The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The Factors of Life

[ 1 ] Let us recapitulate what we have established in the preceding chapters. The world presents itself to human beings as a multiplicity, as a sum of particulars. One of these particulars, a being among beings, is the human being himself. We refer to this form of the world simply as given, and insofar as we do not develop it through conscious activity but find it ready-made, as perception. Within the world of perceptions, we perceive ourselves. This self-perception would simply remain one among many other perceptions if not for the emergence, from the very center of this self-perception, of something that proves capable of connecting the perceptions as a whole—that is, the sum of all other perceptions—with that of our self. This emerging something is no longer mere perception; nor is it simply found alongside the perceptions. It is brought about through activity. It initially appears bound to what we perceive as our self. In terms of its inner significance, however, it extends beyond the self. It adds ideal determinations to the individual perceptions, which, however, relate to one another and are grounded in a whole. It determines what is gained through self-perception in the same ideal way as all other perceptions and sets it, as a subject or “I,” in relation to the objects. This something is thought, and the ideal determinations are the concepts and ideas. Thought therefore first manifests itself in the perception of the self; yet it is not merely subjective, for the self designates itself as a subject only with the aid of thought. This mental relation to itself is a vital determination of our personality. Through it, we lead a purely ideal existence. Through it, we feel ourselves to be thinking beings. This determination of life would remain a purely conceptual (logical) one if no other determinations of our self were added. We would then be beings whose lives were exhausted in the establishment of purely ideal relationships between perceptions among themselves, between them and the ultimate, and between them and ourselves. If one calls the establishment of such a mental relationship “cognition,” and the state of our self thereby attained “knowledge,” then, given the above premise, we would have to regard ourselves as merely cognizing or knowing beings.

[ 2 ] However, this assumption does not hold true. As we have seen, we relate perceptions to ourselves not merely in an ideal sense, through concepts, but also through emotion. We are therefore not beings whose lives consist solely of concepts. The naive realist even sees in the life of the emotions a more genuine life of the personality than in the purely conceptual element of knowledge. And from his standpoint, he is quite right to interpret the matter in this way. On the subjective side, feeling is initially exactly the same as perception is on the objective side. According to the principle of naive realism—that everything which can be perceived is real—feeling is therefore the guarantee of the reality of one’s own personality. The monism referred to here must, however, grant feeling the same complement that it deems necessary for perception if it is to present itself as complete reality. For this monism, feeling is an incomplete reality that, in the initial form in which it is given to us, does not yet contain its second factor, the concept or the idea. That is why, in life, feeling, just like perception , always precedes cognition. We first feel ourselves as beings; and in the course of gradual development, we only struggle our way to the point where, within our own existence felt in a vague way, the concept of our self dawns upon us. What for us only emerges later, however, is originally inseparably connected with feeling. Because of this circumstance, the naive person comes to believe that existence presents itself to him immediately through feeling, but only indirectly through knowledge. The development of his emotional life will therefore seem more important to him than anything else. He will believe he has grasped the structure of the world only when he has incorporated it into his feelings. He seeks not to make knowledge, but feeling, the means of cognition. Since feeling is something entirely individual, something akin to perception, the philosopher of feeling elevates a principle that has meaning only within his own personality to a universal principle. He seeks to permeate the entire world with his own self. What the monism referred to here strives to grasp in concept, the philosopher of feeling seeks to achieve through feeling, and regards this union with objects as the more immediate one.

[ 3 ] The approach described here, the philosophy of feeling, is often referred to as mysticism. The error of a mystical outlook based solely on feeling lies in the fact that it seeks to experience what it ought to know, that it seeks to elevate an individual phenomenon—feeling—to a universal principle.

[ 4 ] Feeling is a purely individual act, the relationship between the external world and our subject, insofar as this relationship finds its expression in a purely subjective experience.

[ 5 ] There is yet another expression of the human personality. Through its thinking, the ego participates in the general life of the world; through this, it relates the perceptions to itself—and itself to the perceptions—in a purely ideal (conceptual) sense. In feeling, it experiences a relation of objects to its subject; in will, the opposite is the case. In willing, we likewise have a perception before us, namely that of the individual relation of our self to the objective. Whatever in willing is not a purely ideal factor is just as much an object of perception as is the case with any thing in the external world.

