Riddles of Philosophy
Part I
GA 18
III. Thought Life from the Beginning of the Christian Era to John Scotus Erigena
[ 1 ] In the age that follows the flowering of the Greek world conceptions, philosophy submerges into religious life. The philosophical trends vanish, so to speak, into the religious currents and emerge only later. It is not meant to imply by this statement that these religious movements have no connection with the development of the philosophical life. On the contrary, this connection exists in the most extensive measure. Here, however, no statement about the evolution of religious life is intended, but rather a characterization of the development of the world conceptions insofar as it results from thought experience as such.
[ 2 ] After the exhaustion of Greek thought life, an age begins in the spiritual life of mankind in which the religious impulses become the driving forces of the intellectual world conceptions as well. For Plotinus, his own mystical experience was the source of inspiration of his ideas. A similar role for the spiritual development of mankind in its general life is played by the religious impulses in an age that begins with the exhaustion of Greek philosophy and lasts approximately until John Scotus Erigena (died 885 A.D.)
The development of thought does not completely cease in this age. We even witness the unfolding of magnificent and comprehensive thought structures. The thought energies, however, do not have their source within themselves but are derived from religious impulses.
The religious mode of conception in this period flows through the developing human souls and the resulting world pictures are derived from this stimulation. The thoughts that occur in this process are Greek thoughts that are still exerting their influence. They are adopted and transformed, but are not brought to new growth out of themselves. The world conceptions emerge out of the background of the religious life. What is alive in them is not self-unfolding thought, but the religious impulses that are striving to manifest themselves in the previously conquered thought forms.
[ 3 ] We can study this development in several significant phenomena. We can see Platonic and older philosophies engaged on European soil in the endeavor to comprehend or to contradict what the religions spread as their doctrines. Important thinkers attempt to present the revelations of religion as fully justified before the forum of the old world conceptions.
What is historically known as Gnosticism develops in this way in a more Christian or a more pagan coloring. Personalities of significance of this movement are Valentinus, Basilides and Marcion. Their thought creation is a comprehensive conception of world evolution. Cognition, gnosis, when it rises from the intellectual to the trans-intellectual realm, leads into the conception of a higher world-creative entity. This being is infinitely superior to everything seen as the world by man, and so are the other lofty beings it produces out of itself—the aeons. They form a descending series of generations in such a way that a less perfect aeon always proceeds from a more perfect one. As such, in a later stage of evolution an aeon has to be considered to be also the creator of the world that is visible to man and to which man himself belongs. Into this world an aeon of the highest degree of perfection now can join. It is an aeon that has remained in a purely spiritual, perfect world and has there continued its development in the best possible way, while other aeons produced the imperfect and eventually the sensual world including man. In this manner, the connection of the two worlds that have gone through different paths of evolution is thinkable for the Gnostic. The imperfect world receives its stimulation at a certain point of evolution by the perfect one in order that it may begin to strive toward the perfect.
The Gnostics who were inclined toward Christianity saw in Christ Jesus the perfect aeon, which has united with the terrestrial world.
[ 4 ] Personalities like Clemens of Alexandria (died ca. 211 A.D.) and Origen (born ca. 185 A.D.) stood more on a dogmatic Christian ground. Clemens accepts the Greek world conceptions as a preparation of the Christian revelation and uses them as instruments to express and defend the Christian impulses. Origen proceeds in a similar way.
[ 5 ] We find a thought life inspired by religious impulses flowing together in a comprehensive stream of conceptions in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, which are mentioned from 533 A.D. on. They probably had not been composed much earlier, but they do go back, not in their details but in their characteristic features, to earlier thinking of this age. Their content can be sketched in the following way. When the soul liberates itself from everything that it can perceive and think as being, when it also transcends beyond what it is capable of thinking as non-being, then it can spiritually divine the realm of the over-being, the hidden Godhead. In this entity, primordial being is united with primordial goodness and primordial beauty. Starting from this primeval trinity, the soul witnesses a descending order of beings that lead down to man in hierarchical array.
[ 6 ] In the ninth century Scotus Erigena adopts this conception of the world and develops it in his own way. The world for him presents itself as an evolution in four forms of nature. The first of these is the creating and not created nature. In it is contained the purely spiritual primordial cause of the world out of which evolves the creating and created nature. This is a sum of purely spiritual entities and energies, which through their activity produce the created and not creating nature, to which the sensual world and man belong. They develop in such a way that they are received into the not created and not creating nature, in which the facts of salvation, the religious means of grace, etc., unfold their effect.
