The Philosophy of Freedom
The Philosophy of Freedom and its circle of ideas: pure thinking, moral intuition, ethical individualism and the threefold social impulse. Part of Thalira's Anthroposophical Glossary of 515 terms, and companion to the in-depth guide Anthroposophy.
Ethical Individualism is the position Steiner argues for in The Philosophy of Freedom, in which the moral act proceeds from individual moral intuition rather than from external commandment, convention, or biological drive.
Moral Intuition is the first moment of the free deed in Steiner's ethics; it is the act in which the I grasps a moral idea directly, without sense-mediation, prior to its application and execution.
Philosophy of Freedom is Rudolf Steiner's 1894 epistemological foundation, in which thinking grasps reality directly and the free deed proceeds from moral intuition rather than from rule or impulse.
Pure Thinking (reines Denken) is the activity in which the I grasps concepts directly from the spiritual world rather than abstracting them from sense data; it is the bridge between ordinary thought and supersensible cognition.
The healthy social body that arises when cultural-spiritual life, rights-political life, and economic life each follow their own organising principle of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
Threefolding is Steiner's social proposal that human society organises itself through three semi-independent spheres of cultural life, rights life, and economic life.