The Philosophy of Freedom

RUDOLF STEINER

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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.

Seventh English edition:
Translated from the German, and with an Introduction
by Michael Wilson

1964
RUDOLF STEINER PRESS
35 Park Road, London NW1

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First German edition, Die Philosophie der Freiheit .. Berlin, 1894
Second German edition, revised and enlarged by the author
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Berlin, 1918
Latest (12th) German edition .. .. .. .. .. .. Dornach, 1962
First English edition, The Philosophy of Freedom .. London, 1916
Second English edition, revised and enlarged* .. .. London, 1922
Third English edition* .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. London, 1932
Fourth English edition, revised translation* .. .. London, 1939
Fifth English edition* .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. London, 1940
Sixth English edition* .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. London, 1949
American edition, new translation* .. .. .. .. New York, 1963
Seventh English edition, thoroughly revised translation
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. London, 1964


*English translations of this book from 1922 to 1963 were published with the
title

The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity

This translation, based on the 12th German edition, 1962, is published by
permission of Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassvierwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland.

(c) Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1964.

Made and printed in Great Britain by
THE GARDEN CITY PRESS LIMITED
Letchworth, Hertfordshire.

 

The Philosophy of Freedom

Introduction

Rudolf Steiner was born in 1861 and died in 1925. In his autobiography, The
Course of My Life (see fn 1), he makes quite clear that the problems dealt
with in The Philosophy of Freedom played a leading part in his life.

His childhood was spent in the Austrian countryside, where his father was a
stationmaster. At the age of eight Steiner was already aware of things and
beings that are not seen as well as those that are. Writing about his
experiences at this age, he said, ". . . the reality of the spiritual world
was as certain to me as that of the physical. I felt the need, however, for
a sort of justification for this assumption."

Recognizing the boy's ability, his father sent him to the Realschule at
Wiener Neustadt, and later to the Technical University in Vienna. Here
Steiner had to support himself, by means of scholarships and tutoring.
Studying and mastering many more subjects than were in his curriculum, he
always came back to the problem of knowledge itself. He was very much aware:
that in the experience of oneself as an ego, one is in the world of the
spirit. Although he took part in all the social activities going on around
him -- in the arts, the sciences, even in politics -- he wrote that "much
more vital at that time was the need to find an answer to the question: How
far is it possible to prove that in human thinking real spirit is the
agent?"

He made a deep study of philosophy, particularly the writings of Kant, but
nowhere did he find a way of thinking that could be carried as far as a
perception of the spiritual world. Thus Steiner was led to develop a theory
of knowledge out of his own striving after truth, one which took its start
from a direct experience of the spiritual nature of thinking.

As a student, Steiner's scientific ability was acknowledged when he was
asked to edit Goethe's writings on nature. In Goethe he recognized one who
had been able to perceive the spiritual in nature, even though he had not
carried this as far as a direct perception of the spirit. Steiner was able
to bring a new understanding to Goethe's scientific work through this
insight into his perception of nature. Since no existing philosophical
theory could take this kind of vision into account, and since Goethe had
never stated explicitly what his philosophy of life was, Steiner filled this
need by publishing, in 1886, an introductory book called The Theory of
Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception. His introductions to the
several volumes and sections of Goethe's scientific writings (1883-97) have
been collected into the book Goethe the Scientist. These are valuable
contributions to the philosophy of science.

During this time his thoughts about his own philosophy were gradually coming
to maturity. In the year 1888 he met Eduard von Hartmann, with whom he had
already had a long correspondence. He describes the chilling effect on him
of the way this philosopher of pessimism denied that thinking could ever
reach reality, but must forever deal with illusions. Steiner was already
clear in his mind how such obstacles were to be overcome. He did not stop at
the problem of knowledge, but carried his ideas from this realm into the
field of ethics, to help him deal with the problem of human freedom. He
wanted to show that morality could be given a sure foundation without basing
it upon imposed rules of conduct.

Meanwhile his work of editing had taken him away from his beloved Vienna to
Weimar. Here Steiner wrestled with the task of presenting his ideas to the
world. His observations of the spiritual had all the exactness of a science,
and yet his experience of the reality of ideas was in some ways akin to the
mystic's experience. Mysticism presents the intensity of immediate knowledge
with conviction, but deals only with subjective impressions; it fails to
deal with the reality outside man. Science, on the other hand, consists of
ideas about the world, even if the ideas are mainly materialistic. By
starting from the spiritual nature of thinking, Steiner was able to form
ideas that bear upon the spiritual world in the same way that the ideas of
natural science bear upon the physical. Thus he could describe his
philosophy as the result of "introspective observation following the methods
of Natural Science." He first presented an outline of his ideas in his
doctoral dissertation, Truth and Knowledge, which bore the sub-title
"Prelude to a 'Philosophy of Freedom'."

In 1894 The Philosophy of Freedom was published, and the content which had
formed the centre of his life's striving was placed before the world.
Steiner was deeply disappointed at the lack of understanding it received.
Hartmann's reaction was typical; instead of accepting the discovery that
thinking can lead to the reality of the spirit in the world, he continued to
think that "spirit" was merely a concept existing in the human mind, and
freedom an illusion based on ignorance. Such was fundamentally the view of
the age to which Steiner introduced his philosophy. But however it seemed to
others, Steiner had in fact established a firm foundation for knowledge of
the spirit, and now he felt able to pursue his researches in this field
without restraint. The Philosophy of Freedom summed up the ideas he had
formed to deal with the riddles of existence that had so far dominated his
life. "The further way," he wrote, "could now be nothing else but a struggle
to find the right form of ideas to express the spiritual world itself."

While still at Weimar, Steiner wrote two more books, Friedrich Nietzsche,
Fighter for Freedom (1895), inspired by a visit to the aged philosopher, and
Goethe's Conception of the World (1897), which completed his work in this
field. He then moved to Berlin to take over the editing of a literary
magazine; here he wrote Riddles of Philosophy (1901) and Mysticism and
Modern Thought (1901). He also embarked on an ever-increasing activity of
lecturing. But his real task lay in deepening his knowledge of the spiritual
world until he could reach the point of publishing the results of this
research.

The rest of his life was devoted to building up a complete science of the
spirit, to which he gave the name Anthroposophy. Foremost amongst his
discoveries was his direct experience of the reality of the Christ, which
soon took a central place in his whole teaching. The many books and lectures
which he published set forth the magnificent scope of his vision. (see fn 2)
From 1911 he turned also to the arts -- drama, painting, architecture,
eurythmy -- showing the creative forming powers that can be drawn from
spiritual vision. As a response to the disaster of the 1914-18 war, he
showed how the social sphere could be given new life through an insight into
the nature of man, his initiative bearing practical fruit in the fields of
education, agriculture, therapy and medicine. After a few more years of
intense activity, now as the leader of a world-wide movement, he died,
leaving behind him an achievement that must allow his recognition as the
first Initiate of the age of science. (see fn 3) Anthroposophy is itself a
science, firmly based on the results of observation, and open to
investigation by anyone who is prepared to follow the path of development he
pioneered -- a path that takes its start from the struggle for inner freedom
set forth in this book.

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The Philosophy of Freedom can be seen as the crowning achievement of
nineteenth-century philosophy. It answers all the problems of knowledge and
morality that philosophers had raised, argued over, and eventually left
unsolved with the conclusion that "we can never know ". Yet this great
achievement received no recognition, and only when Steiner had acquired a
large following of people thankful for all that he had given them of his
spiritual revelation, did there arise the desire to read also his earlier
work, upon which he always insisted his whole research was firmly based.
Perhaps if Steiner had spent the rest of his life expounding his philosophy,
he would today be recognized throughout the world as a major philosopher;
yet his achievement in going forward himself to develop the science of the
spirit is much the greater, and this will surely be recognized in time.
Indeed, philosophy has got itself a bad name, perhaps from its too-frequent
negative results, and it might even be better to consider the Philosophy of
Freedom not just as a chapter of philosophy, but as the key to a whole way
of life.

Considered just as a piece of philosophy, it might in any case be thought
out of date, having only historical interest. For instance, a modern
scientist may well believe that any philosopher who spoke up against atomism
has been proved wrong by the success of atomic physics. But this would be to
misunderstand the nature of philosophy. Steiner deals in turn with each
possible point of view, illustrating each one with an example from the
literature, and then showing the fallacies or shortcomings that have to be
overcome. Atomism is justified only so long as it is taken as an aid to the
intellect in dealing with the forces of nature; it is wrong if it postulates
qualities of a kind that belong to perceived phenomena, but attributes them
to a realm that by definition can never be perceived. This mistaken view of
the atom may have been abandoned by science, but it still persists in many
quarters. Similarly, many of the old philosophical points of view, dating
back to Kant, survive among scientists who are very advanced in the
experimental or theoretical fields, so that Steiner's treatment of the
problem of knowledge is still relevant. Confusion concerning the nature of
perception is widespread, because of the reluctance to consider the central
part played by thinking. Thinking is all too often dismissed as "subjective"
and hence unreliable, without any realization that it is thinking itself
that has made this decision. The belief that science can deal only with the
"objective" world has led to the position where many scientists are quite
unable to say whether the real world is the familiar world of their
surroundings, as experienced through the senses and pictured in the
imagination, or the theoretical world of spinning particles, imperceptible
forces and statistical probabilities that is inferred from their
experimental results. (see fn 4) Here Steiner's path of knowledge can give a
firmer basis for natural science than it has ever had before, as well as
providing a sure foundation for the development of spiritual science.
Although there are many people who find all that they need in contemplating
the wonders of the spiritual world, the Philosophy of Freedom does not exist
mainly to provide a philosophical justification for their belief; its main
value lies in the sound basis it can give to those who cannot bring
themselves to accept anything that is not clearly scientific -- a basis for
knowledge, for self-knowledge, for moral action, for life itself. It does
not "tell us what to do", but it opens a way to the spirit for all those for
whom the scientific path to truth, rather than the mystical, is the only
possibility.