[ 7 ] In the world conceptions of the Gnostics, Dionysius and Scotus Erigena, the human soul feels its roots in a world ground on which it does not base its support through the forces of thought, but from which it wants to receive the world of thought as a gift. The soul does not feel secure in the native strength of thought. It strives, however, to experience its relation to the world ground in the form of thought. The soul has thought itself enlivened by another energy that derives from religious impulses, whereas in the Greek thinkers it lived out of its own strength. Thought in this age existed, so to speak, in a form in which its own energy was dormant. In the same way, we may also think of the energy of picture conception in the centuries that preceded the birth of thought. There must have been an ancient time when consciousness in the form of picture conception flourished, the same as did the later thought consciousness in Greece. It then drew its energy out of other impulses and only when it had gone through this intermediate state did it transform into thought experience. It is an intermediate state in the process of thought development that we witness in the first centuries of the Christian era.
[ 8 ] In those parts of Asia where the conceptions of Aristotle had been spread, the tendency now arose to lend expression to the semitic religious impulses in the ideas of the Greek thinker. This tendency was then transplanted also to European soil and so entered into the European spiritual life through such thinkers as the great Aristotelians, Averroës (1126–1198), Maimonides (1135–1204), and others.
In Averroës, we find the view that it is an error to assume that a special thought world exists in the personality of man. There is only one homogeneous thought world in the divine primordial being. As light can be reflected in many mirrors, so also one thought world is revealed in many human beings. During human life on earth, to be sure, a further transformation of the thought world takes place, but this is, in reality, only a process in the spiritually homogeneous primordial ground. With man's death, the individual revelation through him simply comes to an end. His thought life now exists only in the one thought life.
This world conception allows the Greek thought experience to continue its effect, but does it in such a way that it is now anchored in the uniform divine world ground. It leaves us with the impression of being a manifestation of the fact that the developing human soul did not feel in itself the intrinsic energy of thought. It therefore projected this energy into an extra-human world power.
Das Gedankenleben vom Beginn der christlichen Zeitrechnung bis zu Johannes Scotus oder Erigena
[ 1 ] In dem Zeitalter, das auf die Blüte der griechischen Weltanschauungen folgt, tauchen diese in das religiöse Leben dieses Zeitalters unter. Die Weltanschauungsströmung verschwindet gewissermaßen in den religiösen Bewegungen und taucht erst in einem späteren Zeitpunkte wieder auf. Damit soll nicht behauptet werden, daß diese religiösen Bewegungen nicht im Zusammenhang mit dem Fortgange des Weltanschauungslebens stehen. Es ist dies vielmehr in dem allerumfassendsten Sinne der Fall. Doch wird hier nicht beabsichtigt, etwas über die Entwickelung des religiösen Lebens zu sagen. Es soll nur der Fortgang der Weltanschauungen charakterisiert werden, insofern dieser aus dem Gedankenerleben als solchem sich ergibt.
[ 2 ] Nach der Erschöpfung des griechischen Gedankenlebens tritt im Geistesleben der Menschheit ein Zeitalter ein, in welchem die religiösen Impulse die treibenden Kräfte auch der gedanklichen Weltanschauung werden. Was bei Plotin sein eigenes mystisches Erleben war, das Inspirierende für seine Ideen, das werden in ausgebreiteterem Leben für die geistige Menschheitsentwickelung die religiösen Impulse in einem Zeitalter, das mit der Erschöpfung der griechischen Weltanschauung beginnt und etwa bis zu Scotus Erigena (gest. 877 n.Chr.) dauert. Es hat die Gedankenentwickelung in diesem Zeitalter nicht etwa völlig auf; es entfalten sich sogar großartige, umfassende Gedankengebäude. Doch ziehen die Gedankenkräfte derselben ihre Quellen nicht aus sich selbst, sondern aus den religiösen Impulsen. 86 Es strömt in diesem Zeitalter die religiöse Vorstellungsart durch die sich entwickelnden Menschenseelen, und aus den Anregungen dieser Vorstellungsart fließen die Weltbilder. Die Gedanken, die dabei zutage treten, sind die fortwirkenden griechischen Gedanken. Man nimmt diese auf, gestaltet sie um; aber man bringt sie zu keinem Wachstum aus sich selbst heraus. Aus dem Hintergrunde des religiösen Lebens heraus treten die Weltanschauungen. Was in ihnen lebt, ist nicht der sich entfaltende Gedanke; es sind die religiösen Impulse, welche danach drängen, in den errungenen Gedanken sich einen Ausdruck zu verschaffen.
