Steiner - A Philosophy of Freedom
Steiner - A Philosophy of Freedom
I NTUITIVE THINKING
AS A S P I R I T U A L P AT H
A Philosophy of Freedom
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CL ASSICS IN AN TH RO PO S O PH Y
Theosophy
I NTUITIVE T HINKING
AS A S PIRITUAL PATH
RUDOLF STEINER
A Philosophy of Freedom
Translated by M IC H A EL L IPSO N
ANTHROPOSOPHIC PRESS
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without the written permission of the publisher, except for brief quota-
tions in critical reviews and articles.
Printed in the United States of America
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CONTENTS
PA RT I : T H E O RY
The Knowledge of Freedom
PA RT I I : P R A C T I C E
The Reality of Freedom
FINAL QUESTIONS
The Consequences of Monism 231
Bibliography 259
Index 263
TRANSINT Black vii
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
Michael Lipson
Translator’s Introduction ix
Translator’s Introduction xi
Introduction xiii
INTRODUCTION
Introduction xv
Introduction xvii
Introduction xix
Introduction xxi
Preface 1
Preface 3
April, 1918
Rudolf Steiner
*All footnotes are the publisher’s notes, unless they are identified as
the author’s notes.
1. The Riddles of Philosophy (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press,
1973).
1chap Black 5
PART I : THEORY
The Knowledge of Freedom
CHAPTER 1
1. D.F. Strauss (1808–1874), Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872).
A German theologian and philosopher, David Friedrich Strauss
developed a Hegelian theory of Biblical interpretation. He caused a
storm with his historical-critical Life of Jesus, in which he called the
Gospels “a historical myth.”
1chap Black 7
them and then receive them into their own realm. Pity
appears in my heart when the mental image of a person
who arouses pity in me enters my consciousness. The
way to the heart goes through the head.
Love is no exception here. If it is not a mere expression
of the sexual drive, then love is based on mental pictures
that we form of the beloved. And the more idealistic these
mental pictures are, the more blessed is the love. Here,
too, thought is the father of feeling. People say that love
makes us blind to the beloved’s flaws. But we can also
turn this around and claim that love opens our eyes to the
beloved’s strengths. Many pass by these good qualities
without noticing them. One person sees them and, just for
this reason, love awakens in the soul. What else has this
person done but make a mental picture of what a hundred
others have ignored? Love is not theirs because they lack
the mental picture.
We can approach the matter however we like: it only [19]
grows clearer that the question regarding the nature of hu-
man actions presupposes another, that of the origin of
thinking. I shall therefore turn to this question next.
2chap Black 18
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
not only see a tree, I also know that I am the one who sees
it. Moreover, I realize that something goes on in me while
I observe the tree. If the tree disappears from my view, a
remnant of this process remains in my consciousness: an
image of the tree. As I was observing, this image united
itself with my self. My self is thereby enriched: its content
has received a new element into itself. I call this element
my mental picture (Vorstellung) of the tree. There would
be no need to speak of mental pictures if I did not experi-
ence them in the percept of my self. In that case, percepts
would come and go; I would let them pass by. It is only
because I perceive my self, and notice that with every per-
cept the content of my self also changes, that I find myself
compelled to connect the observation of the object with
my own changed state, and to speak of my mental picture.
[23] I perceive mental pictures in my self in the same way
that I perceive colors, sounds, and so forth in other ob-
jects. From this point of view, I can now make a distinc-
tion, calling these other objects that stand over against me
the outer world, while designating the content of my self-
percept as the inner world. Failure to recognize the rela-
tion between the mental picture and the object has led to
the greatest misunderstandings in modern philosophy.
The perception of an inner change, the modification that
my self undergoes, has been thrust into the foreground,
and the object causing this modification has been lost
sight of altogether. It has been said that we do not per-
ceive objects, but only our mental pictures. I am not sup-
posed to know anything of the object of my observation,
the table in itself, but only of the change that occurs in my
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self while I perceive the table. This view must not be con-
fused with the Berkeleyan view mentioned above. Berke-
ley asserts the subjective nature of my perceptual content,
but he does not say that I can know only my mental pic-
tures. He limits my knowledge to my mental pictures be-
cause he believes that there are no objects outside mental
picturing. In this view, once I cease directing my gaze to-
ward it, what I regard as a table no longer exists. Hence for
Berkeley my percepts arise immediately from the power
of God. I see a table because God calls forth this percept
in me. Berkeley knows of no real beings other than God
and human spirits. What we call the world is present only
within spirits. What the naive human being calls the outer
world, corporeal nature, does not exist for Berkeley.
