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{{Short description|Philosophical treatise by Rudolf Steiner}} {{italics}} {{copyedit|reason=Problems with headings, lists, presentation of quotations, etc.|date=July 2024}}
[[File:Die_Philosophie_der_Freiheit.png|thumb|{{center|Title page of the original German edition}}]]
{{Anthroposophy}} '''''The Philosophy of Freedom''''' is the fundamental philosophical work of [[philosopher]], [[Goethe]] scholar, and [[Esoteric|esotericist]] [[Rudolf Steiner]] (1861–1925).<ref name="Cees">{{cite book|author-first=Cees|author-last=Leijenhorst|author-link=Cees Leijenhorst|editor-link=Wouter Hanegraaff|editor-last=Hanegraaff|editor-first=Wouter J.|editor-last2=Faivre|editor-first2=Antoine|editor-last3=van den Broek|editor-first3=Roelof|editor-last4=Brach|editor-first4=Jean-Pierre|year=2006|title=Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism|chapter='''Steiner,''' Rudolf, * 25.2.1861 Kraljevec (Croatia), † 30.3.1925 Dornach (Switzerland)|place=Leiden / Boston|publisher=Brill|page=1086|quote=Steiner moved to Weimar in 1890 and stayed there until 1897. He complained bitterly about the bad salary and the boring philological work, but found the time to write his main philosophical works during his Weimar period. ... Steiner's high hopes that his philosophical work would gain him a professorship at one of the universities in the German-speaking world were never fulfilled. Especially his main philosophical work, the ''Philosophie der Freiheit'', did not receive the attention and appreciation he had hoped for.}}</ref> It addresses the question of whether and in what sense human beings are free. Originally published in 1894 in [[German language|German]] as ''Die Philosophie der Freiheit'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://img.zvab.com/member/75172b/55540873.jpg|title=Jacket}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.steiner-hoeren.de/Aktuelles.31.0.html|title=steiner-hoeren.de: MENUE|website=www.steiner-hoeren.de}}</ref> with a second edition published in 1918, the work has appeared under several [[The Philosophy of Freedom#English Translations|English titles]], including ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity'' (the title Steiner proposed for the English-language translation<ref>{{cite book|last1=Meyer|first1=T. H.|title=D.N. Dunlop, A Man of Our Time: A Biography|date=2014|publisher=Temple Lodge Publishing|location=Forest Row, UK|isbn=9781906999667|page=125}}{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2023}}</ref>), ''The Philosophy of Freedom'', and ''Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path''.

"Steiner was a moral individualist".{{efn-lr|Ethical individualism is the opposite of ethical collectivism (meaning a moral code which is good for everyone).}}<ref name="t661">{{cite book|last=Ryan|first=Alexandra E.|editor-last=Clarke|editor-first=Peter|title=Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements|publisher=Taylor & Francis|year=2004|isbn=978-1-134-49970-0|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DouBAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA34|access-date=2024-07-19|page=34}}</ref> Part One of ''The Philosophy of Freedom'' examines the basis of freedom in human thinking, provides an account of the relationship between knowledge and perception, and explores the role and reliability of thinking in the formation of knowledge. In Part Two Steiner analyzes the conditions necessary for human beings to be free, and develops a [[moral philosophy]] that he labels "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> indicates the philosophical approach Steiner intends to take. Steiner hoped that the book "would gain him a professorship", but the book "did not receive the attention he had hoped for."<ref name="Cees" /> In fact, the book was reasonably favourably received in English, with reviews in ''Mind'', the leading journal of philosophy in England, the ''Philosophical Review'', and the ''Monist'',<ref>Mind, NS vol 4 (1895) pp. 129-130; Monist Vol. 5 (1895), Philosophical Review, Vol. 4, No. 5 (Sep., 1895) pp. 573-574.</ref> and in German publications.<ref>E.g. the less than favourable review in Philosophisches Jahrbuch Vol 8 (1895), pp. 423-428 [http://philosophisches-jahrbuch.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/PJ8_S423-447_Rezensionen]</ref>

