The Rudolf Steiner Archive

15. The Consequences of Monism

[ 1 ] The unified explanation of the world, or the monism meant here, takes from human experience the principles it needs to explain the world. It also seeks the sources of action within the world of observation, namely in the human nature accessible to our self-knowledge, namely in the moral imagination. It refuses to seek the ultimate reasons for the world outside of perception and thought through abstract conclusions. For monism, the unity that tangible thinking observation brings to the manifold multiplicity of perceptions is at the same time the unity that the human need for knowledge demands and through which it seeks entry into the physical and spiritual realms of the world. Whoever seeks another unity behind this unity to be sought in this way only proves that he does not recognize the correspondence of what is found through thinking with what is demanded by the instinct of knowledge. The single human individual is not actually separated from the world. It is a part of the world, and there is a connection with the whole of the cosmos according to reality, which is only interrupted for our perception. For the time being, we see this part as an entity existing on its own, because we do not see the belts and ropes through which the movement of our wheel of life is brought about by the basic forces of the cosmos. Whoever remains on this standpoint sees the part of a whole as a truly independently existing being, as the monad, which receives the information from the rest of the world in some way from outside. The monism meant here shows that independence can only be believed as long as what is perceived is not drawn into the net of the conceptual world through thinking. If this happens, the partial existence turns out to be a mere appearance of perception. Man can only find his self-contained total existence in the universe through intuitive thought experience. Thinking destroys the appearance of perception and integrates our individual existence into the life of the cosmos. The unity of the conceptual world, which contains the objective perceptions, also incorporates the content of our subjective personality. Thinking gives us the true form of reality as a self-contained unity, while the diversity of perceptions is only an appearance conditioned by our organization (cf. p. 86ff.). Recognizing the real as opposed to the appearance of perception has always been the goal of human thought. Science endeavoured to recognize perceptions as reality by uncovering the lawful connections within them. Where, however, it was held that the connection established by human thought had only a subjective meaning, the true ground of unity was sought in an object located beyond our world of experience (a revealed God, will, absolute spirit, etc.). - And, based on this opinion, they endeavored to gain, in addition to the knowledge of the connections recognizable within experience, a second one that goes beyond experience and reveals the connection of the same with the entities that can no longer be experienced (metaphysics gained not through experience but through inference). From this point of view, the reason why we understand the context of the world through regulated thinking was seen in the fact that a primordial being had constructed the world according to logical laws, and the reason for our actions was seen in the will of the primordial being. But it was not recognized that thinking encompasses the subjective and the objective at the same time, and that total reality is conveyed in the union of perception with the concept. Only as long as we consider the lawfulness that permeates and determines perception in the abstract form of the concept are we in fact dealing with something purely subjective. What is subjective, however, is not the content of the concept that is added to the perception with the help of thinking. This content is not taken from the subject, but from reality. It is the part of reality that perception cannot reach. It is experience, but not experience mediated by perception. He who cannot imagine that the concept is a real thing, thinks only of the abstract form in which he holds it in his mind. But in such a separation it is present only through our organization, just as perception is. Even the tree that we perceive has no existence in isolation. It is only a link within the great machinery of nature, and only possible in real connection with it. An abstract concept has no reality in itself, just as little as a perception in itself. Perception is that part of reality which is given objectively, the concept that which is given subjectively (through intuition, cf. page 95ff.). Our mental organization tears reality apart into these two factors. One factor appears to perception, the other to intuition. Only the connection between the two, the perception that integrates itself lawfully into the universe, is full reality. If we consider mere perception on its own, then we have no reality, but an incoherent chaos; if we consider the lawfulness of perceptions on their own, then we are merely dealing with abstract concepts. It is not the abstract concept that contains reality, but thinking observation, which considers neither the concept nor the perception in isolation, but the connection between the two.

