The Philosophy of Freedom: Difference between revisions
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Part One of ''The Philosophy of Freedom'' examines the basis for freedom in human thinking, gives an account of the relationship between knowledge and perception, and explores the reliability of thinking as a means to knowledge. In Part Two Steiner analyzes the conditions necessary for freedom of action<ref name="Essential"/> and develops a [[moral philosophy]] he describes as "ethical individualism".<ref>Chapter 9, "The Idea of Freedom".</ref> The book's subtitle, ''Some results of introspective observation following the methods of natural science'',<ref>An alternate translation reads, "Results of Introspective Observations According to the Method of Natural Science" (Rudolf Steiner, ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity'', trans. Rita Stebbing, (N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1963), p. 3). The German original is, "Beobachtungs-Resultate nach naturwissenshcaftlicher Methode" (Steiner, 1894, title page.)</ref> describes the philosophical method Steiner intends to follow. |
Part One of ''The Philosophy of Freedom'' examines the basis for freedom in human thinking, gives an account of the relationship between knowledge and perception, and explores the reliability of thinking as a means to knowledge. In Part Two Steiner analyzes the conditions necessary for freedom of action<ref name="Essential"/> and develops a [[moral philosophy]] he describes as "ethical individualism".<ref>Chapter 9, "The Idea of Freedom".</ref> The book's subtitle, ''Some results of introspective observation following the methods of natural science'',<ref>An alternate translation reads, "Results of Introspective Observations According to the Method of Natural Science" (Rudolf Steiner, ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity'', trans. Rita Stebbing, (N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1963), p. 3). The German original is, "Beobachtungs-Resultate nach naturwissenshcaftlicher Methode" (Steiner, 1894, title page.)</ref> describes the philosophical method Steiner intends to follow. |
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Originally published in 1894 in [[German language|German]] as ''Die Philosophie der Freiheit'', with a second edition published in 1918, the work has appeared under a number of [[#English_translations|English titles]], including ''The Philosophy of Freedom'', ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity'', and ''Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path''. |
Originally published in 1894 in [[German language|German]] as ''Die Philosophie der Freiheit'',<ref>Jacket[http://img.zvab.com/member/75172b/55540873.jpg]</ref> with a second edition published in 1918, the work has appeared under a number of [[#English_translations|English titles]], including ''The Philosophy of Freedom'', ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity'', and ''Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path''. |
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==Historical context== |
==Historical context== |
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The Philosophy of Freedom is the fundamental philosophical work of the philosopher and esotericist Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). It addresses the questions whether and in what sense man can be said to be free.
Part One of The Philosophy of Freedom examines the basis for freedom in human thinking, gives an account of the relationship between knowledge and perception, and explores the reliability of thinking as a means to knowledge. In Part Two Steiner analyzes the conditions necessary for freedom of action[1] and develops a moral philosophy he describes as "ethical individualism".[2] The book's subtitle, Some results of introspective observation following the methods of natural science,[3] describes the philosophical method Steiner intends to follow.
Originally published in 1894 in German as Die Philosophie der Freiheit,[4] with a second edition published in 1918, the work has appeared under a number of English titles, including The Philosophy of Freedom, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path.
