Ch. 1 Conscious Human Action
Ch. 2 The Basic Drive behind the Quest for Knowledge
Ch. 3 The Service of Thinking in our Quest for Knowledge
Ch. 4 The World as Percept
Ch. 5 Attaining Knowledge of the World
Ch. 6 The Human Individuality
Ch. 7 Are there Limits to Knowledge?

Chapter 1 Conscious Human Action

Before we launch into cognitive-practical exercises with the texts of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, we would wish again to indicate the nature of the tasks we are undertaking. Above all, we must continually bear in mind that the study, the thinking-through, of the methodology of Anthroposophy, with which we were engaged in the previous chapters, will find a direct continuation in our work with the texts of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’.*

* Rudolf Steiner wrote a special epistemological prologue for this work. It was published in the form of a separate brochure with the title ‘Truth and Science’ (GA 3).
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Only the present book will enable one to understand fully why one of the components of the methodology of Anthroposophy is practical work at the unfolding of a new way of thinking – i.e. that a mastery of it can only be sufficiently productive if the student really tries to change the nature and quality of his thinking consciousness in the way described in the previous chapter and repeatedly taken up again in those that follow.

Knowledge of the fundamentals of the methodology of Anthroposophy is of decisive importance for an understanding of its entire content and has, in addition, a value in itself, as Rudolf Steiner himself quite clearly tells us: “.... for the mere content of spiritual science is not really the essential and important thing. What really counts is the way that one has to think in order to recognize the truth of spiritual science” (GA 187, 1.1.1919).

Human cognition was confronted with a similar task, for the first time, in the period of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, when reflective thinking was starting to develop. The form of cognition that has unfolded since that time has its basis in the repelling, the reflecting (and this means also the negating) of intelligible beings who approach the human being when he thinks. As a result of their rejection there arise in the thinking subject concepts which are lacking in substance, but free. In Anthroposophy, however, the situation is different. Its concepts, as they approach the cognizing subject, do not want to be reflected; they want to unite with him on the level of essential being, but not to propel him into the state of group-consciousness as was the case with the Greeks of the pre-philosophical age. One can say without exaggeration that knowledge of Anthroposophy is both personalistic and ontological. And anyone who, while placing a limit on reflection, seeks to grasp it with the intellect alone, will receive at best a ‘rough idea’ of it. This is the difficulty we face, often without suspecting it, as we read the works of Rudolf Steiner. The human being of the present cultural epoch bears within his very instincts an inclination towards the dialectical type of thinking. And when, in the seven-membered cycles in which Rudolf Steiner thought, he discovers that one is meant not to reflect, but to ‘behold’, that one is supposed to simply identify with what one is reading, for a while, and wait for the judgement to appear, as it were, from a quite different direction – in short, when he sees himself suddenly confronted by a structure (holistic in character) and nature of thinking that is completely new to him, he feels as though he has fallen into a void.*  He is prepared to think through the dialectical triads of the cycles, but what comes after them simply gets on his nerves. This happened to one of the greatest thinkers of the latter part of the 19th century, Eduard von Hartmann. One cannot say of him that he did not understand the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (although he engaged in intense polemics with the author); he was simply unable to find a relation to it, because he only reflected it.

* This happens to the reader with a trained thinking. Whoever thinks associatively or prefers when he is thinking to let himself be guided by the ‘voice’ of feeling, will probably not notice what we speak of here.
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Rudolf Steiner said later in his lectures that, when the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ appeared, many Europeans had the impression that it was written in Chinese. Admittedly, everything new is given an unfavourable reception by the human community, but here we have to do with an innovative deed of a special kind, where the cognizing subject is given the task of merging with the object of cognition so as to form a unity in which he himself is overcome and preserved (aufgehoben) for the sake of a higher existence. In order to decide in favour of such a metamorphosis and have the strength to carry it through, one must first have gained, in work with the structure and content of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, an understanding of the idea and the possibility of freedom. In terms of methodology, the process of understanding these things is, at the same time, the beginning of their realization, because, while we are doing exercises in the new method of thinking and cognition, we undergo certain changes in consciousness, which are necessary for the free spirit. Thus we have before us a tri-une task in our work with the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’.

Only through the transition to a beholding of the ideas can the human being become free, and begin activity of his own within the context of the world-totality. In order to unfold the capacity of ‘beholding’ the development of the ideas, and then the idea itself, one must practise in such a way that one’s sense of thought is strengthened, which (then) undergoes metamorphosis in accordance with the laws of the logic of beholding. But a fruitful exercise (in whatever field) can only be done if one has as clear an idea as possible of what one must do, and how, and why. We will take as the basis for our practical work with the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ the final form which we arrived at in Fig. 40, as a result of what is shown in Figs. 37, 38 and 39. We know that all the connections that exist on the ‘ur’-phenomenal level manifest both in the phenomenology of the universal nature-process and in that of the human thinking spirit. Though the latter hovers above the conditions of space and time, it contains within it nevertheless the principle of autonomous movement, which is conditioned by the working in it of the laws of evolutionary process. In its shadowy, reflected being, it recalls the being of the world in the aeon of Old Saturn up to the moment when time arose. It is therefore characterized by both linear sequence (e.g. logic) in its manifestation, and simultaneity of the events taking place within it. This comes to expression in, for example, the prior determination of the synthesis in the thesis, which led Kant to raise the question concerning the possibility of synthetic (i.e. containing new knowledge within them) judgements a priori.

But not only in the dialectical triad, also in the seven-membered cycle of thinking the end result is predetermined by the thesis – but not realized in the thesis! And how it will be realized depends upon the activity of the thinking subject, since there are many possibilities of its realization. This is also the case in the organic world. The conditional nature of its development which is contained in the seed meets up with a host of developmental factors; here, the natural environment is at work, cosmic influences, selection and finally genetic manipulation. Through their working, the plant does not cease to be a plant, but the form and even its species can change, and within a long period of evolution it is a constituent part of the evolution of species.

