Rudolf Steiner

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Rudolf Steiner (25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925), born in Donji Kraljevec, Croatia, was an Austrian philosopher, literary scholar, educator, artist, playwright, social thinker, and esotericist.^[1][2] He was the founder of Anthroposophy, Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine,^[3] and the new artistic form of Eurythmy.

He characterized anthroposophy as follows:

“

Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe…. Anthroposophists are those who experience, as an essential need of life, certain questions on the nature of the human being and the universe, just as one experiences hunger and thirst.[4]

”

Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual component. He derived his epistemology from Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, where “Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.”^[5]

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Childhood and education 1.2 Writer and philosopher 1.3 Steiner and the Theosophical Society 1.4 Spiritual research 1.5 The Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities 1.6 Attacks, illness and death 2 Philosophical development 2.1 Goethean science 2.2 Knowledge and freedom 2.3 Spiritual science 3 Breadth of activity 3.1 Education 3.2 Social activism 3.3 Architecture and sculpture 3.4 Performing arts 3.5 Anthroposophical Medicine 3.6 Biodynamic Farming 4 Steiner and Christianity 4.1 The Christ being as the center of earthly evolution 4.2 Divergence from conventional Christian thought 4.3 The Christian Community 5 Reception of Steiner 6 Controversies 6.1 Rudolf Steiner's views on race and ethnicity 6.2 Steiner and Antisemitism 7 References 8 Bibliography 8.1 Steiner's writings 8.1.1 Books 8.1.2 Articles about social renewal 8.2 Steiner's lectures 8.2.1 General anthroposophy 8.2.2 Education and science 8.2.3 Religion 8.3 Steiner Schools 8.4 Works about Steiner by other authors 9 External links 9.1 General 9.2 Writings 9.3 Practical activities 9.4 Articles about Steiner 9.5 Further interest

Biography

Childhood and education

Steiner's father was a huntsman in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras, and later became a telegraph operator and stationmaster on the Southern Austrian Railway. When he was born, his father was stationed in Murakirály in the Muraköz region, then part of Hungary (present-day Donji Kraljevec, Međimurje region, northernmost Croatia). When he was two years old, the family moved into Burgenland, Austria, in the foothills of the eastern Alps.

In his childhood, Steiner was interested in mathematics and philosophy. From 1879 to 1883 he attended the Technische Hochschule (Technical University) in Vienna, where he studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers at the university in Vienna, Karl Julius Schroer, suggested Steiner's name to Professor Joseph Kurschner, editor of a new edition of Goethe's works. Steiner was then asked to become the edition's scientific editor.[6]

In his autobiography, Steiner related that at 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, he met a simple herb gatherer, Felix Kogutski, who spoke about the spiritual world "as someone who had his own experiences of it...." This herb gatherer introduced Steiner to a person that Steiner only identified as a "master", and who had a great influence on Steiner's subsequent development, in particular directing him to study Fichte's philosophy.^[6]

In 1891 Steiner earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock in Germany with his thesis, later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge.[7]

Writer and philosopher

In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kurschner edition, Steiner was invited to come to the Goethe archives in Weimar to become an editor for the official complete edition of Goethe's works. Steiner remained with the archive until 1896. As well as the introductions for and commentaries to the resulting four volumes of Goethe's scientific writings, Steiner wrote two books about Goethe's philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897). During this time he also collaborated in complete editions of Arthur Schopenhauer's work and that of the writer Jean Paul and wrote articles for various journals.

During his time at the archives, Steiner wrote what he considered his most important philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom) (1894), an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a path upon which humans can become spiritually free beings (see below).

In 1896, Friedrich Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, asked Steiner to set the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg in order. Her brother by that time was no longer compos mentis. Forster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher and Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom. Of Nietzsche, Steiner says in his autobiography, "Nietzsche's ideas of the 'eternal repetition' and of 'supermen' 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 nineteenth century."^[7] "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'."^[7].

In 1897, Steiner left the Weimar archives and moved to Berlin. He became owner, chief editor, and active contributor to the literary journal Magazin für Literatur, where he hoped to find a readership sympathetic to his philosophy. His work in the magazine was not well received by its readership, including the alienation of subscribers following Steiner's unpopular support of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair.^[8] The Magazin für Literatur lost more subscribers after Steiner's close friendship with anarchist writer John Henry Mackay was revealed when Steiner published extracts from their correspondence.^[9][8] Dissatisfaction with his editorial style eventually led to his departure from the magazine.

