, from the moment that a
critique of reason became a topic of discussion, it should have been obvious that
reason does not grasp itself and cannot apprehend itself by means of anything (such as
a concept) that has to be derived from something else and that does not possess its
foundation or ground within itself; instead, reason can grasp and apprehend itself only
immediately – and there is nothing immediate but intuition. Hence, if philosophy is
from now on to be synonymous with reason’s own self-produced cognition of itself,
then philosophy can by no means be considered to be cognition based upon concepts,
but must instead be cognition based upon intuition.27
27 Ibid, p. 191.
28 Ibid, p. 20.
29 ibid, both in the sense of being contradictory, and in the sense of denying the self: e.g. p.18: The
dogmatist’s
principle is belief in things for the sake of himself. Thus he possesses only an indirect or mediated belief in his
own dispersed self, which is conveyed to him only by objects.
Fichte’s various presentations of the Wisssenschaftslehre vary in their emphases and in their
detail but, for the sake of brevity, it might be said that the central argument is essentially
along the following lines:
1. Only two kinds of epistemological (and philosophical) positions are possible – those
which take their starting point from the observed things of the world, and those
which start from the observer. These positions might be described as dogmatism
and idealism. Although Fichte said famously: The kind of philosophy one chooses
… depends upon the kind of person one is 28, it is not a case of one choice being of
no greater value than the other: dogmatism, Fichte claims, is self-negating29, and it is
Page 9
only idealism, which warrants any further consideration.
2. There are also two forms of idealism. One form might be called transcendental, or
critical, idealism, and this is what other interpreters have made of Kant’s critical
philosophy. The problem with transcendental idealism is that it assumes there is a
discontinuity between the observer and the observed – hence the need for
transcendence - and it thereby generates the unknowable things-in-themselves. The
other kind of idealism is what the Wissenschaftslehre seeks to demonstrate as the
true and only foundation of knowledge – an idealism, which takes as its starting
point not merely the observer, but the activity of consciousness turned upon itself:
the observer self-observing. This, says Fichte, is also the correct understanding of
the critical philosophy, though the world and Kant himself might disagree.30 Fichte
does not give a name to this form of idealism, and sometimes also refers to it as
transcendental idealism’: to distinguish it for its emphasis upon activity and
immediacy we might call it immanent idealism.
3. The fundamental issue for epistemology is not Kant’s question How are synthetic
truths a priori possible? which arises from, and assumes the existence of, separate
categories of knowledge, and separated forms of experience. Epistemological
enquiry should, instead, commence by taking account of the varieties of mental
images (representations) we have before us, when we turn our consciousness upon
ourselves. We find there are mental images, which arise from our own thoughts,
30 Ibid, pp 52-53: ... the author of the Wissenschaftslehre has prefaced his presentation with the claim that
this
philosophy is in complete accord with Kant’s and is nothing other than this philosophy properly understood. ...
Yet all of the recognized experts on Kant’s philosophy who have expressed an opinion on this topic – be they
friends or foes of the Wissenschaftslehre – have unanimously affirmed just the opposite; and, at their
suggestion, this has even been asserted by Kant himself, who must surely understand his own philosophy
better
than anyone else. The author of the Wissenschaftslehre would be happy to share this opinion – if only he
could. Kant made his views very clear in his Open letter on Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre of August 7, 1799:
… I hereby declare that I regard Fichte’s Theory of Science [Wissenschaftslehre] as a totally indefensible
system. … I am so opposed to metaphysics, as defined according to Fichtean principles, that I have advised
him, in a letter, to turn his fine literary gifts to the problem of applying the Critique of Pure Reason rather than
squander them in cultivating fruitless sophistries. See Zweig, A. (ed) (1955) Kant: Philosophical
Correspondence 1759-99, pp 253-254.
desires and imaginations. There are also mental images, which are not created by
us, but appear before us as our representations of, and experiences of, the given
world. The question, therefore, should rather be formulated as: What is the origin
of the system of representations accompanied by a feeling of necessity? 31
4. In endeavouring to answer this question we begin by recognizing that our
consciousness operates out of two series of mental activities. One series is
generated by our consciousness of selfhood – of I . On this level we act
spontaneously in the world. The other series is generated by speculation upon life –
Page 10
this is the standpoint of the philosopher. The method of the Wissenschaftslehre will
consist in observing the interplay of these two series of activities.32
5. Because it is activity we are observing, we realize there is no need – and no place for us to assume the being of any object, including consciousness. The standpoint
of the I is spontaneous activity, and the standpoint of the philosopher is the
observation of the conscious subject. From this standpoint the philosopher
discovers that the ground of all being is the act of the I turning back upon itself.33
6. The I the philosopher observes in the act of turning back upon itself is, of course,
the philosopher’s own I . In becoming aware of this, the philosopher realizes that
the ground of all being is, in fact, a free act, and an intuition. This is not an intuition
of the sensory world: it is what Fichte describes as an intellectual intuition.
31 Ibid, p. 39.
32 Ibid, p. 38 fn: The philosopher occupies the standpoint of pure speculation, whereas the I itself occupies
the
standpoint of life and science … The standpoint of life is comprehensible only from the standpoint of
speculation. … The standpoint of speculation exists only to make the standpoint of life and science
comprehensible.
33 Ibid, p. 40: The sole thing to which the person who undertakes this act of abstraction continues to cling
and
proposes to employ as the basis for explaining everything that has to be explained is the conscious subject.
Consequently, he must grasp this subject entirely apart from any representation of being, for only in this way
will he then be able to show that this subject contains within itself the ground of all being being for this
subject, as goes without saying. But if we abstract from all being of and for this conscious subject, then
nothing pertains to it but acting. More specifically, in relation to being, the subject in question is the acting
subject. The philosopher therefore has to apprehend this subject while it is engaged in acting. This is the
point
at which the previously mentioned double series first arises.
By the time Fichte has developed his argument to this point the distance from the position
adopted by Kant could not be greater. While Kant clams that intellectual intuition lies
outside of the range of human cognition, for Fichte intellectual intuition is at the very core of
all cognitive activity.
2.1 Fichte’s concept of intellectual intuition
Fichte’s new discovery that intuition is at the core of all cognition leads him on to elaborate
a critique of intellectual intuition. Intellectual intuition emerges gradually in the course of
Fichte’s various restatements of the Wissenschaftslehre. It does not appear in the Grundlage,
but by the time of the Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre it is identified by Fichte
as the generative source of all cognition. In the Second Introduction Fichte defines what he
means by intellectual intuition as follows:
Intellectual intuition is the name I give to the act required of the philosopher: an act
of intuiting himself while simultaneously performing the act by means of which the I
originates for him. Intellectual intuition is the immediate consciousness that I act and
Page 11
of what I do when I act. It is because of this that it is possible for me to know
something because I do it. That we possess such a power of intellectual intuition is
not something that can be demonstrated by means of concepts, nor can an
understanding of what intellectual intuition is be produced from concepts. …
To be sure, anyone can be shown, within his own acknowledged experience, that this
intellectual intuition is present in every moment of his consciousness. I cannot take a
single step, I cannot move my hand or foot, without the intellectual intuition of my
self-consciousness in these actions. It is only through such an intuition that I know
that I do this. Only in this way am I able to distinguish my own acting (and, within
this acting, my own self) from the encountered object of this acting. Every person
who ascribes an activity to himself appeals to this intuition. It contains within itself
the source of life, and apart from it there is nothing but death.34
34 Ibid, pp 46-47.
In the first paragraph of the definition intellectual intuition is identified as, and is
recognizable as, a self-conscious action. In the second paragraph, however, Fichte appears
to be moving to a description of what others, including Kant before him and Steiner after
him, identify as the unconscious action of the will. It will be necessary, therefore, to
examine both how Fichte elaborates his concept of intellectual intuition, and whether, in the
end, what he is describing is the form of intellectual intuition Kant asserts is unavailable to
human cognition, or whether Fichte is describing some other function of the mind.
Fichte compares intellectual intuition with sensory intuition. According to Fichte both must
be grasped conceptually, and intellectual intuition is always conjoined with sensory
intuition.35 Like sensory intuition, intellectual intuition leads to the construction of a mental
image36, though it is an image of a series of actions, rather than of a thing.37 From these
comparisons Fichte argues that there is a reciprocal dependency between intellectual intuition
and sensory intuition, as both of them arise from self-consciousness.38 Intellectual intuition,
then, is as intrinsic to the structure of consciousness and the operation of reason as is sensory
intuition. This, as Fichte acknowledges, is in direct conflict with Kant’s assertion that
intellectual intuition is outside the range of human capacities.39 Fichte nevertheless remains
committed to the view that he is the true interpreter of Kant, and that the Wissenschaftslehre
is nothing other than the First Critique from another perspective. He must, therefore, find
some way of distinguishing what Kant has to say about intellectual intuition from the central
role he wishes to ascribe to it. Fichte does this by proposing that he and Kant are actually
using the same words to express two very different concepts:
35 Ibid, p. 47: I cannot discover myself to be acting without also discovering some object upon with I act; and
I
discover this object by means of sensory intuition, which I grasp by means of a concept.
36 Loc. cit: Vorstellung, translated by Breazeale, in this instance, as an image or a picture rather than as
representation.
37 Loc. cit: How could I possibly know (what it is I want to produce) unless I had immediately observed
myself
Page 12
engaged in the act of constructing a concept of a goal, that is, in a type of acting?
38 Loc. cit: … for sensory intuition is possible only in conjunction with intellectual intuition, since everything
that is supposed to be my representation must be referred to me; but consciousness of the I comes only from
intellectual intuition
39 Ibid, p. 55: … there is nothing against which Kant has declared himself more decisively and, one might
say,
disparagingly than against the claim that we possess a power of intellectual intuition.
In Kant’s terminology every intuition is directed at some being (a posited being,
something fixed and enduring). Accordingly, intellectual intuition would, in this
case, have to be a consciousness of a non-sensible being, an immediate consciousness
of the thing in itself, and indeed, a consciousness made possible by thought alone; i.e.
it would amount to a creation of the thing in itself simply from the concept of the
same … The intellectual intuition of which the Wissenschaftslehre speaks is not
directed toward any sort of being whatsoever; instead, it is directed at an acting – and
this is something that Kant does not even mention (except, perhaps, under the name
pure apperception ).40
40 Ibid, pp 55-56.
41 Ibid, pp 73-74: … the object, considered as something given, is also something merely thought of; and
therefore the passage plucked from the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason [ the object is given to
us ,
Critique of Pure Reason, A19, B33] merely characterizes the system of necessary thinking in terms borrowed
from the empirical viewpoint, a viewpoint that can be explained and derived only by means of the Critique that
follows.
… All of our cognition does indeed begin with an affection, but not with an affection by an object. This is
Kant’s view of the matter, and it is also the position of the Wissenschaftslehre.
The difference might be expressed as a difference of emphasis. Kant is speaking of an
intellectual intuition (as opposed to a sensory intuition), while what Fichte has in mind is the
activity of intellectual intuition.
Fichte is, nevertheless, not consistent either in developing or even in maintaining this
distinction. Not very much further into the Second Introduction, Fichte argues that for Kant,
as much as for Fichte himself, the non-sensible being and the thing in itself are not
objects. They are not any kinds of things, and do not, therefore, have to be characterised with
the quality of being. They are, rather, nothing other than affections brought about by the
activity of thinking.41 Kant’s intellectual intuition, therefore, is not directed toward any sort
of being any more so than is Fichte’s activity of intellectual intuition. There are two points
to be made about Fichte’s apparent inability to follow through with the distinction he draws
between his and Kant’s conceptions of intellectual intuition. One is that his argument for
abandoning the distinction between intellectual intuition and intellectual intuition depends
upon an idiosyncratic interpretation of Kant’s use of the expression object of sense
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
experience in the First Critique42 The other is that it is something of a lost opportunity for,
as Förster shows, there is some merit in maintaining the distinction between intellectual
intuition and intellectual intuition, as both of the senses in which Fichte uses the term are in
any case to be found in the differing ways in which Kant expresses himself in the First and
Third Critiques.43
42 CPR, B1, p. 41: There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. For how should
our
faculty of knowledge be awakened into action did not objects affecting our senses partly of themselves
produce
representations, partly arouse the activity of our understanding to compare these representations, and, by
combining or separating them, work up the raw material of the sensible impressions into that knowledge of
objects which is entitled experience? [writer’s emphasis]
43 Förster, (2009) Part 1, p. 8: However, the intellectual intuition that is brought into play here [in s77 of the
Third Critique] is not identical to the productive intuition referred to in the deduction, so that we have to
distinguish more precisely between two meanings of the concept of intellectual intuition – one, immediate
and
direct because it is a productive intuition, and the other, immediate and direct because it is a non-sensible
intuition.
44 IWL, p. 48.
45 Loc. Cit.
Fichte describes intellectual intuition as something which is directed at an acting .
Intellectual intuition is known to us, Fichte tells us, as an inference from the obvious facts of
consciousness 44. He explains these obvious facts in the following manner:
First I resolve to think of some determinate thing, and then the desired thought
ensues; I resolve to do some determinate thing, and the representation of its
occurrence then ensues. This is a fact of consciousness.45
If this fact is accounted for purely in terms of sensory intuition, however, I can do no more
than observe that the thought follows in time from the resolution to think; the representation
follows in time from the resolution to act: I cannot, from the considerations available to
sensory intuition, conclude that the one is the cause of the other. I must assume, therefore,
that my activity, my resolution is the source of the thoughts and the representations. Fichte
describes intellectual intuition in the following fashion:
Why do I make this assumption? No basis for it can be found among the sensory
ingredients we examined above. Accordingly, it must have its basis in a special type
of consciousness, indeed, in an immediate consciousness, and hence, in an intuition.
The intuition in question certainly cannot be a sensory intuition directed at some
materially subsisting thing; instead, it must be an intuition of a sheer activity – not an
activity that has been brought to a halt, but one that continues; not a being, but
something living.46
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
46 Loc. Cit.
47Ibid, p. 50: Intellectual intuition provides the only firm standpoint for any philosophy. Everything that
occurs within consciousness can be explained upon the basis of intellectual intuition – and only upon this
basis.
Without self-consciousness there is no consciousness whatsoever, but self-consciousness is possible only in
the
way we have indicated: I am only active. I cannot be driven from this position. This is the point where my
philosophy becomes entirely independent of all arbitrary choice and becomes a product of iron necessity …
48 Ibid, p. 49: Fichte, like Kant, nevertheless identifies freedom and compliance with the moral law. He, too,
therefore emphasizes the claims of duty: p. 50: With this, transcendental idealism simultaneously reveals
itself
to be the only type of philosophical thinking that accords with duty. It is the mode of thinking in which
speculation and the ethical law are most intimately united.
49 Loc. Cit; TK, p. 77, Steiner citing Harms (1876) Die Philosophie seit Kant : His [Fichte’s] world-view is
predominantly and exclusively ethical, and his theory of knowledge has no other feature.
This intuition, for Fichte, forms the ground for all philosophy.47
Fichte also argues that the actuality of intellectual intuition is most evident in the practical
sphere of the ethical law within us . The ethical law for Fichte appears to be nothing other
than the Kantian categorical imperative48, and this, as for Kant, is also the domain of human
freedom. Fichte links consciousness and freedom in this way:
Our intuition of self-activity and freedom has its foundation in our consciousness of
this law, which is unquestionably not a type of consciousness derived from anything
else, but is instead an immediate consciousness. Here I am given to myself, by
myself, as something that is obliged to be active in a certain way. … It is only
through the medium of the ethical law that I catch a glimpse of myself; and insofar as
a I view myself through this medium, I necessarily view myself as self-active. In this
way an entirely alien ingredient, viz., my consciousness of my own real efficacy,
arises for me within a consciousness that otherwise would be nothing but a
consciousness of a particular sequence of my representations.49
Fichte differs from Kant, however, in having the one activity – intellectual intuition – as the
ground for what Kant describes separately, and distinctly, as pure and as practical reason.
This both simplifies, and complicates, Fichte’s position. George Seidel, in his critique of
the ways in which the concepts of activity and ground are developed by the postKantians, explains that it leads Fichte to a grounding of all reason upon intellectual intuition:
Fichte’s philosophical position is complicated by the fact that he insists upon joining
the theoretical self of Kant’s first critique with the practical self of the Critique of
Practical Reason, in order to explain both the activity which is knowing and the
ethical action which requires knowledge. On the score of the activity which is
knowing, he says that the act of self-positing self-consciousness is the concept of the
self; and the concept of the self is the concept of this act: It is thus because I make it
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thus. Thus, the intellectual intuition becomes the underpinning for the concept. He
speaks of the intellectual intuition as a fact (Thatsache) of consciousness for the
philosopher, but a Thathandlung [act] for the original self. The intellectual intuition
is, then, the one and only firm standpoint for all philosophy. It couples two worlds,
the world of theoretical knowledge and the world of moral action, in a single glance.
It is, says Fichte, through the medium of the moral law that I behold myself. Fichte
departs from Kant at this point, insisting, as he does, that since it is the self which
performs the ethical act, the self must be able to be aware that it is the self that
performs it. There must be speculative knowledge of the practical act such that it
may be recognized as the self’s own. As he says, intellectual intuition is the
immediate intuition of the self’s own activity. This activity, which is identified with
freedom, is the bridge between the sensible and intelligible world.50
50 Seidel, G.(1976) Activity and Ground: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, Georg Olms Verlag: Hildesheim/New
York, p. 75.
51 ISTP, pp. 159-160: Kant says, Duty! You exalted, mighty name, you who contain nothing lovable, nothing
ingratiatingly agreeable [was Einschmeichelung bei sich führt] , but who demand submission, (you who)
establish a law … before which all inclinations fall dumb, though in secret they might work against it! To this,
It might be said at this point that there are some interesting comparisons and differences
between the respective positions adopted by Fichte and by Steiner. Fichte identifies the
activity of intellectual intuition as the source of freedom; Steiner ascribes freedom to the
activity of thinking: for Fichte intellectual intuition is the bridge between the sensible and
intelligible worlds ; for Steiner that role is undertaken by a specific form of intellectual
intuition, namely what he calls intuitive thinking. Steiner’s work, in this regard, is clearly a
development of Fichte’s. The same cannot be said of Fichte’s apparent acceptance of the
Kantian moral law within . In contrast, Steiner’s concept of freedom, and what Steiner
terms ethical individualism , are very much at odds with the notion of a categorical
imperative and the Kantian concept of duty.51
a human being, out of the consciousness of the free spirit, replies: Freedom! You friendly, human name, you
who contain everything morally beloved, everything that most dignifies my humanity, and who make me into
no
one’s servant, you who do not merely establish a law, because it feels unfree in the face of every merely
imposed law!
52 Important texts for understanding the development of Fichte’s thought have only become available in the
20th
century. There are two manuscripts of the lectures Fichte gave between 1796 and 1799 on the
Wissenschaftslehre in the novo methodo, the Hallesche Nachschrift and the Nachschrift Krause. The former
was not published until 1937, and the latter was only discovered in 1980. See Zöller, G. (1996) Thinking and
Willing in Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity in D. Breazeale & T. Rockmore (eds) New Perspectives on Fichte,
Humanities Press: New Jersey p. 14fn.
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
53 TK, pp 79-83: Let us now survey Fichte’s line of thought once more. On close inspection one sees that
there is a break in its sequence: a break, indeed, of a kind that casts doubt upon the correctness of his view
of the
original deed of the I. ... Had Fichte attempted to discover how the I determines its own activity, he should
have arrived at the concept of knowledge which is to be produced by the I.
