Submitted by Lori Perry on Tue, 09/04/2007 - 10:30am.
I. CONSCIOUS HUMAN ACTION (DAS BEWUSSTE MENSCHLICHE HANDELN)
A. No Freedom -- Unconscious Motivation
B. Freedom through Reason -- Do Motives Compel?
C. Freedom Not Understood -- The Leading Role of Thinking
GESTALT: 19 P. -- 3 linked 7's -- Rising Intensity.
QUALITY: A struggle with the hidden, or occult, by the [unseeing?]
If one has kept up with recent literature, one knows how diversely the Freedom-Idea is interpreted today. Attention should be given to the chapter's threefold title itself, in order to limit the scope. Which aspects are stressed, which excluded?
As he proceeds, the reader will encounter famous names. These also represent viewpoints extant today. They should be listed and their viewpoints compared with one another. There is significance in the order in which they appear. Note that Hegel stands outside the other seven.
Pictorially expressed, this is the tale of the seven blind men who came to see the elephant. The elephant is no easy beast to interpret if you can't see. Neither is man's relation to his spirit being.
If the world's notable philosophic figures have misconstrued the inner creative process by which men can consciously give themselves their motives, -- if something which seems obvious must suffer distortion for intellectual reasons, can we not expect that we too, as individuals, have hazy notions of this thing called FREEDOM?
The English language is in this case no help: liberty, independence, free-choice, free-speech, free-thought, and freedom of this or that; the word Free-dom itself, Free-domain, is an old landholders' term, and like all the above, a purely political notion, expressing human rights bestowed by law.
"FREEHEIT", (literally Free-hood) implies a state or spiritual condition of the individual. Its non-existence in English was the reason why Rudolf Steiner advised the translators that his book in English be entitled: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY. Someday, we may have the courage to coin the word 'Free-hood'. Until then, whenever we read or hear the word 'Freedom' in connection with this text, the echo from within must be SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY.
After the reader has carefully analysed these seven typical views of 'what freedom is not', and has fully grasped the irrelevance of any connection between 'freedom' and the unconscious or animal nature of man, and has seen that 'free-choice' is a verbal shell, he is faced with finding the real meaning of 'consciousness'. It may be of help here, to remind ourselves of its derivation: con-scious = with-science, or knowing activity. We may imagine we know what it means to be conscious, but when pinned down, can I be humanly conscious without thinking? Aware, certainly, in an animal way, but not humanly conscious, until I think about what I perceive.
To round out a good discussion of the chapter, a students' group should go to town on P 18. Is love possible without thinking? -- That should end the meeting on a warm note.
O'Neil Chapter One, typed
I. CONSCIOUS HUMAN ACTION (DAS BEWUSSTE MENSCHLICHE HANDELN)
A. No Freedom -- Unconscious Motivation
B. Freedom through Reason -- Do Motives Compel?
C. Freedom Not Understood -- The Leading Role of Thinking
GESTALT: 19 P. -- 3 linked 7's -- Rising Intensity.
QUALITY: A struggle with the hidden, or occult, by the [unseeing?]
If one has kept up with recent literature, one knows how diversely the Freedom-Idea is interpreted today. Attention should be given to the chapter's threefold title itself, in order to limit the scope. Which aspects are stressed, which excluded?
As he proceeds, the reader will encounter famous names. These also represent viewpoints extant today. They should be listed and their viewpoints compared with one another. There is significance in the order in which they appear. Note that Hegel stands outside the other seven.
Pictorially expressed, this is the tale of the seven blind men who came to see the elephant. The elephant is no easy beast to interpret if you can't see. Neither is man's relation to his spirit being.
If the world's notable philosophic figures have misconstrued the inner creative process by which men can consciously give themselves their motives, -- if something which seems obvious must suffer distortion for intellectual reasons, can we not expect that we too, as individuals, have hazy notions of this thing called FREEDOM?
The English language is in this case no help: liberty, independence, free-choice, free-speech, free-thought, and freedom of this or that; the word Free-dom itself, Free-domain, is an old landholders' term, and like all the above, a purely political notion, expressing human rights bestowed by law.
"FREEHEIT", (literally Free-hood) implies a state or spiritual condition of the individual. Its non-existence in English was the reason why Rudolf Steiner advised the translators that his book in English be entitled: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY. Someday, we may have the courage to coin the word 'Free-hood'. Until then, whenever we read or hear the word 'Freedom' in connection with this text, the echo from within must be SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY.
After the reader has carefully analysed these seven typical views of 'what freedom is not', and has fully grasped the irrelevance of any connection between 'freedom' and the unconscious or animal nature of man, and has seen that 'free-choice' is a verbal shell, he is faced with finding the real meaning of 'consciousness'. It may be of help here, to remind ourselves of its derivation: con-scious = with-science, or knowing activity. We may imagine we know what it means to be conscious, but when pinned down, can I be humanly conscious without thinking? Aware, certainly, in an animal way, but not humanly conscious, until I think about what I perceive.
To round out a good discussion of the chapter, a students' group should go to town on P 18. Is love possible without thinking? -- That should end the meeting on a warm note.
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