The Evolution of Conceptual Thinking from Ancient Clairvoyance to Modern Nominalism

GA 165 — 15 January 1916, Dornach

First Lecture

Tomorrow I would like to briefly return to the spiritual side of the early days of Christianity and its lasting impact. This will lead to some deeper insights into the public lectures of the last few days. Today I would like to give a kind of philosophical introduction to this, to familiarize you with some history, because it is good if we, within the spiritual science movement, also know something of how people strive in the rest of the world to get to the bottom of the world's mysteries, how they think and feel about these mysteries in the world.

If you look at the history of philosophy from the beginning to the present day, you will basically only find certain philosophical currents discussed, philosophical currents that are close to most contemporary philosophers. However, one would be quite wrong to see everything that exists in the present in terms of such more philosophical research paths in what is usually found. For example, most of you are unaware that during the 19th century, particularly in the second half of the 19th century and especially towards the end of the 19th century, there was a lively philosophical life within the Catholic Church that continues to this day. that within the Catholic Church, a very peculiar philosophical direction, differing from the other philosophy of the world, was cultivated by the learned priesthood and is cultivated by many, so that in this field one has a rich literature, at least as rich a literature as on other directions of philosophical activity. And this literature is called the literature of Neuscholastik.

A curious circumstance has led to the fact that the school, which flourished in the middle of the Middle Ages, which basically began with Scotus Erigena and then continued through Thomas Aquinas to the times of Duns Scotus, reappeared in the 19th century, and indeed out of a very specific need for knowledge, albeit one colored by religious belief. Particularly from the second third of the 19th century onwards, we see this direction of neo-scholasticism emerging in Catholic circles. In all Central and Western European languages, books upon books are being written in an attempt to understand anew what was lived in scholasticism. And if one tries to explore the inner reason why scholasticism is reviving, one must actually open up a broad view. And this is what we want to point out today.

In the lectures I have given in the last few days, I have repeatedly emphasized that one way to spiritual-scientific knowledge is through a very special treatment of thinking, of concepts, of logic; that through the influence of the exercises that lead to this development of thinking, the human being no longer thinks in his physical body, but in his ether body. Thus he not only thinks dead conceptual logic, but he lives in the activity of thinking, that is, he lives and moves in his ether body, as we can express it technically. It is a living into the etheric body when logic itself comes to life, when — as I have put it in popular terms — the statue, through which one can visualize the logic at work in ordinary life, comes to life, when the human being becomes alive in his ether body, that is, the concepts are no longer dead concepts, but those living concepts begin, of which I have said for years that the concept gains life, as if one were with one's soul in a living being. For many centuries, humanity has basically known nothing of this liveliness as the truth of concepts and ideas in external philosophy. I have tried to point out this fact in the first chapter of my “Riddles of Philosophy” that was added to the new edition.

Even in the last philosophical periods of Greek civilization, humanity actually no longer knew anything philosophically about the possible liveliness of concepts and ideas. Let us keep that in mind. Initially, the Greeks — you can read about this in my “Riddles of Philosophy” — had concepts and ideas in the same way that people today have sensory perceptions, a color, a sound or a smell. The great Plato, up to Aristotle, and even more so the older philosophers, did not believe that they had formed the concept, the thought, internally, but that they received it from things, just as one receives red or blue, that is, the sensory perceptions.

Then came the time - and I have described how this continues in cycles - when one no longer felt inwardly that the things had given one the concept, but one only felt that the concept arose in the soul. And now one did not know what to do with the concept, with the inner idea, which the Greek had still believed he received from things. Hence arose those scholastic problems, those scholastic puzzles: What does the concept mean at all in relation to things? — The Greek could not ask it that way, because he had the consciousness that things give him the concepts, so the concepts belong to things as colors belong to things. — That ceased when the Middle Ages came. Then one had to ask: What kind of relationship does something that arises in our mind have to things? And besides: the things out there are many and varied and individual, but the concepts are general, a unity. We go through the world and encounter many horses; we form the unified concept of horse out of these many horses. Every horse coincides with the concept of horse.

Today, many people, who are even less familiar with the concept than the medieval philosophers, who saw it as a sharp problem, say: Well, the concept is just not in the things themselves.

I have repeatedly mentioned a comparison that my friend, the late Vincenz Knauer, a great connoisseur of medieval philosophy, often used for those people who say: Out there is only the material of the animal, the soul makes the concept. Old Knauer would always say: People claim: The lamb is outside, but what is really there is only matter. The wolf is outside, but what is really there is only matter. The soul creates the concept of the lamb, and the soul creates the concept of the wolf. And old Knauer said: If only matter were really present, and you locked up a wolf that ate nothing but lambs, then when it had discarded its old matter it would finally be only lamb, because it would have only lamb matter in itself. But one would notice with amazement that it would still have remained the wolf, that something else must therefore be present in addition to matter.

