Don't believe everything you think
We take it for granted - we can't even articulate a questioning of it - that our thoughts are our own, and are to be taken at face value, always. That may be so - that they are our own - but Husserl suggested that we could still step back from them enough to perceive laws at work, and distinct structures in place.
Academic phenomenology still maintains the reality principle - that there is noone in here but me - of course, and calls it consciousness. There isn't anyone else here but you, and there's nothing behind your thoughts but you. So it's all about discerning the laws and describing the structures of consciousness.
This, I gather, is the boundary at which phenomenology and the occult side of anthroposophy, especially of the occult school - or school of spiritual science, separate. This is where Steiner and academic phenomenology are radically different. Steiner peers through, then steps through the back of the cave - the back wall of consciousness, the end of ourselves, where we know there is no door. He steps out of ordinary consciousness, deliberately and fully aware - and calls it spiritual activity - and into...spirit...ual...realms. Because if you get that you can't believe everything you think, then you're bound to start asking questions about what you do think, and why. And wherefrom.
Comments
The notion 'alternative conceptual frameworks' refers to a position in academic philosophy that takes up with some themes common to Barfield's work, and so I found some - though only some - accommodation to my own project of studying and articulating Barfield's work.
The emphasis on perceptual is interesting, but a dead end for the most part because we think it's then entirely physiological - even in the so-called 'philosophy of mind', which is really just logical analysis of the naive point of view.
Really, this blog is about the evolution of consciousness, and the spiritual world as articulated by Rudolf Steiner - if I classified it so distinctly. I've been meditating on Barfield and Steiner's work for years, and the blog is where I blurt out my revelations and bafflements.
If anything, though, as far as academic philosophical positions go, I'm a phenomenologist - and so was Steiner.