According to [[Gary Lachman]], "It's also a work of genius, and one suspects that Steiner's later occult reputation has prevented the book from receiving the kind of attention it deserves."<ref>{{cite book|last=Lachman|first=Gary|title=Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work|publisher=Penguin Publishing Group|year=2007|isbn=978-1-101-15407-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gsfrzMrkkc8C&pg=PT10|access-date=29 February 2024|quote=It's also a work of genius, and one suspects that Steiner's later occult reputation has prevented the book from receiving the kind of attention it deserves.|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=gsfrzMrkkc8C&pg=PA92 92]}}</ref> He also wrote "Mainstream philosophy has as much use for Steiner today as it did a century ago, but his work has been picked up by more alternative thinkers, like [[William Irwin Thompson]] and [[Richard Tarnas]]."{{sfn|Lachman|2007|p=232}}

== Historical context ==
Steiner had wanted to write a philosophy of freedom since at least 1880.<ref name="Lindenberg">Christoph Lindenberg, ''Rudolf Steiner: Eine Biographie'', (Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben 1997), pp. 212–3.{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2023}}</ref> The appearance of ''The Philosophy of Freedom'' in 1894<ref name="Steiner">Rudolf Steiner, ''Die Philosophie der Freiheit: Grundzuege einer modernen Weltanschauung'', (Berlin: Emil Felder, 1894)</ref>  was preceded by his publications on Goethe, focusing on [[epistemology]] and the [[philosophy of science]], particularly ''Goethe the Scientist'' (1883)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/GA_Detail.php?GA=|title=Rudolf Steiner: Complete Works Volume Details|website=www.rudolfsteinerweb.com}}</ref> and ''The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception'' (1886).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1985/GA002_pre1924.html|title=''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''.}}</ref> In 1891, Steiner presented his doctoral dissertation, which was an epistemological study that included discussion of [[Immanuel Kant|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'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/RSPI1963/GA003_index.html|title=Contents - GA 3. Truth and Knowledge (1963) - Rudolf Steiner Archive|website=rsarchive.org}}</ref> dedicated to Eduard von Hartmann. In the Preface to ''The Philosophy of Freedom'' itself, 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."<ref>Steiner, Preface to the First Edition, 1894, revised 1918. Wilson translation 1964.</ref>

While a student in Vienna, Steiner attended some of the lectures of [[Franz Brentano]], an important precursor of the [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenological movement]] in philosophy (see [[School of Brentano]]).<ref>[[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 [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA021/English/RSP1970/GA021_index.html] {{ISBN|0 854402314}}{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2023}}; 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.[http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/TSoML/GA028_c03.html]</ref> Like the later phenomenologists, Steiner was seeking a way to solve the subject-object problem.<ref>Welburn, Andrew, ''Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy and the Crisis of Contemporary Thought'' (2004), chapter 2.  {{ISBN|0-86315-436-0}}{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2023}}</ref> 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.<ref name="SP2009">Sergei Prokofieff, ''Anthroposophy and The Philosophy of Freedom'', Temple Lodge Press 2009, p. 206.{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2023}}</ref>

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 favor 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.

== Arrangement and outline of the book ==
''The Philosophy of Freedom'' is divided into three parts. The first part - "Knowledge of Freedom" - is epistemological and in a broad sense metaphysical (the nature of reality). The second part -"The Reality of Freedom" - is about free will and ethics. The title of the third part - "Ultimate Questions" or, in German, 'die letzten Fragen', deals with the nature and consequences of the completely monistic though not materialist view of the world presented in the book.

