I believe the Philosophy of Freedom captures the spirit of the new 21st century. This website has been putting out that message for five years with 30 videos attracting almost 60,000 views, 17000 search pages online (yahoo), and 170,000 website visits. And now we are starting to see the results of all this work from the many contributors to the website.

The Philosophy of Freedom T-shirt!

Hardly mentioned before, even within anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom has now risen to the core of American culture. You haven’t arrived until your image is displayed boldly on a T-shirt that others are willing to wear.

The Philosophy of Freedom is COOL, AWESOME, and more. Increase your status by wearing it on your body!

Has your reading of the Philosophy of Freedom been a personal choice done behind closed doors? Time to come out of the closet and proudly tell the world who you are. 

A private entrepreneur selected “Philosophy of Freedom” along with some other Waldorf designs to sell online. The T-shirt company is not affiliated with this website, but we could offer a line of T-shirts if we came up with some designs.

You have a choice of several types and colors of the cotton T-shirts. You can even modify the wording. Order your T-shirt here. If you are a real fan of the book you may also want to order some boxer shorts.

 

POF 10-3 Whereas the materialistic dualist makes man an automaton whose actions are only the result of a purely mechanical system, the spiritualistic dualist (that is, one who sees the Absolute, the Being-in-itself, as something spiritual in which man has no share in his conscious experience) makes him a slave to the will of the Absolute.

As in materialism, so also in one-sided spiritualism, in fact in any kind of metaphysical realism inferring but not experiencing something extra-human as the true reality, freedom is out of the question.

 

 

POF 10-6 According to the monistic view, the human being acts unfreely when he obeys some perceptible external compulsion; he acts freely, when he obeys none but himself…

If anyone asserts that the action of a fellow is done unfreely, then he must identify the thing or the person or the institution within the perceptible world, that has caused the person to act.

 

I am searching foreign language websites looking for interesting content to post and found this on a German site.

POF 9-8 "I do not work out mentally whether my action is good or bad; I carry it out because I love it.... I do not ask myself, "How would another man act in my position?" -- but I act as I, this particular individuality, find I have occasion to do.... I feel no compulsion, neither the compulsion of nature which guides me by my instincts, nor the compulsion of the moral commandments, but I want simply to carry out what lies within me."

"There is an anecdote of Rudolf Steiner that he was very amused to find his "Philosophy of Freedom" in a library on the shelf below, "Anarchy".  The above quotations set such an arrangement that is obviously close. Steiner advocates vehemently against the idea that the human will is determined by external circumstances, but to the contrary, he says that if a person fully develops as a human being his intention (wanting) just like his thinking is free." by Andreas Meier But don't worry, the free spirit's non-conformity may be viewed as dangerous only for a limited amount of time until you get to know him better. POF 9-12 The philistine, who sees the embodiment of morality in an external code, may see in the free spirit even a dangerous person. But that is only because his view is narrowed down to a limited period of time. If he were able to look beyond this, he would at once find that the free spirit just as seldom needs to go beyond the laws of his state as does the philistine himself,

 

 

POF 7-2 The conditions necessary for cognition to take place are there through the I and for the I. The I sets itself the problems of cognition; and moreover it takes them from an element that is absolutely clear and transparent in itself: the element of thinking.

If we set ourselves questions which we cannot answer, it must be because the content of the questions is not in all respects clear and distinct. It is not the world which sets us the questions, but we ourselves.

 

Models of Rudolf Steiner’s Goetheanum II and the Representative of Humanity and a panel drawing were on display at the Pompidou Center in Paris last summer at one of the major artistic events of the year.

“Traces of the Sacred” displayed a broad selection of paintings, sculptures, installations and videos bringing together some 350 major works by almost 200 artists of international renown.

A significant strain of modern art has found its roots in the turmoil of the loss of conventional religious belief. The exhibition revolved around the role of the spiritual in the twentieth century and the struggle to offer answers to the questions "what are we, where do we come from, and where are we going?".

The goal of the exhibition is to explore the significance of the survival of such questioning throughout the twentieth century, and to show that it continues to fuel the invention of contemporary artistic forms, and as such represents an essential key to the understanding of modern art.

