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.
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