"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds."

Abstract thought is one of the most astounding things achievable by man. And not just conscious thought about events, the world, people around, and the like: the human mind's ability to ponder ideas and concepts not literally in front of them: to consider things beyond what can be seen and touched and experienced directly. There are an infinite number of quotable phrases on the subject: Socrates, Voltaire, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pablo Picasso, and Stephen Hawking, to name a few, have voiced some pretty profound lines on the subject. It is incredible, and strange, and frightening, and enticing, and wonderful: the ideas we can imagine using only the power of our brains, nothing else: not the real world, not a belief in some supernatural plane on which abstractions exist, just our brainpower, supplemented only by basic conceptions of 'sane' and 'insane' and a few logical presuppositions. It is incredible, and it is an ability that is necessary to exercise. It is absolutely fundamental to human society that all members may retain the ability to practice and voice abstract thought: freedom of thought in society lends itself to the resistance of fascist and other totalitarian regimes, the constant arisal of new ideas and innovations, beneficial modifications to the standard paradigms of science and technology, political hierarchy, literary advances, forming changes in the very fabrics of society. It is necessary to exercise freedom of thought in order to correctly practice the freedoms of assembly, religion, press, and speech. So arises the question: how does one actually LIMIT the freedom of thought, to change something so essential to the human brain such that so much of its potential is erased? As stated earlier, there are a few necessary presets to freedom of abstract human thought: notions of sanity and logic, which can be tainted and skewed by perspective. It is possible to limit the scope of human thought by containing the bounds from which the thought is observed and approached. The philosopher Slavoj Zizek says that the purpose of philosophy is to ask the right questions, as asking the wrong questions can narrow the field of possible speculation to the terms of the question. The approach to thought is incredibly important, and so just as asking the wrong question limits the possible field of answers, limiting the perspective of any person limits the field of possible thought, inhibiting the potential scope of contemplation. This becomes a theme of wisdom versus instruction: wisdom is attained through each individual's own conjecture, while instruction can quite easily become a monotonizing erasure of individual thought, a restriction to the approach to thought. This theme, an albeit huge and overstuffed one, lends itself to a much more practical and corporeal theme: loving someone enough to let them go; not only physically, but in thought. If one loves someone truly, they will not oblige a specific set of presuppositions on the other to limit their thought and experience to their own, but will let them go to find their own presuppositions. And so, in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, one can see the themes of free thought and sufficient love.


The theme of instruction and wisdom lies underneath the blanket of letting those one loves go, so in order to see the themes of truly free thought, one must identify the themes of love. One can see where Siddhartha's father does not want him to go out on his own and become a Samana, "[Siddhartha's father] saw his son standing there unmoving, and his heart filled with anger, with disquiet, with trepidation, with sorrow" (Hesse 10). One can see that the father is not at the stage of love where he is able to let his son go off on his own pursuits, as he gets upset that his son wishes to pursue individualistic exploration. He maintains that the obedience of his son is what is important, " 'Siddhartha will do as his father instructs him' " (Hesse 10). He does not consider the restrictions he is putting on the experience of life of his son, and how that will affect his son's mind and power to think freely. Eventually, the father realizes how his son is an individual and must retain the experience and freedom of thought of an individual, "His eyes gazed into the distance straight before him. the father realized then that Siddhartha was no longer with him in the place of his birth" (Hesse 10). He realizes that Siddhartha is growing apart from the ideology of his father, and Siddhartha must be fully released in order to realize his full potential of thought; and here the father attains the level of love for his son that allows him to let him go, to pursue individual and free thought.

This is the next level of the theme of love: the level of acceptance, and gaining the ability to let someone go. The father finally lets go of Siddhartha in the beginning, "He took his hand from his son's shoulder and went out" (Hesse 11). The father literally releases Siddhartha into the world to seek his own philosophy and reaches the point of love where he does this, if begrudgingly. Then, Siddhartha finds himself facing the same situation with his own son. Vasudeva coaches him, "Or do you really believe that you committed your own follies so as to spare your son from committing them?" (Hesse 101). Vasudeva tells Siddhartha that Siddhartha cannot experience the world for his son, he must let his son go out and experience it for himself, so as not to be subjugated to Siddhartha's sole mindset, and form his own. Then, as Siddhartha muses over the knowledge that allowing his son to go out into the world will allow for terrible things to happen to his son, "Stronger than this knowledge was his love for the boy" (Hesse 101). Siddhartha's love for his son overcomes his overbearing fear of what will happen to the boy and Siddhartha allows himself to let go of the boy, to let his love form the break that will allow his son to finally go out into the world.

The final part of the theme is the direct moments of individualism seen in the boy, Siddhartha's son. Vasudeva still coaches Siddhartha through the evolution of his love. "Who saved the Samana Siddhartha from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from folly? Were his father's piety, his teachers' admonitions, his own knowledge, and his own searching able to protect him? What father, what teacher, was able to protect him from living life himself?" (Hesse 101). Vasudeva tries to highlight the need for each individual to learn their own lessons, rather than let those that went before them to learn on their behalf. He cites Siddhartha's own experience: his father once wished to let his own lessons teach Siddhartha rather than letting Siddhartha go out and learn for himself. He tries to get him to let his son go, talking about how his son is quite different than Siddhartha and Vasudeva, and must not be constrained to the experiences and thoughts of them, " 'Are you not forcing him, the arrogant and spoiled boy, to live in a hut with two old banana eaters for whom even rice is a delicacy, whose thoughts cannot be his, whose hearts are old and still and beat differently from his?' " (Hesse 100). He tells Siddhartha that he is forcing his son into a life of ideals that he does not share, and that his son must go out and learn and acquire for himself his own ideals. Finally, as Siddhartha lets go, he realizes that his son is going out to form his own path, "He is providing for himself, choosing his own path" (Hesse 104). Siddhartha finally manages to let his son go, finally achieves the level of love necessarily to truly let his son go, to go out and form his own ideas and to be free to think for himself.

Throughout Hesse's Siddhartha, the theme that states if someone loves someone else truly, they can and should let their love go. The theme then points to a deeper theme, a theme of free thinking. The theme that to let someone go is to allow them to experience for themselves, to acquire their own wisdom, rather than to be constrained to the perspective of their instruction. Free and abstract thought is one of the most incredible achievements of humanity, the ability to embrace and consider something that is purely an ideal, and is fundamental to all human society. It can only limited by the perspective from which it is approached, a limitation that can be placed by instruction. Therefore, one must accept that instruction must exist in a way that only shows the way to information, but is able to let go enough such that the learner may retain the freedom of thought necessary to interpret it in any way they choose; they must have the open mind and their own life experience in order to do it. And so true love allows a teacher to let their student go to experience for themselves, to allow for the development of their own ideals and to think freely and abstractly themselves.