3. Fichte’s original insight
Fichte’s derivation of intellectual intuition as the starting point of consciousness arises from
his analysis of the process of self-consciousness. That analysis moves through various
modifications from the earlier versions of the Wissenschaftslehre to the later, as Fichte seeks
to overcome the objections he envisages to his formulations. The motivating factor in these
modifications is Fichte’s awareness that there are inherent defects in the reflection theory
of self-consciousness, the notion that self-consciousness merely consists in treating the
conscious subject as an object. Fichte recognises that there is something more to the activity
involved in self-consciousness than the mere fact of reflection. The consequence is that he
develops an increasingly sophisticated construction of how it is that that activity operates.52
A comprehensive examination of the phases in Fichte’s conception of self-consciousness is to
be found in Dieter Henrich’s essay Fichte’s Original Insight. Henrich sets out the
contradictions in the reflection theory and Fichte’s three successive formulations for selfconsciousness. In Truth and Knowledge Steiner relies upon Fichte’s arguments for
intellectual intuition, but then claims that Fichte falls short in his failure to identify the
activity of the I within cognition.53 In Philosophy of Freedom Steiner argues that it is the
activity of thinking, through which self-consciousness is related to cognition.54 The
following presentation of Henrich’s critique of Fichte’s formulation of self-consciousness has
been undertaken to better evaluate Steiner’s epistemological claims, namely that there is a
lacuna in Fichte’s line of thought, and that Fichte’s critique of self-consciousness would
otherwise have lead to the identification of intuitive thinking as the source of knowledge of
essences.
54 ISTP, p. 33: This is the characteristic of thinking. The thinker forgets thinking while doing it. What
concerns the thinker is not thinking, but the observed object of thinking.
55 FOI, p. 19: Self-consciousness is unique inasmuch as there is no distinction, here, between the one who
thinks and the object of his thought, between the one who possesses something and what he possesses.
Where
the Self is, both the subject and this subject as its own object, are present. Also, we can never grasp the Self
as
subject in isolation in the way we can any other thing, whatever it might be. When we are thinking of it we
have already presupposed the consciousness of it in our own thought and thus have turned the subject-self of
which we are thinking into an object. Thus we only revolve around it in a perpetual circle. This means that
self-consciousness, considered on its own, does not amplify or extend our knowledge of reality. The knower
already contains what he grasps when he turns back into himself.
56 Loc. cit.
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Henrich gives an historical overview of the theory of self-consciousness. Although selfconsciousness has been a feature of epistemology from Plato, and a basic principle of
philosophy from Descartes onwards, philosophers, up to and including Kant, considered selfconsciousness as a consequential element of other elements of their theories of knowledge.
They did not examine the concept of self-consciousness itself, because self-consciousness
does not appear to provide us with any knowledge of the world. It appears, rather, to be
merely reflective, and consideration of it seems to lead to circularity.55 Fichte’s original
insight was to find a way of avoiding this apparent circularity by distinguishing between
consciousness of the self and the positing of self-consciousness. Henrich expresses this
distinction by claiming it is not the Self but the theory of the Self as reflection that
continually turns in a circle. 56 According to Henrich the contradictions within the reflection
theory of self-consciousness can be demonstrated by posing a set of simple questions, the
first of which was one raised by Fichte. Henrich expresses the first question as follows:
The theory that the Self is reflection talks about a Subject-Self that knows itself by
entering into relation to itself, that is, by turning back into itself. How can this
subject be conceived? If we assume that it is really the Self when it functions as the
subject, then it is obvious that we are turning in a circle and are presupposing what we
want to explain. For we can only speak of an I where a subject has apprehended
itself, where an ego says I to itself. Self-consciousness is distinguished from all
other forms of knowledge precisely by the fact that one and the same item presents
itself in self-consciousness in a double guise. Whatever act might bring this
consciousness about, only the total result, in which the I gains possession and
knowledge of itself, can be called I . However, this act can by no means be
described as reflection. For reflection can only mean that an item of knowledge
which is already at hand is properly apprehended and thereby made explicit!57
57 Ibid, p. 20.
58 Loc. cit.
That is, the reflection theory must be circular, because anyone who sets reflection into
motion must himself already be both the knower and the known. 58 If this circularity is to be
avoided then self-consciousness must take place immediately and spontaneously. In other
words, the very act of positing self-consciousness demonstrates features which, according to
Kant, are unavailable to human cognition and which are characteristic of, and demonstrative
of, intellectual intuition.
Henrich outlines a second question for self-reflection theory, which follows from the first.
Not only must the subject be both the knower and the known, self-reflection theory is in
danger of generating a third element of consciousness, which accounts for the capacity of the
knower to identify the correct object as the reflection of itself. The only way for selfreflection theory to avoid this complication is for it to acknowledge that the subject has
immediate (intuitive) consciousness of the object as itself. Henrich shows that the second
question is also circular and demonstrates that, once again, self-consciousness presupposes
intellectual intuition. He sets out the argument as follows:
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
Now, if we are to explain consciousness of the identity I=I , it is not enough that any
subject whatsoever gain an explicit consciousness of any object whatsoever. This
subject must also know that its object is identical with itself. … But how can selfconsciousness know that it has grasped itself, if an Object-Self has come about only
via the Self’s act of reflection? Obviously it can know this only if it already knew
itself before. For only on the basis of previous knowledge is it possible for selfconsciousness to say: What I am grasping is I myself. But, if it already knows
itself, then it already knows that I=I. And thus the theory of reflection begs the
question once again. It presupposes that the problem which it has been faced with
has been completely solved at the start.59
59 Ibid, p. 21.
60 Loc. cit.
61 Ibid, p. 24.
62 Loc. cit.
63 TK, p. 79: The I is not postulated by presupposing another I; it presupposes itself. This means: the I
simply
is, absolutely and unconditionally. The hypothetical form of a judgment, which is the form of all judgments,
when an absolute I is not presupposed, here is transformed into a principle of absolute existence: I simply
am.
Fichte also expresses this as follows: The I originally and absolutely postulates its own being. This whole
Fichte, according to Henrich, was the first philosopher to recognize this circle and to draw
consequences from it. 60 Recognizing the circularity was Fichte’s original insight; the
consequence for Fichte was that he then found himself engaged in repeated attempts to
describe unambiguously the process of self-consciousness.
Henrich’s presentation of Fichte’s first two formulations of the dynamic of selfconsciousness affords us a further opportunity for understanding what it is that Steiner will
characterise as Fichte’s fundamental mistake. The first formulation, from the Grundlage of
1794, is expressed in these terms: the Self posits itself absolutely and unconditionally .61 It
is not difficult, from this formulation, to see why it is that Fichte is often accused of absolute
solipsism. Henrich describes the formulation as allowing for extreme expression to the
pathos of freedom. 62 Steiner appears to be referring to this formulation in Truth and
Knowledge when he is reciting Fichte’s ontological deduction.63 The difficulty with this first
deduction of Fichte’s is clearly nothing but a kind of pedagogical discussion, the aim of which is to guide his
reader to the point where knowledge of the unconditional activity of the I dawns in him. His aim is to bring the
activity of the I emphatically home to the reader, for without this activity there is no I.
64 FOI, pp 29-30: … the Self has no knowledge of itself unless the intuition and the concept of the Self are
inextricably bound together with one another. They are equiprimordial
65 CPR, A51, B75, p. 93.
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
66 FOI, p. 30.
formulation is the lack of any dynamic to lead to self-knowledge. The second formulation,
from the 1797 Introductions, acknowledges this deficit, and Fichte reformulates his
derivation of self-consciousness to read: The Self posits itself absolutely as positing itself.
The beauty of this formulation is that it oversteps the question of whether the Self has
intuitive or conceptual knowledge of itself by allowing for it to have both at the same time.64
It is also a further step away from the Kantian picture of consciousness and cognition, and it
adds an ironic twist to Kant’s pithy Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without
concepts are blind 65. The irony is that Kant can only have had sensory intuitions in mind,
while Fichte has managed to extend Kant’s dictum to include intellectual intuition.
Fichte’s third formulation of reflective self-consciousness is significantly different from the
other two. It arises from a recognition that the second formulation also depends upon a
hidden assumption, namely that the active Self, in positing itself as positing, depends upon a
pre-existing active ground, in which there is balance and unity between intuition and concept.
Fichte overcomes this difficulty now by describing self-consciousness as an activity in
which an eye is inserted [eine Taetigkeit, der eine Auge eingesetzt ist].66 Henrich explains
how Fichte arrives at this image:
It is only by thinking of the activity of the eye in this way that we can acquire an idea
of the Self and its being for itself. It then becomes clear that the eye which catches
sight of the activity must at the same time see itself. For the activity is essentially an
activity of the eye; thus, the activity can only be seen at the same time as the eye is
seen. … In other words, the relationship the Self has to itself amounts to knowledge
existing for itself and manifest to itself; at the same time, however, this knowledge
remains a matter of fact which can be used to explain everything else except its own
existence ...
Accordingly, the eye inserted in the activity includes intuition and concept at the same
time. Only then can it be wholly inward to the act and, at the same time, to its
cognitive relation to itself; only then can it be understood as self-consciousness.67
67 Ibid, p. 33.
68 Förster develops this argument in Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie and in his paper Goethe and the Auge
des
Geistes (2001) Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, pp 87-101at p.
99:
The similarities between Goethe’s approach and that of Fichte are indeed striking. Both proceed from an
intuitive whole or ideal unity from which the empirical distinctions evolve.
69 The Preface is dated December 1891 . Wahrheit und Wissenschaft was first published by Hermann
Weissbach in Weimar in 1892.
Fichte’s adoption of such a decidedly visual formulation to account for the activities of
cognition and self-consciousness is of particular interest for two reasons. One is that it is
remarkably reminiscent of Goethe’s descriptions of the interactions between subject and
Page 20
object in the practice of intuitive judgment [anschauende Urteilskraft], and suggests that
there may be a more immediate connection between Fichte’s representation of consciousness
and Goethe’s perception of the archetype than is usually assumed.68 The other is that Fichte
has shifted in his representation of self-consciousness from a mathematical postulation of the
necessity of being to a metaphor derived from the senses and the activity of a sense organ.
From this characterisation of intellectual intuition it will not be such a large step for Steiner to
take in arguing that cognition is grounded in the activity of thinking.
4. Steiner’s derivation of intellectual intuition in Truth and Knowledge
In 1890 Steiner moved to Weimar. He enrolled in the University of Rostock to undertake his
doctoral work, and in 1891 completed his dissertation, which he published in the following
year as Wahrheit und Wissenschaft [Truth and Knowledge]69. The subtitle of the original
edition, Introduction to Philosophy of Freedom , indicates that Truth and Knowledge
prepares the ground for Philosophy of Freedom, and that Steiner already had the argument of
Philosophy of Freedom in mind. Truth and Knowledge is clearly grounded very much within
the neo-Kantian academic tradition. Steiner indicates that his intention is to overcome the
unhealthy faith in Kant 70 of his contemporary neo-Kantians, and that: Unlike Kant ... the
purpose here is not to show what our faculty of knowledge cannot do, but rather to show
what it is really able to achieve. 71 Steiner claims to have outgrown his dependence upon
Goethe72, and developed the principal concepts of his own epistemology. He is attempting to
demonstrate that his epistemology is a whole that rests upon its own foundation. 73
70 TK, p. 9.
71 Ibid, p. 11.
72 Ibid, p. 13: Until now, I have always presented my philosophical views in connection with Goethe’s worldview … In this work, however, I hope to have shown that the edifice of my thought is a whole that rests upon
its
own foundation, and need not be derived from Goethe’s world-view.
73 Ibid, p. 13.
74 Ibid, p. 10.
75 Ibid, p. 11.
First amongst the pillars of that foundation is Steiner’s idiosyncratic conception of thinking.
The thesis of his dissertation is ... to show that everything necessary to explain and account
for the world is within the reach of our thinking .74 According to Steiner knowledge is
produced through the activity of thinking. That is, knowledge should not be seen as an object
to be acquired, but as something which arises in the course of thinking, and:
… truth is not, as is usually assumed, an ideal reflection of something real, but is a
product of the human spirit, created by an activity which is free; this product would
exist nowhere if we did not create it ourselves. The object of knowledge is not to
repeat in conceptual form something which already exists, but rather to create a
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completely new sphere, which when combined with the world given to our senses
constitutes complete reality. Thus man’s highest activity, his spiritual creativeness, is
an organic part of the universal world-process.75
To arrive at his revitalised understanding of thinking Steiner reworks the concept of intuition.
He retraces the steps Fichte has taken away from Kant, and then endeavours to take them
further. In his Preliminary Remarks, the first chapter of Truth and Knowledge, Steiner
indicates he has two interrelated aims, namely:
… so to formulate the problem of cognition that in this very formulation it will do full
justice to the essential feature of epistemology, namely, the fact that it is a science
which must contain no presuppositions. A further aim is to use this philosophical
basis for science to throw light on Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s philosophy of science.76
76 Ibid, pp 28-29.
77 KRV, B19-20, pp 58 -59: Die eigentliche Aufgabe der reinen Vernunft ist nun in der Frage enthalten: Wie
sind synthetische Urteile a priori möglich? , B73, p. 96: Hier haben wir nun eines von den erforderlichen
To rid epistemology of presuppositions Steiner devotes two chapters to demonstrating the
deficits in Kant’s formulation of the problem of knowledge and the methodology of the First
Critique. Steiner’s response to Kant is considered in section 4.1 following. In Chapters 4
and 5 of Truth and Knowledge Steiner presents his own formulation of the constituents of
knowledge, and it is here that Steiner emphasizes the activity of thinking at the centre of
cognition. Steiner’s arguments for intellectual intuition are presented in section 4.2. In
Chapter 6 of Truth and Knowledge Steiner turns to Fichte’s claim that it is the activity of the
I and consciousness, rather than thinking, that leads to knowledge. The final two chapters
of Truth and Knowledge are a short epistemological conclusion and a practical conclusion.
It can be seen that, although Steiner is continually attempting to distance himself from Kant
and his contemporary neo-Kantians, he is also seeking to respond to the epistemological and
practical consequences of the First and Second Critiques. Steiner’s moves away from Fichte
and towards his own conception of thinking, as the activity at the heart of intellectual
intuition, are discussed in section 5 following.
4.1 Steiner’s response to Kant
Steiner’s response to the critical philosophy, like Fichte’s, begins with the claim that Kant has
formulated the problem of knowledge incorrectly, by asking himself the wrong question. It
is familiar territory that, in the Introduction at the end of the Transcendental Aesthetic of the
First Critique, Kant formulates the problem of knowledge as: How are synthetical judgments
a priori possible?77 For Steiner, however, this cannot be the starting point of an
Stücken zur Auflösung der allgemeinen Aufgabe der Transzendentalphilosophie: wie sind synthetische Sätze
a
priori möglich?
78 TK, p. 33.
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
79 CPR, B20, p. 59.
80 TK, p. 34. Steiner is, of course, not alone in pointing to the foundational difficulties in the critical
philosophy.
See, for example, Williams, R. (1992) Recognition; State University of New York Press: Albany, p. 29: The
Kantian transcendental is theoretically problematic in that Kant’s account of the conditions of possibility of
knowledge does not reveal how such a transcendental account itself is possible. And, in regard to the
antinomies: p. 31: Is not the critique of knowledge itself knowledge? It does not appear to be knowledge in
the restricted and qualified sense that it purports to establish. But if critique is not knowledge, how can Kant
pretend to adjudicate opposing cognitive and metaphysical claims?
epistemology, because it assumes that there can be knowledge that is independent of
experience. There may be some such knowledge, Steiner allows, but for him:
A theory of knowledge must leave open, to begin with, the question of whether we
can arrive at a judgment solely by means of experience, or by some other means as
well. Indeed, to an unprejudiced mind it must seem that for something to be
independent of experience in this way is impossible. For whatever object we are
concerned to know, we must become aware of it directly and individually, that is, it
must become experience. We acquire mathematical judgment too, only through
direct experience of particular single examples.78
Kant takes it as given that there will be mathematical and scientific knowledge independent
of experience. In the Introduction to the First Critique Kant also asks: How is pure
mathematics possible? How is pure natural science possible?79 Steiner’s response to these
questions is to point to Kant’s presuppositions, for as Steiner says:
The Critique of Pure Reason does not at all prove that mathematics and pure science
are a priori sciences, but only establishes their sphere of validity, pre-supposing that
their truths are acquired independently of experience. Kant, in fact, avoids discussing
the question of proof of the a priori sciences, in that he simply excludes that section of
mathematics … where even in his own opinion the a priori nature is open to doubt;
and he limits himself to that section where he believes proof can be inferred from the
concepts alone.80
Any knowledge which arises independently of experience, Steiner argues, would have to be
unmediated knowledge of one or other of the faculties of our consciousness. Even so, for it
to become knowledge, Steiner claims, it would have to form part of our experience.
A second objection Steiner has to Kant’s starting point is the corollary of the first. Not only
does Kant assume the existence of knowledge independent of experience, he also suggests
that what appears to be arise from experience may not be comprised merely of experience.81
Just as Kant draws our attention to synthetic judgments a priori, Steiner raises the possibility
of purely experiential knowledge, and claims:
81 CPR, B1, p. 41: But though all knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of
experience. For it may well be that even our empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through
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impressions and of what our own faculty of knowledge (sensible impressions serving merely as the occasion)
supplies from itself.
82 TK, p. 34.
… at the beginning of a theoretical investigation of knowledge, one ought not to
maintain that no valid and absolute knowledge can be obtained by means of
experience. For it is quite conceivable that experience itself could contain some
characteristic feature which would guarantee the validity of insight gained by means
of it.82
It should be mentioned that the kind of experience being referred to by Steiner appears to
include both of the forms of experience expressed in the well-known German distinction
bewteen Erfahrung and Erlebnis. These are, broadly, inner and outer experiences – what
one goes through, and what one lives through. Steiner’s position, in contrast with Kant’s,
seems to be that all our knowledge arises out of some form of experience.
A further objection of Steiner’s to Kant is the notion that all empirical knowledge is limited
to, and consists only of, representations (Vorstellungen). Steiner observes that, from Kant’s
time to his, almost all philosophical views assume this to be so, whether or not their
proponents are Kantians. Even Eduard von Hartmann, to whom Steiner has dedicated his
thesis, regards this notion as irrefutable:
… in his (Hartmann’s) book, Kritische Grundlegung des transzendentalen Realismus
(Critical Basis of Transcendental Realism) he assumes that his readers, by critical
reflection, have overcome the na„ve identification of the perceptual picture with the
thing-in-itself, that they have convinced themselves of the absolute diversity of the
subjective-ideal content of consciousness – given as perceptual object through the act
of representing – and the thing existing by itself, independent both of the act of
representing and of the form of consciousness; in other words, readers who have
entirely convinced themselves that the totality of what is given us directly consists of
our representations.83
83 TK, pp 39-40.
84 Ibid, p. 41; this objection might be extended to the circularity inherent in any critique of reason or thinking,
for which see Breazeale, D. Circles and Grounds in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre in Breazeale, D. &
Rockmore,
T. (eds) (1994) Fichte: Historical Contexts/Contemporary Controversies, Humanities Press: New Jersey, pp
4370
85 Ibid, p. 41: citing Part 1 of von Hartmann’s Das Grundproblem der Erkenntinistheorie [The Fundamental
Problem of Epistemology].
86 Ibid, pp 42-43.
Steiner makes the same observation about this assumption as Fichte makes about Kant’s
Page 24
notion that the starting-point of knowledge is reason:
To say that my knowledge extends to begin with only as far as my representations, is
to express a quite definite judgment about cognition. In this sentence I add a
predicate to the world given to me, namely, its existence in the form of representation.
But how do I know, prior to all knowledge, that the things given to me are
representations?84
The limiting of empirical knowledge to representations has, Steiner says, become an intrinsic
part of modern scientific consciousness. Steiner cites von Hartmann’s observation85, that
there are three separate arguments for this, which nevertheless lead into each other. These
arguments are from physical, psycho-physiological and philosophical perspectives. Physical
science reduces sense-perceptible phenomena to vibrations and systems of minute particles
separated by empty space, so that:
(t)he physicist believes he is justified in assuming that a material body does not affect
our senses of touch and warmth by direct contact, because there must be a certain
distance, even if very small, between the body and the place where it touches the skin.
