Freedom

Odysseus and the Sirens. Painting by John William Waterhouse (1891)

The ancient Greek word for freedom - "Éleutheria" - originally meant something like: "to set out on a journey and overcome all difficulties in order to reach a beloved goal", as Homer describes it in his Odyssey.

Man is created free, is free, And if he were born in chains. Friedrich Schiller: Worte des Glaubens (German)

Only in limitation the master shows himself, And only the law can give us freedom. Johann von Wolfgang Goethe: Natur und Kunst ... (German)

The Panther His gaze has, from the passing of the bars, grown so weary that it cannot hold. To him, there seem to be thousand bars and behind those thousand bars no world. The smooth pace, the strong and supple stride, that circles in the smallest space, is like a dance of force around a middle, in which a strong will’s paralysed. Only at times the pupil’s veil lifts without a sound –. An image enters, moving through the body's rigid hush- and in the heart ceases to be. Rainer Maria Rilke: Neue Gedichte, p. 37 English translation by A.F.

Freedom (Latin: libertas; Greek: ἐλευθερία éleutheria) of man lies, according to Rudolf Steiner, in the fact that he can recognise the laws of his actions and base his decisions on them. The starting point of freedom is therefore not freedom of will, but freedom of thought, which man can attain in pure, sensuality-free thinking through moral intuition - not out of blind instincts, drives or desires, nor in the mere observance of external norms, but knowing out of fully conscious love for what he does. Only in this way can he shape his actions self-determinedly, autonomously, in defiance of all external constraints. If he lacks inner freedom, he cannot make use of outer freedom, no matter how generously it is granted to him.

„Read in my "Philosophy of Freedom" what great importance I have attached to not asking about the freedom of the will. It sits below, deep down in the unconscious, and it is nonsense to ask about the freedom of the will; one can only speak of the freedom of thought. I have kept this apart in my "Philosophy of Freedom". The free thoughts must then impulse the will, then man is free.“ (Lit.:GA 235, p. 46ff)

That this is a distant ideal, rarely achieved, can hardly be doubted. Only rarely does man act truly free out of fully conscious insight into the true reasons for his actions. Often he is the slave of his own egoisms or at best follows the external rules that he has been brought up with. But in his I lies the power to approach this ideal step by step in the course of a long development and finally to become a true Spirit of Freedom. That this goal is not attainable in a single earthly life, but requires many repeated earthly lives and the healing power of karma, does not seem implausible when viewed in this light.

According to Rudolf Steiner's ideas on social threefolding, a free spiritual life, based on the individual abilities of man, is to develop today as an independent member of the social organism alongside economic and legal life.

„The spiritual member in the threefold social organism comprises science, art, religion, the entire educational system and the judicial administration of justice. All these spiritual-cultural factors can only fulfil their task and fertilise social life in the right way in complete freedom from state intervention. Spiritual life, culture, must develop out of the free co-operation of all spiritual-creative individual personalities and give itself its own administrative bodies.“ (Lit.:GA 24, p. 473)

Eleutheria

The Greek term Éleutheria (Greek: ἐλευθερία) probably derives from Greek ἐλευ éleu, which roughly means: "to reach a beloved goal" (to be able to), quite in the sense of an external (sea) journey that one must accomplish and thereby develop one's powers and abilities in order to reach the desired, beloved goal, as classically described by Homer in his Iliad and Odyssey. Éleutheria was also an epithet of the goddess Artemis, who was worshipped in this form especially in the city of Myra in Lycia in Asia Minor. In Roman mythology, the goddess Libertas corresponds to her, for whom the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World) in New York City also stands.

Freedom of thought and moral autonomy

„The point is that we have developed freedom firstly in thought. The source of freedom arises in thought. Man has an immediate consciousness of the fact that in his thought he is a free being.“ (Lit.:GA 235, p. 54)

Consciousness of the regularities of one's own actions is a particular case of cognition in general, but when cognition is directed towards the conscious activity of the I, this regularity no longer lies outside the cognized object, but is content of the I itself, conceived in living activity, which brings forth these laws from itself and from insight into the circumstances. The perceiver and the perceived, subject and object, fall into one, become identical, and thus we are no longer governed by moral commandments and laws imposed from without, nor by instinctive modes of action imposed from within, but we absorb the former into our own being, or we clarify what the latter demand of us and only carry out that which we command ourselves, i.e. that which we ourselves have raised to conscious motives of action.