I wonder if the Goetheanum could have come up with something better than the cheap looking models for such a significant event, or are they authentic design models made by Steiner?

photos by Christian Grauer, rudolf-steiner.de

How does Anthroposophy differ from Buddhism and other Eastern paths?

The central premise of Buddhism is that emptying of one’s desires is the key to personal salvation. This emptying involves the voiding of one’s personal will.

POF 13-11 Those who hold that moral ideals are attainable only if man destroys his own personal will, are not aware that these ideals are wanted by the human being just as he wants the satisfaction of the so-called animal instincts.

Moral ideals spring from the moral imagination of the human being. They are his intuitions, the driving forces which his spirit harnesses; he wants them, because their realization is his highest pleasure. He needs no ethics to forbid him to strive for pleasure and then to tell him what he shall strive for.

Are our thoughts determined by material processes?

FOR
Steven Pinker, Evolutionary psychologist
I don’t believe there’s such a thing as free will in the sense of a ghost and a machine, a spirit or a soul that somehow reads the TV screen of the senses and pushes buttons and pulls the levers of behavior. Our behavior is the product of physical processes in the brain.

On the other hand, when you have a brain that consists of one hundred billion neurons connected by one hundred trillion synopses, there is a vast amount of complexity. That means that human choices will not be predictable in any simple way from the stimuli that I’ve hinged on beforehand.

If the human mind is the product of a “Ghost in the Machine" (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology) and not the result of electrochemical interactions among neurons, then the mind should not be dependent on the configuration of the brain that houses it. In short, there should be aspects of the mind that owe nothing to the physical functioning of the brain.

AGAINST
Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom Chapter 3
It can be observed that thinking is not determined by material processes in the brain. We know WHY our thinking connects one concept with another. The relevant context and the connection between the concepts is clear to us from the content of the two concepts themselves. For example, the concept "organism" links up with other concepts such as "lawful development" and "growth". Introspection 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.

 

A crop "circle" is a geometric pattern, often very intricate and complex, appearing in fields, usually wheat fields and usually in England. The earliest mention of a crop circle dates back to the 1500s. A 17th century English woodcut shows a devilish creature making a crop circle. People who lived in the area called the creature the "mowing devil."

Some believe that the crop designs are messages from alien spacecraft. Scientists have stretched their imaginations to come up with theories of vortexes, ball lightning, plasma, and other less occult explanations involving natural forces such as wind, heat, or animals.

Many crop circles are probably due to pranksters, but contrary to popular belief, trampling, breaking or bending the stalks of the plants affected does not explain many other crop circles. Even though the stalks are bent, they are not damaged. Most of the time, the crop continues to grow as normal. The stalk of each plant is softened at a precise point by an, as yet, unidentified force which causes the entire stalk to collapse. This same force, with incredible mathematical detail, lays the entire flattened area in interwoven, swirled layers .

According to Rudolf Steiner, the gnomes are root spirits and are responsible for pushing plants up out of the ground. With the fundamental force of their being they unceasingly thrust away from the earthly, and it is this thrust that determines the upward direction of plant growth. The gnomes cause the plant to have only its roots in the earth and to grow out of the earth; in fact, the gnomes force the plants to grow upwards and out of the earth.

Could the gnomes be using elemental forces to create the crop circles? For what reason? Their nature prompts them to play all sorts of tricks on the human being. Is this some alien joke on gullible humans? Or rather than tricks, could they be trying to awaken human beings with designs specifically arranged in such way as to awaken the collective unconscious? Have Robert Powell and Kevin Dann mentioned the gnomes in connection with 2012? A gnome was seen fleeing the scene of a recent crop circle in Wiltshire, England. Upon being discovered the gnome responded by mooning the crop circle researcher. This photo is now being used to support the "gnome trick" theory.

 

Ethical individualism is Intuitively Determined "Action"
POF 9-7 The conduct of a human being will therefore depend on the manner in which his faculty of intuition works in a given situation. The sum of ideas which are effective in us, the concrete content of our intuitions, constitutes what is individual in each of us, notwithstanding the universality of the world of ideas.