Similar things can be said of human thinking, only here it is the human being who is his own ‘breeder’ or perhaps ‘genetic manipulator’. The most important thing here is that he is a species in his own right and the possibility is given to him to command his own ‘ur’- phenomenon. In thinking consciousness the human subject as a species has the form of the following lemniscate:

We may speak of a ‘species’ in this case, because there exists a cultural-historical phylogenesis of the personality which every individual human being must recapitulate on the path of mastery of his spiritual ‘ur’-phenomenon – i.e. his higher ‘I’.

The lemniscate of thinking and the lemniscate which encapsulates the evolutionary cycle stand in a mutual relation of phenomenon and ‘ur’-phenomenon. In our analysis of the cycles of thinking in which the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ is written, this knowledge helps us to grasp the organism of living thinking, which is without any question a totality; it is this which determines the overall structure of its elements, their character and the relations between them. There emerges in the general weaving of the thinking an ascending mutual conditioning of its cycles; from the element of All-unity the movement of thinking advances to a new cycle, whose first element leads the preceding cycle to an octave and is at the same time the beginning of a new cycle. As we follow this path, we move from the less perfect knowledge to the more perfect, from the special to the eternal idea, from reflection to the organism of thinking.

If the cycle were enclosed within the seven elements, we would arrive with its help at a thinking that is perhaps a little more alive but remains dogmatic, we would arrive at the ‘eternal recurrence’ to which the plant and also the animal world is condemned. But in thinking, such a thing is impossible so long as its cycle is not just completed in a relative sense and the seventh stage has actually been reached. In the evolution of the world its ‘ur’-phenomenon is the aeon of the future Vulcan – the trans-temporal realm of Spirit-Man. From above and from the future, it does not merely crown all that has become, it also negates it, thus bringing about at the same time a further process of becoming.

Towards this future moves the primal revelation of God the Father, who strives to press through the dense ‘layer’ of what has become, of the world of matter and the senses, to the realm of pure spirit. Like scales there arise and fall away from this impulse-process: forms, living beings, substances. And they are taken up by it again, to be transformed into something more perfect, which is able sooner or later to become pure being of the ‘I’ spirit. This is the course followed by development, and the logic of beholding in thinking works in the same way. When one has grasped its nature, its laws, one must enter deeply, with a new consciousness, into the realm of practical thinking as a process of becoming. So let us now embark upon our triune task.

First of all, we will consider the fact that the first two parts of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ each have seven chapters. Each part is a greater thought cycle, in which the chapters fulfill the role of elements. Therefore, e.g. in Ch. 1 all the elements have the character of the thesis; they have the clear-cut quality of the intellect and their form of expression is very incisive. In Ch. 2 everything is pervaded by the conflict of contradictions, polarities, opinions and standpoints. This whole chapter forms an antithesis to the first. In Ch. 4 even the theses have a beholding character, etc.

All three parts of the book (together with ‘The Consequences of Monism’) form a tri-unity, which has dialectical features only in part, since it stands higher than dialectics, as we will show in due course. For the cognizing spirit of the reader, the entire first part of the book has the aim of calling forth within it a special involutive process. The second part is striving to become, within it, its individual evolution.

The first chapter of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ consists of five Cycles. Through it the cognizing subject itself is introduced, which as a microcosm is five-membered. It would not be a bad thing if the reader would try, himself, to identify these Cycles. But if he can’t quite manage to do it yet he can follow our analysis. It should be pointed out, however, that a real result of work with the ‘Philosophy’ is only achieved by one who learns to experience for himself its structure as one of the expressions of the macro-processes of development and understand what gigantic relationships stand behind these Cycles of thinking which, as a first glance will show, are not at all complicated (in their form). In working with them one must, above all, avoid trying to grasp their structures with the intellect alone, because here the whole aim is the development of a new soul-spiritual quality. Even its seeming simplicity is relative. One need only bear in mind that the dialectical autonomous movement of thinking is far more elementary than the Goetheanistic (movement of thinking), but that a careless way of operating with it resulted in the whole world being stood on its head.

In the course of the structural analysis we will give the content of all the chapters of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, dividing them into Cycles, sub-cycles and elements. This will increase the length of the book considerably, but it will have the advantage that the reader will be able to acquire an overall (holistic) picture of the methodology of Anthroposophy, which can then be experienced in its realization in practice in the process of becoming of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. If the reader postpones this living experience ‘to next time’ he risks having to content himself with a collection of abstractions.*

* It is not without significance that the Russian reader possibly has no access to a copy of the ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’.
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We will be occupied mainly with the structural analysis of the book, and in this we will appeal to the reader’s sense of thought; the content of the book we will allow to speak for itself. We will present our own thoughts on this content in the chapters numbered with Roman numerals. But at the end of each chapter of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ we will give – in the first part of the book – a concluding summary and tables with brief formulations of the elements of content (1, 3, 5, 7) in all the Cycles. In this way the cognitive work with the book will also be intensified.

So, now let us begin our analysis. It is by its very nature structured according to systems, as we will be dealing with a hierarchy of wholenesses (Ganzheiten) which merge together to form ever greater unities (units). And in no respect will we risk being over-zealous in our application of the dissecting intellect.

The first Cycle in Chapter 1 begins with a clear and simple dialectical triad. Its thesis and antithesis negate one another in the most unambiguous way possible. The synthesis reconciles them. Since the book has only just begun one can, admittedly, not expect any spectacular results from the first synthesis. However, the contradictions that come before it have truly world-historical significance. And one must give all due respect to this synthesis – it expresses an opinion with which, for the time being, both advocates and opponents of human freedom can agree. In short, it is simple but exemplary.