In his epistemology Steiner seeks to show that we can achieve a true picture of reality only by uniting [[perception]], which reflects only the outer appearance of the world, and [[Concept|conception]], which together give us access to the world's inner nature.<ref>Chapters 5 "The Act of Knowing", 7 "Are there Limits to Knowledge?"</ref>

In his account of freedom, this idea is applied to the question of what freedom is. From another epistemological angle, Steiner's account of thinking in Part One becomes his concept of thinking in Part Two. We act freely when we act through the thinking activity of our being. Ethics finds its place as the actions of the free being. The very short Part Three places this activity and the cognitive activity of man in the context of the world considered as an epistemological whole.

== Knowledge of 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 [[Free will|freedom]], if it exists at all, must be sought in an awareness of the motives of our actions.<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], Chapter 1 "Conscious Human Action"</ref>

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 [[Mind-body dualism|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 notes that when we encounter percepts, we are compelled to contemplate them and supplement them with concepts. Essentially, we naturally incorporate the process of thinking into our observations. Steiner aims to illustrate that what he views as the fundamental contradiction between observation and thinking forms the basis for all other related contradictions and philosophical distinctions, such as subject vs. object, appearance vs. reality, and so forth. He highlights that for most objects of observation, we cannot simultaneously observe both the percept and our thoughts about it, as a tree and our thoughts about a tree are inherently distinct; we can only focus on 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): ''Thinking and thinking about thinking are the same process; observing the latter, we are simultaneously observing the former.''

Normally, however, for just that reason 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".<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], Ch. 3 p. 26.</ref> 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 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".<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], Ch.3 p. 25.</ref> 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"<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], p. 27.</ref> This is what Steiner calls the transparency of our thinking process.<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], p. 28.</ref> To appreciate this point, we must be able to adapt to our own thinking of 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. After all, we are unable to take up the exceptional position needed to do so.

Steiner takes Descartes' dictum, "I think, therefore I am," to signify that "I am certain . . . that [thinking] exists in the sense that I myself bring it forth,"<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], p 30. Cf. Steiner's own wording, in translation: "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..."</ref> However, Steiner advances the objection (common to many others, beginning in Descartes' own time),<ref>Cottingham, Meditations, Objections and Replies</ref> that the further claim that ''I am'' is more problematic.<ref>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.</ref>

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 a 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 thinking beings 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.

The Chapter on thinking is followed by a shorter one on perception, Chapter 4. It contains two main and very important points. 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! In that case, the basis for our knowledge of the brain would be completely undermined. The scientific claim is made, on the basis of physiology and psychology, that our percepts are produced by a causal process within the organism and hence are subjective. This is called "critical idealism" But physiology and psychology are based on these percepts. So our knowledge of physiology and psychology is subjective. But then it cannot validate the claim that percepts are subjective. Furthermore, critical idealism leaves unaccounted for the passage from the brain process to the sensation.

What are the consequences of such a view of perception for the concept of knowledge? In Chapter 5 Steiner presents his concept of knowledge. Human beings are two-sided, as they both think and also perceive. 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 produced by 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.

At the end of Chapter 5; Steiner completes the view of perception begun in Chapter 4. What is the percept that perceiving produces? 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.

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. In this sense [[mathematics]] could be said to be one discipline that studies the inner aspect of reality.

Steiner proposes that the apparent dualism of experience can be overcome by discovering the inner and initially hidden unity of perception and thinking.<ref name="Hemleben">Johannes Hemleben, ''Rudolf Steiner: A documentary biography'', Henry Goulden, 1975, {{ISBN|0-904822-02-8}}{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2023}}, pp. 61–64 (German edition: ''Rudolf Steiner: mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten'', Rowohlt, 1990, {{ISBN|3-499-50079-5}}){{Unreliable source?|date=October 2023}}</ref> By observing a thinking process sufficiently intensively, perceiving and thinking can begin to unify. This is knowledge. By the same token, a clear-eyed study of what is revealed in observation can lead to appropriate concepts - thinking.

Steiner argues 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.”<ref>"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."[http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA003/English/RSPI1963/GA003_index.html GA3]</ref> 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 full 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.

