Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner | |
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Donji Kraljevec, Croatia) | |
Died | 30 March 1925 Dornach, Switzerland | (aged 64)
Education | Vienna Institute of Technology University of Rostock (PhD, 1891) |
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Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 or 25 February 1861
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between
Steiner advocated a form of
Biography
Childhood and education
Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (1829–1910), left a position as a
Steiner entered the village school, but following a disagreement between his father and the schoolmaster, he was briefly educated at home. In 1869, when Steiner was eight years old, the family moved to the village of
In 1879, the family moved to Inzersdorf to enable Steiner to attend the Vienna Institute of Technology,[31] where he enrolled in courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and mineralogy and audited courses in literature and philosophy, on an academic scholarship from 1879 to 1883, where he completed his studies and the requirements of the Ghega scholarship satisfactorily.[32][33] In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers, Karl Julius Schröer,[2]: Chap. 3 suggested Steiner's name to Joseph Kürschner, chief editor of a new edition of Goethe's works,[34] who asked Steiner to become the edition's natural science editor,[35] a truly astonishing opportunity for a young student without any form of academic credentials or previous publications.[36]: 43
Before attending the Vienna Institute of Technology, Steiner had studied
Early spiritual experiences
When he was nine years old, Steiner believed that he saw the spirit of an aunt who had died in a far-off town, asking him to help her at a time when neither he nor his family knew of the woman's death.[37] Steiner later related that as a child, he felt "that one must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself after the fashion of geometry ... [for here] one is permitted to know something which the mind alone, through its own power, experiences. In this feeling I found the justification for the spiritual world that I experienced ... I confirmed for myself by means of geometry the feeling that I must speak of a world 'which is not seen'."[2]
Steiner believed that at the age of 15 he had gained a complete understanding of the concept of time, which he considered to be the precondition of spiritual clairvoyance.[13] At 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, Steiner met a herb gatherer, Felix Kogutzki, who spoke about the spiritual world "as one who had his own experience therein".[2]: 39–40 [38]
Writer and philosopher
In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of
In 1891, Steiner received a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock, for his dissertation discussing Fichte's concept of the ego,[24][42] submitted to Heinrich von Stein , whose Seven Books of Platonism Steiner esteemed.[2]: Chap. 14 Steiner's dissertation was later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge: Prelude to a Philosophy of Freedom, with a dedication to Eduard von Hartmann.[43] Two years later, in 1894, he published Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom or The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, the latter being Steiner's preferred English title), an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a way for humans to become spiritually free beings. Steiner hoped that the book "would gain him a professorship", but the book was not well received.[15] Steiner later spoke of this book as containing implicitly, in philosophical form, the entire content of what he later developed explicitly as anthroposophy.[44]
In 1896, Steiner declined an offer from
My first acquaintance with Nietzsche's writings belongs to the year 1889. Previous to that I had never read a line of his. Upon the substance of my ideas as these find expression in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Nietzsche's thought had not the least influence....Nietzsche's ideas of the '
eternal recurrence' and of 'Übermensch' remained long in my mind. For in these was reflected that which a personality must feel concerning the evolution and essential being of humanity when this personality is kept back from grasping the spiritual world by the restricted thought in the philosophy of nature characterizing the end of the 19th century....What attracted me particularly was that one could read Nietzsche without coming upon anything which strove to make the reader a 'dependent' of Nietzsche's.[2]: Chap. 18
In 1897, Steiner left the
Despite his fame as a teacher of esotericism, Steiner was culturally and academically isolated.[46]
Theosophical Society
In 1899, Steiner published an article, "Goethe's Secret Revelation", discussing the esoteric nature of Goethe's fairy tale
In contrast to mainstream Theosophy, Steiner sought to build a Western approach to spirituality based on the philosophical and mystical traditions of European culture. The German Section of the Theosophical Society grew rapidly under Steiner's leadership as he lectured throughout much of Europe on his
Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities
The
Steiner's lecture activity expanded enormously with the end of the war. Most importantly, from 1919 on Steiner began to work with other members of the society to found numerous
At a "Foundation Meeting" for members held at the Dornach center during Christmas 1923, Steiner founded the School of Spiritual Science.
