recently I thought I read here some quotation or reference to Steiner himself commenting upon the difficulty he had being able to speak out of the consciousness soul. He was "forced" (?) to mostly speak to the intellectual soul (or some such idea). Can anyone reading this provide a quote and a reference to where he said this?
thanks,
joel
to Joel
Hi,
There may or may not be a little conflation going on here. I haven't read everything written on this site lately, so you may actually not be referring to what I wrote. However, I did recently mention Steiner's comments regarding his inability to articulate what he wanted to say regarding the profound epistemological/perceptual starting points of ANTHROPOSOPHY- A FRAGMENT. However, I've never seen him characterize it in language of consciousness soul explicitly. As to the question of "force"....I don't remember if I used that word and, if so, in what context. However, to the degree that we are forced to speak from where we are, I would say that young Steiner was forced to articulate his early epistemology from an intellectual-soul center of gravity (this far from discounts nascent states and structures already being in formation). Hence his impossible insistence (in his first three gems) on a starting point he dropped soon thereafter and never quite picked back up again. Although, to me it is clear that the new language he introduces in the 1918 additions is much more than merely complementary. It's radical when you really see how it undercuts his younger none-sense (I mean that both literally and figuratively) about percepts getting attached to concepts. I find that most people consider the additions to be mere highlights; this is partly due to Steiner's insistence that nothing need be added to the text, although I'm sure we are all happy that he wrote in an entirely new opening to chapter 9.
I have no doubt you've at least read the two quotes provided in FRAGMENT regarding his self described failure to find words to say what he was trying to say in that text.
Jeff
the two quotes?
not that I know of, I have not read them ... but perhaps have in another context and don't remember when ...
I am not a big reader of Steiner (too much to handle), so I years ago just tried to chew on the epistemologies and also to see what might happen if I applied the practices of Goetheanism to an investigation of the social world of humanity ... been and still is quite an adventure just with those aspects of his work
j.
i've done the same thing,
I did the same thing you did, Joel, regarding what you said about limiting your reading to the epistemology. a few year back, however, i had to take a detour when i ran smack into the limitation of young steiner's starting point. I was reading chapter 4 and when I got to 4-3 and 4-4, I could not go any further. Suddenly these passages that I had grown to value very deeply and had integrated into the core of my PoF spouting made no sense to me...I thought I was misreading them. Was Steiner really insisting that we must start by imagining pure-percepts??? Of course my bewilderment did not come out of nowhere. I had recently taken many steps forward in my own realization of the way I was allowing certain constructs shape my "experience" unaware.
i really do consider ANTHROPOSOPHY- A FRAGMENT as his most important epistemological statement (even though it is partial and, in his words, failed). it is in the latest edition of that book where you'll find the quote in which Steiner describes how he was not able to find the words to say what he was trying to say when writing. And then (I read this over 5 years ago) there is a wonderful lecture in which he describes why he expected the "right words" to be made possible by the changes in philosophy that would flower in the 20th century. I think various streams in phenomenology and existentialism would have excited him very much (much more than they have excited the general anthropop society; I guess Merleau-Ponty (or the 30 other original explorers) didn't speak often enough about Ghosts or Christ or Lord knows what else.
As long as Anthroposophists continue to cling to the way Steiner formulated The Given (and all the residual concepts- and habits of thoughts- that form in its wake), I don't expect they'll do all that much to loosen up and percision language and thought all that much. It isn't a betrayal of Steiner to recognize that PoF (as an actual realization) now (in our time) can explain why young Steiner's "given world picture" was how he (back then) could best try to articulate (in western, germanic, Van Hartman-inspired language) the starting point. Barfield does such a beautiful and eloquent job debunking the anthropological notion that there was a historical starting point of so called pure percepts. If only we could see anthros applying that same observation to the individual development. Experiencing something as a percept is the result of a highly cognitive process (there are no percepts "observed" that are not being cognitively generated/recognized as such), but anthropops still use the language of young Steiner and speak of "attaching", "linking" and "connecting" so-called concepts with so-called percepts. It's like saying, "I always avoid seeing myself in a mirror by immediately closing my eyes when I see myself in a mirror"....If young Steiner had said that I have no doubt that we'd have very smart and creative anthropops parroting it as a possibility as well.
