The Philosophy of Freedom is the fundamental philosophical work of philosopher, Goethe scholar and esotericist Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). It addresses the question of whether and in what sense human beings are free. Originally published in 1894 in German as Die Philosophie der Freiheit, with a second edition published in 1918, the work has appeared under a number of English titles, including The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (the title Steiner proposed for the English-language translation), The Philosophy of Freedom, and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path.
Part One of The Philosophy of Freedom examines the basis of freedom in human thinking, gives 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". The book's subtitle, Some results of introspective observation following the methods of natural science, 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." 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, and in German.
Historical context
Steiner had wanted to write a philosophy of freedom since at least 1880. The appearance of The Philosophy of Freedom in 1894 was preceded by his publications on Goethe, focusing on epistemology and the philosophy of science, particularly Goethe the Scientist (1883) and The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception (1886). 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, 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."
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). Like the later phenomenologists, Steiner was seeking a way to solve the subject–object problem. 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.
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.
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 freewill 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 conception, which together give us access to the world's inner nature.