HAVING dealt with Kant, Steiner decides to trace the lingering influence of the philosophy as it developed in the wake of his death. Not in terms of discussing German Idealists such as Schelling and Hegel, nor by revisiting the work of Fichte, but in accordance with his continuing search for a theory of knowledge that is based on empirical factors.

As we have seen, Steiner took a particular interest in the writings of Eduard Von Hartmann (pictured) and the former notes that Kant’s thesis pertaining to the world as “an idea” in the mind of the individual had a powerful influence on Von Hartmann’s Critical Grounding of Transcendental Realism (1875). In fact the latter is said to address his work

exclusively to readers who have achieved critical emancipation from the naïve identification of the world of perception with the thing-in-itself. He demands of them that they shall have made clear to themselves the absolute heterogeneity of the object of perception which through the act of representation has been given as a subjective and ideal content of con-sciousness, and of the thing-in-itself which is independent of the act of representation and of the form of consciousness and which exists in its own right. His readers are required to be thoroughly convinced that the whole of what is immediately given to us consists of ideas. (p.141)

Even Kant’s nineteenth-century critics – among them Julius Hermann von Kirchmann (1802-1884) and Carl Göring (1841-1879) – are said to “lay down the law” by setting forth their own philosophical presuppositions as though they were a form of holy writ.

Nonetheless, it is Part I of Von Hartmann’s Fundamental Problems of Epistemology (1889) to which Steiner returns in his ongoing quest to erase the pre-suppositional tendencies of Western thought and he sets out to examine the work’s four main categories: (i) the physical, (ii) the psycho-physical, (iii) the physiological and (iv) the philosophical.

Beginning with the first, Steiner explains that the role of the physicist is to observe the phenomena that comes to us by way of our immediate environment. Indeed, when

we experience a sensation of sound, to the view that there is nothing in these phenomena which in the very least resembles what we perceive immediately as sound. Outside, in the space which surrounds us, nothing is to be found except longitudinal oscillations of bodies and of the air. Thence it is inferred that what in ordinary life we call “sound” or “tone” is nothing but the subjective reaction of our organism to these wave-like oscillations. Similarly, it is inferred that light and colour and heat are purely subjective. The phenomena of colour-dispersion, of refraction, of interference, of polarisation, teach us that to the just-mentioned sensations there correspond in the outer space certain transverse oscillations which we feel compelled to ascribe, in part to the bodies, in part to an immeasurably fine, elastic fluid, the “ether.” (pp.142-3)

The physicist, he argues, has no interest in the perpetuation of “objects in space” and, instead, concentrates on the fact that each is comprised of tiny particles that impact one another within the space that lies in between. This is how a physicist would account for the fact that touch and temperature do rely on direct contact with our bodies and therefore retain their distance in the sense that it is our nerve-endings which are said to close the gap.

Likewise, in relation to the psycho-physical Steiner – by way of Von Hartmann – agrees with the theory of Johannes Peter Müller (1801-1858) that

every sense can be affected only in its own characteristic way as determined by its organisation, and that its reaction is always of the same kind whatever may be the external stimulus. If the optical nerve is stimulated, light-sensations are experienced by us regardless of whether the stimulus was pressure, or an electric current, or light. On the other hand, the same external phenomena produce quite different sensations according as they are perceived by different senses. From these facts the inference has been drawn that there occurs only one sort of phenomenon in the external world, viz., motions, and that the variety of qualities of the world we perceive is essentially a reaction of our senses to these motions. According to this view, we do not perceive the external world as such, but only the subjective sensations which it evokes in us. (p.143)

To the physical must be added the physiological, he continues, something which moves beyond the initial phase of coming into contact with the external world and its effect on our “percepts”. This involves the process by which a particular sensation is evoked within the human body to the degree that the epidermis, or outer layer of the skin, is shown to be insensitive. Despite the fact that external stimuli must pass through the epidermis, therefore, when it comes to hearing and sight

the external motions have, in addition, to be modified by a number of structures in the sense-organs, before they reach the nerves. The nerves have to conduct the effects produced in the end-organs up to the central organ, and only then can take place the process by means of which purely mechanical changes in the brain produce sensations. It is clear that the stimulus which acts upon the sense-organs is so completely changed by the transformations which it undergoes, that every trace of resemblance between the initial impression on the sense-organs and the final sensation in consciousness must be obliterated. (pp.143-4)

It is Von Hartmann, after all, who suggests that consciousness is comprised of sensations that indicate a response of the soul to “molecular motions in the highest cortical centres” and yet bear no resemblance to such motions. As far as Steiner is concerned, this line of reasoning suggests that human consciousness contains no form of “external existence”.