Political engagement and social agenda
Steiner became a well-known and controversial public figure during and after World War I. In response to the catastrophic situation in post-war Germany, he proposed extensive social reforms through the establishment of a
Steiner opposed Wilson's proposal to create new European nations based around ethnic groups, which he saw as opening the door to rampant nationalism. Steiner proposed, as an alternative:
'social territories' with democratic institutions that were accessible to all inhabitants of a territory whatever their origin while the needs of the various ethnicities would be met by independent cultural institutions.[61]
Attacks, illness, and death
The
From 1923 on, Steiner showed signs of increasing frailness and illness. He nonetheless continued to lecture widely, and even to travel; especially towards the end of this time, he was often giving two, three or even four lectures daily for courses taking place concurrently. Many of these lectures focused on practical areas of life such as education.[68]
Increasingly ill, he held his last lecture in late September, 1924. He continued work on his autobiography during the last months of his life; he died at Dornach on 30 March 1925.
Spiritual research
Steiner first began speaking publicly about spiritual experiences and phenomena in his 1899 lectures to the Theosophical Society. By 1901 he had begun to write about spiritual topics, initially in the form of discussions of historical figures such as the mystics of the Middle Ages. By 1904 he was expressing his own understanding of these themes in his essays and books, while continuing to refer to a wide variety of historical sources.
A world of spiritual perception is discussed in a number of writings which I have published since this book appeared. The Philosophy of Freedom forms the philosophical basis for these later writings. For it tries to show that the experience of thinking, rightly understood, is in fact an experience of spirit.
(Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom, Consequences of Monism)
Steiner aimed to apply his training in
Steiner used the word Geisteswissenschaft (from Geist = mind or spirit, Wissenschaft = science), a term originally coined by Wilhelm Dilthey as a descriptor of the humanities, in a novel way, to describe a systematic ("scientific") approach to spirituality.[74] Steiner used the term Geisteswissenschaft, generally translated into English as "spiritual science," to describe a discipline treating the spirit as something actual and real, starting from the premise that it is possible for human beings to penetrate behind what is sense-perceptible.[75] He proposed that psychology, history, and the humanities generally were based on the direct grasp of an ideal reality,[76] and required close attention to the particular period and culture which provided the distinctive character of religious qualities in the course of the evolution of consciousness. In contrast to William James' pragmatic approach to religious and psychic experience, which emphasized its idiosyncratic character, Steiner focused on ways such experience can be rendered more intelligible and integrated into human life.[77]
Steiner proposed that an understanding of reincarnation and karma was necessary to understand psychology[78] and that the form of external nature would be more comprehensible as a result of insight into the course of karma in the evolution of humanity.[79] Beginning in 1910, he described aspects of karma relating to health, natural phenomena and free will, taking the position that a person is not bound by his or her karma, but can transcend this through actively taking hold of one's own nature and destiny.[80] In an extensive series of lectures from February to September 1924, Steiner presented further research on successive reincarnations of various individuals and described the techniques he used for karma research.[68][81]
Breadth of activity
After the First World War, Steiner became active in a wide variety of cultural contexts. He founded a number of schools, the first of which was known as the
Steiner's literary estate is broad. Steiner's writings, published in about forty volumes, include books, essays, four plays ('mystery dramas'), mantric verse, and an autobiography. His collected lectures, making up another approximately 300 volumes, discuss a wide range of themes. Steiner's drawings, chiefly illustrations done on blackboards during his lectures, are collected in a separate series of 28 volumes. Many publications have covered his architectural legacy and sculptural work.[93][94]
Education
As a young man, Steiner was a private tutor and a lecturer on history for the Berlin Arbeiterbildungsschule,[95] an educational initiative for working class adults.[96] Soon thereafter, he began to articulate his ideas on education in public lectures,[97] culminating in a 1907 essay on The Education of the Child in which he described the major phases of child development which formed the foundation of his approach to education.[98] His conception of education was influenced by the Herbartian pedagogy prominent in Europe during the late nineteenth century,[95]: 1362, 1390ff [97] though Steiner criticized Herbart for not sufficiently recognizing the importance of educating the will and feelings as well as the intellect.[99]
In 1919, Emil Molt invited him to lecture to his workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart. Out of these lectures came the first Waldorf School. In 1922, Steiner presented these ideas at a conference called for this purpose in Oxford by Professor Millicent Mackenzie. He subsequently presented a teacher training course at Torquay in 1924 at an Anthroposophy Summer School organised by Eleanor Merry.[100] The Oxford Conference and the Torquay teacher training led to the founding of the first Waldorf schools in Britain.[101] During Steiner's lifetime, schools based on his educational principles were also founded in Hamburg, Essen, The Hague and London; there are now more than 1000 Waldorf schools worldwide.