„Truly our actions are, after all, only those in which we completely set aside the concept of duty and solely allow individuality to rule.“ (Lit.:GA 38, p. 143)

„An action is felt to be free in so far as the reasons for it spring from the ideal part of my individual being; every other part of an action, whether it is carried out under the compulsion of nature or under the obligation of moral standard, is felt to be unfree.

Man is free in so far as he is able to obey himself in every moment of his life. A moral deed is my deed only if it can be called a free one in this sense.“ (Lit.:GA 4, p. 164)

Thus, in Steiner's sense, moral autonomy, ethical individualism and a thoroughgoing tolerance in the interplay of man, society and the world are established. The prerequisite for this is to love what one does out of insight, i.e. to identify oneself in free devotion with what one is doing while respecting social and natural conditions. From this follows the fundamental maxim of free people, which Rudolf Steiner formulated in his “Philosophy of Freedom”:

„To live in love towards our actions, and to let live in the understanding of the other’s will, is the fundamental maxim of free men.“ (Lit.:GA 4, p. 166)

Rudolf Steiner offered an in-depth presentation of his thoughts on freedom in his fundamental philosophical writings at the beginning of his public literary activity in "The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception" (CW 2), "Truth and Knowledge" (CW 3), and in "The Philosophy of Freedom" (CW 4), and later -- after decades of experience gained through dealing with the path of knowledge conceived in his early works and after the realisation of the idea of freedom in regard to the forces of consciousness within the world-view systems and the increasing universality of individual thought in humanity had undergone a long development -- in his writing "The Riddles of Philosophy" (CW 18).

„Those who study my book, ‘Philosophy of Freedom’, will find, however, that I was compelled to speak not of a freedom of the will at first, but of the freedom which is experienced in thought, namely, in thought free from sensuality, in pure thought, in that thought which consciously emerges in the human soul as an ethical, as a moral ideal, and which attains that strength which can have a motivating effect on the will of man. We can speak of human freedom when we speak of those human actions which are shaped by man’s free thinking, when the human being, through a moral self-education, comes to the point at which instincts, drives, emotions, his temperament do not influence him to an action, but only the devoted love for an action. In this devoted love for an action can develop that which arises from the ideal strength of pure moral thought. This is a real free action.“ (Lit.:GA 79, p. 128)

In order to make it clear that human thinking is an outright pole of freedom, which Steiner already wrote in the “Philosophy of Freedom”, Joseph Beuys once put forward the following formula: Thinking = Knowledge = Freedom

Freedom and intellectualism

Through intellectualism our spiritual being is deadened; however, it is precisely through this that we are given the possibility of freedom. The intellect is not a reality but a mere image and therefore cannot compel us. By creatively transforming this image and shaping the moral impulses that guide our actions, in complete freedom in our thinking, we thereby realise our very own spiritual being.

„Man had to become intellectualistic so that he could become free. Man loses his spiritual being in intellectualism, for he can carry nothing from intellectualism through the gates of death. However, he acquires freedom through intellectualism, and what he thus acquires in freedom he can then carry through the gates of death.

Man may therefore think as much as he likes in a purely intellectualistic way - none of it passes through the gate of death. Only when man uses his thinking in order to live it out in free actions, does so much, as it were, of the spiritual-soul substance which makes him a being and not mere knowledge pass with him, from his experiences of freedom, through the gate of death. In thinking, our human being is taken from us through intellectualism in order to let us attain freedom. What we experience in freedom is then given to us again as human being. Intellectualism kills us, but it also revives us. It resurrects us as a completely transformed being by making us free human beings.“ (Lit.:GA 207, p. 170)