[ 3 ] Man kann an einzelnen bedeutsamen Erscheinungen diese Entwickelung betrachten. Man sieht dann auf europäischem Boden platonische und ältere Vorstellungsarten damit ringen, zu begreifen, was die Religionen verkünden, oder auch es bekämpfen. Bedeutende Denker suchen, was die Religion offenbart, auch gerechtfertigt vor den alten Weltanschauungen darzustellen. So kommt zustande, was die Geschichte als Gnosis bezeichnet, in einer mehr christlichen oder mehr heidnischen Färbung. Persönlichkeiten, welche für die Gnosis in Betracht kommen, sind Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion. Ihre Gedankenschöpfung ist eine umfassende Weltentwickelungsvorstellung. Das Erkennen, die Gnosis, mündet, wenn es sich aus dem Gedanklichen ins Übergedankliche erhebt, in die Vorstellung einer höchsten weItschöpferischen Wesenheit. Weit erhaben über alles, was als Welt von dem Menschen wahrgenommen wird, ist diese Wesenheit. Und weit erhaben sind auch noch die Wesenheiten, welche sie aus sich hervorgehen läßt, die Äonen. Doch bilden diese eine absteigende Entwickelungsreihe, so daß ein Äon als ein unvollkommenerer 87 immer aus einem volIkommeneren hervorgeht. Als ein solcher Äon auf einer späteren Entwickelungsstufe ist der Schöpfer der dem Menschen wahrnehmbaren Welt anzusehen, der auch der Mensch selbst zugehört. Mit dieser Welt kann sich nun ein Äon des höchsten Vollkommenheitsgrades verbinden. Ein Äon, der in einer rein geistigen, vollkommenen Welt verblieben und da sich im besten Sinne weiterentwickelt hat, während andere Äonen Unvollkommenes und zuletzt die sinnliche Welt mit dem Menschen hervorgebracht haben. So ist für die Gnosis die Verbindung zweier Welten denkbar, welche verschiedene Entwickelungswege durchgemacht haben, und von denen dann in einem Zeitpunkte die unvollkommene von der vollkommenen zu neuer Entwickelung nach dem Vollkommenen zu angeregt wird. Die dem Christentum zugeneigten Gnostiker sahen in dem Christus Jesus jenen vollkommenen Äon, der mit der Erdenwelt sich verbunden hat.
[ 4 ] Mehr auf dogmatisch-christlichem Boden standen Persönlichkeiten wie Clemens von Alexandrien (gest. etwa 211 n.Chr.) und Origenes (geb. etwa 183 n.Chr.). Clemens nimmt die griechischen Weltanschauungen wie eine Vorbereitung der christlichen Offenbarung und benützt sie als ein Instrument, um die christlichen Impulse auszudrücken und zu verteidigen. In ähnlicher Art verfährt Origenes.
[ 5 ] Wie zusammenfließend in einem umfassenden Vorstellungsstrom findet sich das von den religiösen Impulsen inspirierte Gedankenleben in den Schriften des Areopagiten Dionysius. Diese Schriften werden vom Jahr 533 n.Chr. an erwähnt, sind wohl nicht viel früher verfaßt, gehen aber in ihren Grundzügen, nicht in den Einzelheiten, auf früheres Denken dieses Zeitalters zurück. Man kann den Inhalt in der folgenden Art skizzieren: Wenn die Seele sich allem entringt, was sie als Seiendes wahrnehmen und denken kann, wenn sie auch hinausgeht über alles, was sie als Nichtseiendes zu denken vermag, so kann sie das Gebiet der überseienden, verborgenen Gotteswesenheit geistig erahnen. In dieser ist das Urseiende mit der Urgüte und der Urschönheit vereinigt. Von dieser ursprünglichen Dreiheit ausgehend, schaut die Seele absteigend eine Rangordnung von Wesen, die in hierarchischer Ordnung bis zum Menschen gehen.
[ 6 ] Scotus Erigena übernimmt im neunten Jahrhunderte diese Weltanschauung und baut sie in seiner Art aus. Für ihn stellt sich die Welt als eine Entwickelung in vier «Naturformen» dar. Die erste ist die «schaffende und nicht geschaffene Natur». In ihr ist der rein geistige Urgrund der Welt enthalten, aus dem sich die «schaffende und geschaffene Natur» entwickelt. Das ist eine Summe von rein geistigen Wesenheiten und Kräften, die durch ihre Tätigkeit erst die «geschaffene und nicht schaffende Natur» hervorbringen, zu welcher die Sinnenwelt und der Mensch gehören. Diese entwickeln sich so, daß sie aufgenommen werden in die «nicht geschaffene und nicht schaffende Natur», innerhalb welcher die Tatsachen der Erlösung, die religiösen Gnadenmittel usw. wirken.