Historical context
Steiner had wanted to write a philosophy of freedom since at least 1880.[5] The appearance of the book was preceded by his publications on Goethe, focusing on epistemology and the philosophy of science, particularly Goethe the Scientist (1883)[6] and The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception (1886).[7] In 1891, Steiner presented his doctoral dissertation, an epistemological study that includes discussion of Kant's and Fichte's theories of knowledge. A revised version of the thesis was published a year later in book form as Truth and Knowledge: Introduction to a Philosophy of Freedom.[8] The Philosophy of Freedom appeared in 1894.[9] In the Preface, Steiner described the aim of the book: knowledge should become "organically alive". "All real philosophers have been artists in the realm of concepts. For them, human ideas were their artists' materials and scientific method their artistic technique."[10]
While a student in Vienna, Steiner attended some of the lectures of Franz Brentano, an important precursor of the phenomenological movement in philosophy (see School of Brentano).[11] Like the later phenomenologists, Steiner was seeking a way to solve the subject-object problem.[12] Steiner's approach to freedom was also in part inspired by Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man and a response to the scientific works of Goethe, whom Steiner believed had not focused sufficiently on the role of thinking in developing inner freedom.[13]
Steiner's division of his subject into the knowledge of freedom and the reality of freedom in some respects parallels Fichte's distinction between formal freedom, the capacity and disposition to form intentions based on larger goals, including a person's awareness of this capacity, and material freedom, the realization of this capacity by formulating new actions.[14] Steiner is also critical of Fichte's philosophy, however, criticizing what he called a "fundamental mistake" in Fichte's Science of Knowledge.[15]
Steiner was also deeply affected as a young man by Kant's argument in the Critique of Pure Reason that we cannot know things as they are in themselves, and he devotes a long chapter of The Philosophy of Freedom, "Are there Limits to Knowledge?", to a refutation of this view, arguing that there are in principle no limits to knowledge. This claim is important to freedom, because for Steiner freedom involves knowing the real basis of our actions. If this basis cannot be known, then freedom is not possible. Steiner's argument in favour of freedom also responds to determinists such as Spinoza, for whom human action is just as much determined as anything else in the necessity that governs nature as a whole.
Other philosophers discussed or mentioned in The Philosophy of Freedom include George Berkeley, Pierre Jean George Cabanis, Descartes, Ernst Haeckel, Robert Hamerling, von Hartmann, Hegel, David Hume, Johannes Kreyenbuehl,[16]Otto Liebmann, Friedrich Paulsen, Paul Rée, Johannes Rehmke, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer. and David Strauss.[17]
In response to Eduard von Hartmann and other critics, Steiner used the Appendix of the 1918 edition to make clear that the book presented a “monism of thought” that was quite different from philosophies such as transcendental realism, epistemological monism,[18] Hegel's universalistic panlogism and Hume's individualistic phenomenalism.[19]
Arrangement and outline of the book
The twofold structure of The Philosophy of Freedom partly parallels Hegel's description of freedom: "Ethical life is the Idea of freedom as the living good which has its knowledge and volition in self-consciousness, and its actuality through self-conscious action."[20] However, Steiner differs from Hegel in an essential way: Steiner finds the activity of thinking to be something much greater and more real than the concepts which crystallize out of thinking.[21]
Steiner seeks to demonstrate that we can achieve a true picture of reality only by uniting perception, which reflects only the outer appearance of the world, and cognition, which gives us access to the world's inner structure.[22] He suggested that outer freedom arises when we bridge the gap between our ideals and the constraints of external reality, letting our deeds be inspired by moral imagination.[1]
Understanding freedom
Steiner begins exploring the nature of human freedom by accepting "that an action, of which the agent does not know why he performs it, cannot be free," but asking what happens when a person becomes conscious of his or her motives for acting. He proposes (1) that through introspective observation we can become conscious of the motivations of our actions, and (2) that the sole possibility of human freedom, if it exists at all, must be sought in an awareness of the motives of our actions.[23]
In Chapter 2, "The Fundamental Desire for Knowledge," Steiner discusses how an awareness of the division between mind, or subject, and world, or object, gives rise to a desire to reestablish a unity between these poles. After criticizing solutions to this problem provided by dualism in the philosophy of mind and several forms of monism as one-sided, Steiner suggests that only by locating nature's manifestations within our subjective nature can we overcome this division.
In Chapter 3, "Thinking in the service of Knowledge," Steiner observes that when confronted with percepts, we feel obliged to think about and add concepts to these: to observation we add thinking. Steiner seeks to demonstrate that what he considers the primary antithesis between observation and thinking underlies all other related antitheses and philosophical distinctions, such as subject vs. object, appearance vs. reality, and so on. For most objects of observation, he points out, we cannot observe both the percept and our thinking about this percept simultaneously, for a tree and thinking about a tree are fundamentally different; we can only attend to one at a time. In contrast, we can simultaneously observe thinking and observe our thoughts about thinking, for here the percept (thinking) and our thinking about the percept consist of the same element (thought): Just thinking and thinking about thinking are the same process; observing the latter, we are simultaneously observing the former.
