Jan Höglund's Blog

Category: Philosophy

  • Retrospective 2024-45

    This is a retrospective of week 45, 2024 (2024-11-04–2024-11-10). I’ve started reading Sarah Kendzior’s books Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America and They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent this week. I will return to these books next week. I’ve also listened to the…

  • Rudolf Steiner on Consciousness

    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. What happens in consciousness when we face another person? Rudolf Steiner writes: What, then, do I have before me when I face another person? I look at what is immediately apparent. …it…

  • Retrospective 2024-44

    This is a retrospective of week 44, 2024 (2024-10-21–2024-11-03). This week I’ve finished reading Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America by Mary C. Richards and The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner. I wrote the following posts during the week: I think Rudolf Steiner focuses too much on the role of conceptual thinking in…

  • Rudolf Steiner on Freedom

    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. I take the following to mean that in order to understand human freedom we need to free ourselves from the kind of thinking that is appropriate to understanding what is…

  • Rudolf Steiner on Gender

    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. The following is strikingly contemporary. Please, remember that the book was published 1894. Rudolf Steiner writes: It is impossible to understand a human being fully if one bases one’s judgment…

  • Rudolf Steiner on Natural Objects

    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. Ruldolf Steiner seems not only to overvalue thinking, but seems to be stuck in mechanistic thinking? Steiner writes: I construct a machine purposefully when I bring its parts into a…

  • 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…

  • Retrospective 2024-43

    This is a retrospective of week 43, 2024 (2024-10-14–2024-10-20). I’ve continued reading Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America by Mary C. Richards, and started reading The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner this week. Reading Steiner raises a number questions: I’ve also listened to Brian Gray’s leading thoughts from Applied Anthroposophy during the week.…

  • Deep Metaphysical Assumptions

    I find many of Iain McGilchrist’s deep metaphysical assumptions wonderfully resonant, but not all. Let’s explore! What are McGilchrist’s deep metaphysical assumptions? McGilchrist says: I’ve really always been philosophically minded. There were a number of things that occurred to me and seemed terribly important… These were things like that:[1] The whole is never the same…

  • A Critique of Iain McGilchrist

    McGilchrist says that attention is a moral act, but what if he doesn’t see what he doesn’t see? He has replaced one formula (it’s not either/or but both/and) with another more complicated, and, notably, more subtle, one (it’s not either/or or both/and, but either/or and both/and). He loves it! He’s very good at this kind…