[ 7 ] In den Weltanschauungen der Gnostiker, des Dionysius, des Scotus Erigena fühlt die Menschenseele ihre Wurzel in einem Weltengrunde, auf den sie sich nicht durch die Kraft des Gedankens stellt, sondern von dem sie die Gedankenwelt als Gabe empfangen will. In der Eigenkraft des Gedankens fühlt sich die Seele nicht sicher; doch strebt sie danach, ihr Verhältnis zu dem Weltgrunde im Gedanken zu erleben. Sie läßt in sich den Gedanken, der bei den griechischen Denkern von seiner eigenen Kraft lebte, von einer anderen Kraft beleben, die sie aus den religiösen Impulsen holt. Es führt der Gedanke in diesem Zeitalter gewissermaßen ein Dasein, in dem seine eigene Kraft schlummert. So darf man sich auch das Bildervorstellen denken in den Jahrhunderten, die der Geburt des Gedankens vorangegangen sind. Das Bildvorstellen hatte wohl eine uralte Blüte, ähnlich wie das Gedankenerleben in Griechenland; dann sog es seine Kraft aus anderen Impulsen, und erst als es durch diesen Zwischenzustand hindurchgegangen war, verwandelte es sich in das Gedankenerleben. Es ist ein Zwischenzustand des Gedankenwachstums, der sich in den ersten Jahrhunderten der christlichen Zeitrechnung darstellt.
[ 8 ] In Asien, wo des Aristoteles Anschauungen Verbreitung fanden, entsteht das Bestreben, die semitischen Religionsimpulse in den Ideen des griechischen Denkers zum Ausdrucke zu bringen. Das verpflanzt sich dann auf europäischen Boden und tritt ein in das europäische Geistesleben durch Denker wie Averroes, den großen Aristoteliker (1126-1198), Maimonides (1135-1204) und andere. Bei Averroes findet man die Ansicht, daß das Vorhandensein einer besonderen Gedankenwelt in der Persönlichkeit des Menschen ein Irrtum sei. Es gibt nur eine einige Gedankenwelt in dem göttlichen Urwesen. Wie sich ein Licht in vielen Spiegeln abbilden kann, so offenbart sich die eine Gedankenwelt in den vielen Menschen. Es findet zwar während des menschlichen Erdenlebens eine Fortbildung der Gedankenwelt statt; doch ist diese in Wahrheit nur ein Vorgang in dem geistigen einigenden Urgrunde. Stirbt der Mensch, so hört einfach die individuelle Offenbarung durch ihn auf. Sein Gedankenleben ist nur mehr in dem einen Gedankenleben vorhanden. Diese Weltanschauung läßt das griechische Gedankenerleben so fortwirken, daß sie dieses in dem einheitlichen göttlichen Weltengrunde verankert. Sie macht den Eindruck, als ob in ihr zum Ausdruck käme, daß die sich entwickelnde Menschenseele in sich nicht die ureigene Kraft des Gedankens fühlte; deshalb verlegt sie diese Kraft in eine außermenschliche Weltenmacht.
The life of thought from the beginning of the Christian era to John Scotus or Erigena
[ 1 ] In the age that follows the flowering of the Greek worldviews, these are submerged in the religious life of this age. The worldview current disappears, so to speak, into the religious movements and only reappears at a later point in time. This is not to say that these religious movements are not connected with the progress of worldview life. Rather, this is the case in the most comprehensive sense. But it is not the intention here to say anything about the development of religious life. It is only intended to characterize the progression of worldviews insofar as this results from the experience of thought as such.
[ 2 ] After the exhaustion of the Greek life of thought, an age enters the spiritual life of mankind in which religious impulses become the driving forces of the intellectual worldview. What his own mystical experience was for Plotinus, the inspiration for his ideas, became the religious impulses for the spiritual development of mankind in a more widespread life in an age that began with the exhaustion of the Greek world view and lasted until about the time of Scotus Erigena (d. 877 A.D.). The development of thought did not come to a complete standstill in this age; in fact, magnificent, comprehensive thought structures unfolded. However, the powers of thought do not draw their sources from themselves, but from religious impulses. 86 In this age, the religious mode of imagination flows through the developing human souls, and the world views flow from the impulses of this mode of imagination. The thoughts that emerge are the Greek thoughts that continue to have an effect. These are taken up and transformed, but they are not brought to any growth out of themselves. World views emerge from the background of religious life. What lives in them is not the unfolding thought; it is the religious impulses that urge to find expression in the thoughts that have been attained.