„We can clearly point to the first third of the 15th century: that is when this intellectualism first emerged with all clarity. In former times, even when people were thinking so-called scientifically, they thought much more in images which contained the growth forces of things themselves, not in abstract concepts, as we must do today as a matter of course. Now, these abstract concepts which educate us inwardly to pure thinking, about which I have spoken in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom’, these abstract concepts, they make it possible for us to become free beings. When people could not yet think in abstractions, the entire state of their souls was determined, dependent. People can only develop freely after they are inwardly determined by nothing, after the moral impulses -- you can read about this in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom’ -- can be grasped in pure thought. Pure thoughts, however, are not reality, they are images. Images cannot compel us, we ourselves must determine our actions; images have nothing compelling about them. Mankind has developed towards abstract thought on the one hand and towards freedom on the other. I have often described this from other points of view.

How was it for mankind before he had advanced to grasp abstract thought in earthly life, to come to freedom in earthly life through the same faculty with which he can grasp abstract thought? Humanity did not grasp abstract thoughts in life on earth between birth and death; even in ancient Greece this was not yet possible, let alone in earlier times. Humanity thought in images and was not equipped with the inner consciousness of freedom that has arisen with the onset of pure, that is, abstract thought. Abstract thought leaves us cold. That which abstract thought gives us in the way of moral ability, that is what warms us in the most intensive sense, for that represents in the highest sense our human dignity.

What was it like before abstract thought with its accompaniment of freedom came over humanity? Well, as you know, when man passes through the gates of death, in the first days after he has left his physical body, he still has the etheric body with him, and he has spread out before him a comprehensive review, not in detailed paintings, but in harmonising universal images, the whole course of life he has gone through, as far back as he remembers. The newly deceased has his life tableau spread out before him for several days as a life-containing image. Yes, my dear friends, that is how it is today. In those times when people had picture consciousness here on earth, they had spread out before them after death what mankind of today experiences -- the rational, the logical comprehension of the world -- that which they did not have between birth and death. This is something that leads us in the most eminent sense into the understanding of the human being. That which the human being of an older historical epoch, not only of prehistoric times, had only after death: a brief retrospect in abstract concepts and the impulse of freedom which was left for him in life between death and a new birth, that has pressed itself into earthly life during the development of humanity. It belongs to one of the mysteries of existence that the supersensible continually presses its way into the sensible. What is extended throughout earthly life today, the ability of abstraction and freedom, was something that came into human possession for an older humanity only during this retrospective view after death, whereas today man has rationality, intellectuality and freedom during his earthly life between birth and death, and therefore a mere picture retrospective after death. This is how things pass into each other. The real concrete-supersensible continually pushes itself into the sensory.“ (Lit.:GA 257, p. 43f)

Appearance and reality

We can only attain freedom because during our life on earth we live with our daytime consciousness in a world of mere appearance.

„If we direct our senses out into our world environment between birth and death, then the world presents itself to us as appearance, as semblance [...]

In the present age, however, if, between birth and death, man did not perceive the world as appearance, if he could not experience appearance, he could not be free. The development of freedom is only possible in the world of appearance. I hinted at this in my book "On the Riddle of Man" by pointing out that the world we experience can actually be compared to the images that look back at us from a mirror. These images that look at us from a mirror cannot force anything upon us; for they are only images, they are appearances. And so, that which man has as a world of perception is also appearance.

Man is by no means completely caught up in the appearance of the world. He is only spun into an illusory world with his perception, which fills his waking consciousness. But when man looks at his instincts, at his passions, at his temperaments, at all that surges up out of the human being, without being able to bring it to clear conceptions, at least to alert conceptions, then all this is not illusion. It is indeed reality, but a reality that does not tread before man's present consciousness. Man lives between birth and death in a true world which he does not know, but one which is never predisposed to give him real freedom. Instincts that make him unfree can be implanted in him, inner necessities can be brought forth, but never ever can it let man experience freedom. Freedom can only be experienced within a world of images, of appearances. And we must, by waking up, enter into a life of illusory perception, so that freedom can develop there.“ (Lit.:GA 207, p. 172f)

It is initially different in the life between death and new birth. There man encounters the reality of the spiritual world and is thereby captured by its necessity. But the freedom he has acquired in earthly life he can carry as his own being through the gate of death and assert in the world beyond.