Normally, however, we do not pay attention to the process of thinking, only its results, the thoughts themselves: "The first observation which we make about thinking is therefore this: that it is the unobserved element in our ordinary mental and spiritual life".[24] Steiner connects this "first observation" to the fact that thinking is entirely due to our own activity. It does not appear before us unless we ourselves produce it. Nevertheless, when I apprehend the content of thinking, a concept, this is self-justifying, in the sense that it can be asked why I feel this or that way about something, but not why it produces in me this or that concept. Such a question would be "simply meaningless".[25] Their contents justify the relations of concepts to one another.
Furthermore, when observing my thinking, it is always a past instance of thinking that I observe, not a present one. That the thinker and the observer of the thinker are one and the same explains why I can know thinking "more intimately and immediately than any other process in the world"[26] This is what Steiner calls the transparency of our thinking process.[27] To appreciate this point, we must be able to adapt to our own thinking the "exceptional" procedure mentioned above: we must apply it to itself. If we are unable to do this, and we think of thinking as a brain-process, it is because we do not see thinking, because we are unable to take up the exceptional position needed to do so.
Steiner takes Descartes' dictum, "I think, therefore I am," to signify the truth that "I am certain . . . that [thinking] exists in the sense that I myself bring it forth,"[28] However, Steiner advances the objection (common to many others, beginning in Descartes' own time,[29]) that the further claim that I am is more problematic.[30]
Steiner's full view is found in the following passage.
- ...thinking must never be regarded as merely a subjective activity. Thinking lies beyond subject and object. It produces these two concepts just as it produces all others. When, therefore, I, as thinking subject, refer a concept to an object, we must not regard this reference as something purely subjective. It is not the subject that makes the reference, but thinking. The subject does not think because it is a subject; rather it appears to itself as a subject because it can think. The activity exercised by man as a thinking being is thus not merely subjective. Rather is it something neither subjective nor objective, that transcends both these concepts. I ought never to say that my individual subject thinks, but much more that my individual subject lives by the grace of thinking.
What are the consequences of such a view for the concept of knowledge? In Chapter 4 Steiner presents his concept of knowledge.Man is a two-sided being who thinks and also perceives. The two activities together give a complete view of the world. Knowledge is the union of what is produced in thinking, the concept, and what is produced in perceiving, the percept. Steiner argues that there can be no relationship among the objects of perception other than what is revealed in the ideal element of thinking, the concept. Accordingly, the relation between some perceived object and ourselves is also an ideal one. An important passage analyzes the view that we cannot experience the world itself but only subjective images somewhere inside the brain, or in the soul inside the brain. This view is based on treating the perceptual relationship between self and world as other than ideal, as naively real, just as we perceive it, as a process derived in its content from perception itself.
What is the percept that perceiving produces? At the end of Chapter 4 Steiner rejects this question. 'The question asked in this way is absurd.' For a percept is the determinate content of the perception, and its "what?" - what it is - can only refer to this content. It is as though the question, 'What is this (percept)?' - pointing at a duck - could only receive the answer, "A duck." But a percept is not a duck.
Steiner points out the inconsistency of treating all our perceptions as mere subjective mental images inside the brain. If that were true, the perception of the brain itself would have to be a mere subjective mental image inside . . . the brain. The absurdity of that becomes clearer in Steiner's more detailed discussions, during the course of which a profoundly different understanding of perception is proposed.
