The relationship between materialism and freedom is complex, on the one hand philosophical materialism (positivism) is a deterministic worldview (inexorably subject to physical laws) one that if it were true would permit no human freedom whatsoever, except if that freedom were somehow defined as being the outcome of pure chance. When the physical realm is seen as being created by a spiritual realm, however, as is described at great length in the works of Rudolf Steiner, then matter is seen as a prerequisite for the development of freedom, because it is in our relationship to the material world that freedom first becomes possible.

Philosophical materialism also, transitionally at least, can be seen as a boon to freedom in that it can cause us to deeply question the validity of religious dogma, and so release us from its millennia-long control over our minds. This rejection of religious authority does not imply the rejection of what religion has stood for (i.e. the existence of a spiritual world), but it makes it subject to deeper more critical levels of questioning, and to each individual’s own cognitive experience.

This is especially true of the kind of religious authority that has in the past perpetuated itself mainly by means of fear. I can still recall vividly in my youth reading the memoirs of a lapsed Catholic priest, who stated that at that time three-quarters of Irish Catholicism was based either upon the fear of punishment after death, or on the fear of social isolation. More recently a similar rejection of authority is to be found in The Dance of a Fallen Monk, written by George Fowler, who was a Trappist monk for seventeen years and priest for twelve, before finally leaving the church on the grounds that all he had learnt in that period was “self hatred”. Neither person gave up on the spiritual life, they were simply no longer willing to be part of a religious movement based upon hierarchical authority, which they saw as being out of step with the needs of our present age. This revolt is widespread today, and it is impossible to estimate just how great a part in creating it Darwinian materialism has played, but it has certainly been a significant part and is a good example of materialism almost inadvertently helping to create human freedom.

Christianity, although central to Rudolf Steiner’s worldview, is not seen by him as being dependent upon religious authority, and he was himself by no means an authoritarian, quite the opposite in fact. For Steiner human freedom is itself intimately connected with the life of Christ, because it is the strength that we can derive from the slowly maturing higher-self in us, the archetype of which was historically made manifest in the Christ event, that makes our ongoing struggle against adversity possible — allowing us to develop a creative inner freedom that cannot be ‘given’ to us, even by an omnipotent deity, but must be earned by our confronting the lessons of adversity. Inner freedom, he tells us, can only be developed through knowledge, and from the experiences arising out of life’s constant struggle (we must always distinguish clearly between ‘liberty’ as something given to us from without, and creative ‘freedom’ as something coming entirely from within ourselves).

The development of creative freedom is also a task that requires many more than one lifetime, which accounts for the little known fact that C.S. Lewis, agreeing with his friend Owen Barfield, had declared that “the attainment of “Christian perfection” required that reincarnation be true. (see In Search of Salt by Raymond P. Tripp Jr.) The teaching of reincarnation was once widely accepted in the early Christian church, its total denial by Christian orthodoxy took place only after Constantine, when this Gnostic concept came into conflict with the Roman church’s claimed authority (claimed because of ‘apostolic succession’ that in Steiner’s day was still held to be the grounds for Papal infallibility), preventing it from threatening the faithful with an awful day of final judgement at the end of only one life, if they did not submit to its authority.

We should be thankful for the present weakening of this kind of authoritarianism, and to Darwin for the degree that this is his doing (his theory has today all but eliminated the Creator God in much of religion, leaving only the Saviour God). This unquestioned benefit, however, does not make Darwinism true, and if it were true the resulting material determinism would in any case altogether extinguish human freedom. To find the real roots of human freedom we need to delve much deeper than is usually done, and it was Steiner’s task to help humanity do just that.

The Philosophy of Freedom
In his work The Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner describes the conditions that are necessary for true human freedom to develop, and in it the role that materialism plays in this great human adventure is also brought to expression, although in a manner that leaves us with levels of ambiguity which today merit further discussion. For Steiner this was an intensely personal document, one that marked his own struggle upwards to the light of understanding.

When Steiner was writing this work he was still in his thirties, and was at that time befriended by the German biological materialist, artist and Darwinist, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) author of The Riddle of the Universe and other works. Indeed Steiner wrote letters in defence of Haeckel when he was being attacked for his Darwinian views on religious grounds.

