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[Music] so forthcoming lectures i will undertake to present views of the relationship between the human being and the cosmos on the one hand
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and on the other of our relationship with humanity's historical development these observations should complement much of what we have already pondered today i first wish to preface these
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observations with something that may strike you as unconnected with our theme but whose relevance we will discover in subsequent lectures in central european and german thought
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in the first half of the nineteenth century apart from the facts we have already explored there is another and very characteristic fact that we should consider
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recently i spoke of the contrast evident when one reads either schiller's title aesthetic letters or gerta's title fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily today i want to highlight a similar
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contrast which emerged in early 19th century thinkers in hegel and schopenhauer in goethe and schiller we have an intimate friendship of two individuals
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who having previously dismissed one another at a certain stage of their lives united and brought into equilibrium what was really otherwise a lasting contradiction in central european philosophy
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albeit one that continually seeks reconciliation two other individuals hegel and schopenhauer embody these polar opposites in thinking although in this case one cannot say
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that the difference was reconciled i have described the deep opposition between schopenhauer and hegel in my book title riddles of philosophy aside that is also found in the written works section of
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rudolfsteineraudio.com and of readers aside this opposition also becomes apparent in the fact that schopenhauer spared no expletives in denigrating his
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counterpart hegel a great deal of schopenhauer's works are taken up with scolding hegel hegelianism and everything related to it in the most extreme terms
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hegel had less cause to scold schopenhauer since before the former died schopenhauer was an uninfluential figure whose philosophical ideas had attracted little attention
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the differences between these two philosophers can be summed up as follows hegel sees the primary foundations of the world and of world evolution
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along with everything relating to it as originating in the real element of thought he regards the idea or the thought as underlying and underpinning all
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existence and hegel's philosophy falls into three parts firstly logic though not subjective human logic but the logic he considers to be the world's
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foundation then as a second aspect his philosophy of nature however for him nature is again nothing other than idea though here in its otherness
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in his words the quote idea in its externality to itself close quote so nature too is idea but in a different form one which can be observed with the
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senses in returning to itself the idea becomes for hegel the human mind and spirit evolving from the simplest mental activities through to world history
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and to the rise of this subjective human spirit into religion art and science in studying hegel's philosophy therefore one has to allow for evolution of the
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quote world idea close quote as hakel saw it schopenhauer is diametrically opposed to this whereas hegel sees thoughts world thoughts as the creative fount of things
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as their intrinsically real aspect for schopenhauer every element of thought is merely subjective and as such only unreal image the only thing that has reality for him
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is will and just as hegel traces the thought through mineral animal plant and human kingdoms so schopenhauer traces the will in the same way
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schopenhauer's most stimulating treatises entitled on the will in nature thus we can say that hegel is the philosopher of thought while schopenhauer is the philosopher of
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the will in these two individuals therefore we have two opposing elements for what do we find in thought on the one hand and the will on the other
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this polar contrast can best be studied as introduction to our next lecture by observing it within the human being let us for a moment turn aside entirely from the philosophy of both hegel and
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schopenhauer and study human reality as we already know an intellectual capacity comes to the fore initially that is an element of thought
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and then also an element of will the element of thought is primarily assigned to the human head and the element of will primarily to the human limb organism this tells us already that the
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intellectual element is really what originates in our pre-birth existence in worlds of spirit between death and a new birth incorporating itself into us
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and essentially perpetuating our pre-birth existence in this new life on earth compared with this element of thought the element of will is youthful in us
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it passes through the gate of death then enters the world between death and the new birth is transformed there metamorphosed and creates the intellectual element for our next life
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what essentially comes to the fore most clearly in our soul organism therefore is our intellectual aspect the element of thought which points us back to a past existence
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and our will element which points us forward into the future thus we discern this polar opposition of thought and will within us reality of course should never be seen
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schematically it would actually be schematic to say that every element of thought directs us back into our past whereas every element of will directs us toward future existence that is not so