In so far as this intuitive content applies to action, it constitutes the moral content of the individual. To let this content express itself in life is both the highest moral driving force and the highest motive a man can have, who sees that in this content all other moral principles are in the end united. We may call this point of view ethical individualism.

The decisive factor of an intuitively determined action in any concrete instance is the discovery of the corresponding purely individual intuition.

POF 9-1 Psyche-Physical Organization
The human organization contributes nothing to the essential nature of thinking, but recedes whenever the activity of thinking makes its appearance; it suspends its own activity, it yields ground; and on the ground thus left empty, the thinking appears.

The essence which is active in thinking has a twofold function: first, it represses the activity of the human organization; secondly, it steps into its place.

For even the former, the repression of the physical organization, is a consequence of the activity of thinking, and more particularly of that part of this activity which prepares the manifestation of thinking.

Lionizing
The benefits that would accrue to an esoteric movement from a really rigorous exclusion of sympathetic and antipathetic attitudes are beyond estimating. This would eliminate the harm done by lionizing, which is sympathy-gone-overboard.

To lionize means to form a Luciferic claque around supposedly special personalities. This not only tends to cut off those so venerated from non-claque members, thus lessening their fruitfulness: it swells heads much better left life-sized while at the same time reducing the claque's members to non-entities.

Furthermore, it works strongly counter to the greatly-needed insight that all human beings have unique personalities which deserve and require developing. To fail to develop them leads to waste more wanton than any human enterprise can allow itself and still entertain the hope of prospering.

Lionizing is thus in all three aspects illness -- illness moving toward a fatal outcome in that it gradually drains away the strength of the organism, while certain of its parts suffer from gigantism. Is this not cancer of the body social?
Refections on Community Building by Marjorie Spock

Community of Spirit
We are firmly grounded in our understanding of things of the spirit only when we do not rest content with abstract spiritual concepts and a capacity to express them theoretically, but instead grow into a sure belief that higher beings are present with us in a community of spirit when we engage in spiritual study.
Awakening to Community by Rudolf Steiner

Harmony of Intentions
It is only because human individuals are one in spirit that they can live out their lives side by side. The free human being lives in confidence that he and any other free human beings belong to one spiritual world, and that their intentions will harmonize. The free human being does not demand agreement from his fellows, but expects to find it because it is inherent in human nature. I am not here referring to the necessity for this or that external institution, but to the disposition, the attitude of soul, through which the human being, aware of himself among his fellows, most clearly expresses the ideal of human dignity.
9-10 Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner

Subliminal Messages
Because of copyright youtube blocks this video in Guernsey, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, United Kingdom.

In Waldorf Schools, the keynote is the attainment of inner freedom but within a more Western perspective. Rather than seeking spiritual freedom, the aim of Waldorf Schools is to develop free individuals who can find their own truth when they reach adult life.

Unlike most holistic/humanistic educators, Steiner interpreted freedom as a state achieved in the course of adult life rather than a principle to be practiced during childhood.

In fact, he sternly argued against affording undue freedom to children prematurely. He firmly believed that before puberty, children are not ready for independent judgment, for questioning values, for discussing ideas objectively, or for intellectually determining right from wrong.

He claimed that what children needed is right guidance and a loving relationship with their teacher based upon trust and respect for his/her authority. Hence in Waldorf Schools, “freedom is a long-term goal cultivated through love, structure, and control.”

In high school however, Waldorf students enjoy some level of freedom. They are encouraged to pursue their interests, to take risks, to make decisions, and to voice their opinions. In short, they are encouraged to invest in their own self-development.

Youth Section brings Philosophy of Freedom principles to Goetheanum

As we enter the 21st century the principles in The Philosophy of Freedom have been taking hold throughout the world lead by a youth movement who recognizes the value of the individual, diversity of views, and community building that arises upward through free communication between the many rather than downward from the top ranks of authority.

The most dramatic example is the rise of Barack Obama and his respect of the value of individuals. His election was the result of a vast hi-tech communication network manned by the younger generation who understand and support diversity. It is happening in Iran and elsewhere as youth fight for social forms that support the individual. Now the revolution has reached all the way to the Goetheanum.

