The Exceptional State
I had an interesting conversation with Angus, a fellow scholar of Anthroposophy. He posted a recording on his youtube channel The Exceptional State:
We talked about chapter 4 from Steiner's GA3 (Truth and Science): The Starting Point of Epistemology
We are challenged in this chapter to imagine how the world would be without our thinking, without cognition. This lead to us talking about the experiences with hallucinogenic drugs, that reach towards that world. The next step in this chapter is to get from this pre-cognition world to a world that is partially known and partially unknown. And to Steiner’s claim that there are elements in our experience that are 100% known.
For those who manage to finish it, and who manage my steenkolen English and steenkolen reasoning, in the end I tried to reach for the Exceptional state, but the Exceptional state (Angus) was not convinced. This was an unforeseen but poetic ending!
From the transcript:
“There is an important point which is crucial in Steiner’s work, which is the next step he makes with this postulate:
“… there must be something in the realm of the given where our activity does not float in the void, where the content of the world itself is the active agent.”
He says that we find this required element in our thinking, in ideas and concepts, because these are things that we ourselves produce. There is nothing hidden there. It is not something given from the outside; it is still a given, but it is a given from the inside that has no mystery. It requires my presence. It cannot occur without me, and there is nothing concealed within it.
However, you can also criticize this. Yesterday I had an insight in a group discussion, because I started to question this. I said that even with the simplest concept, like the concept of a circle or the concept of the number one, I can let it arise in me, but there will always be mysteries about this concept. I never know everything about it. So how can I say that there is nothing hidden in an idea that exists in me? How can Steiner justify the claim that an idea in me has no secrets, that nothing about it is hidden from my insight? Then one of the participants in the group said that it is not about whether the idea itself is complete or even true. What matters is that what you think of it, in that moment, is complete in itself. It is transparent to you, and it is complete in its own presence.
…
If we look at the outside world, for example at a tree, it is obvious that we have a concept of the tree, but we cannot see inside the tree. We do not know everything about its roots, its internal processes, or its full evolution. So there is always a polarity between the known and the unknown. There is something known about the tree, but much remains unknown. Steiner says that we need an anchor. We need to identify something that is completely known to us, and he says we can find this in the idea itself. The idea itself is completely known to us.
So we begin to observe the idea. The subject becomes the object. Then the question arises whether we can agree with Steiner that nothing about an idea is unknown to us. That is my fundamental question. For me, this was not obvious at first, but I am starting to understand what he means. He does not mean that you must know everything about the circle in an absolute sense. Rather, he means that when you think the concept of the circle, in that moment of thinking, that experience is completely known to you. You can observe your idea of the circle directly. That is the step he is pointing toward. This is the exceptional state.”
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Thanks for this Rick. I have had some time to think about our conversation and a couple of the interesting points that arose. These 2 points were 1: What is the "exceptional state" and 2: Is Steiner's epistemology pre-suppositionless?
It seems on further reflection that these 2 points are more intimately related than might be initially assumed and that a deepening into the nature of 1 leads to clarity in 2.
I think this could be flashed out in a later conversation, but essentially boil down to the following.
1 The argument that "the brain creates thinking" is philosophically (critically) naive, because the brain is a percept, sensory observation like any other. In essence it is an example of circular thinking that is illuminated when in the "exceptional state"
2 The argument that monism is assumed is a failure to recognize that the naive realism is the initial state prior to knowledge and therefore the correct point from which to initiate an investigation into a (true) theory of knowledge.
3 The argument that this is a Steiner "construct" is actually the experience that one must have of all knowledge if one hasn't lived into the "exceptional state" or more specifically it reflects the extent to which our thinking is Kantian. What seems like a construct for the "normal state" becomes instead transparency, a transparency that is only experienceable if the shadowy world of abstract thinking is replaced with an empirical experience of the activity of thinking itself.
Also I find it "delicious" that the structure of our conversation, which was unplanned, brought these 2 important ideas together. Almost inviting us to allow them to face off with each other.
Hi! Regarding the point made at about 0:55 - that Steiner assumes that knowledge is possible:
But he says: “it is essential to realize that the activity of producing something in the act of cognition must present itself to us as something *also directly given*. It must not be necessary to draw conclusions before recognizing it”.
(I’m quoting the translation read by Dale Brunsvold which seems much clearer than the RS Archive’s to me. Here’s the passage you read out:
https://youtu.be/XyrWgqv4BKk?si=6v3GDRr5ge4T9F5-&t=4023)
So that’s his whole point, that cognition is at first *found* as part of the given (not assumed) before we realize, at closer inspection, that it is actually not given:
“Real cognition depends on finding a sphere, somewhere in the given, where our cognizant activity does not really presuppose something given but finds itself active in the very essence of the given. In other words, precisely through strict adherence to the given as merely given, it must become apparent that not everything is given”.
"We do knows absolutely directly that concepts and ideas appear only in the act of cognition, and through this enter the sphere of the directly given. In this respect, concepts and ideas do not deceive anyone [like sensory impression can do]"