Anyway, I think Steiner experienced a set of states associated with PoF when he was very young and attempted to formulated them via structures of consciousness that were still primarily rooted in the main gestures of the intellectual soul (this helps explain why young Steiner honestly thought his book, PoF, would impress Van Hartman; it's hard to imagine now!). This makes sense developmentally. It seems that most anthropops like to think that Steiner developed from a great initiate into a REALLY Great Initiate, skipping the richness of his actual humanity in between...Oh, well...
the given; percepts and concepts; and too much Steiner
I always wondered, from the beginning of my experiences of Steiner via the Society and Movement, why people were more or less constantly reading about the soul in Steiner, when they had one of their own which they could observe. I have the same attitude toward PoF and A Theory of Knowledge, and was made especially happy in this regard when I read in Emerson that books were but for to inspire, and if they ever replaced our own thinking we would never connect to the divine fires that burn in our own cognitive processes. Our thinking doesn't grow through the study of particular texts, but through the exercise of its own inherent properties.
We have to use it in order to come to enjoy its reality. All the best that I have learned in life came through my own thought activity, yet this does not dismiss the role of inspiration from others, for that inspiration is the fuel the feeds the fires of our own original thought. What is even more interesting (to borrown from Spock) is what happens when on this path we begin to encounter the effect and influence of invisible beings on this original and individual thought activity - when through our introspection we wake up in the ethereal thought-world.
In writing this I am not suggesting we not read PoF etc. but only that it is far more important to use PoF as a spring board for questions we pose to ourselves, than as a book that contains answers. The Italian PoF fan (M.S.) uses this term which I often find particularly instructive: "a pre-thought thought". This is what we get from texts, when we adore them too much (turn their ideas into Idols, to borrow from Barfield). We get concepts that coerce our thinking along certain pre-thought paths that can spoil what happens when we encounter our experience. The pre-thought thought stands inbetween our I* and the experience, masking it.
As the map (PoF) is not the territory, so our individual soul life contains much that we ourselves should ponder on our own. Take the idea of a "given" or the "necessary given" for example. When we examine the content of our own experience in the light of this possibility, we are led down certain paths of exploration. I would maintain, however, and I think Emerson would agree, that we better serve the potential of our own thinking by drawing our own conclusions, without seeking to assume we have made an error when we don't get an answer there that is confirmed by a revered text. If we measure the results of our own introspection against how Steiner phrased it, we will be lost.
Thinking then grows through its own activity, not by how well it follows the pattern of another thinker.
joel
*I'll not go into the territory of what is this term "I" is meant to represent, that being a very fun riddle for each of us to face.
two (not really) ways
It’s great that you are expressing an idea/impulse that took its inspiration from reading a book (Emerson, to boot) itself, Joel!
Yea, maps. The great thing about maps is you can approach them from two very different directions, each serving a useful purpose. As you suggest, Joel, we can just plunge into the territory, letting the map take us where it does. No matter how many errors the map might have (the tree is actually not next to the well) our interaction with the territory may be valuable on its own. The other useful thing to do is to correct the map. There can be great value (for those getting ready to make the trip) in simply updating or redrawing the map (to show that the tree really isn’t next to the well).
Steiner's young attempts to point to his experience via epistemology can be approached in each direction. I think that by now there is fairly good evidence that it is fairly weak in terms of inspiring a wonderful romp in the territory (obviously not for folks like us). And I do believe very strongly that this is in part due to the fact that his map must be redrawn. Not only is it fun to redraw the map, it opens up new opportunities to inspire- just like the Emerson quote did for you.
I am always very intrigued by the psychological dynamic that makes it so that even the most intelligent of anthros refuse to look closely at the map itself. They love redrawing every other map…but……hmmmm…………..
P.S. In suggesting a redrawing, I mean in forms that carry the gesture of the consciousness soul, which is certainly not going to end up in some new articulation that is THE way...rather, each expression will express the new kinds of concepts that work very differently from those he was trying to use...
Dessert!!! Yummm!!!!
In the movie Finding Forrester, the character played by Sean Connery (a famous author) is discovered reading a tabloid. The discoverer reacts in shock - "How could such a great author read such drivel?" seems to be his reaction.
