In 1-1 freedom is an illusion because there is "always a perfectly definite reason" why we choose one course of action over another. We are unable to be indifferent (impartial and unbiased) in our choice of action so any "Freedom of Indifferent Choice" is an illusion.

It speaks of making a choice between "possible courses of action". That implies to me that we are examining action itself and looking to see if it is free. We have physical bodies. When we act our body is under the law of cause and effect. Matter doesn't just move without a cause. There is always a reason, or a cause for each effect. Science considers that no free will exists in the natural world which they study. If I stand up, move across the room, or move my arm there are many physical causes that can be found that are required to move a body. From there you can move to all the genetic and social conditioning reasons for action. This is the realm of natural and social science to discover these pre-existing "perfectly definite reasons" for why I choose a course of action. Embracing this view has led to genetic engineering and the use of psychotropic (mind altering) drugs by psychiatrists.

If a person consists only of these pre-existing reasons and natural urges then the scientist is right and he will be able to explain a person with this research data. Politicians and businesses use this type of research for marketing. Such a person without free will would lack any moral responsibility as they possessed no freedom. So the scientist would be correct in saying, " The moral valuation of human action and character remains untouched by this problem..."

Certainly at early stages of the development of a child this must be true. Even at later stages of community conformity. But the problem with the position is that it is shallow. It would only apply to the most superficial people with extremely arrested development.

Of course that would include myself while driving when I unconsciously turn right out of habit onto my home street when I intended to continue on. Last week I was at a friends home. He had prepared a coffee tray with cream and honey. I immediately said I drink my coffee black, which is my habit. Then, it was like a moment of awakening, I realized I was going to miss a pleasant experience of pouring cream from a cute little cream thing and experiencing the sweet taste of honey. So I enjoyed the new experience. The habitual "perfectly definite reason" arose and I chose not to act on it.

A free person would also have a "perfectly definite reason". This view can not tell the difference between the two because the research doesn't explore the Question of Freedom deeply enough. An unconscious person would like wise not know if they are free or not. They could ignore the question or accept freedom on faith without really knowing. But each time our habitual behavior springs upon us and we consciously choose to act or not act upon it we take a step toward more freedom.

The next view is that of Freedom of Choice. We move beyond our outside programming and develop wants and preferences of our own. With an introspective look we find our own individual wants and preferences that differ from others. The question now becomes whether we are determined by our personal desire. When I awakened from my habitual choice of black coffee and went for the cream and honey was my choice now being compelled by my desire for sweetness? Moving from an outer perspective of action to an inner perspective of desire we are faced with different variations of the Question of Freedom. Our self-awareness increases as we move through these various perspectives in Chapter 1 and pose the Question of Freedom.

The first quotation Steiner gives us is by the philosopher/theologian David Friedrich Strauss, who in the 1870s tried to pave the way for a new Christianity based on scientific principles. I couldn't find the quotation on line to see the context, but it seems to me from everything I've read about him that, like Kant, Strauss was trying to separate morality from the question of freedom. As if saying that in spite of having no freedom of choice, we can still be moral beings. I wonder if this isn't part of the reason that Steiner finds this philosopher a superficial thinker, because he stopped short and refused to follow the thought of "no freedom" into the realm of morality.

Herbert Spencer, who applied evolutionary theory to all social, biological and psychological processes, coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" (not to justify the exploitation of the poor by the rich, but to explain changes in society caused by the human need to adapt to changing situations). He was against religious dogma and saw evolution as "he ongoing process by which matter is refined into an increasingly complex and coherent form." (from the Wikipedia article on him.) So I guess that pretty much makes him a materialist, though he seems to have been a good-hearted man, much concerned with human rights and educational reform.

I remember an informal talk given some years back by the nutritionist Joan Dye Gussow at the Farm and Garden here at U.C. Santa Cruz, in which she asked, can anyone think of any other freedom besides "freedom of choice?" The question struck me because it's not that easy to answer. When I go to any grocery store and look at all the different kinds of things there are to buy, I wonder if so much choice isn't a kind of spell put on us so that we won't have time to really think about anything.