„Life in appearance is really only granted to him between birth and death. Today, man does not come to live in appearance between death and a new birth. He is, as it were, captured by necessity when he passes through death [...].

This is the development into which man entered in the middle of the 15th century. For him, the divine-spiritual worlds have disappeared from appearance on earth. In the time between death and a new birth, however, these divine-spiritual worlds take him captive so much that he cannot preserve his independence in relation to them. Only, I said, when man really develops freedom here, that is, when he engages his whole being for the illusory life, is it possible for him to also carry his own being through the gate of death.“ (Lit.:GA 207, p. 174f)

If the experience of after-death necessity has too strong an effect on one’s next life on earth, a danger arises, one in which present humanity is actually suspended:

„It [humanity] cannot quite settle into the mere world of phenomena, into the world of appearances. Above all, it cannot settle into this world of appearances with its inner life. It wants to surrender itself to necessity, to inner necessity, to instincts, drives, passions. Today we see little realised of that which emerges from the free impulsiveness of pure thought. But as much as man lacks freedom here in life between birth and death, just as much unfreedom, necessity in perception, comes over him with hypnotising compulsion between death and new birth. So that man is threatened with the danger of not being able to take his own being with him when passing through the gates of death, but in the world of perception not living into something free, but rather into something which causes him to submerge himself in compulsory relations, which makes him as if frozen in the outer world.“ (Lit.:GA 207, p. 178)

Technology and freedom

„In the machine, man has surrounded himself with something transparent but alien to him. He has linked his life to this stranger. Cold stands the machine there and far from man, a triumph of ‘secured’ knowledge; next to it stands man himself, darkness before him, when he looks into himself with this knowledge.

And yet: humanity had to educate itself to look into the transparent dead if it was to become fully awake. It needs the pictorial knowledge of that which is alien to its own being in order to be awake. For all preceding knowledge is co-determined out of the darkness of man's own nature; it only becomes clear before the soul when the human soul becomes a mere mirror which only creates images of that which is alien to man. Previously, when man spoke of knowledge, he had in his soul instinct, the contents of his own nature, which as such could not be clear. His ideas were interspersed with being; but they were not clear. - The images of lifeless being are clear. Now, however, man has in these images not only the revelation of the inanimate, but also inner experiences. Images, by their own nature, cannot cause anything. They are powerless. If man experiences his moral impulses in the realm of the pictorial in the same way he has acquired them in lifeless nature, he then rises to freedom. For images cannot determine the will as drives, passions or instincts can. Only the age that has developed mathematic-like pictorial thinking through that which is dead can guide man to freedom.

Cold technology gives human thinking a character that leads to freedom. Between levers, wheels and motors lives only a dead spirit; but in this realm of the dead the free human soul awakens. It must awaken the spirit in itself which before was, more or less, only dreaming when it solely animated nature. Dreaming becomes conscious thinking in the coldness of the machine.“ (Lit.:GA 36, p. 84f)

The experience of freedom in the context of imagination, inspiration and intuition

„In every experience of freedom three things are interwoven. They appear as a unity at the moment when the experience takes place, but the subsequent course of life makes one conscious of them separately. One experiences what one has to do as an inner image that rises before one in free moral imaginative activity. What one has decided to do appears as a true imagination for one must find it worth loving. The second element contained in the unified experience is the impulse that one is admonished by higher powers to follow what is germinating within. <Do it> say the inner voices, and the awareness of them is a true inspiration. But also a third element is interwoven into the unified experience. Through the deed, one places oneself in an external environment of destiny into which one would never have entered without the freedom experience. One now encounters different people, is led to different places, by the fact that the inner intuitively grasped now becomes the fateful environment approaching from the outside. The situation of a true intuition arises." "You see," Rudolf Steiner continued, "these three interwoven experiences have subsequently separated, --have become conscious in isolation, so that imagination and inspiration and intuition have become conscious acts of cognition.“ (Lit.: Contributions 49, p. 30)

The will to freedom

Whoever remains in recognition of his personal views and opinions only recognises the transient. But he who recognises the I in himself as the eternal core of his being also recognises the eternal in the other things that surround him.