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it is just primarily the case that thought points us back and will points us forward at the same time a will element also informs the primary element of thought
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originating in the past while a thought element informs the will that surges in us and passes through death into the future to gain insight into reality and engage
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with it we must never be merely schematic never just arrange a sequence of ideas but must be clear that in reality one thing is always more primary but that
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the other elements of reality also live within it within this and that something of subsidiary importance in one aspect of reality elsewhere becomes the most important and
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primary aspect so along come philosophers and consider things from their characteristic perspectives and create their one-sided philosophies
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what i just decided as the thought element within us does not only exist there bound to the head organism but really exists everywhere in the cosmos the whole cosmos is pervaded with cosmic
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thoughts hegel a strong mind who sensed the outcome of many past lives focused his attention therefore particularly on cosmic thoughts schopenhauer was less aware of the
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outcome in him of former lives on earth but directed his attention more to cosmic will you see just as we live in will and thought so these live also in the cosmos
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we can however ask this what significance does thought with which hegel had such affinity have for the cosmos and what is the significance for the
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cosmos of the will with which schopenhauer was especially concerned hegel was not focused on thoughts as they developed in human beings for him basically the whole world was
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nothing but a manifestation of thoughts and thus he focused on cosmic thought hegel's distinctive cast of mind was one which actually points us westward in the world
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what comes to expression in materialistic ideas of evolution in the west in materially conceived physics was something hegel raised into the element of thought
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in darwin we find a theory of evolution that is materialistic in so far as it sees only course material substances engaged in and driving this evolution
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hegel shows us a world in which everything that evolves is impelled by the thought pulsing through it in which the thought in its specific configurations and tangible forms
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is really the evolving element we can therefore say that in the west human minds observe the world from the perspective of thought but they materialize it
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hegel idealizes thought and thereby arrives at cosmic thought in his philosophy hegel speaks of thought but actually means cosmic thought
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he says wherever we look in the outer world whether we see a plant in its orbit an animal excuse me whether we see a planet in its orbit an animal a plant or a mineral
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we are really seeing thoughts everywhere it is just that these kinds of thought in the external world exist there in a different form than they do in our thinking it cannot be said that hegel sought to
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propound an esoteric theory about the thoughts at work in the world however it remained esoteric since few people read his works it was not his intention to propound an
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esoteric doctrine about the world's cosmic content but it is extremely interesting that the secret societies of the west regard the idea that the world is really formed of
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thoughts as a profoundly esoteric doctrine things which hegel naively and openly stated about the world are viewed by western anglo-american secret societies
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as the content of their secret doctrine and they believe that this secret should not be popularized however preposterous it may seem to say so hegel's philosophy is in some respects a central thread running
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through western occultism and this in fact represents a significant problem if you familiarize yourself with the most esoteric doctrines of the anglo-american secret societies
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you will find their content scarcely diverges from hegel's philosophy the only difference is not of content but outlook hegel regards these things as a palpable
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open matter whereas western secret societies carefully stand guard over what hegel presented to the world to prevent it becoming known and preserve its occult nature
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why is this it is actually a very important problem regarding as a secret doctrine something born of the spirit as this is gives you power
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whereas when it is popularized it no longer has this power please give this the full attention it warrants any content that one possesses as knowledge acquires power if we keep it
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secret this is why those who wish to preserve the secrecy of certain occult doctrines are very displeased if they are publicized you can say that this is a law of the
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world that power is acquired by maintaining secrecy about things which if popularized simply give us knowledge in recent years i have spoken to you in
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various ways about the powers proceeding from the west the influence of these powers was not due to possession in the west of some kind of knowledge lacking in central europe
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but instead to a different approach to this knowledge just consider the remarkable tragedy involved here events in world history
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arising due to the power of western secret societies could even perhaps have been averted if people in central europe had studied their own thinkers carefully enough
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instead the opposite was true in the eighties of the last century as i have often mentioned edward von hartmann published the fact in print that only
