Rudolf Steiner on Thinking, Feeling, and Willing

This is one of several posts which are based on my reading of The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner. For other posts, see below.

Rudolf Steiner writes about the three factors of life—thinking, feeling, and willing—in the addendum to the 1918 edition of The Philosophy of Freedom. I find it difficult to step into Steiner’s view. How does “active”, “essential”, “intuitive” thinking (see below) differ from ordinary thinking? What if there’s active, essential, intuitive feeling as well? Some would call it felt sense.¹

Rudolf Steiner writes (italics in the original text):

The difficulty of grasping thinking in its essence by observing it consists in this: when the soul wants to bring it into the focus of attention, this essence has all too easily already slipped away from the observing soul. All that is left for the soul then is the dead abstraction, the corpse of living thinking. If we look only at this abstraction, we can easily feel drawn to the mysticism of feeling or the metaphysics of will, which seem so “full of life.” We find it strange if anyone seeks to grasp the essence of reality in “mere thoughts.” But whoever truly manages to experience life within thinking sees that dwelling in mere feelings or contemplating the element of will cannot even be compared with (let alone ranked above) the inner richness and the experience, the inner calmness and mobility, in the life of thinking. It is precisely the richness, the inner fullness of experience, that makes its reflection in normal consciousness seem dead and abstract. No other activity of the human soul is as easily misunderstood as thinking. Feeling and willing warm the human soul even when we look back and recollect their original state, while thinking all too easily leaves us cold. It seems to dry out the life of the soul. Yet this is only the sharply contoured shadow of the reality of thinking—a reality interwoven with light, dipping down warmly into the phenomena of the world. This dipping down occurs with a power that flows forth in the activity of thinking itself—the power of love in spiritual form. One should not object that to speak of love in active thinking is to displace a feeling, love, into thinking. This objection is actually a confirmation of what is being said here. For whoever turns toward essential thinking finds within it both feeling and will, and both of these in the depths of their reality. Whoever turns aside from thinking toward “pure” feeling and willing loses the true reality of feeling and willing. If we experience thinking intuitively, we also do justice to the experience of feeling and will. But the mysticism of feeling and the metaphysics of will cannot do justice to the penetration of existence by intuitive thinking. Those views all too easily conclude that it is they who stand within reality, while intuitive thinkers, devoid of feeling and estranged from reality, form only a shadowy, cold picture of the world in “abstract thoughts.”
—Rudolf Steiner, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 8, Addendum to the new edition (1918)

What if Steiner overvalues “conceptual” thinking?² Steiner writes (italics in the original text):

The highest stage of individual life is conceptual thinking without reference to a specific perceptual content. We determine the content of a concept out of the conceptual sphere through pure intuition. Such a concept initially contains no reference to specific percepts. If we enter into willing under the influence of a concept referring to a percept—that is to say, a mental picture—then it is this percept that determines our willing through the detour of conceptual thinking. If we act under the influence of intuitions, then the motive power of our action is pure thinking. Since it is customary in philosophy to designate the capacity for pure thinking as “reason,” we are fully justified in calling the moral driving force characteristic of this stage practical reason.
—Rudolf Steiner, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 9

I’d suggest intuition has more to do with felt sensing than thinking.³

Update 2024-11-04:
Related posts updated.

Update 2024-11-02:
Related posts added.

Notes:
1. The felt sense is a felt meaning, a bodily comprehension. See Eugene Gendlin, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective, p. xxi.
2. Conceptual thinking turns living experience into abstractions. See Eugene Gendlin, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective, p. 2.
3. The body knows vastly more than we can think. See Eugene Gendlin, Focusing: How to Gain Direct Access to Your Body’s Knowledge, p. viii.

Rudolf Steiner on Thinking, Feeling, and Willing

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