For medieval scholasticism, this presented a significant problem, a significant enigma. The scholastics said to themselves: the concepts are the universals because they encompass many individual things. And they could not say, as today's man likes to say, that these universals are only something that has arisen in the mind of man, that has nothing to do with things. These medieval philosophers distinguished three types of universals. First, they said, universals are ante rem, before the thing, before what you see out there, so the universal “horse” is thought of before all possible sensual horses, as a thought in the deity. So said medieval scholasticism.

Then there are universals in re, in things, and specifically as essence in things, precisely what matters. The universal “wolf” is what matters, and the universal “lamb” is what matters. They are what ensures that the wolf does not become a lamb, even if it eats nothing but lambs.

And then there is a third form in which the universals exist, that is: post rem, after the things as they are in our minds, when we have considered the world and subtracted them from the things. The medieval scholastics attached great importance to this distinction, and it was this distinction that protected them from that skepticism, from that dissection, which cannot get to the essence of things, for the reason that they consider the concepts and ideas that man in his soul gains from things to be only a product of the soul and do not imagine anything about them that could have any significance for things themselves.

The particular form of this skepticism can be found in one form with Hume and in another form with Cart. There, concepts and ideas are only that which the human mind forms as ideas. Through concepts and ideas, man can no longer approach things.

For theologians who want to be philosophers at the same time, who thus want to penetrate theology philosophically, a very special difficulty has arisen and will always arise. For the theologian is dependent not only on seeing the things in the world, but also on thinking them in a certain relationship to the divine essence, and he gets into difficulties when he and which form the content of the only ideal knowledge – if one does not ascend to spiritual science – cannot himself bring these into any relationship with the Godhead, that is, think as universals ante rem, as universal concepts before the things.

Now there is something very significant connected with what I have said. There will always be people who cannot see anything in the concept that has to do with things, who only see the material in things outside, and on the other hand, there are those who can see something real in the concepts that has to do with the things themselves, that is, what is in the things and what the human mind draws out of the things, what the human mind makes out of universals in re into universals post rem.

Those who recognize that the concepts have a reality outside the human mind were called realists in the Middle Ages and later, especially in Catholic philosophy. And the view that the concepts and ideas have a real significance in the world is called realism. The other view, which assumes that concepts and ideas are fabricated only in the human mind, as it were, as words, is called nominalism, and its representatives are called nominalists.

You will easily see that the nominalists can actually see the real only in the manifold, in the multitude. Only the realists can see something real in the comprehensive, in the universal. And here we come to the point where a particular difficulty arose for the philosophizing theologians. These Catholic theologians had to defend the dogma of the Trinity, of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the three persons in the Godhead. After the development of ecclesiastical theology, they could not help saying: the three persons are individual, complete entities, but at the same time they are supposed to be one unity! If they had been nominalists, the divinity would always have fallen apart into three persons for them. Only the realists could still think of the three persons under one universal. But for that, the universal concept had to have a reality; for that, one had to be a realist. Therefore, the realists got along better with the Trinity than the nominalists, who had great difficulties and who, in the end, when scholasticism was already coming to an end and had degenerated into skepticism, could only hide behind the fact that they said: You cannot understand how the three persons are to be one divinity; but that is precisely why you have to believe it, you have to give up understanding; something like that can only be revealed. The human mind can only lead to nominalism, it cannot lead to any kind of realism. And basically it is the Hume-Kantian doctrine that has become pure nominalism by way of phenomenalism.

The central dogma of the Trinity, of the three divine persons, thus depended on realism or nominalism, on one or the other conception of the essence of universals. You will therefore understand that when Kant's philosophy increasingly became the philosophy of Protestant circles in Europe, a reaction took hold in Catholic circles. And this reaction consisted in saying to oneself on this ground that one must now again take a close look at the old scholasticism, one must fathom what scholasticism actually meant. In short, because they could not arrive at a new way of understanding the spiritual world, they tried to reconstruct scholasticism. And a rich literature arose that set itself the sole task of making scholasticism accessible to people again.

