THE PHENOMENALIST
By listing the thinking and acting characteristics of the Phenomenalism worldview found in The Philosophy Of Freedom, a personality type unfolds.
Phenomenalism: An explanation of the world of phenomena. There is a world spread out around me, but I do not maintain this world is is the real one. I can only say that it 'appears' to me. I am not saying that this world of colors and sounds, which arises only because certain processes in my eyes present themselves to me as colors, while processes in my ears present themselves to me as sounds—I am not saying that this world is the true world. It is a world of phenomena.
Phenomenalism worldview in Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy Of Freedom
1.11 Phenomenalist action: Idealize A Person
“Love depends on the thoughts we form of the loved one. And the more we idealize the loved one in our thoughts, the more joyful is our love.”
2.11 Phenomenalist pursuit of knowledge: Description Of Consciousness
“I have so far not been concerned with any scientific results, but simply with the description of what every one of us experiences in his own consciousness.”
3.11 Phenomenalist thinking: Impartial Consideration Of Thinking
“We must first consider thinking quite impartially without relation to a thinking subject or to an object of thought. There is no denying that thought must be understood before anything else can be understood.”
4.11 Phenomenalist perception: External Perception Is My Idea
“I thought that the percept, just as I perceive it, had objective existence. But now I observe that it disappears with my act of perception, that it is only a modification of my mental state. For as soon as I see clearly that my sense-organs and their activity, my nerve- and soul-processes, can also be known to me only through perception, the argument which I have outlined reveals itself in its full absurdity.”
5.11 Phenomenalist knowing: Conceptual Connections Of Percepts
“Other than what is immediately perceived, we cannot speak of there being anything except what is known through the conceptual connections between the percepts—connections that are accessible to thinking.”
6.11 Phenomenalist individual representation of reality: Education Of Feelings
“Man is meant to be a whole. Knowledge of objects will go hand-in-hand with the development and education of the feeling-side of his nature.”
7.11 Phenomenalist cognition: Sum of Effects and Underlying Causes
Inductive inference “This kind of conclusion infers, from a sum of effects, the character of their underlying causes.”
8.11 Phenomenalist personality: Ideal Principle And Real Experience Of Feeling and Willing
“Besides the ideal principle which is accessible to knowledge, there is said to be a real principle which cannot be apprehended by thinking but can yet be experienced in feeling and willing.”
9.11 Phenomenalist idea to act: Free And Unfree Actions
“Our life is made up of free and unfree actions. We cannot, however, form a final and adequate concept of human nature without coming upon the free spirit as its purest expression.”
10.11 Phenomenalist moral authority: Illumine The Phenomena Of The World
“Monism regards the transition through automatic behavior (according to natural drives and instincts) and through obedient behavior (according to moral norms) as necessary preliminary stages for morality, but sees the possibility of surmounting both transitional stages through the free spirit. And it rejects the latter because monism seeks within the world all the principles of explanation which it needs to illumine the phenomena of the world, and seeks none outside it.”
11.11 Phenomenalist purpose: Coherence Within Whole
“The orderly coherence of the members of a perceptual whole is nothing more than the ideal (logical) coherence of the members of the ideal whole which is contained in this perceptual whole.”
12.11 Phenomenalist moral idea: Depends On External Circumstances
“Whether I am able to do, i.e., to make real, what I will, i.e., what I have set before myself as my idea of action, that depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill.”
13.11 Phenomenalist value of life: Highest Pleasure Is The Realization Of Moral Ideals
“Moral ideals spring from the moral imagination of man. They are his intuitions, the driving forces which his spirit harnesses; he wants them, because their realization is his highest pleasure.”
14.11 Phenomenalist individuality: Ethical Conduct
“Only that part of his conduct that springs from his intuitions can have ethical value in the true sense.”