[ 6 ] Nevertheless, naive realism will once again believe that it is dealing with a far more real existence than can be attained through thought. It will perceive in the will an element in which it becomes aware of an event, a causation immediately, in contrast to thought, which first grasps the event in concepts. What the ego accomplishes through its will represents, for such a view, a process that is experienced immediately. In the act of willing, the adherent of this philosophy believes he has truly grasped a corner of world events. While he can follow other events only through external perception, he believes he experiences a real event quite immediately in his own willing. The form of being in which the will appears to him within the self becomes for him a real principle of reality. His own volition appears to him as a special case of general world events; the latter thus as general volition. The will becomes a world principle just as, in emotional mysticism, feeling becomes a principle of knowledge. This perspective is philosophy of the will (Thelism). That which can only be experienced individually is made by it into a constitutive factor of the world.

[ 7 ] Just as emotional mysticism cannot be called a science, neither can the philosophy of the will. For both claim that they cannot make do with a conceptual understanding of the world. Both demand, in addition to the ideal principle of being, a real principle as well. And they do so with some justification. But since we have only perception as a means of apprehending these so-called real principles, the claim of emotional mysticism and the philosophy of the will is identical to the view that we have two sources of knowledge: that of thought and that of perception, the latter of which manifests itself in feeling and will as individual experience. Since the outflows of one source—the experiences—cannot be directly incorporated by these worldviews into those of the other source, that of thought, the two modes of cognition, perception and thought, coexist side by side without higher mediation. Alongside the ideal principle attainable through knowledge, there is said to be a real principle of the world that must be experienced and cannot be grasped by thought. In other words: emotional mysticism and the philosophy of the will are forms of naive realism, because they adhere to the principle that what is immediately perceived is real. Compared to the original naive realism, they commit only the inconsistency of making a specific form of perception (feeling or willing) the sole means of knowing being, whereas they can do so only if they generally adhere to the principle: What is perceived is real. They would thus also have to attribute equal epistemic value to external perception.

[ 8 ] The philosophy of the will becomes metaphysical realism when it extends the will to the spheres of existence in which direct experience of it is not possible, as it is within one’s own subject. It hypothetically posits a principle outside the subject for which subjective experience is the sole criterion of reality. As metaphysical realism, the philosophy of the will falls prey to the critique outlined in the preceding chapter, which must overcome the contradictory element of any metaphysical realism and acknowledge that the will is a general world event only insofar as it relates ideally to the rest of the world.

Addendum to the new edition (1918)

[ 9 ] The difficulty in observing and grasping thought in its essence lies in the fact that this essence slips away all too easily from the observing soul the moment it attempts to direct its attention toward it. Then all that remains is the dead abstract, the corpse of living thought. If one looks only at this abstract, one will easily find oneself compelled to enter into the “vibrant” element of emotional mysticism, or even the metaphysics of the will. One will find it strange when someone seeks to grasp the essence of reality in “mere thought.” But whoever brings themselves to truly possess life in thought comes to the realization that the inner richness and the experience—resting within itself yet simultaneously in motion—within this life cannot even be compared to the weaving of mere feelings or the contemplation of the element of will, let alone that the latter should be placed above the former. It is precisely from this richness, from this inner fullness of experience, that its counterpart in the ordinary attitude of the soul appears dead and abstract. No other human activity of the soul is as easily misunderstood as thinking. Willing and feeling still warm the human soul even in the afterlife of its original state. Thinking, however, all too easily leaves one cold in this reliving; it seems to dry up the life of the soul. Yet this is merely the strongly asserting shadow of its light-permeated reality, which warmly immerses itself in the phenomena of the world. This immersion occurs through a power flowing within the act of thinking itself, a power that is love in a spiritual sense. One must not object by saying that whoever sees love in active thinking is projecting a feeling—love—into it. For this objection is in truth a confirmation of what has been asserted here. For whoever turns toward essential thinking finds in it both feeling and will, the latter also in the depths of their reality; whoever turns away from thinking and turns only to “mere” feeling and willing loses the true reality of these. Whoever wishes to intuitively experience in thinking will also do justice to emotional and volitional experience; but emotional mysticism and the metaphysics of the will cannot do justice to the intuitive-rational penetration of existence. The latter will all too easily come to the conclusion that they stand in the real; but the intuitively thinking person, unfeeling and alien to reality, forms a shadowy, cold worldview in “abstract thoughts.”