This is one of several posts which are based on my reading of The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner. For other posts, see below.
I take the following to mean that in order to understand human freedom we need to free ourselves from the kind of thinking that is appropriate to understanding what is “generic” and “controlling”, i.e., what is extrinsic and systemic. Steiner writes:
Cognition consists in linking a concept with a percept through thinking. … People who immediately mix their own concepts into any judgment of others can never attain understanding of an individuality. Just as a free individuality frees itself from the characteristics of the genus, cognition must free itself from the approach appropriate to understanding what is generic.
People can be considered free spirits within the human community only to the degree that they free themselves from the generic in this way. No human is all genus; none is all individuality. But all human beings gradually free a greater or lesser sphere of their being both from what is generic to animal life and from the controlling decrees of human authorities.
—Rudolf Steiner, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 1t
Only intrisically motivated action, originating from “our intuitions”, has intrinsic value. And what is extrinsic and systemic become intrinsic when taken up into “our intuitions”.
Only the part of our action that springs from our intuitions has moral value in the true sense. And what we have in the way of moral instincts through inheritance of social instincts becomes something ethical through our taking it up into our intuitions.
—Rudolf Steiner, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 1t
Update 2024-11-04:
Text updated.
Related posts updated.
Related posts:
Rudolf Steiner on Consciousness
Rudolf Steiner on Gender
Rudolf Steiner on Natural Objects
Rudolf Steiner on Thinking, Feeling, and Willing
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