Rudolf Steiner's 'Philosophie Der Freiheit'

G. A. Bondarev Rudolf Steiner’s ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ As the Foundation of the Logic of Beholding Thinking. Religion of the Thinking Will. Organon of the New Cultural Epoch. Volume 2 G. A. BONDAREV Rudolf Steiner’s ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ as the Foundation of Logic of Beholding Thinking. Religion of the Thinking Will. Organon of the New Cultural Epoch. An Introduction to Anthroposophical Methodology Volume II “That the ideas of human beings should not just remain ‘thinking’, but that they should become ‘seeing in thinking’, an infinitely great deal depends upon this fact.” Rudolf Steiner 2013 English translation of the German edition, ‘Die ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ von Rudolf Steiner als Grundlage der Logik des anschauenden Denkens. Religion des denkenden Willens. Organon der neuen Kul- turepoche’ (Ausgabe der Freien Philosophischen Assoziation, Basel, 2004) by Graham B. Rickett. Typesetting, formatting and image editing: Jacob Harlow 2013 Copyright: G. A. Bondarev All rights reserved ISBN: 978-1-304-76217-7 Contents IV Survey of the Literature .............................................................. 7 'Die Philosophie der Freiheit' Chapter 2 – The Scientific Impulse ............................................... 29 V The Religious-Ethical Character of the Thought- Metamorphoses ................................................................................ 43 'Die Philosophie der Freiheit' Chapter 3 – Thinking as a Means of gaining Knowledge of the World ............................................................................................ 69 VI The Concept (the Idea) and the Percept (Experience) ............ 95 1. The Three Worlds ..................................................................... 95 2. The Genesis of the Concept ...................................................... 98 3. ‘Sensory Appearance’ and ‘Thinking’ in the World-View of Ideal-Realism .............................................................................. 107 4. Goethe, Hegel and Rudolf Steiner .......................................... 114 5. The Natural-Scientific Method of Goethe and Rudolf Steiner 117 6. The Subject of Cognition ........................................................ 123 'Die Philosophie der Freiheit' Chapter 4 – The World as Percept .............................................. 129 The Three Aspects of Symmetry .................................................. 164 VII From Abstract to Picture Thinking ....................................... 169 1. Primary and Secondary Qualities ............................................ 169 2. Some Special Features of Quality and Quantity ..................... 176 3. What is the Relation between Thinking and Being? ............... 181 4. The Divine and the Abstract .................................................... 186 5. The Pure Actuality of Thinking ............................................... 195 'Die Philosophie der Freiheit' Chapter 5 – Gaining Knowledge of the World ............................ 201 VIII The Coming into Being of Homo Sapiens ............................ 231 1. From Natural Man to Rational Man ........................................ 231 2. Homa Erectus .......................................................................... 238 3. The ‘Ur’-phenomenon of Man in Different Globes ................ 242 4. The Structure of the Universe – and the Human Being. .......... 253 5. The Biblical Creation Myth in the Light of Anthroposophy ... 257 6. A Holistic Image of the Human Being .................................... 263 7. The Spiritual-Material Evolution of Man as a Species, and the Ontology of the ‘I’. ...................................................................... 266 'Die Philosophie der Freiheit' Chapter 6 – The Human Individuality ......................................... 279 IX Memory Picturing ..................................................................... 291 1. The ‘Ur’-Phenomenon of Man’s Evolution to Spirit ............... 291 2. A Leap across the Abyss of Nothingness ................................ 296 3. The Threefold Bodily Nature and Memory ............................. 301 4. The Phenomenon of the Human Being .................................... 316 5. Memories outside the Physical Body ...................................... 333 'Die Philosophie der Freiheit' Chapter 7 – Are there Limits to Knowledge? .............................. 343 References .................................................................................. 369 6 IV Survey of the Literature As we are engaged in considerations of methodology and in practical exercises on the basis of the text of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, it is not without value for us to know of the – if we may use the expres- sion – literary ‘ecology’ within which our work is placed. On the theme of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ a significant number of books and articles have already appeared. Most of them have the intention in common of resolving the mystery or mysteries of this book. Its riddling nature is felt by many; many, simply by reading it without entering deeply into the text or its spiritual-scientific mysteries, experience a wholesome, ordering effect upon the soul. But where there is a striving to discover the method of approaching the book, people come together in study-groups. The first experiment of this kind took place already at the end of the 1920’s. Carl Unger, a pupil of Rudolf Steiner’s, organized at that time a small circle of philosophically-thinking anthroposophists and in their work together they succeeded establishing that the book has substance and that when one applies certain procedures in the study of it, it con- tributes to practical development of the power of judgment in beholding. Carl Unger sensed yet another peculiarity of the book: that it has an ethical effect on the reader and stands in some way in harmony with the Holy Scriptures. Heinrich Leiste, a pupil of Unger’s, wrote about the primary goal that the study group led by Unger had set itself. It was, by working with certain philosophical and Anthroposophical insights of Rudolf Steiner, to reach through to an epistemology of imaginative consciousness.116 As a result of his premature, tragic death, Carl Unger was not able to develop his direction of spiritual-scientific research and unfortunate- ly, as time when on, it simply faded from view. It was all the more sat- isfying to discover one day that the chief questions of our own research, which were formulated at another time and in an entirely different cultural, social and even ethnic environment are, in essence, a direct con- tinuation of the intentions of many decades ago. In Middle Europe in the work on the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ the intellectual direction has gained the upper hand. This is due, above all, to the permanent neglect of the methodology of spiritual science; in such a case, thought begins unavoidably to revolve in a closed circle of the reflective mode of thinking, which was already completely exhaust- ed by the end of the 19th century. In Anthroposophy this is told of in the most comprehensive way, yet, nonetheless, attempts to cross the boundaries of the intellect with the help of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ are undertaken merely intellectually. With this we do not at all intend to challenge anyone’s right to a formal-logical or historical- philosophical approach to this book. We merely stress the primary im- portance of the transformation of the quality of consciousness, without which the book will always remain an ‘open secret’. We fully share the concern expressed by Otto Palmer in his book in which he gathered together most of the statements Rudolf Steiner himself made about the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. He writes that “this book is in danger of being treated in the same way as one treats other philosophies. In this sense academic philosophy demonstrates a much sounder instinct by not paying any attention to this book at all. For, in a certain sense, it represents the end of philosophy and creates the transition to something completely new.”117 How and to what it builds this transition cannot be recognized without a systematic study of the methodology of Anthroposophy. But as very few people wish to apply themselves to this work, the results of the search for this transition are modest to say the least; the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ continues to be studied like “other philosophies”. A certain service, it is true, is also provided by this – as can be seen, for example, in the book by Michael Kirn, which he conceived as a many-volume work, in which he systematically analyzes, chapter by chapter, the entire ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. He sees it as his own task to place its content within a broader historical-philosophical context, the necessity of which was not questioned by Rudolf Steiner. Accord- ing to Kirn, such an “expansion” of the content of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ uncovers the universality of its content.118 In reading Kirn’s book we are given the possibility not only to extend our knowledge of philosophy, but also to experience how broad and significant is the philosophical context out of which the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ grows and how all-encompassing is the arena of the battle of human concepts in the question of defining the truly human principle within the human being. To our own undoubted benefit we exercise in this our capacity for intellectual concentration, as we prepare our mind for beholding. Regarding Kirn’s attempts to bring the content

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