Our study of the structure of the book has the character of research and is therefore unavoidably intellect-based and even in some degree artificial. One should not imagine that Rudolf Steiner constructed his train of thought likewise in an artificial way. No, he just thought, and as he did so he proceeded from his spiritual nature, which in him was different from our own. It was characteristic of him to identify with the process of metamorphosis in thinking, just as it is quite normal for us to think in opposites. There arises within us an immense number of concepts. We give utterance to them, often for no compelling reason. But when they have been uttered, we know that, looking at them from different standpoints, we can both uphold and also retract them. People who are not able to create a synthesis in cognition are mostly content with this and engage in endless arguments with one another. Others (Hegel, for example) think creatively: contradiction provides for them a fertile soil for the creation of new thought-forms. This is how our thought-instinct works. When we become aware of it, our sense of thought is strengthened: in the sphere of thinking the aesthetic principle – our taste for the elaboration of ideas in a beautiful, logical, artistic way – develops, and for this the capacity is required to identify with the material of thinking, just as the painter identifies with the material of form and colour, and the composer with that of musical sound. And the logical conscience also develops in us. Once all these things are there, we can begin to be creative in thinking.

If the process of thinking is accompanied by an active sense of thought, we are already close to ‘beholding’. On the path of the artistic elaboration of thinking, the feeling for our own higher ‘I’ develops within us; with its help we can have an ideal perception of the rebirth of the thesis out of ‘beholding’. In this concrete case we recognize that the force of the thesis has grown considerably: its character as a mere proposition has been transformed into a key question of Lebensan-schauung (one’s philosophical view of life):

A short digression into the history of the question has allowed us, thanks to identification with it, to obtain results for which an abstract speculative approach would have required the writing of a whole chapter.

It can happen, that a reader with an insufficiently developed sense of thought or with an aversion to thinking altogether, finds all these gradations and nuances in the process of development of living thinking unimportant or even far-fetched; it is not by chance that the overwhelming majority of philosophical directions even regard thinking and cognition per se as an insufficiently real foundation of life and search with grim determination for the ‘things in themselves’. In order to forestall a possible mishap of this kind, we have given, also in the first three chapters, a methodological introduction into the practical work, and will develop this still further. Anyone who reads this with careful attention will even grasp the inevitable character of the method of thought brought to light by us, which is used in Anthroposophy, and also of its structures. The method of spiritual science has much in common with counterpoint. Thanks to it one’s knowledge as a whole arises out of the interplay of many different elements, and assumes a ‘stereoscopic’, spatial character. What has become known within a temporal process reappears, when it is beheld, in the instantaneous flash of insight. Is all of this easy to learn? Anyone who demands simplicity in all things could be asked the following question: Does a musician expect one of his listeners not to hear the polyphony in a Bach fugue or not to be able to distinguish C sharp minor from E flat major? In spiritual science things are more difficult than in music and the traditional sciences put together. Knowledge of its laws must be attained both via the sense-organs and the intellect and also with something that is higher than the senses and the intellect.

The judgements that are born of ‘beholding’ possess, so to speak, enhanced a posteriority and thus also heightened reality; they display a tendency towards individualization which, as in the case of the individualization of the human being, can be enormously varied in character. It can correspond to what we imagine, or stand in contradiction to it; it can be convincing or absurd, etc. Here as in dialectic, contradiction can, on occasion, be more fruitful than agreement. This is exactly what happens in the Cycle we are considering. As we shall see from the further content of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, it is difficult to find periods in the history of human thought which were favourable for the individualizing of the idea of freedom, and for the idea generally. Rudolf Steiner, therefore, not infrequently hands what has been attained in the fifth element to the opponents of freedom and enables them to give individual expression to the idea.

 6.            And it is one of the sad symptoms of the superficiality of contemporary thought that a book                   4.
                whose intention it is to distill a ‘new order’ from the results of modern natural-scientific research
                (David Friedrich Strauss – ‘The Old and the New Faith’) has nothing more to say on this question
                than the words: “Here we do not need to enter into the question of the freedom of human will. The
                supposed freedom of indifferent choice has always been regarded as an empty illusion by every
                philosophy worthy of the name. However, this question does not affect in any way the moral value   
                attached to human actions and thoughts.”

The fruits of this ‘handing over’ gesture show themselves in the element of All-unity, with which the Cycle ends. Here we can see how fruitful it was to give way. Now we have the right to a conclusion that is truly colossal in its scope.

7.            I have quoted this passage, not because I regard the book in which it is found as being of special
               importance, but because it seems to me to express the (most enlightened) opinion to which the
               majority of our thoughtful contemporaries are able to rise in this matter.

Thus the, at first sight, uncomplicated dialectical beginning: free – not free, unfolding according to the laws of ‘beholding in thinking’, has led us, within a single page, to a fundamental conclusion of not just philosophical but also social and historical importance.

Cycle II proceeds further.*  Let us not forget its general nuance: it forms the antithesis to Cycle I. The latter was, in a sense, a threefold thesis, since the whole first part stands under the sign of the thesis, and the same is true of Chap. 1 within the context of the first part. Therefore considerable attention is given in Cycle I to what is called in science ‘the stating of the problem’. Now begins its overcoming and preserving (Aufhebung), its elevation to a higher level, where it will show itself in a new form.

* The analysis put forward here of the system structure of the book is not the only one possible. It is connected with the subject of knowledge and is therefore, in its objective aspect, also determined by the subject. Something similar happens in the experience of works of art. For lack of space, we have no opportunity to consider the second option here, in which the content sounds in a more macrocosmic ‘key’, a rhythmic breathing as compared with the mi- crocosm of the five-fold structure that we are investigating. In the second vari- ant, the first Cycle develops, after the first triad, two more; thus the second and then the third synthesis arise, whereby the dialectical principle of the Cycle is deepened.
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As the aim of our studies is to provide material for the development of new feelings, we will now quote the description of the nature of thesis and antithesis which was given to them by Jakob Boehme in his book ‘Aurora’ in the language of alchemy and from the standpoint of the principle of world-development. Thesis: “In dark astringency the primal Being takes on form, silently enclosed within Himself and motionless”; antithesis: “through the devouring of its opposite the first nature-form passes over into the form of the second; what is astringent and motionless acquires movement; strength and life enters into it” (GA 7). In the past it was known to those who still had relics of the old clairvoyance, that thought possesses substance, that it is an intelligible Being. It is to this reality of thinking, and nothing else, that we battle our way through the curtain of seeming abstraction, which is overcome by a way of thinking which transforms itself.