From this he concludes further that what we sense as the hardness or warmth of a
body, for example, is only the reaction of the peripheral nerves of our senses of touch
and warmth to the molecular forces of bodies which act upon them across empty
space.86
This view of the relationship between phenomena and sense perception is confirmed by the
psycho-physicist87, who reports that:
87 Ibid, fn 32, pp 101-102. Steiner is alluding to the work of Johannes Peter Müller, professor of anatomy and
physiology at Berlin University in the earlier 19th century. Müller, in his Handbuch der Physiologie des
Menschen developed the principle of the law of specific energy of sense substances : The kind of sensation
following stimulation of a sensory nerve does not depend on the mode of stimulation, but upon the nature of
the
sense organ. Thus, light, pressure, or mechanical stimulation acting on the retina and optic nerve invariably
produces luminous impressions .
88 Ibid, p. 43.
89 Ibid, p. 44.
90 Ibid, p. 45, citing Hartmann’s Grundproblem, p. 37.
… there is only one kind of phenomenon in the external world, namely motion, and
that the many aspects of the world which we perceive derive essentially from the
reaction of our senses to this phenomenon.88
As a consequence, there can be no similarity between what first affected the sense organs,
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and the sensations that finally arise in consciousness. 89 The philosophical argument for
reducing empirical knowledge to representations is derived from the other two. The
physical and the psycho-physiological arguments show that there is not even any immediate
connection between our receiving a sense impression and becoming conscious of a sensation,
much less between our sensations and the phenomena of the given world. The philosopher
must therefore conclude that our na„ve consciousness is illusory, and agree with von
Hartmann that … all that the subject perceives are modifications of its own soul-condition
and nothing else .90
Steiner outlines three arguments to refute scientific reductionism. The first is that the
reduction is itself self-cancelling . We are assuming both, in a na„ve realist way, that an
external world exists, and at the same time, as a transcendental idealist, that our organism is
so constituted, that we can only ever perceive the external world as representations. We can
only have one or the other. The second argument is that this form of reasoning cannot prove
anything at all. It starts from na„ve realism so as to demonstrate that our world-picture is
nothing other than the subjective content of representations. Even if the conclusion is
correct, it cannot be proven from a contrary premise. The final point, summarizing the
others, is that: Transcendental idealism demonstrates its truth by using the same premises as
the na„ve realism which it aims to refute .91 The conclusion Steiner draws, therefore, is that
there is no alternative but to abandon this path . If there is to be a credible foundation for
an epistemology it must lie outside the well-trodden paths of uncritical na„ve realism and neoKantian transcendental idealism.
91 Ibid, p. 46.
92 Ibid, p. 47.
93 Ibid, p. 48, this writer’s italics
4.2 Steiner’s argument for intellectual intuition
The positive epistemological argument of Truth and Knowledge commences at the end of
chapter 3, and is developed in chapters 4 and 5. At the conclusion of his response to Kant,
Steiner observes that the use of thinking is the unspoken element upon which the subjectivist
transcendental arguments rely. Subjectivism presupposes that, starting from certain facts,
logical thinking will lead to correct conclusions. As Steiner observes, … the justification
for using thinking in this way is not examined by this philosophical approach .92 The
difference between the na„ve realist view of the world and the critical, according to Steiner, is
the element of thinking. When this analysis is applied to self observation, one recognizes
that … (a) critical attitude is one that comes to grips with the laws of its own activity in order
to discover their reliability and limits. 93 The epistemologist, therefore, will need to attend to
the laws inherent in cognition through the engagement of thinking.
In Chapters 4 and 5 Steiner endeavours, like many before him, to set out what the foundation
must be for any epistemology. Steiner has the benefit of having learnt from the mistakes and
pitfalls of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and other foundational thinkers. He is wary of any
preconceptions. The starting point of any epistemology, Steiner observes, must nevertheless
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
be the state of things … immediately prior to cognition, so that the very next step man takes
beyond it is the activity of cognition .94 For this, Steiner introduces the concept of the
directly given.95 The directly given comprises a world content, which includes concepts and
ideas mediated to us by intellectual intuition.96 Through intellectual intuition we come to
realise that it is the activity of thinking, which is the origin of cognition. In chapter 4 Steiner
describes the directly given and postulates intellectual intuition. In chapter 5 he identifies
cognition with the activity of thinking.
94 ibid, p. 51.
95 WW, p. 27: das unmittelbar gegebene Weltbild
96 Ibid, p. 34: Nur die Begriffe und Ideen sind uns in der Form gegeben, die man die intellektuelle
Anschauung
genannt hat. The rendering of intellektuelle Anschauung in the Stebbing translation as intellectual seeing
avoids the difficulties inherent in intuition, but it also misses the point of Steiner’s using Kant’s language.
97 Ibid, pp 51-52: it is correct to describe this buzzin’, bloomin’ confusion as disconnected and
undifferentiated, precisely because it is the activity of thinking, which connects and differentiates our senseimpressions.
98 ibid, p. 52.
99 KRV, A21, B36, p. 70: Diese gehören zur reinen Anschauung, die a priori, auch ohne einen wirklichen
Gegenstand der Sinne oder Empfindung, als eine bloße Form der Sinnlichkeit im Gemüte stattfindet.
The state of things immediately prior to cognition is what Steiner calls our directly given
world picture:
… that picture of the world which presents itself to man before he has subjected it to
the processes of knowledge in any way, before he has asserted or decided anything at
all about it by means of thinking. This directly given is what flits past us,
disconnected, but still undifferentiated.97
Steiner says of the world picture before conceptual activity that it … contains neither
substance, quality nor cause and effect; distinctions between matter and spirit, body and soul,
do not yet exist. 98 It is interesting to compare this with Kant’s deconstruction of sense
experience in the Transcendental Aesthetic. There Kant, it will be remembered, removes the
qualities of substance, power, hardness and colour to be left with space and time as pure
intuitions, as preconditions of sensibility, and, therefore, of cognition.99 Steiner’s is a more
radical surgery, which also removes the concepts upon which the Kantian critique comes to
rely. Steiner notes:
Furthermore, any other predicate must also be excluded from the world-picture at this
stage. The picture can be considered neither as reality nor as appearance, neither
subjective nor objective, neither as chance nor as necessity; whether it is thing-initself , or mere representation, cannot be decided at this stage.100
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
100 TK, p. 52.
101 If it were to, it would be as a consequence of cognition, and could not, therefore, constitute a startingpoint.
Steiner is aware that his concept of the directly given world picture does not, and indeed,
cannot, correspond with any known form, or stage, of consciousness.101 He is also aware
that the division between the given and the known is, despite his best efforts, drawn
artificially. He is determining what is removed from the given world picture, so as to leave
merely the directly given, and he is using conceptual definitions to do it. He comments
that the process of successive extraction does not determine the starting-point of
epistemology, but points in the direction of it:
… what we have extracted by means of thought does not characterize the directly
given world-picture, nor define nor express anything about it; what it does is to guide
our attention to the dividing line, where the starting point for cognition is to be found.
… To remove from this all that has been contributed by cognition, and to establish a
pre-cognitive starting point, can only be done conceptually. But such concepts are
not of value as knowledge; they have the purely negative function of removing from
sight all that belongs to knowledge, and of leading us to the point where knowledge
begins.
The point prior to cognition is the conceptual separation between the directly given and
cognition, but there is no distinction of content to distinguish the given from the known. As
a result, the directly given world content must include:
… everything that enters our experience in the widest sense: sensations, perceptions,
opinions, feelings, deeds, pictures of dreams and imaginations, representations,
concepts and ideas.
Illusions and hallucinations too, at this stage, are equal to the rest of the worldcontent. For their relation to other perceptions can be revealed only through
observation based on cognition.102
102 TK, p. 56.
103 Descartes, R. (1960) Meditations, Penguin Books: London pp 111-112, writer’s italics; qu’est-ce que je
suis? Un chose pendant …
104 Ibid, p. 110: I am, I exist: that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I think.
It is interesting to compare this depiction of the content of the directly given, as the starting
point for all knowledge, with Descartes’ depiction of the content of thinking:
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And so, once again, what am I? A thinking thing – a thing, that is to say, which
doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, and does not will, and which also affirms
and feels. … And it is I who imagine, for though chance may have it, as I have
already supposed, that everything I imagine is false, the power of imagining still
belongs truly to me and to my thought. Finally, it is I who sense or perceive physical
things through my senses, I who see the light, hear a noise, and feel heat. … And to
feel, in this precise sense, is nothing other than to think.103
Although Descartes describes his victory over existential doubt with the active cogito, ergo
sum104, his argument is based upon the concept of himself as a thinking thing . He argues
from the content of thinking, in its broadest sense, to establish the existence of the I .
Steiner argues from a similar content, as the content of the directly given, to deny that either
the existence of consciousness or of the I has been established, and to assert that what has
been established, rather, is the primacy of the activity of thinking:
When epistemology starts from the assumption that all the elements just mentioned
constitute the content of our consciousness, the following question immediately
arises: How is it possible for us to go beyond our consciousness and recognize actual
existence; where can the leap be made from our subjective experiences to what lies
beyond them? When such an assumption is not made, the situation is different. Both
consciousness and the representation of the I are, to begin with, only parts of the
directly-given and the relationship of the latter to the two former must be discovered
by the means of cognition. Cognition is not to be defined in terms of consciousness,
but vice versa: both consciousness and the relation between subject and object in
terms of cognition.105
105 TK, p. 57.
106 IWL, p. 73: When you posit an object that is accompanied by the thought that it has exercised an effect
upon you, then you also think of yourself as affected in this case. And when you think that this is what occurs
in the case of every object you perceive, then you think of yourself as generally affectable. In other words, it is
by means of this act of your own thinking that you ascribe receptivity or sensibility to yourself. Thus the
object,
considered as something given, is also something merely thought of …
107 TK, p. 57: Since the given is left without predicate, to begin with, the question arises as to how it is
defined at all; how can any start be made with cognition? How does one part of the world-picture come to be
designated as perception and the other as concept, one thing as existence, another as appearance, this as
cause
and that as effect; how is it that we can separate ourselves from what is objective and regard ourselves as I
in
contrast to the not-I ?
108 Loc. cit.
109 TK, p. 58.
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Steiner casts doubt over a wider canvas than does Descartes: for Steiner (as for Fichte106)
there is doubt about the objectivity of the object, the givenness of the given.107
Steiner’s strategy now is to find the bridge from the world-picture as given, to that other
world-picture which we build up by means of cognition .108 Steiner does not argue for the
existence of such a bridge, but appears to take it as a given. This is concerning, and
surprising, as he has been so careful to locate a starting point for epistemology without any
presuppositions. His rationale for assuming the existence of such a bridge is that,
otherwise, our relationship with the directly given world picture could be nothing more than
descriptive:
Somewhere in the given we must find a place where we can set to work, where
something exists which is akin to cognition. If everything were really only given, we
could do no more than merely stare into the external world and stare indifferently into
the inner world of our individuality. We would at most be able to describe things as
something external to us; we should never be able to understand them. Our concepts
would have a purely external relation to that to which they referred; they would not be
inwardly related to it. For real cognition depends on finding a sphere somewhere in
the given where our cognizing activity does not merely presuppose something given,
but finds itself active in the very essence of the given.109
It seems that Steiner has become hostage to the very begging-of-the-question he had set out
to avoid. The purpose of his argument was to discover whether and how our concepts have a
relationship with the given, not to assume it. We are now told that real cognition occurs
when our cognizing activity finds itself active in the very essence of the given . The
concepts real cognition , cognizing activity and the essence of the given are not defined
or explained, and the use of them can only have the effect of diminishing the effect of the
argument Steiner has so far maintained.
The bridge Steiner discovers between cognition and the given arises, he claims, from closer
examination of the nature of the given. Within the given there is also the not-given.110
Steiner does not say what he means by formally part of the given, but it will, presumably,
not amount to a formal constituent of perception, such as Kant’s intuitions of space, time and
causation. He seems to be saying that what, at the commencement of the enquiry, appears to
be all of the one nature is on closer observation, or further reflection, in fact differentiated
into the given and the not-given. There would be nothing remarkable in that, except that
observation and reflection are the very activities, which would seem to be most associated
with the engagement of a consciousness and an ego. If this is so, then Steiner has separated
out the not-given from the given through assuming the initiating activity of the very elements
he has argued are to be defined in terms of cognition, for:
110Loc. cit: … precisely through strict adherence to the given as merely given, it must become apparent that
not
everything is given. Insistence on the given alone must lead to the discovery of something which goes
beyond
the given. … the given also includes what according to its very nature is not given. The latter would appear, to
Page 30
begin with, as formally part of the given, but on closer scrutiny, would reveal its true nature of its own accord.
Both consciousness and the representation of the I are, to begin with, only parts of
the directly-given and the relationship of the latter to the two former must be
discovered by means of cognition. Cognition is not to be defined in terms of
consciousness, but vice versa: both consciousness and the relation between subject
and object in terms of cognition.111
111 TK, p. 57.
112 Ibid, p. 58.
113Loc. cit; this is an exact translation: WW. p. 32: Dies ist der zweite Punkt unserer Erkenntnistheorie. Er
besteht in den Postulat: es muß im Gebiete des Gegebenen etwas liegen, wo unserer Tätigkeit nicht im
Leeren
schwebt, wo der Inhalt der Welt selbst in dieser Tätigkeit eingeht.
114 TK, p. 59: It is essential to remember that it is we ourselves who postulate what characteristic feature
that
part of the world-content must possess with which our activity of cognition can make a start.
Steiner has one further argument for concluding that there must be something in the given,
which is both not-given, and immediately connected to cognition. It is this:
The whole difficulty in understanding cognition comes from the fact that we ourselves
do not create the content of the world. If we did this, cognition would not exist at all.
I can only ask questions about something which is given to me. Something which I
create myself, I also determine myself, so that I do not need to ask for an explanation
of it.112
This argument, again, assumes the existence of a consciousness, and an I , prior to
cognition. I can only ask questions implies a consciousness separate from the given, and
something, which is given to me implies a separation between the given and the not-given
me . Steiner’s final claim – that I do not need to ask for an explanation for what I create
myself – is also not any form of proof of a bridge between what he has defined as the given,
and the process of cognition. As a result Steiner is left to summarise his argument as a
postulate:
This is the second step in our theory of knowledge. It consists in the postulate: In the
sphere of the given there must be something in relation to which our activity does not
hover in emptiness, but where the content of the world itself enters this activity.113
Steiner acknowledges that his argument for a bridge between the directly given world-picture
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and cognition is insufficient to qualify as proof, and can amount to nothing more than a
postulate.114
Steiner now seeks to identify which part of the given world is, in fact, not-given, and which
forms a bridge with the process of cognition, by engaging with our activity. It will be that
part, which of its nature is connected with, or forms part of, the process of cognition. It is
concepts and ideas which, in fact, arise in the act of cognition, and only then can they form
part of the given.115 Steiner has arrived at his bridge between the directly given worldcontent and cognition. The bricks and mortar of the bridge, it might be said, are concepts
and ideas, while the framework itself is intellectual intuition. Intellectual intuition has such
a central role, for Concepts and ideas alone are given us in a form that could be called
intellectual intuition. 116
115Ibid, p. 60: It is a characteristic feature of all the rest of our world-picture that it must be given if we are to
experience it; the only case in which the opposite occurs is that of concepts and ideas: these we must
produce if
we are to experience them.
116 See fn 97.
117TK, pp 60-61.
In describing the form in which we receive concepts and ideas as intellectual intuition Steiner
is alluding, specifically, to Kant’s notion of intellectual intuition. Contrary to the Kantian
view, he argues that concepts are not empty, because we do possess the capacity for
intellectual intuition.
Kant and the later philosophers who follow in his steps, completely deny this ability
to man, because it is said that all thinking refers only to objects and does not itself
produce anything. In intellectual seeing [Anschauung] the content must be contained
within the thought-form itself. But is this not precisely the case with pure concepts
and ideas? … If one clings to the Kantian assertion that of themselves concepts are
empty, it would be impossible to determine anything about the given world. Suppose
two elements of the world-content were given: a and b. If I am to find a relation
between them, I must do so with the help of a principle which has a definite content; I
can only produce this principle myself in the act of cognition; I cannot derive it from
the objects, for the definition of the objects is only to be obtained by means of the
principle. Thus a principle by means of which we define objects belongs entirely to
the conceptual sphere alone.117
If Steiner has demonstrated the existence of intellectual intuition, in the form denied by Kant,
he will have gone a long way towards establishing that dualism can be overcome in the
process of cognition. But is that what Steiner has established? He has postulated that there
must be some not-given in the directly given, which connects with our efforts at cognition; he
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has identified this not-given with concepts and ideas, and he has claimed that concepts and
ideas present themselves to us in the very form of intellectual intuition Kant describes as
unavailable to the human intellect. His argument for this latter claim is that our use of
concepts to associate elements of the world-content requires that those concepts contain
principles, which we produce in the act of cognition. They cannot, Steiner claims, have arisen
from the directly-given world-content, for the definition of the objects is only to be obtained
by means of the principle. It was, however, Steiner’s own postulate that the given worldcontent contains an element, which is not-given, and that this element consists in concepts
and ideas. He does not explain how it is that these very directly-given concepts and ideas do
not contain the principles of association between other elements of the given, and why it is
that, from these postulates, we need to postulate the existence of intellectual intuition.118
118This is surprising, because Steiner does attempt to respond to the objection, that he has been operating
covertly with a concept [Vorstellung] of the I . He claims (TK, p. 61.) that his uses of the expressions we
produce concepts and we insist on this or that are merely turns of phrase, and do not commit him to the
position that consciousness precedes cognition. These very turns of phrase, however, imply the preceding
existence, not only of a conscious I , but of a whole community of similar consciousnesses.
5. Intellectual intuition and the activity of thinking
The third element Steiner introduces into his theory of knowledge is the activity of thinking.
Steiner’s analysis of the process of cognition seems to be this: (1) At the moment preceding
cognition the world-picture is directly given; (2) from the world-picture concepts and ideas
have been separated out, and (3) knowledge arises from the activity of thinking in reuniting
concepts and ideas with the given. Steiner describes the last stage as the act of restoration ,
and says:
The act of restoration consists in thinking about the world as given. Our thinking
consideration of the world brings about the actual union of the two parts of the worldcontent: the part we survey as given on the horizon of our experience, and the part
which has to be produced in the act of cognition before that can be given also. The
act of cognition is the synthesis of these two elements. Indeed, in every single act of
cognition, one part appears as something produced within that act itself, and through
that act, as added to the merely given.119
119 Ibid, pp 63-64.
120 Ibid, p. 64: To permeate the world, as given, with concepts and ideas, is a thinking consideration of
things.
Therefore, thinking is the act which mediates knowledge. It is only when thinking arranges the world-picture
by means of its own activity that knowledge can come about. Thinking itself is an activity which, in the
moment of cognition, produces a content of its own. Therefore, insofar as the content that is cognized issues
from thinking, it contains no problem for cognition. We have only to observe it; the very nature of what we
observe is given us directly. A description of thinking is also at the same time the science of thinking.
121 Ibid, p. 65.
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
It is the activity of thinking, therefore, which lies at the very core of all cognition, and it is the
recognition that there is content to the activity of thinking, which distinguishes Steiner’s
epistemology from the Kantian.120 Steiner is now able to provide a description of the kind of
activity in which thinking engages when it restores the world-picture, and says:
… thinking approaches the given world-content as an organizing principle. The
process takes place as follows: Thinking first lifts out certain entities from the totality
of the world-whole. In the given nothing is really separate; everything is a connected
continuum. Then thinking relates these separate entities to each other in accordance
with the thought-forms it produces, and also determines the outcome of this
relationship. When thinking restores a relationship between two separate sections of
the world-content, it does not do so arbitrarily. Thinking waits for what comes to
light of its own accord as the result of restoring the relationship. And it is this result
alone which is knowledge of that particular section of the world content.121
Steiner now compares his analysis of the role of thinking with Kant’s. Kant regards the
truths of mathematics and the Newtonian laws of nature as given, and as accessible a priori to
cognition. For Steiner, by contrast, there are no such a priori truths, and they can be obtained
as truths only through the activity of thinking. In an allusion to the argument of the
Transcendental Deduction122 Steiner argues for the primacy of thinking in cognition and
says:
122 CPR, B131, p. 152: It must be possible for the I think’ to accompany all my representations ... All the
manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the I think’ in the same subject in which this
manifold is found.