Amazing sign of change happening at the Goetheanum: Conversation. Several months ago the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum met with the Youth Section and --listened. Through this conversation it became clear: the activity of conversation itself was important. Out of this conversation an event came into being called Youth Section Weekend in which the organization of the event itself expresses the ideals of The Philosophy of Freedom..

“It is our hope that many different generations, nationalities, professions and points of view can come together at this event. We aim to create a space where each human being can be valued for their uniqueness, where we can develop an active empathy, and where we can recognise that each one of us is an important piece of ‘the puzzle.’”

The traditional one way flow lecture is being replaced by the group insight possible in interactive conversation groups. Time will even be permitted for individuals to bring up their own topics. The traditional lecture will be renewed as “short conversational” contributions.

“There will be conversation groups on a range of social topics (including social three-folding, economics, social sculpture, and more). There will also be space for you to bring the topic you are currently passionate about. In addition, there will be short ‘conversational’ contributions from Elizabeth Wirsching, Paul Mackay, Seth Jordan, Shelley Sacks, Ulrich Rösch and Katie Dobb.”

The Youth Section Weekend organizers understand that powerful ethical impulses can result from conversation that empower commitment to action.

“We hope that you join us as we attempt to leap from speaking about social commitment to entering a conversation, with commitment!”

The Youth Section Weekend will be held at the Goetheanum Nov. 27-29. More info here.

 

It always bothers me when a rock band names themselves after another well known word. When you search the original word on the web, for example Madonna, as in mother of Jesus, you get an endless list of links to Madonna the rock star. So when a search brought up Rudolf Steiner the rock band, I had a flash of an endless list of links to a rock band when someone searches for Rudolf Steiner the ethical individualist. Who is the band Rudolf Steiner and will they soon be dominating the internet?

Rudolf Steiner duo Kaya and Hora

In 2001, vocalist Kaya and keyboardist Hora formed the visual kei male duo Rudolf Steiner. Visual kei refers to a movement among Japanese musicians that is characterized by the use of eccentric, sometimes flamboyant looks. This usually involves striking make-up, unusual hair styles and elaborate costumes.


Rudolf Steiner audio song Queen of Decadence

In order to express the concept of "near future decadence", Rudolf Steiner decided to base their sound entirely on digital music with Kaya's dark and imaginative lyrics that centered on topics like gender identity and artificial life forms. This concept was also reflected in their makeup and costumes, which were influenced by gothic and fetish fashion. The band released two demo tapes, Perfect Garden and Queen of Decadence, but a recording deal was not made until 2002 when they signed to an independent music label and changed their name to Schwarz Stein. Schwarz Stein? Perhaps the new name sounds cool to Japanese. Hooray for the name change anyway.

Despite their growing popularity, Schwarz Stein announced in February 2004 that they would split up due to their different personalities and stances towards music. As rock bands want to be original, another band would not likely want to name themselves Rudolf Steiner again, but the cool name Anthroposophy is available.

Hermann Obrist tomb

Hermann Obrist

In the late nineteenth century German conventional architectural theory that had relied on historicism gave way to themes of rhythm, bodily movement, and space. Hermann Obrist (1863–1927) was one of the most influential visionaries of the time whose inspirations for abstract designs were derived from natural forms and phenomena. His fountains and tombs of around 1900 created the first abstract sculptures that developed a language of their own through the interaction of organic and inorganic structures. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) likely knew or knew of Obrist who was said to have Steiner books in his library.

Hermann Obrist

Rudolf Steiner First Goetheanum 1913 Second Goetheanum 1923

POF 9-10
Why should my action be of less service to the public good when I have done it out of love than when I have done it only because I consider serving the public good to be my duty?

The mere concept of duty excludes freedom because it does not acknowledge the individual element but demands that this be subject to a general standard. Freedom of action is conceivable only from the standpoint of ethical individualism.

The last sentence of the original Preface to Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom (or Spiritual Activity), reads: One must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its bondage.

There are, in general, two different kinds of biographical circumstances where one is presented with moral choices: 1) situational - that is karmic and destiny related - the question seeks us, we do not seek the question - it (the question) is part of the necessary given of our lives; and, 2) proactive - we seek to act upon the world in a situationally free way - that is we are not reacting to something that has come toward us through the unfolding of the biography, but choose an ideal as a direction or purpose to the unfolding of the biography.