Berkeley’s view stands in contrast to the currently pre-
vailing Kantian view.4 This also limits our knowledge of
the world to our mental pictures. But it does not do so be-
cause of the conviction that no things except these mental
pictures can exist. Rather, the Kantian view believes us to
be so organized that we can learn only of modifications in
our own self, not of the things-in-themselves that cause
them. From the circumstance that I know only my mental
10. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Die Welt als Wille und Vorts-
tellung [The World as Will and Representation]. Schopenhauer was
the most influential German philosopher between Hegel and
Nietzsche. See The Riddles of Philosophy, p. 192 ff.
4chap Black 72
CHAPTER 5
These two views agree with naive realism in that they [7]
seek to gain a footing in the world by an investigation of
percepts. But nowhere in this realm can they find a firm
base.
One of the main questions for proponents of transcen- [8]
dental realism must be: “How does the I bring the world
of mental pictures out of itself?” A world given to us as
mental pictures, which disappears as soon as we close our
senses to the external world, can still be of interest in the
serious search for knowledge, insofar as it is a means for
indirectly investigating the world of the self-existent I. If
the things we experience were mental pictures, then ev-
eryday life would be like a dream, and knowledge of the
true state of affairs would be like waking up. Our dream
images, too, interest us only as long as we dream and so
do not see through their dream nature. The moment we
awaken, we no longer ask about the inner connection of
our dream images, but about the physical, physiological,
and psychological processes that underlie them. In the
same way, philosophers who hold the world to be their
mental picture cannot interest themselves in the inner
connection of its details. If they admit an existent I at all,
they will not ask how one of their mental pictures con-
nects with another. Rather, they will ask what is going on
plant any less than leaves and blossoms do? You might
reply that leaves and blossoms are present without a per-
ceiving subject, while the concept appears only when a
human being confronts the plant. Very well. But blos-
soms and leaves arise in the plant only when there is earth
in which the seed can be laid and light and air in which
leaves and blossoms can unfold. Just so, the concept of
the plant arises when thinking consciousness approaches
the plant.”
[11] It is quite arbitrary to consider as a totality, a whole, the
sum of what we experience of a thing through perception
alone, and to regard what results from a thinking contem-
plation as something appended, that has nothing to do
with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud today, then
the picture that offers itself to my perception is limited to
the present moment. But if I put the bud in water, then I
will get a completely different picture of my object to-
morrow. And if I can keep my eyes turned toward the
rosebud, then I shall see today’s state change continuous-
ly into tomorrow’s through countless intermediate stages.
The picture offering itself to me in a specific moment is
but an accidental cross-section of an object that is caught
up in a continual process of becoming. If I do not put the
bud in water, then it will fail to develop a whole series of
states lying within it as possibilities. And tomorrow I
might be prevented from observing the blossom further,
and so form an incomplete picture of it.
[12] It is completely unrealistic to grasp at accidental ele-
ments and to declare, of the picture revealed at a particu-
lar time: that is the thing.
5chap Black 81
Human Individuality 97
CHAPTER 6
HUMAN INDIVIDUALITY
Human Individuality 99
CHAPTER 7
PART II : PRACTICE
The Reality of Freedom
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
1. In writings subsequent to this one, the writer has shown how the
above view has been confirmed in psychology, physiology, etc. Here,
only what comes from the unprejudiced observation of thinking itself
was to be addressed. (Author’s note)
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else. Who of us can say that they are really free in all their
actions? But in each of us there dwells a deeper being in
whom the free human comes to expression.
Our life is made up of free and unfree actions. Yet we [39]
cannot think the concept of the human through to the end
without arriving at the free spirit as the purest expression
of human nature. Indeed, we are only truly human to the
extent that we are free.
That is an ideal, many will say. No doubt. But it is an [40]
ideal that works as a real element in our being and mani-
fests its effects on the surface. It is no thought-up or
dreamed-up ideal, but one that has life and makes itself
clearly known in even its most imperfect form of exist-
ence. Were human beings merely natural creatures, it
would be absurd to look for ideals—that is, ideas that are
not currently effective and requiring realization. With
things of the external world, the idea is determined by the
percept, and we have done our part once we have recog-
nized the connection between idea and percept. But this is
not so with humans. The totality of human existence is not
determined apart from the human beings themselves;
their true concepts as ethical human beings (free spirits)
are not united in advance, objectively, with the perceptual
picture of “human beings,” needing merely to be con-
firmed afterward by cognition. As human beings, we
must each unite our own concept with the percept of “hu-
man” through our own activity. Concept and percept co-
incide here only if we ourselves make them coincide. But
we can only do so if we have discovered the concept of
the free spirit, which is our own concept. In the objective
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CHAPTER 10
FREEDOM-PHILOSOPHY
AND MONISM
CHAPTER 11
2. Ibid.
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CHAPTER 12
MORAL IMAGINATION
(Darwinism and Ethics)
[1] Free spirits act out of their impulses—that is, from intui-
tions chosen by thinking from the totality of their world
of ideas. The reason that unfree spirits separate particular
intuitions from their world of ideas, to make them the ba-
sis of an action, lies in what the perceptual world has giv-
en them—that is, in their previous experiences. Before
coming to a decision, unfree spirits remember what
someone did, or recommended, or what God commanded
in such a case, and so forth. Then they act accordingly.