In Cycle II we experience something similar to that of which Boehme speaks. The call to battle sounds already in the thesis. One can even find it sarcastic. But what we have is, rather, a justified nuance of indignation provoked by element 6 in the previous Cycle.

             CYCLE II

1.          That freedom cannot consist in the completely arbitrary choice 5. between the one or the other of          5.
             two possible actions, everyone today seems to know who claims to have grown beyond the
             kindergarten stage of science. There is always, so people say, a quite definite reason why, of
             several possible actions, there is one particular action which a person carries out.

Before we move on to the antithesis, let us return to the theme of the octave, which we touched upon earlier. The thought-cycles, which have been developed according to the new logic, possess their organic and aesthetic principles which are not of the sense-world. The laws of all these realms of spiritual being merge together into a unity in the phenomenology of Goetheanistic thinking. Its cyclic systems pass over into one another in smooth transition; between them a connection remains which is conditioned by the law of the higher unity, in the same way as all that happens in the evolution of the world.

What we have just said can be experienced clearly in the transition from the first to the second Cycle. The first Cycle led us to the conclusion: The majority of thoughtful contemporaries have only been able to rise to the idea that seemingly indifferent freedom of choice is an illusion. And now we are confronting a new thesis: This everyone seems to know, etc. Actually, we have here the same as what we had in the seventh element of the first Cycle, and at the same time we understand clearly, and even feel (from the tone of what is being said) that we have before us a new beginning. Two aspects of the question of freedom – thinking and activity – are sounding in the new structure in a similar way to what went before, but differently all the same – ‘an octave higher’.

In addition to the musical element there is a touch of the dramatic art in the character of the thinking in the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. The polemical-dialectical element is frequently personified, in such a way that the battle over the idea of freedom takes on the character of a world drama, assuming the aspect of a social alchemy in which the antitheses are substantially real. They come to expression in the struggle of opinions and world-views, but are rooted in the many-membered being of man and are conditioned by the extent of his development, but also by the extent of his failure to develop. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ is experienced by anyone who really begins to understand it, as a Mystery Drama, whose main hero is the new Dionysos-Prometheus who battles with all that has become, for the sake of individual evolution and the overcoming of inherited sin. But the Mysteries pursued, at all times, the goal of bringing about in the participant catharsis, moral purification. In the case at hand catharsis of the soul is absolutely essential, in order to eradicate everything that disturbs pure thought and beholding.

Rudolf Steiner says with reference to this point that, thanks to work with the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, in the reader “catharsis can be brought about to a high degree. For what is important in such things as this book is the fact that the thoughts are all set out in such a way that they have an effect .... This book is a structured organism, and to work through the thoughts in this book brings about something like an inner training” (GA 103, 31.5.1908).

Work with this book can be compared to the placing of an object in a magnetic field, thereby charging it with an electromagnetic potential, or with a blind man walking always along the same route and thus, after a while, no longer needing someone to accompany him. In the present case, we are learning to orientate ourselves within a reality that is invisible to us. We learn this by identifying the rhythms and processes in our astral and etheric bodies repeatedly with the rhythmic quality of the thinking in which the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ is written. Its ‘field’ becomes, in the end, our own ‘field’; we learn to perceive it with our sense of thought. Even the title of the book should not be understood in the traditional sense in which one speaks, for example, of the philosophy of the unconscious, or transcendental philosophy. It is related to conceptions of a different kind like, for example, the philosophy of the heroic deed, the philosophy of revelation, the philosophy of sacrifice. As one reads this book the first paragraph of the first chapter already awakens associations with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Then (until the end of Ch. 9) we have the theme of the battle of the romantic hero with fate. This battle resembles flashes of lightning which have been long suppressed by the darkness of destiny:

                – we have here to do with one “of the most important questions of life, of religion”;

                = “we do not need to enter here into the question of the freedom of the human will”;

                – “This sounds convincing”;

                = The fundamental thesis of the doctrine of free will is, of course,“rejected”.

The discussion here is not about abstract questions of cognition, but about the immediate, present and eternal destiny of the real human being. Nevertheless, armies march towards us again in Ch. 4, bearing banners with the inscription: “The world is my inner representation”, together with many other illusionists. Their battle against the idea of freedom, whatever may be their intentions, merges together with an all- pervading conflict between good and evil which we will be examining in the chapters of our book. A Mystery Drama is impossible without the antithesis between good and evil.

At the end of the first Cycle we know, as readers, that the battle has concluded here with our defeat. The victor is David Friedrich Strauss, who has imparted to the majority of ‘thoughtful contemporaries’ not actually the knowledge, but rather the belief, that freedom does not exist, because it could only be freedom of choice (for which in reality there is always a definite reason). The destructive consequences of this belief are, indeed, incalculable. For in that case there is neither sin nor virtue, and individual evolution is an empty dream. The positive, creative element in the first Cycle is contained in the way its content is structured (Fig. 43).

One can see from the diagram that, although the problem is only presented from the standpoint of thought and will, feeling is also (because there are elements of the tri-unity) an accompanying factor below the surface. It orientates the solution of the problem, now from willing to thinking – and then we are looking into an as yet unrealized future, when the will really enters the thinking, whereby the character of thinking is changed – and now from thinking to willing, and then, before one can make a judgement regarding the possibility of action, one must first understand what thinking really is. Thus we discover that the main question of the whole first part of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ (it has a significant role to play also in the second) is already posed in the first thesis. Such is the remarkable way in which the living nature of the book is revealed, in whose words we only experience its outer form. Something similar happens in our dealings with the organic world. We observe the multiplicity of its forms, behind which are concealed the principle of life and the seeds of psychical functions. In the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ we contemplate thought-forms. They are built up according to the principles of the living realm, and we must learn to transform our psychical activity in order to be able to really behold them. Pure acts of ‘beholding’ are attained in emptied consciousness, and the thought is apprehended in ideal perception, through the sense which is free of all attachment to sense-qualities.