[ 2 ] Even the most orthodox subjective idealist will not deny that we live in reality (that our real existence is rooted in it). He will only deny that with our cognition we also achieve ideally what we experience in reality. Monism, on the other hand, shows that thinking is neither subjective nor objective, but a principle that encompasses both sides of reality. When we observe by thinking, we carry out a process that itself belongs to the series of real events. By thinking within experience itself, we overcome the one-sidedness of mere perception. Through abstract, conceptual hypotheses (through purely conceptual reflection) we cannot fathom the essence of the real, but we live in the real by finding the ideas for the perceptions. Monism does not seek something inexperient (something beyond) in experience, but sees the real in concept and perception. It does not spin metaphysics out of mere abstract concepts, because it sees in the concept itself only the one side of reality, which remains hidden from perception and only has meaning in connection with perception. However, it evokes in man the conviction that he lives in the world of reality and does not have to seek a higher reality outside his world that cannot be experienced. It prevents him from seeking the absolutely real elsewhere than in experience, because he recognizes the content of experience itself as the real. And he is satisfied by this reality because he knows that thinking has the power to vouch for it. What dualism seeks only behind the world of observation, monism finds in the world itself. Monism shows that with our cognition we grasp reality in its true form, not in a subjective image that interposes itself between man and reality. For monism, the conceptual content of the world is the same for all human individuals (cf. pp. 89ff.). According to monistic principles, one human individual regards another as his equal because it is the same world content that lives itself out in him. In some conceptual world there are not as many concepts of the lion as there are individuals who think a lion, but only one. And the concept that A adds to the perception of the lion is the same as that of B, only conceived by a different subject of perception (cf. p. 90f.). Thinking leads all subjects of perception to the common ideal unity of all multiplicity. The single world of ideas lives itself out in them as a multiplicity of individuals. As long as man grasps himself merely through self-perception, he sees himself as this particular human being; as soon as he looks at the world of ideas that lights up within him and encompasses everything particular, he sees the absolutely real shining vividly within himself. Dualism defines the divine primordial being as that which permeates all human beings and lives in all of them. Monism finds this common divine life in reality itself. The ideal content of another person is also mine, and I only see him as another as long as I perceive, but no longer as soon as I think. Each person's thinking encompasses only a part of the entire world of ideas, and in this respect individuals also differ in the actual content of their thinking. But these contents are in a self-contained whole that encompasses the thought contents of all people. The common primordial being that permeates all human beings is thus grasped by man in his thinking. Life in reality that is filled with the content of thought is at the same time life in God. The merely accessible, not to be experienced beyond is based on a misunderstanding of those who believe that this world does not have the reason for its existence in itself. They do not realize that through thinking they can find what they require to explain perception. For this reason, however, no speculation has yet brought to light any content that has not been borrowed from the reality given to us. The God assumed by abstract inference is only man transferred to a beyond; Schopenhauer's will is the absolutized human will-power; Hartmann's unconscious primordial being, composed of idea and will, is a composition of two abstractions from experience. Exactly the same can be said of all other otherworldly principles based on non-experienced thinking.

[ 3 ] In truth, the human mind never goes beyond the reality in which we live, nor does it need to, since everything it needs to explain it lies in this world. If philosophers ultimately declare themselves satisfied with the derivation of the world from principles that they borrow from experience and transfer to a hypothetical beyond, then such satisfaction must also be possible if the same content is left in this world, where it belongs for experiential thinking. All going beyond the world is only an apparent one, and the principles transferred out of the world do not explain the world better than those lying within it. Self-understanding thought, however, does not even call for such a going out, since a thought content must only seek a perceptual content within the world, not outside it, with which it forms a real thing. Even the objects of the imagination are only contents that only have their justification when they become ideas that point to a perceptual content. Through this perceptual content they integrate themselves into reality. A concept that should be filled with a content that is supposed to lie outside the world given to us is an abstraction that does not correspond to reality. We can only conceive the concepts of reality; in order to find these ourselves, we also need to perceive them. A primordial being of the world, for which a content is conceived, is an impossible assumption for self-understanding thinking. Monism does not deny the ideal, it does not even regard a perceptual content for which the ideal counterpart is lacking as full reality; but it finds nothing in the whole field of thinking that could compel it to step out of the experiential realm of thinking by denying the objectively spiritual reality of thinking. Monism regards a science that confines itself to describing perceptions without penetrating to their ideal complements as a half-measure. But it also regards as half-measures all abstract concepts that do not find their complement in perception and do not fit anywhere into the network of concepts spanning the observable world. He therefore does not recognize any ideas that point to an objective that lies beyond our experience and that are supposed to form the content of a merely hypothetical metaphysics. All that mankind has produced of such ideas are for him abstractions from experience, whose borrowing from the same is only overlooked by their originators.