123 TK, p. 66.
124 Loc. cit.
125 Ibid, pp 66-67.
126 CPR, B4-B5, p. 44: Now it is easy to show that there actually are in human knowledge judgments which
are
necessary and in the strictest sense universal, and which are therefore pure a priori judgments. If an example
from the sciences be desired, we have only to look to any of the propositions of mathematics; if we seek an
example from the understanding in its quite ordinary employment, the proposition, every alteration must have
a
cause’, will serve our purpose. In the latter case, indeed, the very concept of a cause so manifestly contains
the
concept of a necessity of connection with an effect and of the strict universality of a rule, that the concept
would be altogether lost if we attempted to derive it, as Hume has done, from a repeated association of that
which happens ...
Page 34
When Kant speaks of the synthetic unity of apperception it is evident that he had
some inkling of what we have shown here to be an activity of thinking, the purpose of
which is to organize the world-content systematically. But the fact that he believed
that the a priori laws of pure science could be derived from the rules according to
which this synthesis takes place, shows how little this inkling brought to his
consciousness the essential task of thinking. He did not realize that this synthetic
activity of thinking is only a preparation for discovering natural laws as such.123
To demonstrate further what he means, Steiner invites the reader to extract one content, a,
from the world-picture and another content, b, from the world-picture 124 and to assume that
a and b are causally related, and that a is the cause and b the effect. From this he concludes
that the fact that a and b are causally connected could never become knowledge if thinking
were not able to form the concept of causality. 125 What Steiner does not address is that
Kant also gives a great deal of attention to causation, and argues from the Introduction that
causation is a pure a priori judgment, which precedes both experience and thinking in the
process of cognition.126
5.1 Steiner’s extrapolation from Fichte’s concept of intellectual intuition
Steiner develops his concept of intellectual intuition in the sixth chapter of Truth and
Knowledge, which is entitled Theory of knowledge free of assumptions and Fichte’s science
of knowledge. Steiner critiques Fichte’s conception of the relationship between the I ,
thinking and consciousness, but begins with a restatement of his own derivation of the
distinction between knowledge of the given and knowledge of consciousness. Knowledge
of the given world leads to a consideration of the idea of knowledge,127 which itself requires
a consideration of the activity of consciousness. This is because, unlike the elements of
knowledge of the external given world, …the concept and the given reality of consciousness
are originally separated .128 As a result, …the idea of knowledge can be united with its
corresponding given only by the activity of consciousness, and hence consciousness as a
reality exists only if it produces itself. 129
127 TK, p. 73: In contrast to the given world, a second world – the world of thinking – rises up to meet the I,
and the I unites the two through its own free decision, producing what we have defined as the idea of
knowledge.
128 Ibid, p. 74
129 Loc. cit.
130Ibid, p. 75: The science of knowledge … is built up … through a determination of freedom … to become
conscious of the general manner of acting of the intelligence. Steiner cites the full text from Fichte, J. (1845)
Sämtliche Werke: Berlin, Volume 1, p. 71f.
At this point Steiner believes he has cleared the ground sufficiently , so that it is possible to
see with clarity the fundamental mistake in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre. Steiner begins by
Page 35
arguing that the derivation of what Fichte calls the acting of intelligence is nothing other
than a less clearly articulated version of Steiner’s postulation of the idea of knowledge .
Steiner cites Fichte’s Sämtliche Werke130 and observes:
What does Fichte here mean by the acting of intelligence if we express in clear
concepts what he dimly felt? Nothing other than the production of the idea of
knowledge, taking place in consciousness. Had Fichte become clear about this, then
he would have formulated the above principle as follows: A science of knowledge
has the task of bringing to consciousness the act of cognition, insofar as it is still an
unconscious activity of the I; it must show that to objectify the idea of knowledge is a
necessary deed of the I.131
131 Loc. Cit.
132 Ibid, pp 76-77.
Fichte, Steiner argues, fails to identify the acting of intelligence with the specific act of
knowing. As a result, Steiner claims, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre is in the end not a theory of
knowledge at all, but rather of practical application , or of ethics. Steiner concludes:
The I is to do something, but what is it to do? Fichte did not formulate the concept of
knowledge which the I must produce, and in consequence he strove in vain to define
any further activity of the I beyond its original deed. In fact, he finally stated that to
investigate any such further activity does not lie within the scope of theory. In his
deduction of representation, he does not begin from any absolute activity of the I or of
the not-I, but he starts from a state of determination which, at the same time, itself
determines, because in his view nothing else is, or can be contained directly in
consciousness. What in turn determines the state of determination is left completely
undecided in his theory; and because of this uncertainty, one is forced beyond theory
into practical application of the science of knowledge. However, through this
statement Fichte completely abolishes all cognition. For the practical activity of the
I belongs to a different sphere altogether. … But if epistemology is to be the
foundation of all knowledge, the decisive point is not to have a definition of an I that
is free, but of an I that cognizes. 132
At this point the argument of the Wisssenschaftslehre as Steiner understands it, and Steiner’s
identification of Fichte’s fundamental mistake , might be expressed by the following
propositions. Fichte argues in effect that:
(1) Only a theory of consciousness can provide the foundation for knowledge; now
(2) The ground of consciousness is the I’s postulating of its own existence, which is an
intellectual intuition; but
(3) The I’s postulation of its own existence is an activity of the I; and
Page 36
(4) This activity is a free process. The ground of all knowledge, therefore, is the free activity
of the I in coming to self-consciousness.
According to Steiner, Fichte’s argument ends at this point. Fichte’s fundamental mistake is
the failure to take the argument one step further, and to recognize that:
(5) The free activity of the I is a cognitive activity: the I is being active, specifically, in the act
of knowing itself.133
133 Ibid, p. 75-78.
134 Ibid, p. 75: Harms, in his address, On the Philosophy of Fichte, (p15) rightly says: His world-view is
predominantly and exclusively ethical, and his theory of knowledge has no other feature.
135 Breazeale, D. (1994) Philosophy and the Divided Self, in H. Girndt and W. Schrader (eds) Realität und
Gewißheit, Rodopi: Amsterdam and Atlanta, p19: The theoretical quest that animates the Jena
Wissenschaftslehre, that is, the quest for a coherent and certain philosophical system able to furnish us with
a
fully adequate, transcendental account of the full range of everyday experience (including both our practical
certainty of our own freedom and our experience of objective reality) is not conceived of by Fichte as an end
in
itself. Instead, this scientific project is itself a response to a deeper, practical demand – a demand not for
theoretical or even for practical certainty, but rather for personal unity or wholeness. We seek systematic
unity
in the realm of theory (philosophy) not primarily for its own sake, but rather, as a means for coming to terms
with and if possible mitigating the painful, existential division within our own selves.
136 IWL, p. 77.
Steiner’s explanation for Fichte’s failure to take the step of identifying the activity of the I
with knowing is that Fichte’s real interest, and real agenda, is to formulate a ground for
ethics, rather than for epistemology. This is a view of Fichte shared by sources from which
Steiner drew134, and by contemporary interpreters of Fichte.135 The effects of this are that
Fichte does not complete the epistemological task, and nor, according to Steiner, does he
arrive at a credible grounding of the I . As a consequence:
Cognition would have no task to fulfil whatever if all spheres of reality were given in
their totality. But the I, so long as it has not been inserted by thinking into the
systematic whole of the world-picture, also exists as something merely directly given,
so that it does not suffice to point to its activity. Yet Fichte is of the opinion that
where the I is concerned, all that is necessary is to seek and find it. … We have
seen that the only instance where proof and definitions are not required is in regard to
the content of pure logic. The I, however, belongs to reality, where it is necessary to
establish the presence of this or that category within the given. This Fichte does not
do. And this is why he gave his science of knowledge a mistaken form.136
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Fichte’s endeavour to provide an absolute grounding for the freedom of the I , Steiner
argues, leaves him with two possibilities, and the various versions of the Wissenschaftslehre
can be seen as a shift from one of these to the other. Steiner observes:
When it is realized that, owing to the whole trend of his philosophy, Fichte could not
be content with any starting point for knowledge other than an absolute decree, it
becomes clear that he has only two possibilities for making this beginning appear
intelligible. One possibility is to focus the attention on one or another of the
empirical activities of consciousness, and then crystallize out the pure concept of the I
by gradually stripping away everything that did not originally belong to
consciousness. The other possibility is to start directly with the original activity of
the I, and then to bring its nature to light through self-contemplation and selfobservation. Fichte chose the first possibility at the beginning of his philosophical
path, but gradually went over to the second.137
137 Ibid, p. 78.
138 Ibid, p. 80: Unless the I sets to work on something given which it postulates, it can do nothing and
hence
cannot postulate either. Fichte’s own principle actually shows this: The I postulates its existence. This
existence is a category. This means we have arrived at our principle: The activity of the I is to postulate, as a
free decision, the concepts and ideas of the given. Fichte arrives at his conclusion only because he
unconsciously sets out to that the I exists . Had he worked out the concept of cognition, he would then have
arrived at the true starting point of a theory of knowledge, namely: The I postulates cognition.
139 Ibid, p. 81.
In both cases Fichte’s argument amounts to an ontological grounding for ethics, rather than
for the ground for an epistemology. The crystallizing out of the pure concept of the I could
lead to an epistemology, Steiner claims, but Fichte does not allow it to do so.138 The other
approach, which Fichte takes from the time of the First Introduction, is more likely to lead
immediately to a theory of knowledge. This is because:
In self-observation, the activity of the I is actually seen, not one-sidedly turned in a
particular direction, not as merely postulating existence, but revealing many aspects
of itself as it strives to grasp the directly given world-content in thinking. Selfobservation reveals the I engaged in the activity of building up the world-picture by
combining the given with concepts.139
Fichte’s interest, however, is focused so little on the world of the directly given, and so much
on the operations of consciousness, that he confuses knowledge with self-consciousness.140
The consequence, according to Steiner, is that the Wissenschaftslehre can never become the
basis for the sciences Fichte intended it to be, and the capacity for intuitive knowledge has to
be left to a completely new sense organ , which is not yet developed in the human being.141
140 Ibid, p. 82: … for him, the process of knowledge appears to consist in spinning the world out of the I
itself.
This is why Fichte sees the world-picture more and more as a construction of the I. He emphasizes ever more
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strongly that for the science of knowledge it is essential to awaken the faculty for watching the I while it
constructs the world.
141 Loc. cit; Steiner cites Fichte’s Introductory Lecture to the Science of Knowledge, delivered at Berlin
University in the autumn of 1813: 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.
142 IWL, p. 20.
143TK, p. 84.
Fichte’s failure to recognize that the activity of the I’ is specifically thinking activity is
illuminated by Steiner in his commentary on Fichte’s famous dictum: The kind of
philosophy one chooses thus depends upon the kind of person one is. 142 Fichte is referring
to a choice between what he (and Kant) call dogmatism’ and idealism’ – self-consistent
world views, which take as their given either the existence of things, or the existence of the
I’. Fichte leaves the choice of system to the individual, but, as Steiner says in paraphrasing
Fichte: … if one wishes the I to retain its independence, then one will cease to believe in the
external things and devote oneself to idealism. 143 Fichte does not appear to give any
thought to how we might set about making the choice between dogmatism and idealism.
Steiner argues that an enquiry into this process leads inexorably to the activity of thinking:
This line of thought fails to consider one thing, namely that the I cannot reach any
choice or decision which has some real foundation if it does not presuppose
something which enables it to do so. Everything determined by the I remains empty
and without content if the I does not find something that is full of content and
determined through and through, which then makes it possible for the I to determine
the given and, in doing so, also enables it to choose between idealism and dogmatism.
This something which is permeated with content through and through is, however, the
world of thinking. And to determine the given by means of thinking is to cognize.
No matter from what aspect Fichte is considered, we shall find that his line of thought
gains power and life when we think of the activity of the I, which he presents as grey
and empty of content, as filled and organized by what we have called the process of
cognition.144
144 Loc. Cit.
145 Ibid, p. 85: 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. Steiner is using the language of Fichte’s earlier
descriptions of the derivation of self-consciousness, but the point would remain the same with the third
formulation as an activity into which an eye is inserted .
146Loc. cit: Anyone who has acquainted himself intimately with Fichte’s system will know that it was a point
Page 39
of
vital importance for this philosopher to uphold the principle that nothing from the external world can enter the
I,
that nothing takes place in the I which is not originally postulated by the I itself.
147See the earlier discussion of Fichte’s claim that there is no essential difference between his philosophy
and
Kant’s.
Steiner is claiming that the activity of thinking is not grey and empty like Fichte’s picture
of the activity of the I, because it is suffused with the content of the directly given world,
which it combines with the concepts produced by intellectual intuition. The I does also act
freely when it generates the idea of knowledge, when it produces the category of cognition
through self-determination 145, but otherwise it is only in the activity of thinking itself, that
the I can be said to be free. Steiner claims that his discussion sheds a completely new light
on critical idealism. It is clear that Steiner has in mind Fichte’s subjective idealism in
particular,146 and while Fichte might assert that the same would therefore apply to Kant’s
critical idealism as well147, Kant’s presentation of perception in the First Critique suggests
that for him, as much as for Steiner, the information we obtain of the world through sense
perception is objective and real . Despite the dualism of the critical philosophy there is
nothing about Kant’s presentation that detracts from the variety of the manifold of
experience, of the directly given world.
But even if Steiner’s criticism of the subjectivity of critical idealism is limited to Fichte’s
subjective idealism there are still some serious difficulties with it. Steiner wants to
differentiate his own position from Fichte’s, and therefore claims:
Yet it is beyond all doubt that no idealism can derive from the I that form of the
world-content which is here described as the directly given. This form of the worldcontent can only be given; it can never be constructed out of thinking.148
148 TK, p. 85.
Steiner now appears to be opting for a na„ve realist perspective, rather than positioning
himself within the idealist tradition, for which the starting point of cognition will always be
that what we take as the directly given is mediated to us through our senses together with
the activity of consciousness. He also appears to be assuming the critical idealist will seek to
assert that the form of the world content can be constructed specifically out of thinking. It is
Steiner himself who has introduced thinking as the active element in the process of cognition.
The critical idealist need only reply that Steiner has provided an argument against his own
removal of the process of cognition from the self-consciousness of intellectual intuition to
thinking.
Steiner must, of course, argue for the independent reality of the directly given if he is
establish his case for access to essences, and if he is to be consistent with the theory of
knowledge he has extracted from Goethe’s scientific studies. These two sources of Steiner’s
epistemology now start to merge as he draws a distinction between the sense-perceptible and
Page 40
the essential nature of the given. Steiner returns to his claim that human cognition can
have access to essences when he says:
It is, however, one thing merely to be aware of the given world; it is quite another to
recognize its essential nature. This latter, though intimately connected with the
world-content, does not become clear to us unless we ourselves build up reality out of
the given and the activity of thinking. The essential What of the given is postulated
for the I only through the I itself. Yet the I would have no occasion to postulate
within itself the nature of something given if it did not first find itself confronted by a
completely undetermined given. Therefore, what is postulated by the I as the nature
and being of the world is not postulated without the I, but through it.149
149 Loc. cit.
150 or positings; WW: Das eigentliche Was des Gegebenen wird für das Ich nur durch das letzten selbst
gesetzt [writer’s italics].
151 TK, p. 87.
152 Steiner may yet qualify as an idealist; see, for example, Rockmore, T. (2007) Kant and Idealism, Yale
UP:
New Haven and London, p. 2: Though some of the most interesting thinkers in the Western philosophical
Steiner’s essential What of the given is not, of course, the Kantian thing-in-itself.
Steiner is building a case that the essential What of the given is accessible as knowledge
through the postulations150 of the I, and through the activity of thinking. That is, the
connection he had sought to establish between the given world and cognition through
Goethe’s way of seeing he is now seeking to establish by starting from a critique of the
activity of thinking. Steiner therefore claims that, through his examination of the activity of
thinking, he has constructed a true idealism grounded in the world as it really is, and
concludes:
Our theory of knowledge supplies the foundation for true idealism in the real sense of
the word. It establishes the conviction that in thinking the essence of the world is
mediated. Through thinking alone the relationship between the details of the worldcontent become manifest, be it the relation of the sun to the stone it warms, or the
relation of the I to the external world. In thinking alone the element is given which
determines all things in their relations to one another.151
Bearing in mind his trenchant criticism of Kant, the move he is now making away from
Fichte, and his evident attachment to Goethe’s form of empirical enquiry, one might wonder
why Steiner feels impelled to regard his own epistemology as any form of idealism. There is
little in the structure of Steiner’s argument which would qualify him as an idealist. The
explanation may simply be that Steiner is looking to position himself amongst his
contemporaries in the neo-Kantian tradition.152
tradition are widely taken to be, and even took themselves to be, idealists, there is no agreement on the
Page 41
meaning
of idealism .
15 Part 2 Chapter 6
153 TK, pp 89-91.
154 Ibid, pp 93-95.
155 Ibid, p. 89.
156 By subjective idealism Steiner means Kant’s and Fichte’s critical idealism, Schelling’s and Hegel’s
absolute
idealism, and all other forms of transcendental idealism, so as to distinguish them from what he describes as
his
objective idealism.
157 By definition; in this, Steiner is following Fichte, who elaborates the one-sidedness both of dogmatism
and
idealism in the First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre; IWL, p. 11ff
158 TK, p. 90: The adherent of skepticism must cease to doubt the possibility of knowing the world, for there
is
no room for doubt in regard to the given – it is still untouched by all predicates later bestowed on it by
means
of cognition. Should the sceptic maintain that our cognitive thinking can never approach the world, he can
only
maintain this with the help of thinking, and in so doing refutes himself. Whoever attempts to establish doubt in
thinking by means of thinking itself admits, by implication, that thinking contains a power strong enough to
support a conviction.
5.2 From intellectual intuition to intuitive thinking
Steiner concludes Truth and Knowledge with two short chapters, an Epistemological
Conclusion153 and a Practical Conclusion.154 The Epistemological Conclusion states the
position Steiner’s argument has reached, which is to assert that knowledge arises from the
activity of thinking. He has not yet sought to demonstrate how the activity of thinking will
provide knowledge of essences. Steiner makes several bold claims about what he has
achieved. He claims:
We acquire positive insight through particular judgments; through the theory of
knowledge we learn the value of this insight for reality. Because we have adhered
strictly to this absolutely fundamental principle and have not evaluated any particular
instances of knowledge in our discussion, we have transcended all one-sided worldviews.155
This transcendence is said to encompass dogmatism, subjective idealism156 and all forms of
skepticism. Dogmatism and subjective idealism, according to Steiner, are clearly onesided,157 while skepticism is one-sided by dint of its failure to acknowledge the reality of the
given, and to acknowledge its own dependency upon thinking.158 The second bold claim is
to have succeeded where Kant, and many others, had failed:
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15 Part 2 Chapter 6
… our theory of knowledge transcends both one-sided empiricism and one-sided
rationalism by uniting them at a higher level. In this way, justice is done to both.
Empiricism is justified by showing that as far as content is concerned, all knowledge
of the given is to be attained only through direct contact with the given. And it will
be found that this view also does justice to rationalism in that thinking is declared to
be both the necessary and the only mediator of knowledge.159
159 Loc. cit.
160 TK, p. 91; WW, p. 57: Und wir glauben in der Tat gezeigt zu haben, daß der Streit der
Weltanschauungen
daher kommt, daß man ein Wissen über ein Objektives (Ding, Ich, Bewußtsein usw.) zu erwerben trachtet,
ohne
vorher desjenigen genau zu kennen, was allein erst über alle andere Wissen Auschluß geben kann: die Natur
des Wissens selbst [this writer’s italics]
Steiner speaks as if all empiricists make no attempt to account for the deficits identified by
rationalists in an empiricist view of knowledge, and that rationalists, likewise, never allow for
interplay between thinking and an empirical reality. The contrary, of course, is the case, and
the history both of empiricism and of rationalism is the history of ever more sophisticated
attempts to account for the whole of inner and of outer reality from a specific base.