With regard to freedom of the will, Steiner observes that a key question is how the will to action arises in the first place. Steiner describes to begin with two sources for human action: on the one hand, the driving forces springing from our natural being, from our instincts, feelings, and thoughts insofar as these are determined by our character - and on the other hand, various kinds of external motives we may adopt, including the dictates of abstract ethical or moral codes. In this way, both nature and culture bring forces to bear on our will and soul life. Overcoming these two elements, neither of which is individualized, we can achieve genuinely individualized intuitions that speak to the particular situation at hand. By overcoming a slavish or automatic response to the dictates of both our 'lower' drives and conventional morality, and by orchestrating a meeting place of objective and subjective elements of experience, we find the freedom to choose how to think and act.[31]: Chap. 9
Freedom for Steiner does not consist in acting out everything subjective within us, but in acting out of love, thoughtfully and creatively. In this way we can love our own actions, which are unique and individual to us, rather than stemming from obedience to external moral codes or compulsive physical drives. Both of the latter constitute limitations on freedom:
- Whether his unfreedom is forced on him by physical means or by moral laws, whether man is unfree because he follows his unlimited sexual desire or because he is bound by the fetters of conventional morality, is quite immaterial from a certain point of view...let us not assert that such a man can rightly call his actions his own, seeing that he is driven to them by a force other than himself.[32]
Freedom arises most clearly at the moment when a human being becomes active in pure, individualized thinking; this is, for Steiner, spiritual activity.[1] Achieving freedom is then accomplished by learning to let an ever larger portion of one's actions be determined by such individualized thought, rather than by habit, addiction, reflex, or involuntary or unconscious motives. Steiner differentiates pure thinking into "moral intuition" (formulation of individual purposes), "moral imagination" (creative strategies for realizing these larger purposes in the concrete situation), and "moral technique" (the practical capacity to accomplish what was intended). He suggests that we only achieve free deeds when we find an ethically impelled but particularized response to the immediacy of a given situation. Such a response will always be radically individual; it cannot be predicted or prescribed.[1]
Steiner's ethical philosophy is neither utilitarian nor deontological. For Steiner, the highest morality exists when a person acts in the world through deeds of love realized by means of individually developed and contextually-sensitive moral imaginations,[1]
Steiner treats thinking as an organ of perception as valid, and as subject to illusion, as the senses. He suggests that pure cognition is one with feeling and will in the depths of their reality, which is the power of love in its spiritual form. Pure thinking provides a living, warm, luminous, entry into the creative depths of the world, "the conscious experience, in pure spirit, of a purely spiritual content," while gray abstractions are merely the left-over remains, the corpses of what once was living thinking.
We can become conscious of our thought processes in a way that we cannot be of our feelings, will or sense perceptions. We know that what we experience in thinking is exactly what it seems, so that appearance and reality become one. By contrast, our feelings' meaning is not directly apparent, while we only perceive the meaning of a percept after some form of conceptual framework has been brought to bear (for example, we give the right spatial meaning to the visually converging lines of railroad tracks through our understanding of perspective). Mathematics is an example of thinking in which thought itself forms the perceptions; no sense-perceptions are needed to form a basis for mathematical principles. Mathematics could be said to be a science of the inner aspect of reality.
Steiner explains that our consciousness is "dualistic" in that the unity of the world (and of every object or element of the world), is at first only available to us split in two, because of our two basic modes of perception. Thus the world comes to us as "inner" and "outer," or "thought" and "percept," or "concept" and "given". It is the work of the human mind or spirit to uncover the fundamental unity of these two aspects, to recognize that they are two poles of a single reality, not two absolutely separate things. Though they are different, yet at the same time each contains in its innermost core something of the other. In his book The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886), one chapter is titled "Thinking as a Higher Experience within Experience."[33] That chapter title exemplifies the way in which Steiner finds thinking and perception to be simultaneously one and yet distinct, an inwardly differentiated unity, not two elements.
Steiner proposes that the dualism of experience can be overcome by discovering the inner and initially hidden unity of perception and cognition.[34] For example, by observing a thinking process sufficiently intensively, perceiving and thinking can begin to unify.
Steiner tells us that thinking is more pervasive in our ordinary perceiving than we often recognize. If, for example, we had not as infants learned, unconsciously, to think with our eyes and limbs, then our eyes, even if functioning perfectly in a physical sense, would see only something like what the philosopher William James referred to as a "blooming buzzing confusion,” or what Steiner referred to as a highly chaotic stage of the “given.”[35] We would not perceive spatial or temporal structure or recognize distinct qualities. If that conclusion seems surprising, that is because the thinking-in-perceiving learned in childhood becomes habitual and automatic long before we attain fully consciousness, so we rarely become aware of the key role cognition plays in even the simplest perceptions. Similarly, we are unconscious of the ways we perceive our thinking.