In 1899, Frau Eunicke moves to Berlin, and they marry. This lasted until her death, in 1911.

Steiner and the Theosophical Society

Main article: Rudolf Steiner and the Theosophical Society

A turning point came in 1899, when Steiner decided to publish an article in the Magazin für Literatur, titled "Goethe's Secret Revelation", on the esoteric nature of Goethe's fairy tale, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. This article led to an invitation by the Count and Countess Brockdorff to speak to a gathering of Theosophists on the subject of Nietzsche. Steiner continued speaking regularly to the members of the Theosophical Society, becoming the head of its newly constituted German section in 1902. It was within this society that Steiner met and worked with Marie von Sievers, who eventually became his second wife (1914).

By 1904, Steiner was appointed by Annie Besant to be leader of the Esoteric Society for Germany and Austria. The German Section of the Theosophical Society grew rapidly under Steiner's leadership as he lectured throughout much of Europe on his spiritual science.

During this period Steiner developed an original approach, replacing Madame Blavatsky's terminology with his own, and performing spiritual research with results different from those achieved by Besant and Leadbeater. Steiner ends his autobiography ruing the reception of the "artistic innovations offered" at the Theosophical Congress of 1907 in Munich. These, and other differences led to a formal split in 1912.

Spiritual research

From his decision to "go public" in 1900 with a lecture on The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily until his death in 1925, Steiner articulated an ongoing stream of "experiences of the spiritual world" — experiences he said had touched him from an early age on.^[8] Steiner aimed to apply his training in mathematics, science, and philosophy to produce rigorous, verifiable presentations of those experiences. ^[10]

Steiner believed that through freely chosen ethical disciplines and meditative training, anyone could develop the ability to experience spiritual world and beings, as well as the higher nature of oneself and others.^[8] Steiner believed that such discipline and training would help a person to become a more creative and loving individual.^{[citation needed]}

Steiner's ideas about the inner life were influenced by Franz Brentano^[8] - with whom he had studied - and Wilhelm Dilthey, founders of the phenomenological movement in European philosophy. Steiner was also influenced by Goethe's phenomenological approach to science.^[8][11][12]

Steiner set forth his spiritual research in a vast number of texts and lectures; notable are:

• Theosophy: An Introduction (1904), in which he sets forth his ideas of the body-soul-spirit constitution of the human being, reincarnation, and the unity of the spiritual and sense-perceptible ("as two sides of a single coin").
• Knowledge of Higher Worlds (1904/5), in which he describes his conception of a path of spiritual development, detailing many principles of life (openness, positivity, respect for others), spiritual exercises (control of thought and will, directed imaginations) and experiences likely to arise on this path (trials and spiritual perceptions).
• An Outline of Esoteric Science (1910), in which he describes a vast panorama of cosmic evolution, the spiritual hierarchies that guide this evolution, and the path of spiritual development that leads to such perceptions.

Steiner led the following esoteric schools:

• His independent Esoteric School of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1904. This school continued after the break with theosophy (see below) and eventually led into the
• School of Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society, founded in 1923. This was intended to have three "classes", but Steiner only developed the first one of these. Unlike most esoteric schools, all of the texts relating to the "School of Spiritual Science" have been published (in the full edition of Steiner's works).
• In 1906 Steiner became leader of a lodge called Mystica Aeterna within the Masonic Order of Memphis and Mizraim, an affiliation that ended around 1914. Steiner added to the Masonic rite a number of Rosicrucian references.^[13] The figure of Christian Rosenkreutz also plays an important role in several of his later lectures.

The Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities

The Anthroposophical Society grew rapidly. Fueled by a need to find a home for their yearly conferences, which included performances of plays written by Eduard Schuré as well as Steiner himself, the decision was made to build a theater and organizational center. In 1913, construction began on the first Goetheanum building, in Dornach, Switzerland. The building, designed by Steiner, was built to significant part by volunteers who offered craftsmanship or simply a will to learn new skills. Once World War I started in 1914, the Goetheanum volunteers could hear the sound of cannon fire beyond the Swiss border, but despite the war, people from all over Europe worked peaceably side by side on the building's construction. In 1919, the Goetheanum staged the world premiere of a complete production of Goethe's Faust. In this same year, the first Waldorf school was founded in Stuttgart, Germany.