Steiner does not explain what he means by uniting empiricism and rationalism at a higher
level , but this is, presumably, the level at which the activity of thinking emerges as the
mediator between the directly given world content and intellectual intuition. Steiner’s
final epistemological claim is a summary of the others, namely:
And we believe that we have shown that all conflicts between world-views result
from a tendency to attempt to attain knowledge of something objective (thing, I,
consciousness, etc) without having first gained a sufficiently exact knowledge of what
alone can elucidate all knowledge: the nature of knowledge itself.160
This claim leads on to Steiner’s Practical Conclusion, from which it is apparent that Steiner’s
search for knowledge of essences will inevitably lead on to wider, cosmological implications:
It is part of man’s task to bring into the sphere of apparent reality the fundamental
laws of the universe which, although they rule all existence, would never come to
existence as such. The very nature of knowledge [Natur des Wissens] is that the
world-foundation [Weltengrund], which is not to be found as such in objective reality,
is present in it. Our knowledge [Erkennen] – pictorially expressed – is a gradual,
living penetration into the world’s foundation.161
161 TK, p. 93; Natur des Wissens is better translated as nature of knowing, and should be distinguished from
Page 43
Erkennen, which does translate as knowledge; Weltengrund is better translated as world-ground, which is
clumsy in English, but retains the Fichtean and German Idealist concept of ground.
In Philosophy of Freedom Steiner elaborates his arguments for grounding both his
epistemological and his practical conclusions on intuitive thinking.
Page 44
17 Part 2 Chapter 7 INTUITIVE THINKING.txt
PART 2 Chapter 7 INTUITIVE THINKING
The fourth disjunction between Kantian epistemology and Steiner’s notion of cognition
concerns the activity of thinking, and it follows on from the disjunction over intellectual
intuition. If it is accepted that a case can be made (as it is by Fichte) for intellectual intuition
as a function of human cognition, it then becomes a question of the role intellectual intuition
is to be designated in the act of knowing. Fichte shows that intellectual intuition leads to an
activity, but does not specify what that activity is said to be. In Truth and Knowledge Steiner
argues that this activity is, specifically, the activity of thinking engaged in producing ideas
and concepts. Steiner designates this mode of thinking as intuitive thinking, and makes the
claim in Philosophy of Freedom that it is in the process of thinking intuitively that human
beings experience freedom.1 For Steiner there is an immediate and necessary association
between intuitive thinking and freedom. Kant, on the other hand, claims in the Preface to the
Second Edition of the First Critique that freedom, and our consciousness of freedom, is an
ethical, rather than a cognitive, concept and is neither regulative nor constitutive of the
activity of pure reason.2 The fourth disjunction, therefore, represents a further step for
Steiner away from the epistemology of the critical philosophy. It is, in fact, the last step
Steiner takes before abandoning his project of attempting to ground knowledge of essences
within the framework of the neo-Kantian tradition.
1 Ph F, Ch 12 Addendum [1], ITSP, pp 192-193: It is especially significant that the justification for calling a
will free comes from the experience that a conceptual intuition realizes itself in the will. … This is achievable
because in conceptual intuition nothing but its self-based essence is at work. … If I observe willing that is the
image of an intuition, then all organically necessary activity has withdrawn from that willing. The will is free.
2 CPR, B xxxiii, p. 31: the consciousness of freedom rests exclusively on the clear exhibition of duties …
The argument of this chapter is developed over six sections. The first and second sections
give an account of Kant’s concepts of thinking and freedom, as these two concepts are
intertwined by Steiner in Philosophy of Freedom in the course of his argument for intuitive
thinking. The first section shows that thinking must be transparent and discursive for Kant,
rather than creative and intuitive as Steiner would have it. The second section is an account
of Kant’s concept of freedom, and of the ambiguous role Kant assigns to freedom within the
critical philosophy. The third section then examines Steiner’s presentations of thinking and
freedom in Philosophy of Freedom, for it is from these two concepts that he derives intuitive
thinking. The derivation of intuitive thinking is central to Steiner’s epistemological project
and it is the ground of the epistemological claims of his anthroposophical spiritual science.
There are difficulties within the derivation, and for that reason it has become the source of
heated debate amongst philosophically-inclined anthroposophists. The fourth section is
concerned with these difficulties and the implications they will have for Steiner’s prospects
of demonstrating that the critical philosophy can be extended to include knowledge of
essences. The fifth section is a short discussion of the observation debate, the question of
whether it is possible to observe oneself in the process of thinking. The final section asserts
that, as with the perception of archetypes, Steiner has again been unable to ground the
apperception of essences from within the framework of the neo-Kantian tradition.
1. Kant’s concept of thinking
Page 1
Kant introduces thinking into the argument of the First Critique in the Transcendental
Deduction of the Transcendental Analytic, but does so in the form of what he calls the I
think’ .3 It is noteworthy that although the whole argument of the critical philosophy
3 Ibid, B131, p. 152.
depends to a considerable extent upon the capacity of thinking to generate concepts,4 Kant
does not direct his attention to thinking itself until he is accounting for how the elements of
cognition adhere, when he is describing the unification of those elements as the synthetic
unity of apperception and the transcendental unity of self-consciousness .5 In the course
of this argument Kant identifies the I think’ as the unseen element in all cognitive activity,
which he describes as being present within the consciousness of all representations of
experience. Kant then introduces the I think’ and its association with representations and
consciousness in the following way:6
4 Ibid, A19, B33, p. 65: Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions; they
are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise concepts.
5 Ibid, B132, p. 153.
6 Ibid, B131-132, pp 152-153.
7The contrast Kant wants to draw is that the I think is a reality for Descartes, while for Kant it is merely
contingent. In the introduction to the Paralogisms of Pure Reason Kant says at A 347, B405. p. 332: The
proposition I think’, is, however, here taken only problematically, not in so far as it may contain perception of
an existent (the Cartesian cogito, ergo sum), but in respect of its mere possibility, in order to see what
properties
applicable to its subject (be that subject actually existent or not) may follow from so simple a proposition.
8 Ibid, B131-132, pp 152-153.
It must be possible for the I think’ to accompany all my representations; for
otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all,
and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least
would be nothing to me. That representation which can be given prior to all thought
is entitled intuition. All the manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation
to the I think’ in the same subject in which this manifold is found.
It is striking that Kant speaks in terms of the I think’ rather than the activity of thinking, and
that he presents the I think’ as the ground of all intuitions. It may be that Kant does this to
contrast his conception of the role of thinking with Descartes’ cogito.7 Kant no doubt has
sensory intuitions in mind, but he continues his account of the I think’ in the Transcendental
Deduction in a way which is suggestive of intellectual intuition, for he says:8
But this representation is an act of spontaneity, that is, it cannot be regarded as
Page 2
belonging to sensibility. I call it pure apperception, to distinguish it from empirical
apperception, or, again, original apperception, because it is that self-consciousness
which, while generating the representation I think’ (a representation which must be
capable of accompanying all other representations, and which in all consciousness is
one and the same), cannot itself be accompanied by any further representation.
The difference between the I think’ and intellectual intuition is that although the I think’ is
also generated by an act of spontaneity it is nevertheless a representation [Vorstellung]
generated by another representation, namely self-consciousness. For Kant both selfconsciousness and the I think’, therefore, are not to be regarded as anything more than
representations and they are not elements of consciousness of which we can have immediate
knowledge.
Because the I think’ can be no more accessible to cognition than in the form of a
representation Kant does not consider the activity of thinking separately from the substance’,
the I’, which thinks. The Paralogisms of Pure Reason are designed to demonstrate that
while the I think’ ... contains the form of each and every judgment of understanding and
accompanies all categories as their vehicle 9 the consequence is that thinking, like the I’, has
no substance of its own. As a result, it could never be the case for Kant that thinking of itself
could provide knowledge of an object.10 Indeed, thinking for Kant could never be anything
more than Steiner’s description of it as ... the unobserved element in our normal spiritual
life 11 and, from Kant’s perspective, it would never be possible to observe the I’ in the act of
thinking, for ... I do not know myself through being conscious of myself as thinking, but
9Ibid, B406, p. 368.
10Loc. cit: The following general remark may, at the outset, aid us in our scrutiny of this kind of argument. I
do not know an object merely in that I think …
11Ph F, Ch 3 [12], ITSP, p. 33.
only when I am conscious of the intuition of myself as determined with respect to the
functions of thought. 12
12 CPR, B 406, p. 368.
13 Kant, I. (1972) (ed H Paton) The Moral Law: Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Hutchinson
University Library: London; hereinafter Groundwork and GW
14 CPR, B xxvii-xxviii, p. 28.
2. Kant’s concept of freedom
Kant says a great deal more about freedom than he does about thinking. Freedom is the
constitutive principle of practical reason, and is therefore at the centre of the arguments both
of the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals13 and of the Second Critique. There is,
however, also some discussion of freedom in the First Critique, and it is particularly
interesting, because it gives the impression that for Kant, as much as for Fichte and for
Steiner, the epistemological argument is designed to ground an ethics within which moral
Page 3
choices are to be made by a free will. Kant’s references to freedom begin in the Preface to
the Second Edition of the First Critique. Here Kant is referring to the division between
appearances and things-in-itself as a way of accounting for the seeming contradiction
between natural determination and freedom of the will. He then says of human freedom:
But if our Critique is not in error in teaching that the object is to be taken in a twofold
sense, namely as appearance and as thing in itself … then there is no contradiction in
supposing that one and the same will is, in the appearance, that is, in its visible acts,
necessarily subject to the law of nature, and so far not free, while yet, as belonging to
a thing in itself, it is not subject to that law, and is therefore free. My soul, viewed
from the latter standpoint, cannot indeed be known by means of speculative reason
(and still less through empirical observation); and freedom as a property of a being to
which I attribute effects in the sensible world, is therefore also not knowable in any
such fashion.14
Although there is freedom of the will, Kant argues, we are not able to know whether or not
we are free or can exercise freedom.15 This is because, even though we can think freedom,
our actual knowledge is limited to the world of appearances.16 That is also why freedom
must enter into our understanding of practical reason but not of pure reason. The exercise of
freedom of the will, as the determinative principle of moral action, does not itself require that
we understand freedom,17 nor even that we have any consciousness of it.18
15 Loc. cit: But though I cannot know, I can yet think freedom.
16 Ibid, B xxix, p. 29.
17 Loc Cit
18Ibid, B xxxiii, p. 31: the consciousness of freedom rests exclusively on the clear exhibition of duties, in
opposition to all claims of the inclinations;
19 Ibid, B473, p. 409.
Even though Kant has already dispensed with freedom as an element of the epistemological
argument in the Preface to the Second Edition, he deals with freedom again in the Antinomies
of the Transcendental Aesthetic. In the third antinomy Kant sets out the maxims for the
arguments for and against the existence of freedom as freedom of the will in the form of the
following dialectic:
Thesis Antithesis
Causality in accordance with the There is no freedom; everything in the
laws of nature is not the only world takes place solely in accordance
causality from which the appear- with laws of nature.
ances of the world can one and all
Page 4
be derived. To explain these
appearances it is necessary to assume
that there is also another causality,
that of freedom.19
He then provides the proofs for each of the thesis and the antithesis. The proof for the thesis
is concluded in this way:
We must, then, assume a causality through which something takes place, the cause of
which is not itself determined, in accordance with necessary laws, by another cause
antecedent to it, that is to say, an absolute spontaneity of the cause, whereby a series
of appearances, which proceeds in accordance with laws of nature, begins of itself.
This is transcendental freedom, without which, even in the [ordinary] course of
nature, the series of appearances on the side of the causes can never be complete.20
20 Ibid, B474-475, pp 410-411.
21 Loc. Cit.
The proof Kant devises for the antithesis relies upon the apparent contradiction between
freedom and conformity to law, and concludes:
If freedom were determined in accordance with laws, it would not be freedom; it
would simply be nature under another name. Nature and transcendental freedom
differ as do conformity to law and lawlessness.21
It is clear from the way in which Kant structures these proofs of the third antinomy that he is
leaving the way open for a conception of freedom in the Second Critique, which will not be
transcendent but immanent, and in which freedom is consistent with conformity to law, but to
moral law rather than to natural law.
Despite Kant’s arguments against the possibility of the knowledge of freedom, and the
equivocation of the third antinomy as to the actuality of freedom, there is a sense in which
freedom is a necessary constituent of his epistemological argument as well. A critique of
pure reason, as Kant recognizes towards the end of the First Critique in the Transcendental
Doctrine of Method, requires the liberty, or freedom (as freedom from restriction), to subject
reason to recurrent criticism. In setting out the Discipline of Pure Reason Kant then
observes:
Reason must in all its undertakings subject itself to criticism; should it limit freedom
of criticism by any prohibitions, it must harm itself, drawing upon itself a damaging
suspicion. Nothing is so important through its usefulness, nothing so sacred, that it
Page 5
may be exempted from this searching examination, which knows no respect for
persons. Reason depends on this freedom for its very existence.22
22 Ibid, B 766, p. 593.
23 GW, p. 107: Will is a kind of causality belonging to living beings so far as they are rational. Freedom
would then be the property this causality has of being able to work independently of determination by alien
causes.
24Loc. cit: The above definition of freedom is negative and consequently unfruitful as a way of grasping its
essence …
25Loc. cit: The concept of causality carries with it that of laws (Gesetze) in accordance with which, because
of
something else we call a cause, something else – namely, its effect – must be posited (gesetzt). Hence
freedom
of will, although it is not the property of conforming to laws of nature, is not for this reason lawless …
26 Ibid, p. 108.
27Ibid, p. 119: Reason would overstep its limits if it took upon itself to explain how pure reason can be
practical. This would be identical with explaining how freedom is possible.
This kind of freedom, which is exercised in the process of self-criticism, will be superrational, and will be consistent with conformity to the laws of reason.
Kant’s subsequent elaborations of freedom as free will in the Groundwork and in the Second
Critique shed further light on the limitations he is applying to the concept of freedom. In
the Groundwork Kant only begins to speak about freedom after he has formulated the
metaphysic of moral action in terms of the will, duty, the categorical imperative and the
various formulations of the moral law. He then introduces freedom as a function of
causality23 and acknowledges that this is a negative definition of freedom,24 the positive
aspect of which is freedom’s capacity to conform to causal laws.25 Freedom, then, must be
presupposed as a property of the will of all rational beings,26 though we cannot claim to know
how freedom is possible.27 Kant’s conception of freedom in the Groundwork, then, might be
said to amount to a rational construct for the law-abiding operation of the will, for Kant
concludes the argument by saying:
Thus the Idea of freedom can never admit of full comprehension, or indeed of insight,
since it can never by any analogy have an example falling under it. It holds only as a
necessary presupposition of reason in a being who believes himself to be conscious of
a will – that is, of a power distinct from mere appetition ...28
28 Loc Cit, appetition appears to be an attempt to translate Willkür without the range of connotations of
desire .
Page 6
29 C Pr R, pp 3-4.
30 Ibid, p. 75: What is essential in the moral worth of actions is that the moral law should directly determine
the
will. p. 76: The essential point in all determination of the will through the moral law is this: as a free will, and
thus not only without co-operating with sensuous impulses but even rejecting all of them and checking all
inclinations so far as they could be antagonistic to the law, it is determined by the law.
31Ibid, p. 82.
As the Groundwork is designed to set out Kant’s ethical argument in a form which is readily
understood by a wider public, it appears that Kant intends to subsume freedom within his
deontological ethical position.
In the Preface to the Second Critique Kant identifies freedom as the ground of practical
reason and of the speculative concepts, for which he is attempting to find some justification.
Kant then says of freedom:
The concept of freedom, in so far as its reality is proved by an apodictic law of
practical reason, is the keystone of the whole architecture of the system of pure reason
and even of speculative reason. All other concepts (those of God and immortality)
which, as mere Ideas, are unsupported by anything in speculative reason now attach
themselves to the concept of freedom and gain, with it and through it, stability and
objective reality. That is, their possibility is proved by the fact that there really is
freedom, for this Idea is revealed by the moral law.29
Freedom is again defined negatively by Kant, this time as the freedom to avoid temptations to
disregard the moral law. This is because a free will, in Kant’s view, is a will freed from nonrational feelings, impulses and desires.30 As a result of this not only is free will, but freedom
itself is a limiting factor within the critical philosophy:
Freedom, the causality of which is determinable only through the law, consists,
however, only in the fact that it limits all inclinations, including self-esteem, to the
condition of obedience to its pure law.31
Kant’s concept of freedom, then, is a capacity to exercise moral choice, but only in
accordance with the moral law. Thus Kant can exclaim:
Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing charming or
insinuating but requires submission and yet seekest not to move the will by
threatening aught that would arouse natural aversion or terror, but only holdest forth a
law which of itself finds entrance into the mind and yet gains reluctant reverence
(though not always obedience) – a law before which all inclinations are mute even
though they secretly work against it: what origin is worthy of thee, and where is the
root of thy noble descent which proudly rejects all kinship with the inclinations and
from which to be descended is the indispensable condition of the only worth which
men alone can give themselves?32
32 Ibid, p. 90: the antiquated language is the Lewis White Beck translation.
Page 7
33 ITSP, pp 159-160.
We can gauge the extent of Steiner’s rejection of the Kantian formulation of a concept of
freedom from his parodying rejoinder to Kant in The Philosophy of Freedom:
Kant says, Duty! You exalted, mighty name, you who contain nothing lovable,
nothing ingratiatingly agreeable, but who demand submission, (you who) establish a
law ... before which all inclinations fall dumb, though in secret they might work
against it! To this, a human being, out of the consciousness of the free spirit, replies:
Freedom! You friendly, human name, you who contain everything morally beloved,
everything that most dignifies my humanity, and who make me into no-one’s servant,
you who do not merely establish a law, but wait for what my moral love itself will
recognize as law, because it feels unfree in the face of every merely imposed law! 33
In juxtaposing duty and freedom in this way Steiner is able to avoid the difficulties Kant
faces in interpreting freedom as a function of duty, but he exposes himself to the much
greater practical problem of distinguishing between the exercise of freedom, when it is
determined by moral love and when it is merely the expression of wilfulness, desire and
self-gratification.
In view of the form in which Kant structures his moral law it may seem puzzling at first that
he should describe freedom in the Second Critique as the keystone of the whole architecture
of the system of pure reason and even of speculative reason . Kant’s description of freedom
as the keystone is, however, very apt once we recognize that the driving force of the critical
philosophy is to establish a ground for the justification of metaphysical judgments about God,
human freedom and immortality of the soul. Of these three purported sources of
metaphysical knowledge, freedom is the most accessible. If, through the critical philosophy,
Kant can establish the reality of human freedom, he is on the way to a constitutive, rather
than a merely regulative, system of metaphysics. In this sense, then, Kant’s epistemological
project is like Steiner’s, in that cognition is seen to be the underpinning for a philosophy of
freedom. The difference between Kant and Steiner lies in the means by which freedom is
sought to be derived from the theory of knowledge, and the implications which can be drawn
from that derivation.
Although Kant discusses freedom as a possibility in the First Critique and in the
Groundwork, it is not until the Second Critique that he proposes the actuality of freedom. In
the Preface to the Second Critique, as we have seen, Kant claims that there really is
freedom, for this Idea is revealed by the moral law. 34 That is, while speculative reason
allows us to think freedom, but not to know it, practical reason allows us to know that there
actually is freedom. We know there really is freedom because freedom is an essential
element of the moral law, and we have immediate experience of the moral law. Kant is
mindful of the apparent circularity of his argument, and explains in a footnote:
34 C Pr R, p. 4.
To avoid having anyone imagine that there is an inconsistency when I say that
freedom is the condition of the moral law and later assert that the moral law is the
Page 8
only condition under which freedom can be known, I will only remind the reader that,
though freedom is certainly the ratio essendi of the moral law, the latter is the ratio
cognoscendi of freedom. For had not the moral law already been distinctly thought
in our reason, we would never have been justified in assuming anything like freedom,
even though it is not self-contradictory. But if there were no freedom, the moral law
would never have been encountered in us.35
35 Loc. cit.
36 Ibid, p. 169: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the oftener and the
more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not merely
conjecture them and seek them as though obscured in darkness or in the transcendent region beyond my
horizon:
I see them before me, and I associate them directly with the consciousness of my own existence.
