The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific MethodsSteiner, Rudolf
Religion
The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific Methods
Steiner, Rudolf
Anthroposophy; Free will and determinism; Knowledge, Theory of; Life
A system of Ethics, then, which is built up on Pessimism has its root
in the contempt for man's moral imagination. Only he who does not
consider the individual human mind capable of determining for itself
the content of its striving, can look for the sum and substance of
will in the craving for pleasure. A man without imagination does not
create moral ideas; they must be imparted to him. Physical nature
sees to it that he seeks the satisfaction of his lower desires; but
for the development of the whole man the desires which have their
origin in the spirit are fully as necessary. Only those who believe
that man has no such spiritual desires at all can maintain that they
must be imparted to him from without. On that view it will also be
correct to say that it is man's duty to do what he does not will to
do. Every Ethical system which demands of man that he should suppress
his will in order to fulfil tasks which he does not will, works, not
with the whole man, but with a stunted being who lacks the faculty
of spiritual desires. For a man who has been harmoniously developed,
the so-called ideas of the Good lie, not without, but within the
range of his will. Moral action consists, not in the extirpation
of one's individual will, but in the fullest development of human
nature. To regard moral ideals as attainable only on condition that
man destroys his individual will, is to ignore the fact that these
ideals are as much rooted in man's will as the satisfaction of the
so-called animal instincts.
It cannot be denied that the views here outlined may easily be
misunderstood. Immature youths without any moral imagination like to
look upon the instincts of their half-developed natures as the full
substance of humanity, and reject all moral ideas which they have
not themselves originated, in order that they may "live themselves
out" without restriction. But it goes without saying that a theory
which holds for a fully developed man does not hold for half-developed
boys. Anyone who still requires to be brought by education to the point
where his moral nature breaks through the shell of his lower passions,
cannot expect to be measured by the same standard as a mature man. But
it was not my intention to set down what a half-fledged youth requires
to be taught, but the essential nature of a mature man. My intention
was to demonstrate the possibility of freedom, which becomes manifest,
not in actions physically or psychically determined, but in actions
sustained; by spiritual intuitions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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