The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preface to the New Edition (1918)

[ 1 ] There are two fundamental questions concerning human spiritual life around which everything to be discussed in this book is organized. The first is whether there is a way of viewing the human being such that this view serves as a foundation for everything else that comes to the human being through experience or science, yet which he feels cannot stand on its own. It could be driven into the realm of the uncertain by doubt and critical judgment. The other question is this: May human beings, as volitional beings, attribute freedom to themselves, or is this freedom a mere illusion that arises within them because they do not see through the threads of necessity to which their volition is just as bound as a natural phenomenon? It is not an artificial figment of the imagination that gives rise to this question. It arises quite naturally before the soul in a certain state of mind. And one can sense that the soul would be lacking something of what it is meant to be if it did not confront the two possibilities—freedom or necessity of volition—with the utmost seriousness of inquiry. This treatise aims to show that the soul’s experiences, which human beings must undergo through the second question, depend on the perspective they are able to adopt toward the first. An attempt is made to demonstrate that there is a conception of human nature capable of underpinning all other knowledge; and a further attempt to indicate that, with this conception, the idea of the freedom of the will gains full justification, provided only that the realm of the soul is found in which free will can unfold.

[ 2 ] The insight discussed here in relation to these two questions is one that, once gained, can become an integral part of the soul’s living life itself. No theoretical answer is provided that, once acquired, is merely carried along as a conviction preserved in memory. For the mode of thinking underlying this book, such an answer would be merely superficial. No such ready-made, definitive answer is given; rather, reference is made to a realm of soul experience in which, through the soul’s inner activity itself, the question is answered anew and vividly at every moment when the human being requires it. Once one has found the realm of the soul where these questions unfold, the very perception of this realm provides what one needs for these two mysteries of life, so that, with what has been attained, one may journey further into the breadth and depth of the enigmatic life, where need and destiny lead one to go. — A realization that proves its validity and significance through its own life and through the kinship of this life with the entire human soul life seems thus to be demonstrated.

[ 3 ] This is how I viewed the content of this book when I wrote it down twenty-five years ago. Even today, I must write down such sentences if I wish to highlight the central ideas of the text. When I wrote it down back then, I limited myself to saying no more than what is strictly related to the two fundamental questions identified. If anyone should be surprised that this book contains no reference yet to the realm of the spiritual world of experience, which has been presented in my later writings, let them bear in mind that at that time I did not wish to give an account of the results of spiritual research, but rather to lay the foundation upon which such results can rest. This Philosophy of Freedom contains no such specific findings, any more than it contains specific findings from the natural sciences; but what it does contain, in my opinion, is indispensable for anyone seeking a firm foundation for such insights. What is said in the book may also be acceptable to some people who, for whatever reasons they deem valid, wish to have nothing to do with my results of Spiritual Science research. But for those who can regard these results of Spiritual Science as something to which they are drawn, what has been attempted here may also be of importance. This is: to demonstrate how an unbiased consideration, extending merely to the two questions indicated as fundamental to all knowledge, leads to the insight that human beings live within a true spiritual world. This book endeavors to justify an understanding of the spiritual realm prior to entering into spiritual experience. And this justification is undertaken in such a way that one need not, at any point in these explanations, look to the experiences I will later cite in order to find what is said here acceptable, provided one is able or willing to engage with the nature of these explanations themselves.

[ 4 ] Thus, it seems to me that this book, on the one hand, occupies a position entirely distinct from my other works in Spiritual Science; yet, on the other hand, it is also most closely connected to them. All of this has prompted me, now, twenty-five years later, to republish the content of the work essentially almost entirely unchanged. I have only added longer supplements to a whole series of sections. The experiences I have had with misunderstandings of what I have said made such detailed expansions seem necessary to me. I have made changes only where what I intended to say a quarter-century ago now seems to me to have been expressed clumsily. (Only someone with ill will would be led by these changes to say that I have altered my fundamental convictions.)

[ 5 ] The book has been out of print for many years. Nevertheless, as is evident from what I have just said, it seems to me that what I said twenty-five years ago regarding the issues in question should still be stated today; for this reason, I hesitated for a long time before completing this new edition. I kept asking myself whether I ought not, at this or that point, to grapple with the numerous philosophical views that have come to light since the publication of the first edition. My recent preoccupation with purely Spiritual Science research prevented me from doing so in the manner I would have wished. However, after examining contemporary philosophical work as thoroughly as possible, I have now convinced myself that, as tempting as such an examination might be in itself, it does not belong in this book given what it is intended to convey. What I felt needed to be said about recent philosophical trends from the perspective taken in The Philosophy of Freedom can be found in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy.

April 1918
Rudolf Steiner