The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific MethodsSteiner, Rudolf
Religion
The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific Methods
Steiner, Rudolf
Anthroposophy; Free will and determinism; Knowledge, Theory of; Life
It holds the conceptual content of the world
to be identical for all human individuals (cp. pp. 84 ff.). According
to Monistic principles, every human individual regards every other
as akin to himself, because it is the same world-content which
expresses itself in all. In the single conceptual world there are
not as many concepts of "lion" as there are individuals who form the
thought of "lion," but only one. And the concept which A adds to the
percept of "lion" is identical with B's concept except so far as,
in each case, it is apprehended by a different perceiving subject
(cp. p. 85). Thought leads all perceiving subjects back to the ideal
unity in all multiplicity, which is common to them all. There is but
one ideal world, but it realises itself in human subjects as in a
multiplicity of individuals. So long as man apprehends himself merely
by self-observation, he looks upon himself as this particular being,
but so soon as he becomes conscious of the ideal world which shines
forth within him, and which embraces all particulars within itself,
he perceives that the Absolute Reality lives within him. Dualism fixes
upon the Divine Being as that which permeates all men and lives in them
all. Monism finds this universal Divine Life in Reality itself. The
ideal content of another subject is also my content, and I regard it
as a different content only so long as I perceive, but no longer when I
think. Every man embraces in his thought only a part of the total world
of ideas, and so far, individuals are distinguished one from another
also by the actual contents of their thought. But all these contents
belong to a self-contained whole, which comprises within itself the
thought-contents of all men. Hence every man, in so far as he thinks,
lays hold of the universal Reality which pervades all men. To fill
one's life with such thought-content is to live in Reality, and at
the same time to live in God. The thought of a Beyond owes its origin
to the misconception of those who believe that this world cannot have
the ground of its existence in itself. They do not understand that,
by thinking, they discover just what they demand for the explanation
of the perceptual world. This is the reason why no speculation has
ever produced any content which has not been borrowed from reality
as it is given to us. A personal God is nothing but a human being
transplanted into the Beyond. Schopenhauer's Will is the human will
made absolute. Hartmann's Unconscious, made up of idea and will,
is but a compound of two abstractions drawn from experience. Exactly
the same is true of all other transcendent principles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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