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
There is yet another expression of human personality. The Self, through
thought, takes part in the universal world-life. Through thought it
establishes purely ideal (conceptual) relations between percepts and
itself, and between itself and percepts. In feeling, it has immediate
experience of the relation of objects to itself as subject. In will,
the opposite is the case. In volition, we are concerned once more with
a percept, viz., that of the individual relation of the self to what
is objective. Whatever in the act of will is not an ideal factor,
is just as much mere object of perception as is any object in the
external world.
Nevertheless, the Naïve Realist believes here again that he has
before him something far more real than can ever be attained by
thought. He sees in the will an element in which he is immediately
aware of an activity, a causation, in contrast with thought which
afterwards grasps this activity in conceptual form. On this view, the
realisation by the Self of its will is a process which is experienced
immediately. The adherent of this philosophy believes that in the will
he has really got hold of one end of reality. Whereas he can follow
other occurrences only from the outside by means of perception,
he is confident that in his will he experiences a real process
quite immediately. The mode of existence presented to him by the
will within himself becomes for him the fundamental reality of the
universe. His own will appears to him as a special case of the general
world-process; hence the latter is conceived as a universal will. The
will becomes the principle of reality just as, in Mysticism, feeling
becomes the principle of knowledge. This kind of theory is called
Voluntarism (Thelism). It makes something which can be experienced
only individually the dominant factor of the world.
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