Steiner proposed that both perception and thinking can be extended beyond their present limits. Just as the telescope and microscope offer us radical extensions of the range of our perceptions, so we can look to extend our powers of thought until they become organs of perception for higher worlds. Steiner thus challenges the philosophy of his (and our) time: it is not enough simply to define the limits of possible knowledge; it is necessary to work to extend these as well.[34]
Exercising freedom
Steiner begins the second part of the book by emphasizing the role of self-awareness in objective thinking. Here he modifies the usual description of inner and outer experience by pointing out that our feelings, for example, are given to us as naively as outer perceptions. Both of these, feelings and perceptions, tell about objects we are interested in: the one about ourselves, the other about the world. Both require the help of thinking to penetrate the reasons why they arise, to comprehend their inner message. The same is true of our will. Whereas our feelings tell how the world affects us, our will tells how we would affect the world. Neither attains to true objectivity, for both mix the world's existence and our inner life in an unclear way. Steiner emphasizes that we experience our feelings and will - and our perceptions as well - as being more essentially part of us than our thinking; the former are more basic, more natural. He celebrates this gift of natural, direct experience, but points out that this experience is still dualistic in the sense that it only encompasses one side of the world.
This all is by way of introduction and recapitulation. Steiner then introduces the principle that we can act out of the compulsions of our natural being (reflexes, drives, desires) or out of the compulsion of ethical principles, and that neither of these leaves us free. Between them, however, is an individual insight, a partly situational ethic, that arises neither from abstract principles nor from our bodily impulses.[36] A deed that arises in this way can be said to be truly free; it is also both unpredictable and wholly individual. Here Steiner articulates his fundamental maxim of social life:
- Live through deeds of love, and let others live with understanding for each person's unique intentions.
Here he describes a polarity of influences on human nature, stating that morality transcends both the determining factors of bodily influences and those of convention:
- A moral misunderstanding, a clash, is out of the question between people who are morally free. Only one who is morally unfree, who obeys bodily instincts or conventional demands of duty, turns away from a fellow human being if the latter does not obey the same instincts and demands as himself.
For Steiner, true morality, the highest good, is the universal mediated by the profoundly individual and situational; it depends upon our achieving freedom from both our inner drives and outer pressures. To achieve such free deeds, we must cultivate our moral imagination, our ability to imaginatively create ethically sound and practical solutions to new situations, in fact, to forge our own ethical principles and to transform these flexibly as needed - not in the service of our own egotistical purposes, but in the face of new demands and unique situations. This is only possible through moral intuitions, immediate experiences of spiritual realities that underlie moral judgments.[1][34] Moral imagination and intuition allow us to realize our subjective impulses in objective reality, thus creating bridges between the spiritual influence of our subjectivity and the natural influence of the objective world in deeds whereby "that which is natural is spiritual, that which is spiritual is natural".[37]
Toward the end of the second part of the book, Steiner writes that "The unique character of the idea, by means of which I distinguish myself as 'I', makes me an individual." And then, "An act the grounds for which lie in the ideal part of my nature is free." Steiner there is using the term ideal to refer to pure ideation or pure thinking in Steiner's sense. "The action is therefore neither stereotyped, carried out according to set rules, nor is it performed automatically in response to an external impetus; the action is determined solely through its ideal content."[38] What is individual in us is to be distinguished from what is generic by its ideal character. If an act proceeds out of genuine thinking, or practical reason, then it is free.
Steiner concludes by pointing out that to achieve this level of freedom, we must lift ourselves out of our group-existence: out of the prejudices we receive from our family, nation, ethnic group and religion, and all that we inherit from the past that limits our creative and imaginative capacity to meet the world directly. Only when we realize our potential to be a unique individual are we free. Thus, it lies in our freedom to achieve freedom; only when we actively strive towards freedom do we have some chance of attaining it.