Beginning in 1919, Steiner was called upon to assist with numerous practical activities (see below). His lecture activity expanded enormously. At the same time, the Goetheanum developed as a wide-ranging cultural centre. On New Year's Eve, 1922/1923, it was burned down by arson; only his massive sculpture depicting the spiritual forces active in the world and the human being, the Representative of Humanity, was saved. Steiner immediately began work designing a second Goetheanum building – made of concrete instead of wood – which was completed in 1928, three years after his death.

During the Anthroposophical Society's Christmas conference in 1923, Steiner founded the School of Spiritual Science, intended as an open university for research and study. This university, which has various sections or faculties, has grown steadily; it is particularly active today in the fields of education, medicine, agriculture, art, natural science, literature, philosophy, sociology and economics. Steiner spoke of laying the foundation stone of the new society in the hearts of his listeners, while the First Goetheanum's foundation stone had been laid in the earth. He gave a Foundation Stone meditation to anchor this.

Attacks, illness and death

The arson had a context. Threats had been made publicly against the Goetheanum ^[14], and against Steiner himself. ^[15]

Reacting to the catastrophic situation in post-war Germany, Steiner had gone on extensive lecture tours promoting his social ideas of the Threefold Social Order, entailing a fundamentally different political structure; he suggested that only through independence of the cultural, political and economic realms could such catastrophes as the World War be avoided. He also promoted a radical solution in the disputed area of Upper Silesia - claimed by both Poland and Germany -; his suggestion that this area be granted at least provisional independence led to his being publicly accused of being a traitor to Germany.^[16]

In 1919, the political theorist of the National Socialist movement in Germany, Dietrich Eckart, attacked Steiner and suggested that he was a Jew.^[17] In 1921, Adolf Hitler attacked Steiner in an article in the right-wing "Völkischen Beobachter" newspaper^[18] and other nationalist extremists in Germany were calling up a "war against Steiner". The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich led Steiner to give up his residence in Berlin, saying that if those responsible for the attempted coup [Hitler and others] came to power in Germany, it would no longer be possible for him to enter the country; ^[19] he also warned against the disastrous effects it would have for Central Europe if the National Socialists came to power.^[20]

The loss of the Goetheanum affected Steiner's health seriously. From 1923 on, he showed signs of increasing frailness and illness. He 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. On the one hand, many of these were for practical areas of life: education, curative eurythmy, speech and drama. On the other hand, Steiner began a new, extensive series of lectures presenting his research on the successive lives of various individuals, and on the technique of karma research generally. The theme of karma, he once said, was his true life mission; though he had attempted to treat it before, it had never met with sufficient interest. Finally, he had an interested listenership.^{[citation needed]}

By autumn, 1924, however, he was too weak to continue; his last lecture was held in September of that year. He died on March 30, 1925.

Philosophical development

Goethean science

In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between 1884-97, Steiner presented Goethe's approach to science as essentially phenomenological in nature, rather than theory- or model-based. He developed this conception further in several books, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897), particularly emphasizing the transformation in Goethe's approach from the physical sciences, where experiment played the primary role, to plant biology, where imagination was required to find the biological archetypes (Urpflanze), and postulated that Goethe had sought but been unable to fully find the further transformation in scientific thinking necessary to properly interpret and understand the animal kingdom.^{[citation needed]}

Steiner defended Goethe's qualitative description of color as arising synthetically from the polarity of light and darkness, in contrast to Newton's particle-based and analytic conception. He emphasized the role of evolutionary thinking in Goethe's discovery of the intermaxillary bone in human beings; Goethe expected human anatomy to be an evolutionary transformation of animal anatomy.^{[citation needed]}