For reasons of space, it is not possible for us to analyse all the movements and thought-structures in the book in as detailed (but still far from adequate) way as this, so we are trying at the beginning to give the reader a real incentive to work through the continuation in independent thought and play an active part in our deliberations.

Let us now return to the second Cycle. Here, too, the forces of the past voice their opinion, those judgements about freedom in which the element of feeling prevailed over that of thinking, and the idea of freedom therefore seemed unconvincing. As we give ourselves over to these moods, the wish grows stronger in us, to turn our attention to the present and the future of the consciousness-soul. The thought-content in this Cycle is based upon a triangle.

This is, let us say, the theory of the question. Its practice is rooted in a real soul-process, which is also threefold. This results in the hexagram of choice, which represents together with its centre a seven- membered system. This centre is the point of the synthesis, which Spinoza tries to understand. The flicker of a suggestion of a rational way of thinking, which was contained in the thesis of the second Cycle, appears again in the antithesis, but, just as D. F. Strauss did in Cycle 1, Herbert Spencer scores the victory over us this time. Behind him there stands, as was the case with Strauss, the majority of “thoughtful contemporaries”. They force us to let the battle between thesis and antithesis end in their favour.

2.             This sounds convincing. And yet, right up to the present day, the main attacks of the                   6.
                opponents of freedom have only been directed against the freedom of choice. Herbert
                Spencer, who subscribes to views which are growing in popularity from day to day, says in
                ‘The Principles of Psychology’ (Part IV, chap. IX, par. 219): “That everyone is at liberty to
                desire or not to desire, which is the real proposition involved in the dogma of free will, is
                negatived as much by the analysis of consciousness, as by the contents of the preceding
                chapters (of psychology)”.

3.             Others, too, proceed from this same standpoint when they attack the concept of free will.             7.
                The germ of all the arguments concerned can already be found in Spinoza. His clear and
                simple objection to the idea of freedom has since been repeated countless times, only
                shrouded, as a rule, in the most subtle theoretical doctrines, so that it becomes difficult to
                recognize the straightforward line of thinking, which is the only thing that matters.

The ‘draughts game’ with the contending party – the opponent of freedom – continues. It is subject to the laws of the logic of beholding in thinking. We need to behold the synthesis within the ‘environment’ of the laws. This ‘environment’ was erected very directly by Spinoza. The ‘ur’-phenomenon of the counter-argument is also best revealed in simple thought-forms.

4.              Spinoza writes in a letter of October or November 1674: “I call a thing free, which exists       C.II’                
                 and acts out of the sheer necessity of its nature, and I call unfree that which is determined       1.
                 in its existence and activity in a rigid and precise way by something else. Thus, God, for
                 example, though He exists necessarily, is nevertheless free, because He exists purely and
                 simply out of the necessity of His own nature. Similarly, God freely knows Himself and all
                 other things, because it follows from the necessity of His nature, that He knows all things.
                 So you see that I connect freedom not with free decision, but with free necessity.

                 But let us descend to the level of created things, which are all determined by external causes
                 to exist and act in a fixed and exact way. For the purpose of clarification, let us take a very
                 simple picture. A stone, for example, receives from an external cause that strikes it a certain
                 quantity of movement with which it afterwards, when the impact of the outer cause has ceased,
                 necessarily continues to move. This continuation of the stone in its movement is unfree and
                 without necessity, because it has to be defined by the impact of an external cause. What here
                 is true of the stone, is true of every other single thing, however complex and adaptable to many
                 purposes it may be: namely, that every thing is necessarily determined by an external cause to
                 exist and to act in a fixed and precise way.

                 Now, please imagine that the stone, while it is moving, thinks and knows that it is striving with 
                 the utmost of its strength to continue in this movement. This stone, which is only aware of its
                 striving and is not at all indifferent, will be convinced that it is entirely free and that it is continuing
                 in its motion for no other reason than that it wishes to do so. Such, however, is the human freedom
                 which we all believe we have and which consists solely in the fact that human beings are
                 conscious of their desires, but at the same time do not know the causes that determine them.
                 Thus, the child believes that it freely desires milk, the angry boy that he freely craves revenge,
                 and the coward that he freely wishes to run away. Then, also, the drunken man believes that it is
                 out of a free decision that he says something which, when he is sober again, he wishes he had
                 not said; and since this prejudice is inborn in all human beings, it is not easy to free oneself of it.
                 For, although we are amply taught by experience that human beings are least able to moderate
                 their desires and that, torn by conflicting passions, they acknowledge what is better and do what
                 is worse, yet they regard themselves as free all the same; the reason being that there are certain
                 things which they desire less strongly, and many a craving can be inhibited through the recollection
                 of something that one often calls to mind.”

The act of beholding is of long duration this time, and here it is very graphic (anschaulich) indeed. If we do not disturb it with incidental thoughts, in the end we cannot but ask the question: So isn’t freedom consciously recognized necessity? (Karl Marx). All our thoughts and feelings are brought into a state of tension on account of a conclusion of this kind, but they will not come into movement. The ‘I’ becomes active and discovers by means of a kind of perception (in the ‘beholding’) within itself, an understanding of the main error, not only of Spinoza, but of the majority of the opponents of freedom.

