Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

vation. Indeed, the starting point for epistemology which Steiner seeks, thatabout which thinking has made no prior claims or assumptions, turns out tobe thinking itself. Steiner shows that ordinarily we fail to observe our ownthinking; we take it for granted. In a sense, he says, it is granted; it is part ofthe given world picture. It differs, however, in this one respect: whereas wecannot be immediately certain whether or not we produced the rest of thegiven world picture, with this one part of it that is our own thinking we canbe sure that we ourselves produce it. True, people have hallucinations. Theysometimes believe that what they are in fact making up has independentsensory existence. But about concepts and ideas we make no such mistake,Steiner says. “We do know absolutely directly that concepts and ideas appearonly in the act of cognition and … enter the sphere of the directly given”through this activity (Truth and Knowledge). “A hallucination,” he says, “mayappear as something externally given, but one would never take one’s ownconcepts to be something given without one’s own thinking activity” (Truthand Knowledge; my emphasis). Our ideas, our concepts, then, come to us byour own activity of cognition. Our ideas we know we produce.Notice the paradox; it is absolutely basic. Our cognition is part of thegiven because we can recognize it directly, that is, without having to drawany conclusions about it first. But (here is the paradox) what we directlyknow as given when we know our own cognition is this: that we produce it,that it is our own activity! Thus we ourselves produce this part of the given.The given contains an activity, cognition, and this activity, which we knowto be our own act, produces concepts, including the concept, “There is a precognitionalgiven which is the starting point for cognition.” To summarize:Cognition is both given and self-produced in that my self-production of itis what I directly know about it.We are in the realm of paradox, but not necessarily in the solipsisticlabyrinth that self-reflexivity conjures for many people (Hughes). At leastEmerson, like Steiner, would deny that self-reference disqualifies one’sthought from validity. On the contrary, to learn to detect your own thinkingand recognize that it is yours instead of excluding it from your scrutinybecause it is yours—this skill Emerson exhorts his apprentice in self-relianceto practice:A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light whichflashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmamentof bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought,because it is his (“Self-Reliance,” paragraph one; my emphasis).180