Relation to earlier and later work
Before 1900, Steiner was laying the epistemological basis of his thought. Steiner mentioned that The Philosophy of Freedom was intended to give the philosophical foundations for what had been outlined in his earlier work Truth and Science (1892).[39]
In works written after 1900, Steiner began to explain how thinking can evolve to become an organ of perception of higher worlds of living, creative, spiritual beings. Steiner frequently referred to The Philosophy of Freedom in his later lectures and in written works.[40] Near the end of his life, he suggested that The Philosophy of Freedom would outlive all his other works.[41]
Steiner's principal works on philosophy include:
- 1886 The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception. Steiner considered this to be "the epistemological foundation and justification for every thing I said and published later. It speaks of the essential being of knowing activity that opens the way from the sense perceptible world into the spiritual one."[42]
- 1892 Truth and Science (or Truth and Knowledge), dedicated to Eduard von Hartmann.
- 1894 The Philosophy of Freedom. This presented the philosophical foundations for what had been outlined in Truth and Science, and its line of thought led to the same goal as Steiner's later book Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man (1904).[43] It contained, in a philosophical form, the entire content of what he later developed explicitly as anthroposophy.[44]
- 1914 A Brief Outline of an Approach to Anthroposophy, chapter 8 in the book The Riddles of Philosophy Presented in an Outline of Its History.
Quotations
- The fundamental maxim of free men is to live in love towards our actions, and to let live in the understanding of the other person's will.[31] : Chapter 9
- Ethical individualism... is spiritualized theory of evolution carried over into moral life.[31] : Chapter 12
- Only to the extent that a man has emancipated himself...from all that is generic, does he count as a free spirit within a human community. No man is all genus, none is all individuality.[31]: Chapter 14
Editorial history
The first edition of Die Philosophie der Freiheit was published in 1893/4. A second revised edition appeared in 1918. Further German editions reprinted the 1918 text until 1973, when a revised edition was produced based on Steiner's corrections of the galley proofs of the 1918 edition. Minor changes, including corrections to some of Steiner's citations, were made in the 1987 German edition.[45]
The first edition included the following passage Steiner removed from later editions: “We no longer believe that there is a norm to which we must all strive to conform. Nothing is accepted as valid, unless it springs from the roots of individuality. The saying Each one of us must choose his hero in whose footsteps he toils up to Olympus no longer holds for us. If only we probe deep enough into the very heart of our being, there dwells something noble, something worthy of development.”[15][16]
English translations
English translations include:
- 1916: The Philosophy of Freedom: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific Methods. trans. Hoernlé and Hoernlé, ed. Harry Collison, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, London and New York.[46] This is the only English translation of the first German edition. (This edition uses a non-standard chapter numbering.)
- 1922: The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Based on 2nd German edition, trans. Hoernlé and Hoernlé.
- 1939: The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, trans. Hermann Poppelbaum, based on Hoernlé and Hoernlé translation
- 1963: The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, trans. Rita Stebbing. A USA edition, full title The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Fundamentals of a Modern View of the World: Results of Introspective Observation According to the Method of Natural Science, from the German edition published in Switzerland under the title Die Philosophie der Freiheit, Grundzüge einer modernen Weltenschauung; includes a Bibliographical Note[17]
- 1964: The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception, trans. Michael Wilson. 7th English edition, full title, The Philosophy of Freedom (The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity), The Basis for a Modern World Conception: Some results of introspective observation following the methods of Natural Science.
- 1986: The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: Basic Features of a Modern World View, trans. William Lindeman
- 1995: Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom, trans. Michael Lipson, based on Wilson translation [18]
There is a comparison tool to compare most of the above translations.
The source of the alternative titles
While The Philosophy of Freedom is a literal translation of the German title (Die Philosophie der Freiheit), Steiner suggested at the time of the first English edition in 1916 that the title The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity be used as it would more accurately characterize the book's theme of freedom as a dynamic process of development, as opposed to the fixed state connoted by the etymology of "freedom" (dom=a state or condition).[47][48]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg/40px-Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg.png)
Bibliography
- Rudolf Steiner on His Book the Philosophy of Freedom, Compiled by Otto Palmer (1964), SteinerBooks (1975), Reprinted.
- G.A.Bondarev, Rudolf Steiner's "Philosophie der Freiheit" as the Foundation of the Logic of Beholding. Religion of the Thinking Will. Organon of the New Cultural Epoch. An introduction to Anthroposophical Methodology, translated from the German from the German edition, 2004. ISBN 978-1-105-05765-6
- Welburn, Andrew, Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy and the Crisis of Contemporary Thought (2004), ISBN 0-86315-436-0 (for Steiner and Husserl, see p. 98 ff.)