Biodynamic agriculture
In 1924, a group of farmers concerned about the future of agriculture requested Steiner's help. Steiner responded with a lecture series on an
"Steiner’s 'biodynamic agriculture' based on 'restoring the quasi-mystical relationship between earth and the cosmos' was widely accepted in the Third Reich (28)."[109]
A central aspect of biodynamics is that the farm as a whole is seen as an organism, and therefore should be a largely self-sustaining system, producing its own
In a 2002 newspaper editorial, Peter Treue, agricultural researcher at the
Anthroposophical medicine
From the late 1910s, Steiner was working with doctors to create a new approach to medicine. In 1921, pharmacists and physicians gathered under Steiner's guidance to create a pharmaceutical company called Weleda which now distributes naturopathic medical and beauty products worldwide. At around the same time, Dr. Ita Wegman founded a first anthroposophic medical clinic (now the Ita Wegman Clinic) in Arlesheim. Anthroposophic medicine is practiced in some 80 countries.[111] It is a form of alternative medicine based on pseudoscientific and occult notions.[112]
Social reform
For a period after World War I, Steiner was active as a lecturer on social reform. A petition expressing his basic social ideas was widely circulated and signed by many cultural figures of the day, including Hermann Hesse.
In Steiner's chief book on
Steiner proposed that societal well-being fundamentally depends upon a relationship of mutuality between the individuals and the community as a whole:
The well-being of a community of people working together will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by others.
— Steiner, The Fundamental Social Law[114]
He expressed another aspect of this in the following motto:
The healthy social life is found
When in the mirror of each human soul
The whole community finds its reflection,
And when in the community
The virtue of each one is living.— Steiner, The Fundamental Social Law[114]
According to Cees Leijenhorst, "Steiner outlined his vision of a new political and social philosophy that avoids the two extremes of capitalism and socialism."[115]
According to Egil Asprem, "Steiner’s teachings had a clear authoritarian ring, and developed a rather crass polemic against 'materialism', 'liberalism', and cultural 'degeneration'. [...] For example, anthroposophical medicine was developed to contrast with the 'materialistic' (and hence 'degenerate') medicine of the establishment."[116]
Architecture and visual arts
Steiner designed 17 buildings, including the First and Second Goetheanums.[117] These two buildings, built in Dornach, Switzerland, were intended to house significant theater spaces as well as a "school for spiritual science".[118] Three of Steiner's buildings have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture.[119]
His primary sculptural work is The Representative of Humanity (1922), a nine-meter high wood sculpture executed as a joint project with the sculptor Edith Maryon. This was intended to be placed in the first Goetheanum. It shows a central human figure, the "Representative of Humanity," holding a balance between opposing tendencies of expansion and contraction personified as the beings of Lucifer and Ahriman.[120][121][122] It was intended to show, in conscious contrast to Michelangelo's Last Judgment, Christ as mute and impersonal such that the beings that approach him must judge themselves.[123] The sculpture is now on permanent display at the Goetheanum.
Steiner's blackboard drawings were unique at the time and almost certainly not originally intended as art works.[124] Joseph Beuys' work, itself heavily influenced by Steiner, has led to the modern understanding of Steiner's drawings as artistic objects.[125]
Performing arts
Steiner wrote four
Steiner's plays continue to be performed by anthroposophical groups in various countries, most notably (in the original German) in Dornach, Switzerland and (in English translation) in Spring Valley, New York and in Stroud and Stourbridge in the U.K.In collaboration with Marie von Sivers, Steiner also founded a new approach to acting, storytelling, and the recitation of poetry. His last public lecture course, given in 1924, was on speech and drama. The Russian actor, director, and acting coach Michael Chekhov based significant aspects of his method of acting on Steiner's work.[127][128]
Together with
Esoteric schools
Steiner was founder and leader of the following:
- His independent Esoteric School of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1904. This school continued after the break with Theosophybut was disbanded at the start of World War I.
- A lodge called Mystica Aeterna within the Masonic Order of Memphis and Mizraim, which Steiner led from 1906 until around 1914. Steiner added to the Masonic rite a number of Rosicrucian references.[129]
- The School of Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society, founded in 1923 as a further development of his earlier Esoteric School. This was originally constituted with a general section and seven specialized sections for education, literature, performing arts, natural sciences, medicine, visual arts, and astronomy.[57][59][130] Steiner gave members of the School the first Lesson for guidance into the esoteric work in February 1924.[131] Though Steiner intended to develop three "classes" of this school, only the first of these was developed in his lifetime (and continues today). An authentic text of the written records on which the teaching of the First Class was based was published in 1992.[132]
Philosophical ideas
Goethean science
In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between 1884 and 1897, Steiner presented Goethe's approach to science as essentially
Particular organic forms can be evolved only from universal types, and every organic entity we experience must coincide with some one of these derivative forms of the type. Here the evolutionary method must replace the method of proof. We aim not to show that external conditions act upon one another in a certain way and thereby bring about a definite result, but that a particular form has developed under definite external conditions out of the type. This is the radical difference between inorganic and organic science.