Today we hear about the "free world" and the "value of the individual", and
yet the current scientific view of man seems to lend little support to these
concepts, but seems rather to lead to a kind of morality in which every type
of behavior is excused on the plea that "I cannot help being what I am!" If
we would really value the individual, and support our feeling of freedom
with knowledge, we must find a point of view which will lead the ego to help
itself become what it wants to be -- a free being. This cannot mean that we
must abandon the scientific path; only that the scope of science must be
widened to take into account the ego that experiences itself as spirit,
which it does in the act of thinking. Thus the Philosophy of Freedom takes
its start by examining the process of thinking, and shows that there need be
no fear of unknown causes in unknown worlds forever beyond the reach of our
knowledge, since limits to knowledge exist only in so far as we fail to
awaken our thinking to the point where it becomes an organ of direct
perception. Having established the possibility of knowing, the book goes on
to show that we can also know the causes of our actions, and if our motive
for acting comes from pure intuition, from thinking alone, without any
promptings from the appearances and illusions of the sense-world, then we
can indeed act in freedom, out of pure love for the deed.

Man ultimately has his fate in his own hands, though the path to this
condition of freedom is a long and a hard one, in the course of which he
must develop merciless knowledge of himself and selfless understanding of
others. He must, through his own labors, give birth to what St. Paul called
"the second Adam that was made a quickening spirit". Indeed Steiner himself
has referred to his philosophy of freedom as a Pauline theory of knowledge.

Notes on the translation

This book was first translated into English by Professor and Mrs. R. F.
Alfred Hoernle, in 1916, and was edited by Mr. Harry Collison, who wrote
that he was fortunate to have been able to secure them as translators,
"their thorough knowledge of philosophy and their complete command of the
German and English languages enabling them to overcome the difficulty of
finding adequate English equivalents for the terms of German Philosophy."

Following the publication of the revised German edition in 1918, Professor
Hoernle translated the new passages and other incidental changes that Dr.
Steiner had made. For this 1922 edition the title was changed, at the
author's request, to The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, with the added
remark that "throughout the entire work 'freedom' should be taken to mean
'spiritual activity'." The reasons for this change and also for the present
decision to change back to the original title are given below (see Freedom,
below).

The translation was revised in 1939 by Dr. Hermann Poppelbaum, whose object
was to "check certain words and phrases from the strictly Steiner point of
view". He wrote in his preface as follows:

The readers of the German original of this book will know that the
author's argument is largely based upon a distinction between the
different elements making up the act of Knowledge. English
philosophical terms are rarely exact equivalents of German
philosophical terms, and the translator's standing problem is to
avoid, or at least to minimize, the ambiguities resulting
therefrom. The aim of the present revision of the original
translation has been to help the reader to understand the analysis
of the act of Knowledge and to enable him to follow the subsequent
chapters without being troubled by ambiguous terms.

In spite of Dr. Poppelbaum's removal of certain ambiguities, readers were
still troubled by difficulties that did not derive from the original German.
When I was asked by the publishers to prepare this new edition, it soon
became clear to me that further alterations to words and phrases would not
be sufficient to remove these difficulties. It may therefore be helpful to
state briefly what my guiding principles have been in making this
translation.

Steiner did not write his book as a thesis for students of philosophy, but
in order to give a sound philosophical basis to the experience of oneself as
a free spirit -- an experience that is open to everybody. The book is
written in such a way that the very reading of it is a help towards
participating in this experience. For this reason all the terms used must
convey a real meaning to the reader, and any explanations required must be
in words that are self-evident. Indeed, Steiner states clearly that the
terms he uses do not always have the precise meanings given in current
scientific writings, but that his intention is to record the facts of
everyday experience (see Chapter 2). I have tried throughout to convey the
essential meaning of Steiner's original words, and to follow closely his
train of thought, so that the English reader may have as nearly as possible
the same experience that a German reader has from the original text. Thus
the structure of the original has been preserved, sentence by sentence. It
might be argued that a "free" translation, making full use of English idiom
and style, would be far more appropriate for an English reader; this could
cut out the wordy repetitions and lengthy phrases typical of German
philosophical writing and make for a more readable text. But it would also
have to be written out of the English philosophical tradition, and would
require a complete reconstruction of Steiner's arguments from the point of
view of an Englishman's philosophy. This might be an excellent thing to do,
but would constitute a new work, not a translation. Even if it were
attempted, there would still be the need for a close translation making
Steiner's path of knowledge available in detail for the English reader.

The method I have followed was to make a fresh translation of each passage
and then compare it with the existing one, choosing the better version of
the two. Where there was no advantage in making a change, I have left the
earlier version, so that many passages appear unaltered from the previous
edition. This is therefore a thoroughly revised, rather than an entirely
new, translation. It is my hope that it will prove straightforward reading
for anyone prepared to follow the author along the path of experience he has
described. The following notes explaining certain of the terms used are
intended tor those who want to compare this edition with the German
original, or who are making a special study of philosophy.

FREEDOM is not an exact equivalent of the German word Freiheit, although
among its wide spectrum of meanings there are some that do correspond. In
certain circumstances, however, the differences are important. Steiner
himself drew attention to this, for instance, in a lecture he gave at Oxford
in 1922, where he said with reference to this book,

"Therefore today we need above all a view of the world based on
Freiheit -- one can use this word in German, but here in England
one must put it differently because the word 'freedom' has a
different meaning -- one must say a view of the world based on
spiritual activity, on action, on thinking and feeling that arise
from the individual human spirit." (Translated from the German.)

Steiner also drew attention to the different endings of the words; Freiheit
could be rendered literally as "freehood" if such a word existed. The German
ending -heit implied an inner condition or degree, while -tum, corresponding
to our "-dom", implied something granted or imposed from outside. This is
only partly true in English, as a consideration of the words "manhood",
"knighthood", "serfdom", "earldom", and "wisdom" will show. In any case,
meanings change with time, and current usage rather than etymology is the
best guide.

When describing any kind of creative activity we speak of a "freedom of
style" or "freedom of expression" in a way that indicates an inner conquest
of outer restraints. This inner conquest is the theme of the book, and it is
in this sense that I believe the title The Philosophy of Freedom would be
understood today. When Steiner questioned the aptness of this title, he
expressed the view that English people believed that they already possessed
freedom, and that they needed to be shocked out of their complacency and
made to realize that the freedom he meant had to be attained by hard work.
While this may still be true today, the alternative he suggested is now less
likely to achieve this shock than is the original. I have not found that the
title "The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity" gives the newcomer any
indication that the goal of the book is the attainment of inner freedom.
Today it is just as likely to suggest a justification of religious
practices. Throughout the book it has proved quite impossible to translate
Freiheit as "spiritual activity" wherever it occurs. The word appears in the
titles of the parts of the book and of some of the chapters; the book opens
with the question of freedom or necessity, and the final sentence (see
Consequences of Monism) is "He is free." Undoubtedly "freedom" is the proper
English word to express the main theme of the book, and should also appear
in the book's title. Times have changed, and what may well have been good
reasons for changing the title in 1922 are not necessarily still valid.
After much thought, and taking everything into account, I have decided that
the content of the book is better represented today by the title The
Philosophy of Freedom. Moreover, with this title the book may be instantly
identified with Die Philosophie der Freiheit, and I have already remarked
that this edition is intended as a close translation of the German, rather
than a new book specially written for the English.

SPIRIT, SOUL and MIND are not precise equivalents in English of the German
Geist and Seele. Perhaps because we use the concept of mind to include all
our experiences through thinking, the concepts of spirit and soul have
practically dropped out of everyday use, whereas in German there is no
distinct equivalent for "mind" and the concepts "spirit" (Geist) and "soul"
(Seele) are consequently broader in scope. Any work describing Steiner's
point of view in terms of English philosophy would have to deal with the
mind as a central theme (see fn 5), but here our task is to introduce
readers to Steiner's concepts of spirit and soul. For Steiner, the spirit is
experienced directly in the act of intuitive thinking. The human spirit is
that part of us that thinks, but the spiritual world is not limited to the
personal field of the individual human being; it opens out to embrace the
eternal truths of existence. The English word "spirit" gives the sense of
something more universal, less personal, than "mind ", and since Steiner's
philosophical path leads to an experience of the reality of the spiritual
world, I have kept the word wherever possible, using "mind " or "mental " in
a few places where it seemed more appropriate. The "spiritual activity" here
meant is thus more than mental activity, although it starts at a level we
would call mental; it leads the human being, aware of himself as a spirit,
into the ultimate experience of truth.

The soul, too, is directly experienced; it is not a vague metaphysical
entity, but is that region in us where we experience our likes and dislikes,
our feelings of pleasure and pain. It contains those characteristics of
thought and feeling that make us individual, different from each other. In
many common phrases we use the word "mind" where German has the word Seele,
but since Steiner recognizes a distinction between soul and spirit, it is
important to keep these different words. Even in modern English usage
something of this difference remains, and it is not too late to hope that
Steiner's exact observations in this realm may help to prevent the terms
"soul" and "spirit" becoming mere synonyms. Therefore I have kept these
words wherever the distinction was important, though in a few places an
alternative rendering seemed to fit better; for instance, the "introspective
observation" quoted in the motto on the title-page could have been rendered
literally as "observation of the soul" -- this observation involves a
critical examination of our habits of thought and feeling, not studied from
outside in the manner of a psychological survey of human behavior, but from
inside where each person meets himself face to face.

The whole book can be considered as a study of the mind, but using an
exactness of observation and clarity of thinking never before achieved.
Nevertheless, the stream of materialism still flows so strongly that there
is a real danger that the mind, and indeed the whole realm of the soul and
the spirit, will be dismissed as a metaphysical construction. Only by
adopting a philosophy such as is developed in this book will it be possible
to retain an experience of soul and of spirit which will be strong enough to
stand up to the overwhelming desire to accept nothing as real unless it is
supported by science. For in this philosophy Steiner opens the door to a
science of the spirit every bit as exact and precise as our current science
of nature would be.

CONCEPT and PERCEPT are the direct equivalents of Begriff and Wahrnehmung.
The concept is something grasped by thinking, an element of the world of
ideas. Steiner describes what it is at the beginning of Chapter 4 (see
Chapter 4).

In describing the percept (see Chapter 4), Steiner mentions the ambiguity of
current speech. The German word Wahrnehmung, like the English "perception",
can mean either the process of perceiving or the object perceived as an
element of observation. Steiner uses the word in the latter sense, and the
word "percept", though not perhaps in common use, does avoid the ambiguity.
The word does not refer to an actual concrete object that is being observed,
for this would only be recognized as such after the appropriate concept had
been attached to it, but to the content of observation devoid of any
conceptual element. This includes not only sensations of color, sound,
pressure, warmth, taste, smell, and so on, but feelings of pleasure and pain
and even thoughts, once the thinking is done. Modern science has come to the
conclusion that one cannot deal with a sensation devoid of any conceptual
element, and uses the term "perception" to include the whole response to a
stimulus, in other words, to mean the result of perceiving. But even if one
cannot communicate the nature of an experience of pure percept to another
person, one must still be able to deal with it as an essential part of the
analysis of the process of knowledge. Using the word "percept" for this
element of the analysis, we are free to keep the word "perception" for the
process of perceiving.