Connery's reaction? He just read some good literature - 'this is dessert'.
I find this helpful - the epistemologies (and to some extent the foundation books - when read in the right way) are like good solid meal (balance of carbs, protein, fruit and veggies). The lecture cycles are like dessert. Read too much of them and you get 'fat' (ie - your thinking becomes sloppy and slow).
There's nothing wrong with reading lecture cycles - one just has to take them as dessert.
Steiner made progress
Through my own studies of human sense perception I discovered that Steiner made dramatic jumps in his articulation of new insights as he got older.
I suggest that ANTHROPOSOPHY (fragment) was superceded by the vast lecture cycle COSMOSOPHY in 1921. In this cycle Steiner achieved what he was unable to articulate years earlier in his written attempts. IMHO In this cycle it is clear that the demand on the audience was equivalent to the demand made on the readers of PoF.
It would be unfortunate to evaluate Steiner's abilities only on his earlier writings. His capacitiy to adapt and further his understanding is demonstrated through his later lectures which appear to have been given by a wholly revised and updated personality.
Please revise and update what you give us
The communication above is an example of how you can say nothing with lots of words. Similar communications can be expressed in negative judgments - for example: "Steiner's language is old", etc.
In order to say something requires answers to the added questions below:
Through my own studies of human sense perception I discovered that Steiner made dramatic jumps in his articulation of new insights as he got older.
What are the "new insights"?
I suggest that ANTHROPOSOPHY (fragment) was superceded by the vast lecture cycle COSMOSOPHY in 1921.
"Superceded" in which sense?
In this cycle Steiner achieved what he was unable to articulate years earlier in his written attempts.
What did Steiner achieve in this cycle which "he was unable to articulate years earlier in his written attempts"?
IMHO In this cycle it is clear that the demand on the audience was equivalent to the demand made on the readers of PoF.
"It is clear" - what is this "demand"?
It would be unfortunate to evaluate Steiner's abilities only on his earlier writings.
Why?
His capacitiy to adapt and further his understanding is demonstrated through his later lectures which appear to have been given by a wholly revised and updated personality.
No details given, as usual.
to John (COSMOS)
Hi John,
COSMOSOPHY is thickly dense, brilliant and comprehensive. It stands with those later lectures in which he combines his artistry as a thinker so brilliantly with the subtle intricacy of his developing insights and observations. I wouldn't be able to say it "supercedes" FRAGMENT but that is mainly because of some things very specific to me:
What I find so powerful about FRAGMENT is that Steiner is staying as close as possible to ongoing experience and, from there, is trying to carve out a new kind of concept (we could call it a process-concept) that will articulate the starting point of his theory of perception and knowledge. This is where he says he fails. And I have yet to find any other writing or lecture in which he took back up that task. In FRAGMENT we can actually watch as Steiner attempts to radically reformulate the notion of The Given. I'm obviously biased in that it is the notion of the "directly given world" picture that I think must be dropped, immediately, from anthrpop vocabulary. FRAGMENT is unique in that Steiner is trying hard to formulate his starting point in a manner that isn't shaped by the conceptual presuppositions that he carried into PoF and his other epistemological works.
As comprehensive as COSMOSOPHY is, its achievment is not related to what he was going after in FRAGMENT. COSMOS takes concepts about astral/etheric/Christ for granted. COSMOS is a great achievement for how creatively it restates and extends many of his basic spiritual observations and schematics (he is a master at using "mirror" analogies) He isn't attempting in COSMOS to rebuild the ground floor of his theory of perception or cognition. In COSMOSOPHY Steiner is talking to people who already take for granted most of his spiritual vocabulary. If you handed COSMOS to a creative and intelligent student of phenomenology, he or she might be able to appreciate it in some ways, but we could hardly expect them to suddently feel like all of those spiritual terms have been validated. Whereas, FRAGMENT seems to only look more and more relavent from the perspective of those who are striving to reground epistemology in the actual experiences of living and being. I handed FRAGMENT to a very learned and open-minded student of phenomenology who handed it back to me (one year later!) and said, "How has this gone undiscovered for so long"....