„As long as one lives with the world personally, things reveal only that which links them to our personality, but that is their transience. If we withdraw ourselves from our transience and live with our sense of self, with our ‘I’ in its permanence, then the transitory parts of us become mediators; and what is revealed through them is an imperishable, an eternal element in all things. This relation between one’s own eternal to the eternal in things must be established in the knower.“ (Lit.:GA 9, p. 188f)

Whoever generates the impulses of his actions through this realisation of the eternal found in and through the I, acts in harmony with the eternal world order and at the same time in full freedom. Admittedly, this is an ideal which man is still far from having reached, but it is a goal towards which he can strive - and that is his will to freedom.

„Thus the possibility opens up to the knower to no longer follow the uncountable influences of the outer world of the senses alone, which direct his will sometimes here, sometimes there. Through knowledge he has seen the eternal essence of things. Through the transformation of his inner world, he has within himself the ability to perceive this eternal being. For the knower, the following thoughts take on a special importance. When he acts out of his self, he is conscious of acting out of the eternal essence of things. For things express their essence in him. He therefore acts in the sense of the eternal world order when he gives direction to his actions out of the eternal essence living within himself. Through this he knows that he is no longer merely driven by things; he knows that he acts according to the laws implanted in them, which have become the laws of his own being. - This acting from within can only be an ideal towards which one strives. The attainment of this goal lies in the far distance. But the knower must have the will to see this path clearly. This is his will to freedom. For freedom is action out of oneself. And only he who draws his motives from the eternal may act out of his self. A being that does not do so acts according to other motives than those implanted in things. Such a being is at variance with the world order. And this [the world order] must then prevail over it. That is to say: in the end, it cannot come to pass what its will sets out to do. It cannot become free. The arbitrariness of the individual destroys itself through the effect of its deeds.“ (Lit.:GA 9, p. 190f)

The roots of human Freedom

The ‘Fight in Heaven’

→ Main article: Fight in Heaven

In the transition period from the Old Sun to the Old Moon, the so-called ‘fight in heaven’ took place. In this process, entities from the hierarchy of the Dynameis (Spirits of Motion) were, as it were, "commanded away" to act as adversaries to inhibit progressive development, but precisely by doing so to bring about a new essential evolutionary leap. These powers were not yet evil in themselves and could not have become inhibiting forces of their own will. But by running up a storm against normal development and thereby opening up new paths for evolution, they also became producers of evil in the end, but precisely by doing so, they made freedom possible. They themselves did not yet have this freedom, but a part of the angelic beings who completed their humanity stage on the Old Moon, i.e. their I-development, could free themselves from the will of the Deity through the inhibiting influence of the Dynameis and pursue their own goals. They thus became Luciferic spirits.

„Thus we see that in a certain respect it was only through the Dynameis being ‘commanded away’ that man was given the possibility of attaining the goal out of himself, which even the highest Seraphim cannot attain out of themselves. That is the essence. They cannot act in any other way, the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, than to follow directly the impulses which the Deity gives. The Kyriotetes, the entire Second Hierarchy, cannot act otherwise either. Of the Dynameis, a number were ‘commanded away’; so also those Dynameis, who threw themselves, so to speak, into the path of evolution, could not do otherwise than follow the orders of the Deity. Even in what one might call the origin of evil, there too they only carry out the will of the Deity; by making themselves servants of evil, they only carry out the will of the Deity, which wants to develop the strong good through the deviation of evil. And now let us descend to those entities which we call the Exusiai: Through themselves they could not have achieved this. Neither could they have become evil through themselves; nor could the Spirits of Personality, nor the Spirits of Fire. For when these were human beings on the sun, the Dynameis were not yet commanded away, there was no possibility at all of becoming evil. The first who had the possibility of becoming evil were the Angels, for this possibility only existed through the evolution of the moon. There, from the sun to the moon, the fight in the heavens took place. A part of the Angels rejected this possibility, did not allow themselves to be tempted, so to speak, by the forces that were to lead into the hindrances; they remained with the old nature. So that down to the Angels, and even in a part of the Angels, we have before us such entities of the Spiritual Hierarchies which absolutely cannot do otherwise than follow the Divine Will, for whom there is no possibility of not following the Divine Will. That is the essence.