'Our next task must be to define the concept of "mental picture" more closely', Steiner writes at the end of Chapter 6. With this concept, we arrive at the relation of knowledge to the individual, and life, and feeling. After a refutation of the subjectivity of percepts, Steiner describes a mental picture as an intuition or thought related to an individual percept. And so the mental picture is defined as an individualized concept.

Experience is the "sum total" of mental pictures of the individual. However, the human cognitive inventory extends beyond percept, concept, and mental picture. It also includes the relation of these elements to the Ego, which is feeling. Feeling establishes our personal connection to the world, and we fluctuate between this personal connection and the "universal world process" presented in thinking. The mental pictures we create impart an individualized quality to our mental life and connect it to our personal experiences.

Chapter 7 takes up the consequences of the view that knowledge consists of the restoration of the unity of the content of the percept and the concept. Steiner calls those who make the epistemological distinction into a permanent metaphysical one [[dualists]]. For the monist ‘The world is given to us as a duality, and knowledge transforms it into a unity.' Working with an irresolvable distinction, the dualist is bound to assert that there are limits to knowledge: ‘the “in itself” of a thing.’ For the monist, there is no in-principle limit to knowledge.

For [[monism]] in Steiner's sense, there are only concepts and percepts, which, united, form the object; for the dualist, there is the subject, the object, the percept, and the concept.<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], p. 93. Nb in the 2008 printing “percept” is misspelled as “precept”.</ref> We must not conceive of the process of perception as though it is naïvely real, as we do when we take perception to be a causal effect of the things as they are in themselves on us. [[Metaphysical realism]] is the view that there is an object in the world that is imperceptible as it is in itself, but is also to be conceived naïve realistically. It 'is a contradictory mixture of naïve realism and idealism. Its hypothetical [elements] are imperceptible entities endowed with the qualities of percepts’.<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], p. 98</ref> For the monist, the process of perception is an ideal relation. The metaphysical realist, however, is left with the unanswerable question how the metaphysically real objects are converted into subjective percepts. Here Steiner can be read as giving his account of the structure and basis of what is today called [[the mind-body problem]].

Steiner's summary of Part I of ''The Philosophy of Freedom'', at the start of Chapter 8 in Part II, contains the following passage:

: The world comes to meet me as a multiplicity, a sum of separate details. As a human being, I am myself one of these details, an entity among other entities. We call this form of the world simply the given and—insofar as we do not develop it through conscious activity but find it ready-made—we call it percept. Within the world of percepts, we perceive ourselves. But if something did not emerge out of this self-percept that proved capable of linking both percepts in general and also the sum of all other percepts with the percept of our self, our self-percept would remain simply one among many. This emerging something, however, is no longer a mere percept; nor is it, like percepts, simply present. It is produced through activity and initially appears linked to what we perceive as our self, but its inner meaning reaches beyond the self. It adds conceptual determinates to individual percepts, but these conceptual determinates relate to one another and are grounded in a whole. It determines conceptually what is achieved through self-perception conceptually, just as it determines all other percepts. It places this as the subject or “I” over against objects. This “something” is thinking, and the conceptual determinates are concepts and ideas.<ref>''Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path'', Michael Lipson translation, Chapter 8</ref>

== The Reality of 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 that 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, and 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.

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 (Steiner [Wilson translation] Ch. 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.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JAr5d1ESGGgC&pg=PA140|title=Philosophy of Freedom|first=Rudolf|last=Steiner|date=October 31, 2011|publisher=Rudolf Steiner Press|isbn=978-1-85584-266-3|via=Google Books|page=140}}</ref>

Freedom arises most clearly at the moment when a human being becomes active in pure, individualized thinking; this is, for Steiner, spiritual activity.<ref name="Essential">Robert McDermott, ''The Essential Steiner: Basic Writings of Rudolf Steiner'', Harper & Row, 1984, {{ISBN|0-06-065345-0}}, pp. 41–44</ref> 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.<ref name="Essential" />