- Sergei O. Prokofieff, Anthroposophy and The Philosophy of Freedom. Anthroposophy and its Method of Cognition. The Christological and Cosmic-Human Dimension of The Philosophy of Freedom, Temple Lodge Publishing, London 2009, from the German edition, 2006. ISBN 978-1-906999-02-5
- Iddo Oberski, Key to Life: An Introductory Sketch to Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, Eloquent Books 2010. ISBN 1609118650
- Sergei O. Prokofieff, The Guardian of the Threshold and the Philosophy of Freedom: On the Relationship of The Philosophy of Freedom to the Fifth Gospel, Temple Lodge Publishing, Forest Row 2011
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f Robert McDermott, The Essential Steiner: Basic Writings of Rudolf Steiner, Harper & Row, 1984, ISBN 0-06-065345-0, pp. 41–44
- ^ Chapter 9, "The Idea of Freedom".
- ^ An alternate translation reads, "Results of Introspective Observations According to the Method of Natural Science" (Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, trans. Rita Stebbing, (N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1963), p. 3). The German original is, "Beobachtungs-Resultate nach naturwissenshcaftlicher Methode" (Steiner, 1894, title page.)
- ^ Jacket[1]
- ^ Christoph Lindenberg, Rudolf Steiner: Eine Biographie, (Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben 1997), pp. 212–3.
- ^ "Goethe the Scientist"
- ^ The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception, with Specific Reference to Schiller, also translated as Goethe's Theory of Knowledge, An Outline of the Epistemology of His Worldview.
- ^ Truth and Knowledge, dedicated to Eduard von Hartmann.
- ^ Rudolf Steiner, Die Philosophie der Freiheit: Grundzuege einer modernen Weltanschauung, (Berlin: Emil Felder, 1894)
- ^ Steiner, Preface to the First Edition, 1894, revised 1918. Wilson translation 1964.
- ^ Owen Barfield in The Case for Anthroposophy, Selections from Von Seelenrätseln By Rudolf Steiner, London, 1970, remarks that Steiner was an admirer and assiduous reader of Brentano [2] ISBN 0 854402314; and see Steiner's remark that as a student Brentano's stimulus strongly affected him, and in following years he read most of what Brentano published.[3]
- ^ Welburn, Andrew, Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy and the Crisis of Contemporary Thought (2004), chapter 2. ISBN 0-86315-436-0
- ^ Sergei Prokofieff, Anthroposophy and The Philosophy of Freedom, Temple Lodge Press 2009, p. 206.
- ^ Fichte, The System of Ethics IV
- ^ Ch. 6, cited by Steiner in Chapter 5, "The Act of Knowing"
- ^ Ethical-Spiritual Activity in Kant, A critical-speculative study of the true spirit in Kantian philosophy, Johannes Kreyenbuehl, article referenced by Steiner published in English tranlation 1986, ISBN 0-936132-81-7 [4]
- ^ Rudolf Steiner, Philosophie der Freiheit, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1987, see Index of Names, pp. 283–284.
- ^ Epistemological monism- "realistic", asserting that data exist independently of the knowing mind, or "idealistic", asserting the data exist only when apprehended by the mind.[5]
- ^ Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Phenomenalism
- ^ Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1991). Alan W. Wood (ed.). Elements of the philosophy of right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ¶142.
- ^ :"My remarks concerning the self-supporting and self-determined nature of thinking cannot...be simply transferred to concepts. I make special mention of this, because it is here that I differ from Hegel, who regards the concept as something primary and original. -- end of first paragraph, Chapter 4 "The World as Percept, The Philosophy of Freedom
- ^ Chapters 5 "The Act of Knowing", 7 "Are there Limits to Knowledge?"
- ^ Wilson, Chapter 1 "Conscious Human Action"
- ^ Wilson, Ch. 3 p. 26.
- ^ Wilson, Ch.3 p. 25.
- ^ Wilson, p. 27.