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two philosophers in all the central european universities had ever read hegel a great many of course spoke about hegel and gave lectures on him but there was
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clear evidence to suggest that only two professors of philosophy had engaged properly with him and learned from him anyone with a little sensibility in such
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matters could discover this for himself by borrowing a volume of hegel from any library and would find that it had scarcely been scrutinized from my own experience i can tell you
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that it was sometimes hard to detach one page from the next because the copy was still so intact it is only very recently even that hegel has started to be republished
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these things were not my a special concern today but i just wanted to show that what lives idealistically in hegel nevertheless does point us toward the west and resurfaces on the one hand
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in the coarse-grained materialism of darwinian thinking spencerism and so forth and on the other in the esotericism of secret societies and now let us turn to schopenhauer who
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i would say is a worshiper of the will that he is really concerned with cosmic will is clear from almost every page of his works but especially his fine treaties on the will in nature
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where he presents all natural life in terms of the will underlying it as the primal potency of nature and we can therefore say that chopina really materializes the cosmic will
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if hegel's whole outlook points us westward where does schopenhauer point us you can find the answer to this in schopenhauer himself for you will soon see if you study him that he feels a profound affinity with
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the orient this surfaces from his whole sensibility in a way we can't quite define schopenhauer's attraction to nirvana and everything oriental in nature
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his inclination toward hinduism is irrational as is his whole philosophy of will and yet a great imperative is implicit in it schopenhauer's professed philosophy is
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one of the will yet he presents it as his fitting for central europe in dialectical terms in thoughts he rationalizes the will itself speaking in thoughts yet speaking of the
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will but in speaking of the will in this way or in other words really materializing the cosmic will his affinity with the orient rises from the depths of his soul into his
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awareness he rhapsodizes about all indian culture just as hegel points us westward in a more objective way so schopenhauer points us eastward
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but in oriental culture we do not find the will element which schopenhauer really senses to be its intrinsic element materialized and pressed into thought
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and thus intellectualized the whole form in which cosmic will which does indeed underlie the eastern soul comes to expression has little affinity with the intellect
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it comes to the fore instead partly in a poetic mode and partly in directly expressed perception schopenhauer has intellectualized in central european manner what the orient
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would have expressed in pictorial form but what he is pointing to the cosmic will is nevertheless still the element from which the orient draws its inner vision
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it is the element in which the world view of the orient lived in especially accentuating all pervading love as this worldview does
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the element of love is in fact nothing other than a certain aspect of cosmic will but now lifted above the intellect we can therefore say that will is spiritualized here
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just as thought is materialized in the west so will was spiritualized in the east in the central european element we see these two worlds play into one another
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in idealized cosmic thought and materialized cosmic will the latter also being approached through thought in hegelianism's connection with western secret societies
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we find a deep affinity of the hegelian cosmic thought system with the west while in the attraction the subjective attraction which schopenhauer feels for the orient
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we find an expression of schopenhauer's affinity with the east if one allows schopenhauer's philosophy to act upon one's sensibility it is remarkable to experience the
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relative flatness of its thought element schopenhauer's philosophy is not profound yet it possesses a somewhat inebriated quality some will driven element that pulses in
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it schopenhauer becomes most alluring and stimulating where he penetrates what are really prosaic thoughts with his element of will the fire of his will erupts in his
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sentences and this is why he became so ala mode as a philosopher for a fairly prosaic era the first half of the 19th century was an era full of resonant ideas but as it
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passed schopenhauer came into fashion there was not much need to think instead one could just let the tingling will pulsing through thoughts work upon one especially when reading
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texts such as peregra where this tingling of thoughts grows positively refined and elegant in the contrast between hegel and schopenhauer in central europe therefore
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we find two opposing poles one of which was developed in the west especially while the other was especially developed in the east in central europe these two outlooks stand alongside one another in a
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potentially mutually sustaining and balancing way in the incomparable bond of friendship between schiller and goethe they found harmonious reconciliation
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while in the disjuncture between hegel and schopenhauer only an inharmonious accommodation was found you see schopenhauer became associate professor at berlin
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university at the time when hegel was propounding his philosophy there to great acclaim schopenhauer found scarcely any audience and often spoke to a near-empty