== Four concepts of freedom ==
Already in Ch. 1 of ''The Philosophy of Freedom'' Steiner had made the claim, 'That an action, of which the agent does not know why he performs it, cannot be ''free'', goes without saying' (''ist selbstverständlich'').<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], 1964, p. 11, Steiner 1894, p. 19.</ref> This is a preliminary statement; it does not amount to a definition or statement of what freedom ''is''. The statement that no action is free unless the agent knows why he performs it is equivalent to the statement that if an action is free, then the agent ''does'' know why he performs it. The second statement is not a definition, which has the form of a full equivalence, but merely ''one'' implication, though a highly suggestive and methodologically important one.

For the full account of freedom, which includes four different characterizations of freedom, we must wait until Chapter 9, "The Idea of Freedom". Here we encounter the following definitions. But they are distinct. 'It is difficult to find out exactly what Dr. Steiner understands by 'freedom.' He defines it differently in different places . . .'<ref>David Irons, Review of _Die Philosophie der Freiheit_, in _The Philosophical Review, Vol. 4, No. 5 (1895), p. 574.</ref> It may be, however, that Steiner is proposing four criteria that must all be satisfied, rather than four mutually contradictory definitions. Or he may be offering four perspectives or angles from which the fundamental concept of freedom is meant to emerge. From the text of Chapter 9 it is difficult to say which of these is the correct interpretation.

=== ''(1) Love'' ===
'I carry it [the action] out because I love it.'<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], 1964, p. 136</ref> In the long paragraph containing this statement, Steiner sets the love of the action within the context that a free action is not influenced by any "moral maxim". This is clearly an attack on Kant. The action is carried out the moment '. . . I have grasped the idea of it, on the basis of love, and I am not a "superior automaton" obeying the maxim.

=== ''(2) The Ideal Part of my Being: Thinking'' ===
'An action is felt to be free in so far as the reasons for it spring from the ideal part of my individual being; every other part of an action [?] . . . is felt to be ''unfree'''; . . . every other part of an action . . . is felt to be unfree'<ref name="Wilson, 1964, p. 138">Steiner [Wilson translation], 1964, p. 138.</ref> (Wilson's translation gives an unnecessarily subjective reading here, as the German original makes no mention of what "is ''felt'' to be free": 'Einen Handlung, deren Grund in dem ideellen Teil meines individuellen Wesens liegt, ''ist'' (emphasis added) frei . . . jede andere . . .''ist'' (emphasis added) unfrei.' Steiner's entirely objective formulation does not allow the so-called open question argument: though 'Though the action is ''felt'' to be free, ''is'' it free?'<ref>Steiner, 1894, p. 152.</ref> and thereby sidesteps the vexed and dubious libertarian argument for freewill based merely on the subjective ''feeling'' of freedom.)

=== ''(3) Obedience to Oneself'' ===
'Man is free in so far as he is able to obey himself in every moment of his life'<ref name="Wilson, 1964, p. 138" /> Here the topic has changed. In (2) we were offered a definition of the free act. Now in (3) the question seems to be what a free man or human being is. 'Man is free . . .' ('Frei ist der Mensch'). The requirement is remarkably demanding: 'in so far as he is able to obey himself in every moment of his life . . .', so that it only takes one failure of the ability in one "Augenblick" to make him unfree. Besides, Definition (3) suffers from a formal defect to the extent that it must include the modal formulation ("is able to obey himself") which seems to presuppose freedom ("is able to . . .", "in der Lage ist"). Definition (3) is also surprisingly Spinozist, in the sense that the freedom of a being is for Spinoza, in the Letter to Schuller of 1674, quoted by Steiner in Steiner [Wilson translation], 1965, p.&nbsp;5, "the ability to act from the necessity of its nature". It is a consequence of (3) that freedom is the antithesis of duty,<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], p. 138.</ref> because "duty does not acknowledge the individual element" in our actions.

