Category: Values

  • 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…

  • Zak Stein on Values

    The following is from Zak Stein’s contribution to the Metaphysics and the Matter with Things: Thinking with Iain McGilchrist conference in March 2024. Zak Stein said (my emphasis in italics): “…the perception of intrinsic value is a basic human capability. Just as our nervous system has evolved to perceive space and time, So it has…

  • Retrospective 2024-34

    This is a retrospective of week 34, 2024 (2024-08-19–2024-08-25). I finished reading Karin Bojs’ book last week and have continued reflecting on its content. The question I’m struggling with is: Why is the left hemispere of the brain taking over again and again? We are so easily are caught up in the left hemisphere’s re-presentation…

  • Retrospective 2024-33

    This is a retrospective of week 33, 2024 (2024-08-12–2024-08-18). This week, I have read Min europiska familj: de senaste 54000 åren by Karin Bojs. The book is in Swedish and is about Bojs’ family for the past 54,000 years. The first part of the book is more interesting than the last part. The last part…

  • Christopher Alexander on Descartes

    Christopher Alexander has the following to say about René Descartes in The Nature of Order, Book One: The Phenomenon of Life (italics in the original text): …Descartes not only invented the method of observation which in effect we have continued to use unchanged for several hundred years, but that in addition he saw clearly what…

  • Organisms must be free to choose

    Why must organisms be free to choose? It’s because organisms must be free to act according to their own beinghood. It’s a foundational principle, because the cosmos itself is a free process of true and original creation. Compelled behavior is not creative. Organisms must be able to respond to the world. Skye Hirst emphasizes that:…

  • Iain McGilchrist on value-ception

    If Iain McGilchrist is right, then values are part of a conscious cosmos. Value-ception is immediate.1 Whenever we perceive something, we perceive the unanalyzed whole, and in this whole its value.2 This does not negate an axiological3 analysis of the original value-ception. We depend, however, on our right hemisphere for it to be disclosed to…

  • Amy Mindell on Metaskills

    Amy Mindell explores the ways therapists express their attitudes and beliefs about life in her book Metaskills: The Spiritual Art of Therapy. These attitutes permeate and shape the therapist’s techniques. The therapist’s values are expressed in the interactions with the client. Amy Mindell has seen many therapists “in action”, how their theoretical ideas and techniques…