Skepticism is an honest search for knowledge. It is used to search for the truth in matters based on sound reasoning, logic, and evidence. The idea is to neither initially accept claims nor dismiss them; it’s about questioning them and testing them for validity. In his Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner presents various views and leaves it up to us to form our own opinion. Other times he seeks to convince us with sound logic and a description of inner processes of the mind that we can verify ourselves.

No thought or scrutiny needs to be used if accepting or denying the book’s content depends on how well it fits in with your current understanding, belief system or world-view. But honest scientific skepticism requires the effort of objective thinking and accurate observation.

Here is an example: In chapter 2 the theory of Materialism is compared to Spiritualism. Materialists seek to explain everything as matter and material process while Spiritualists seek to explain everything with spiritual theory. To do this the Materialists turn away from the spiritual nature of their own “I” while the Spiritualist turns away from the material world.

We can observe this shift of attention toward or away from the “I” while researching physical or spiritual phenomena and discover if what Steiner is saying is true or not. Chapter 2 continues on describing other one-sided world-views and how they result from where we are fixating our attention.

Turn to any page in the Philosophy of Freedom and you can find descriptions of the cognitive or ethical process connected together with objective thinking that with some work in your own reasoning and self-observation skills, you can determine yourself whether they are valid or not.