— Rudolf Steiner, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, Chapter XVI, "Organic Nature"
A variety of authors have termed Goethean science pseudoscience.[134][135][136] According to Dan Dugan, Steiner was a champion of the following pseudoscientific claims:
- Goethe's Theory of Colours;[136]
- "he called relativity 'brilliant nonsense'";[136][137]
- "he taught that the motions of the planets were caused by the relationships of the spiritual beings that inhabited them";[136]
- vitalism;[136]
- doubting germ theory;[136]
- non-standard approach to physiological systems, including claiming that the heart is not a pump.[135]
According to Rudolf Steiner, mainstream science is Ahrimanic.[138]
Knowledge and freedom
Steiner approached the philosophical questions of knowledge and freedom in two stages. In his dissertation, published in expanded form in 1892 as Truth and Knowledge, Steiner suggests that there is an inconsistency between Kant's philosophy, which posits that all knowledge is a representation of an essential verity inaccessible to human consciousness, and modern science, which assumes that all influences can be found in the sensory and mental world to which we have access. Steiner considered Kant's philosophy of an inaccessible beyond ("Jenseits-Philosophy") a stumbling block in achieving a satisfying philosophical viewpoint.[139]
Steiner postulates that the world is essentially an indivisible unity, but that our
In The Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner further explores potentials within thinking: freedom, he suggests, can only be approached gradually with the aid of the creative activity of thinking. Thinking can be a free deed; in addition, it can liberate our will from its subservience to our instincts and drives. Free deeds, he suggests, are those for which we are fully conscious of the motive for our action; freedom is the spiritual activity of penetrating with consciousness our own nature and that of the world,[141] and the real activity of acting in full consciousness.[70]: 133–4 This includes overcoming influences of both heredity and environment: "To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts – not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one's deepest, most original, most essential and spiritual self, one's individuality."[24]
Steiner affirms
Spiritual science
In his earliest works, Steiner already spoke of the "natural and spiritual worlds" as a unity.[30] From 1900 on, he began lecturing about concrete details of the spiritual world(s), culminating in the publication in 1904 of the first of several systematic presentations, his Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos. As a starting point for the book Steiner took a quotation from Goethe, describing the method of natural scientific observation,[143] while in the Preface he made clear that the line of thought taken in this book led to the same goal as that in his earlier work, The Philosophy of Freedom.[144]
In the years 1903–1908 Steiner maintained the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis and published in it essays on topics such as initiation, reincarnation and karma, and knowledge of the supernatural world.[145] Some of these were later collected and published as books, such as How to Know Higher Worlds (1904–5) and Cosmic Memory. The book An Outline of Esoteric Science was published in 1910. Important themes include:
- the human being as body, soul and spirit;
- the path of spiritual development;
- spiritual influences on world-evolution and history; and
- reincarnation and karma.
Steiner emphasized that there is an objective natural and spiritual world that can be known, and that perceptions of the spiritual world and incorporeal beings are, under conditions of training comparable to that required for the natural sciences, including self-discipline, replicable by multiple observers. It is on this basis that
For Steiner, the cosmos is permeated and continually transformed by the creative activity of non-physical processes and spiritual beings. For the human being to become conscious of the objective reality of these processes and beings, it is necessary to creatively enact and reenact, within, their creative activity. Thus objective spiritual knowledge always entails creative inner activity.[30] Steiner articulated three stages of any creative deed:[70]: Pt II, Chapter 1
- Moral intuition: the ability to discover or, preferably, develop valid ethical principles;
- Moral imagination: the imaginative transformation of such principles into a concrete intention applicable to the particular situation (situational ethics); and
- Moral technique: the realization of the intended transformation, depending on a mastery of practical skills.
Steiner termed his work from this period onwards
Steiner and Christianity
Steiner appreciated the ritual of the mass he experienced while serving as an altar boy from school age until he was ten years old, and this experience remained memorable for him as a genuinely spiritual one, contrasting with his irreligious family life.[148] As a young adult, Steiner had no formal connection to organized religion. In 1899, he experienced what he described as a life-transforming inner encounter with the being of Christ. Steiner was then 38, and the experience of meeting Christ occurred after a tremendous inner struggle. To use Steiner's own words, the "experience culminated in my standing in the spiritual presence of the Mystery of Golgotha in a most profound and solemn festival of knowledge."[149] His relationship to Christianity thereafter remained entirely founded upon personal experience, and thus both non-denominational and strikingly different from conventional religious forms.[24]
Christ and human evolution
Steiner describes Christ as the unique pivot and meaning of earth's evolutionary processes and human history, redeeming
Central principles of his understanding include:
- The being of Christ is central to all religions, though called by different names by each.
