Idea

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The word idea (Greek: εἶδος eidos / ἰδέα idea "conception, image, pattern, model or archetype, idea") was first used by Plato in philosophical contexts to designate the "what" of things, their essence, their "in itself", and is derived from the Greek word for "to see, to behold, to recognise" (idein)[1][2] and thus means: that which is seen. The idea refers first of all to a mental imagination, a thought or concept.

„Ideas are not qualitatively different from concepts. They are only more substantial, more saturated and more extensive concepts.“ (Lit.:GA 4, p. 57)

Ideas grasp the general, the universals, in contrast to the sensually appearing individual. In the sense of the Platonic doctrine of ideas, one could therefore say: Whenever we see, we idealise - and only through this do we recognise things for what they are, i.e. we lift in our consciousness, through idealisation, out of the given reality its actual essence. In the mind, we give the chaotic sensory data an ideal form, through which their true, spiritual reality is revealed, compared to which the mere world of the senses appears only shadowy. Plato spoke about this in detail in his "Politeia" in the famous allegory of the cave. Philosophising is based on a spiritual "seeing", a supersensible "vision" of pure ideas, a vision of ideas. The archetypal ideas exist independently of sensually tangible things, which owe their being and essence only to the participation (Greek: μέθεξις methexis) in the unchanging eternal ideas; they are only a transient imitation (Greek: μίμησις mimesis) of their imperishable spiritual archetypes. According to Aristotle, however, the human faculty of cognition is so limited that by far the most ideas can only be experienced in or on the manifold sensual things and can be lifted out of them by abstraction. Only the highest and most general ideas, such as those of mathematics, can be grasped purely intellectually. Thomas Aquinas later distinguished the universalia ante rem, which live before all individual things in divine reason, from the universalia in re, which work in things, and the universalia post rem, which are formed as concepts in the mind of man.

„What is called idea: that which always comes to appearance and therefore confronts us as the law of all appearances.“ (Lit.: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Maxims and Reflections[3])

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ vgl. z.B. Pierre Chantraine: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots, Paris 2009, S. 438;
  2. ↑ Hjalmar Frisk: Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Band 1, Heidelberg 1960, S. 708.
  3. ↑ Goethe-BA Bd. 18, S. 642
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