Knowledge and freedom

Steiner approached the philosophical questions of epistemology and freedom in two stages. The first was his dissertation, published in expanded form in 1892 as Truth and Knowledge. Here Steiner suggests that there is an inconsistency between Kant's philosophy, which postulated that the essential verity of the world was inaccessible to human consciousness, and modern science, which assumes that all influences can be found in what Steiner termed the "sinnlichen und geistlichen" (sensory and mental/spiritual) world to which we have access. Steiner terms Kant's "Jenseits-Philosophie" (philosophy of an inaccessible beyond) a stumbling block in achieving a satisfying philosophical viewpoint.^[21]

Steiner postulates that the world is essentially an indivisible unity, but that our consciousness divides it into the sense-perceptible appearance, on the one hand, and the formal nature accessible to our thinking, on the other. He sees in thinking itself an element that can be strengthened and deepened sufficiently to penetrate all that our senses do not reveal to us. Steiner thus explicitly denies all justification to a division between faith and knowledge; otherwise expressed, between the spiritual and natural worlds. Their apparent duality is conditioned by the structure of our consciousness, which separates perception and thinking, but these two faculties give us two complementary views of the same world; neither has primacy and the two together are necessary and sufficient to arrive at a complete understanding of the world. In thinking about perception (the path of natural science) and perceiving the process of thinking (the path of spiritual training), it is possible to discover a hidden inner unity between the two poles of our experience.

Truth, for Steiner, is paradoxically both an objective discovery and yet:

"a free creation of the human spirit, that never would exist at all if we did not generate it ourselves. The task of understanding is not to replicate in conceptual form something that already exists, but rather to create a wholly new realm, that together with the world given to our senses constitutes the fullness of reality."^[22]

A new stage of Steiner's philosophical development is expressed in his Philosophy of Freedom.^{[citation needed]} Here, he further explores potentials within thinking: freedom, he suggests, can only be approached asymptotically and 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, and the real activity of acting in full consciousness. (See the main article on the book Philosophy of Freedom for a fuller exposition.)

Steiner sees human consciousness, indeed, all human culture, as a product of natural evolution that transcends itself; nature becomes self-conscious in the human being. He thus affirms Darwin's and Haeckel's evolutionary perspectives but extends this beyond its materialistic consequences. He seems here to build upon Solvyov, whose description of the nature of human consciousness is virtually identical with Steiner's:

In human beings, the absolute subject-object appears as such, i.e. as pure spiritual activity, containing all of its own objectivity, the whole process of its natural manifestation, but containing it totally ideally - in consciousness....The subject knows here only its own activity as an objective activity (sub specie object). Thus, the original identity of subject and object is restored in philosophical knowledge.^[23]

Spiritual science

Main article: Anthroposophy

In his earliest works, Steiner already spoke of the "natural and spiritual worlds" as a unity.^[8] 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, followed by How to Know Higher Worlds (1904/5), Cosmic Memory (a collection of articles written between 1904 and 1908), and An Outline of Esoteric Science (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, which he considered to be his own central theme.

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, but including extraordinary self-discipline, replicable by multiple observers. It is on this basis that spiritual science is possible, with radically different epistemological foundations than those of natural science.

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 knowledge always entails creative inner activity.^[8]

Steiner termed his work from this period on Anthroposophy.

Breadth of activity

Steiner is certainly remarkable for the breadth of his achievements. The school movement he founded has become as successful as those of Maria Montessori.^[24] Biodynamic agriculture is one of the two pillars of the modern organic farming movement, and is as important today as the ideas of one of the other founders of modern organic agriculture, Albert Howard.^[25] Anthroposophic medicine has achieved as broad a range of medicinal remedies as Hahnemann's homeopathy; in addition, a broad range of supportive therapies — both artistic and biographical — have arisen out of Steiner's work.^[26] The homes for the handicapped based on his work are as successful as those of L'Arche.^[27] His paintings and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries, and the list of people influenced by him includes Joseph Beuys and other significant modern artists. His two Goetheanum buildings are generally accepted to be masterpieces of modern architecture,^[28] and other anthroposophical architects have contributed thousands of innovative buildings to the modern scene. One of first institutions to practice ethical banking was an anthroposophical bank working out of Steiner's ideas.

