Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism (from Greek: ἄνϑρωπος anthropos "man" and μορφή morphē "form, shape") is the transference of human shape and behavioural characteristics to non-human beings and phenomena, for example to gods, animals, plants, forces of nature, inanimate objects and even machines.
„Man never grasps how anthropomorphic he is.“
Rudolf Steiner had already written in the "Introductions to Goethe's Natural Scientific Writings", on the occasion of his consideration of Goethe's method of research, that man inevitably carries a revealed or veiled anthropomorphism into his cognitive activity, indeed that through it, if it is done in the right way, cognition becomes possible in the first place. Cognition only exists through man and for man. This in no way distances him from reality, which can fundamentally only be achieved in a process that transcends subject and object. The truth through which reality is to be grasped is always a free creative product of the individual human being, which can, however, be comprehended intersubjectively with the corresponding mental mobility. This in no way establishes an arbitrary relativism, but only emphasises that reality must be grasped individually in the process of cognition and can also be grasped in this way, because man as a microcosm carries within himself all the laws of the macrocosm. As much as he is able to lift into his consciousness, he is also able to approach reality in his cognition from ever new sides in a constantly progressing process. Goethe had therefore written:
„If I know my relationship to myself and to the outside world, I call it truth. And so everyone can have his own truth, and yet it is always the same.“
There is no purely objective knowledge that could completely eliminate the subject; if one makes such a claim, one is subject to a deception. Even the seemingly purely objective findings of the natural sciences have such an anthropomorphism, which is usually veiled and thus often neglected.
„Man must let things speak from his spirit if he wants to recognise their essence. Everything he has to say about this being is borrowed from the spiritual experiences of his inner being. Man can only judge the world from himself. He must think anthropomorphically. An anthropomorphism is introduced into the simplest phenomenon, e.g. into the collision of two bodies, when one speaks about it. The judgement: "One body pushes the other" is already anthropomorphic. For if one wants to get beyond the mere observation of the process, one must transfer to it the experience that our own body has when it sets a body of the external world in motion. All physical explanations are hidden anthropomorphisms. One anthropomorphises nature when one explains it, one puts man's inner experiences into it. But these subjective experiences are the inner essence of things. And it cannot therefore be said that man does not recognise the objective truth, the "in itself" of things, because he can only form subjective ideas about them.[2] There can be no question of any other than a subjective human truth. For truth is the insertion of subjective experiences into the objective context of appearance. These subjective experiences can even assume a quite individual character. They are nevertheless the expression of the inner essence of things. One can only put into things what one has experienced oneself. Accordingly, every human being, according to his or her individual experiences, will put something in a certain sense different into things. How I interpret certain processes of nature cannot be fully understood by another who has not experienced the same thing inwardly. But it is not at all a question of all men thinking the same thing about things, but only of their living in the element of truth when they think about things. One cannot therefore regard the thoughts of another as such and accept or reject them, but one should regard them as the proclaimers of one's individuality. "Those who contradict and argue should sometimes consider that not every language is intelligible to everyone" (Natw. Schr., 4th vol., 2nd ed., p. 355). A philosophy can never transmit a universally valid truth, but it describes the inner experiences of the philosopher through which he interprets the outer phenomena.
When a thing expresses its essence through the organ of the human spirit, the full reality only comes about through the confluence of the outer objective and the inner subjective. Neither through one-sided observation nor through one-sided thinking does man recognise reality. This is not present as something finished in the objective world, but is only brought forth by the human spirit in connection with things. Objective things are only a part of reality. Whoever praises exclusively sensuous experience must be answered with Goethe, "that experience is only half of experience" (Natw. Schr., 4. Bd., 2. Abt., p. 503). "All that is factual is already theory," i.e. an ideal reveals itself in the human mind when it contemplates a factual. This conception of the world, which recognises the essence of things in ideas and conceives of knowledge as a living into the essence of things, is not mysticism. But it has in common with mysticism that it does not regard objective truth as something existing in the external world, but as something that can really be grasped within the human being. The opposite worldview places the causes of things behind the appearances, in a realm beyond human experience. It can either give itself over to a blind faith in these reasons, which receives its content from a positive religion of revelation, or it can set up intellectual hypotheses and theories about how this otherworldly realm of reality is constituted. The mystic as well as the confessor of Goethe's worldview reject both the belief in an otherworldly realm and the hypotheses about such a realm, and adhere to the real spiritual realm which expresses itself in the human being himself.“ (Lit.:GA 1, p. 335ff)
Literature
- Rudolf Steiner: Einleitungen zu Goethes Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften, GA 1 (1987), ISBN 3-7274-0011-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
 |
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF. |
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Maximen und Reflexionen, 4. Band, 2. Heft (1823). In: Zeno.org.