IDEA and MENTAL PICTURE, as used here, correspond to the German words Idee
and Vorstellung respectively. Normally these would both be rendered as
"idea", and this practice led to an ambiguity that obscured a distinction
central to Steiner's argument. This was the main cause of Dr. Poppelbaum's
concern, and his solution was to render Vorstellung as "representation" and
Idee as "Idea" with a capital "I". Though this usage may have philosophical
justification, it has been my experience in group studies of this book over
many years that it has never been fully accepted in practice;
"representation" remains a specialist term with a sense rather different
from its usual meaning in English, and it certainly does not have the same
obvious meaning for the English reader that Vorstellung has for the German.

In explaining his use of the word "representation", Dr. Poppelbaum wrote in
his preface as follows:

The mental picture which the thinker forms to represent the
concept in an individual way is here called a "representation" . .
.

Since "mental picture" is here used to explain the term "representation", it
seems simpler to use "mental picture" throughout. It fits Steiner's
treatment very well, since it conveys to the reader both the sense of
something conceptual, in that it is mental, and the sense of something
perceptual, in that it is a picture. In fact, Steiner gives two definitions
of the mental picture, one as a "percept in my self" (see Chapter 4) and
another as an "individualized concept" (see Chapter 6), and it is this
intermediate position between percept and concept that gives the mental
picture its importance in the process of knowledge.

Another advantage of the term "mental picture" is that the verb "to picture"
corresponds well with the German vorstellen, implying a mental creation of a
scene rather than a physical representation with pencil, paints or camera,
which would be "to depict". Of course the visual term "picture" must be
understood to cover also the content of other senses, for instance, a
remembered tune or a recollection of tranquillity, but this broadening of
meaning through analogy is inherent in English usage.

Although mental pictures are commonly regarded as a special class of ideas,
here the term "idea" is used only for the German Idee, without ambiguity.
Ideas are not individualized, but are "fuller, more saturated, more
comprehensive concepts" (see Chapter 4). In the later part of the book, when
discussing the nature of a conscious motive, Steiner uses the word to
include all concepts in the most general way, individualized or not, which
comes very close to the English use of the word "idea".

IMAGINATION means the faculty and process of creating mental pictures. The
word is the same as the German Imagination, but I have also used it for the
German Phantasie, because the word "fantasy" suggests something altogether
too far from reality, whereas "imagination" can mean something not only the
product of our own consciousness, but also a step towards the realization of
something new. Thus the title given to Chapter 12, Moral Imagination (for
Moralische Phantasie), seemed to me to be correct, and I have kept it. It
describes the process of taking an abstract idea, or concept, and creating a
vivid mental picture of how it can be applied in a particular circumstance,
so that it may become the motive for a moral deed.

In later writings Steiner describes how this ordinary faculty of imagining,
or making mental pictures, can be developed to the point where it becomes
the faculty of actually perceiving the creative ideas behind the phenomena
of nature. In these later writings "Imagination" becomes a special term to
indicate this level of perception, but in this book the meaning remains near
to the ordinary usage. However, the gateway to such higher levels of
perception is opened through the path of experience here set forth.

INTUITION is again the same as the German word, and means the faculty and
process of grasping concepts, in particular the immediate apprehension of a
thought without reasoning. This is the normal English usage, though Steiner
uses the term in an exact way, as follows (see Chapter 5):

In contrast to the content of the percept which is given to us
from without, the content of thinking appears inwardly. The form
in which this first makes its appearance we will call intuition.
Intuition is for thinking what observation is for the percept.

Later in the book he gives another definition (see Chapter 9):

Intuition is the conscious experience -- in pure spirit -- of a
purely spiritual content. Only through an intuition can the
essence of thinking be grasped.

From this it is not difficult to see how again, in later writings, Steiner
could describe a stage of perception still higher than that called
"Imagination", the stage of "Intuition" in which one immediately apprehends
the reality of other spiritual beings. Although this book deals only with
the spiritual content of pure thinking, intuition at this level is also a
step towards a higher level of perceiving reality.

EXPERIENCE has two meanings, which correspond to different words in German.
"Actual observation of facts or events" corresponds to the German Erlebnis
and to the verb erleben, while "the knowledge resulting from this
observation" corresponds to Erfahrung, Thus the accumulation of knowledge
can be described as "past experience" or "total sum of experience", if the
single word is ambiguous (see, for instance, Chapter 6). When speaking of
human behavior that is based on past experience, Steiner calls it praktische
Erfahrung, which is rendered as "practical experience" (see Chapter 9).

On the other hand, having direct experience as an activity of observation is
expressed by the verb erleben, which means literally "to live through".
Thus, in the latter part of the book, particularly in those passages which
were added in 1918 (see Chapter 7 and Consequences of Monism), Steiner
speaks repeatedly of the "thinking which can be experienced". This
experience is to be understood as every bit as real and concrete as the
"actual observation of facts and events" described above.

MOTIVE and DRIVING FORCE are two elements in any act of will that have to be
recognized as distinct (see Chapter 9). They correspond to the German words
Motiv and Triebfeder, respectively.

"Motive", as used by Steiner, corresponds exactly to the common English
usage, meaning the reason that a person has for his action. It has to be a
conscious motive, in the form of a concept or mental picture, or else we
cannot speak of an act of will, let alone a moral deed. An "unconscious
motive" is really a contradiction in terms, and should properly be described
as a driving force -- it implies that some other person has been able to
grasp the concept which was the reason for the action, though the person
acting was not himself aware of it; he acted as an automaton, or, as we
properly say, "without motive". Nevertheless, modern psychology has
contrived to define the "motive " as something no different from the driving
force, which precludes the recognition of a motive grasped out of pure
intuition, and therefore of the essential difference between a moral deed
where a man knows why he acts and an amoral one where his knowledge is a
matter of indifference. By making the distinction between motive and driving
force, Steiner has been able to characterize all possible levels of action
from the purely instinctive to the completely free deed.

The literal meaning of Triebfeder is the mainspring that drives a piece of
clockwork. In previous editions, this was rendered as "spring of action".
While this is legitimate philosophical usage, I found that it was often
misunderstood by the ordinary reader, being taken to mean a spring like a
fountain or river-source, as in the phrase "springs of life". This
immediately causes confusion with the origin or source of the action, which
is the motive. Of course, at the higher levels of action there is no other
driving force than the idea which stands as the motive, but in order to
follow the development from lower levels one must distinguish the idea,
which is the motive, from whatever it is in us that throws us into action
whenever a suitable motive presents itself. "Mainspring" does not always fit
well in the text, and after trying various words and phrases I have chosen
"driving force" as best expressing the dynamic nature of this part of our
constitution. The driving force differs from the motive in that we may well
remain unconscious of it. But if we are not conscious of the driving force
behind our actions, we cannot be acting in freedom, even though we are aware
of our motives. Only if we make our own ideals the driving force of our will
can we act in freedom, because then nothing apart from ourselves determines
our action. Thus the final triumph of Steiner's path of development depends
on making this clear distinction between motive and driving force. A view
that treats all motives as driving forces will not be able to recognize the
possibility of freedom, while a view that regards all driving forces as
ideal elements will not see the need for overcoming our unconscious urges
and habits if freedom is to be attained.

WILL and WANT are two distinct words in English where the German has only
one verb wollen and its derivatives. Here the task of translating runs into
a considerable difficulty, for in any discussion of free will it is
important to be clear what willing is. The noun forms are fairly
straightforward: ein Wollen means "an act of will", das Wollen means
"willing" in general, and der Wille means "the will". But the English verb
"to will" has a restricted range of meaning, and to use it all the time to
render the German wollen can be quite misleading. An example is the
quotation from Hamerling in the first chapter (see Chapter 1):

Der Mensch kann allerdings tun, was er will -- aber er kann nicht
wollen, was er will, weil sein Wille durch Motive bestimmt ist.

The previous edition rendered this:

Man can, it is true, do what he wills, but he cannot will what he
wills, because his will is determined by motives.

If this means anything at all in English, it means that man cannot direct
his will as he chooses. The archaic sense of "willing" as "desiring" is kept
in the phrase "what he wills", in keeping with current usage, for instance,
in the remark "Come when you will." But the active sense of "willing" as
contrasted with "doing" implies a metaphysical power of compulsion quite out
of keeping with Steiner's whole method of treating the subject. This
metaphysical attitude to the will is clearly expressed in a sentence such as
"I willed him to go", which implies something more than mere desire but less
than overt action. It is less obvious when dealing with the genesis of one's
own actions, but the tendency to attribute a metaphysical quality to the
will is developed in Schopenhauer's philosophy, and this may well be a
tendency inherent in the German language. Steiner has no such intention, and
he leaves us in no doubt that his use of wollen implies a definite element
of desire (see Chapter 13); indeed, the highest expression of man's will is
when it becomes the faculty of spiritual desire or craving (geistige
Begehrungsvermögen). Therefore, whenever the archaic sense of the verb "to
will" is not appropriate, I have decided that it is better to render the
German verb wollen with the English "want" and its variants, "wanting", "to
want to . . ." and so on. This makes immediate good sense of many passages,
and moreover if one would translate this back into German one would have to
use the word wollen. Hamerling's sentence now becomes:

Man can certainly do as he wills, but he cannot want as he wills,
because his wanting is determined by motives.

Although Steiner has to show that this view is mistaken, one can at least
understand how it could come to be written. That it can be a genuine human
experience is shown by the similar remark attributed to T. E. Lawrence, "I
can do what I want, but I cannot want what I want." In other words, "I can
carry out any desires for action that I may have, but I cannot choose how
these desires come to me." Both Lawrence and Hamerling leave out of account
just those cases where man can want as he wills, because he has freely
chosen his own motive. Steiner's treatment of the will overcomes any
necessity for metaphysical thinking; for instance, it now makes sense to say
that to want without motive would make the will an "empty faculty" (see
Chapter 1), because to want without wanting something would be meaningless.

I have dealt with this at some length because it has been my experience that
the message of the entire book springs to life in a new and vivid way when
it is realized that the original motive power of the will is in fact desire,
and that desire can be transformed by knowledge into its most noble form,
which is love.