Examples of the first kind are easy: someone makes change and gives us too much; a co-worker lies to our boss and puts the mutual work at risk; we are attracted to someone outside of the already committed personal relationships etc. etc. etc.

The second was best exemplified in the film Pay it Forward.  There one was to seek out people with certain clear needs for help, and seek to help them regardless of our own personal risk.   There were important details in the film and it is quite instructional to rewatch or watch it for the first time if you've never seen it.

In either case, there arises the opportunity for the engendering, through our own thinking activity, a moral idea or ideal.  What then is our relationship to this idea or ideal in either or both of the above cases (situational or proactive)? 

We should keep in mind that

POF 10-8 The moral laws which the metaphysician who works by mere inference must regard as issuing from a higher power, are, for the adherent of monism, thoughts of men; for him the moral world order is neither the imprint of a purely mechanical natural order, nor that of an extra-human world order, but through and through the free creation of men.

It is not the will of some being outside him in the world that man has to carry out, but his own; he puts into effect his own resolves and intentions, not those of another being.

Monism does not see, behind man's actions, the purposes of a supreme directorate, foreign to him and determining him according to its will, but rather sees that men, in so far as they realize their intuitive ideas, pursue only their own human ends.

Moreover, each individual pursues his own particular ends.

For the world of ideas comes to expression, not in a community of men, but only in human individuals. What appears as the common goal of a whole group of people is only the result of the separate acts of will of its individual members, and in fact, usually of a few outstanding ones who, as their authorities, are followed by the others.

Each one of us has it in him to be a free spirit, just as every rose bud has in it a rose.

Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine," writes Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of his new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate -- a sort of "long essay" to the faithful that deals with the matter of man's relationship to Mammon.

The Pontiff's emphasis on charity is consistent for the worldwide religious body whose adherents believe in divine love and the necessity to treat one's neighbors and even one's enemies as one wishes to be treated--Christianity's golden rule. In his new proclamation to Catholics, and to "all people of good will," the Pope calls on mankind to recall that "profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end . . ." However, he warns against profit as an exclusive goal.

The Pope examined globalization and the harm caused by rich countries exploiting poor countries and selected the ethical principle of charity to be the most important.

As the moral authority of millions his followers are encouraged to adopt this ethical principle of charity to economics. Then he supplies them with a moral imagination that applies this general principle of charity to specifically mean contributing a part of your business profits to charity.

POF 9-5 gives 4 levels of motives: 1. egotism, 2. moral authority, 3. moral insight, and the highest as 4. conceptual intuition. Those who accept the Pope's message as a command that must be followed because he is their authority operate at the second level of morality; moral authority. If you assume the Pope arrived at this leading moral principle by understanding that charity would do the greatest good for all humankind would put it at the third level: moral insight. It becomes a fixed principle to be applied to better the ethics of business. The Pope then puts his idea of "good" into a specific picture, a moral imagination of donating profits to charities.

The highest moral level is conceptual intuition which sees a certain value in all moral principles and always asks whether in the given case this or that principle is the more important. An ethical individualist would not be held to a fixed principle such as "doing the greatest good for humanity" but may select the principle of "the greatest good for myself". The particular moral principle would be selected for each single situation.

Einstein wrote in 1921, "Here arises a puzzle that has disturbed scientists of all periods. How is it possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality? Can human reason without experience discover by pure thinking the properties of things? "

Wigner concluded that the structure of mathematics and the structure of the physical universe are disturbingly similar. Wigner capped off his paper with a quote from the late philosopher Charles Pierce "that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered".

Rudolf Steiner's answer to this problem is straightforward and revealing. Thought maps so well onto external reality because, in its very essence, it is that reality.

As Steiner describes the act of cognition, the world comes to us not from just one direction, as has long been assumed in philosphic materialism, but from two opposite directions. Sense-born percepts are private, in that they are the product of our external sense organs, which are different for each of us, and because we each must occupy a different point in space. Percepts, however, do not carry their conceptual content with them, and without that content the world remains meaningless to us.