=== ''(4) "Non-Objective Determination of the Self"'' ===
In the case of man the free spirit, unlike in every other case, the concept and percept of our being do not coincide, in reality, or belong together ''originally'', until man himself brings it about, in his own consciousness, that they should. 'Concept and percept coincide in this case only if man makes them coincide. This he can only do if he has found the concept of the free spirit, that is, if he has found the concept of his own self.'<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], 1964, p. 141.</ref>'Only ''he himself'' can make of himself a ''free man''<ref>Steiner [Wilson translation], 1964, p. 142.</ref>('Ein ''freies'' Wesen kann er nur ''selbst'' aus sich machen.)'<ref>Steiner, 1894, p. 159. The startling idea that the percept and concept of everything in the world ''other'' than man are originally not divided is to be found as early as Steiner's doctoral dissertation, ''Truth and Science'', though in that early work (1892), the originally divided thing which only becomes united through its own activity is not the free being, but consciousness. 'Here the union of the two factors of reality [concept and percept] depends upon the activity of consciousness. In all other objects, the separation has no significance for the objects themselves, but only for knowledge . . . But the concept and the given reality of consciousness are originally separated . . .'. (Steiner, "Truth and Science", trans Rita Stebbing, in ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity'', (West Nyack: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1963), p. 357)).</ref>

Freedom is (1) love; (2) thinking, which Steiner also calls "love in its spiritual form"; (3) Obedience to Oneself; (4) "Non-Objective Determination of the Self".

It seems, however, that Steiner intends his different characterizations or definitions to apply to different aspects of the concept of freedom, rather than to be different concepts of freedom, and that he regarded them as bringing out different points about a consistent whole. It would be worth trying to express what this consistent whole is, or how Steiner intended to characterize it, if he did. It seems reasonable to suppose that he saw this unity in the concept of spirit or a spiritual being,<ref>See Steiner [Wilson translation], 1964, p. 121-124: 'When we observe our thinking, we live during this observation directly within a self-supporting, spiritual web of being'; also ''Truth and Science'' p. 297, where 'truth is not, as is usually assumed, an ideal reflection of something real, but is a product of the human spirit, created by an activity which is free',</ref> and where on his view, as on traditional religious views, as well as New Age views, not all spiritual beings are human beings, though (a further difficulty) not all spiritual beings are free. On the other hand, Steiner had a strong sense of the proper order of epistemological exposition,<ref>See e.g. Ch. 2 of ''Truth and Science''.</ref> and difficulty might be that he cannot assume the concept of a spiritual being prior to the epistemology and metaphysics of ''The Philosophy of Freedom''. The alternative is to forego the ideal of an inquiry which is ''vorausetzungslos'' or without presupposition,<ref>''Truth and Science'', p. 313.</ref> or to rest with a "disjunctive" concept of freedom: an act is free if it is done out of love, ''or'' from the ideal part of one's nature, ''or'' out of obedience to oneself, ''or'' which has the characteristic of "non-objective determination of the self. The latter course hardly seems to have been one that Steiner would have taken, since he regarded the definitions as complementary if not equivalent.<ref>'Wir können aber den Begriff des Menschen nicht zu Ende denken, ohne auf den ''freien Geist'' als die reinste Aussprägung der menschlichen Natur zu kommen.' (Steiner, 1894, p. 156).</ref>

== Steiner's ethics ==
Steiner's ethical philosophy is neither [[Utilitarianism|utilitarian]] nor [[deontological]]. "...Steiner is not implying that the circumstances are...shaping the free deed. 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. The ethical act is the one performed in or out of freedom, in the sense developed in the first part of Steiner's book. This of course raises a difficulty concerning the one who loves evil and acts on the basis of this love. Are his actions of "the highest morality"? It cannot be so, since the act is evil. On the other hand, it must be so, since the act is performed out of love. Steiner's answer . . .