--------------------------------------

It was the late Friedrich Geuter who showed me, together with many others,
the importance of this book as a basis for the social as well as the
intellectual life of today. My debt to the previous translators and editors
will already be clear. I also owe much to the many friends who have taken
part in joint studies of this book over the past thirty years and to those
who have helped and advised me with suggestions for the translation,
especially the late George Adams, Owen Barfield, and Rita Stebbing. Finally
I must mention my colleague Ralph Brocklebank, who has shared much of the
work, and, with Dorothy Osmond, prepared it for the Press.

Michael Wilson, Clent, 1964.

--------------------------------------

Footnotes:

1. Published in parts from 1923-5, and never completed. The titles given
for Dr. Steiner's books are those of the English translations.

2. The list of titles is long, but the more important books include:
o Christianity as Mystical Fact (1902),
o Knowledge of The Higher Worlds and its Attainment (1904),
o Theosophy, a description of the nature of man and his relation to
the spiritual world (1904), and
o Occult Science -- An Outline, an account of the evolution of man
and the universe in terms of spiritual realities (1910).

3. For an account of the life and work of Rudolf Steiner, see A Scientist
of The Invisible, by A. P. Shepherd (1954). The range of his
contribution to modem thought can be seen in The Faithful Thinker,
edited by A. C. Harwood (1961).

4. See the discussion by Owen Barfield in "Saving the Appearances",
(1957).

5. See "Rudolf Steiner's Concept of Mind" by Owen Barfield, in The
Faithful Thinker, pp. 11-21.

 

The Philosophy of Freedom

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author's Prefaces

Preface to the revised edition of 1918

There are two fundamental questions in the life of the human soul towards
which everything to be discussed in this book is directed, One is: Is it
possible to find a view of the essential nature of man such as will give us
a foundation for everything else that comes to meet us -- whether through
life experience or through science -- which we feel is otherwise not
self-supporting and therefore liable to be driven by doubt and criticism
into the realm of uncertainty? The other question is this: Is man entitled
to claim for himself freedom of will, or is freedom a mere illusion begotten
of his inability to recognize the threads of necessity on which his will,
like any natural event, depends? It is no artificial tissue of theories that
provokes this question. In a certain mood it presents itself quite naturally
to the human soul. And one may well feel that if the soul has not at some
time found itself faced in utmost seriousness by the problem of free will or
necessity it will not have reached its full stature. This book is intended
to show that the experiences which the second problem causes man's soul to
undergo depend upon the position he is able to take up towards the first
problem, An attempt is made to prove that there is a view of the nature of
man's being which can support the rest of knowledge; and further, that this
view completely justifies the idea of free will, provided only that we have
first discovered that region of the soul in which free will can unfold
itself.

The view to which we here refer is one which, once gained, is capable of
becoming part and parcel of the very life of the soul itself. The answer
given to the two problems will not be of the purely theoretical sort which,
once mastered, may be carried about as a conviction preserved by memory.
Such an answer would, for the whole manner of thinking on which this book is
based, be no real answer at all. The book will not give a ready-made
self-contained answer of this sort, but will point to a field of experience
in which man's inner soul activity supplies a living answer to these
questions at every moment that he needs one. Whoever has once discovered the
region of the soul where these questions unfold, will find that the very
contemplation of this region gives him all that he needs for the solution of
the two problems. With the knowledge thus acquired, he may then, as desire
or destiny impels him, adventure further into the breadths and depths of
this enigmatical life of ours. Thus it would appear that a kind of knowledge
which proves its justification and validity by its own inner life as well as
by the kinship of its own life with the whole life of the human soul, does
in fact exist.

This is how I thought about the content of this book when I first wrote it
down twenty-five years ago. Today, once again, I have to set down similar
sentences if I am to characterize the main ideas of the book. At the
original writing I limited myself to saying no more than was in the
strictest sense connected with the two fundamental questions which I have
outlined. If anyone should be astonished at not finding in this book any
reference to that region of the world of spiritual experience described in
my later writings, I would ask him to bear in mind that it was not my
purpose at that time to set down the results of spiritual research, but
first to lay the foundations on which such results can rest.

The Philosophy of Freedom does not contain any results of this sort, any
more than it contains special results of the natural sciences. But what it
does contain is in my judgment absolutely necessary for anyone who seeks a
secure foundation for such knowledge. What I have said in this book may be
acceptable even to some who, for reasons of their own, refuse to have
anything to do with the results of my researches into the spiritual realm.
But anyone who feels drawn towards the results of these spiritual researches
may well appreciate the importance of what I was here trying to do. It is
this: to show that open-minded consideration simply of the two questions I
have indicated and which are fundamental for every kind of knowledge, leads
to the view that man lives in the midst of a genuine spiritual world.

In this book the attempt is made to show that a knowledge of the spirit
realm before entering upon actual spiritual experience is fully justified.
The course of this demonstration is so conducted that for anyone who is able
and willing to enter into these arguments it is never necessary, in order to
accept them, to cast furtive glances at the experiences which my later
writings have shown to be relevant.

Thus it seems to me that in one sense this book occupies a position
completely independent of my writings on actual spiritual scientific
matters. Yet in another sense it is most intimately connected with them.
These considerations have moved me now, after a lapse of twenty-five years,
to republish the contents of this book practically unaltered in all
essentials. I have, however, made additions of some length to a number of
chapters. The misunderstandings of my argument which I have met seemed to
make these more detailed elaborations necessary. Changes of text have been
made only where it appeared to me that I had said clumsily what I meant to
say a quarter of a century ago. (Only ill will could find in these changes
occasion to suggest that I have changed my fundamental conviction.)

For many years my book has been out of print. In spite of the fact, which is
apparent from what I have just said, that my utterances of twenty-five years
ago about these problems still seem to me just as relevant today, I
hesitated a long time about the completion of this revised edition. Again
and again I have asked myself whether I ought not, at this point or that, to
define my position towards the numerous philosophical views which have been
put forward since the publication of the first edition. Yet my preoccupation
in recent years with researches into the purely spiritual realm prevented me
from doing this in the way I could have wished. However, a survey of the
philosophical literature of the present day, as thorough as I could make it,
has convinced me that such a critical discussion, tempting though it would
be in itself, would be out of place in the context of this book. All that it
seemed to me necessary to say about recent philosophical tendencies, from
the point of view of the Philosophy of Freedom, may be found in the second
volume of my Riddles of Philosophy.

Rudolf Steiner, April 1918.

Preface to the first edition, 1894; revised, 1918

In the following is reproduced, in all essentials, what stood as a preface
in the first edition of this book. Since it shows the mood of thought out of
which I wrote this book twenty-five years ago, rather than having any direct
bearing on its contents, I include it here as an appendix. I do not want to
omit it altogether, because the opinion keeps cropping up that I need to
suppress some of my earlier writings on account of my later ones on
spiritual science. Only the very first introductory sentences of this
preface (in the first edition) have been altogether omitted here, because
today they seem to me quite irrelevant. But the rest of what was said seems
to me necessary even today, in spite of, indeed, just because of the natural
scientific manner of thinking of our contemporaries.

Our age can only accept truth from the depths of human nature. Of Schiller's
two well-known paths, it is the second that will mostly be chosen at the
present time:

Truth seek we both -- Thou in the life without thee and around; I
in the heart within. By both can Truth alike be found. The healthy
eye can through the world the great Creator track; The healthy
heart is but the glass which gives Creation back.

(Translation by E. Bulwer Lytton.)

A truth which comes to us from outside always bears the stamp of
uncertainty. We can believe only what appears to each one of us in our own
hearts as truth.

Only the truth can give us assurance in developing our individual powers.
Whoever is tortured by doubts finds his powers lamed. In a world full of
riddles, he can find no goal for his creative energies.

We no longer want merely to believe; we want to know. Belief demands the
acceptance of truths which we do not fully comprehend. But things we do not
fully comprehend are repugnant to the individual element in us, which wants
to experience everything in the depths of its inner being. The only
knowledge which satisfies us is one which is subject to no external
standards but springs from the inner life of the personality.

Again, we do not want any knowledge of the kind that has become frozen once
and for all into rigid academic rules, preserved in encyclopedias valid for
all time. Each of us claims the right to start from the facts that lie
nearest to hand, from his own immediate experiences, and thence to ascend to
a knowledge of the whole universe. We strive after certainty in knowledge,
but each in his own way.

Our scientific doctrines, too, should no longer be formulated as if we were
unconditionally compelled to accept them. None of us would wish to give a
scientific work a title like Fichte's "A Pellucid Account for the General
Public concerning the Real Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to
Compel the Readers to Understand." Today nobody should be compelled to
understand. From anyone who is not driven to a certain view by his own
individual needs, we demand no acknowledgment or agreement. Even with the
immature human being, the child, we do not nowadays cram knowledge into it,
but we try to develop its capacities so that it will no longer need to be
compelled to understand, but will want to understand.

I am under no illusion about these characteristics of my time. I know how
much the tendency prevails to make things impersonal and stereotyped. But I
know equally well that many of my contemporaries try to order their lives in
the kind of way I have indicated. To them I would dedicate this book. It is
not meant to give "the only possible" path to the truth, but is meant to
describe the path taken by one for whom truth is the main concern.

The book leads at first into somewhat abstract regions, where thought must
draw sharp outlines if it is to reach clearly defined positions. But the
reader will also be led out of these arid concepts into concrete life. I am
indeed fully convinced that one must raise oneself into the ethereal realm
of concepts if one would experience every aspect of existence. Whoever
appreciates only the pleasures of the senses is unacquainted with life's
sweetest savors. The oriental sages make their disciples live a life of
renunciation and asceticism for years before they impart to them their own
wisdom. The western world no longer demands pious exercises and ascetic
habits as a preparation for science, but it does require the willingness to
withdraw oneself awhile from the immediate impressions of life, and to
betake oneself into the realm of pure thought.

The realms of life are many. For each one, special sciences develop. But
life itself is a unity, and the more deeply the sciences try to penetrate
into their separate realms, the more they withdraw themselves from the
vision of the world as a living whole. There must be a knowledge which seeks
in the separate sciences the elements for leading man back once more to the
fullness of life. The scientific specialist seeks through his findings to
develop awareness of the world and its workings; in this book the aim is a
philosophical one -- that knowledge itself shall become organically alive.
The separate sciences are stages on the way to that knowledge we are here
trying to achieve. A similar relationship exists in the arts. The composer
works on the basis of the theory of composition. This theory is a collection
of rules which one has to know in order to compose. In composing, the rules
of the theory become the servants of life itself, of reality. In exactly the
same sense, philosophy is an art. 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. Abstract thinking thus takes
on concrete individual life. The ideas become powerful forces in life. Then
we do not merely have knowledge about things, but have made knowledge into a
real self-governing organism; our actual working consciousness has risen
beyond a mere passive reception of truths.