- ↑ Goethe's views stand in the sharpest conceivable contrast to Kant's philosophy. The latter proceeds from the view that the world of the imagination is governed by the laws of the human mind. of the human mind and that everything that is brought to it from the outside can only exist in it as a subjective reflection. The human being does not perceive the "in itself" of things, but the appearance that arises from the fact that things affect him and that he and he combines these affections according to the laws of his intellect and reason. The fact that the essence of things speaks through this reason was Kant and the Kantians have no idea that the essence of things speaks through this reason. Therefore Kant's philosophy could never mean anything to Goethe. When he appropriated individual propositions of Kant's, he gave them a meaning meaning than they have within the teachings of their originator. have. It is through a note that only became known after the opening of the Weimar Goethe archives, it is clear that Goethe was not aware of the contrast between his conception of the world and that of Kant. very well. For him, Kant's fundamental error lies in the fact that the latter "the subjective faculty of knowledge itself as an object and the point and the point where subjective and objective meet, sharply but not quite correctly". Subjective and objective come together when the human being expresses what the outside world expresses, and that which is heard in his inner being, into the unified being of things. But then the opposition of subjective and objective and objective ceases altogether; it disappears in the unified reality. I have already alluded to this in this writing, p. 218 ff. K. Vorländer now polemicises against my remarks at that time. in the first issue of "Kant Studies". He finds that my view on the opposition between Goethe's and Kant's conception of the world "at least strongly one-sided and in contradiction with clear Goethe's own testimonies" and that it "results from a complete misunderstanding of the of Kant's transcendental method" on my part. explain. Vorländer' has no idea of the world view in which Goethe lived. in which Goethe lived. To polemicise with him would be of no use to me at all. because we speak different languages. How clear his clear thinking is shown by the fact that he never knows what is meant by my what is meant. For example, I make a comment on the Goethean sentence sentence: "As soon as a person becomes aware of the objects around him, he he regards them in relation to himself, and rightly so. For his whole fate depends on whether he likes them or dislikes them, whether they displeasure, whether they attract or repel him, whether they benefit or harm him. harm. This quite natural way of looking at things and judging them seems as easy as it is necessary. . . A far work is undertaken by those whose lively impulse for knowledge to observe the objects of nature in themselves and in their relationships objects of nature in themselves and in their relations to one another; they seek and examine and examine what is, and not what pleases." My comment "Here we can see how Goethe's world view is precisely the opposite pole of Kant's. For Kant there is no of things as they are in themselves, but only as they are in relation to us. they appear in relation to us. Goethe only accepts this view as a only as a quite subordinate way of putting oneself in relation to things. to things." To this, "Vorländer" says: "These (words of Goethe's) want nothing more nothing more than an introduction to the trivial difference between the pleasant and the true. between the pleasant and the true. The researcher should seek <what is and not what pleases>. Whoever, like Steiner, has the latter the latter, albeit very subordinate, way of relating to things as that of of relating oneself to things as Kant's, one is advised to first first learn the basic concepts of Kant's doctrine, e.g. the difference between subjective and objective. the difference between subjective and objective sensation, for example from § 3 of the Kr. d. U.". Now I have by no means, as I did not say, as is clear from my sentence, that that way of relating to things which relation to things is Kant's, but rather that Goethe is the Kantian conception of the relationship between subject and object does not correspond to the relation in which man stands to things when he to things when he wants to know how they are in themselves. Goethe is of the opinion that Kant's definition does not correspond to the human corresponds to human cognition, but only to the relationship to things when he looks at them in relation to his liking or disliking them. in relation to his liking and disliking them. Whoever can misunderstand a sentence in such a misunderstand a sentence in such a way as Vorländer, he may spare himself, from giving other people advice on their philosophical education. philosophical education, and rather first acquire the ability to learn to to learn to read a sentence correctly. Anyone can look for Goethe quotes and compile them historically. and compile them historically; to interpret them in the sense of Goethe's world view, at least "Vorländer" cannot.
