Online Course POF-01:  Introduction To The Philosophy Of Freedom: Mastering The Content Course Description The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner Chapter 2 The Fundamental Desire For Knowledge Log-in to this website while taking quiz if you want the quiz results recorded for course credit. You may take the quiz as many times as you like. Topics (pars. 5 thru 7) Materialism, Spiritualism Extreme Spiritualism, Idealism Matter-Thinking Paradox Indivisible Unity click here for picture

2.1Materialism
[5] Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another.


2.2 Spiritualism (see note below for another translation)
[6] What of the spiritualistic theory? The genuine spiritualist denies to matter all independent existence and regards it merely as a product of spirit(mind). But when he tries to use this theory to solve the riddle of his own human nature, he finds himself driven into a corner. Over against the "I" or Ego, which can be ranged on the side of spirit, there stands directly the world of the senses. No spiritual approach to it seems open. Only with the help of material processes can it be perceived and experienced by the "I". Such material processes the "I" does not discover in itself so long as it regards its own nature as exclusively spiritual. In what it achieves spiritually by its own effort, the sense-perceptible world is never to be found. It seems as if the "I" had to concede that the world would be a closed book to it unless it could establish a non-spiritual relation to the world.


2.3 Absolute Idealism
Similarly, when it comes to action, we have to translate our purposes into realities with the help of material things and forces. We are, therefore, referred back to the outer world. The most extreme spiritualist -- or rather, the thinker who through his absolute idealism appears as extreme spiritualist -- is Johann Gottlieb Fichte*. He attempts to derive the whole edifice of the world from the "I". What he has actually accomplished is a magnificent thought-picture of the world, without any content of experience(empirical content). As little as it is possible for the materialist to argue the spirit(mind) away, just as little is it possible for the spiritualist to argue away the outer world of matter.


2.4 Idealism
[7] When man reflects upon the "I", he perceives in the first instance the work of this "I" in the conceptual elaboration of the world of ideas. Hence a world-conception that inclines towards spiritualism may feel tempted, in looking at man's own essential nature, to acknowledge nothing of spirit except this world of ideas. In this way spiritualism becomes one-sided idealism. Instead of going on to penetrate through the world of ideas to the spiritual world, idealism identifies the spiritual world with the world of ideas itself. As a result, it is compelled to remain fixed with its world-outlook in the circle of activity of the Ego, as if bewitched.


2.5 Matter-Thinking Paradox
[8] A curious variant of idealism is to be found in the view which Friedrich Albert Lange* has put forward in his widely read History of Materialism. He holds that the materialists are quite right in declaring all phenomena, including our thinking, to be the product of purely material processes, but, conversely, matter and its processes are for him themselves the product of our thinking.

“The senses give us only the effects of things, not true copies, much less the things themselves. But among these mere effects we must include the senses themselves together with the brain and the molecular vibrations which we assume to go on there."

That is, our thinking is produced by the material processes, and these by the thinking of our I. Lange's philosophy is thus nothing more than the story, in philosophical terms, of the intrepid Baron Münchhausen*, who holds himself up in the air by his own pigtail.


2.6 Indivisible Unity
[9] The third form of monism is the one which finds even in the simplest entity (the atom) both matter and spirit(mind) already united. But nothing is gained by this either, except that the question, which really originates in our consciousness, is shifted to another place. How comes it that the simple entity manifests itself in a two-fold manner, if it is an indivisible unity?

2.2 AlternativeTranslation Note
The following is from the 1916 Hoernle English translation before Steiner 1918 revisions--the English translator makes a decision to translate Geist to spirit or mind.
What of the Spiritualistic theory? The Spiritualist denies Matter (the World) and regards it merely as a product of Mind (the Self). He supposes the whole phenomenal world to be nothing more than a fabric woven by Mind out of itself. This conception of the world finds itself in difficulties as soon as it attempts to deduce from Mind any single concrete phenomenon. It cannot do so either in knowledge or in action. If one would really know the external world, one must turn one's eye outwards and draw on the fund of experience. Without experience Mind can have no content. Similarly, when it comes to acting, we have to translate our purpose into realities with the help of material things and forces. We are, therefore, dependent on the outer world.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte Note
Fichte is a personality who believes that, in order to walk life’s course, he has no need of the real world and its facts; rather, he keeps his eyes riveted on the world of idea. He holds those in low self esteem who do not understand such an idealistic attitude of spirit. Rudolf Steiner, pp. 123, Riddles of Philosophy

Baron Münchhausen note
The Baron's astounding feats included riding cannonballs, traveling to the Moon, and escaping from a swamp by pulling himself up by his own hair. His name is associated with absurdly exaggerated stories.

Friedrich Albert Lange note
It is Lange's conviction that all scientific endeavor that does not limit itself to the evidence of the senses and the logical intellect that combines these elements of evidence must remain fruitless. That the senses and the intellect together, however, do not supply us with anything but a result of our own organization, he accepts as evidently following from his analysis of the origin of knowledge. The world is for him fundamentally a product of the fiction of our senses and of our intellects. Because of this opinion, he never asks the question of truth with regard to the ideas. A truth that could enlighten us about the essence of the world is not recognized by Lange. He believes he has obtained an open road for the ideas and ideals that are formed by the human mind and that he has accomplished this through the very fact that he no longer feels the need of attributing any truth to the knowledge of the senses and the intellect. Without hesitation he considered everything that went beyond sensual observation and rational combination to be mere fiction. No matter what the idealistic philosophers had thought concerning the nature of facts, for him it belonged to the realm of poetic fiction.
-Rudolf Steiner, Riddles of Philosophy, p. 326