Of course, this literature was only read by Catholic theologians, but on a large scale. And for those who are interested in everything that is going on in the intellectual culture of humanity, it is by no means useless to take a brief look at the extensive literature that has come to light. It is useful to take a look at this neoscholastic literature if only because it allows us to see how black and white can coexist in the world – please note that the word has no negative connotation here! The whole way of thinking, the whole way of looking at the world, is different in the progressive current of philosophy, which follows Kant, Fichte, Hegel, or earlier Cartesius, Malebranche, Hume, up to Mill and Spencer. It is a completely different kind of intellectual research, a completely different way of thinking about the world, than that which emerged, for example, in Gratry and the numerous neoscholastics who wrote everywhere, in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, England, and Germany; for there is a wealth of neoscholastic literature in all countries. And all the orders of the Catholic priesthood have taken part in the discussions. The study of scholasticism became particularly lively from 1879 onwards, when Pope Leo XIII's encyclical “Aeterni patris” was published. In this encyclical, Catholic theologians were made to study Thomas Aquinas as a matter of duty. Since that time, a rich literature has emerged in the tradition of Thomism, and the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas has been thoroughly studied and interpreted. However, the whole movement had already begun earlier, so that today libraries can be filled with the many brilliant works that have emerged from this renewal of Thomism.

You can educate yourself, for example, from a book like “The Origin of Human Reason” or from many French books or, if you prefer, from numerous works by Italian Jesuits and Dominicans, with which this philosophy has been driven again. Much ingenuity has been applied to the study of scholasticism in all countries – an ingenuity that people, even those who study philosophy today, usually have no idea of, because they do not have the necessary interest to pay attention to all sides of human endeavor. The need to take a stand against Kantianism arose from this side, which, by becoming pure nominalism, especially in the second half of the 19th century, removed the ground from under Catholic theology.

I am now speaking purely historically, not to evaluate anything, not even to refute anything, or to agree with anything, but purely historically. And then one can see that basically, to this day, people are still endeavoring to understand what the concept and the thinking are actually about. In the modern age, people can no longer achieve anything with the concept in its old sense. It must be revitalized if we are to make progress. Long-term attempts must be made to understand, theoretically, with the mere concept of the image, what significance thinking has for divinity.

Others have endeavored in other ways. For example, a very significant current has emerged that is even very close to Catholicism and has been pursued by priests within Catholicism, but it has not found the favor of Catholic authority to the extent that scholasticism did. In the encyclical “Aeterni patris”, Catholic theologians were even dutifully encouraged to renew the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, to resurrect it. Another direction has not received as much favor from the Catholic authorities: that is the direction of Rosmini-Serbati and Gioberti. Rosmini, who was born in Rovereto near Trento and died in nearby Stresa in 1855, expressed his aspirations particularly in works that were not actually published until after his death. And it is interesting to see how Rosmini wanted to work his way up by examining the real value of the concept. Rosmini came to understand that man has the concept present in his inner experience. A person who is only a nominalist stops at the fact that he experiences the concept internally and passes over the question of where the concept is present in reality. Rosmini, however, was ingenious enough to know that even if something reveals itself within the soul, this does not mean that it has reality only within the soul. And so he knew, in particular, by starting from the concept of being, that the soul, by experiencing the concepts, at the same time experiences the inner essence of things as they live in the concepts. And so Rosmini's philosophy consisted in seeking inner experiences, which for him were experiences of concepts, but in doing so he did not arrive at the liveliness of the concepts, only at the diversity of the concepts. And now he sought to specify how the concept lives simultaneously in the soul and in things. This is very clearly expressed in the work by Rosmini that was left behind and is entitled “Teosofia”. Within Catholicism, others also held a similar point of view, but Rosmini is one of the most ingenious.

Now, however, Catholic theology finds such a direction as Rosminian somewhat inconvenient and uncomfortable, because it is very difficult for this side to reconcile the concept of revelation with this theory of concepts. For the concept of revelation amounts to the fact that the highest truths must be revealed. They cannot be experienced inwardly in the soul, but must be revealed outwardly in the course of human history. Man can only approach reality with his concepts to a certain degree, and the sphere of revelations rises above this sphere of concepts. From this point of view, the scholastics had to stand. This is also compatible with what Catholicism still regards as its core today, better than the Rosminian experienced concepts. Because when you have experienced concepts, it is actually God who lives in you. And basically, Catholic theology is horrified when people claim that God lives in man. That is why Leo XIII declared Rosmini's philosophy heretical in the 1880s by a decree of his own and forbade Catholic theologians to study and teach Rosmini's philosophy unless they had permission from their superiors. For in this way, strict measures are taken within the operations of Catholic theologians. I do not know whether this is always the case without exception. In the publications of Catholic theologians of all camps, one will in any case always find the seal of the superior episcopal authority. This then means that Catholic theologians are allowed to study such a work. There are certain exceptions for those who are university teachers, but things are handled very strictly, at least in theory.

In this way, one also sees the attempt to work one's way into an understanding of the relationship between thinking and the world.

