Dr. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) wrote the Philosophy of Freedom in 1893. Yet it remains an illuminating and stimulating book about freedom and truth to this day. It sheds light on important aspects of personal development. In the course of his life, Steiner wrote and spoke frequently on this subject. He already formulated coherently at the time what is considered conducive to inner freedom, psychological flexibility and psychological balance within various psychotherapeutic movements in mental health care. A summary of this can be found on this website here .
The excerpt below is taken from the first chapter of the first edition of The Philosophy of Freedom. It expresses the premise that is central to psychotherapy today.
“I think I characterize an essential feature of our time when I say that the cult of the human individual has come to the center of attention today. It strives energetically to overcome any form of authority. Everything that claims to have value must have its origin in the deepest core of the individual. Everything that hinders the full development of the individual powers is rejected. (…) We do not allow ideals to be forced upon us; we are convinced that there is something noble and worth developing in each of us, if only we can penetrate deep enough into ourselves – to the very core of our being. We no longer believe that there is a model human being to whom all people should aspire. Our view of the perfection of the whole is that it rests on the specific perfection of each individual. We do not want to achieve what everyone else can do, but what is possible only for us thanks to our specific nature. Artists have never wanted to know less about norms and rules in art than they do now. Every artist claims to have the right to shape what is his own in his work of art. There are playwrights who prefer to write in their own dialect rather than in the general language prescribed by grammar. I can find no better expression for these phenomena than that they arise from the extreme urge for freedom of the individual. We don’t want to be dependent in any way; and where dependence is inescapable,
At such a time we also want to draw the truth only from the depths of our own being. (…) A truth that comes from outside always bears the stamp of uncertainty. We only want to believe what each of us experiences as truth in our own inner self.
Only the truth can give us security in developing our individual powers. He who is tormented by doubts is powerless. In a world he finds puzzling, he can find no purpose for his own creativity.
We no longer want to merely believe; we want to know. Faith requires acceptance of truths that we do not fully understand. But what we do not see through completely goes against the individual, which wants to experience everything within itself. Only knowledge satisfies us, which does not submit to any outer standard, but springs from the inner life of the person.
Nor do we want to know that fossilized school wisdom has been crushed once and for all and is preserved in timeless compendiums. Each of us considers himself qualified to start from his personal experiences, from his direct experiences, and on that basis to ascend to an understanding of the whole universe. We strive for certainty, but each in his own way.
Our scientific theories should also no longer be presented in a way that everyone must inevitably endorse them. (…) Nowadays no one should be forced to understand anything. We do not require acknowledgment or acquiescence from anyone who does not come to a particular opinion from a particular individual need. I am under no illusions in characterizing my time in this way. I know how much cliche behavior devoid of individuality exists and how much conformity is rampant. But I also know that there are many contemporaries who try to organize their lives from the above-mentioned intention. To them I dedicate this book. It does not want to indicate ‘the only’ way to the truth, but it wants to tell about the road taken by someone who wants the truth.”
Below are some excerpts in which Steiner describes the ability to detach from the content of your thoughts. Steiner sees the ability to confront your own thinking and to perceive your thinking as a crucial starting point for personal growth. You then no longer just perceive the content of a thought itself. You then observe that thought as a phenomenon . In all modern forms of psychotherapy, this activity is now recognized as essential for personal growth.
“Everything that enters the circle of our experience we become aware of only through observation. The content of sensations, perceptions and perceptions, our feelings, volitions, dream and fantasy images, representations, concepts and ideas, all possible illusions and hallucinations: they are given to us by observation. Now thinking as an object of observation differs essentially from all other things. My observation of a table or a tree occurs as soon as these objects enter my horizon of experience. However, I do not observe my thinking about these objects at the same time. I observe the table, then I think about the table, but I do not observe this thinking at the same time. I must first place myself on a point of view outside my own activity if I want to observe my thinking about the table as well as the table. While observing objects and events and thinking about them are very common states that constantly occur in my life, the observation of thinking is a kind of exceptional state. (…) With the statement: I think about a table, I already bring myself into the above-described state of exception in which something is made an object of observation that is always included in our mental activity, but then not as an observed object. It is characteristic of thought that the thinking man forgets thought while he is practicing it. It is not thinking that occupies him, but the object he observes. So the first observation we make about thinking is that thinking is the unobserved element of our normal consciousness. (…) However, for anyone who is able to observe thought – and with a little goodwill any normally developed person is able to do so – this observation is the most important thing he can do. For he observes something that he himself produces; he is not opposed to an initially foreign object, but to his own activity.”
