This review of Twelve Ways of Seeing the World by Mario Betti appeared in the journal Paradigm Explorer, issue 131 (2019/3).
Subtitled ‘philosophies and archetypal worldviews for understanding human consciousness’, this significant book makes an important contribution to the debate around the topic. It stems from the work of Goethe and Steiner while including a galaxy of other thinkers during the course of its very helpful analysis. Steiner was the first to delimit this twelvefold character consisting of phenomenalism, sensualism, materialism, mathematism, rationalism, idealism, psychism, pneumatism, ‘spiritualism’, monadism, dynamism and realism. Readers will note the invention of new terms, and each is discussed in detail in separate chapters that nevertheless make connections between the various approaches. The picture that emerges is one of harmony and complementarity – problems arise when one approach claims to be complete in itself as many scientists strive to reduce everything to the principle of matter through materialism. The author explains that the first three emerge from the senses, the next three from thought, while psychism, pneumatism and ‘spiritualism’ (in quotes with a redefined meaning) emerge from the depths of the soul.
If psychism focuses on sense of I, pneumatism, corresponding to gnosis, asserts that I Am the Universe. These paths are illustrated with quotations from Marcus Aurelius, Hildegard von Bingen, Kierkegaard, Goethe, Husserl and Jung, where the smaller I becomes one with the greater I. Pneumatism brings in an understanding of love, with quotations from Al-Ghazzali, Jacques Lusseyran and, inspiringly, the autobiography of Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 and was subsequently assassinated. The author sees these phases as part of our current evolutionary development. The final chapter brings things together in the image of Humanus, the new human being envisaged by Goethe but now under threat from developments in biotechnology reducing consciousness and cognition to information processing. If culture is based on freedom and the self creation of human modes of being, then we need to take this task very seriously in prioritising conscious inner development and widening our view to recognise the harmonious interplay between the 12 world views set out in this book. As Schweitzer once said, our task is to become more finely and deeply human by developing truth, freedom and love.
Paradigm Explorer 2019/3
Twelve Ways of Seeing the World: Philosophies and Archetypal Worldviews for Understanding Human Consciousness
Mario Betti
Mario Betti strives to make sense of the world through different lenses framed as twelve archetypes. He draws on the research of Rudolph Steiner and his twelvefold typology of human and cosmic thought to explore and validate each world view from its own unique perspective. In this way he means to transform dogmatism and enable a deeper dialogue.