How philosophy as an art is related to human freedom, what freedom is, and
whether we do, or can, participate in it -- this is the main theme of my
book. All other scientific discussions are included only because they
ultimately throw light on these questions, which are, in my opinion, the
most immediate concern of mankind. These pages offer a "Philosophy of
Freedom".

All science would be nothing but the satisfaction of idle curiosity did it
not strive to raise the value of existence for the personality of man. The
sciences attain their true value only by showing the human significance of
their results. The ultimate aim of the individual can never be the
cultivation of a single faculty, but only the development of all the
capacities that slumber within us. Knowledge has value only in so far as it
contributes to the all-round development of the whole nature of man.

This book, therefore, conceives the relationship between science and life,
not in such a way that man must bow down before an idea and devote his
powers to its service, but in the sense that he masters the world of ideas
in order to use them for his human aims, which transcend those of mere
science.

One must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will
fall into its bondage.

 

The Philosophy of Freedom

Knowledge of Freedom

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter One

Conscious Human Action

Is man in his thinking and acting a spiritually free being, or is he
compelled by the iron necessity of purely natural law? There are few
questions upon which so much sagacity has been brought to bear. The idea of
the freedom of the human will has found enthusiastic supporters and stubborn
opponents in plenty. There are those who, in their moral fervor, label
anyone a man of limited intelligence who can deny so patent a fact as
freedom. Opposed to them are others who regard it as the acme of
unscientific thinking for anyone to believe that the uniformity of natural
law is broken in the sphere of human action and thinking. One and the same
thing is thus proclaimed, now as the most precious possession of humanity,
now as its most fatal illusion. Infinite subtlety has been employed to
explain how human freedom can be consistent with the laws working in nature,
of which man, after all, is a part. No less is the trouble to which others
have gone to explain how such a delusion as this could have arisen. That we
are dealing here with one of the most important questions for life,
religion, conduct, science, must be felt by anyone who includes any degree
of thoroughness at all in his make-up. It is one of the sad signs of the
superficiality of present-day thought that a book which attempts to develop
a new faith out of the results of recent scientific research, (see fn 1) has
nothing more to say on this question than these words:

With the question of the freedom of the human will we are not
concerned. The alleged freedom of indifferent choice has been
recognized as an empty illusion by every philosophy worthy of the
name. The moral valuation of human action and character remains
untouched by this problem.

It is not because I consider that the book in which it occurs has any
special importance that I quote this passage, but because it seems to me to
express the view to which the thinking of most of our contemporaries manages
to rise in this matter. Everyone who claims to have grown beyond the
kindergarten stage of science appears to know nowadays that freedom cannot
consist in choosing, at one's pleasure, one or other of two possible courses
of action. There is always, so we are told, a perfectly definite reason why,
out of several possible actions, we carry out just one and no other.

This seems obvious. Nevertheless, down to the present day, the main attacks
of the opponents of freedom are directed only against freedom of choice.
Even Herbert Spencer, whose doctrines are gaining ground daily, says,

That everyone is at liberty to desire or not to desire, which is
the real proposition involved in the dogma of free will, is
negated as much by the analysis of consciousness, as by the
contents of the preceding chapter. (see fn 2)

Others, too, start from the same point of view in combating the concept of
free will. The germs of all the relevant arguments are to be found as early
as Spinoza. All that he brought forward in clear and simple language against
the idea of freedom has since been repeated times without number, but as a
rule enveloped in the most hair-splitting theoretical doctrines, so that it
is difficult to recognize the straightforward train of thought which is all
that matters. Spinoza writes in a letter of October or November, 1674,

I call a thing free which exists and acts from the pure necessity
of its nature, and I call that unfree, of which the being and
action are precisely and fixedly determined by something else.
Thus, for example, God, though necessary, is free because he
exists only through the necessity of his own nature. Similarly,
God cognizes himself and all else freely, because it follows
solely from the necessity of his nature that he cognizes all. You
see, therefore, that for me freedom consists not in free decision,
but in free necessity.

But let us come down to created things which are all determined by
external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite
manner. To perceive this more clearly, let us imagine a perfectly
simple case. A stone, for example, receives from an external cause
acting upon it a certain quantity of motion, by reason of which it
necessarily continues to move, after the impact of the external
cause has ceased. The continued motion of the stone is due to
compulsion, not to the necessity of its own nature, because it
requires to be defined by the thrust of an external cause. What is
true here for the stone is true also for every other particular
thing, however complicated and many-sided it may be, namely, that
everything is necessarily determined by external causes to exist
and to act in a fixed and definite manner.

Now, please, suppose that this stone during its motion thinks and
knows that it is striving to the best of its ability to continue
in motion. This stone, which is conscious only of its striving and
is by no means indifferent, will believe that it is absolutely
free, and that it continues in motion for no other reason than its
own will to continue. But this is just the human freedom that
everybody claims to possess and which consists in nothing but
this, that men are conscious of their desires, but ignorant of the
causes by which they are determined. Thus the child believes that
he desires milk of his own free will, the angry boy regards his
desire for vengeance as free, and the coward his desire for
flight. Again, the drunken man believes that he says of his own
free will what, sober again, he would fain have left unsaid, and
as this prejudice is innate in all men, it is difficult to free
oneself from it. For, although experience teaches us often enough
that man least of all can temper his desires, and that, moved by
conflicting passions, he sees the better and pursues the worse,
yet he considers himself free because there are some things which
he desires less strongly, and some desires which he can easily
inhibit through the recollection of something else which it is
often possible to recall.

Because this view is so clearly and definitely expressed it is easy to
detect the fundamental error that it contains. The same necessity by which a
stone makes a definite movement as the result of an impact, is said to
compel a man to carry out an action when impelled thereto by any reason. It
is only because man is conscious of his action that he thinks himself to be
its originator. But in doing so he overlooks the fact that he is driven by a
cause which he cannot help obeying. The error in this train of thought is
soon discovered. Spinoza, and all who think like him, overlook the fact that
man not only is conscious of his action, but also may become conscious of
the causes which guide him. Nobody will deny that the child is unfree when
he desires milk, or the drunken man when he says things which he later
regrets. Neither knows anything of the causes, working in the depths of
their organisms, which exercise irresistible control over them. But is it
justifiable to lump together actions of this kind with those in which a man
is conscious not only of his actions but also of the reasons which cause him
to act? Are the actions of men really all of one kind? Should the act of a
soldier on the field of battle, of the scientific researcher in his
laboratory, of the statesman in the most complicated diplomatic
negotiations, be placed scientifically on the same level with that of the
child when it desires milk: It is no doubt true that it is best to seek the
solution of a problem where the conditions are simplest. But inability to
discriminate has before now caused endless confusion. There is, after all, a
profound difference between knowing why I am acting and not knowing it. At
first sight this seems a self-evident truth. And yet the opponents of
freedom never ask themselves whether a motive of action which I recognize
and see through, is to be regarded as compulsory for me in the same sense as
the organic process which causes the child to cry for milk

Eduard von Hartmann asserts that the human will depends on two chief
factors, the motives and the character. (see fn 3) If one regards men as all
alike, or at any rate the differences between them as negligible, then their
will appears as determined from without, that is to say, by the
circumstances which come to meet them. But if one bears in mind that a man
adopts an idea, or mental picture, as the motive of his action only if his
character is such that this mental picture arouses a desire in him, then he
appears as determined from within and not from without. Now because, in
accordance with his character, he must first adopt as a motive a mental
picture given to him from without, a man believes he is free, that is,
independent of external impulses. The truth, however, according to Eduard
von Hartmann, is that

even though we ourselves first adopt a mental picture as a motive,
we do so not arbitrarily, but according to the necessity of our
characterological disposition, that is, we are anything but free.

Here again the difference between motives which I allow to influence me only
after I have permeated them with my consciousness, and those which I follow
without any clear knowledge of them, is absolutely ignored.

This leads us straight to the standpoint from which the subject will be
considered here. Have we any right to consider the question of the freedom
of the will by itself at all? And if not, with what other question must it
necessarily be connected?

If there is a difference between a conscious motive of action and an
unconscious urge, then the conscious motive will result in an action which
must be judged differently from one that springs from blind impulse. Hence
our first question will concern this difference, and on the result of this
enquiry will depend what attitude we shall have to take towards the question
of freedom proper.

What does it mean to have knowledge of the reasons for one's action? Too
little attention has been paid to this question because, unfortunately, we
have torn into two what is really an inseparable whole: Man. We have
distinguished between the knower and the doer and have left out of account
precisely the one who matters most of all -- the knowing doer.

It is said that man is free when he is controlled only by his reason and not
by his animal passions. Or again, that to be free means to be able to
determine one's life and action by purposes and deliberate decisions.

Nothing is gained by assertions of this sort. For the question is just
whether reason, purposes, and decisions exercise the same kind of compulsion
over a man as his animal passions. If without my co-operation, a rational
decision emerges in me with the same necessity with which hunger and thirst
arise, then I must needs obey it, and my freedom is an illusion.

Another form of expression runs: to be free does not mean to be able to want
as one wills, but to be able to do as one wills. This thought has been
expressed with great clearness by the poet-philosopher Robert Hamerling.

Man can certainly do as he wills, but he cannot want as he wills,
because his wanting is determined by motives. He cannot want as he
wills? Let us consider these phrases more closely. Have they any
intelligible meaning: Freedom of will would then mean being able
to want without ground, without motive. But what does wanting mean
if not to have grounds for doing, or trying to do, this rather
than that: To want something without ground or motive would be to
want something without wanting it. The concept of wanting cannot
be divorced from the concept of motive. Without a determining
motive the will is an empty faculty; only through the motive does
it become active and real. It is, therefore, quite true that the
human will is not "free" inasmuch as its direction is always
determined by the strongest motive. But on the other hand it must
be admitted that it is absurd, in contrast with this "unfreedom",
to speak of a conceivable freedom of the will which would consist
in being able to want what one does not want. (see fn 4)

Here again, only motives in general are mentioned, without taking into
account the difference between unconscious and conscious motives. If a
motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be
the "strongest" of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any
meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am
forced by the motive to do it? The primary question is not whether I can do
a thing or not when a motive has worked upon me, but whether there are any
motives except such as impel me with absolute necessity. If I am compelled
to want something, then I may well be absolutely indifferent as to whether I
can also do it. And if, through my character, or through circumstances
prevailing in my environment, a motive is forced on me which to my thinking
is unreasonable, then I should even have to be glad if I could not do what I
want.