Steiner's literary estate is correspondingly broad. Steiner's writings are published in about forty volumes, including books, essays, plays ('mystery dramas'), mantric verse and an autobiography. His collected lectures make up another approximately 300 volumes, and nearly every imaginable theme is covered somewhere here. (Much of Steiner's work is available on-line at the Rudolf Steiner archive, and Steiner's complete works are searchable at the German language archive). Steiner's drawings are collected in a separate series of 28 volumes. Many publications have covered his architectural legacy and sculptural work.

Education

As a young man, Steiner already supported the independence of educational institutions from governmental control. In 1907, he wrote a long essay, entitled "Education in the Light of Spiritual Science", in which he described the major phases of child development and suggested that these would be the basis of a healthy approach to education.

In 1919, Emil Molt invited him to lecture on the topic of education to the workers at Molt's factory in Stuttgart. Out of this came a new school, the Waldorf school, and Waldorf education — sometimes known as Steiner Education. 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 900 independent Waldorf schools world-wide.

Social activism

For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active as a lecturer on social questions. A petition expressing his basic social ideas (signed by Herman Hesse, among others) was very widely circulated. His main book on social questions, Toward Social Renewal, sold tens of thousands of copies. Today around the world there are a number of innovative banks, companies, charitable institutions, and schools for developing new cooperative forms of business, all working partly out of Steiner’s social ideas. One example is The Rudolf Steiner Foundation (RSF), incorporated in 1984, and as of 2004 with estimated assets of $70 million. RSF provides "charitable innovative financial services". According to the independent organizations Co-op America and the Social Investment Forum Foundation, RSF is "one of the top 10 best organizations exemplifying the building of economic opportunity and hope for individuals through community investing." ^[29]

Steiner suggested that the cultural, political and economic spheres of society needed to be sufficiently independent of one another to be able to mutually correct each other in an ongoing way. He suggested that human society had been moving slowly, over thousands of years, toward articulation of society into three independent yet mutually corrective realms, and that a Threefold Social Order was not some utopia that could be implemented in a day or even a century. It was a gradual process that he expected would continue to develop for thousands of years. Nevertheless, he gave many specific suggestions for social reforms that he thought would increase the threefold articulation of society. He believed in equality of human rights for political life, liberty in cultural life, and voluntary, uncoerced fraternal cooperation in economic life.^[30]

Architecture and sculpture

Steiner designed 17 buildings, including the First and Second Goetheanums. These two buildings, built in Dornach, Switzerland, were intended to house a University for Spiritual Science. Three of Steiner's buildings, including both Goetheanum buildings, have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture.^[31]

As a sculptor, his works include The Representative of Humanity (1922). This nine-meter high wood sculpture was a joint project with the sculptor Edith Maryon; it is on permanent display at the Goetheanum in Dornach.

Performing arts

Together with Marie Steiner-von Sievers, Rudolf Steiner developed the art of Eurythmy, sometimes referred to as "visible speech and visible song". According to the principles of Eurythmy, there are archetypal movements or gestures that correspond to every aspect of speech - the sounds, or phonemes, the rhythms, the grammatical function, and so on - to every "soul quality" - laughing, despair, intimacy, etc. - and to every aspect of music - tones, intervals, rhythms, harmonies, etc.

As a playwright, Steiner wrote four "Mystery Dramas" between 1909 and 1913, including The Portal of Initiation and The Soul's Awakening. They are still performed today by Anthroposophical groups.

Steiner also founded a new approach to artistic speech and drama; see his Speech and Drama Course. Various ensembles work with this approach, called "speech formation" (Ger.:Sprachgestaltung), and trainings exist in various countries, including England, the United States, Switzerland, and Germany; see a list of trainings. The actor Michael Chekhov extended this approach in what is now known as the Chekhov method ^[32]

Anthroposophical Medicine

Main article: 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 natural medical products worldwide. At around the same time, Dr. Ita Wegman founded a first anthroposophic medical clinic in Arlesheim, Switzerland (now called the Wegman Clinic).

Anthroposophical medicine is a holistic and salutogenetic approach to health. It thus focuses on ensuring that the conditions for health are present in a person; combating illness is often necessary but is insufficient alone. The approach was founded in the 1920s by Rudolf Steiner in conjunction with Ita Wegman, who carried the concept forward after Steiner's death in 1925.

