THE MATHEMATIST
By listing the thinking and acting characteristics of the Mathematism worldview found in The Philosophy Of Freedom, a personality type unfolds.
Mathematism: Mathematism is a transition moving from Materialism to Idealism. It takes the world as a mechanical apparatus and orders it accurately. It would like to explain the world in mathematical terms. It is calculating and orders things by measure and number. It gives percept and concept equal value. Mathematism can also lead to a paradox between the ideal and the real.
Mathematism worldview in Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy Of Freedom
1.5 Mathematist action: Action Resulting From Conscious Motive
Rather than blind urge, freedom is to act according to a conscious motive; the knowing doer.
2.5 Mathematist pursuit of knowledge: Paradox Between Physical And Ideal
Mathematical paradox between physical and ideal. “The Materialists are quite right in declaring all phenomena, including our thought, to be the product of purely material processes, but, in turn, Matter and its processes are for him themselves the product of our thinking.”
3.5 Mathematist thinking: Know Content Of Concept
“I know immediately, from the content of the two concepts, why my thought connects the concept of thunder with that of lightning.”
4.5 Mathematist perception: Mathematical Percept-Picture
“I should like to call the dependence of my perceptual world on my point of observation 'mathematical'. It determines proportions of size and mutual distances of my percepts.”
5.5 Mathematist knowing: Indivisible Existence of Concept With Percept
“Indivisible existence of concept with percept. Mathematics teaches me to distinguish various kinds of lines, one of which is the parabola. If I analyze the conditions under which the stone thrown by me moves, I find that the line of its flight is identical with the line I know as a parabola.”
6.5 Mathematist individual representation of reality: Cognitive personality
“If our personality expressed itself only in cognition, the totality of all that is objective would be contained in percept, concept, and idea.”
7.5 Mathematist cognition: Real Principles in addition to Ideal Principles
“The ideal principles which thinking discovers are too airy for the Dualist, and he seeks, in addition, real principles with which to support them.”
8.5 Mathematist personality: Knowledge is inseparably bound up with our feeling
“What for us only emerges later is, however, inseparably bound up with our feeling from the beginning. Because of this fact the naive person falls into the belief that in feeling, existence presents itself to him directly; in knowing, only indirectly. The cultivation of his feeling life will therefore seem to him more important than anything else.”
9.5 Mathematist idea to act: Moral Intuition
“The action is individually adapted to the special case and the special situation, and yet at the same time is ideally determined by pure intuition.”
10.5 Mathematist moral authority: Accept Moral Principles
“Anyone incapable of producing moral ideas through intuition must receive them from others. To the extent that humans receive their ethical principles from without, they are in fact unfree. Monism ascribes to the idea the same importance as to the percept.
11.5 Mathematist purpose: Laws Of Nature
“Monism rejects the concept of purpose in every sphere, with the sole exception of human action. It looks for laws of Nature, but not for purposes of Nature.”
12.5 Mathematist moral idea: Normative Moral Laws
“Some people have wanted to maintain the standard-setting (normative) character of moral laws.”
13.5 Mathematist value of life: Quantity Of Pleasure
“What is the right method for comparing the sum of pleasure to pain? Eduard von Hartmann believes that it is reason that holds the scales. The rational estimation of feelings is reinstated as the standard of value.”
14.5 Mathematist individuality: Social Science Laws
“Racial, tribal, national, and sexual characteristics form the content of specific sciences. Determining the individual according to the laws of his genus ceases where the sphere of freedom (in thinking and acting) begins.”
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