2-16-98 ARISTOTLE AND HIS CATEGORIES

Followers of new-age principles, disciples of eastern yogis and traditional Christians often share one thing in common: a disregard of, or even contempt for, western philosophy. Their attitude is not without some justification, since many of today's philosophers speak a language which is so specialized, obtuse and seemingly impractical, that no one is listening anymore but other philosophers.

By this, I am not suggesting that the process of abstraction is not worthwhile. It is only counter-productive when the concepts lose relevance to daily living .A good example of this lack of relevance are the categories of Aristotle: substance, quality, quantity, relations, actions, passion, place and time. These categories (the most abstract possible concepts) are, according to The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living, universal archetypes of the World Soul or World Idea. They represent, respectively, the essence of the planets known as the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and the Nodes of the Moon. However, divorced from an astrology based in spiritual science, such as the Art of Multi-Dimensional Living, Aristotle's categories are relegated to the dust bin of meaningless metaphysical concepts.

For example, the Aristotelian category termed "relations" is somewhat meaningless to the average person. If however, they could see the role of Mercury in organizing and integrating (relating) all the various forms of relative knowledge, and if they could understand that astrology, ruled by Mercury, is the science of relationships -- as Dane Rudhyar, the father of western astrology, was so fond of saying -- then this category comes alive!

Plato could have made these types of connections; Aristotle couldn't or wouldn't. Why this was the case is explored in depth by Rudolph Steiner in his series of lectures entitled "Karmic Relationships". The essence of what Steiner says is that , at a certain point in world evolution, there arose a need for a greater penetration of spirit into matter. Plato's philosophy would not have supported this process, but Aristotle's would. Thus, a pact was formed in the higher worlds between the Platonists and the Aristotelians to allow Aristotle's teaching to spread throughout the world until a time would come (right about now) when Platonists could once again bring in this more "other worldly" Platonic form of knowledge, because the consciousness soul (our present stage of development according to Steiner) could now receive it in the right way.

In summary, Aristotle's knowledge provided a material foundation upon which a freshly constructed form of Platonism can now thrive. While this revitalized Platonism has much in common with The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living, it is this latter knowledge alone which has the capacity to restore the categories of Aristotle to full relevance and glory.