116 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
percepts and their conceptual (ideal) relations. Thus,
metaphysical realism arrives at a worldview that requires,
as a matter of principle, that we be able to perceive per-
cepts, while it requires us to be able to think the relations
among percepts. Beside the world of percepts and con-
cepts, this metaphysical realism can validate no third re-
gion of the world for which both principles, the so-called
principle of the real and the principle of the ideal, are si-
multaneously valid.
When metaphysical realism claims that, along with the
ideal relation between the perceptual object and its sub-
ject, there must exist a real relationship between the
“thing-in-itself” of the percept and the “thing-in-itself” of
the perceptible subject (the so-called individual spirit),
then this claim rests on the false assumption of the exist-
ence of a process analogous to the processes of the sense
world but imperceptible. When metaphysical realism fur-
ther states that we enter into a conscious-ideal relation-
ship with our perceptual world but can enter into a
dynamic relationship (of forces) only with the real world,
it commits the same error again. We can speak of a rela-
tionship of forces only within the perceptual world (in the
area of the sense of touch), but not outside this world.
The worldview into which metaphysical realism merg-
es when it eliminates its contradictory elements can be
calledmonism, because it combines one-sided realism
with idealism into a higher unity.
For naive realism, the real world is a sum of perceptual
objects. For metaphysical realism, imperceptible forces
as well as percepts attain reality. Monism replaces these
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