And now we come to two categories of entities: First, those Angels who threw themselves into what the Dynameis wreaked during the fight in the heavens. These were such entities that, because of their further deeds, we call the Luciferic entities. These entities then approached the human astral body during the evolution of the earth and gave man the possibility of evil, but with it also the possibility of developing himself out of his own free strength. So that within the entire sequence of the hierarchies we have the possibility of freedom only in a part of the Angels and in man. The possibility of freedom begins, so to speak, in the middle of the progression of Angels; but only in man is it developed in the right way. When man entered upon earth, however, he had to succumb to the great force of the Luciferic spirits. They penetrated the astral body of man with their forces, and the I was thereby included in these forces; so that during the Lemurian and Atlantean periods, and even afterwards, we have the I as in a cloud, as wrapped in a cloud, which was brought about by the influences of Lucifer. Man has only been saved from being overpowered by the forces pulling him down by the fact that earlier beings have overshadowed him, that the Angels who remained above, and the Archangels above, have embodied themselves in special individuals and guided him. And this had been taking place up to that point in time when something very exceptional occurred, when a Being, who until then had only been connected with the existence of the sun, had come so far that it could now not only, like earlier Beings of the higher worlds, enter into the physical body, etheric body and astral body of man, but that it could penetrate man into the I.“ (Lit.:GA 110, p. 166f)

Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha

The Luciferic spirits made it possible for man to attain freedom during the evolution of the earth, namely, the freedom to free himself from the will of the Deity. But this is only one, the negative side of freedom. Man would have fallen prey to the Luciferic powers that worked in his astral body. This could only be prevented by the Christ incarnating himself on earth. The Christ works directly through the I of the human being, but in doing so he divests himself of any claim to power and thereby makes it possible for the human being to rise to the spiritual by free choice. Only in this way is full freedom realised.

„... this deed is such that it has no other effect on any human being than that he himself chooses to let an effect have on him, that is, when it is compatible with the absolutely free character of his individual I. For it is not enough for the Christ to become present in the human astral body, the Christ must, if he is to be really understood, become present in the human I. And the I must freely decide to receive the Christ. That is what matters. But it is precisely through this that this human I, when it unites with the Christ, takes into itself a reality, a divine power, not merely a doctrine. Therefore it can be proved a hundred times over that all the teachings of Christianity are already to be found here or there; but that is not what matters, but rather, that which is essential in Christianity is the deed, which can only become one's own possession through a voluntary elevation into the higher worlds. Thus man receives the Christ-power in that he receives it voluntarily, and no one can receive it who does not receive it voluntarily. But this has only become possible for man because the Christ became man on earth, for he was called upon to become man on earth.“ (Lit.:GA 110, p. 170)

„This is the great difference between Christianity as compared with the old doctrines of the gods. If man wants to find the Christ, he must find him in freedom. He must freely acknowledge the Mystery of Golgotha. The content of the cosmogonies forced itself upon man. The Mystery of Golgotha does not force itself upon man. He must approach the Mystery of Golgotha in a certain resurrection of his being in freedom.“ (Lit.:GA 207, p. 180)

„If the God who is called by the name of Father-God had once not allowed the Luciferic influences to approach man, man would not have developed the free I-disposition. Through the Luciferic influence the disposition to the free I was established. This had to be permitted by the Father-God. But after the I -- for the sake of freedom -- had to be entangled in matter, the complete love of the Son had to lead to the deed of Golgotha in order to be free the I again from this entanglement in matter. This alone made human freedom and complete human dignity possible. That we can be free beings, we owe to a divine deed of love. Thus, as human beings, we may feel as free beings, but we must never forget that we owe this freedom to God's deed of love. If we think in this way, the thought will move to the centre of our feelings: You can attain human dignity; but this you must not forget, that what you are you owe to the One who restored you to your original human form through redemption on Golgotha! - The idea of freedom should

