Key to Life

This short book provides a sketch of the important, but underrated book written by 19th-century Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom. The purpose of Key to Life is to help new readers make sense of the essential ideas of Steiner's book and prepare them for working through the detailed account itself. Grasping the key ideas should inspire readers to dive into the original at a later time and read it without encountering major obstacles. While Steiner's work delves into the age-old question of freedom of will, his approach to the experiential exploration of the nature of thinking is unique. A human act can only meaningfully be called free if the person acting is fully conscious of the reasons for his/her action. This means that the degree of freedom of the act is determined by the degree of freedom of the thinking preceding the act. But what is thinking? Iddo Oberski's book explains how Steiner sees thinking as a manifestation in us of a natural phenomenon, and as such, thinking should be understood as a real experience of the spiritual world. Steiner's philosophy sparked a movement called Anthroposophy, which seeks to develop a path to knowledge that runs in between science and mysticism. First-time author Iddo Oberski is originally from Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is now a lecturer at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Throughout his studies in neurobiology, primatology and education, he always thought that a real knowledge of the human being was missing. In Steiner's book, he felt he finally got some answers.