37 Ibid, pp 28-30: The first formulation, the Fundamental Law of Pure Practical Reason, So act that the
maxim
of your will could always hold at the same time as the principle giving universal law , indicates that freedom
for
Kant does not mean freedom of action in any absolute sense, but freedom to act in accordance with the
universal
moral law.
From this it appears that there are three separable steps in Kant’s derivation of freedom,
which takes the form of a syllogism. The first step is the distinct thought of the existence
of the moral law. Kant appears to be saying that, because we can think of the existence of a
moral law if there is freedom of the will, then there must be a moral law if it can be shown
that there is freedom. The second step is the assertion of the logical possibility of the idea
of freedom, which is established in the Third Antinomy of the First Critique as being not
self-contradictory, and therefore possible as a practical reality. The third step is the
conclusion that there must in fact be freedom, because we encounter the moral law within
ourselves. Kant’s derivation of freedom, then, appears to depend upon accepting the moral
law within as an unassailable fact of the human condition.36 Kant will not, however, grant
our recognition of the moral law the status of an intellectual intuition, though it might seem
that there could hardly be a better way one could describe it.
As Kant’s derivation of freedom depends upon the existence of the moral law, the form the
moral law takes will tell us something about what Kant means by freedom. Kant deals with
the relationship between the will, the moral law and freedom in the sections of the Second
Critique leading to the first formulation of the categorical imperative.37 In these sections
Kant argues that the will can only be determined by a law, which is not a law of nature, and
to that extent, at least, it must be independent, and therefore free. He then asks what kind of
law would be required to ground an independent and free will, and concludes that it must be
the mere legislative form of the law.38 As a result, therefore, freedom and unconditional
practical law reciprocally imply each other 39 and and it is the moral law which leads
directly to the concept of freedom .40 In other words, the kind of freedom, which can be
Page 9
derived from the moral law, will be nothing more than the regulative idea of a freedom to
comply with the moral law.
38 Ibid, p. 28: Now, as no determining ground of the will except the universal legislative form [of its maxim]
can serve as a law for it, such a will must be conceived as wholly independent of the natural law of
appearances
in their mutual relations, i.e. the law of causality. Such independence is called freedom in the strictest, i.e.
transcendental, sense. Therefore, a will to which only the law-giving form of the maxim can serve as a law is
a
free will.
39 Ibid, p. 29.
40 Loc. cit.
41 Ibid, p. 31.
Kant’s derivation of freedom and the form it takes is also prescribed, to some extent, by his
determination that we do not possess a faculty for intellectual intuition. In discussing the
relationship between law and will Kant comments that the will’s independence of empirical
conditions is remarkable and unique.41 He then considers the derivation of the principle of a
law, and observes:
... it is at least not impossible to conceive of a law that alone serves the purpose of the
subjective form of principles and yet is a ground of determination by virtue of the
objective form of a law in general. The consciousness of this fundamental law may
be called a fact of reason, since one cannot ferret it out from antecedent data of
reason, such as the consciousness of freedom (for this is not antecedently given), and
since it forces itself upon us as a synthetic proposition a priori based on no pure or
empirical intuition. It would be analytic if the freedom of the will were presupposed,
but for this, as a positive concept, an intellectual intuition would be needed, and here
we cannot assume it. In order to regard this law without any misinterpretation as
given, one must note that it is not an empirical fact but the sole fact of pure reason,
which by it proclaims itself as originating law.42
42 Ibid, pp 31-32.
43Steiner suggested that the English translation of Freiheit be spiritual activity . The American edition
avoids the problem by changing the title entirely to Intuitive thinking as a spiritual path .
44Steiner gives the title Conscious Human Action to the first chapter of Philosophy of Freedom and
commences his argument with: Is a human being spiritually free, or subject to the iron necessity of purely
natural law? Ph F [1], ITSP, p. 5.
45The title page of the original edition of Wahrheit und Wissenschaft describes the work as Vorspiel einer
Philosophie der Freiheit [Prelude to a Philosophy of Freedom], TK, p. 2.
Because he denies that intellectual intuition is available to human consciousness Kant must
Page 10
argue for consciousness of the moral law as the sole fact of pure reason . Had Kant, like
Fichte, Schelling and Steiner, incorporated intellectual intuition into his conception of
cognition, he would not need to have seen consciousness of the moral law as the sole fact of
pure reason, but could have understood it as an instance of intellectual intuition.
3. Steiner’s concepts of thinking and freedom
Because there is such a degree of interdependence between Steiner’s concepts of thinking and
freedom, they will to a considerable extent be dealt with together. Steiner’s epistemological
project is to proceed from intellectual intuition to intuitive thinking, in the course of which he
identifies intuitive thinking with freedom. Steiner has an idiosyncratic notion of freedom,
which has resulted in the freedom of the title of Philosophy of Freedom being substituted at
times with spiritual activity or intuitive thinking .43 Freedom, in Steiner’s sense, is
nothing to do with the exercise of rights, but everything to do with the conscious and moral
exercise of the will.44
Although Steiner’s account of freedom is contained substantially in Philosophy of Freedom,
it is anticipated to some extent in Truth and Knowledge.45 In the Preface to Truth and
Knowledge Steiner indicates already that freedom will be at the centre of his argument. His
analysis of cognition leads him to conclude that ... truth is not, as is usually assumed, an
ideal reflection of something real, but is a product of the human spirit, created by an activity
which is free; ... 46 Similarly, our deeds or moral ideals ... are to be considered not as
copies of something existing outside us, but as being present solely within us, 47 and as a
result ... the insight that truth is the outcome of a free deed also establishes a philosophy of
morality, the foundation of which is the completely free personality. 48 The impression
Steiner creates in the Preface to Truth and Knowledge is that his agenda, like Kant’s and
Fichte’s, is to provide the epistemological ground for the establishment of moral freedom.
Although the focus is on intellectual intuition in Truth and Knowledge this impression is
reinforced by its Practical Conclusion. The Practical Conclusion claims that moral freedom
has been demonstrated by the fact of cognitive freedom, and that awareness of moral freedom
is itself the essence of the free personality alluded to in the Preface.49 In fact, however,
Steiner’s purpose is not to embark upon an epistemological enquiry merely to ground an
ethical position. Steiner is critical of Fichte for doing just this; in contrast Steiner’s project is
both ontological and epistemological, and he is committed to finding a way of demonstrating
that human beings have access to knowledge of essences.50
46 Ibid, p. 11.
47 Ibid, p. 12.
48 Loc. cit.
49Ibid, pp 94-95: To carry out a deed under the influence of a law external to the person who brings the
deed to
realization, is a deed done in unfreedom. To carry out a deed ruled by a law that lies within the one who
brings
it about, is a deed done in freedom. To recognize the laws of one’s deeds, means to become conscious of
one’s
Page 11
own freedom. Thus the process of knowledge is the process of development toward freedom.
50Ibid, p. 77: But if epistemology is to be the foundation of all knowledge, the decisive point is not to have a
definition of an I that is free, but of an I that cognizes . Fichte has allowed himself to be too much
influenced by his subjective inclinations to present the freedom of the human personality in the clearest
possible
light. Harms, in his address, On the Philosophy of Fichte, (p15) rightly says: His world-view is predominantly
and exclusively ethical, and his theory of knowledge has no other feature.
The account Steiner gives of cognition and thinking in Truth and Knowledge is already bound
together with the account he is developing of freedom. Having claimed to have shown that
the given world-picture becomes complete only through that other, indirect kind of given
which is brought to it by thinking 51, Steiner isolates the idea of knowledge as the one
element of consciousness, which does not arise from the activity of thinking - the separating
and re-uniting of the given world and the world of ideas and concepts - and says:
51 Ibid, p. 70.
52 Ibid, p. 73.
53 Ibid, p. 74.
54 Loc. cit: I believe I have now cleared the ground sufficiently to enable us to understand Fichte’s Science
of
Knowledge through recognition of the fundamental mistake contained in it.
We have now defined the idea of knowledge. In the act of cognition this idea is
directly given in human consciousness. Both outer and inner perceptions, as well as
its own presence are given directly to the I , which is the centre of consciousness. ...
In contrast to the given world, a second world – the world of thinking – rises up to
meet the I, and the I unites the two through its own free decision, producing what we
have defined as the idea of knowledge.52
Freedom, then, is a capacity of the I’, the centre of consciousness, to exercise its own free
decision to produce the idea of knowledge. Indeed, consciousness has no choice but to
exercise this freedom, for:
All other categories (ideas), whether or not they are grasped in cognition, are
necessarily united with their corresponding forms of the given. But the idea of
consciousness can be united with its corresponding given only by the activity of
consciousness. Consciousness as a reality exists only if it produces itself.53
In other words, there is a necessary freedom in conscious activity. Steiner develops this
insight into a critique of the difficulties Fichte encounters in the Wissenschaftslehre.54 By
the end of Truth and Knowledge it is clear that Steiner’s promised philosophy of freedom
will be an argument for freedom of the will grounded upon the freedom exercised in the kind
of thinking, which is generated by intellectual intuition.
Page 12
In Philosophy of Freedom Steiner builds his argument for intuitive thinking upon a critique of
the activity of thinking and the identification of that activity as the source of all human moral
action. In the first chapter, Conscious Human Action, he argues that the question of whether
or not there is freedom of the will first requires an answer to question of whether there is a
difference between a conscious motive and an unconscious drive, that is, what does it mean
to have knowledge of the motives of one’s actions? 55 If the question of human freedom is
really a question about consciousness of human action it then becomes a question about the
nature of thinking, for what distinguishes humans from all other organic beings rests on
rational thinking. 56 This leads Steiner to embark upon an enquiry into the origin and
significance of thinking.57 In the next chapter, The Fundamental Urge for Knowledge,
Steiner moves his focus to the question of knowledge and presents the pursuit of knowledge
as an instance of existential angst.58 We demand explanations for what we observe and find
ourselves setting up a barrier between ourselves and the world. Indeed, according to Steiner,
our cultural history is the story of attempting to overcome this barrier.59 Scientists and
thinkers do this by striving to penetrate in thinking what they experience through
observation. 60 Steiner observes that all dualistic and monistic world views are attempts to
55 Ph F, Ch 1 [8]-[9], ITSP, p. 12.
56 Ibid, Ch 1[15], ITSP, p. 14: this claim reflects Steiner’s historical context. Most lovers of animals today
would argue that many of the higher animals demonstrate a capacity for rational thinking.
57 Ibid, Ch 1[17], ITSP, pp 15-16: Obviously, my action cannot be free if I, as the actor, do not know why I
carry it out. But what about an action for which the reasons are known? This leads us to ask: what is the
origin
and significance of thinking? For without understanding the soul’s activity of thinking, no concept of the
knowledge of anything is possible. When we understand what thinking means in general, it will be easy to
clarify the role that thinking plays in human action.
58 Ibid, Ch 2 [1], ITSP, p. 18: We seem born for dissatisfaction. The urge to know is only a special case of
this
dissatisfaction.
59 Ph F, Ch 2 [4], ITSP p. 19: This feeling [that we are creatures not outside but within the universe]
engenders
an effort to bridge the opposition. And, in the final analysis, the whole spiritual striving of humankind consists
in bridging this opposition. The history of spiritual life is a continual searching for the unity between the I and
the world. Religion, art and science share this as their goal.
60 Ph F, Ch 2 [4], ITSP, p. 20.
reconcile I and the world. This will only be possible, however, if we descend into the
depths of our own being, to find there those elements that we have saved in our flight out of
nature. 61 Those elements will have to do with the activity of thinking.62
61 Ph F, Ch 2 [12], ITSP, p. 26.
62Ph F, Ch 2 [4], ITSP p. 20: Only when we have made the world content into our thought content do we
rediscover the connection from which we have sundered ourselves.
Page 13
63 Ph F, Ch 3 [4], ITSP, pp 29-30: Insofar as we are conscious of it, observation and thinking are the two
points
of departure for all human spiritual striving. The workings of both common human understanding and the
most
complicated scientific investigations rest on these two pillars of our spirit. For Kant the essentials of cognition
are sensibility and understanding: CPR, A19, B33 p. 65: Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and
it
alone yields us intuitions; they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise
concepts.
64 Ph F, Ch 2 [7], ITSP p. 31: Chronologically, observation even precedes thinking. For we can become
aware
of thinking, too, only through observation. For Kant thinking precedes observation: CPR B xiii, p20:
Accidental observations, made in obedience to no previously thought-out plan, can never be made to yield a
necessary law, which alone reason is concerned to discover.
65 Ph F, Ch 2 [3], ITSP p. 29: Mere observation can follow the parts of a given event in succession, but their
connection remains obscure until concepts are brought in to help.
66 loc cit
67 CPR, A20, B34 p. 65: The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected
by
it, is sensation.
In Chapter 3 of Philosophy of Freedom, Thinking in the Service of Understanding the World,
Steiner argues that observation and thinking are the essentials of cognition.63 Observation
precedes thinking,64 but thinking is required for knowledge to arise.65 Steiner does not
explain what he means by observation. He distinguishes between mere observation and
observations which follow the addition of concepts,66 but does not say whether mere
observation might be equated with Kant’s notion of sensation or the representation of a
sensation.67 He also does not say whether by observation he means something to the effect
of thought-directed seeing , or whether he is attempting to exclude the activity of thinking
from his concept of observation. This is unfortunate, because Steiner next embarks upon an
extended discussion of the observation of thinking. He first notes that ... when we observe
thinking, we are applying to thinking a procedure that is normal when we consider all the rest
of our world-content but that is not normally applied to thinking. 68 Steiner emphasises that
the observation of thinking is an exceptional state, for in it we externalise and observe
something we have ourselves created, namely the ideas and concepts we attach to our
observations. At all other times [thinking] is the unobserved element in our normal spiritual
life. 69
68 Ph F, Ch 3 [8], ISTP pp 31-32.
69 Ph F, Ch 3 [12], ITSP p. 33.
Page 14
70 Ph F, Ch 3 [14], ITSP p. 34.
71 Ph F, Ch 3 [15], ITSP p. 34.
72 Ph F, Ch 3 [16], ITSP pp 34-35.
73 Ph F, Ch 3 [17], ITSP p. 35.
74 The original does not assist: Ph F, Ch 3 [17], p. 37: Diese durchsichtige Klarheit in bezug auf den
Denkprozeß ist ganz unabhängig von unserer Kenntnis der physiologischen Grundlagen des Denkens.
In his discussion of the observation of thinking Steiner notes that I can never observe my
present thinking; only after I have thought can I take the experiences I have had during my
thinking process as the object of my thinking. 70 As a result these two are therefore
incompatible: active production and contemplative confrontation. 71 When it comes to the
contemplative confrontation of thinking:72
It is impossible for us to observe thinking as it occurs at each moment for the same
reason that we can know our thinking more immediately and intimately than any other
process in the world. Precisely because we ourselves produce our thinking, we know
the characteristics of its course and how it occurs. What can be found only indirectly
in other spheres of observation – the appropriate connections and the relationship of
individual objects – we know in a completely immediate way in thinking.
Our completely immediate knowledge of our own thinking is accompanied by the
transparent clarity we experience in relation to the thinking process. 73 Steiner does not
say whether, in referring to the transparent clarity of the thinking process he is reminding
us that thinking is imperceptible as the unobserved element in our normal spiritual life , or
whether he means just the opposite – that thinking is observable with transparent clarity.74 If
he means the former he is describing something similar to Kant’s depiction of the I think as
the pure apperception, which unifies all representations.75 It seems however, as one reads
on, that Steiner means the latter and that his interest is in constructing an account of thinking
as an observable phenomenon.
75 CPR, B132 p. 153: That representation which can be given prior to all thought is entitled intuition. All the
manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the I think’ n the same subject in which this
manifold is found. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, that is, it cannot be regarded as belonging
to
sensibility. I call it pure apperception, to distinguish it from empirical apperception, or, again, original
apperception, because it is that self-consciousness which, while generating the representation I think’ ...
cannot
itself be accompanied by any further representation.
76 Ph F, Ch 3 [18], p. 37.
77 Ph F, Ch 3 [19], p. 37.
Page 15
78 Loc. cit.
79 Ph F, Ch 3 [19], pp 37-38: What the tacked-on therefore I am might mean has been much disputed.
80 Ph F, Ch 3 [19], p. 38.
Steiner takes the observation of thinking to be the starting point of his search for knowledge
of essences. For Steiner the observation of thinking is the most important observation that
can be made 76. This is because:77
We find ourselves facing something that to begin with is not foreign to us, but our
own activity. We know how the thing we are observing comes about. We see
through the relationships and the connections. A secure point has been won, from
which we can reasonably hope to seek an explanation of the other world phenomena.
Steiner reads Descartes’ cogito to be making the same point, and that (Descartes) could only
claim that, in thinking, I lay hold of myself in the activity that is, of all the world’s content,
the most my own. 78 Steiner construes Descartes’ enquiry to be essentially epistemological,79
but claims to have found firm ground in an object the meaning of whose existence I can
draw out of myself. 80 That firm ground, according to Steiner, is not thinking itself, but the
observation of thinking. Steiner’s original insight, it might be said, is that it is the
observation of one’s own thinking activity, which lies at the core of all cognition.81 This is
because it is in the observation of thinking, according to Steiner, that we realise we have the
capacity to create, and it is that capacity which will ultimately constitute our freedom.82 It is
also in the observation of thinking that we hold a corner of the world process ,83 for we can
presume to understand how we create with our thinking. For us to observe our thinking we
have to have been thinking, and this is why, for the contemplation of the whole worldprocess, there is no more primal starting point than thinking. 84
81Loc. cit: As a thinker, I am myself such an object. I endow my existence with the definite, self-reposing
content of thinking activity. From there, I can now proceed to ask whether other things exist in the same or in
a
different sense.
82 Ph F, Ch3 [23], ITSP, p. 40: What is impossible with nature – creation before cognition – we achieve with
thinking. If we waited, before thinking, until we already understood it, then we would never get to that point.
We must think resolutely ahead, in order later to arrive by observation at a knowledge of what we have done.
We ourselves create the object for the observation of thinking.
83 Ph F, Ch3 [25], ITSP, p. 41.
84 Loc. cit.
85 Ph F, Ch3 [29], ITSP, pp42-43: I believe I have now justified beginning my consideration of the world with
thinking. When Archimedes had invented the lever, he thought he could use it to lift the whole cosmos on its
hinges, if only he could find a secure point to set his instrument. For this, he needed something supported by
itself, not by something else.
Page 16
86 Loc. cit.
87 Ph F, Ch3 [30], ITSP, p. 43.
Having found firm ground in the observation of thinking Steiner returns to thinking itself as
the starting point for cognition. Steiner compares thinking with the secure point of
Archimedes’ lever,85 for in thinking we have a principle that exits through itself. 86 Indeed,
thinking holds such primacy for Steiner that for him it must precede consciousness. This
seems to be a very peculiar position for him to adopt, particularly in light of the extent to
which, in Truth and Knowledge, he relies upon Fichte’s derivation of the activity of
intellectual intuition from a critique of self-consciousness. Steiner argues:87
Most contemporary philosophers would object that there has to be a consciousness
before there can be thinking. According to them, we should therefore proceed from
consciousness and not from thinking since there would be no thinking without
consciousness. To this I would have to reply that, if I want to understand the
relationship between thinking and consciousness, I must think about it. Therefore I
presuppose thinking.
He explains that he is not claiming thinking was created before consciousness, but rather that
understanding the world requires thinking before it requires consciousness.88 Similarly,
thinking precedes the division into subject and object, and must be considered completely
neutrally, without reference to a thinking subject or a thought object. For in subject and
object we already have concepts that are formed through thinking. 89 Steiner is emphatic
that before anything else can be understood, thinking must be understood. 90
88 Loc. cit: Naturally, the creator could not let thinking arise without first having consciousness come about.
For philosophers, however, it is not a question of creating the world but of understanding it. Hence they do
not
need a starting point for creating the world, but rather one for understanding it.