- ^ Wilson, p. 28.
- ^ Wilson, p 30. Steiner's own wording: "My investigation touches firm ground only when I find an object which exists in a sense which I can derive from the object itself. But I am myself such an object in that I think..."
- ^ Cottingham, Meditations, Objections and Replies
- ^ Descartes, it could be said, began his Meditations on First Philosophy I) with doubt about his own outer experience, Steiner with trust about his own inner experience.
- ^ a b c d Steiner, Rudolf (1999). Michael Wilson (ed.). The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception. Steiner Books. ISBN 1-85584-082-0., syntax slightly revised
- ^ Philosophy of Freedom, p. 40
- ^ Steiner, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception, with Specific Reference to Schiller. Chapter VIII in English version by O.D.Wanamaker, 1968 A Theory of Knowledge based on Goethe's World Conception, from second German edition 1924. Also translated as Goethe's Theory of Knowledge, An Outline of the Epistemology of His Worldview.
- ^ a b c Johannes Hemleben, Rudolf Steiner: A documentary biography, Henry Goulden, 1975, ISBN 0-904822-02-8, pp. 61–64 (German edition: Rudolf Steiner: mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Rowohlt, 1990, ISBN 3-499-50079-5)
- ^ "In logic, all theory is pure empiricism; in the science of logic there is only observation. But when we want to know something other than thinking, we can do so only with the help of thinking; this means that thinking has to approach something given and transform its chaotic relationship with the world-picture into a systematic one. This means that thinking approaches the given world-content as an organizing principle."GA3
- ^ "...Steiner is not implying that the circumstances are...shaping the free deed."Robert A. McDermott, American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner, 2012 [6]
- ^ Agnes Nobel, Educating through Art, ISBN 0-86315-187-6, p. 103. (Originally published as Filosofens Knapp, Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm, 1991)
- ^ The Philosophy of Freedom, Ch. X, "the Idea of Freedom", trans:(1) R.F.A. Hoernle; (2) R. Stebbing
- ^ The Riddles of Philosophy: A Brief Outline of an Approach to Anthroposophy, Chapter VIII A Brief Outline of an Approach to Anthroposophy.[7]
- ^ Otto Palmer, "A Partial Bibliography of the Works of Rudolf Steiner in Which He refers to The Philosophy of Freedom included in Rudolf Steiner on His Book the Philosophy of Freedom, Compiled by Otto Palmer (1964), ISBN 0910142688 [8]
- ^ Paul Marshall Allen, in Foreword to Stebbing's 1963 translation
- ^ Preface to the 1924 edition of The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886)"Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception", also translated as Goethe's Theory of Knowledge, An Outline of the Epistemology of His Worldview. Online translation into English by William Lindeman see [9]
- ^ Theosophy, from the Prefaces to the First, Second, and Third Editions[10]
- ^ Sergei Prokofieff, May Human Beings Hear It!, Temple Lodge, 2004. p. 460
- ^ Rudolf Steiner Archive publication history
- ^ The cover sheet[11] mistakenly named "Vienna", instead of the University of Rostock in Germany, for Steiner's Ph.D.[12]
- ^ P.M.Allen in Foreword to Stebbing edition, 1963[13]
- ^ The Philosophy of Freedom / Spiritual Activity[14]
- ^ Majorek, Marek B. (2007). "Origins of consciousness and conscious (free) intentions from the viewpoint of Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual Science (Anthroposophy) in relation to Husserl's transcendental reduction". Phenomenology of Life from the Animal Soul to the Human Mind II: The Human Soul in the Creative Transformation of the Mind. Springer. pp. 259–278. ISBN 1402051816.
External links
- The Philosophy of Freedom/Spiritual Activity complete text in English (various versions), and other languages including the original German.
- The Philosophy of Freedom, PDF Downloads of complete text in English and German, various versions
- Die Philosophie der Freiheit, original German text
- Intuitive Thinking As A Spiritual Path, Audiobook, read by Dale Brunsvold
- The Fifth Gospel Five lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1913 from the series The Akashic Chronicle and the Fifth Gospel
- Overview of the Literature, G.A.Bondarev, quoting Andrei Bely