- Every religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born.
- Historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed in our times in order to meet the ongoing evolution of humanity.
In Steiner's
Divergence from conventional Christian thought
Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include
One of the central points of divergence with conventional Christian thought is found in Steiner's views on reincarnation and karma.
Steiner also posited two different Jesus children involved in the Incarnation of the Christ: one child descended from
Steiner's view of the
The teachings of Anthroposophy got called Christian Gnosticism.[17] Indeed, according to the official stance of the Catholic Church, Anthroposophy is "a neognostic heresy".[18][152] Other heresiologists agree.[19] The Lutheran (Missouri Sinod) apologist and heresiologist Eldon K. Winker quoted Ron Rhodes that Steiner had the same Christology as Cerinthus.[20] Indeed, Steiner thought that Jesus and Christ were two separated beings, who got fused at a certain point in time,[153] which can be construed as Gnostic but not as Docetic,[153] since "they do not believe the Christ departed from Jesus prior to the crucfixion".[20] "Steiner's Christology is discussed as a central element of his thought in Johannes Hemleben, Rudolf Steiner: A Documentary Biography, trans. Leo Twyman (East Grinstead, Sussex: Henry Goulden, 1975), pp. 96-100. From the perspective of orthodox Christianity, it may be said that Steiner combined a docetic understanding of Christ's nature with the Adoptionist heresy."[154] Older scholarship says Steiner's Christology is Nestorian.[155] According to Egil Asprem, "Steiner’s Christology was, however, quite heterodox, and hardly compatible with official church doctrine."[156][157]
Two German scholars have called Anthroposophy "the most successful form of 'alternative' religion in the [twentieth] century."[158] Other scholars stated that Anthroposophy is "aspiring to the status of religious dogma".[159]
According to Swartz, Brandt, Hammer, and Hansson, Anthroposophy is a religion.
Robert A. McDermott says Anthroposophy belongs to Christian Rosicrucianism.[170] According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Rudolf Steiner "blended modern Theosophy with a Gnostic form of Christianity, Rosicrucianism, and German Naturphilosophie".[171]
Geoffrey Ahern states that Anthroposophy belongs to neo-gnosticism broadly conceived, which he identifies with
Was Steiner a Gnostic? Yes and no. Yes, from the point of view that he offered insights and methods for a personal experience of Christ. I have formulated this aspect of his work as his hermeneutical key: ‘not I, but Christ in me’. No, from the point of view that he was not trying to reestablish Gnosticism's practices into a neo-gnostic tradition. Steiner was, in his times, well aware of concerns articulated more recently by Pope Francis about the two subtle enemies of holiness, contemporary Gnosticism and contemporary Pelagianism.[173]
— Martin Samson, PhD thesis
Granted that Steiner included Gnostic elements in his cosmological reinterpretation of Christianity, many of them from the Pistis Sophia, Steiner was not a Gnostic in the sense of someone who held that the world was ruled by a demiurge, that matter was evil, or that it was possible to escape from this fallen universe by acquiring secret spiritual knowledge. To characterize the structure of his thought as derived from Syrio-Egyptian gnosis (Ahern 2010) may be too strong and plays down the fact that he was critical of early Gnostic Christianity as having no adequate idea of Jesus as a man of flesh and blood.[174]
— Wayne Hudson
According to Catholic scholars Anthroposophy belongs to the New Age.[175][176]
The Christian Community
In the 1920s, Steiner was approached by
The resulting movement for religious renewal became known as "The Christian Community". Its work is based on a free relationship to Christ without dogma or policies. Its priesthood, which is open to both men and women, is free to preach out of their own spiritual insights and creativity.
Steiner emphasized that the resulting movement for the renewal of Christianity was a personal gesture of help to a movement founded by Rittelmeyer and others independently of his anthroposophical work.[113] The distinction was important to Steiner because he sought with Anthroposophy to create a scientific, not faith-based, spirituality.[150] He recognized that for those who wished to find more traditional forms, however, a renewal of the traditional religions was also a vital need of the times.
