The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preface to the New Edition of 1918

[ 1 ] There are two root questions of human soul life, according to which everything that is to be discussed in this book is organized. One is whether there is a way of looking at the human being in such a way that this view proves to be a support for everything else that comes to man through experience or science, but of which he has the feeling that it cannot support itself. It can be driven into the realm of uncertainty by doubt and critical judgment. The other question is this: Can man as a volitional being ascribe freedom to himself, or is this freedom a mere illusion that arises in him because he does not see through the threads of necessity on which his volition hangs just as much as a natural event? This question does not arise from an artificial web of thought. It arises quite naturally in a certain state of the soul. And one can feel that the soul would lose something of what it is supposed to be if it were not faced with the two possibilities: Freedom or necessity of will, if it did not see itself confronted with the greatest possible seriousness of question. The aim of this paper is to show that the experiences of the soul which man must undergo through the second question depend on the point of view he is able to adopt in relation to the first. The attempt is made to prove that there is a view of the human being that can support the rest of knowledge; and the further attempt is made to indicate that with this view full justification is gained for the idea of the freedom of the will, if only the area of the soul is found in which the free will can unfold.

[ 2 ] The view referred to here with regard to these two questions presents itself as one which, once gained, can become a part of the living life of the soul itself. It is not a theoretical answer which, once acquired, one carries with one merely as a conviction preserved by memory. For the way of thinking on which this book is based, such an answer would only be an apparent one. It is not such a ready-made, finished answer that is given, but reference is made to a field of experience of the soul in which, through the inner activity of the soul itself, the question is answered anew in every moment in which man needs it. Whoever has once found the area of the soul in which these questions develop, the real contemplation of this area gives him what he needs for these two riddles of life in order to walk with what he has attained further into the breadths and depths of the enigmatic life into which need and destiny prompt him to walk. - An insight that proves its justification and validity through its own life and through the relationship of this own life with the whole of human soul life seems to have been demonstrated.

[ 3 ] This is what I thought about the content of this book when I wrote it down twenty-five years ago. Even today, I have to write down sentences like this if I want to characterize the main ideas of the book. When I wrote it down at that time, I limited myself to not saying more than what is connected in the strictest sense with the two root questions identified. If anyone should be surprised that in this book there is still no reference to the field of the spiritual world of experience, which has been presented in my later writings, let him consider that at that time I did not want to give a description of the results of spiritual research, but first wanted to build the foundation on which such results can rest. This "Philosophy of Freedom" contains no such special results, just as little as it contains special scientific results; but what it does contain, in my opinion, cannot be dispensed with by those who seek certainty for such knowledge. What is said in the book may also be acceptable to some people who, for some reason or other, do not want to have anything to do with my research results in the humanities. But for those who can regard these spiritual scientific results as something that attracts them, what has been attempted here will also be important. It is this: to show how an impartial contemplation, which extends only over the two questions indicated as fundamental to all cognition, leads to the view that man lives within a true spiritual world. The aim of this book is to justify a knowledge of the spiritual realm before entering into spiritual experience. And this justification is undertaken in such a way that nowhere in these explanations need one look at the experiences I later assert in order to find what is said here acceptable, if one can or likes to go into the nature of these explanations themselves.

[ 4 ] So, on the one hand, this book seems to me to occupy a completely separate position from my actual writings on the humanities; and on the other hand, it seems to be connected with them in the most fundamental way. All this has prompted me now, after twenty-five years, to republish the contents of the book almost completely unchanged. I have only made longer additions to a whole series of sections. The experiences I have had with misunderstandings of what I have said have made such extensive additions seem necessary. I have only made changes where what I wanted to say a quarter of a century ago seemed awkward today. (Only a malicious person would find it necessary to say that I have changed my basic convictions from what I have changed.)

[ 5 ] The book has been sold out for many years. Despite the fact that, as can be seen from what I have just said, it seems to me that what I said twenty-five years ago about the marked questions should still be said today, I hesitated for a long time before completing this new edition. I asked myself again and again whether I would not have to deal here or there with the numerous philosophical views that have come to light since the publication of the first edition. I have recently been prevented from doing this in the way I would have liked by the demands of my purely humanistic research. However, after looking around as thoroughly as possible in the philosophical work of the present, I have convinced myself that, as tempting as such a discussion would be in itself, it cannot be included in my book. What seemed to me necessary to be said about more recent philosophical trends from the point of view adopted in the "Philosophy of Freedom" can be found in the second volume of my "Riddles of Philosophy".

April 1918
Rudolf Steiner