The Rudolf Steiner Archive

19. Human Freedom

[ 1 ] Our view of the sources of our cognition cannot be without influence on that of our practical actions. Man acts according to mental determinations that lie within him. What he accomplishes is based on intentions, goals that he sets for himself. But it is quite natural that these aims, intentions, ideals, etc., will have the same character as the rest of man's world of thought. And so there will be a practical truth of dogmatic science which has an essentially different character from that which arises as the consequence of our theory of knowledge. If the truths which man arrives at in science are conditioned by a factual necessity which has its seat outside of thought, so too will be the ideals on which he bases his actions. Man then acts according to laws whose justification he lacks in factual terms: he thinks of a norm that is prescribed for his actions from outside. But this is the character of the commandment that man has to observe. The dogma as practical truth is a moral commandment.

[ 2 ] The situation is completely different when we take our theory of knowledge as a basis. This recognizes no other ground of truths than the content of thought that lies within them. Therefore, when a moral ideal comes into being, it is the inner power that lies in the content of that ideal that guides our actions. It is not because an ideal is given to us as a law that we act according to it, but because the ideal is active in us by virtue of its content and guides us. The drive to act does not lie outside us, but within us. We felt subject to the dictates of duty, we had to act in a certain way because it commands us to do so. First comes the ought and then the will, which has to submit to it. In our view, this is not the case. The will is sovereign. It only carries out what lies within the human personality as thought content. Man does not have laws given to him by an external power, he is his own lawgiver.

[ 3 ] Who should give them to him, according to our world view? The world-ground has poured itself completely into the world; it has not withdrawn from the world in order to direct it from without, it drives it from within; it has not withheld itself from it. The highest form in which it appears within the reality of ordinary life is thought, and with it the human personality. Thus, if the world ground has goals, they are identical with the goals that man sets for himself by living himself. Man does not act according to the intentions of the world ruler by following his commands, but by acting according to his own insights. For in them that world ruler lives himself. He does not live as a will somewhere outside of man; he has given up all self-will in order to make everything dependent on man's will. So that man can be his own lawgiver, all thoughts of extra-human world determinations and the like must be abandoned.

[ 4 ] We take this opportunity to draw attention to Kreyenbühl's excellent treatise in the "Philosophische Monatshefte", Volume 18, Issue 3. This treatise correctly explains how the maxims of our actions are based on direct determinations of our individuality; how everything ethically great is not inspired by the power of the moral law but is carried out in response to the direct urge of an individual idea.

[ 5 ] Only in this view is true human freedom possible. If man does not carry within himself the reasons for his actions, but must be guided by commandments, he acts under compulsion, he is under a necessity, almost like a mere natural being.

[ 6 ] Our philosophy is therefore in an eminent sense a philosophy of freedom.^{a9The ideas of this philosophy were later developed further in my "Philosophy of Freedom" (1894).} It first shows theoretically how all forces, etc., which controlled the world from outside must be removed in order to make man his own master in the very best sense of the word. When man acts morally, this is not for us the fulfillment of duty, but the expression of his completely free nature. Man does not act because he should, but because he wants to. Goethe also had this view in mind when he said: "Lessing, who felt many a restriction unwillingly, has one of his characters say: Nobody has to. A witty, happy-minded man said: Whoever wants to, must. A third, admittedly an educated man, added: We see, he also wants." There is therefore no motivation for our actions other than our insight. Without the addition of any compulsion, the free man acts according to his insight, according to commandments which he gives himself.

[ 7 ] The well-known Kant-Schiller controversy revolved around these truths. Kant took the position of the law of duty. He believed that the moral law was degraded if he made it dependent on human subjectivity. In his view, man only acts morally if he renounces all subjective impulses in his actions and bows purely to the majesty of duty. Schiller saw this view as a degradation of human nature. Should it really be so bad that it has to eliminate its own impulses so completely if it wants to be moral! Schiller's and Goethe's view of the world can only subscribe to the view we have stated. The starting point of his actions is to be sought in man himself.

[ 8 ] This is why history, whose subject is man, must not speak of external influences on his actions, of ideas that lie in time, etc.; least of all of a plan that underlies it. History is nothing other than the development of human actions, views, etc. "At all times it is only the individuals who have worked for science, not the age. It was the age that executed Socrates by poison; the age that burned Muß; the ages have always remained the same," says Goethe. All a priori construction of plans on which history should be based is contrary to the historical method, as it arises from the nature of history. This aims to become aware of what people have contributed to the progress of their race; to find out what goals this or that personality has set for themselves, what direction they have given their time. History can certainly be based on human nature. Their will, their tendencies must be understood. Our epistemology entirely excludes the imputation of a purpose to history, such as that men should be educated from a lower stage of perfection to a higher one, etc. In the same way, it seems erroneous in our view if, as Herder does in his "Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind", historical events are to be understood in the same way as natural facts, according to the sequence of cause and effect. The laws of history are of a much higher nature. One fact of physics is determined by another in such a way that the law is above the phenomena. A historical fact is determined as an ideal by an ideal. There can only be talk of cause and effect if one is completely attached to externality. Who could believe that he reflects the matter when he calls Luther the cause of the Reformation? History is essentially an ideal science. Its reality is already ideas. Therefore, devotion to the object is the only correct method. Any going beyond it is unhistorical.

[ 9 ] Psychology, Folklore and History ^{a10Now that I have worked on the various areas of what I call "anthroposophy", I would have to insert this "anthroposophy" here if I were writing this little book today. Forty years ago, when I was writing it, "psychology", in an admittedly uncommon sense, was something that included the view of the entire "spiritual world" (pneumatology). But it must not be inferred from this that I wanted to exclude this "spiritual world" from the knowledge of man.} are the most important forms of spiritual science. Its methods, as we have seen, are based on the direct apprehension of ideal reality. Their object is the idea, the spiritual, just as that of inorganic science was the law of nature, the type of organic science.