THE PNEUMATIST
By listing the thinking and acting characteristics of the Pneumatism worldview in The Philosophy Of Freedom, a personality type unfolds. The Pneumatist accepts the Spirit of the world, a doctrine of the Spirit. To act freely is to be spontaneous. She feels united with the rhythms of Nature, for the world is Spirit. By going within she enters the realm of pure thought, the place of universal concepts and universal thinking. Moral action is to act out of love, while moral order issues from a higher power. She accepts supernatural influences upon the creation and to guide human beings. We can only know someone when we discover their individual Spirit.
Pneumatism: Interested in the spirit in the world and the expression of individual spirit.
Pneumatism worldview in Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy Of Freedom
1.8 Pneumatist spirit in action: Spontaneous Will
“Our will is the cause of our movement, but the willing itself is “unconditioned”; it is an absolute beginning (a first cause and not a link in a chain of events).”
2.8 Pneumatist spirit in the pursuit of knowledge: Feeling Impulse
“Desires to feel we belong to nature. We feel we are in her and belong to her. It can be only her own life which pulses also in us.”
3.8 Pneumatist spirit in thinking: Realm Of Pure Thought
“When we reflect upon thinking itself we enter the realm of thought and add to the number of objects of observation. We then add nothing to our thought that is foreign to it, and therefore have no need to justify any such addition.”
4.8 Pneumatist spirit in perception: World Is Spirit
“For Berkeley nothing is real except God and human spirits. What we call the "world" exists only in spirits. This theory is confronted by the now predominant Kantian which instead of spirits speaks of unknowable things-in-themselves.”
5.8 Pneumatist spirit in knowing: Universal Concept
“The concept of the triangle grasped by me is the same as that grasped by my neighbor. The single, unitary concept of the triangle does not become many by being thought by many thinkers. In so far as we think, we are the All-One Being which pervades everything.”
6.8 Pneumatist spirit in individual representation of reality: Universal Thinking
“The farther we ascend into the universal nature of thought, the more the character of unique personality becomes lost in us. There are those whose concepts come before us as devoid of any trace of individual coloring as if they had not been produced by a being of flesh and blood at all. True individuality belongs to him whose feelings reach up to the farthest possible extent into the region of the ideal.”
7.8 Pneumatist spirit in cognition: Imperceptible Reality
“Metaphysical Realism constructs, beside the perceptible reality, an imperceptible one which it conceives on the analogy of the former.”
8.8 Pneumatist spirit in personality: Mystic
“Wants to raise feeling, which is individual, into a universal principle.”
9.8 Pneumatist spirit in idea to act: Love For The Objective
“I do not ask whether my action is good or bad; I perform it because I am in love with it.”
10.8 Pneumatist spirit in moral authority: Moral Laws From A Higher Power
“The moral commandments, which the merely inference-drawing metaphysician has to regard as flowing from a higher power, are, for the believer in monism, the thoughts of men; the moral world order is the free work of man.”
11.8 Pneumatist spirit in world purpose: Spiritual World Order
“Ideas are realized purposefully only by human beings. Consequently, it is illegitimate to speak of history or a moral world-order as the embodiment of ideas.”
12.8 Pneumatist spirit in moral idea: Supernatural Influence
“Just as Monism has no use for supernatural creative ideas in explaining living organisms, it cannot admit any continuous supernatural influence upon moral life (divine government of the world from the outside), nor an influence through a particular act of revelation at a particular moment in history (giving of the ten commandments), or through God's appearance on the earth (divinity of Christ). Moral processes are, for Monism, natural products like everything else that exists, and their causes must be looked for in nature, i.e., in man, because man is the bearer of morality.”
13.8 Pneumatist spirit in the value of life: “Value” Of Pleasure (satisfaction of needs)
“This amount of enjoyment would have the greatest conceivable value when no need remained unsatisfied, and when along with the enjoyment a certain amount of pain did not have to be taken into the bargain at the same time.”
14.8 Pneumatist spirit in individuality: Individual Views And Action
“And every science that concerns itself with abstract thoughts and generic concepts is only a preparation for that knowledge which is afforded us when a human individuality communicates to us his way of viewing the world, and for that other knowledge which we gain from the content of his willing.”
Comments