Customer Reviews

The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception

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The quintessential book for every anthroposophist to read and re-read. Steiner laid more emphasis on this work than any of his other books - contains all essential anthroposophical concepts in seed form.

It is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century that the anthroposophical society does not lay more emphasis on this work.

If you consider yourself an anthropop - GET IT AND READ IT.

Michael Wilson is far better than Lipson translation (is more faithful to the original german)

I kept on with the reading because I knew Steiner had something important to say that would be uplifting. He was widening the area philosophers use for arriving at their conclusions. Steiner had been upset by Immanual Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" which he read when he was 15. He wanted to correct what he saw as a limitation in Kant's outlook, whereby, a person can never know the nature of reality, which is unknowable. Steiner disagreed and felt that this pessimisistic orientation would lead to nihilism, which did occur in Satre, Camus, etc.
I found that if I went slow enough I was able to see that involving the thinking process itself as part of nature (as Steiner discribes it); and that Kant's conclusions about the world's unknowability were wrong. Steiner believed that the thinking process has an important role to play in evolution and that it images are not arrived at unconsciously. He claims the whole process from image-thought-concept is conscious, knowable, and unique. When he wrote this book, the thinking process was mostly ignored as part of what shapes reality. The book is not easy to understand, in part, because Steiner is arguing with the current state of philosophy in his own day. wish he had just presented his own thinking.