# Intuition

**By Stewart Lundy** · 2023-04-07

As Kant wrote, "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." It was Rudolf Steiner's contention that indigenous humanity had a tendency to have something closer to pure intuition, but as civilization develops, more concepts become layered and things like technological development is possible. There has perhaps never been a time completely devoid of concepts, or human beings would exist in a sort of intuitional trance, drifting from thing to thing without capacity for planning. Such a case is likely rather rare in the scheme of things.   
  

This indigenous mode of clairvoyance was direct, immediate, and unprejudiced by the development of vast conceptual philosophies. It is harder to "see" when we think we already know. As Simone Weil puts it, "not knowing is most intimate." When we valued _intimacy_ with the world more than _power_ over the world, we were disinclined to systematize or objectify it. The distinction here feels like the distinction Martin Buber makes in his classic work _I and Thou_, namely, a distinction between the I-and-it relationship versus the I-and-thou relationship. When we encounter the world as not merely being filled with useful (or dangerous) objects, but rather _presences_ rich with meaning, we encounter the world as a Thou as another _who_ like ourselves.   
  
As Owen Barfield puts it, Anthroposophy (as he sees it) is the post-scientific revolution articulation of the _perennial philosophy_.   
  
Steiner's impulse is distinct. He is not advocating going "back" to a conception-free world, nor does he side on mere systematized conceptual thought. Instead, he urges us towards recovering intuition _in the midst_ of scientific development and transforming the sciences so that they, once again, serve _LIFE_ and not mere _POWER_.

**Tags:** biodynamic preparations, biodynamics, consciousness, direct perception, indigenous, intuition, kant, owen barfield, perennial philosophy, phenomenology, rudolf steiner, wisdom

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> Source: [The Josephine Porter Institute](https://www.jpibiodynamics.org/blogs/blog/understanding-intuition-concepts)