The fourth category, that of philosophy, is used by Von Hartmann to undermine the theory of Naïve Realism. As we saw from Part Eight onwards, this area of thought confines what we know about the world in terms of that which appears before our eyes. This also excludes Kant’s own analysis of representational objects, of course, but here Steiner is keen to emphasise that Von Hartmann’s philosophy is based on his aforegoing physical and physiological objections to Naïve Realism and therefore

the desired conclusion can be reached only if we start from the existence and nexus of external objects, just as these are assumed by the ordinary naïve consciousness, and then inquire how this external world can enter the consciousness of beings with organisms such as ours. We have seen that every trace of such an external world is lost on the way from the impression on the sense-organ to the appearance of the sensation in our consciousness, and that in the latter nothing survives except our ideas. Hence, we have to assume that the picture of the external world which we actually have, has been built up by the soul on the basis of the sensations given to it. First, the soul constructs out of the data of the senses of touch and sight a picture of the world in space, and then the sensations of the other senses are fitted into this space-system. (p.144)

It was Von Hartmann’s belief that what we perceive in the external world amounts to a “modification” of our own psychic states. Steiner elaborates by explaining that the external world is not directly perceived, as such, but transformed by our “organisation” into a complex system of ideas.

Needless to say, we have already examined how Von Hartmann’s philosophy tends to cancel itself out and yet Steiner wishes to use it as the basis to present a more positive alternative:

Are we justified in regarding the world, which is given to us, as the subjective content of ideas because the assumptions of the naïve consciousness, logically followed out, lead to this conclusion? Our purpose is, rather, to exhibit these assumptions themselves as untenable. Yet, so far we should have found only that it is possible for a premise to be false and yet for the conclusion drawn from it to be true. Granted that this may happen, yet we can never regard the conclusion as proved by means of that premise. (p.144)

Ironically, whilst Naïve Realism is a rather awkward term for that which ordinarily appears as self-evident, the fact that the opposing position is Transcendental Realism – i.e. the view that objects in space and time exist independently of our experience of them – means that the latter is able to demonstrate its “own truth” by employing the principles of the former that it desperately tries to demolish:

Transcendental Idealism is true, if Naïve Realism is false. But the falsity of the latter is shown only by assuming it to be true. Once we clearly realise this situation, we have no choice but to abandon this line of argument and to try another. But are we to trust to good luck, and experiment about until we hit by accident upon the right line? This is Eduard von Hartmann’s view when he believes himself to have shown the validity of his own epistemological standpoint, on the ground that his theory explains the phenomena whereas its rivals do not. According to his view, the several philosophical systems are engaged in a sort of struggle for existence in which the fittest is ultimately accepted as victor. But this method appears to us to be unsuitable, if only for the reason that there may well be several hypotheses which explain the phenomena equally satis-factorily. (p.145)

Steiner’s chief motivation has always been to highlight where Naïve Realism has erred, because the search for a new philosophy cannot begin until one explains precisely why the old one is so deficient. This, he achieves, the main point of attack being the problematic nature of the word “naïve”. One might apply it to an artist who has little understanding of the laws that govern his activity, for example, and who is nonetheless aware that such activity relies on sense and feeling. Conversely, Steiner believes there is a form of self-observation that lifts one beyond the purely “naïve” state in terms of becoming conscious of how the activity may be justified.

The word applied by Steiner to this latter stage is “critical,” meaning that naïve consciousness is overcome when the free spirit becomes

master of the laws of its own activity in order to know how far it can rely on them and what are their limits. Theory of Knowledge can be nothing if not a critical science. Its object is precisely the most subjective activity of man — knowing. What it aims at exhibiting is the laws to which knowing conforms. Hence, the naïve attitude is wholly excluded from this science. Its claim to strength lies precisely in that it achieves what many minds, interested in practice rather than in theory, pride themselves on never having attempted, viz., “thinking about thought.” (p.146)

This practical quest to construct a theory of knowledge upon fresh, non-presuppositional footings is all part of Steiner’s confidence in the dynamism of spiritual activity.