[ 4 ] Neither can the goals of our actions be taken from an extra-human beyond according to monistic principles. Insofar as they are conceived, they must come from human intuition. Man does not make the purposes of an objective (otherworldly) primordial being his individual purposes, but pursues his own, given to him by his moral imagination. Man detaches the idea that is realized in an action from the unified world of ideas and bases his will on it. In his actions, therefore, it is not the commandments implanted in this world from the hereafter that are lived out, but the human intuitions belonging to the world of this world. Monism knows of no such world ruler who sets the goal and direction of our actions outside of ourselves. Man finds no such otherworldly source of existence whose counsel he could explore in order to learn from it the goals towards which he must steer his actions. He is rejected by himself. He himself must give content to his actions. If he looks outside the world in which he lives for the reasons for his will, he searches in vain. If he goes beyond the satisfaction of his natural instincts, for which Mother Nature has provided, he must seek them in his own moral imagination, unless his comfort prefers to be determined by the moral imagination of others, that is to say, he must refrain from all action or act according to reasons which he gives himself out of the world of his ideas, or which others give him out of the same. When he gets beyond his sensual instincts and the execution of other people's orders, he is determined by nothing but himself. He must act from a drive determined by himself and by nothing else. Ideally, however, this drive is determined in the world of ideas; but factually it can only be derived from it by man and realized in reality. Monism can only find the reason for the actual realization of an idea into reality by man in man himself. Man must first want an idea to become an action before it can happen. Such a will therefore has its reason only in man himself. Man is then the ultimate determinant of his action. He is free.

Addition to the new edition (1918)

[ 5 ] I. In the second part of this book an attempt was made to justify the fact that freedom is to be found in the reality of human action. For this purpose it was necessary to separate out from the whole field of human action those parts which can be spoken of as freedom in the case of unbiased self-observation. These are the actions that present themselves as realizations of ideal intuitions. No impartial observation will address other actions as free. But with impartial self-observation, man will have to consider himself predisposed to progress along the path of ethical intuitions and their realization. This impartial observation of man's ethical nature cannot, however, in itself bring about a final decision about freedom. For if intuitive thinking itself were to spring from some other entity, if its essence were not one resting on itself, the consciousness of freedom flowing from the ethical would prove to be an illusion. But the second part of this book finds its natural support in the first. The latter presents intuitive thinking as the experienced inner activity of the human spirit. Understanding this essence of thinking experientially, however, is tantamount to recognizing the freedom of intuitive thinking. And if one knows that this thinking is free, then one can also see the scope of the will to which freedom is to be attributed. The acting man will be considered free by him who can ascribe to the intuitive experience of thinking a being at rest in itself on the basis of inner experience. Those who are not able to do so will probably not be able to find any kind of incontestable way to accept freedom. The experience asserted here finds in consciousness the intuitive thinking that does not have reality merely in consciousness. And it thus finds freedom as a characteristic of the actions flowing from the intuitions of consciousness.

[ 6 ] II. The presentation of this book is based on the purely spiritually perceptible intuitive thinking, through which every perception is placed in reality in a recognizing way. More should not be presented in the book than can be seen from the experience of intuitive thinking. But it should also assert what kind of thought formation this experienced thinking requires. And it demands that it should not be denied in the process of cognition as an experience at rest in itself. That it should not be denied the ability to experience reality together with perception, instead of first seeking it in a world that lies outside of this experience and is to be opened up, towards which the human activity of thinking is only a subjective one. -

[ 7 ] This characterizes the element in thinking through which man lives himself spiritually into reality. (And no one should actually confuse this world view based on experienced thinking with mere rationalism). But on the other hand, it is clear from the whole spirit of these explanations that the perceptual element only acquires a definition of reality for human cognition when it is grasped in thinking. Outside of thinking the designation as reality cannot lie. Therefore, it must not be imagined that the sensory way of perceiving guarantees the only reality. What appears as perception is something that man must absolutely expect on his path through life. It could only be asked: can it be legitimately expected from the point of view that arises merely from intuitively experienced thinking that man can also perceive the spiritual in addition to the sensual? This can be expected. For, even if on the one hand intuitively experienced thinking is an active process taking place in the human spirit, on the other hand it is at the same time a spiritual perception grasped without a sensory organ. It is a perception in which the perceiver himself is active, and it is a self-activity that is perceived at the same time. In intuitively experienced thinking, man is also placed in a spiritual world as a perceiver. What he encounters within this world as perception, such as the spiritual world of his own thinking, is recognized by man as a spiritual world of perception. This world of perception would have the same relationship to thinking as the sensory world of perception on the sense side. The spiritual world of perception cannot be something alien to man as soon as he experiences it, because in intuitive thinking he already has an experience that is purely spiritual in character. A number of the writings published by me after this book speak of such a spiritual world of perception. This "Philosophy of Freedom" is the philosophical foundation for these later writings. For in this book an attempt is made to show that correctly understood thought-experience is already spirit-experience. Therefore, it seems to the author that he who can take the point of view of the author of this "Philosophy of Freedom" in all seriousness will not stop at entering the world of spiritual perception. However, it is not possible to deduce logically - by means of conclusions - from the contents of this book what is presented in the author's later books. From the living grasp of the intuitive thinking meant in this book, however, the further living entry into the spiritual world of perception will naturally result.