Status Updates From The Philosophy of Freedom: ...

‘The world is thus a multiplicity of objects of equal value. None plays any greater part in the whole machinery of the world than any other. If it is to become clear to us that this or that fact has greater significance than another, we must consult our thinking.’

‘Our thinking is not individual like our senses and feeling; it is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each separate human being only because it comes to be related to his individual feelings and sensations.’

‘Does not the world produce thinking in the heads of men with the same necessity as it produces the blossom on a plant?’

‘When I’m conscious not only of the object but also of my own personality which confronts the object and observes it, I do not merely see a tree, but I also know it is I who am seeing it. I know that something happens in me while I’m observing the tree. This picture becomes associated with myself during my observation. Myself has become enriched; it’s content has absorbed a new element: a mental picture.’

‘There’s no denying that before anything else can be understood, thinking must be understood. Whoever denies this fails to realize that man is not the first link in the chain of creation but the last. In order to explain the world by means of concepts, we cannot start from the elements of existence which came first in time, but we must begin with that which is given to us as the nearest and most intimate.’

‘We can find Nature outside us only if we have first learned to know her within us. What is akin to her within us must be our guide. We shall attempt no speculations concerning the interactions of Nature and spirit. Rather shall we probe into the depths of our own being, to find there those elements which we saved in our flight from Nature.’

‘We have, it is true, torn ourselves away from Nature, but we must none the less have taken something of her with us into our own being. This element of Nature in us we must seek out, and then we shall find the connection with her once more.’

‘We seem born to be dissatisfied. And our thirst for knowledge is but a special instance of this dissatisfaction. Every glance at Nature evokes in us a multitude of questions. Every phenomenon we meet sets us a new problem. Every experience is a riddle. Nowhere are we satisfied with what Nature spreads out before our senses.’