Haeckel was Steiner’s senior by seventeen years, and he was, one gathers, a rather dominating personality. Emma Darwin said of him, when he visited Darwin in 1870, "very nice and hearty and affectionate, but he bellowed out his bad English in such a voice that he nearly deafened us." From this alone it is clear that Haeckel was by no means a timid or withdrawn personality, but a man who made his presence felt. It must also be remembered (sadly) that Haeckel was later convicted of fraud by an academic court at the University of Jena, for forgery in his embryonic drawings (an interesting chapter is devoted to this in Icons of Evolution by Jonathon Wells). The forgery was done to make the drawings fit better with his published ideas, so we may think of him as a man who did not like nature to prove him wrong — no doubt a very human failing.

His relationship with Steiner was doubtless one of considerable significance for Steiner’s own development, because it made it necessary for him to confront materialism, as it were, head on. He later characterised Haeckel as having been “philosophically naïve,” but there is little doubt that while in his presence he was a very convincing man. It would be surprising indeed, therefore, if his influence were not to be found in Steiner’s own works of this period, especially given the personal struggle that those works reflect. I suspect that in those parts of The Philosophy of Freedom, in which Steiner touches upon Darwinism, this may well have been the case, although why it is the case is quite another question.

In this context it is interesting also, that in reference to the works of his well-known French contemporary Henri Bergson (1859–1941), born two years before Steiner (in the same year that Darwin’s theory was published), Steiner, while sympathetic, does not have a great deal to say about his non-materialistic evolutionary theory, even though Bergson’s proposed ‘élan vital’ would have closely matched the idea of an etheric realm that came to be so central to Steiner’s later work (see ‘Riddles of Philosophy’ Chapter VII). Bergson’s theory was, nevertheless, convincing enough for it later to be adopted as an alternative to Darwinism by the British/Hungarian scientist Michael Polanyi (1891–1978). Polanyi was also perhaps the first to recognise the falsity of the concept ‘mechanism’ as it was being used in science, although by calling it “dual control” he expressed this concern in language that few might understand:

"In this light the organism is shown to be, like a machine, a system which works according to two different principles: its structure serves as a boundary condition, harnessing the physical-chemical processes by which its organs perform their functions. Thus, this system may be called a system under dual control" (first italics mine).

“Dual control” here, of course, means that something in addition to the currently recognized realm of natural law is at work — Design perhaps, but in the non-miraculous sense described in Steiner’s anthroposophy? What is clear, however, is that Bergson provides the missing ‘second’ factor, whereas Darwin does not.

Epistemology
The essence of Steiner’s theory of knowledge, is that in the act of cognition the outer world approaches us from two directions, from the ‘percept’ via the physical senses, and from the ‘concept’ or ‘idea’ which we derive directly from the spiritual ‘inside’ of nature, by means of the self-confirming activity of thought. The act of knowledge then consists in our making the correct connection between concept and percept, whereas error results from our making the wrong connection. This fully rational epistemological argument is to be found in the first seven chapters of The Philosophy of Freedom, and it has been clearly restated in a more modern context by Owen Barfield, in his essay ‘Rudolf Steiner’s Concept of Mind’.

In this argument concepts and ideas are seen to be both individual and universal, but with individualism arising chiefly from the perceptual realm, because of our unique position as individuals in time and space, and our errors of judgement.

In contrast, materialism tells us that there is only one path whereby knowledge reaches the human mind, by sense impressions (empiricism) transmitted, in a manner strictly in accordance with natural law, along the nerve pathways to the brain where they become transformed, in some totally unknown manner, into concepts and ideas that are believed to possess no reality other than as the accidental by-products of sensory stimulation with which they began, and to be subjectively confined to each separate individual’s brain cavity, i.e. possessing no ‘universal’ validity (to better understand the folly that this entails, see the essay entitled ‘Barfield, Darwin & Galileo’ www.difficulttruths.com).

The problem here, of course (apart from the overall inadequacy of this description) is that no explanation is given for cognitive error, because natural law does not (cannot) fail, meaning that whatever concepts arise in the mind by this perceptual route alone must, out of law-governed necessity, be absolutely true. This is precisely why materialism is seen as a deterministic worldview. More recent developments in quantum physics have changed this picture somewhat, but mainly by replacing determinism with indeterminism, neither of which can be a vehicle for creative freedom.