5.              Because we have here a view that is expressed in a clear and straightforward manner,                   2.
                 it will also be easy to expose the fundamental error contained within it. (Spinoza maintains
                 that:) There is the same degree of necessity in the action of a human being when he is
                 motivated by some reason or other to carry it out, as there is when a stone carries out a
                 movement when subjected to a given impact. Only because the human being has a
                 consciousness of his action does he believe that he brought it about freely. He overlooks
                 the fact that he is driven by a cause which he must of necessity follow. The error in this line
                 of argument is soon detected. Spinoza and all those who think like him overlook the fact that
                 the human being not only has consciousness of his action, but can also be aware of the
                 causes by which he is led. No-one will dispute the fact that the child is unfree when it desires
                 milk, that the drunken man is unfree when he says things which he later regrets. They are
                 both ignorant of the causes, which are active in the depths of their organism and to whose
                 irresistible compulsion they are subject. But is it right to treat actions of this kind on an equal
                 basis with those where the human being is conscious, not only of his action, but also of the
                 reasons that prompt him? Are human actions all of the same kind? Is it legitimate to place
                 the action of the soldier in the battlefield, that of the research scientist in his laboratory, and
                 that of the statesman involved in complex diplomatic negotiations, on the same level as that
                 of the child when it cries for milk? It is no doubt true that the best way of seeking the solution
                 to a problem is to approach it where it presents itself in the simplest form. But it is often the
                 case that the lack of ability to discriminate has resulted in endless confusion. ǂ And it makes
                 a huge and far-reaching difference whether I know why I am doing something, or whether this          3.
                 is not the case. This would seem, at first, to be a quite self-evident truth. And yet the opponents
                 of freedom never ask whether a motive of my action which is known to me in full transparency
                 exercises compulsion over me in the same way as the organic process which prompts a child
                 to cry for milk.

We have won a remarkable victory. It came to us in a very natural and obvious way. We have begun to ‘see-and-understand’ what many people do not see and therefore do not understand; their intellectual subtleties only conceal from them an important truth. We must therefore change the question of freedom around from ‘freedom of choice’ to ‘becoming aware of the motive’. We are struck with amazement at the fact that great minds like Strauss, Spencer and Spinoza “overlooked” the simple truth. What were the reasons for this? – We are given two reasons in the book: an inner and an outer reason. As we do not have the right to impose anything on the thought in its development and our victory forms no more than a positive ‘overtone’ within it, it receives its individual features from Hartmann who connects it with two aspects of the soul.

6.             Eduard von Hartmann asserts in his ‘Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness’ (p. 451) that             4.
                the human will depends upon two main factors: the motives and the character. If we look at
                human beings as all the same as each other, or regard the differences as negligible, then their
                willing appears as if determined from without, namely through the situations which come to
                meet them. But if one considers the fact that different people make an inner representation
               (Vorstellung) into a motive for their action, only if their character is of such a kind as to be
               roused to a desire by the inner representation concerned, then the human being appears as
               if determined from within and not from without. Now, the human being is convinced that,
               because he has first, in accordance with his character, to make an inner representation that
               has been imposed on him from outside, into a motive for action, he is free, that is to say,
               independent of outer motives. But the truth is, according to Eduard von Hartmann, that: “Even
               if it is we ourselves who raise the inner representations onto the level of motives, we do not
               do this arbitrarily, but in accordance with the necessity of our characterological disposition.
              That is to say we are, in this, anything but free.”

As we see, Hartmann has given features to his thought which stifle him with their one-sidedness. The philosopher did not completely understand what he was dealing with. Thought, which is a visitor from the higher world, frees itself from everything that obscures it and, in the striving towards a positive all-unity in which there is freedom, bestows rich fruits upon us as the fulfilment of the Cycle of antithesis.

7.           Here, too, no account is taken of the difference that exists between motives which I allow to            5.
              work on me only after I have permeated them with my consciousness, and those which I follow
              without possessing clear knowledge of them.
             
              And this leads us directly to the standpoint from which the whole matter will be regarded here.
              Should the question concerning the freedom of our will, be asked one-sidedly in isolation from
              other questions? And if not, with what other question must it necessarily be connected?

              If there is a difference between a conscious motive for my action and an unconscious drive,
              then the former will also result in an action that must be judged differently from one performed
              out of a blind urge. The question regarding this difference will therefore be the first to be dealt
              with. How we are to relate to the actual freedom question will depend entirely upon the outcome
             of this investigation.

The thesis of the Cycle that follows also has the character of an octave in relation to the preceding ‘musical scale’ of thinking. As it represents the thesis of Cycle III, i.e. of the synthesis-Cycle, it states the conflicting points of view and shows how they can be reconciled.

            Cycle III

1.           What does it mean to have knowledge of the reasons for one’s action? Too little consideration           6.
              has been given to this question, because one has, unfortunately, torn apart an indivisible whole,
              namely the human being. Man as an active being was distinguished from man as a knower, and
              the most important of all, the human being who acts out of knowledge, was forgotten.

      In this case, too, there is an opponent.

2.           The view is expressed that a man is free if his actions are governed by reason alone and not by
              his animal desires. Or, alternatively, that freedom means to be able to direct one’s life and one’s
              actions in accordance with purposes and decisions.

      But in this sphere the opponent is weak. Once the problem is stated correctly, his arguments are easily refuted.

3.           Nothing is gained through assertions of this kind, because they leave unanswered the crucial            7.
              question – whether reason, purposes and decisions work with the same compelling effect on
              the human being as animal desires. If, with no active involvement on my part, a rational decision    
              arises in me with the same necessity as hunger or thirst, then I have no choice but to follow it,
              and my freedom is an illusion.

As we are still in the process, in our discussion, of forming a judgement and are not dogmatically insisting on our point of view, we must acknowledge that, for the present, it is not possible for us to complete in ‘beholding’ the positive outcome we have reached. It is new and it has no ‘surrounding’ of its own. The old ‘surrounding’, however, is exceptionally rich and varied, and we have no alternative but to incorporate our synthesis into it. We will ‘behold’ what it does to our synthesis.

4.           There is yet another argument, which is formulated as follows: To be free is not to be able           C. III' 1.
              to will as one wishes,but to be able to do what one wishes. The philosopher-poet Robert              1. 
              Hamerling has given very clear-cut expression to this thought in his ‘Atomistik des Willens’:
              “The human being can do what he wishes (wills) – but he cannot will as he wishes (wills),
              because his will is determined by motives! – He cannot will as he wishes (wills)? Let us look
              at these words more closely. Do they contain any rational sense? Would freedom of will have
              to mean the ability to will something without reason, without motive? But what else does willing
              mean than to have a reason for doing or striving to achieve this thing rather than that? To will
              something for no reason and with no motive would mean to will it without wanting (willing) it. The
              concept of willing is inseparably connected with that of motive. Without a determining motive the
              will is an empty capacity: only through the motive does it become active and real. It is, therefore,
              correct to say that the human will is ‘unfree’ to the extent that its direction is always determined
              by the strongest motive. But on the other hand it must be admitted that it is absurd to set over
              against this ‘unfreedom’ a conceivable ‘freedom of will’, which would consist in being able to will
              what one does not want (will)” (‘Atomistik des Willens’, Vol. 2, p.213 f.).