At first glance, it doesn't really seem that the 2 philosophers being quoted here are really very different in their approaches. The quotations Steiner chose, however, do seem to me to be different. Two kinds of things are presented: Science, telling us that there's always a cause (reason) behind any choice we might make, so all our choices really are determined; and Religious Dogma, telling us that it's really a question of desire. I have a very clear picture of a Priest telling a young gay person to learn how to control his or her wrongful desires, to be acceptable to God and the Church. This is a situation where most thinking people would side with the Determinists, I do believe!

I think Chapter 1 begins with the most extreme case of an unconscious person who lacks any individuality. That would mean if you wanted to understand such a person you would need to learn about their background. What ethnic, family, gender, nationality, and religion shaped who they are. I remember meeting a girl who I found very unique and fascinating in her beliefs and view of the world. She accepted everyone for who they were without judgment being a real living example of “Live and Let Live”. I appreciated these qualities very much and thought of her as a free spirit.

Gradually I learned more of her background. She was a witch who was a part of the Wicca movement. Now I am opened minded and this in itself was not a problem. As I learned more about the group I found they can be very liberal in regards to having several partners and such. Through the study of the group I learned that many of the traits I thought were uniquely individual actually were just part of the group stereotype. Not being familiar with the group I wasn’t able to identify them as group traits until I learned about the group.

While I appreciate the non-judgmental attitude that Wicca expresses it was more morally liberal that I could be comfortable with. A person who is for the most part a group stereotype usually can only have a successful relationship with another person of that group. In traditional societies they even pick your mate which is probably the right thing to do if everyone’s goal is to maintain an ethnic stereotype. The older ones would be able to match people according to what was best for the community stereotype to be maintained.

I couldn’t conform to the group practices of Wicca so it wasn’t a match. I learned that it is important to learn about a persons background as preparation to learn what is and is not individual about them.

I remember I was in a New Age Mystical Christian group as a lay leader in Denver, Colo. The group had become small and a meeting was called of the members to decide whether the group should continue or disband. During the meeting I gave my opinion that maybe there was not enough interest to sustain the cost of a building and priest.

After the meeting I was reprimanded by the priest for expressing an opinion to end the community. He said as a lay leader I should only express the leadership opinion that the group should continue. I had been very loyal to the group mind in the past. I thought as the group leadership thought. Now I was developing a free independent choice arising from within myself. Rather than being welcomed into the world as an emerging individual spirit I was immediately attacked as some sort of traitor! As it says in 1-2 "the main attacks of the opponents of freedom are directed only against freedom of choice". Free independent choice is often considered a threat whether it be a restrictive marriage, work place, or church and attacked as soon as it emerges. Look what happens to a teenager.

This rattled me somewhat and I developed some fear and confusion. My path as an individual spirit had begun. The group mind had empowered me with something larger than individual life. But it was time to leave because something was stirring within me. I knew I would lose the security of having "a perfectly definite reason" for my action supplied for me by the group. I knew I would be weakened and be subject to the forces of desire within myself and temptations of the world without the aura of group identity and protection of group traditions. I left and it was a long struggle until powers unfolded from within myself, developed mainly through the study of The Philosophy of Freedom, that gave me an strength independent of anything outside myself. If every group collapses, if the cities crumble, if everyone turns against me, if man's God is proven not to exist, or whatever, it matters but it is not the source of my existence or strength.

With an inner intuitive source I am free to participate in life without the necessity, most of the time, anyway.

"Nature makes us merely a natural being; society makes us a law-abiding being; only we ourselves can make of ourself a free human being." Philosophy of Freedom Chapter 9-11.

In 1-1 the Freedom of Indifferent Choice is examined. Are we able to be impartial and unbiased in our choice of possible action or are we determined by a "perfectly definite reason" that already exists or of which we will always arrive at making us biased and lacking Indifferent Choice?

Occasions of prejudice are well documented whether they be against another race, a biased court judge, or our own habitual and predictable patterns of thinking and behavior.

Scientific researchers have arrived at the conclusion that we are powerless against the natural and social determining factors that control us so freedom is an illusion.