89 Ph F, Ch 3 [31], ITSP, p. 44, and Ch 4 [1], ITSP, p. 50: Concepts and ideas already presuppose thinking.
90 Loc. cit.
91 Ph F, Ch 4 [6], ITSP, p. 52.
92 Loc. cit.
93 Loc. cit.
94 Loc. cit.
In Chapter 4 of Philosophy of Freedom Steiner moves from a critique of thinking to the
relationship between the activity of thinking and the thinker for it is through the thinker that
Page 17
thinking is linked to observation. 91 This linking takes place in consciousness, which is the
stage where concept and observation meet 92 and which operates as the mediator between
thinking and observation. 93 It is apparent that Steiner has now moved well away from
Fichte’s depiction of the genesis of thinking in the positing activity of consciousness, for he
inverts Fichte’s derivation of thinking as arising from self-consciousness and predicates selfconsciousness upon thinking. For Steiner Human consciousness must necessarily at the
same time also be self-consciousness, because it is a thinking consciousness. 94 It is also
apparent that Steiner is moving towards a characterisation of thinking as an entity
independent of the thinker. Human consciousness is self-consciousness, he explains, for
when thinking directs its gaze toward its own activity, it has before it as its object its very
own being, that is, its subject. 95 Steiner reminds us that thinking is beyond subject and
object 96 and depicts the relationship between thinking and thinker, as he understands it, from
the perspective of thinking when he says:97
95 Loc. cit.
96 Ph F, Ch 4 [7], ITSP, p. 52.
97 Loc. cit, this writer’s emphasis
98 Ph F, Ch 5 [10] pp 79-80.
Thus, when we as thinking subjects relate a concept to an object, we must not regard
this relationship as something merely subjective. It is not the subject that introduces
the relationship, but thinking. The subject does not think because it is a subject;
rather, it appears to itself as a subject because it can think. The activity that human
beings exercise as thinking beings is therefore not merely subjective, but it is a kind of
activity that is neither subjective nor objective; it goes beyond both these concepts. I
should never say that my individual subject thinks; rather, it lives by the grace of
thinking. Thus, thinking is an element that leads me beyond myself and unites me
with objects. But it separates me from them at the same time, by setting me over
against them as subject.
It will be remembered that, in his Goethe studies, Steiner sought to demonstrate that thinking
is a sense organ. The central plank of Steiner’s epistemology is still thinking, but now
thinking is an element that leads me beyond myself ... . The activity of thinking itself has
now separated out from its role as an activity of the thinker.
4. Intuitive thinking
In Chapter 5 of Philosophy of Freedom Steiner extends his depiction of thinking by drawing
analogies with natural phenomena. He appears to be calling upon what he has taken from
Goethe’s approach to science when he imagines responding to a naive realist by asking:98
By what right do you declare the world to be finished without thinking? Does not the
world bring forth thinking in human heads with the same necessity as it brings forth
blossoms on the plant? Plant a seed in the earth. It puts forth roots and stem. It
Page 18
unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Set the plant before you. It links itself to a
specific concept in your soul. Why does this concept belong to the plant any less than
the leaves and blossoms do? You might reply that leaves and blossoms are present
without a perceiving subject, while the concept appears only when a human being
confronts the plant. Very well. But blossoms and leaves arise in the plant only
when there is earth in which the seed can be laid and light and air in which leaves and
blossoms can unfold. Just so, the concept of the plant arises when thinking
consciousness approaches the plant.
Until this point, and although he appears to have a questionable view of the relationship
between thinking and consciousness, Steiner has restricted himself to the demands of rational
argument. He is now moving to a pictorial, imaginative way of endeavouring to demonstrate
the primacy of thinking, by claiming that it is thinking which will deliver knowledge of
essences, of the totality of the objects of sense perception. If thinking unites percept and
concept, and if the concept is as much a part of the object as the percept, then, Steiner seems
to be saying, there could no longer be any need to postulate a world of unknowable things-inthemselves. The activity of thinking overcomes dualism, and it is through the observation of
the activity of thinking that it possible to claim that there are no limits to knowledge. The
argument is attractive, but it comes at a cost. The cost for Steiner is that he is likely to be
subject to the scholarly and academic criticism, which is so often made against his later
works, that what he is offering is more akin to self-referential phantasy than a contribution to
credible intellectual discourse.
Steiner gives another two examples from the observation of nature to demonstrate his claim
that it is quite arbitrary to consider as a totality, a whole, the sum of what we experience of a
thing through perception alone, and to regard what results from a thinking contemplation as
something appended, that has nothing to do with the thing itself. 99 One is a version of
Zeno’s paradox.100 The other is a further instance from the observation of plant life, which
brings to mind both Goethe’s anschauende Urteilskraft [intuitive judgment] and Kant’s
accounts of intuitive understanding in the Third Critique as ways of addressing the cognition
of organic nature. Steiner says:101
99 Ph F, Ch 5 [11], p. 80.
100 Ph F, Ch 5 [14], ITSP p. 81: When I throw a stone through the air horizontally, I see it in different places
in
succession. …
101 Ph F, Ch 5 [11] –[12], ITSP p. 80, this writer’s emphasis
102 Ph F, Ch 5 [16], ITSP, p. 82.
If I am given a rosebud today, then the picture that offers itself to my perception is
limited to the present moment. But if I put the bud in water, then I will get a
completely different picture of my object tomorrow. And if I can keep my eyes
turned toward the rosebud, then I shall see today’s state of change continuously into
tomorrow’s through countless intermediate stages. The picture offering itself to me in
a specific moment is but an accidental cross-section of an object that is caught up in a
Page 19
continual process of becoming. If I do not put the bud in water, then it will fail to
develop a whole series of states lying within it as possibilities. And tomorrow I
might be prevented from observing the blossom further, and so form an incomplete
picture of it.
It is completely unrealistic to grasp as accidental elements and to declare, of the
picture revealed at a particular time: that is the thing.
It will be apparent that Steiner is no longer talking about the process of knowing a specific
moment of the given world, the accidental cross-section of an object . His focus, along
with his characterisation of the activity of thinking, has moved to a broader canvas, and has
become separated off from the consciousness of the thinking observer. As a consequence
Steiner can say:102
How I am organized to comprehend things has nothing to do with their nature. The
divide between perceiving and thinking comes into being only at the instant that I, the
observer, come over against things. Yet which elements belong to the thing, and
which do not, can in no way depend upon how I come to know those elements.
In other words, what we regard as subjective – the ideas and concepts contributed by our
thinking – are no less a part of the thing than what appear to us to be the objective, senseperceptible phenomena.
Steiner completes his characterisation of thinking with expressions which indicate that, for
him, thinking is the unifying force of the cosmos. The fact that there is only one concept of
triangle demonstrates to Steiner that the thinking of many thinkers is itself a unity. 103 But
it is the activity of thinking itself, which produces that unity, for:104
103 Ph F, Ch 5 [18]-[19], ITSP pp 83-84.
104 Ph F, Ch 5 [20], ITSP, p. 84.
105 Loc. cit.
106 Ph F, Ch 5 [21], ITSP, p. 84.
In thinking, we are given the element that unites our particular individuality with the
whole of the cosmos. When we sense, feel (and also perceive) we are separate; when
we think, we are the all-one being that penetrates all. This is the deeper basis of our
dual nature. Within us, we see an absolute force coming into existence, a force that is
universal. Yet we do not come to know it as it streams forth from the centre of the
world, but only at a point on the periphery. If we came to know it as it streamed forth
from the centre of the world, then we would know the whole riddle of the world at the
instant we came to consciousness.
It is because we stand at a point on the periphery that we must find out about the realm
situated outside our own being with the help of thinking that extends into us from universal
world existence. 105 Steiner’s focus has moved away from epistemology as a critique of the
powers of human cognition to its forming the ground for a phenomenology of thinking. He
Page 20
therefore now addresses cognition from the perspective of thinking, and says the urge for
knowledge arises in us because thinking in us reaches out beyond our separateness and relates
itself to universal world existence. 106 That is, thinking itself is the active element in
Steiner’s picture of the cosmos, and individual thinkers are the means for its self-expression.
It is at this point that Steiner introduces the concept of intuition [Intuition]. He has returned
to the role of thinking in unifying percept and concept in the act of cognition, and says:
In contrast to perceptual content, which is given us from without, thought-content
appears within. We shall call the form in which thought-content first arises intuition.
Intuition is to thinking as observation is to perception. Intuition and observation are
the sources of our knowledge. We remain alienated from an object we have observed
in the world as long as we do not have within us the corresponding intuition, which
supplies us with the piece of reality missing from the percept.107
107 Ph F, Ch 5 [25] p. 80: Im Gegensatz zum Wahrnehmungsinhalte, der uns von außen gegeben ist,
erscheint
der Gedankeninhalt im Innern. Die Form, in der er zunächst auftritt, wollen wir als Intuition bezeichnen. Sie
is für das Denken, was die Beobachtung für die Wahrnehmung ist. Intuition und Beobachtung sind die
Quellen
unserer Erkenntnis. Wir stehen einem beobachteten Dinge der Welt so lange fremd gegenüber, so lange wir
in
unserem Innern nicht die entsprechende Intuition haben, die uns das in der Wahrnehmng fehlende Stück der
Wirklichkeit ergänzt. ITSP p88
108Ph F, Ch 2 [14] ITSP p. 26: ... I attach no value to using the individual expressions, such as I , spirit ,
world , nature , and so forth, in the precise way that is usual in psychology and philosophy.
Intuition has been introduced in this one paragraph to refer to four things at once, namely the
form in which thought-content first arises, to an enhanced state of thinking, as the source of
our knowledge from within and to an individualised concept ( the piece of reality missing
from the percept ). It is difficult to know what Steiner intends by using the term intuition
in these many ways, unless it is to give the impression of the range of overlapping meanings
of intuition. He certainly acknowledges employing other terms in Philosophy of Freedom
without precision.108 But if Steiner is to argue for intuition in some form we need to know
what he means. In describing intuition as the form in which thought-content first arises
Steiner seems to be implying that intuition, as intellectual intuition, is the ground of ideas and
concepts, in much the same way as the sensory intuitions of space and time are the grounds of
what is given us from without. When he then says, however, intuition is to thinking as
observation is to perception Steiner would appear to be claiming that intuition is an
enhanced form of thinking, in much the same way as observation is an enhanced, thought-
filled or thinking form of perception. Yet if this is so Steiner’s argument would seem to run
counter to his clear statements in Chapter 3 of Philosophy of Freedom that any observation of
one’s own thinking can only take place after the thinking.109 And if intuition is active, and is
as to thinking as observation is to perception it cannot also amount to the impliedly passive
form in which thought-content first arises .
Page 21
109See fn. 72.
110Steiner subsequently also identifies intuitions with mental pictures: Ph F, Ch 6 [4] ITSP, p. 99: A mental
picture is nothing but an intuition related to a specific percept. It is a concept, once linked to a percept, for
which the relation to that percept has remained.
111Ph F, Ch 5 [26] ITSP, p. 89: ... What meets us in observation as separate details is linked, item by item,
through the coherent, unitary world of our intuitions.
Steiner’s third statement about intuition is that intuition and observation are the sources of
our knowledge. If observation is a source of our knowledge it must be that Steiner is
referring to the point in the cognitive process at which perception has been grasped by the
activity of thinking to become observation. Likewise, if intuition is to be seen as the source
of our conceptual knowledge Steiner must mean that concepts have been grasped by thinking
to become intuition. Finally, if intuition supplies us with the piece of reality missing from
the percept it must be that it is intuition, which creates or delivers the concept to marry up
with the percept.110 In the following paragraph, however, Steiner elaborates what he means
by the corresponding intuition , and it becomes clear that he is also identifying intuitions
with individualised concepts.111 Relating intuition to thinking, what we now have is intuition
as the ground of thinking (in the form of intellectual intuition), intuition as an enhanced form
of thinking, intuition as concepts grasped by thinking and intuition as individualised
concepts. What Steiner appears to be doing (though he does not specifically say so) is to
weave a thread of intuition into each of the ways in which he has described thinking. What
is being suggested it seems, is that what Steiner will later call intuitive thinking , rather like
Fichte’s an activity in which an eye is inserted , is an enhanced form of thinking, which
enables the knower, in the act of knowing, to observe the activity of thinking and in so doing
to come to a knowledge of essences.112
112 Steiner implies that this ability may not be universal: Ph F, Ch 6 [7] ITSP, p. 100: The sum of everything
of
which I can form mental pictures I can call my experience . Hence, the greater the number of individualized
concepts a person has, the richer their experience will be. A person lacking intuitive capacity, on the other
hand, is unsuited to acquire experience. For such a person, once objects are out of sight they are lost,
because
the concepts that ought to be brought into relationship with them are lacking.
113 Ph F, Ch 9 [2] p. 121; ITSP, p. 135.
114It will be remembered that Steiner had earlier declared, Ph F, Ch 3 [14], ITSP p. 34: I can never observe
my
present thinking.
115 Ph F, Ch 9 [2], ITSP, p. 136.
This interpretation of what Steiner means by intuition seems to be borne out by his most
developed discussion of intuition in the original text of Philosophy of Freedom, which
appears in Chapter 9, The Idea of Freedom. In Chapter 9 Steiner at last brings together what
he has had to say about intuition and thinking with his starting point, namely his enquiry into
Page 22
freedom. In doing so, however, he makes a statement at the outset which appears to
contradict his critique of the observation of thinking in Chapter 3. He says:113
In the preceding discussion, an attempt was made to show that it is possible to clarify
this relationship [between percept and concept] through unprejudiced observation. A
proper understanding of such observation leads to the insight that thinking can be
beheld directly [unmittelbar] as a self-enclosed entity.
There is no mistaking what Steiner is now claiming, for the text is clearly arguing that
thinking can be beheld immediately as a self-enclosed entity.114 Steiner extrapolates from this
cause for concern to another troubling claim when he then declares that:115
To observe thinking is to live, during the observation, immediately within the
weaving of a self-supporting spiritual entity. We could even say that whoever wants
to grasp the essence of the spirit in the form in which it first presents itself to human
beings can do so in the self-sustaining activity of thinking.
Steiner appears to be conflating the self-sustaining activity of thinking with observation of
the activity of thinking, and contradicting a distinction between the two that he was careful to
make in Chapter 3.116
116See the discussion above, and summarized at Ph F, Ch 3 [15], ITSP, p. 34: These two are therefore
incompatible: active production and contemplative confrontation.
117 Ph F Ch 9, [3] ITSP, pp 136-137.
118 Ph F Ch 9, [4] ITSP, p. 137.
Steiner has changed his position in regard to thinking and the observation of thinking,
because he has a specific explanation in mind for how it is that intuition leads to knowledge
of essences. Misunderstanding the nature of concept and percept can lead us to the
construction of a hypothetical metaphysical world, he says:117
But, if we see what is really present in thinking, we will recognise that only one part
of reality is present in the percept and that we experience the other part – which
belongs to it and is necessary for it to appear as full reality – in the permeation of the
percept by thinking. We shall then see, in what appears in consciousness as thinking,
not a shadowy copy of reality, but a spiritual essence that sustains itself. Of this
spiritual essence we can say that it becomes present to our consciousness through
intuition. Intuition is the conscious experience, within what is purely spiritual, of a
purely spiritual content. The essence of thinking can be grasped only through
intuition.
What Steiner appears to be claiming is that a concept is not so much an individualised idea as
something, which we experience ... in the permeation of the percept by thinking. A
concept for Steiner, therefore, is not a shadowy copy of reality (as he appears to understand
it to be for a transcendental idealist) – it is reality: it is a spiritual essence that sustains
itself. And it is through intuition that we know this to be the case, for intuition is the
conscious experience, within what is purely spiritual, of a purely spiritual content. It
Page 23
follows, then, that the essence of thinking can be grasped only through intuition . Steiner
has succeeded in attaching what he now describes as the intuitive essence of thinking 118 to
knowledge of essences, but it is at the cost of the credibility of his argument. Concepts are
now experiences rather than the products of the thinking activity of the individual
thinker,119 and the simultaneous observation of one’s own thinking has moved from being
impossible to becoming central to Steiner’s critique of intuition. From this point on it could
not be claimed that Steiner has argued from intuition to knowledge of essences.
119Ph F, Ch 4 [1] ITSP, p. 49: Concepts and ideas arise through thinking. … When the object disappears
from
our field of observation, only the conceptual counterpart remains. The latter is the concept of the object.
120Ph F, Ch 9 [14] ITSP, p. 143: If we act under the influence of intuitions, then the motive power of our
actions is pure thinking. Despite his rejection of deontological ethics Steiner retains Kant’s terminology by
equating pure thinking with reason and then adding: Since it is customary in philosophy to designate the
capacity for pure thinking as reason, we are fully justified in calling the moral driving force characteristic of
this [highest] stage [of individual life] practical reason.
121 Ph F, FQ, Addendum [2], p. 241.
Steiner uses his formulation of intuition as the conscious experience, within what is purely
spiritual, of a purely spiritual content as the springboard for the ethical argument, which
occupies the larger part of the remainder of Philosophy of Freedom.120 The expression
intuitive thinking does not itself appear in Philosophy of Freedom until the revised edition
of 1918, in which Steiner alludes to it in a number of the Addenda. In the last of these, which
was referred to at the conclusion to Part 2 Chapter 1, Steiner explains the argument of
Philosophy of Freedom in terms of intuitive thinking, and says:121
The content of this book is built on intuitive thinking that can be experienced purely
spiritually, and through which every percept is placed within reality during the act of
cognition. No more was to be presented than can be surveyed from an experience of
intuitive thinking. But we must also emphasize what kind of thought formation the
experience of thinking demands. It demands that intuitive thinking not be denied as a
self-sustaining experience within the process of cognition. It also demands that we
acknowledge its capacity, in conjunction with percepts, to experience reality, instead
of seeking reality only in an inferred world outside experience, in the face of which
the human activity of thinking would be merely subjective.
Steiner subsequently relates his conviction that intuitive thinking has a capacity to
experience reality to his later works on spiritual science .122 The difficulty remains that
the adoption of such a point of view does demand that intuitive thinking not be denied as a
self-sustaining experience within the process of cognition. That is not a demand which can
be made of academic philosophy.
122Ph F, FQ [3] ITSP, p. 242: In this book an attempt is made to show that the experience of thinking,
properly
understood, is already an experience of spirit. Therefore, it seems to me that whoever can adopt the point of
Page 24
view of this book in earnest will not stop short of entering the world of spiritual perception.
123These writers include Michael Muschalle, who obtained a PhD from Bielefelt University in 2001 with a
dissertation on Brentano, Das Denken und seine Beobachtung [Thinking and the observation of thinking]
124Ph F, FQ [3] ITSP, p. 242: As soon as we experience it, the spiritual perceptual world cannot be anything
strange to us as human beings, because we already have in intuitive thinking an experience of a purely
spiritual
character. A number of my later writings discuss such a world of spiritual perception. This book, Philosophy
of Freedom, is their philosophical foundation.
5. The observation debate
Steiner’s discussion of thinking and the observation of thinking in Chapter 3 of The
Philosophy of Freedom, and the apparent contradiction of his position in Chapter 9, have
become the subject of intense debate amongst philosophically-trained anthroposophists.123
Although the work of these writers is not being undertaken from within the academy it is felt
that some mention should be made of it. The reason for the intense debate is that Steiner,
throughout his later work, repeatedly refers to his derivation of intuitive thinking in
Philosophy of Freedom as the epistemological ground of his anthroposophical spiritual
science.124 The epistemological claim of spiritual science is that intuitive thinking can be
further developed into sense-free pure thinking, from which it is then possible to attain
the knowledge of higher worlds , which constitutes knowledge of essences. If Steiner’s
arguments for intuitive thinking in Philosophy of Freedom are unconvincing as philosophy it
becomes difficult for anthroposophists to assert that the results of his spiritual research
should qualify as knowledge, rather than as beliefs held merely on faith.