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 [[Situational ethics|situational ethic]], that arises neither from abstract principles nor from our bodily impulses.<ref name="q975">{{cite book|last=McDermott|first=Robert A.|title=American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner: Emerson – Thoreau – Peirce – James – Royce – Dewey – Whitehead – Feminism|publisher=SteinerBooks|year=2012|isbn=978-1-58420-138-0|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4_1UEouH63QC&pg=PT32|access-date=2024-07-20|page=32|quote=...Steiner is not implying that the circumstances are...shaping the free deed.}}</ref> 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. Reference?

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. Reference?

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.<ref name="Essential" /><ref name="Hemleben" /> 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".<ref>Agnes Nobel, ''Educating through Art'', {{ISBN|0-86315-187-6}}, p. 103. (Originally published as ''Filosofens Knapp'', Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm, 1991)</ref>

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 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."<ref name="Ch10"> ''The Philosophy of Freedom'', Ch. X, "the Idea of Freedom",  trans:(1) R.F.A. Hoernle; (2) R. Stebbing</ref> 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.

== Ultimate Questions ==
The third part of Steiner's book is the shortest, consisting of one Chapter, "The Consequences of Monism", nine pages in the original German of the 1894 edition, and ten pages in Michael Wilson's 1964 translation.

== Relation to earlier and later works ==
Before 1900, Steiner was laying the epistemological basis of his thought. Steiner wrote 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).<ref>''The Riddles of Philosophy: A Brief Outline of an Approach to Anthroposophy'', Chapter VIII ''A Brief Outline of an Approach to Anthroposophy''.[http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA018/English/AP1973/GA018_index.html]</ref>

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, and spiritual beings.  Steiner frequently referred to ''The Philosophy of Freedom'' in his later lectures and in written works.<ref>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}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=Y91vKuF2ACEC&dq=Otto+Palmer%2C+%22A+Partial+Bibliography+of+the+Works+of+Rudolf+Steiner&pg=PT202]{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2023}}</ref> Near the end of his life, he suggested that ''The Philosophy of Freedom'' would outlive all his other works.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|url=https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSPI1963/GA004_foreword.html|title=Foreword - GA 4. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1963) - Rudolf Steiner Archive|website=rsarchive.org}}</ref>

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."<ref>Preface to the 1924 edition of ''The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception'' (1886)[http://www.rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/ "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 [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1985/GA002_pre1924.html]</ref>
* 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).<ref>''Theosophy'', from the Prefaces to the First, Second, and Third Editions [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA009/English/AP1971/GA009_c01.html]</ref> It contained, he claimed, the entire content, in a philosophical form, of what he later developed explicitly as [[anthroposophy]].<ref>Sergei Prokofieff, ''May Human Beings Hear It!'', Temple Lodge, 2004. p. 460{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2023}}</ref>
* 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''.

== Editorial history ==
The first edition of ''Die Philosophie der Freiheit'' was published in 1894. 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/German/GA004_hinweise.html|title=Rudolf Steiner Archive publication history}}</ref>

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.”<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/GPP1916/GA004_index.html|title=The Philosophy of Freedom}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/GPP1916/GA004_c01.html|title=Philosophy of Freedom: I: The Goal of Knowledge}}</ref>

In the appendix added to the 1918 edition, Steiner stated emphatically that the monism "of thought" proposed in his book was quite different from what Eduard von Hartmann and others called "epistemological" monism.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSP1964/GA004_appendix.html|title=Appendix - GA 4. The Philosophy of Freedom (RSP 1964) - Rudolf Steiner Archive|website=rsarchive.org}}</ref>

== English translations ==
English translations include:

* 1916: [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/GPP1916/GA004_index.html ''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.<ref>The cover sheet [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/GPP1916/GA004_cover.html] mistakenly named "Vienna", instead of the [[University of Rostock]] in Germany, for Steiner's Ph.D.[http://www.uni-rostock.de/en/about-us/alumni/prominent-alumni/historical-alumni/]</ref> The only English translation of the first German edition. This edition's chapter numbering differs from that of all later editions.<ref>The first German edition did not number its chapters, while the first English edition did. The disparity in chapter numbering arose because the second German edition, upon which all later translations were based, moved what had been the first chapter of the first edition to become an introductory text and thus began the chapter numbering with what had originally been the second chapter.</ref>
* 1922: ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity''. Based on 2nd German edition, trans. Hoernlé and Hoernlé.
* 1939: [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSPC1949/PPSA_index.html ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity''], trans. Hermann Poppelbaum, based on Hoernlé and Hoernlé translation
* 1963: [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSPI1963/GA004_index.html ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: Fundamentals of a Modern View of the World''], trans. Rita Stebbing. A USA edition; includes a [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSPI1963/GA004_bnote.html Bibliographical Note]
* 1964: [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSP1964/GA004_index.html ''The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception''], trans. [[Michael Henry Wilson|Michael Wilson]]. 7th English edition,
* 1986: [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/AP1986/GA004_index.html ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: Basic Features of a Modern World View''], trans. William Lindeman
* 1992: ''The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Philosophy of Freedom'' trans. Rita Stebbing, {{ISBN|1855840006}}
* 1995: [http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/download/e-books/intuitive_thinking.pdf ''Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom''], trans. Michael Lipson, based on Wilson translation

There is a [http://www.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/Compare/index.php comparison tool] to compare most of the above translations.

=== The source of the alternative titles ===
Though ''The Philosophy of Freedom'' is a literal translation of the original 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'' should be used in the English translation, as it would represent the book's theme of freedom as a dynamic process of development more accurately, as opposed to the fixed state perhaps suggested by the etymology of "freedom" (''dom''=a state or condition). English readers, Steiner believed, might easily believe that freedom is something already in their possession, and needed to be shaken out of their complacence <ref name="auto" /><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/|title=GA 4 The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (overview) - Rudolf Steiner Archive|website=rsarchive.org}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Introspection]]
* [[Natural science]]
* [[Scientific method]]
* [[Paul Tillich]]
* [[True Will]]

== References ==

=== Notes ===
{{notelist-lr}}

=== Citations ===
{{Reflist}}

== 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 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 [[Edmund Husserl]], see p.&nbsp;98 ff.). – Marek B. Majorek, has discussed Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual Science in relation to Husserl's transcendental reduction – {{cite book|title=Phenomenology of Life from the Animal Soul to the Human Mind II: The Human Soul in the Creative Transformation of the Mind|publisher=Springer|author=Majorek, Marek B.|chapter=Origins of consciousness and conscious (free) intentions from the viewpoint of Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual Science (Anthroposophy) in relation to Husserl's transcendental reduction|year=2007|pages=259–278|isbn=978-1402051814}}
* [[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.

== External links ==
{{Sister project links|wikt=no|b=no|q=Rudolf Steiner|s=Rudolf Steiner|commons=Rudolf Steiner|n=no|v=no|species=no|display=Rudolf Steiner|author=no}}

* [http://www.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/ ''The Philosophy of Freedom/Spiritual Activity''] complete text in English (various versions), and other languages including the original German.
* [http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA010/GA010a/English/HR1960/personality.html THE PERSONALITY OF RUDOLF STEINER AND HIS DEVELOPMENT] By Edouard Schuré
* [http://philosophyoffreedom.com/page/download/ ''The Philosophy of Freedom''], PDF Downloads of complete text in English and German, various versions
* [http://www.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/GA004/ ''Die Philosophie der Freiheit''], original German text
* [http://rudolfsteineraudio.com/POSA/posa.html ''Intuitive Thinking As A Spiritual Path'', Audiobook], read by Dale Brunsvold