Reception
Steiner's work has influenced a broad range of notable personalities. These include:
- philosophers Albert Schweitzer, Owen Barfield and Richard Tarnas;[30]
- writers
- child psychiatrist Eva Frommer;[183]
- music therapist Maria Schüppel[184]
- economist Leonard Read;[185]
- ecologist Rachel Carson;[186]
- artists Joseph Beuys,[187] Wassily Kandinsky,[188][189] and Murray Griffin;[190]
- esotericist and educationalist George Trevelyan;[191]
- actor and acting teacher Michael Chekhov;[192]
- cinema director Andrei Tarkovsky;[193]
- composers Jonathan Harvey[194] and Viktor Ullmann;[195] and
- conductor Bruno Walter.[196]
Albert Schweitzer wrote that he and Steiner had in common that they had "taken on the life mission of working for the emergence of a true culture enlivened by the ideal of humanity and to encourage people to become truly thinking beings".[198] However, Schweitzer was not an adept of mysticism or occultism, but of Age of Enlightenment rationalism.[199]
Anthony Storr stated about Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy: "His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional.... But, whereas Einstein's way of perceiving the world by thought became confirmed by experiment and mathematical proof, Steiner's remained intensely subjective and insusceptible of objective confirmation."[134]
Robert Todd Carroll has said of Steiner that "Some of his ideas on education – such as educating the handicapped in the mainstream – are worth considering, although his overall plan for developing the spirit and the soul rather than the intellect cannot be admired".[200] Translators have pointed out that the German term Geist can be translated equally properly as either mind or spirit, however,[201] and that Steiner's usage of this term encompassed both meanings.[202]
The 150th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's birth was marked by the first major retrospective exhibition of his art and work, 'Kosmos - Alchemy of the everyday'. Organized by Vitra Design Museum, the traveling exhibition presented many facets of Steiner's life and achievements, including his influence on architecture, furniture design, dance (Eurythmy), education, and agriculture (Biodynamic agriculture).[203] The exhibition opened in 2011 at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, Germany,[204]
The German psychiatrist Wolfgang Treher diagnosed Rudolf Steiner with schizophrenia, in a book from 1966.
Scientism
Race and ethnicity
Steiner's work includes both universalist, humanist elements and racial assumptions.
Steiner occasionally characterized specific
Throughout his life Steiner consistently emphasized the core spiritual unity of all the world's peoples and sharply criticized racial prejudice. He articulated beliefs that the individual nature of any person stands higher than any racial, ethnic, national or religious affiliation.[26][113] His belief that race and ethnicity are transient and superficial, and not essential aspects of the individual,[210] was partly rooted in his conviction that each individual reincarnates in a variety of different peoples and races over successive lives, and that each of us thus bears within him or herself the heritage of many races and peoples.[210][213] Toward the end of his life, Steiner predicted that race will rapidly lose any remaining significance for future generations.[210] In Steiner's view, culture is universal, and explicitly not ethnically based, and he vehemently criticized imperialism.[214]
In the context of his ethical individualism, Steiner considered "race, folk, ethnicity and gender" to be general, describable categories into which individuals may choose to fit, but from which free human beings can and will liberate themselves.[47]
Martins and Vukadinović describe the racism of Anthroposophy as spiritual and paternalistic (i.e. benevolent), in contrast to the materialistic and often malign racism of fascism.
Steiner did influence Italian Fascism, which exploited "his racial and anti-democratic dogma."[217] The fascist ministers Giovanni Antonio Colonna di Cesarò (nicknamed "the Anthroposophist duke"; he became antifascist after taking part in Benito Mussolini's government[218]) and Ettore Martinoli have openly expressed their sympathy for Rudolf Steiner.[217] Most from the occult pro-fascist UR Group were Anthroposophists.[219][220][221]
In fact, "Steiner's collected works, moreover, totalling more than 350 volumes, contain pervasive internal contradictions and inconsistencies on racial and national questions."[222][223]
According to Munoz, in the materialist perspective (i.e. no reincarnations), Anthroposophy is racist, but in the spiritual perspective (i.e. reincarnations mandatory) it is not racist.[224]
Judaism
During the years when Steiner was best known as a literary critic, he published a series of articles attacking various manifestations of antisemitism and criticizing some of the most prominent anti-Semites of the time as "barbaric" and "enemies of culture".[225][226] In contrast, however, Steiner also promoted full assimilation of the Jewish people into the nations in which they lived, suggesting that Jewish cultural and social life had lost its contemporary relevance[227] and "that Judaism still exists is an error of history".[228] Steiner was a critic of his contemporary Theodor Herzl's goal of a Zionist state, and indeed of any ethnically determined state, as he considered ethnicity to be an outmoded basis for social life and civic identity.[229]
