Sometimes certain thoughts are so radical that we dismiss them, in a sense not trusting our own intuitions.  For a long time I did not want to admit what really lived in a certain book by an American author, but then certain other thoughts (from a surprising direction) led me to conclude that my "radical" idea was valid, and ought to be explored.

It is said that Steiner thought that PoF should be rewritten every 100 years.  I have heard this, but not read it.  All the same the statement, whether truely spoken by Steiner or not, seems likely to be true.  Why?

PoF was not the only way to come at the question of freedom, or what is the Way of an ethical individualist.  PoF is just one way to come at this problem and it is clear from Steiner that he knew that this was so.  The first sentence of the First Leading Thought reads: "Anthroposophy is a path of cognition leading from the spiritual in man to the Spiritual in the Universe..".  Not "the" path, but "a" path.

America is not Central Europe.  This is not the late 19th Century.  PoF belongs to a place and time and a certain context that no longer exists (the triumph of scientific materialism).  Would an American, seeking to answer today the questions of freedom, in particular its moral aspects, write a book of philosophy couched in the arguments of 19th Century German philosophy?

The question itself suggests its answer.

The latest News for Members of the American Anthroposophical Society published an essay of mine: Learning to Perceive the American Soul.

http://www.asnyc.org/aiaen/PDFs/NewsMembersFriends-3-pages.pdf

In that essay I point out that the Central European works from the Ideal, and seeks to incarnate an Ideal into the social.   The American does not do this, but instead perceives in the social a problem to be solved.  The thinking then of an American does not work from the Ideal, but from the experience of the social-real, and thereby strives to find those ideas that heal the problems perceived in the social.

In addition, American Culture is not really like European Culture, although we often imitate it.  Some years back I wrote on an Internet discussion list, devoted to European philosophical thinking (post-modernism), that the reason that Americans were not writing deep philosophical books was because the most creative thinkers had become stand-up comics and cartoonists.  I gave references and names in support, as well as reasons why this was so.  It is only an assumption that genius has to write big long books in the philosophical style common to the heights of Western Civilization as lives in Central Europe.  America is new, raw and fresh.  The genius of our comics is extraordinary, just consider George Carlin's play with words and their meanings.  (if you don't know it, I think you can find his work on YouTube).

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=George+Carlin&search_type=&a...

To me the most genial, and wonderfully humorous comic genius was the cartoonist Bill Waterston, and his creation Calvin and Hobbes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes

As a social critic who makes you laugh and cry at the same time, no one has ever come near his surety of purpose and brevity of expression.  To own reprints of his cartoons, in book form, is to own powerful and enlightening perspectives on social life, academic life, the nature of the family, on childhood, on play, on the imagination, on critical thinking, on education, on work life, - no theme was not touched, and all was fresh and new and deeply wise.  What is, to me, even more proof of his genius, was that once he had said what he wanted to say, he retired.

But none of the above is about an American PoF.  However, I wrote the above to try to break down the assumptions that an expression of PoF, in a modern form, out of an American Soul, would look anything at all like Steiner's book.  It would not.

First, an American version of the quest for inner freedom, and especially moral autonomy, is unlikely to appear in a didactic form - as a treatise or academic work.  It will above all take form as Art, for starters.  Since it comes from a soul that seeks to heal the social, it will also take the form of a work about social life - about what it means that social life could be like if based on the Way of Ethical Individualism, as seen from an American point of view.  So we look for a work of the imagination, not only deeply philosophical and thoughtful on the one hand, but rich in images and story-telling.

This will be found in Ursula Le Guin's book: The Dispossessed: an ambigious utopia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed

The title refers to the fact that the society imagined in the book is peopled by individuals who don't own anything physical at all - thus they are "dispossessed", that is without possessions.  What they own, if anything, is their own autonomy (moral freedom, inward and outward), subject to the laws of necessity as are required when we live in communities.  The inner life, with which we work in PoF, is revealed through the thoughts of the main character, and his thoughts concern not an ideal approach to the questions of freedom with respect to desire and with respect to ideas (no bondage to the idea), but a real approach - i.e. what would it be like if we tried to create a society of anarchists - a quite practical social question. 

It is one thing to strive ourselves for this autonomy, and another thing entirely to attempt to realize in practice a whole culture in which such a thing might be possible for everyone.  That's why it is called an ambiguous utopia, for Le Guin makes us confront what such a society would actually be like, not in a utopian fashion, but in a fully human fashion, with all the human flaws each will naturally possess.

Should anyone want to read this book together, and discuss it, they should contact me at hermit@tiac.net