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auditorium and if hegel was ever asked about chopina's philosophy as an influential highly regarded philosopher he could probably afford simply to shrug his shoulders
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hegel was somewhat more uncomfortable if a philosopher with some reputation such as spoke more out of this will element schleiermacher sought to explain
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christianity in terms of this thought devoid element saying that christianity could not be encompassed by thought except by grasping the thoughts of the universe divine thoughts
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by sensing one's dependency on god and developing a feeling of dependency on the universe to this hegel retorted that a dog would be the best christian if this were so as
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a creature with the most developed sense of dependency if it had been worth his while hegel would of course have given schopenhauer similar short shrift since he hammered
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anyone who did not grasp the elevated idea of the reality of thoughts schopenhauer by contrast saw thoughts as nothing but bubbles rising from the surging waves of cosmic will
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and since there was more reason for him to do so given their relative standing schopenhauer gave hegel a sharp dressing down in his works in this case paradoxes intrinsic to the
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riddles of life in this central region of civilization were not reconciled in fact in both schopenhauer and hegel one thing is lacking a real understanding of the human being
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hegel lives in cosmic thought and doing so does not make him very popular you see in general people don't much care to elevate themselves to cosmic thoughts they harbor a comfortable sense that
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they need not bother with cosmic thoughts they think that the gods or god will do this for them as a protestant one says quote the one god will do this
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if the gods are already concerning themselves with cosmic thoughts why should we make any effort in this direction close quote and it is true that hegel's ideas have an extremely impersonal element
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history for instance as hegel sees it is thoroughly impersonal all we discern here from the start of earthly evolution through to its end is the unfolding thought
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if we were to make a schematic drawing of hegel's philosophy of history we would have to say thoughts arise here they rise up interlace and pass through historical evolution
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and human beings are everywhere enmeshed in these thought webs encompassed in thoughts hegel therefore sees history in terms of this flux of interlacing thoughts
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these enmesh human beings like automata so that they too must evolve alongside the spun webs of world historical thought by contrast schopenhauer sees human thought as nothing but a bubble of foam
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on the waves he turns his gaze to cosmic will to this cosmic ocean of will human beings are really only a kind of reservoir storing a drop of this cosmic
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will schopenhauer's philosophy has no sense of this ongoing evolution of reason or of evolving thought instead what flows on for him is non-thought
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a non-rational non-reasonable will element within this human beings surface and in them is reflected in the guise of reason
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what in fact is a perpetually developing non-reason hegel regards the world as the revelation of the profoundest wisdom of reason schopenhauer regards the world yes how
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does he regard it a remarkable thing happens when you try to answer this question once when i was writing an essay on edward von hartmann this became especially evident to me in
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writing of heartman you have to refer to schopenhauer since his work is based on both hegel and schopenhauer in this essay i was writing a purely philosophical treatise on the philosophy of edward von hartman
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i wanted to suggest that schopenhauer's solution to the riddle of existence was to say that the world is one big stupidity of gods that is what i wrote since i thought it was a true reflection of schopenhauer's
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view the editor of the journal published in austria wrote back to say i would have to delete this since the whole edition would be confiscated if he published it
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that the world is one big stupidity of gods was not something he could print now rather than getting worked up about this i wrote back to the editor to say he was welcome to delete the phrase about god's
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stupidity at the time though i reminded him that when i was editing another journal he himself had sent me an article stating that the austrian school system was a stupidity of the education
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department and that i had let this stand well that edition of my journal was seized in consequence i wanted to remind my correspondent at
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least that he had written something similar though in my case i was speaking of god almighty whereas he was tap playing the austrian minister of education baron couch in considering the essential nature
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of the riddle of the world we can discern in hegel and schopenhauer two opposite poles which appear in their grandeur in fact a grandeur worthy of great admiration
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i am aware though that some people find it strange that an admirer of hegel as i am can present things like this they find it hard to understand that one can retain one's sense of humor in
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relation to things one considers great they think a solemn face is required in discussing things one admires well these two opposite poles there they stand before us
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in this case they were not reconciled harmoniously as with schiller and gerta and we can begin to understand this lack of harmony by grasping that hegel sees the human being as a creature
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evolving within the web of world history's concepts whereas schopenhauer sees him as nothing but a tiny vessel holding a drop of universal will and thus as really only a little extract