The question is not whether I can carry out a decision once made, but how
the decision comes about within me.

What distinguishes man from all other organic beings arises from his
rational thinking. Activity he has in common with other organisms. Nothing
is gained by seeking analogies in the animal world to clarify the concept of
freedom as applied to the actions of human beings. Modern science loves such
analogies. When scientists have succeeded in finding among animals something
similar to human behavior, they believe they have touched on the most
important question of the science of man. To what misunderstandings this
view leads is seen, for example, in the book The Illusion of Freewill, by P.
Rée, where the following remark on freedom appears:

It is easy to explain why the movement of a stone seems to us
necessary, while the volition of a donkey does not. The causes
which set the stone in motion are external and visible, while the
causes which determine the donkey's volition are internal and
invisible. Between us and the place of their activity there is the
skull of the ass. . . . The determining causes are not visible and
therefore thought to be non-existent. The volition, it is
explained, is, indeed, the cause of the donkey's turning round,
but is itself unconditioned; it is an absolute beginning. (see fn
5)

Here again human actions in which there is a consciousness of the motives
are simply ignored, for Rée declares that "between us and the place of their
activity there is the skull of the ass." To judge from these words, it has
not dawned on Rée that there are actions, not indeed of the ass, but of
human beings, in which between us and the action lies the motive that has
become conscious. Rée demonstrates his blindness once again, a few pages
further on, when he says,

We do not perceive the causes by which our will is determined,
hence we think it is not causally determined at all.

But enough of examples which prove that many argue against freedom without
knowing in the least what freedom is.

That an action, of which the agent does not know why he performs it, cannot
be free, goes without saying. But what about an action for which the reasons
are known? This leads us to the question of the origin and meaning of
thinking. For without the recognition of the thinking activity of the soul,
it is impossible to form a concept of knowledge about anything, and
therefore of knowledge about an action. When we know what thinking in
general means, it will be easy to get clear about the role that thinking
plays in human action. As Hegel rightly says,

It is thinking that turns the soul, which the animals also
possess, into spirit.

Hence it will also be thinking that gives to human action its characteristic
stamp.

On no account should it be said that all our action springs only from the
sober deliberations of our reason. I am very far from calling human in the
highest sense only those actions that proceed from abstract judgment. But as
soon as our conduct rises above the sphere of the satisfaction of purely
animal desires, our motives are always permeated by thoughts. Love, pity,
and patriotism are driving forces for actions which cannot be analysed away
into cold concepts of the intellect. It is said that here the heart, the
mood of the soul, hold sway. No doubt. But the heart and the mood of the
soul do not create the motives. They presuppose them and let them enter.
Pity enters my heart when the mental picture of a person who arouses pity
appears in my consciousness. The way to the heart is through the head, Love
is no exception, Whenever it is not merely the expression of bare sexual
instinct, it depends on the mental picture we form of the loved one. And the
more idealistic these mental pictures are, just so much the more blessed is
our love. Here too, thought is the father of feeling. It is said that love
makes us blind to the failings of the loved one. But this can be expressed
the other way round, namely, that it is just for the good qualities that
love opens the eyes. Many pass by these good qualities without noticing
them. One, however, perceives them, and just because he does, love awakens
in his soul. What else has he done but made a mental picture of what
hundreds have failed to see? Love is not theirs, because they lack the
mental picture.

However we approach the matter, it becomes more and more clear that the
question of the nature of human action presupposes that of the origin of
thinking. I shall, therefore, turn next to this question.

--------------------------------------

Footnotes:

1. David Freidrich Strauss, Der alte und neue Glaube.

2. The Principles of Psychology, 1855, German edition 1882; Part IV, Chap.
ix, par. 219.

3. Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, p. 451.

4. Atomistik des Willens, Vol. 2, p. 213 ff.

5. Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit, 1885, page 5.

 

The Philosophy of Freedom

Knowledge of Freedom

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Two

The Fundamental Desire for Knowledge

Two souls reside, alas, within my breast,
And each one from the other would be parted.
The one holds fast, in sturdy lust for love,
With clutching organs clinging to the world;
The other strongly rises from the gloom
To lofty fields of ancient heritage.

Faust I, Scene 2, lines 1112-1117.

In these words Goethe expresses a characteristic feature which is deeply
rooted in human nature. Man is not organized as a self-consistent unity. He
always demands more than the world, of its own accord, gives him. Nature has
endowed us with needs; among them are some that she leaves to our own
activity to satisfy. Abundant as are the gifts she has bestowed upon us,
still more abundant are our desires. We seem born to be dissatisfied. And
our thirst for knowledge is but a special instance of this dissatisfaction.
We look twice at a tree. The first time we see its branches at rest, the
second time in motion. We are not satisfied with this observation. Why, we
ask, does the tree appear to us now at rest, now in motion? Every glance at
Nature evokes in us a multitude of questions. Every phenomenon we meet sets
us a new problem. Every experience is a riddle. We see that from the egg
there emerges a creature like the mother animal, and we ask the reason for
the likeness. We observe a living being grow and develop to a certain degree
of perfection, and we seek the underlying conditions for this experience.
Nowhere are we satisfied with what Nature spreads out before our senses.
Everywhere we seek what we call the explanation of the facts.

The something more which we seek in things, over and above what is
immediately given to us in them, splits our whole being into two parts. We
become conscious of our antithesis to the world. We confront the world as
independent beings. The universe appears to us in two opposite parts: I and
World.

We erect this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as
consciousness first dawns in us. But we never cease to feel that, in spite
of all, we belong to the world, that there is a connecting link between it
and us, and that we are beings within, and not without, the universe.

This feeling makes us strive to bridge over this antithesis, and in this
bridging lies ultimately the whole spiritual striving of mankind. The
history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between
ourselves and the world. Religion, art and science follow, one and all, this
aim. The religious believer seeks in the revelation which God grants him the
solution to the universal riddle which his I, dissatisfied with the world of
mere appearance, sets before him. The artist seeks to embody in his material
the ideas that are in his I, in order to reconcile what lives in him with
the world outside. He too feels dissatisfied with the world of mere
appearance and seeks to mould into it that something more which his I,
transcending it, contains. The thinker seeks the laws of phenomena, and
strives to penetrate by thinking what he experiences by observing. Only when
we have made the world-content into our thought-content do we again find the
unity out of which we had separated ourselves. We shall see later that this
goal can be reached only if the task of the research scientist is conceived
at a much deeper level than is often the case. The whole situation I have
described here presents itself to us on the stage of history in the conflict
between the one-world theory, or monism, and the two-world theory, or
dualism.

Dualism pays attention only to the separation between I and World which the
consciousness of man has brought about. All its efforts consist in a vain
struggle to reconcile these opposites, which it calls now spirit and matter,
now subject and object, now thinking and appearance. It feels that there
must be a bridge between the two worlds but is not in a position to find it.
In that man is aware of himself as "I", he cannot but think of this "I" as
being on the side of the spirit; and in contrasting this "I" with the world,
he is bound to put on the world's side the realm of percepts given to the
senses, that is, the world of matter. In doing so, man puts himself right
into the middle of this antithesis of spirit and matter. He is the more
compelled to do so because his own body belongs to the material world. Thus
the "I", or Ego, belongs to the realm of spirit as a part of it; the
material objects and events which are perceived by the senses belong to the
"World". All the riddles which relate to spirit and matter, man must
inevitably rediscover in the fundamental riddle of his own nature.

Monism pays attention only to the unity and tries either to deny or to slur
over the opposites, present though they are. Neither of these two points of
view can satisfy us, for they do not do justice to the facts. Dualism sees
in spirit (I) and matter (World) two fundamentally different entities, and
cannot, therefore, understand how they can interact with one another. How
should spirit be aware of what goes on in matter, seeing that the essential
nature of matter is quite alien to spirit? Or how in these circumstances
should spirit act upon matter, so as to translate its intentions into
actions? The most ingenious and the most absurd hypotheses have been
propounded to answer these questions. Up to the present, however, monism is
not in a much better position. It has tried three different ways of meeting
the difficulty. Either it denies spirit and becomes materialism; or it
denies matter in order to seek its salvation in spiritualism (see fn 1); or
it asserts that even in the simplest entities in the world, spirit and
matter are indissolubly bound together so that there is no need to marvel at
the appearance in man of these two modes of existence, seeing that they are
never found apart.

Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For
every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts
about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins with the thought
of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted
by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about
it. The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding
them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in
the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal
organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so
he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He
overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one
place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to
himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter
come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with
itself and content just to exist? The materialist has turned his attention
away from the definite subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of
something quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again.
The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it
from one place to another.

What of the spiritualistic theory? The genuine spiritualist denies to matter
all independent existence and regards it merely as a product of spirit. But
when he tries to use this theory to solve the riddle of his own human
nature, he finds himself driven into a corner. Over against the "I" or Ego,
which can be ranged on the side of spirit, there stands directly the world
of the senses. No spiritual approach to it seems open. Only with the help of
material processes can it be perceived and experienced by the "I". Such
material processes the "I" does not discover in itself so long as it regards
its own nature as exclusively spiritual. In what it achieves spiritually by
its own effort, the sense-perceptible world is never to be found. It seems
as if the "I" had to concede that the world would be a closed book to it
unless it could establish a non-spiritual relation to the world. Similarly,
when it comes to action, we have to translate our purposes into realities
with the help of material things and forces. We are, therefore, referred
back to the outer world. The most extreme spiritualist -- or rather, the
thinker who through his absolute idealism appears as extreme spiritualist --
is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He attempts to derive the whole edifice of the
world from the "I". What he has actually accomplished is a magnificent
thought-picture of the world, without any content of experience. As little
as it is possible for the materialist to argue the spirit away, just as
little is it possible for the spiritualist to argue away the outer world of
matter.