   The ‘apagogical’ (Gr. apo - away, agogos - guide – Trans.) act of beholding has merely confirmed the obvious correctness of our position and, moreover, made the tragedy of the situation quite apparent. Yes, there is no-one who distinguishes between conscious and unconscious motives. Such is our ideal ‘a posteriori’.

5.          Here, too, motives in general are referred to, and no account is taken of the difference between           2.
             unconscious and conscious motives. If a motive works upon me and I am compelled to follow it
             because it proves to be the “strongest” of several motives, then the idea of freedom ceases to
             have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do something or not, if I am compelled
             by the motive to do it? The point is not whether, when the motive has worked upon me, I can or
             cannot do something, but whether only that kind of motive exists which works with inescapable
             necessity.

      In this case our idea receives an extended opportunity to reveal its character. And for its individualization nothing more than this is needed.

6.         If I must will something, then in certain circumstances it is a matter of complete indifference to me
            whether I can also do it. If, on account of my character and the circumstances prevailing in my
            surroundings, a motive is forced upon me which my thinking judges to be unreasonable, then I
            ought even to be glad if I am unable to do what I will.

     The stage of All-oneness in the Cycle is correspondingly more incisive and more personalistic. This is the overall synthesis of the three Cycles.

7.         The question is not whether I can carry out in practice something I have decided to do, but how             3.
            the decision arises within me.

     But here there is a danger of falling into dogmatism and wanting to triumph abstractly. For this reason we should not forget that the ‘beholding’ Cycle is coming next. Appropriately enough, it concluded with a certain crescendo. Now the second – the beholding, ‘pastoral’ – section begins. It consists of only one Cycle. While outwardly it is passive, inwardly it prepares the metamorphosis of the element of the past into that of the future. This is its overall character, which imprints itself on all the elements. In it too, in its thesis, we must affirm something. This time we must content ourselves with registering the fact; but it is contradictory, or, rather has a double aspect.

      CYCLE IV

1.           That which distinguishes the human being from all other organisms lies in his rational thinking.            4.

2.           Activity is something that he shares with all other organic beings.

       The synthesis maintains the quality of ‘beholding’, thanks to its object. It is based directly on sense-perception.

3.             If one is trying to throw light on the concept of freedom, there is nothing to be gained by seeking
                within the animal kingdom for analogies with the actions of human beings. Modern science is fond
                of such analogies. And if once it has succeeded in finding in animals something similar to human 
                behaviour, it believes it has touched upon the most important question of the science of man.

       The fourth element is built upon the same material as the synthesis. In it the author suggests to us directly that we should ‘behold’ the observation offered to us by p.Rée. The ideal perception arising out of the ‘beholding’ leads over, like the thesis, into a registering of the fact.

4.            To what misunderstandings this opinion leads, can be seen, for example, in the book ‘Die
               Illusion der Willensfreiheit’ by P. Rée, 1885, who (on p.5) says the following on the subject
               of freedom: “That the movement of the stone seems to us to be necessary and the act of will of
               the donkey not so, is very easily explained. The causes which move the stone are outside it and
               visible. But the causes which account for the donkey’s acts of will are inside it and invisible:
               between us and the place of their activity there stands the cranium of the donkey. We cannot
               see the causal conditioning, and there- fore believe that it does not exist. The impulse of will,
               so the explanation goes, is that which causes the donkey to turn round, but the will itself is not
               conditioned, it is an absolute beginning.”

5.           Thus, here too, the actions of the human being which are accompanied by an awareness of the           5.
              reasons for his action are simply ignored, because Rée explains that: “between us and the place
              of their activity there stands the cranium of the donkey.”

The individualizing of the ideas consists in a shift of our attention from the donkey to the human being.

6.           That there are actions, not of the donkey but of the human being, in which there stands between         6.
              us and the action the motive that has become conscious, of this Rée has no idea – so we are forced
              to conclude from his words. He further confirms this a few pages later when he says: “We do not
              perceive the causes through which our will is determined, and we therefore imagine that it is not
              causally determined at all.”

      As a result of our act of ‘apagogical’ beholding we have convinced ourselves of the complete inadequacy of the arguments disproving human freedom, brought forward by the representatives of the physiological trend in science, which has grown ever stronger since the end of the 18th century. And this means that the conclusion we reached towards the end of Cycle III is now still more solidly grounded.

7.           But the examples we have given suffice to show that many people activity oppose freedom without
              knowing what freedom really is.

      In the modern methodology of science one of the criteria of scientific truth is known as the principle of falsifiability. As the previous example has shown, spiritual science can also fulfill this criterion.
      With the fifth Cycle begins the third part of that greater Cycle which extends across the entire chapter. This consists, not as one might have expected, of three small Cycles, but only of one. The reason for this is that the (human) subject of thinking in Ch. 1, which represents the thesis, raises the problem of research. It does this out of the fullness of its own spiritual nature, which as a microcosm is fivefold. To present Cycles VI and VII in this chapter would have meant the solution of the problem, but this is the task of the chapters to come. If one had done this right at the beginning of the research, one would have rendered a service to the method, but to the disadvantage of the cognizing subject, which would be in contradiction to the spirit of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’.

Thus, Cycle V in Ch. 1 is the final one. Here must be revealed to us the results of the process of beholding, through which all that has passed which was achieved through the work of the first three Cycles. The dialectical triad of Cycle V shows this in a concise and decisive way. In it the dialectical triad of Cycle I is born again on a higher level. There it sounded very abstract indeed, but now it fulfills a rich ‘a posteriori’.