Ideas or concepts become a part of the cognitive act through the brain's capacity as an organ of sense for spiritual reality, i.e. for thought, which is the spiritual 'inside' of everything that is real. All ideas and concepts, therefore, have a universal or 'public' content in addition to the private content which we give them when we marry them, correctly or incorrectly, to our private world of percepts, and to the mental content, true or false, that we have already made into our own 'world-view'.

He tells us that the seeming paradox "I think, yet the world thinks in me" is a profound truth, and that any truly critical introspective study of the cognitive act will show this to be the case. He insists that the modern world has been almost totally blinded to this truth by the prevalence of materialistic assumptions in science and philosophy, i.e. by the view that ideas and concepts are merely the end-products of physical sense stimulation. Given this assumption, even great minds like Albert Einstein are left to impotently wonder why it is that human thought, seen as an entirely subjective activity, maps onto external reality in so remarkable a manner.

excerpt from
Chomsky and the Universal Grammar
by Don Cruse

Lecturer the Sun pole while the audience is the Moon
What role does the lecture have in a Free Community? The lecture format makes the lecturer the sun pole, his audience the Moon which makes for an old fashioned top down form of spiritual authority. Didn’t Rudolf Steiner lecture? That was the beginning stage of anthroposophy. Have we advanced since then?

Conversation As Shared Contemplation
The Philosophy of Freedom encourages and celebrates each person’s unique spiritual being and unique treasure which can enrichen community life. A balance is sought between the sun / moon polarity of speaking and listening. Group discussion, with effort by the participants, can rise to the level of contemplative conversation, or rather pure thinking as a group experience that results in group insight, real relationship between person and person, and a powerful impulse to joint activism. Community, then, will more likely be an awakening experience.

Steiner, in rare prophetic mode, talks about an actual incarnation of Ahriman on the earth and its potential consequences. Just as Christ incarnated in a physical body, so would Ahriman incarnate in the Western world - before 'a part' of the third millennium had passed.

Robert Powell, SteinerBooks author and speaker, and astrologer, gives us this exciting bit of speculation about the incarnation of Ahriman:

In the summer of 2009, on July 22, there is a total eclipse of the Sun at 2:36 AM Greenwich Mean Time. The path of the eclipse crosses India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, the southern islands of Japan, and the western Pacific Ocean. The Moon will be at its perigee (its closest position to the Earth), making it larger than the Sun, resulting in a wider path and greater duration. (The arc of the partial eclipse path on this date swings as far north as 60° N, right across northern Russia, and as far south as 30° S, touching the North Island of New Zealand)

According to Rudolf Steiner, these are conditions that will allow for the maximum power of evil (the beast) to arise up from the interior of the Earth, should human beings remain unaware of the importance of aligning with Christ and maintaining their own consciousness in a state of wakeful awareness in relation to this event.

At the time of the July 22, 2009 eclipse, there is a triple conjunction of Jupiter, Neptune, and Chiron (formerly called an asteroid, it is now classified as a "centaur," suggesting its dual nature as half comet, half asteroid) -- all within less than a single degree, and also a heliocentric opposition of Saturn with Uranus.

At the time of a total solar eclipse, something sulphurous is stirred up. At the time of a solar eclipse, according to Rudolf Steiner, "that which spreads out as negativity upon the Earth can be borne up in a Luciferic way into cosmic space where it can bring about further damage." Demonic spiritual beings are more agitated than usual at the time of an eclipse, and thus -- according to Steiner -- eclipses offer special opportunities for the activity of black magicians. Very few people are able to discern this working of evil at the time of a solar eclipse.

Could it be that the solar eclipse of July 22, 2009 -- the longest eclipse (lasting 6½ minutes) of the whole 21st century -- signifies the start of the 3½-year period of the rule of the Antichrist? If so, the incarnation of Ahriman may take place at or around the time of this solar eclipse.

The least honest are those who read The Philosophy of Freedom as they would any other book and then flatter themselves that they have really taken in the thoughts it contains. They’ve kept on reading strings of words without anything coming out of it that might be likened to the striking of steel on flint.  -Rudolf Steiner

 

In the new Steinerbooks catalogue there is a listing for Sergie Prokofief's book on the Philosophy of Freedom.

Has anyone read this book?

Comments?