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of this cosmic will neither of them therefore take the real personal nature of the individual into account but not can but nor can they take account of the real nature of what they
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see in the cosmos hegel gazes at the cosmos and sees history as this spider's web of concepts schopenhauer gazes at the cosmos and
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instead of a spider's web of concepts which for him is mere reflection he sees the ocean of surging will and the human being is a vessel into which is siphoned a drop of what flows
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ever on in this non-rational non-reasonable will ocean human beings just mimic the possession of reason idea and thought which are merely the reflection in them
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of non-rational will yet these two elements do exist in the cosmos the cosmos consists of thoughts as hegel saw hegel in the west look at the cosmos and sea world thoughts
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schopenhauer and the east look at the cosmos and see world will both are true and the serviceable worldview in relation to the cosmos would have arisen if it had been possible paradoxically
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for schopenhauer's scolding to have brought him to the point finally of going through the roof of leaving his body behind him while hegel's soul remained inside hegel and schopenhauer's soul plummeting back
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down had fallen into hegel and inhabited him too then the conjoined being of schopenhauer and hegel would have seen both world thought and world will and this would have been a true vision
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of what exists in the world world thought and world will which are present in very diverse forms what does spiritual scientific inquiry actually tell us about this cosmology
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it tells us that if we look into the world and let world thoughts work upon us we see the thoughts of past ages everything that has taken effect from primordial times to this present moment
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this is what we see when we see world thoughts for world thought appears to us in its dying and fading when we look into the world in this originates the rigid dead nature
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of natural laws and the fact that we can use nothing much other than mathematics which deals with dead things when we seek to survey the laws of nature
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in contrast world will works in all that speaks to our senses delighting us in light in all that we hear in tones and feel and what warms us in all sensory impressions
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it is this that rises from the dead element of world thoughts and basically points us toward the future world will has what i would call a chaotic undifferentiated character
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yet in the present moment of the universe it lives as the seed of all that will be carried forward into the future if we give ourselves up to the world's element of thought on the other hand
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we have all that plays over into the present from the dawn of time this is not the case though in the human head thought exists in the human head but there it is sundered from external
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universal thought and is instead and is instead bound within the human individual to an individual element of will which you might well see initially as a small reservoir of the cosmic will
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element a drop siphoned off into a tiny vessel what we possess in our intellect points us backward we developed its germ in our previous
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life on earth where it existed as will now it has become thought is bound to our head organism born there like a living after image of the cosmos we connect it with the will and
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rejuvenate it there and by rejuvenating it in the will we send it onward into our next life on earth our next earthly incarnation this view of the world is one we would
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need to draw in a different way we would have to depict external cosmic reality as especially rich in thought elements in ancient times but increasingly crumbling as we come into
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the present so that thought as it exists in the cosmos gradually dies away see also plate three the will element is one we must first draw delicately
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the farther back we go the more thought predominates in akashic pictures the further we evolve the denser becomes the element of will to perceive this evolution
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we need to look upon a light-filled thought element in the most primordial ancient times and upon the non-rational will element of the future but this does not remain so
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for now the human being bears into all this the thoughts he has stored in his head sending these forward into the future and as cosmic thoughts increasingly die away human thoughts germinate
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they rise from their growing tip to permeate in future the cosmic element of will thus the human being preserves cosmic thought and drawing this from within him he
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bears it out into the world via the human being cosmic thought reproduces itself from primordial times through into the future as human beings we belong to the cosmos
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yet we do not belong to it as the materialist imagines as something that like everything else has evolved from the cosmos and is part of it instead we also belong to the creative element of the cosmos
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bearing thought forward from the past into the future here you see we enter something tangible if we really understand the human being we engage with what schopenhauer and
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hegel presented one-sidedly and so you can see how in philosophy too we need to encompass at a higher level what is three-fold in nature fully grasping the human being's
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relationship to the cosmos tomorrow in a more accessible way we will again study how the human being is connected with the cosmos this was an introduction to the theme today and as stated we will discover why
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this was necessary as we continue our studies [Music] you
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