Free spirits have other sources of action than these pre-
conditions. They make absolutely original decisions.
They worry neither about what others have done in their
situation, nor about what they have been commanded to
do. Purely conceptual reasons move them to select a par-
ticular concept from the sum of their concepts and trans-
late it into action. Their action, however, belongs to
perceptible reality. What they perform there will thus be
identical to a quite specific perceptual content. The con-
cept will have to realize itself in a concrete, individual
12chap Black 181
1. Only a superficial view could see, in the use of the word “faculty”
here and in other passages, a return to an older psychology’s teaching
of soul faculties. Connecting it with what was said on pp. 88–89 ff.
yields the exact meaning of the word. (Author’s note)
12chap Black 184
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
form of the natural duties and needs of the female. The ac-
tivity of a man in life is determined by his individual ca-
pacities and inclinations; that of a woman is supposed to
be determined exclusively by the fact that she is, precisely,
a woman. Woman is supposed to be a slave of the generic,
of what is universally womanish. As long as men debate
whether women are suited to this or that profession “ac-
cording to their natural disposition,” the so-called woman
question cannot evolve beyond its most elementary stage.
What women are capable of according to their nature
should be left to women to decide. If it is true that women
are suited only to the profession that is currently allotted
to them, then they will hardly be able to attain any other
on their own. But they must be allowed to decide for them-
selves what is appropriate to their nature. Anyone who
fears a cataclysm in our social conditions if women are ac-
cepted not as generic entities but as individuals should be
told that social conditions in which one half of humanity
leads an existence unworthy of human beings are condi-
tions that stand in great need of improvement.1
FINAL QUESTIONS
THE CONSEQUENCES
OF MONISM
Appendix I 243
APPENDICES (1918)
Appendix I 245
Appendix I 247
Appendix I 249
2. Ibid.
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Appendix I 251
Appendix II 253
II
Our age wants to draw forth Truth only from the depths [2]
of the human being. Of Schiller’s two well known paths,
our present age prefers the second:
1. Only the very first introductory sentences of this preface (in the
first edition) have been completely omitted; today, they seem to me
quite inessential. But what is said in the rest of it seems to me neces-
sary to say even today in spite of—indeed, because of—the natural
scientific thinking of our contemporaries. (Author’s note)
2. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) Great Ger-
man dramatist, aesthetic philosopher, and critic.
appen2 Black 254
Appendix II 255
Appendix II 257
Bibliography 259
BY RUDOLF STEINER:
260 Bibliography
Bibliography 261
BY OTHER AUTHORS
262 Bibliography
Index 263
INDEX
A animal desire
absolute (being) elevation of, 16-17
dualistic relation to, 165-166 hunger as, 209-214
See also authority; divine obedience to as compulsion,
being; God 12-13, 153, 221-222, 229
abstraction, 85-86, 87, 124, 132, satisfaction of, 141
134 See also desire; sexual drive
of concept, 234, 235, 238 animals
of experience, 237 as analogy for human action,
See also thinking 14-15
action ideas within, 177
criminal action, 152, 153 suffering of, 213
effect on of thinking, 16, 52-53 Archimedes, 42
of free spirit, 5-6, 180, 190, atom
195, 222-223, 238 as monistic unification, 24-25
individuality of, 151-152, 154 notional world of, 106-107
love of, 155 Atomistics of the Will, 12-13
motive for, 12, 145, 172, 195 authority
motive power for, 143 operation of, 145-146, 163,
relation of to object, 39 168, 181, 229
relation of to thinking, 31, 137 origin of, 160-161, 225
in relation to consciousness, 5- See also compulsion; law
17
in relation to freedom, 9-11, B
15-16 becoming. See evolution
self-determination of, 28-29, being-in-itself, 165, 166, 167
156, 165, 173, 190 See also divine being; God
See also causes of action; Berkeley, George, 57-58, 61
event See also eye
ambition body
illusory nature of, 202-204 as concept, 114
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264 INDEX
Index 265
266 INDEX
Index 267
268 INDEX
Index 269
270 INDEX
Index 271
272 INDEX
Index 273
274 INDEX
Index 275
276 INDEX
Index 277
278 INDEX
Index 279
280 INDEX
Index 281