Drawing from GA 131, p. 229

not be able to be grasped without the redemptive thought of Christ. Only then is the thought of freedom a justified one. If we want to be free, we must make the sacrifice of owing our freedom to Christ! Only then can we really perceive it.“ (Lit.:GA 131, p. 228f)

„Twice in the evolution of mankind the same word has been used: Once in the Paradise Temptation, when Lucifer said to man, ‘You will be like the gods, your eyes will be opened.’ This is the figurative expression for the Luciferic impulse. Lucifer thus poured spirituality into the lower nature of man and through this gave man the opportunity to come to inner freedom through moral motives. And a second time was now said by the Christ: Are you not gods? (John 10:34 LUT) - The same word! From this we see that it is not only the content of a word that is important, but also the essence which the word speaks, the manner in which a word is spoken. There we see the necessary connection between the deed of Lucifer and the deed of Christ also expressed in a figurative way, as religious documents are wont to do.

Lucifer is the bringer of the personal freedom of the individual human being, Christ is the bearer of the freedom of the whole human race, of the whole human race on earth. This is the significance of Anthroposophy, that it teaches us that the recognition of the Christ-being will take place in such a way that man is free to recognise the Christ or not, just as man is free not to be moral.

A free truth shall be the Christ for the human soul.“ (Lit.:GA 150, p. 99)

„And since this heavenly, the intellectuality and freedom have thus entered into earthly life, a different looking up to divinity has become necessary for humanity than was formerly the case. And this different way of looking up to divinity has become possible for humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha. By entering into earthly life, the Christ can sanctify that which has entered from the supersensible worlds and which would otherwise seduce man to pride and all manner of things. We live in a time when we must comprehend: That which is most sacred to us in this age must be permeated by the Christ-impulse: the ability to grasp pure concepts, and the ability of freedom.“ (Lit.:GA 257, p. 45)

Development towards freedom

Freedom is not given to man from the beginning, but rather, he must develop it on his own by rising to pure sensory-free thinking and, through this, experience moral intuition.

„One asks: is man free or is he not free? Is man a free being who can make decisions out of his soul with real responsibility, or is he harnessed to a natural or spiritual necessity like a natural being? This question has been asked, I would like to say, for thousands of years, and this question is still being asked. This very question is the great error.

One cannot ask in this way, but the question of freedom is a question of human development, such a human development that in the course of his youthful life, or perhaps of his later life, man develops forces within himself which he does not simply have from nature. One cannot even ask: Is man free? He is not free by nature, but he can make himself more and more free by awakening forces that lie dormant in him and that nature does not awaken. Man can become freer and freer. One cannot ask: Is man free or unfree, but only: Is there a way for man to attain freedom? And this path does exist. As I said, thirty years ago I tried to show: When man advances to develop an inner life within himself, so that he grasps the moral impulses for his actions in pure thought, he can really base his actions on thought impulses, not merely on instinctive emotions, - thoughts which submerge themselves in outer reality as the lover does in the beloved being. Then man approaches his freedom. Freedom is just as much a child of thought grasped in spiritual clairvoyance - not under an external compulsion - as it is a child of true devoted love, the love for the object of his action. What German spiritual life was striving for in Schiller, when he confronted Kant and suspected something of such a concept of freedom, behoves us to develop it further in the present. But then it became clear to me that one can only speak of that which underlies moral actions - even if it remains unconscious in human beings, it is nevertheless present - and that one must call this intuition. Therefore, in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom’ I spoke of a moral intuition.

But this was also the starting point for everything I later tried to achieve in the field of spiritual science. Do not believe that I think about these things today in an immodest way. I know very well that this ‘Philosophy of Freedom’, which I conceived more than thirty years ago as a young man, has, as it were, all the teething troubles of that life of thought which emerged in the course of the 19th century. But I also know that out of this cerebral life has sprouted that which has lifted the life of thought into the truly spiritual. So that I can say to myself: When man rises to the moral impulses in moral intuition and represents a truly free being, then he is already, if I may use the frowned-upon word, ‘clairvoyant’ with reference to his moral intuitions. In that which lies beyond all that is sensory lie the incentives of all that is moral. Basically, the truly moral precepts are results of human clairvoyance. Therefore, there was a straight path from that ‘Philosophy of Freedom’ to what I mean today as spiritual science. Freedom germinates in man only when man develops himself. But he can develop further, so that which already underlies freedom also drives him to become independent of all sensuality and to rise freely into the realms of the spirit.

