Rudolf Steiner:
The Philosophy of Freedom
Individuality and Genus
The view that man is destined to become a
complete, self-contained, free individuality seems to be contested
by the fact that he makes his appearance as a member of a naturally
given totality (race, people, nation, family, male or female
sex) and also works within a totality (state, church, and so
on). He bears the general characteristics of the group to which
he belongs, and he gives to his actions a content that is determined
by the position he occupies among many others.
This being so, is individuality possible at
all? Can we regard man as a totality in himself, seeing that
he grows out of one totality and integrates himself into another?
Each member of a totality is determined, as
regards its characteristics and functions, by the whole totality.
A racial group is a totality and all the people belonging to
it bear the characteristic features that are inherent in the
nature of the group. How the single member is constituted, and
how he will behave, are determined by the character of the racial
group. Therefore the physiognomy and conduct of the individual
have something generic about them. If we ask why some particular
thing about a man is like this or like that, we are referred
back from the individual to the genus. The genus explains why
something in the individual appears in the form we observe.
Man, however, makes himself free from what
is generic. For the generic features of the human race, when
rightly understood, do not restrict man's freedom, and should
not artificially be made to do so. A man develops qualities and
activities of his own, and the basis for these we can seek only
in the man himself. What is generic in him serves only as a medium
in which to express his own individual being. He uses as a foundation
the characteristics that nature has given him, and to these he
gives a form appropriate to his own being. If we seek in the
generic laws the reasons for an expression of this being, we
seek in vain. We are concerned with something purely individual
which can be explained only in terms of itself. If a man has
achieved this emancipation from all that is generic, and we are
nevertheless determined to explain everything about him in generic
terms, then we have no sense for what is individual.
It is impossible to understand a human being
completely if one takes the concept of genus as the basis of
one's judgment. The tendency to judge according to the genus
is at its most stubborn where we are concerned with differences
of sex. Almost invariably man sees in woman, and woman in man,
too much of the general character of the other sex and too little
of what is individual. In practical life this does less harm
to men than to women. The social position of women is for the
most part such an unworthy one because in so many respects it
is determined not as it should be by the particular characteristics
of the individual woman, but by the general picture one has of
woman's natural tasks and needs. A man's activity in life is
governed by his individual capacities and inclinations, whereas
a woman's is supposed to be determined solely by the mere fact
that she is a woman. She is supposed to be a slave to what is
generic, to womanhood in general. As long as men continue to
debate whether a woman is suited to this or that profession "according
to her natural disposition", the so-called woman's question
cannot advance beyond its most elementary stage. What a woman,
within her natural limitations, wants to become had better be
left to the woman herself to decide. If it is true that women
are suited only to that profession which is theirs at present,
then they will hardly have it in them to attain any other. But
they must be allowed to decide for themselves what is in accordance
with their nature. To all who fear an upheaval of our social
structure through accepting women as individuals and not as females,
we must reply that a social structure in which the status of
one half of humanity is unworthy of a human being is itself in
great need of improvement.
Anyone who judges people according to generic
characters gets only as far as the frontier where people begin
to be beings whose activity is based on free self-determination.
Whatever lies short of this frontier may naturally become matter
for academic study. The characteristics of race, people, nation
and sex are the subject matter of special branches of study.
Only men who wish to live as nothing more than examples of the
genus could possibly conform to a general picture such as arises
from academic study of this kind. But none of these branches
of study are able to advance as far as the unique content of
the single individual. Determining the individual according to
the laws of his genus ceases where the sphere of freedom (in
thinking and acting) begins. The conceptual content which man
has to connect with the percept by an act of thinking in order
to have the full reality (see Chapter 5 ff.) cannot be fixed
once and for all and bequeathed ready-made to mankind. The individual
must get his concepts through his own intuition. How the individual
has to think cannot possibly be deduced from any kind of generic
concept. It depends simply and solely on the individual. Just
as little is it possible to determine from the general characteristics
of man what concrete aims the individual may choose to set himself.
If we would understand the single individual we must find our
way into his own particular being and not stop short at those
characteristics that are typical. In this sense every single
human being is a separate problem. And every kind of study that
deals with abstract thoughts and generic concepts is but a preparation
for the knowledge we get when a human individuality tells us
his way of viewing the world, and on the other hand for the knowledge
we get from the content of his acts of will Whenever we feel
that we are dealing with that element in a man which is free
from stereotyped thinking and instinctive willing, then, if we
would understand him in his essence, we must cease to call to
our aid any concepts at all of our own making, The act of knowing
consists in combining the concept with the percept by means of
thinking. With all other objects the observer must get his concepts
through his intuition; but if we are to understand a free individuality
we must take over into our own spirit those concepts by which
he determines himself, in their pure form (without mixing our
own conceptual content with them). Those who immediately mix
their own concepts into every judgment about another person,
can never arrive at the understanding of an individuality. Just
as the free individuality emancipates himself from the characteristics
of the genus, so must the act of knowing emancipate itself from
the way in which we understand what is generic.
Only to the extent that a man has emancipated
himself in this way from all that is generic, does he count as
a free spirit within a human community. No man is all genus,
none is all individuality. But every man gradually emancipates
a greater or lesser sphere of his being, both from the generic
characteristics of animal life and from domination by the decrees
of human authorities.
As regards that part of his nature where a
man is not able to achieve this freedom for himself, he constitutes
a part of the whole organism of nature and spirit. In this respect
he lives by copying others or by obeying their commands. But
only that part of his conduct that springs from his intuitions
can have ethical value in the true sense. And those moral instincts
that he possesses through the inheritance of social instincts
acquire ethical value through being taken up into his intuitions.
It is from individual ethical intuitions and their acceptance
by human communities that all moral activity of mankind originates.
In other words, the moral life of mankind is the sum total of
the products of the moral imagination of free human individuals.
This is the conclusion reached by monism.
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