Prolegomena

Jalke Uta Schotten – On the Ontology of Individual Purpose

Uta Schotten’s artistic engagement with creation leads inevitably to the question of human purpose. Here, the focus is not on self-referential subjectivity, but on the exploration of the individual as a manifestation of a singular idea. Drawing on classical philosophical concepts, human existence can be understood as the realization of a specific design: the individual becomes the carrier of a transcendent intention, an archetype (Urgestalt).

The recognition of this immanent purpose is the prerequisite for targeted social impact. The human being acts where his specific position makes the greatest possible contribution to the common good.

This structure finds its visual equivalent in sacred art history, particularly in Francesco Botticini’s The Assumption of the Virgin. The angelic hierarchy depicted there serves as a metaphor for an ideal order: it illustrates a state of complete awareness of one’s place.

In this cosmological order, the struggle for status is dissolved in favor of recognizing one’s own singular divine idea. Every actor is certain of his specific level and task—a hierarchical harmony based not on subordination, but on fulfillment and the recognition of one’s own destiny.

For the artistic process, this insight means a radical liberation. Whoever perceives themselves as the expression of an individual, transcendent idea transcends the need to adapt to the fleeting demands and trends of the art market. Instead of producing market-compliant products, the creative process is transformed.

This inner independence makes it possible to tread new, uncharted paths, as artistic legitimacy is no longer derived from external conventions but from congruence with one’s own primal purpose. This is a new, expanded concept of art: through his thinking and actions, the human being shapes society without needing to be identified as an "artist."

In the certainty (not mere assumption) of this purpose lies not only liberation from the dictates of the market, but the transition to a higher task: the work is thus no mere object, but the material manifestation of a recognized truth that becomes effective where, according to its purpose, it makes the greatest contribution to the whole. From human to human. From I to Thou.

As long as this truth remains hidden, the human being—regardless of his respective field of activity—remains in a state of mere functionality or spiritual disorientation.

Conclusion: Without a connection to a pre-existent purpose, action remains insubstantial; it exhausts itself in the redundant reproduction of the "always the same." In this alienation from one’s own entelechy, art is dead, as it merely serves market-compliant mechanisms and frozen aesthetics.

Only the transition from mechanical acting to the conscious realization of one’s own design (one’s own entelechy) overcomes the current state of man and transforms his actions into a necessary realization for the sake of the whole.

The most essential moment of human existence, therefore, lies in the wisdom to penetrate one's transcendent divine idea and recognize it as an effective reality. Only this awakening of consciousness transforms action from mechanical reaction into creative realization. In recognizing this principle, the integration into the spiritual order—analogous to the iconography of the angelic hierarchy—follows with compelling consequence.

I refer to this process of cognition as the "recognition of truth." This aligns with Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom, in which he demonstrates that human beings create freedom only through the power of their capacity for knowledge. Freedom is thus not something fixed on the outside to be reached, but something that grows out of the execution of that which has been recognized.

The human being acts as a transformative being, much like photosynthesis operates in plants.

The human being is a fundamentally creative being, whose productivity, however, as long as it remains unconscious and without rational guidance, produces destructive phenomena and social disorganization without their causes becoming comprehensible to him.

As the only being endowed with reason, the human being possesses the evolutionary potential for cognition.

If he recognizes this immanent creative power, there arises the necessity to reflexively penetrate his own singular idea—the specific, personal archetype (Urbild). Only this positioning of his own core competence within the overarching order dissolves the urge to occupy the identity of another, and overcomes that destructive rivalry which results from the alienation from one's own purpose.

The existence of a human being thus becomes the material manifestation of truth, which does not seek its rightful place but already occupies it through its mere being.

I am that I am—

I will be that I will be.