Later in the book we learn of a power that exists within thinking that can free us from the grips of outside control. It is the power that makes freedom possible. (For more on this see my article, Power Within Thinking)

"In the presence of the intuitive essence active within thinking, the psyche-physical organization suspends it's activity, as if in an act of reverence, allowing the intuition to take it's place.

9-1 'For this 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.' Rudolf Steiner, Chapter 9, The Philosophy of Freedom

This power within the activity of thinking suspends our natural and social instincts and replaces them with a new impulse from within ourselves. We have originated a new moral idea, an intention that will rule our deed. The laws no longer rule over us, instead they rule over our deed. Our action is free."

In 1-2, the Freedom of Choice the question is whether we can freely make a choice out of our own preferences independent of the outside influences of 1-1. This is challenged by pointing out that our choices are determined within by our natural and conditioned desires, of which we have no control. Our freedom is an illusion.

This is a brief description of what the book spends a lot of time presenting. At 12-11 it says “A free being is one who can want what he himself considers right.” Our highest pleasure is to strive for great ideals which we grasp within ourself. Our strongest desire is to realize these intuitions so in that sense we want what we consider right. By reaching to these ideals we are determining our desires out of freedom that will determine our choices. So we have achieved freedom of choice determined by our spiritual desires.

"Opposed to them are others who regard it as the acme of unscientific thinking for anyone to believe that the uniformity of natural law is broken in the sphere of human action and thinking."

More than 100 years after this book was published, I think it is still true to say that it is very difficult to think scientifically about the world while at the same time incorporating a realistic picture of the free human being into your world picture.

That, I think, is the essence of what this book strives for: to allow human beings to gradually work through to a point where they can think scientifically without creating a world view which excludes the possibility of the free human being.

As this is my first post, I'd also like to say thanks for this website!

I really want to explore the territory, and not just the map, as Joel says in his journal entry, "Comparative Mind, the Way and the Goal." Everywhere in POF Steiner seems to be giving hints, and even out-and-out instructions, on how to do this. (Tom had only to mention this once, and I siezed on the idea and made it my own. Thanks for my idea, Tom!)

In 1.1, someone whom Steiner considers a "superficial thinker", says ""With the question of the freedom of the human will we are not concerned. The alleged freedom of indifferent choice has been recognized as an empty illusion by every philosophy worthy of the name. The moral valuation of human action and character remains untouched by this problem..." Am I this superficial thinker? Not today I don't have to be!

Can I look with all those philosophers Strauss mentions and say, the alleged freedom of indifferent choice is nothing but an empty illusion? Can I recognize that I will never make a choice indifferently, that there is always some reason for what I do? One day when I was trying to think like a materialist, I was confronted by a very greasy, crusted piece of aluminum foil. I could recycle it or I could throw it away. If I recycled it, I'd have to wash it with lots of soap, water, and elbow grease. Thinking as a materialist, I could measure the value of the water and the effort against the value of the foil. I could rationalize that the value of the water tipped the balance so that, in terms of a whole series of measurable values (if someone bothered to measure them) I was perfectly justified in taking the lazy way out and throwing the foil away. I was indifferent to anything but the measurable values, and my own ease. These became my "perfectly definite reason" for choosing between two courses of action. That and the fact that I can't stand dithering about moral issues when I'm cleaning up the kitchen!

The choice was bifurcated. It was, "choosing, at one's pleasure, one or other of two possible courses of action." That in itself is interesting. Are materialistic choices always bifurcated? I'll have to think more about this.

So I'd have to agree with Strauss that, for me, there is no freedom of indifferent choice, except in very strained and peculiar circumstances. Imagining these circumstances, I realize that my need for order is such that I will invent a system in order to keep from going insane. If I had to stand there all day and press 10 buttons that didn't do anything, I would invent some kind of system, such as going left to right all day, making sure that I pushed every button the same number of times. If I had to eat every meal at McDonalds', and had to choose everything from the menu at least once, I'd probably do it in alphabetical order. The need for order is deeply engrained in my being. Inventing a system of order is the only thing that will keep me from being paralyzed by the inability to choose, where there is no desire. I wonder if this is life on the purely material level. The soul with its desires doesn't participate. Brain-thinking invents a system, because that is what brains do.