Steiner financed the publication of and wrote a foreword for the book Die Entente-Freimaurerei und der Weltkrieg (1919) by Karl Heise , partly based upon his own ideas,[230] a book which has been called "a now classic work of anti-Masonry and anti-Judaism."[231] The publication comprised a conspiracy theory according to which World War I was a consequence of a collusion of Freemasons and Jews their purpose being the destruction of Germany. The writing was later enthusiastically received by the Nazi Party.[232][233]
Writings (selection)
- See also Works in German
The standard edition of Steiner's Collected Works constitutes about 422 volumes. This includes 44 volumes of his writings (books, essay, plays, and correspondence), over 6000 lectures, and some 80 volumes (some still in production) documenting his artistic work (architecture, drawings, paintings, graphic design, furniture design, choreography, etc.).[234] His architectural work, particularly, has also been documented extensively outside of the Collected Works.[94][93]
- Goethean Science (1883–1897)
- Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886)
- Truth and Knowledge, doctoral thesis, (1892)
- Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, also published as the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and the ISBN 0-88010-385-X
- Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Age (1901/1925)
- Christianity as Mystical Fact (1902)
- Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos (1904) ISBN 0-88010-373-6
- How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation (1904–5) ISBN 0-88010-508-9
- Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man (1904) (Also published as The Submerged Continents of Atlantis and Lemuria)
- The Education of the Child[ISBN 0-85440-620-4
- The Way of Initiation, (1908) (English edition trans. by Max Gysi)
- Initiation and Its Results, (1909) (English edition trans. by Max Gysi)
- An Outline of Esoteric Science (1910) ISBN 0-88010-409-0
- Four Mystery Dramas (1913)
- The Renewal of the Social Organism (1919)
- Fundamentals of Therapy: An Extension of the Art of Healing Through Spiritual Knowledge (1925)
- Reincarnation and Immortality, Rudolf Steiner Publications. (1970) LCCN 77-130817
- Rudolf Steiner: An Autobiography, Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1977, ISBN 0-8334-0757-0(Originally, The Story of my Life)
- Rudolf Steiner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom Garber Communications; 2nd revised edition (July 1985) ISBN 978-0893450335
See also
References
Notes
Citations
- ^ ISBN 3-499-50500-2, p. 8. In 2009 new documentation appeared supporting a date of 27 February : see Günter Aschoff, "Rudolf Steiners Geburtstag am 27. Februar 1861 – Neue Dokumente" Archived 28 June 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Das Goetheanum 2009/9, pp. 3ff
- ^ a b c d e f g Rudolf Steiner Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life: 1861–1907, Lantern Books, 2006
- ^ "Steiner was born on 25 February 1861 in the village of Kraljevec (in what is today Croatia, but at the time in Hungary)", Heinrich Ullrich, Rudolf Steiner
- ^ "Ich bin...in Ungarn geboren", "ich habe...in Ungarn die ersten eineinhalb Jahre meines Lebens verbracht", Rudolf Steiner, GA174, p. 89
- ^ Steiner was "born February 27, 1861, in Kraljevec, Hungary". Paul M. Allen, "Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner", in Robert McDermott, New Essential Steiner, SteinerBooks (2009)
- ^ Laszlo, Péter (2011), Hungary's Long Nineteenth Century: Constitutional and Democratic Traditions, Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, the Netherlands, p. 7
- ISBN 978-0-333-98454-3
- ^ Lindenberg 2011, p. 356.
- ^ Zander 2007, p. 241.
- ^ a b Staudenmaier 2008.
- ^ Some of the literature regarding Steiner's work in these various fields: Goulet, P: "Les Temps Modernes?", L'Architecture D'Aujourd'hui, December 1982, pp. 8–17; Architect Rudolf Steiner Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine at GreatBuildings.com; Rudolf Steiner International Architecture Database; Brennan, M.: Rudolf Steiner ArtNet Magazine, 18 March 1998; Blunt, R.: Waldorf Education: Theory and Practice – A Background to the Educational Thought of Rudolf Steiner. Master Thesis, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 1995; Ogletree, E.J.: Rudolf Steiner: Unknown Educator, Elementary School Journal, 74(6): 344–352, March 1974; Nilsen, A.:A Comparison of Waldorf & Montessori Education Archived 10 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine, University of Michigan; Rinder, L: Rudolf Steiner's Blackboard Drawings: An Aesthetic Perspective Archived 29 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine and exhibition of Rudolf Steiner's Blackboard Drawings Archived 2 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine, at Berkeley Art Museum, 11 October 1997 – 4 January 1998; Aurélie Choné, "Rudolf Steiner's Mystery Plays: Literary Transcripts of an Esoteric Gnosis and/or Esoteric Attempt at Reconciliation between Art and Science?", Aries, Volume 6, Number 1, 2006, pp. 27–58(32), Brill publishing; Christopher Schaefer, "Rudolf Steiner as a Social Thinker", Re-vision Vol 15, 1992; and Antoine Faivre, Jacob Needleman, Karen Voss; Modern Esoteric Spirituality, Crossroad Publishing, 1992.