         CYCLE V

1.        That an action cannot be free, of which the doer is unaware of the reasons why he is doing
           it is quite self-evident.

2.       But what are we to say of an action whose reasons are known?

3.       This leads us to the question: What is the origin and significance of thinking? For if we lack insight
          into the thinking activity of the soul, a concept of the knowledge of something, and therefore also
          of an action, is not possible. Once we know what is the significance of thinking in general, it will also
          be easy to gain clarity concerning the role played by thinking in human action.

The ‘beholding’ in the Cycle is, with regard to form, reduced to a minimum, but in respect to content it is prodigious. The fifth Cycle is the opposite of Cycle IV. We find in it the answer to the conclusion drawn by Rée on the basis of his observation of animals. So sublime does an idea prove to be, which actually arises from a quite simple experience – so long as we do not think this through, but ‘behold’ i

4.        “It is thinking that makes the soul, with which the animal is also endowed, into spirit,” Hegel rightly
           says.... and thinking will therefore impress its own particular quality upon human action.

‘Beholding’ is this time in complete harmony with the content of the thesis, and in element 5 we arrive at those results of the study of man’s nature which are central to the question of freedom.

5.         I would by no means wish to assert that all our action flows only out of the sober reflection of our
            intellectual understanding. It is in no way my intention to characterize as human in the highest sense,
            only those actions which arise out of the abstract power of judgement. But as soon as our action
            raises itself above the sphere of the satisfaction of purely animal desires, our motives are always
            permeated with thoughts.

If we ask ourselves how the ideas of the science of human nature (Menschenerkenntnis) can be individualized, then element 6 provides us with the best answer.

6.         Love, compassion, patriotism are motivating forces which cannot be resolved into cold intellectual          7.'
            concepts. One says that here the heart, the life of feeling come into their own. But the heart and the
            life of feeling do not create the motives for action. They presuppose them and take them up into
            their own sphere. Compassion awakens in my heart when in my consciousness the inner
            representation has arisen of a person who excites compassion. The way to the heart is through the
            head. Not even love is an exception to this rule. When it is not a mere expression of the sexual drive,
            it has its foundation in the inner representations which we make of the object of our love. And the
            more idealistic these representations are, the more blissful is the happiness which this love brings us.
            Here, too, thought is the father of feeling. As the saying goes: Love makes us blind to the failings of
            the one we love. But one can also turn this around, and assert that love opens our eyes to the merits
            of the beloved. Many people pass these merits by and are entirely oblivious to them. And then
            someone sees them, and for this reason love awakens in his soul. What else has he done than form
            an inner representation of something of which a hundred other people have formed none at all. They
            do not experience love because the inner representation is lacking.

Finally, the ultimate conclusion falls, so to speak, like a ripe fruit into our hands. And this is no less than the All-unity of the whole chapter.

7.         However we may care to approach the matter, it cannot but grow increasingly clear that the                 7.
            question as to the true nature of human action presupposes the other, concerning the origin of
            thinking. So I will now address this question.

Let us now carry out a kind of ‘cross-check’ of the structure of thought which we have highlighted. We will test the structure by referring to the content. In contrast to the Salieri of Pushkin we will test algebra against the yardstick of harmony. As we have already observed, elements 1, 3, 5 and 7 bear the main bulk of the content. The other three – 2, 4 and 6 – contribute to the metamorphosing of these four elements (we discussed this question in the methodology). We will therefore place over against each other, ‘content-bearing’ elements of the same order from different Cycles. And we will try, as we do so, to reduce their content to a minimum, thus making it easier to survey the whole (Table 1).

From the juxtaposition of these brief formulations we can clearly see, above all, the difference between the dialectical and ‘beholding’ parts of the lemniscate. Parallel to this, the law of the sevenfold metamorphosis of the thought-cycle joins together into a unitary whole, elements of the same order in the different Cycles. Thus, when we compare the theses of the different Cycles with one another we arrive at an organic whole, which is not only meaningful but also, for its own part, structured according to the laws of seven-membered metamorphosis: Cycle 1 (thesis) – the human being is free; Cycle II (antithesis) – but there is always a reason for his actions; Cycle III (synthesis) – what does it mean, to know about the motives of activity? Cycle IV (beholding, or to be more precise, this thesis is only pointing to the content of beholding): thinking distinguishes man from animal; Cycle V (ideal perception): an action without knowledge of the reason is not free. The third, fifth and seventh elements are connected together in a similar way. Table I enables us to make a further observation, namely that in the first and third elements thought predominates; in the fifth element this is united with feeling, and in the seventh element both thought, feeling and will are present. Thus the entire content of the chapter stands before us as a unitary organism all of whose parts in different relation to one another give confirmation of the meaningful structure of the whole. It would have been possible though a purely speculative approach, to reach the conclusions that are elaborated in this chapter. Kant showed in his ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ that speculative reasoning is able to prove even the existence of a higher Being. This did not lead him to the idea of spiritual cognition, nor did it strengthen him in his religious faith.

To express, through the conflict of ideas, the drama of human life which is endeavouring to break the fetters of conditioning influences and win through to the power of self-determination – this is the task of cognition which stirs the human heart and is fulfilled in the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. It is futile to register the fact with one’s cold intellectual understanding alone, that the question of freedom is fundamental, and so on. The crisis of life, as we are aware, is called forth by the crisis of cognition. There are in the world people who play a leading role in civilization. The role is played differently, according to whether or not they believe human freedom to be possible. Moreover, the earthly life of man is closely bound up with the spiritual life of the cosmos, and this lends macrocosmic dimensions to the question of freedom. For all these reasons together, the drama of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ assumes the aspect of a Mystery. In the Mystery Dramas, however, the heroes do not shout and roll around on the stage as is usual in theatrical performances today. In them one can feel, through the outer tranquillity of the form, the mighty pulse-beat of the real life of the spirit, its higher conflict and its suffering. It is to these, also, that we seek a connection when we read such books as the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’.

To conclude the chapter we will give a brief summary of its content, in order to take it with us as a seed for our further work with the metamorphoses of consciousness.