This difficulty in explaining cognitive error is illicitly overcome in modern thought by introducing the man-made idea of ‘mechanism,’ as a specious but totally false dictionary-sanctioned synonym for materialism, because this human idea brings with it the concept of mechanical failure or breakdown, which when applied to the natural world, namely to our sensory/cerebral apparatus, allows it to be seen as a machine that does not always function properly — hence cognitive error. This ruse is strengthened by the fact that ‘failure’ or something very similar actually does happen in nature, but it could not happen in Mindless nature if there were no second factor (see” dual control”). So there can be absolutely no justification for inserting the humanly creative idea of ‘machinery’ into the workings of a claimed materialistic universe. Mindlessness could not create ‘machinery’ (except in our own minds and only then with the aid of creative metaphor), but once this word is employed as a lexical definition for materialism, it brings in its wake the rampantly deceptive misuse of all manner of volitional and intentional language, all supposedly being used in an effort to ‘prove’ the truth of materialism. The fact that nature does possess the organic equivalent of inorganic (dead) man-made machinery proves nothing at all except that the second factor, ‘etheric forces,’ actually do exist in nature, just as ‘consciousness’ requires ‘astral’ forces to exist. ‘Mechanism,’ therefore, is a materialistic science of origins fictional substitute for the etheric realm that it wants desperately to ignore — because it can only be spiritual in origin. We can, therefore, confidently assumed that as long as Darwinism exists etheric forces will never be taken seriously by science.

Without this simple ruse scientific materialism and Darwinism would immediately collapse. This error implies an obvious untruth, namely that we (humanity) made the universe. To merely substitute the divine creativity that science wishes to exclude, with human creativity, constitutes an irrational act of the first order of magnitude. This irrationality may be because it was language itself that created the universe (see ‘Owen Barfield and the Origin of Language’) and so, ultimately, it will not allow itself to be used to rationally 'prove' materialism.

Whether language is spiritual in origin or not, the irrational usage that I point to is inescapable, so bad is it, in fact, that in any other context it would simply have been dismissed as an extreme form of ‘anthropomorphism.’ But without it scientific materialism would become an impossible worldview, so that another less honest standard must apply to Darwin’s science of origins than that which is applied to any other realm of science. It becomes subject instead to what Owen Barfield called ‘the great tabu’ wherein the lexical meaning of certain words is changed to accommodate a desired falsity. Today this same verbal sleight-of-hand is carried to much greater lengths in the works of materialistic writers like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, where the public continues to be deceived on a grand scale, because the entire seeming credibility of Darwin’s theory of origins in a modern setting, depends upon the continued and, increasingly outrageous misuse of intentional and volitional idioms, with terms like ‘blind watchmakers,’ ‘selfish genes’ and ‘Designerless design’.

If one removes from Darwin’s theory this rampant misuse of creative language, and allow it only to use such terms as do not suggest conscious creativity, then the theory must and will cease to exist, because then it cannot even be plausibly stated. Mathematics will not help here, because it is an ‘analytic’ not a ‘synthetic’ discipline, and as such it cannot be used to even ask the epistemological questions that are at stake here, let alone resolve them. The difference between Darwinism and anthroposophy can be simply stated: for the former there are NO ideas in nature, which is why, for it to be even the least bit credible it must substitute human creativity in the form of metaphor to explain nature, whereas for anthroposophy, nature’s inner core consists in law-abiding Ideas.

This means that, insofar as it depends on Darwinism for support, materialism has always been a logically false worldview. This is a painful but undeniable fact that, perhaps for reasons involving conscious evolution, mankind has chosen to overlook for the past hundred or more years. There was undoubtedly some level of historical necessity at work here, but now is surely the time to set this irrationality straight, no matter what the cost.

