Hueck, Christoph J.
(2025)
Productive Intuition of an Organism's Vital Force in Goethe and Steiner - preprint.
[Preprint]
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PRODUCTIVE INTUITION OF AN ORGANISM’S VITAL FORCE IN GOETHE AND STEINER - final preprint version.pdf
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Abstract
This paper investigates the epistemological problem of understanding the formative principles of living organisms, proposing that such knowledge requires a non-discursive mode of cognition. Revisiting the philosophies of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Rudolf Steiner, the study explores an alternative method of understanding life—not through mechanistic models or speculative vitalism, but through what is termed “intellectual intuition.” It is demonstrated how Goethe’s concept of the Urpflanze and Steiner’s interpretation enable a mental reconstruction of organic development as a lawful, self-generating process. Drawing parallels with Fichte’s notion of self-awareness through productive cognition, the paper argues that organisms can be known through a productive act of thinking in which the generative principle of life is intellectually intuited. This yields a scientifically grounded, though non-empirical, mode of “empirical vitalism,” in which the organism’s entelechy—its vital laws and force—can be observed through active, intuitive cognition. The study suggests that such a methodology could offer a viable epistemic and metaphysical framework to overcome the limitations of both reductionist biology and speculative vitalism.
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