When man reflects upon the "I", he perceives in the first instance the work
of this "I" in the conceptual elaboration of the world of ideas. Hence a
world-conception that inclines towards spiritualism may feel tempted, in
looking at man's own essential nature, to acknowledge nothing of spirit
except this world of ideas. In this way spiritualism becomes one-sided
idealism. Instead of going on to penetrate through the world of ideas to the
spiritual world, idealism identifies the spiritual world with the world of
ideas itself. As a result, it is compelled to remain fixed with its
world-outlook in the circle of activity of the Ego, as if bewitched.

A curious variant of idealism is to be found in the view which Friedrich
Albert Lange has put forward in his widely read History of Materialism. He
holds that the materialists are quite right in declaring all phenomena,
including our thinking, to be the product of purely material processes, but,
conversely, matter and its processes are for him themselves the product of
our thinking.

The senses give us only the effects of things, not true copies,
much less the things themselves. But among these mere effects we
must include the senses themselves together with the brain and the
molecular vibrations which we assume to go on there.

That is, our thinking is produced by the material processes, and these by
the thinking of our I. Lange's philosophy is thus nothing more than the
story, in philosophical terms, of the intrepid Baron Münchhausen, who holds
himself up in the air by his own pigtail.

The third form of monism is the one which finds even in the simplest entity
(the atom) both matter and spirit already united. But nothing is gained by
this either, except that the question, which really originates in our
consciousness, is shifted to another place. How comes it that the simple
entity manifests itself in a two-fold manner, if it is an indivisible unity?

Against all these theories we must urge the fact that we meet with the basic
and primary opposition first in our own consciousness. It is we ourselves
who break away from the bosom of Nature and contrast ourselves as "I" with
the "World". Goethe has given classic expression to this in his essay
Nature, although his manner may at first sight be considered quite
unscientific: "Living in the midst of her (Nature) we are strangers to her.
Ceaselessly she speaks to us, yet betrays none of her secrets." But Goethe
knows the reverse side too: "Men are all in her and she in all."

However true it may be that we have estranged ourselves from Nature, it is
none the less true that we feel we are in her and belong to her. It can be
only her own working which pulsates also in us.

We must find the way back to her again. A simple reflection can point this
way out to us. We have, it is true, torn ourselves away from Nature, but we
must none the less have taken something of her with us into our own being.
This element of Nature in us we must seek out, and then we shall find the
connection with her once more. Dualism fails to do this. It considers human
inwardness as a spiritual entity utterly alien to Nature, and then attempts
somehow to hitch it on to Nature. No wonder that it cannot find the
connecting link. We can find Nature outside us only if we have first learned
to know her within us. What is akin to her within us must be our guide. This
marks out our path of enquiry. We shall attempt no speculations concerning
the interaction of Nature and spirit. Rather shall we probe into the depths
of our own being, to find there those elements which we saved in our flight
from Nature.

Investigation of our own being must give us the answer to the riddle. We
must reach a point where we can say to ourselves, "Here we are no longer
merely 'I', here is something which is more than 'I'."

I am well aware that many who have read thus far will not find my discussion
"scientific", as this term is used today. To this I can only reply that I
have so far been concerned not with scientific results of any kind, but with
the simple description of what every one of us experiences in his own
consciousness. The inclusion of a few phrases about attempts to reconcile
man's consciousness and the world serves solely to elucidate the actual
facts. I have therefore made no attempt to use the various expressions "I",
"Spirit", "World", "Nature", in the precise way that is usual in psychology
and philosophy. The ordinary consciousness is unaware of the sharp
distinctions made by the sciences, and my purpose so far has been solely to
record the facts of everyday experience. I am concerned, not with the way in
which science, so far, has interpreted consciousness, but with the way in
which we experience it in every moment of our lives.

--------------------------------------

Footnotes:

1. The author refers to philosophical "spiritualism" as opposed to
philosophical "materialism". See reference to Fichte that follows. --
Translator's Footnote.

 

The Philosophy of Freedom

Knowledge of Freedom

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Three

Thinking in the service of Knowledge

When I observe how a billiard ball, when struck, communicates its motion to
another, I remain entirely without influence on the course of this observed
process. The direction of motion and the velocity of the second ball are
determined by the direction and velocity of the first. As long as I remain a
mere spectator, I can only say anything about the movement of the second
ball when it has taken place. It is quite different when I begin to reflect
on the content of my observation. The purpose of my reflection is to form
concepts of the occurrence. I connect the concept of an elastic ball with
certain other concepts of mechanics, and take into consideration the special
circumstances which obtain in the instance in question. I try, in other
words, to add to the occurrence which takes place without my assistance a
second process which takes place in the conceptual sphere. This latter one
is dependent on me. This is shown by the fact that I can rest content with
the observation, and renounce all search for concepts if I have no need of
them. If however, this need is present, then I am not satisfied until I have
brought the concepts Ball, Elasticity, Motion, Impact, Velocity, etc., into
a certain connection, to which the observed process is related in a definite
way. As surely as the occurrence goes on independently of me, so surely is
the conceptual process unable to take place without my assistance.

We shall have to consider later whether this activity of mine really
proceeds from my own independent being, or whether those modern
physiologists are right who say that we cannot think as we will, but that we
must think just as those thoughts and thought-connections determine that
happen to be present in our consciousness. (see fn 1) For the present we
wish merely to establish the fact that we constantly feel obliged to seek
for concepts and connections of concepts, which stand in a certain relation
to the objects and events which are given independently of us. Whether this
activity is really ours or whether we perform it according to an unalterable
necessity, is a question we need not decide at present. That it appears in
the first instance to be ours is beyond question. We know for certain that
we are not given the concepts together with the objects. That I am myself
the agent in the conceptual process may be an illusion, but to immediate
observation it certainly appears to be so. The question is, therefore: What
do we gain by supplementing an event with a conceptual counterpart?

There is a profound difference between the ways in which, for me, the parts
of an event are related to one another before, and after, the discovery of
the corresponding concepts. Mere observation can trace the parts of a given
event as they occur, but their connection remains obscure without the help
of concepts. I see the first billiard ball move towards the second in a
certain direction and with a certain velocity. What will happen after the
impact I must await, and again I can only follow it with my eyes. Suppose
someone, at the moment of impact, obstructs my view of the field where the
event is taking place, then, as mere spectator, I remain ignorant of what
happens afterwards. The situation is different if prior to the obstruction
of my view I have discovered the concepts corresponding to the pattern of
events. In that case I can say what will happen even when I am no longer
able to observe. An event or an object which is merely observed, does not of
itself reveal anything about its connection with other events or objects.
This connection becomes evident only when observation is combined with
thinking.

Observation and thinking are the two points of departure for all the
spiritual striving of man, in so far as he is conscious of such striving.
The workings of common sense, as well as the most complicated scientific
researches, rest on these two fundamental pillars of our spirit.
Philosophers have started from various primary antitheses: idea and reality,
subject and object, appearance and thing-in-itself, "I" and "Not-I", idea
and will, concept and matter, force and substance, the conscious and the
unconscious. It is easy to show, however, that all these antitheses must be
preceded by that of observation and thinking, this being for man the most
important one.

Whatever principle we choose to lay down, we must either prove that
somewhere we have observed it, or we must enunciate it in the form of a
clear thought which can be re-thought by any other thinker. Every
philosopher who sets out to discuss his fundamental principles must express
them in conceptual form and thus use thinking. He therefore indirectly
admits that his activity presupposes thinking. Whether thinking or something
else is the chief factor in the evolution of the world will not be decided
at this point. But that without thinking, the philosopher can gain no
knowledge of such evolution, is clear from the start. In the occurrence of
the world phenomena, thinking may play a minor part; but in the forming of a
view about them, there can be no doubt that, its part is a leading one.

As regards observation, our need of it is due to the way we are constituted.
Our thinking about a horse and the object "horse" are two things which for
us emerge apart from each other. This object is accessible to us only by
means of observation. As little as we can form a concept of a horse by
merely staring at the animal, just as little are we able by mere thinking to
produce a corresponding object.

In sequence of time, observation does in fact come before thinking. For even
thinking we must get to know first through observation. It was essentially a
description of an observation when, at the beginning of this chapter, we
gave an account of how thinking lights up in the presence of an event and
goes beyond what is merely presented. Everything that enters the circle of
our experience, we first become aware of through observation. The content of
sensation, perception and contemplation, all feelings, acts of will, dreams
and fancies, mental pictures, concepts and ideas, all illusions and
hallucinations, are given to us through observation.

But thinking as an object of observation differs essentially from all other
objects. The observation of a table, or a tree, occurs in me as soon as
these objects appear upon the horizon of my experience. Yet I do not, at the
same time, observe my thinking about these things. I observe the table, and
I carry out the thinking about the table, but I do not at the same moment
observe this. I must first take up a standpoint outside my own activity if,
in addition to observing the table, I want also to observe my thinking about
the table. Whereas observation of things and events, and thinking about
them, are everyday occurrences filling up the continuous current of my life,
observation of the thinking itself is a kind of exceptional state. This fact
must be properly taken into account when we come to determine the
relationship of thinking to all other contents of observation. We must be
quite clear about the fact that, in observing thinking, we are applying to
it a procedure which constitutes the normal course of events for the study
of the whole of the rest of the world-content, but which in this normal
course of events is not applied to thinking itself.

Someone might object that what I have said about thinking applies equally to
feeling and to all other spiritual activities. Thus for instance, when I
have a feeling of pleasure, the feeling is also kindled by the object, and
it is this object that I observe, but not the feeling of pleasure. This
objection, however, is based on an error. Pleasure does not stand at all in
the same relation to its object as the concept formed by thinking. I am
conscious, in the most positive way, that the concept of a thing is formed
through my activity; whereas pleasure is produced in me by an object in the
same way as, for instance, a change is caused in an object by a stone which
falls on it. For observation, a pleasure is given in exactly the same way as
the event which causes it. The same is not true of the concept. I can ask
why a particular event arouses in me a feeling of pleasure, but I certainly
cannot ask why an event produces in me a particular set of concepts. The
question would be simply meaningless. In reflecting upon an event, I am in
no way concerned with an effect upon myself. I can learn nothing about
myself through knowing the concepts which correspond to the observed change
in a pane of glass by a stone thrown against it. But I do very definitely
learn something about my personality when I know the feeling which a certain
event arouses in me. When I say of an observed object, "This is a rose," I
say absolutely nothing about myself; but when I say of the same thing that
"it gives me a feeling of pleasure," I characterize not only the rose, but
also myself in my relation to the rose.