Now I feel that I'm getting somewhere. I have to have a "perfectly definite reason" for my action, or I become paralyzed. In the absence of desire, I have to make up some other reason. I have a need for the system that I make up to give me a reason to choose. Is that need the same as a desire? That need goes so deep in me that I could call it a compulsion. I forget all about this compulsion as I go about my daily life, but it's still there. This exercise has made me aware of it, and very uncomfortable.

(I don't want to jump over the path and think I've arrived at the destination, so I'm going through the exercises that I make up for myself using the indications that I like to find inside the text of POF.)

In my last Chapter One exercise I came to the realization that there's something even deeper than desire in me, that determines me in the sense that I must have order, must create order, just to go on functioning. Where there's no desire, the compulsion for order steps in without my bidding.

So it's now obvious that I don't have freedom of choice. Can I feel, along with Steiner, the absurdity that in spite of this obviousness the opponents of freedom mostly direct their attacks against the kind of freedom that has already been disproven? Can I feel that they're beating a dead horse here? Or is something else also going on?

Why does Herbert Spencer, for instance, dismiss the dogma of free will as merely the liberty to desire or not to desire? Does this really sum up the dogma (assumption) of free will?

Dogma of free will: Something about us is free, and this something allows us to choose to be moral or immoral. It makes it so that we're responsible ultimately for our own actions, deserving of praise or punishment. If you follow this back long enough, as many of the determinists do, it's like saying we created ourselves. Because if I'm responsible for stealing the pie, then I must have created the condition in myself that would make me want to steal the pie. But if I created, that condition, then I must have also created the prior condition which led me to create that pie-loving condition, and so on, back to the beginning of time. Which means I must have created myself, which is ridiculous. (There's that bifurcated, either-or thinking again! Either we are totally free from the beginning of time, or we are absolutely determined in everything we do.)

Start again, because bifurcated thinking doesn't seem to get anywhere. Can analysis of our own consciousness negate, as Spencer insists, the idea that we can "want what we want?" I see the pie sitting on the windowsill. I long for it. However, I don't have to steal it! I can, as Spinoza says, recollect something else to inhibit my desire, such as the time I got beaten for stealing a pie.

I want the pie, but pass it by. I'm at liberty to steal it or not steal it, but I'm not at liberty to not desire that oh-so-delicious pie. Does this prove that I don't have free will? Did Spencer get it right? I don't think so! The dogma of free will must be more than just the saying, "you can want what you want." Because I still don't have to do what I want.

So he may not be right about what the dogma of free will entails. But he does seem right about that other thing: I can't want what I want. I don't have freedom of desire. I can look into my consciousness and see what it is I desire. But this is like looking at an object with independent existence. The desire is there, or it isn't there. I can decide to be arbitrary and say, "I hate pie." But that 's not an accurate analysis of my consciousness. The desires, sympathies and antipathies are just there inside my consciousness. Where did they come from? I don't remember putting them there!

Or is that really true? Do I have some say in the matter of what I desire or don't desire? Suppose I'm really angry with someone, and have a desire for vengeance that astonishes me with its depth and intensity. I think about it, and decide to take a Bach flower remedy to help me open my heart and stop being so vengeful. As desires go, the vengeance is much stronger and the imagination of satisfying it is so much more compelling than the desire to take the flower essence drops. What is this but the pie dilemma in another form? Instead of just walking by the opportunity to do an immoral act, I limp by with the crutch of the flower remedy to help me. But wait! After using the crutch I discover that I have gradually lost the desire for vengeance. I wonder how I could ever have wanted to do such mean, despicable things.

I'm not so perfectly sure that desires are "things" after all! Don't they continually form and reform themselves, change their shape, their object even? Can I somehow participate in and direct these changes? Not by merely analyzing them, as if they were set in stone, but by the active process of thinking and making decisions! I begin to see that Spencer may be treating the living world of desire as if it were the physical world, subject to the laws of physics. He may be trying to apply physical, materialistic concepts to a world they don't necessarily apply to.

I can't be sure whether Spencer's doing that or not, but I can try to notice when I start to do it!