I'm not suggesting that FRAGMENT represents something more important than COSMOSOPHY, only that the latter is less related to the aspect of Steiner's epistemological work that I find most inspiring. In FRAGMENT I feel like we are watching Steiner participate not only with his own edge as a teacher but with the very edge of our modern circumstance as those tasked with allowing a new kind of concept to emerge.
ok, gotta run!
Clarification, but is revision needed?
Hello anonymous! Thank you for reading my post and suggesting that it needs hours of work rather than minutes. If I had said nothing in that post, then you would not have thought that there might be something to question.
You are asking me to spend some time working on my post.. The post is not particularly esoteric, and perhaps not as interesting as such work on revision would warrant. You can easily pick such holes in anything I write but do you really want to know the answers to all those questions? I wish to be sure that you are not just being provocative before I spend time on your request. I look forward to your response and will be happy to spend the time expanding my post if you are really interested. If you are genuinely interested in helping me improve the clarity of my posts, I would like to know who my mentor is.
Hello Jeff!
You are correct in saying that many of the founding thoughts in Steiner's research are assumed in Cosmosophy. It does give the scope that the Fragment did not achieve but it does not address the same purpose or audience. Cosmosophy requires the kind of thinking that PoF promotes, however, the content was and is the the theme of my study. Cosmosophy builds on and supercedes the earlier accounts of Steiner's evolving insights. I did not make a distinction between Fragment's reasoned approach and Cosmosophy's account of Steiner's research (which awaits validation by other researchers) because my reason for reading was in support of teaching curative educators how to better understand the folk they want to help. It is the insight that I am interested in rather than epistomology, and that is probably one of my oversights. These days I read Steiner lectures in order to see if my experiences and insights align with his. Although I cannot go anything like as deeply as he does, I try to teach only from my own experience and understanding. Thank you for clarifying that point.
lenses and clinics
Hi, John, nice to hear from you. Yea, COSMOS is like getting to sit around the campfire and hear the amazing stories of a great adventurer, whereas FRAGMENT is like slowing realizing- via a great teacher- that your ongoing experience is the greatest adventure of all. I see now the distinction you are making between practical application of various insight and the epistemological/experiential path.
I'm not so sure that Steiner's work will be validated. I don't doubt that with time more people will gain various kinds of clairvoyant perception. I think we already can confirm this is happening. But as my understanding of the role that schematics play in perception, I am having a hard time believing that the way Steiner percieved spiritual phenomena will be much like those who will be coming and sharing research. The way he described his the spiritual world to french scientists might be what overlaps the most with I think will be coming (in those lectures he did not speak of spiritual beings as external agents but as phenomenological aspects of the researchers ongoing experience; beautiful). That said, there will undoubtedly be those who filter spiritual experience through basically the same mental pictures and conceptions that Steiner did and, to them, things might appear very much as they did to Steiner. It's just that as I meet more and more people developing subtle perception and as I read accounts of such capacities, it seems that the same "things in themselves" that Steiner "saw" will be looking very different when not seen through a theosophical/rosicrucian lens.
Man, I bet you are quite a healer. Do you have clinic?
Jeff
Life and confusion
Jeff, I wonder what lens you are using to 'see' me. I am living in a Camphill School community and my work centres on tutoring and lecturing on the BA (Hons) Curative Education programme we run in partnership with Aberdeen University.
Whatever one names my work, I am really a learner from life, which bears healing forces. For example I am slowly learning to write more clearly on this site, obviously with mixed results as evidenced in mixed messages coming across. Perhaps this site becomes a clinic at times.
Confusion is not illness but a state of being. It is the liminal edge of living opportunity where insight can break through. The challenge to scribe the experiences of the consciousness soul is huge. I was interested to read your recent post about experience. The written word remains long after the moment of the experience has further developed. Clarity is transitory in my experience and does not sit in the memory. For each written sentence, the experience needs to be recreated. Writing a short post can be a long business. The imaginative image of Jacob wrestling with the angel (Old Testament) fits this work of meaningful articulation and one may get dislocated from authenticity.
oh and...
to respond to your question regarding through what lens I "see" you, John: I always end up projecting a whole bunch of respect and playfulness onto you.
"see" ya,
Jeff
amen
amen
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