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
With such presuppositions, it is clear why the Dualist regards his
concepts merely as subjective representations of what is really
external to his consciousness. The objectively real process in the
subject by means of which the percept is produced, and still more
the objective relations between things-in-themselves, remain for the
Dualist inaccessible to direct knowledge. According to him, man can
get only conceptual representations of the objectively real. The bond
of unity which connects things-in-themselves with one another, and
also objectively with the individual minds (as things-in-themselves)
of each of us, exists beyond our consciousness in a Divine Being of
whom, once more, we have merely a conceptual representation.
The Dualist believes that the whole world would be dissolved into
a mere abstract scheme of concepts, did he not posit the existence
of real connections beside the conceptual ones. In other words, the
ideal principles which thinking discovers are too airy for the Dualist,
and he seeks, in addition, real principles with which to support them.
Let us examine these real principles a little more closely. The
naïve man (Naïve Realist) regards the objects of sense-experience as
realities. The fact that his hands can grasp, and his eyes see, these
objects is for him sufficient guarantee of their reality. "Nothing
exists that cannot be perceived" is, in fact, the first axiom of
the naïve man; and it is held to be equally valid in its converse:
"Everything which is perceived exists." The best proof for this
assertion is the naïve man's belief in immortality and in ghosts. He
thinks of the soul as a fine kind of matter perceptible by the senses
which, in special circumstances, may actually become visible to the
ordinary man (belief in ghosts).
In contrast with this, his real, world, the Naïve Realist regards
everything else, especially the world of ideas, as unreal, or "merely
ideal." What we add to objects by thinking is merely thoughts about
the objects. Thought adds nothing real to the percept.
But it is not only with reference to the existence of things that the
naïve man regards perception as the sole guarantee of reality, but
also with reference to the existence of processes. A thing, according
to him, can act on another only when a force actually present to
perception issues from the one and acts upon the other. The older
physicists thought that very fine kinds of substances emanate from
the objects and penetrate through the sense-organs into the soul. The
actual perception of these substances is impossible only because
of the coarseness of our sense-organs relatively to the fineness of
these substances. In principle, the reason for attributing reality
to these substances was the same as that for attributing it to the
objects of the sensible world, viz., their kind of existence, which
was conceived to be analogous to that of perceptual reality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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