Steiner and Darwin
It is in Chapters ten, eleven and twelve of the Philosophy of Freedom, where Steiner is concerned with establishing the grounds for free human morality, that he goes out of his way to reject the idea that morality has a divine source. To do this he goes to some length to limit the concept of ‘purpose’ to human use only, and he praises modern science for having abandoned this concept, because morality then becomes a purely human creation, not one dictated by some divine Being. He states this very succinctly: “For monism, with the rejection of an absolute cosmic Being — never experienced but only hypothetically inferred — all ground for assuming purpose in the world and in nature also falls away.” In this context, therefore, one must ask which monism is he talking about, his own or Darwin’s, because they are exact opposites? If it is Darwin’s monism then it automatically excludes God, but if Steiner’s it means that the creative Ideas in nature upon which his epistemology is based have to be explained as being somehow purposeless, not an easy task. And here it should be noted that in many of his later works he uses the word ‘monism’ mainly in a derogative sense, referring specifically to materialism,

What this also means, of course, is that he has also entirely rejected Aristotelian teleology, a favourite recourse of theologians, and that he appears to be using the influence upon science of Darwin’s total rejection of ‘purpose’ in nature in order to accomplish this. He even (in Chapter 12) appears to accept the Darwinian thesis that all organic forms have a single ancestor, an unlikely proposition that is necessary only for scientific materialism, because if the workings of Ideas (Archetypes) in nature are the real source of biological evolution then a physical continuum becomes unnecessary, only an evolving spiritual continuum is called for — the true explanation perhaps for the notion of ‘punctuated equilibria,’ one of many ‘stop-gaps’ used today in neo-Darwinism.

Steiner does reject ‘purpose’ in nature, of that there can be no doubt, but as he makes very clear this does not include, as it does for Darwin, the rejection of ‘Ideas’ in nature. Instead he asserts that the Ideas that are at work in nature are fully law-abiding (no miracles) and that unlike human concepts and ideas, they do not become ‘causes,’ at least not in the sense that human ideas can. In human creativity ‘the concept of the effect’ can become the cause of an action that creates that effect.’ Not so in nature he tells us, because there the Concept or the Idea is already indwelling in the perceived object in a fully law-abiding manner. This is a very difficult distinction to be clear about, because then Ideas in nature are still causes, but in a different and not so easily understood sense. He overcomes this problem completely in the 1918 Addendum to Chapter 11, wherein he states “…something is revealed in that world which is higher than the kind of purpose realized in the human kingdom.”(Italics mine) From the wording of which one can reasonably conclude that there is still a “kind of purpose” at work in the natural world, suggesting that the exclusion of purpose in nature is nowhere near as absolute for Steiner in 1918, as it is out of necessity for Darwin.

Nevertheless, it was under Darwin’s influence, not Aristotle’s, that modern science rejected the concept of purpose, and has since concerned itself only with the ‘how’ of natural events, while excluding the ‘why’ on the grounds that it has all been accidental. This has led to a science that can increasingly control nature, but that still cannot understand her. So we can reasonably ask the question — did Steiner really understand that Darwinism was materialism, or did he while still influenced by Haeckel, try as was his nature to see it in a more idealistic manner? And in approaching this question we must reject, as he would have wanted, any tendency to view him as being ‘infallible’.

We have in The Philosophy of Freedom, two quite opposite reasons for rejecting purpose in nature; one (Darwinian), because there are none; and the other (Steiner), because there is something at work in nature that is ‘higher than purpose’. These differences, however else one might regard them, are the product of totally opposite monist theories: a monism of matter vs. a monism of Mind or spirit, only one of which can be true, because if both were true they would cancel each other out, or at best leave us with a contradictory dualism, a philosophical solution which Steiner would most certainly have abhorred as being contrary to nature.

Which came first?
There have been attempts made, even among anthroposophists, to resolve this difficulty by making both anthroposophy and Darwinian materialism appear true, but this is impossible within the context of a genuinely monist philosophy, a problem that I have dealt with in my short essay ‘The Difficulty Inherent in Monist Logic.’

To briefly restate the problem, it is that if Darwinian materialism is true, in any degree whatsoever no matter how small, then nature herself becomes either materialistic or dualistic. Which means that Steiner’s vitally important monist epistemological argument, that is so clearly stated in The Philosophy of Freedom, is falsified by reality itself, or at best converted into yet another cognitive dualism — thereby eliminating Steiner’s uniqueness in the history of philosophy, because there have already been far too many dualisms in that history, many of them unconscious, Darwinism being among them.

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