There can, therefore, be no question of putting thinking and feeling on a
level as objects of observation. And the same could easily be shown of other
activities of the human spirit. Unlike thinking, they must be classed with
other observed objects or events. The peculiar nature of thinking lies just
in this, that it is an activity which is directed solely upon the observed
object and not on the thinking personality. This is apparent even from the
way in which we express our thoughts about an object, as distinct from our
feelings or acts of will. When I see an object and recognize it as a table,
I do not as a rule say, "I am thinking of a table," but, "this is a table."
On the other hand, I do say, "I am pleased with the table." In the former
case, I am not at all interested in stating that I have entered into a
relation with the table; whereas in the latter case, it is just this
relation that matters. In saying, "I am thinking of a table," I already
enter the exceptional state characterized above, in which something that is
always contained -- though not as an observed object -- within our spiritual
activity, is itself made into an object of observation.

This is just the peculiar nature of thinking, that the thinker forgets his
thinking while actually engaged in it. What occupies his attention is not
his thinking, but the object of his thinking, which he is observing.

The first observation which we make about thinking is therefore this: that
it is the unobserved element in our ordinary mental and spiritual life.

The reason why we do not observe the thinking that goes on in our ordinary
life is none other than this, that it is due to our own activity. Whatever I
do not myself produce, appears in my field of observation as an object; I
find myself confronted by it as something that has come about independently
of me. It comes to meet me. I must accept it as something that precedes my
thinking process, as a premise. While I am reflecting upon the object, I am
occupied with it, my attention is focussed upon it. To be thus occupied is
precisely to contemplate by thinking. I attend, not to my activity, but to
the object of this activity. In other words, while I am thinking I pay no
heed to my thinking, which is of my own making, but only to the object of my
thinking, which is not of my making.

I am, moreover, in the same position when I enter into the exceptional state
and reflect on my own thinking. I can never observe my present thinking; I
can only subsequently take my experiences of my thinking process as the
object of fresh thinking. If I wanted to watch my present thinking, I should
have to split myself into two persons, one to think, the other to observe
this thinking. But this I cannot do. I can only accomplish it in two
separate acts. The thinking to be observed is never that in which I am
actually engaged, but another one. Whether, for this purpose, I make
observations of my own former thinking, or follow the thinking process of
another person, or finally, as in the example of the motions of the billiard
balls, assume an imaginary thinking process, is immaterial.

There are two things which are incompatible with one another: productive
activity and the simultaneous contemplation of it. This is recognized even
in Genesis (1, 31). Here God creates the world in the first six days, and
only when it is there is any contemplation of it possible: "And God saw
everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good." The same applies
to our thinking. It must be there first, if we would observe it.

The reason why it is impossible to observe thinking in the actual moment of
its occurrence, is the very one which makes it possible for us to know it
more immediately and more intimately than any other process in the world.
Just because it is our own creation do we know the characteristic features
of its course, the manner in which the process takes place. What in all
other spheres of observation can be found only indirectly, namely, the
relevant context and the relationship between the individual objects, is, in
the case of thinking, known to us in an absolutely direct way. I do not on
the face of it know why, for my observation, thunder follows lightning; but
I know directly, from the very content of the two concepts, why my thinking
connects the concept of thunder with the concept of lightning. It does not
matter in the least whether I have the right concepts of lightning and
thunder. The connection between those concepts that I do have is clear to
me, and this through the very concepts themselves.

This transparent clearness concerning our thinking process is quite
independent of our knowledge of the physiological basis of thinking. Here I
am speaking of thinking in so far as we know it from the observation of our
own spiritual activity. How one material process in my brain causes or
influences another while I am carrying out a thinking operation, is quite
irrelevant. What I observe about thinking is not what process in my brain
connects the concept lightning with the concept thunder but what causes me
to bring the two concepts into a particular relationship. My observation
shows me that in linking one thought with another there is nothing to guide
me but the content of my thoughts; I am not guided by any material processes
in my brain. In a less materialistic age than our own, this remark would of
course be entirely superfluous. Today, however, when there are people who
believe that once we know what matter is we shall also know how it thinks,
we do have to insist that one may talk about thinking without trespassing on
the domain of brain physiology.

Many people today find it difficult to grasp the concept of thinking in its
purity. Anyone who challenges the description of thinking which I have given
here by quoting Cabanis' statement that "the brain secretes thoughts as the
liver does gall or the spittle-glands spittle . . .", simply does not know
what I am talking about. He tries to find thinking by a process of mere
observation in the same way that we proceed in the case of other objects
that make up the world. But he cannot find it in this way because, as I have
shown, it eludes just this ordinary observation. Whoever cannot transcend
materialism lacks the ability to bring about the exceptional condition I
have described, in which he becomes conscious of what in all other spiritual
activity remains unconscious. If someone is not willing to take this
standpoint, then one can no more discuss thinking with him than one can
discuss color with a blind man. But in any case he must not imagine that we
regard physiological processes as thinking. He fails to explain thinking
because he simply does not see it.

For everyone, however, who has the ability to observe thinking -- and with
good will every normal man has this ability -- this observation is the most
important one he can possibly make. For he observes something of which he
himself is the creator; he finds himself confronted, not by an apparently
foreign object, but by his own activity. He knows how the thing he is
observing comes into being. He sees into its connections and relationships.
A firm point has now been reached from which one can, with some hope of
success, seek an explanation of all other phenomena of the world.

The feeling that he had found such a firm point led the father of modern
philosophy, Descartes, to base the whole of human knowledge on the
principle: I think, therefore I am. All other things, all other events, are
there independently of me. Whether they be truth, or illusion, or dream, I
know not. There is only one thing of which I am absolutely certain, for I
myself give it its certain existence; and that is my thinking. Whatever
other origin it may ultimately have, may it come from God or from elsewhere,
of one thing I am certain: that it exists in the sense that I myself bring
it forth. Descartes had, to begin with, no justification for giving his
statement more meaning than this. All that he had any right to assert was
that within the whole world content I apprehend myself in my thinking as in
that activity which is most uniquely my own. What the attached "therefore I
am" is supposed to mean has been much debated. It can have a meaning on one
condition only. The simplest assertion I can make of a thing is that it is,
that it exists. How this existence can be further defined in the case of any
particular thing that appears on the horizon of my experience, is at first
sight impossible to say. Each object must first be studied in its relation
to others before we can determine in what sense it can be said to exist. An
experienced event may be a set of percepts or it may be a dream, an
hallucination, or something else. In short, I am unable to say in what sense
it exists. I cannot gather this from the event in itself, but I shall find
it out when I consider the event in its relation to other things. But here
again I cannot know more than just how it stands in relation to these other
things. 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, for I give to my existence the
definite, self-determined content of the thinking activity. From here I can
go on to ask whether other things exist in the same or in some other sense.

When we make thinking an object of observation, we add to the other observed
contents of the world something which usually escapes our attention, But the
way we stand in relation to the other things is in no way altered. We add to
the number of objects of observation, but not to the number of methods.
While we are observing the other things, there enters among the processes of
the world -- among which I now include observation -- one process which is
overlooked. Something is present which is different from all other
processes, something which is not taken into account. But when I observe my
own thinking, no such neglected element is present. For what now hovers in
the background is once more just thinking itself. The object of observation
is qualitatively identical with the activity directed upon it. This is
another characteristic feature of thinking. When we make it an object of
observation, we are not compelled to do so with the help of something
qualitatively different, but can remain within the same element.

When I weave an independently given object into my thinking, I transcend my
observation, and the question arises: What right have I to do this? Why do I
not simply let the object impress itself upon me? How is it possible for my
thinking to be related to the object? These are questions which everyone
must put to himself who reflects on his own thought processes. But all these
questions cease to exist when we think about thinking itself. We then add
nothing to our thinking that is foreign to it, and therefore have no need to
justify any such addition.

Schelling says, "To know Nature means to create Nature." If we take these
words of this bold Nature-philosopher literally, we shall have to renounce
for ever all hope of gaining knowledge of Nature. For Nature is there
already, and in order to create it a second time, we must first know the
principles according to which it has originated. From the Nature that
already exists we should have to borrow or crib the fundamental principles
for the Nature we want to begin by creating. This borrowing, which would
have to precede the creating, would however mean knowing Nature, and this
would still be so even if after the borrowing no creation were to take
place. The only kind of Nature we could create without first having
knowledge of it would be a Nature that does not yet exist.

What is impossible for us with regard to Nature, namely, creating before
knowing, we achieve in the case of thinking. Were we to refrain from
thinking until we had first gained knowledge of it, we would never come to
it at all. We must resolutely plunge right into the activity of thinking, so
that afterwards, by observing what we have done, we may gain knowledge of
it. For the observation of thinking, we ourselves first create an object;
the presence of all other objects is taken care of without any activity on
our part.

My contention that we must think before we can examine thinking might easily
be countered by the apparently equally valid contention that we cannot wait
with digesting until we have first observed the process of digestion. This
objection would be similar to that brought by Pascal against Descartes, when
he asserted that we might also say, "I walk, therefore I am." Certainly I
must go straight ahead with digesting and not wait until I have studied the
physiological process of digestion. But I could only compare this with the
study of thinking if, after digestion, I set myself not to study it by
thinking, but to eat and digest it. It is after all not without reason that,
whereas digestion cannot become the object of digestion, thinking can very
well become the object of thinking.

This then is indisputable, that in thinking we have got hold of one corner
of the whole world process which requires our presence if anything is to
happen. And this is just the point upon which everything turns. The very
reason why things confront me in such a puzzling way is just that I play no
part in their production. They are simply given to me, whereas in the case
of thinking I know how it is done. Hence for the study of all that happens
in the world there can be no more fundamental starting point than thinking
itself.

I should now like to mention a widely current error which prevails with
regard to thinking. It is often said that thinking, as it is in itself, is
nowhere given to us: the thinking that connects our observations and weaves
a network of concepts about them is not at all the same as that which we
subsequently extract from the objects of observation in order to make it the
object of our study. What we first weave unconsciously into the things is
said to be quite different from what we consciously extract from them again.

Those who hold this view do not see that it is impossible in this way to
escape from thinking. I cannot get outside thinking when I want to study it.
If we want to distinguish between thinking before we have become conscious
of it, and thinking of which we have subsequently become aware, we should
not forget that this distinction is a purely external one which has nothing
to do with the thing itself. I do not in any way alter a thing by thinking
about it. I can well imagine that a being with quite differently const