- ^ "Who was Rudolf Steiner and what were his revolutionary teaching ideas?" Richard Garner, Education Editor, The Independent
- ^ ISBN 0880102071
- ISBN 978-0-19-086757-7.
- ^ a b c Leijenhorst, Cees (2006). "Steiner, Rudolf, * 25.2.1861 Kraljevec (Croatia), † 30.3.1925 Dornach (Switzerland)". In Hanegraaff, Wouter J. (ed.). Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden / Boston: Brill. p. 1086.
Steiner moved to Weimar in 1890 and stayed there until 1897. He complained bitterly about the bad salary and the boring philological work, but found the time to write his main philosophical works during his Weimar period. ... Steiner's high hopes that his philosophical work would gain him a professorship at one of the universities in the German-speaking world were never fulfilled. Especially his main philosophical work, the Philosophie der Freiheit, did not receive the attention and appreciation he had hoped for.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-5675-8.
In the broadest sense of the term this is any spiritual teaching that says that spiritual knowledge (Greek: gnosis) or wisdom (sophia) rather than doctrinal faith (pistis) or some ritual practice is the main route to supreme spiritual attainment.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-974391-9. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
Gnosticism has often been regarded as bizarre and outlandish, and certainly it is not easily understood until it is examined in its contemporary setting. It was, however, no mere playing with words and ideas, but a serious attempt to resolve real problems: the nature and destiny of the human race, the problem of *evil, the human predicament. To a gnostic it brought a release and joy and hope, as if awakening from a nightmare. One later offshoot, Manicheism, became for a time a world religion, reaching as far as China, and there are at least elements of gnosticism in such medieval movements as those of the Bogomiles and the Cathari. Gnostic influence has been seen in various works of modern literature, such as those of William Blake and W. B. Yeats, and is also to be found in the Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky and the Anthroposophy of Rudolph Steiner. Gnosticism was of lifelong interest to the psychologist C. G. *Jung, and one of the Nag Hammadi codices (the Jung Codex) was for a time in the Jung Institute in Zurich.
a neognostic heresy
On the one hand, there are what might be called the Western groups, which reject the alleged extravagance and orientalism of evolved Theosophy, in favor of a serious emphasis on its metaphysics and especially its recovery of the Gnostic and Hermetic heritage. These groups feel that the love of India and its mysteries which grew up after Isis Unveiled was unfortunate for a Western group. In this category there are several Neo-Gnostic and Neo-Rosicrucian groups. The Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner is also in this category. On the other hand, there are what may be termed "new revelation" Theosophical schisms, generally based on new revelations from the Masters not accepted by the main traditions. In this set would be Alice Bailey's groups, "I Am," and in a sense Max Heindel's Rosicrucianism.
Examples of such fields are various forms of "alternative healing" such as shamanism, or esoteric world views like anthroposophy ... For this reason, we must suspect that the "alternative knowledge" produced in such fields is just as illusory as that of the standard pseudosciences.
I formulated the cognitive challenge I was presenting myself with in this way: How can I account for the fact that, on one page, Steiner can make a powerful and original critique of Kantian epistemology—basically, the idea that there are limits to knowledge—yet on another make, with all due respect, absolutely outlandish and, more to the point, seemingly unverifiable statements about life in ancient Atlantis?
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Steiner outlined his vision of a new political and social philosophy that avoids the two extremes of capitalism and socialism.
His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional.... But, whereas Einstein's way of perceiving the world by thought became confirmed by experiment and mathematical proof, Steiner's remained intensely subjective and insusceptible of objective confirmation.
Anthroposophical pseudoscience is easy to find in Waldorf schools. "Goethean science" is supposed to be based only on observation, without "dogmatic" theory. Because observations make no sense without a relationship to some hypothesis, students are subtly nudged in the direction of Steiner's explanations of the world. Typical departures from accepted science include the claim that Goethe refuted Newton's theory of color, Steiner's unique "threefold" systems in physiology, and the oft-repeated doctrine that "the heart is not a pump" (blood is said to move itself).
In physics, Steiner championed Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's color theory over Isaac Newton, and he called relativity "brilliant nonsense." In astronomy, he taught that the motions of the planets were caused by the relationships of the spiritual beings that inhabited them. In biology, he preached vitalism and doubted germ theory.
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: CS1 maint: postscript (linkNevertheless, he made a distinction between the human person Jesus, and Christ as the divine Logos.
anthroposophy - a religion based upon the philosophical and scientific knowledge of man
anthroposophy - a religion based upon the philosophical and scientific knowledge of man