The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4.3 On the Abstractness of Concepts

[ 1 ] On page 26 of this paper, I speak of the "paralysis" of concepts when they become imitators of a sensuous reality.

This "paralysis" is the real fact underlying the process of abstraction in the process of cognition. Humans form concepts about sensory reality. For epistemology, the question arises as to how that which man retains in his soul as a concept of a real being or process relates to this real being or process. Does that which I carry around in me as the concept of a wolf have any relation to a reality, or is it merely a schema formed by my soul, which I have formed for myself by abstracting from that which is peculiar to this or that wolf, but to which nothing corresponds in the world of reality. This question was considered at length in the medieval dispute between nominalists and realists. For the nominalists, the only real things about the wolf are the visible substances, flesh, blood, bones, etc. that are present in it as a single individual. The term "wolf" is "merely" a mental summary of the characteristics common to various wolves. The realist replies: any substance found in the individual wolf is also found in other animals. There must be something that organizes the material into the living context in which it is found in the wolf. This ordering reality is given by the concept.

You will now have to admit that Vincenz Knauer, the outstanding expert on Aristotle and medieval philosophy, says something excellent in his book "Die Hauptprobleme der Philosophie" (Vienna 1892) when discussing Aristotelian epistemology (page 137) with the words:

"The wolf, for example, consists of no other material constituents than the lamb; its material corporeality is built up from assimilated lamb meat; but the wolf does not become a lamb, even if it eats nothing but lambs throughout its life. What therefore makes him a wolf must of course be something other than the hyle, the sensuous matter, and indeed it must not and cannot be a mere thought-thing, although it is only accessible to thought, not to the senses, but an actual, therefore real, a very real thing.".

How, however, is one to approach the reality that is being pointed to in the sense of a merely anthropological view? What is conveyed through the senses of the soul does not result in the concept of "wolf". But what is present in ordinary consciousness as this concept is certainly not an "active agent". The power of this concept could certainly not give rise to the arrangement of the "sensible" substances united in the wolf. The truth is that with this question anthropology is at one of the limits of its knowledge. Anthroposophy shows that apart from the relationship of the human being to Wolfe, which is present in the "conspicuousness of meaning", there is another. This does not enter ordinary consciousness in its immediate nature. But it exists as a living supersensible connection between the human being and the sensually perceived object. The living, which exists in man through this connection, is paralysed down to a "concept" through his rationalization.

The abstract concept is the real that has died to visualization in ordinary consciousness, in which the human being lives in sense perception, but which does not become conscious in his life. The abstractness of ideas is brought about by an inner necessity of the soul. Reality gives man a living thing. He kills that part of this living thing which falls into his ordinary consciousness. He accomplishes this because he could not attain self-consciousness in the external world if he had to experience the corresponding connection with this external world in its full vitality. Without the paralysis of this full vitality, man would have to recognize himself as a member within a unity extending beyond his human limits; he would be an organ of a larger organism. The way in which man allows his process of cognition to flow inwards into the abstractness of concepts is not conditioned by something real lying outside him, but by the conditions of development of his own being, which require that in the process of perception he dampens the living connection with the outer world to these abstract concepts, which form the basis on which self-consciousness grows. That this is so is shown to the soul after the development of its mental organs. Through these the living connection (in the sense described on page 26 of this book) with a spirit-reality lying outside the human being is re-established; but if self-consciousness were not already an acquired thing from ordinary consciousness, it could not be formed in the seeing consciousness. One can understand from this that healthy ordinary consciousness is the necessary precondition for the seeing consciousness. Whoever believes that he can develop a seeing consciousness without the active healthy ordinary consciousness is very much mistaken. The ordinary normal consciousness must even accompany the looking consciousness at every moment, because otherwise the latter would bring disorder into human self-consciousness and thus into man's relationship to reality. Anthroposophy can only have to do with such a consciousness in its looking knowledge, but not with any downgrading of the ordinary consciousness.