I would like to make an interjection here that is of a completely different nature. Such interjections are sometimes necessary. Many of our friends believe that they are doing our movement a great favor when they explain to Catholic theologians, for example, that we are not at all anti-Christian and that we are in fact seeking an honest concept of Christ. And in their good faith, our friends go so far as to tell this or that Catholic theologian about the way we characterize Christianity. For our friends then believe, in their – forgive me – naivety, that they can make these theologians see that we are good Christians. But they can never admit that as Catholic theologians! My dear friends, we will be much more agreeable to them if we do not seek the Christ, if we do not care about the Christ! For it is not a matter for them – this must always be borne in mind – that someone is seeking this or that concept of Christ, but for them it is a matter of the supremacy of the Church. And precisely if one had an equally good or better concept of Christ outside the Church, then one would be fought against most of all. Thus, those of our friends who are most gullible do us the greatest harm, who go to Catholic theologians and try to convince them that we are not anti-Christian. For they will say: It is even worse if a concept of Christ could take root outside the church. One must judge the things of life according to one's circumstances and not according to one's naive opinion. We will be fought against particularly sharply if the theologians should make the discovery that we understand something of the inner existence of Christianity that could make a convincing impression on a larger circle of humanity.

But it can be seen that it had become necessary to work one's way into an understanding of the concept and its relationship to reality. And here it must be said: what is contained in the writings of Rosminis is among the most brilliant things that have been accomplished in this direction in modern times. He has worked through this for all areas, and it could be of very special value if one studied Rosmini's concepts of beauty, his aesthetic concepts. Rosmini's theory of beauty, his aesthetics, is something particularly valuable that one should engage with in order to see how a modern mind works its way up to standing at the gateway to spiritual science and just not being able to enter into spiritual science. This can be studied to such an outstanding degree in Rosmini.

Thus we find that there are really spiritual currents that want to work towards an understanding of the concept, but do not come to realize that we are now living in a time when the concept must become alive if one wants to enter into reality.

So the concept has gone through a certain history. I have dealt with this history in part in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” in that first chapter of which I spoke. But here I would like to point out something further. We can say, then, that the concept continues to develop. There was a time when the concept was a perceived concept, as color or sound was perceived. This was the case with the Greeks. Plato is just the last one to speak so realistically about the concepts that one can see how something of the understanding for such a grasp of the concepts resonates in him. With Aristotle it is already different. Then comes the Middle Ages, where one has the concept purely rationally, and where one seeks how it relates to things as a universal, and where one reaches for bridges and comes to the structure: ante rem, in re, post rem – before, in, after things.

Then comes the time when the concept is fully understood in a nominalistic way. This extends into our time. But the reaction is asserting itself, the side currents that seek the concept as an inner experience, as with Rosmini. From here (see diagram: Rosmini) one would come to the life or experience of the concept. So the concept would be chained, so to speak, to the physical body in this time (see diagram: before Plato to the Middle Ages), and now pass over to the etheric body. The concept would lead to the clairvoyant experience of the concept. But then one would have to say that the entire earlier perceived concept and the nominalistic and rational concept have developed out of an atavistic clairvoyance of the concept, and that now the way in which the concept is to be experienced is a conscious one, whereas in earlier times it was more subconscious. And indeed, if you go from Plato, from the Greek philosophers, who had the concept as a perceived one, to the echoes of Zarathustrianism, you have this atavistically grasped – or perhaps one does not need to say “atavistic” because this expression is only valid today – so dream-like, clairvoyantly experienced concept.

Thus the Near Eastern philosophies presented the concept as something that they experienced pictorially. Persian philosophy sees in the “horse in general” a being in general that is specified and differentiated from the individual horse, still something living. The Persians called this “Feruer”. This is abstracted and becomes the Platonic idea. The Persians' Feruer becomes the Platonic idea.

Abstraction is gaining more and more ground because thinking is only experienced in the physical body. We must return to the consciously experienced concept. In this field you see a wonderful cycle taking place from the old clairvoyance of the concept through what the concept had to become in the age of physical experience: the merely rational concept, the merely conceptualized concept, the merely logical concept.

I have often emphasized that logic only came into being through Aristotle, when one had the concept only as a concept. Before that, for the experienced concept, one did not need logic. And now logic comes to life, the statue of logic comes to life.

This example of the concept shows once again what can be seen in general and on a large scale. We also have to work our way into the whole course of human development in the individual, because then we understand more and more clearly the meaning underlying the spiritual current to which we belong. And we really do become more and more objective through these things, but that is also necessary. Where would we end up if objectivity were not understood at all and our dear friends were to drag everything more and more into the personal sphere! Our task must be to work objectively, and the purely personal must recede more and more.