Thus freedom is connected with the development of human thought. Freedom is basically always freedom of thought ...“ (Lit.:GA 333, p. 107ff)

Literature

• Jan-Christoph Heilinger: Naturgeschichte der Freiheit, Berlin 2007 academia.edu
• Geert Keil: Willensfreiheit, 3. Auflage, De Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3110533453, ASIN B015N8BAAW
• Geert Keil: Willensfreiheit und Determinismus, zweite, überarb. Auflage, Reclam, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3150203293
• Anna Seemüller (Hrsg.), Tanja Gabriele Baudson (Hrsg.), Martin Dresler (Hrsg.): Freiheit. Interdisziplinäre Betrachtungen, S. Hirzel Verlag 2010, ISBN 978-3-7776-2199-9
• Christoph J. Hueck: Evolution im Doppelstrom der Zeit, Vlg. am Goetheanum, Dornach 2012
• Clemens Horvat: Die Paulus-Briefe und Rudolf Steiners Philosophie der Freiheit, 2. Auflage, Books on Demand 2019, ISBN 978-3748141877, eBook ASIN B07W4LSC73
• Clemens Horvat: Die Wirklichkeit der Freiheit: Zu den erkenntniswissenschaftlichen und christologischen Grundlagen der Anthroposophie, 5. Auflage, Books on Demand 2017, ISBN 978-3743137776, eBook ASIN B06XPKVVXP
• Rudolf Steiner: Einleitungen zu Goethes Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften, GA 1 (1987), ISBN 3-7274-0011-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Philosophie der Freiheit, GA 4 (1978) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Rätsel der Philosophie, GA 18 (1985) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Drei Schritte der Anthroposophie. Philosophie – Kosmologie – Religion, GA 25 (1999), ISBN 3-7274-0252-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Anthroposophische Leitsätze, GA 26 (1998), ISBN 3-7274-0260-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Der Goetheanumgedanke inmitten der Kulturkrisis der Gegenwart, GA 36 (1961), ISBN 3-7274-0360-8 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Briefe Band I: 1881 – 1890, GA 38 (1985), ISBN 3-7274-0380-2 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Wirklichkeit der höheren Welten, GA 79 (1988), ISBN 3-7274-0790-5 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Grundelemente der Esoterik, GA 93a (1987)
• Rudolf Steiner: Geistige Hierarchien und ihre Widerspiegelung in der physischen Welt, GA 110 (1991), ISBN 3-7274-1100-7 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Von Jesus zu Christus, GA 131 (1988), ISBN 3-7274-1310-7 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Welt des Geistes und ihr Hereinragen in das physische Dasein, GA 150 (1980), ISBN 3-7274-1500-2 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Verbindung zwischen Lebenden und Toten, GA 168, Dornach 1995
• Rudolf Steiner: Geschichtliche Notwendigkeit und Freiheit. Schicksalseinwirkungen aus der Welt der Toten, GA 179 (1977)
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Brücke zwischen der Weltgeistigkeit und dem Physischen des Menschen, GA 202 (1993), ISBN 3-7274-2020-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Anthroposophie als Kosmosophie – Erster Teil, GA 207 (1990), ISBN 3-7274-2070-7 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Philosophie, Kosmologie und Religion in der Anthroposophie, GA 215 (1980), ISBN 3-7274-2152-5 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Esoterische Betrachtungen karmischer Zusammenhänge. Erster Band, GA 235 (1994), ISBN 3-7274-2350-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Anthroposophische Gemeinschaftsbildung, GA 257 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-2570-9 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Das Zusammenwirken von Ärzten und Seelsorgern, GA 318 (1994), ISBN 3-7274-3181-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Gedankenfreiheit und soziale Kräfte, GA 333 (1985), ISBN 3-7274-3330-2 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, Heft 49/50 Beiträge (Contributions) 49

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.