[ 3 ] This development can be observed in individual significant phenomena. On European soil, we see Platonic and older conceptions struggling to understand what the religions proclaim, or fighting against it. Important thinkers try to justify what religion reveals in the light of the old world views. This is how what history calls gnosis comes about, in a more Christian or more pagan coloration. Personalities who come into consideration for gnosis are Valentinus, Basilides and Marcion. Their thought creation is a comprehensive idea of the development of the world. Recognition, gnosis, when it rises from the intellectual to the super-ideological, leads to the conception of a supreme world-creating entity. This being is far above everything that is perceived by man as the world. And also far superior are the beings which it lets emerge from itself, the eons. But these form a descending series of development, so that an aeon as a more imperfect one always emerges from a more perfect one. The Creator of the world perceptible to man, to which man himself also belongs, is to be regarded as such an aeon at a later stage of development. An aeon of the highest degree of perfection can now connect with this world. An eon that has remained in a purely spiritual, perfect world and has developed there in the best sense, while other eons have produced imperfections and finally the sensual world with man. Thus for Gnosis the connection of two worlds is conceivable, which have undergone different paths of development, and of which the imperfect one is then at one time stimulated by the perfect one to a new development towards the perfect one. The Gnostics, who were inclined towards Christianity, saw in Christ Jesus that perfect aeon who had united with the earthly world.
[ 4 ] Personalities such as Clemens of Alexandria (died around 211 AD) and Origenes (born around 183 AD) stood more on dogmatic Christian ground. Clement takes the Greek worldviews as a preparation for Christian revelation and uses them as an instrument to express and defend Christian impulses. Origen proceeds in a similar way.
[ 5 ] As if flowing together in a comprehensive stream of ideas, the life of thought inspired by religious impulses can be found in the writings of the Areopagite Dionysius. These writings are mentioned from the year 533 A.D., are probably not written much earlier, but in their basic features, not in the details, they go back to earlier thinking of this age. The content can be outlined as follows: If the soul withdraws from everything that it can perceive and think as being, if it also goes beyond everything that it is able to think as non-being, then it can spiritually sense the realm of the supersubstantial, hidden God-being. In this, the primordial being is united with the primordial goodness and the primordial beauty. Starting from this primordial trinity, the soul sees a hierarchy of beings descending in hierarchical order up to the human being.
[ 6 ] Scotus Erigena adopted this world view in the ninth century and expanded it in his own way. For him, the world presents itself as a development in four "natural forms". The first is the "creating and uncreated nature". It contains the purely spiritual primordial ground of the world, from which the "creating and created nature" develops. This is a sum of purely spiritual entities and forces which, through their activity, first bring forth the "created and non-created nature", to which the sense world and man belong. These develop in such a way that they are absorbed into the "uncreated and non-creating nature", within which the facts of salvation, the religious means of grace, etc. operate.
[ 7 ] In the world views of the Gnostics, of Dionysius, of Scotus Erigena, the human soul feels its root in a world ground on which it does not place itself through the power of thought, but from which it wants to receive the world of thought as a gift. The soul does not feel secure in the intrinsic power of thought; yet it strives to experience its relationship to the world ground in thought. It allows thought, which lived from its own power among the Greek thinkers, to be enlivened by another power, which it draws from religious impulses. In this age, thought leads, as it were, an existence in which its own power slumbers. This is also how we can think of pictorial imagination in the centuries that preceded the birth of thought. The imagination of images probably had an ancient flowering, similar to the experience of thought in Greece; then it drew its strength from other impulses, and only when it had passed through this intermediate state did it transform itself into the experience of thought. It is an intermediate state of thought growth that presents itself in the first centuries of the Christian era.
[ 8 ] In Asia, where Aristotle's views spread, the endeavor arose to express the Semitic religious impulses in the ideas of the Greek thinker. This was then transplanted to European soil and entered European intellectual life through thinkers such as Averroes, the great Aristotelian (1126-1198), Maimonides (1135-1204) and others. In Averroes we find the view that the existence of a special world of thought in the personality of man is an error. There is only one world of thought in the divine primal being. Just as one light can be reflected in many mirrors, so the one world of thought reveals itself in the many human beings. Although a further development of the world of thoughts takes place during human life on earth, this is in truth only a process in the spiritual unifying primordial being. If the human being dies, the individual revelation through him simply ceases. His thought life is only present in the one thought life. This world view allows the Greek thought experience to continue in such a way that it anchors it in the unified divine world reason. It gives the impression that it expresses the fact that the developing human soul does not feel within itself the intrinsic power of thought; therefore it transfers this power to an extra-human world power.