The observation debate is dealt with most comprehensively in Michael Muschalle’s
Beobachtung des Denkens bei Rudolf Steiner.125 Muschalle focuses on Steiner’s
Spaltungsargument [splitting argument]126 and the Beobachtungsaporie [pause in
observation]127 it implies. The Beobachtungsaporie arises from Steiner’s claim that it is not
possible to observe one’s own thinking in the process of thinking, but that it is possible to
remember it as a self-created object of consciousness.128 Muschalle, not without good
reason, characterises the observation of thinking as the most important factor in Steiner’s
theory of knowledge.129 Steiner certainly says as much,130 and Muschalle reminds us that,
for Steiner, thinking is the lever which enables us to take hold of the world. It is the one
element in the world we can take hold of through itself.131
125Muschalle, M. (2007a) Beobachtung des Denkens bei Rudolf Steiner, Books on demand: online
126Ibid, p. 9.
127Ibid, p. 11.
128Ph F, Ch 3 [14] ITSP, p. 34.
129Muschalle, op. cit, p. 11: Wie wir wissen, ist für Steiner die Beobachtung des Denkens das gewichtigste
Page 25
erkenntnis= theoretische Faktum überhaupt.
130Ph F, Ch 3 [18] ITSP p. 37: But for everyone who has the capacity to observe thinking, and with good
will,
every normally constituted human being has this capacity - the observation of thinking is the most important
observation that can be made.
131Muschalle, op. cit., p. 12.
132Ph F, Ch3 [15], ITSP p. 34: These two are therefore incompatible: active production and contemplative
confrontation. The first book of Moses already recognizes this. In the Book of Genesis, God produces the
world in the first six days of creation; only once it is there is it possible to contemplate it: And God looked at
It appears to be incontrovertible that Steiner rejects any suggestion of a splitting between
the I’ which is thinking and the I’ which observes the thinking. Steiner says without
qualification, and with an allusion to the creation story in Genesis to emphasise the point, that
the creative activity of thinking must take place before it is observed by the thinker.132
everything he had made, and behold, it was very good. The same holds true of our thinking. It must first be
there if we are to observe it.
133 Muschalle, op cit, p. 9.
134 Ibid, p. 11.
Muschalle characterises this as an apparently unbridgeable conceptual distinction between
unmittelbare Erfahrung [immediate experience] of thinking and Beobachtung [observation]
of thinking.133 Muschalle describes Steiner’s position as puzzling134, but it is only puzzling in
the sense that it has the potential to create difficulties for Steiner’s overall epistemological
project. It is consistent, according to Muschalle, with the psychological theory of Steiner’s
time, and in particular with Brentano’s conception of the mind, with which Steiner would
have been very familiar.
Muschalle’s work provides a critique of the many proposals put forward by other
anthroposophical thinkers to save Steiner’s position. By and large the proposals amount to
redefinitions of what it is believed Steiner meant by observation, immediate, experience and
thinking. A couple of the more credible positions will be mentioned, if only in order to
indicate the parameters of the debate. Muschalle argues vehemently against Herbert
Witzenmann who has written extensively on Steiner’s more philosophical works. According
to Muschalle, Witzenmann accepts the incompatibility between the activity of thinking and
the simultaneous observation of it, and avoids the Beobachtungsaporie by claiming that the
experience of thinking is remembered. The issue then becomes whether the experience
which is remembered is an Erfahrung or an Erlebnis, and whether, therefore it ought to be
characterised as an observation [Beobachtung], or as a perception [Wahrnehmung]. As
Muschalle notes, Witzenmann’s strategy is to move the argument away from what Steiner
means by the observation of thinking into an analysis of memory, but this strategy does not
lead to a resolution of the Beobachtungsaporie.135 Muschalle next considers the arguments
Page 26
put forward by Lorenzo Ravagli. Ravagli’s solution to the Beobachtungsaporie is to claim
that there is an immediate, intuitive knowing, which comes into play at the same time as
thinking, and which might be characterised as an intuitive – as opposed to an external – form
of observation. This intuitive observation, Ravagli claims, occurs immediately with the
activity of thinking, and thereby resolves the observation problem in The Philosophy of
Freedom.136 As Muschalle points out, Ravagli’s self-immersion of the I’ in the activity of
thinking [Selbstinnesein des Ich in der Denktätigkeit] may be an indicator of the experience
of thinking, but it is not the same thing as the observation of thinking as Steiner describes it.
Indeed, the very fact that we can speak of experiencing an immediate, intuitive knowledge of
thinking [ein unmittelbares, intuitives Wissen], according to Muschalle, seems to indicate that
the possibility of the simultaneous observation of thinking must be precluded.137 Muschalle
also canvasses the arguments of several other commentators on Steiner’s
Beobachtungsaporie,138 in an effort to find some way of overcoming the problem Steiner
appears to have created for himself, namely that he has denied the possibility of observing
our thoughts as we think them, yet bases his epistemology and his ethics on the freedom he
claims we experience in the immediate observation of the activity of thinking.
135Ibid, pp 20-35.
136Ibid, pp 38-39, citing Ravagli, L. (1997) Der esoterishce Shulungsweg der Anthroposophie im Frühwerk
Rudolf Steiners, in Jahrbuch für anthroposophische Kritik, p. 88ff.
137 Ibid, p. 45: Und weil wir dieses unmittelbare Wissen haben, infolge der Selbstgegebung des Denkens,
gerade deswegen ist die Beobachtung des aktuellen Denkens für Steiner ausgeschlossen.
138Muschalle cites Peter Schneider, Wilfried Gabriel and Marcello da Veiga Greuel before returning to
Witzenmann.
6. The apperception of essences
The problem of the observation of thinking may not be fatal to Steiner’s formulation of
intuitive thinking, but it does point to the kinds of difficulties, which would appear to be the
inevitable result of any attempt to argue for an essentially non-Kantian theory of cognition
from within the context of the critical tradition. Steiner has devised his concept of intuitive
thinking out of Fichte’s reformulation of the intellectual intuition determined by Kant to be
unavailable to human cognition. Intuitive thinking as it is presented in Truth and Knowledge
and Philosophy of Freedom, therefore, is on the one hand a creature of its Kantian lineage
(and the spontaneity and immediacy which are said to characterise intellectual intuition), and
on the other a heightened form of thinking, which can observe what is has itself created upon
subsequent reflection. Seen from a Kantian perspective, such a process is nothing other than
the operation of pure reason, and could not, therefore, lead to the apperception of essences.
It is not surprising then that, after Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner no longer attempts to
present his epistemology as a response to neo-Kantianism.
From this point there are several alternatives open to Steiner from within the academy. One
Page 27
would be to continue to argue for the heightened form of awareness he has characterised as
intuitive thinking , though not from a Kantian perspective. This would avoid any concerns
about the temporal ordering of the observation of thinking, but it would undermine his claim
that even the critical philosophy, properly reconstituted, will lead to a methodology for the
apperception of essences. Another possibility for Steiner might be to reconsider whether he
had been correct to insist that thinking precedes consciousness, and to have claimed that it is
the activity of thinking rather than consciousness, that lies at the heart of cognition. Steiner
could argue instead that it is some kind of intuitive consciousness rather than intuitive
thinking that best describes the activity Fichte had recognised as arising from intellectual
intuition. A third possibility from within the academy might be to abandon the neo-Kantian
framework of his epistemology and attach his standard to the mast of that other prominent
Continental approach to cognition, the phenomenological school of Brentano and Husserl.
It will be remembered that Steiner describes Philosophy of Freedom on its title page as
investigations of the soul using the method of natural science . The difficulty with
adopting this approach for Steiner is that his methodology is in the end much more akin to
that of the post- and neo-Kantians and the Idealist tradition generally than it is to the
orientation of the Phenomenologists. Finally, Steiner might remain within the academy, but
operate as an independent scholar, as Schopenhauer and von Hartmann had done before him.
The other alternative open to Steiner after Philosophy of Freedom is to abandon the academy
and to pursue the development of intuitive thinking, but not as philosophy. Indeed, the
direction in which Steiner’s argument appears to be heading suggests that this is what he will
do. Seen retrospectively it could be claimed that Philosophy of Freedom is already not so
much philosophy as the groundwork for the world view Steiner will adopt after he leaves the
academy. There is support for such a view in Steiner’s Preface to the 1918 revised edition
of Philosophy of Freedom. Here Steiner appears to accept that what he had set out to
establish as the ground of knowledge can be no more clearly defined by him than as a region
of the soul from which the riddles of life might be unravelled, and says:139
139 Ph F, Preface [2], ITSP, p. 2.
Once achieved, this view [of the human being that can support all other knowledge]
can become part of the very life of the soul itself. But no theoretical answer is given
that, once acquired, is simply carried as a conviction preserved by memory. Such an
answer would have to be an illusion, according to the style of thought underlying this
book. Therefore no such finished, closed-off answer is provided here; rather,
reference is made to a region of soul experience in which, through the soul’s inner
activity, the question answers itself in a living way, always anew, whenever a human
being needs it. Once we have found the region of the soul where these questions
unfold, really perceiving this region gives all that we need to answer these riddles of
life.
This writer is not passing any judgment upon the efficacy of what Steiner is proposing as a
practice for solving the riddles of life. From what Steiner says above, and from what he does
in leaving academic philosophy, Steiner has in effect passed his own judgment upon the
likelihood that his epistemological arguments will ever find favour from within the academy
Page 28
and upon the possibility, therefore, of his being able to demonstrate philosophically that
human beings have access to knowledge of essences.
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CONCLUSION
18 CONCLUSION.txt
The discussions of the four disjunctions between the critical philosophy and Rudolf
Steiner’s theory of knowledge, which have been the subject of this study, must lead to the
conclusion that Steiner has not been successful in demonstrating that there are no limits
to knowledge from within the context of the neo-Kantian tradition. His arguments
against the architectonic of transcendental idealism are not so compelling, as to put
seriously into question the structures and claims of the critical project. Steiner’s first
disjunction, his fundamental opposition to Kantian dualism, does not provide sufficient
reason to abandon dualism and adopt a monistic world view. His second disjunction, the
attempt to identify Kant’s concept of the intellectus archetypus with Goethe’s
anschauende Urteilskraft, rests upon the claim that thinking is a sense organ, which
Steiner is unable to prove.
The third disjunction challenges Kant’s assertion that human cognition does not extend to
a capacity for intellectual intuition. Although a convincing case can be made for
intellectual intuition, the case Steiner is arguing had already been made by Fichte. Fichte
concludes that there is an activity at the core of intellectual intuition, without specifying
what that activity consists in. Steiner’s fourth disjunction from the critical philosophy is
to identify the activity generated by intellectual intuition as intuitive thinking – thinking
in which the thinker observes her own capacity to create concepts. It is our capacity for
intuitive thinking, Steiner believes, which demonstrates that we have knowledge of
essences. Steiner’s argument, however, leads to the observation dilemma: if we can
observe thinking as we think our minds must be split in two, and if they are not split in
two then the observation cannot be taking place simultaneously with the act of thinking.
The conclusion again has to be that Steiner has been unable to show that we have access
to essences.
Although Steiner has not succeeded in proving what he set out to prove, that does mean
either that there are no other avenues available for the pursuit of knowledge of essences,
or that there was no philosophical merit in the epistemological work he undertook. As
was indicated in the Introduction to this dissertation, Steiner did seek out other avenues
for the pursuit of knowledge of essences, which he continued to believe was attainable
through the refinement and intensification of thinking. Steiner remained outside the
world of academic philosophy after publishing Philosophy of Freedom, though he
continued to write and speak about philosophies and philosophers for the rest of his
public life.
Even though Steiner did not remain within the academy it might nevertheless be claimed
that he has made a contribution to epistemology, both in terms of the broader interests of
the Continental philosophical tradition and of his attempt to dismantle the purported
limits to knowledge from within the neo-Kantian tradition. The aspect of Continental
philosophy to which it might be said Steiner contributes, is what Richard Tarnas in The
Passion of the Western Mind describes as a participatory perspective on the nature of
cognition. As for Steiner’s neo-Kantian epistemological project there is reason to think
that the points at which Steiner sought to extend the architectonic of the critical
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philosophy – Kant’s limitations upon the availability of the intellectus archetypus and
intellectual intuition – have room for further exploration. This writer is aware of work
being undertaken in this area by one Kant scholar, Eckart Förster.
Participatory consciousness
It will be remembered from the Introduction that, in The Passion of the Western Mind,
Tarnas introduces Steiner and the concept of participatory consciousness at the same time
by putting Steiner forward as a representative of a counter-movement to the mainstream
philosophical and scientific intellectual tradition. It will be recalled Tarnas makes the
following claim:1
1 Tarnas, op. cit, p. 433
2 Ibid, p. 434.
Although the Cartesian-Kantian epistemological position has been the dominant
paradigm of the modern mind, it has not been the only one, for at almost precisely
the same time that the Enlightenment reached its philosophical climax in Kant, a
radically different epistemological perspective began to emerge – first visible in
Goethe with his study of natural forms, developed in new directions by Schiller,
Schelling, Hegel, Coleridge, and Emerson, and articulated within the past century
by Rudolf Steiner. Each of these thinkers gave his own distinct emphasis to the
developing perspective, but common to all was a fundamental conviction that the
relation of the human mind to the world was ultimately not dualistic but
participatory.
Tarnas is not referring to the ontological and methodological dualism discussed in Part 2
Chapter 1, but to a more fundamental dualism between consciousness and object, which
appears to be one of the assumptions of transcendental idealism. Tarnas gives a picture
of participatory consciousness, which appears to owe a great deal to Schelling and Hegel,
and then says of it:2
... this participatory conception held that these subjective principles [of Kant’s
critical insight] are in fact an expression of the world’s own being, and that the
human mind is ultimately the organ of the world’s own process of self-revelation.
In this view, the essential reality of nature is not separate, self-contained, and
complete in itself, so that the human mind can examine it objectively and
register it from without. Rather, nature’s unfolding truth emerges only with the
active participation of the human mind. Nature’s reality is not merely
phenomenal, nor is it independent and objective; rather, it is something that comes
into being through the very act of human cognition. Nature becomes intelligible
to itself through the human mind.
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18 CONCLUSION.txt
Steiner makes similar comments about the relationship between nature and consciousness
and about the role of thinking in mediating between nature and spirit. It will be
remembered, however, that Steiner follows Goethe in claiming that his way of seeing that
relationship is based upon an enhanced form of empirical observation rather than upon a
theoretical reduction of dualism to a monistic world view.
Tarnas claims that participatory consciousness requires an enhanced capacity of
observation and concludes that: A developed inner life is therefore indispensable for
cognition. 3 His account of what that developed inner life might consist in amounts to a
heightening of imagination to the point that: ... the imagination directly contacts the
creative process within nature, realises that process within itself, and brings nature’s
reality to conscious expression. 4 As a result: The human imagination is itself part of
the world’s intrinsic truth; without it the world is in some sense incomplete. 5 Tarnas’s
articulation of a heightened imaginative capacity and the requirement of a developed
inner life are so strongly reminiscent of Steiner’s discussion of intuitive thinking in
Philosophy of Freedom that he could well be continuing the arguments, which had been
initiated by Steiner.
3Ibid, p. 434.
4 Loc. cit: Tarnas also speaks of the intellectual imagination and imaginal intuition .
5 Loc. cit.
Contemporary neo-Kantianism
One contemporary philosopher who continues to work on what might be called the nodal
points of the critical philosophy is Eckart Förster. There are several Kantian studies by
Förster, which examine ways in which the critical philosophy might further be developed.
Förster’s works include Kant’s Final Synthesis: An essay on the Opus Postumum,6 the
journal articles The Significance of ss76 and 77 of the Critique of Judgment for the
Development of Post-Kantian Philosophy7 and the recently published Die 25 Jahre der
Philosophie.8 In each of these works Förster explores aspects of Kant’s work, which are
amenable to fresh and further interpretation. Förster establishes every step he takes by
citing Kant and there are points he develops that are reminiscent of Steiner’s efforts to
ground his expanded epistemology from within the Kantian tradition.
6 Förster, E. (2000) Kant’s Final Synthesis, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass.
7 Förster, E. (2009), op. cit., and Förster, E. (2010) op. cit.
8 Förster, E. (2011) Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie, Vittorio Klostermann: Frankfurt am
Main
9 Förster (2000), p. x.
Förster’s Kant’s Final Synthesis is a set of essays on the Opus postumum that only
became available, even in German, in the 1930s. Förster was engaged to prepare an
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18 CONCLUSION.txt
English translation of some of the texts, and says of the task:9
That required, first and foremost, relating them to Kant’s published writings.
Very soon it became clear that just as Kant’s earlier major publications contain the
key to an understanding of his last work, the Opus postunum also sheds
remarkable new light on these earlier works – works that we believe we know
quite well.
This remarkable new light ´ includes Kant’s later reconsideration of some of the
presuppositions in the Third Critique, which had led to the way in which he regards
organic nature. In the essay The Green Colour of a Lawn and Kant’s Theory of Matter
for example, Förster cites fascicles of the Opus postunum and says:10
10 Ibid, p. 28.
11 Förster (2009), p. 9.
Our own bodily experience functions as the paradigm for the estimation of other
objects as organic; it is the primary example by which we judge all others. But as
a paradigm for natural purposiveness, it cannot be subject to the as if’ principle
of the third Critique: this principle fails to hold in the case of our own bodily
organisation. My body thus plays a unique role in my relation to the world
around me – a role Kant will explore in subsequent fascicles, in connection with
the doctrine of self-positing. But even in the present drafts, the contrast with the
distant analogy between natural purposes and human artefacts that lies at the
foundation of the Critique of Teleological Judgment could hardly be greater.
Some reference has been made in Part 2 Chapter 2 of the dissertation to Förster’s papers
on The Significance of ss76 and 77 of the Critique of Judgment for the Development of
Post-Kantian Philosophy. These papers consider and expand Kant’s concepts of
intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding to include the following four possible
interpretations:11
(1) intellectual intuition as
(a) the productive unity of possibility (thought) and actuality (being); and
(b) the non-sensible intuition of things-in-themselves;
(2) intuitive understanding as
(a) the synthetically universal understanding; and
(b) original understanding, or rather, as the cause of the world.
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18 CONCLUSION.txt
Förster identifies (1) (a) as Fichte’s concept of intellectual intuition and is arguing for the
view that (2) (a) describes Goethe’s concept of intuitive understanding [anschauende
Urteilskraft]. He does not focus upon the other possibilities, but it is clear that (1) (b),
the non-sensible intuition of things-in-themselves, describes the interpretation of
intellectual intuition Steiner is employing to arrive at knowledge of essences.
Förster’s recent Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie is an examination of German Idealism
from the publication of the First Critique in 1781 to the publication of Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit in 1806. In this work, as well as dealing with Fichte’s critique
of consciousness in the Wissenschaftslehre, Förster devotes a chapter to the methodology
of intuitive understanding.12 This chapter discusses Goethe’s contributions to the
development of German Idealism and describes in some detail the methodology implicit
in the Metamorphosis of Plants and the Theory of Colours. In this chapter, as in the
papers on the Third Critique, Förster explores the personal and intellectual relationships
between Goethe, Fichte, Reinhold, Schelling and Hegel.
12 Förster (2010), pp. 253-276.
Förster, like Steiner before him, is working from within the Kantian tradition. Like
Steiner, he also appears to be exploring whether the critical project, as Kant would have
wished, might ultimately lead to the establishment of metaphysical truths as matters of
knowledge, rather than merely as belief. Although this is not the place to explore
Förster’s work any further, the course it has taken does seem to suggest that Steiner was
able to identify those points in the critical project, at which the tensions and possible
weaknesses in it invite further theoretical consideration. In this respect, at least, it might
be granted that Steiner has made a contribution to the continuing neo-Kantian tradition.
Page 5
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Zöller, G. (1996) Thinking and Willing in Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity, in Breazeale,
D. & Rockmore, T. (eds) New Perspectives on Fichte, Humanities Press: New
Jersey.
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Thesis_Ginges_H.txt THE ACT OF KNOWING: RUDOLF STEINER

Transcription

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