“He who makes thought the object of observation adds to the rest of the world of perception something that otherwise escapes his notice; but he does not change the attitude which he, as a human being, also takes towards the other things. He changes the number of objects of observation, but not the method of observation.”
“We must be able to confront the idea with consciousness and feeling; otherwise we will be enslaved by her.”
In the second half of the philosophy of freedom, Steiner elaborates his ideas about freedom. He focuses on the possibility to focus in every situation on what is important to you and to act accordingly. This is also central to one of the most important modern forms of psychotherapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
“Living for the love of deed and letting live for the understanding of the will of others is the leitmotif of free men. (…) The free person lives from the confidence that the other free person belongs to one spiritual world together with him and that they will find each other in their intentions. The free man does not demand agreement from his fellows, but expects it because it is anchored in human nature. This is not to say anything about the requirements that certain external structures must meet, but about the disposition, the soul disposition with which man can experience himself in the midst of fellow human beings whom he respects, and by which he does the greatest justice to human dignity.”
“An action is experienced as free insofar as its motive arises from the ideal part of my individual being; any other aspect of an action, whether arising from the necessity of nature or the compulsion of an ethical norm, is perceived as unfree. Man is free only insofar as he is able to follow himself at every moment of his life. A moral act is my act only if it can be called a free act in this sense.”
“In the view of the monist, man acts partly unfreely, partly freely. He finds himself as an unfree man in the world of perception and he realizes in himself the free man. (…) Each of us is called to become a free spirit, as every germ of a rose is called to become a rose.”
“In the human object of perception there is the possibility of transformation, just as in the germ of a plant there is the possibility of growing into a complete plant. The plant will transform itself by virtue of the objective law that lies within it. Man remains in an unfinished state if he does not take up the transformation material in himself and transform himself under his own power. Nature makes man only a natural being; society makes him a creature that acts according to rules; a free being he himself can make of himself. Nature releases man from her fetters at a certain stage of his development; society leads this development up to a certain point; man can only give himself the ‘finishing touch’. Whoever takes the position of free morality, so do not claim that the free spirit is the only form in which a human being can exist. He sees in the free spirit only the last stage of human development. This does not deny that acting according to norms as a stage in development is justified. It is not acceptable only as an absolute moral point of view. After all, the free spirit overcomes the norms in the sense that it not only considers commandments as motives, but directs its actions according to its own impulses (intuitions).”
In this context Steiner understands intuitions as ‘observed concepts’. With your senses you perceive ‘observations’, with your thinking you perceive ‘intuitions’. He regards these as objective in terms of content, in the way in which someone thinks of them as subjective. By moral intuitions he means the principles, the values, the ideals you can behave according to the situation. For example, the thought ‘ my child’s interest now comes before my own interest’ can act as a moral intuition. That is, as a guide to your behavior. Self-chosen moral intuitions can pull your behavior in a direction against resistance. A person who does something guided by a moral intuition (ie a value) does it because he wants to do it. Even though he may feel resistance to that too.
“Anyone who adheres to the ethical principle of welfare maximization will first ask himself in all his actions what his intentions contribute to this. Anyone who advocates the ethical principle of cultural progress will do the same. However, there is a higher principle, which in each individual case does not proceed from 1 specific ethical goal, but attaches a certain value to all ethical principles and always asks itself in the concrete situation which ethical principle is the most important in this case. It may happen that in certain circumstances a person makes the promotion of cultural progress, in other circumstances the promotion of the common good, and in still other circumstances the motive of his actions is to consider serving one’s own welfare as right. If, however, all other motives are secondary, then what matters first and foremost is the ideational intuition itself. The other motives thereby give up their leading role and only the idea content of the action remains as an active motive. (…) The action is thus not performed according to a template of rules, nor is it performed automatically in response to an external prompt, but is determined solely by its ideal content. Such an act presupposes the ability to have moral intuitions. Anyone who lacks the ability to experience the specific principle for a concrete situation will never bring it to a truly individual will.” The other motives thereby give up their leading role and only the idea content of the action remains as an active motive. (…) The action is thus not performed according to a template of rules, nor is it performed automatically in response to an external prompt, but is determined solely by its ideal content. Such an act presupposes the ability to have moral intuitions. Anyone who lacks the ability to experience the specific principle for a concrete situation will never bring it to a truly individual will.” The other motives thereby give up their leading role and only the idea content of the action remains as an active motive. (…) The action is thus not performed according to a template of rules, nor is it performed automatically in response to an external prompt, but is determined solely by its ideal content. Such an act presupposes the ability to have moral intuitions. Anyone who lacks the ability to experience the specific principle for a concrete situation will never bring it to a truly individual will.” Such an act presupposes the ability to have moral intuitions. Anyone who lacks the ability to experience the specific principle for a concrete situation will never bring it to a truly individual will.” Such an act presupposes the ability to have moral intuitions. Anyone who lacks the ability to experience the specific principle for a concrete situation will never bring it to a truly individual will.”
“Moral ideals spring from the moral fantasy of man. Their realization depends on whether man desires them powerfully enough to overcome pain and difficulty. It is his intuitions, the drives that his mind engages; he wants them because their realization is his highest delight. He need not first let ethics forbid his pursuit of lust, and then allow himself to be dictated what he should strive for. His pursuit will follow his moral ideals, if his moral imagination is active enough to prompt him with the right intuitions; for they must make his will so strong that it can overcome the resistances present in his constitution, which also include the necessary disturbances. He who strives for lofty ideals does so because they are the content of his being. Its realization will give him a pleasure, besides which the pleasure that comes from the poor satisfaction of common desires is but a trifle. Idealists revel spiritually as they turn their ideals into reality.”
“In understanding a free individuality, it is only a question of adopting its own concepts, by which it defines itself, pure (without mixing them with our own conceptual content) in our minds. People who immediately weave their own concepts into every judgment about another can never come to an understanding of an individuality. Just as free individuality detaches itself from the properties of the species, so the process of knowledge must detach itself from thinking in terms of species properties. Only to the extent that man has freed himself from the species characteristics in the manner indicated, can he be regarded as a free spirit within a human community. No human being is completely species specific, no human being is completely individual. But every man eventually frees a greater or lesser part of his being, both of the specific character of animal life and of the imperative commandments of human authorities. Insofar as man cannot conquer such freedom, he forms part of the natural and cultural organism. He then lives as he watches from others or as others tell him to. A person who is ethical in a true sense has only that part of his actions which arises from his intuitions. And the moral instincts he carries with him as a legacy of social instincts acquire an ethical value by incorporating them into his intuitions. It is from individual ethical intuitions and their impact in human communities that all moral activity of humanity springs. You can also say: the moral life of mankind is the sum total of all the imaginary moral products produced by free human individuals. This is the belief that monism leads to.”
“It cannot be denied that the view characterized above can easily be misunderstood. Immature people without moral imagination like to take the instincts of their half-grown natures for the full meaning of being human, and they reject all moral ideas not of their own making, in order to enjoy themselves undisturbed. That what is right for the fully developed man is not true for the half-developed nature of man, is self-evident. From one who has yet to be brought up by education so far that his moral nature can leave the nest of the lower passions, you cannot expect what applies to the matured man. The point of this book is not to indicate what needs to be taught to the undeveloped human being, but what lies within the nature of the matured human being. Because we wanted to show that freedom is possible; and freedom manifests itself not in acts of physical or psychological compulsion, but in acts carried by mental intuitions. The matured man gives himself his worth. He does not pursue a lust that is given to him as the bread of grace by nature or the creator; nor does he fulfill the abstract duty, which he recognizes as such after he has given up the pursuit of pleasure. He acts as he pleases, that is, he conforms to his ethical intuitions; and he experiences the achievement of what he wants as true happiness in life. He measures the value of life by the ratio between what has been achieved and what has been aspired to. An ethic that replaces will with mere must, inclination with mere duty, logically measures the worth of man by the ratio of what duty requires to what man does. This ethic measures man by a standard that is outside his being. – In the vision developed here, man is referred to himself. As the real value of life, it only accepts what the individual person considers to be the value of life according to his own will. This view does not accept anything other than the life value recognized by the individual, just as it does not accept anything other than the life purpose emanating from the individual. It sees the real individual, understood in its multifacetedness, as a being who is lord and master of himself and determines his own value.” – In the vision developed here, man is referred to himself. As the real value of life, it only accepts what the individual person considers to be the value of life according to his own will. This view does not accept anything other than the life value recognized by the individual, just as it does not accept anything other than the life purpose emanating from the individual. It sees the real individual, understood in its multifacetedness, as a being who is lord and master of himself and determines his own value.” – In the vision developed here, man is referred to himself. As the real value of life, it only accepts what the individual person considers to be the value of life according to his own will. This view does not accept anything other than the life value recognized by the individual, just as it does not accept anything other than the life purpose emanating from the individual. It sees the real individual, understood in its multifacetedness, as a being who is lord and master of himself and determines his own value.” just as it asserts no other purpose than the life purpose arising from the individual. It sees the real individual, understood in its multifacetedness, as a being who is lord and master of himself and determines his own value.” just as it asserts no other purpose than the life purpose arising from the individual. It sees the real individual, understood in its multifacetedness, as a being who is lord and master of himself and determines his own worth.”
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