This approach to medicine begins from the proposition that true healing takes place when the body is stimulated to overcome the influences that are causing illness, whether these arise from its own constitution or the surroundings - whether they be poisonous substances, antagonistic organisms (bacterial or viral), or psychological states. Under circumstances where it is not possible to support the body's own resistance, it may be necessary to overcome symptoms by purely external means such as surgery and allopathic medicine offer. As conventional medicines and therapies may also be employed, anthroposophical medicine claims to provide an extension of conventional medical approaches rather than an alternative to these.

As a variety of influences may be causing illness, a corresponding range of treatment possibilities are employed. Therapeutic approaches presently used by anthroposophical doctors include anthroposophic remedies based upon homeopathic principles, oil dispersion baths, massage therapy, artistic therapies to heal the psychological causes of illness, and biographical therapy to establish or re-establish a sense of purpose in the ill person. There are specialized trainings in each of these therapeutic professions, as well as in anthroposophical nursing and medicine. An anthroposophic doctor must also have a medical degree from an established and certified medical school.^[33]

Anthroposophical medicine is a form of holistic medicine within complementary or alternative medicine (CAM), and has been criticized by some current day advocates of evidence based medicine such as Wallace Sampson ^[34] and Edzard Ernst who have argued that practitioners of anthroposophical medicine and other forms of alternative medicine deliver treatments for which the efficacy or safety hasn't been adequately demonstrated through strictly controlled medical and scientific testing.^[35]

Biodynamic Farming

Biodynamic agriculture, or biodynamics comprises an ecological and sustainable farming system, that includes many of the ideas of organic farming (but predates the term). In 1924, a group of farmers concerned about the future of agriculture requested Steiner's help; Steiner responded with a lecture series on agriculture. This was the origin of biodynamic agriculture, which is now practiced throughout much of Europe, North America, and Australasia.^[36] A central concept of these lectures was to "individualize" the farm by bringing no or few outside materials onto the farm, but producing all needed materials such as manure and animal feed from within what he called the "farm organism". Other aspects of Biodynamic farming inspired by Steiner's lectures include timing activities such as planting in relation to the movement patterns of the moon and planets and applying "preparations", which consist of natural materials which have been processed in specific ways, to soil, compost piles, and plants with the intention of engaging non-physical beings and elemental forces. Steiner, in his lectures, encouraged his listeners to verify his suggestions scientifically, as he had not yet done.

The early decades of the twentieth-century saw new methods of agriculture being proposed and used Steiner believed that the introduction of chemical farming was a major problem. Steiner was convinced that the quality of food in his time was degraded, and he believed the source of the problem were artificial fertilizers and pesticides, however he did not believe this was only because of the chemical or biological properties relating to the substances involved, but also due to spiritual shortcomings in the whole chemical approach to farming. Steiner considered the world and everything in it as simultaneously spiritual and material in nature, an approach termed monism. He also believed that living matter was different from dead matter. In other words, Steiner believed synthetic nutrients were not the same as their more living counterparts.^{[citation needed]}

The name "biologically dynamic" or "biodynamic" was coined by Steiner's adherents. A central aspect of biodynamics is that the farm as a whole is seen as an organism, and therefore should be a closed self-nourishing system, which the preparations nourish. Disease of organisms is not to be tackled in isolation but is a symptom of problems in the whole organism.

Steiner and Christianity

The Christ being as the center of earthly evolution

Steiner's writing, though appreciative of all religions and cultural developments, emphasizes recent Western (rather than older Hindu or Buddhist) esoteric thought as having evolved to meet contemporary needs. He describes Christ and his mission on earth as having a particularly important place in human evolution.^{[citation needed]}

Steiner emphasized, however, that:

Christianity has evolved out of previous religions.^{[citation needed]}

The being that manifests in Christianity also manifests in all faiths and religions.^{[citation needed]}

Each religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born.^{[citation needed]}

The historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed considerably to meet the on-going evolution of humanity.[16]

It is the being that unifies all religions — and not a particular religious faith — that Steiner saw as the central force in human evolution. This "Christ Being" is for Steiner not only the Redeemer of the Fall from Paradise, but also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's "evolutionary" processes and of human history, manifesting in all religions and cultures.^{[citation needed]}

Steiner's Christianity differs from that of the Gnostics who viewed the Christ phenomenon through the knowledge gained through earlier gnosticism; whereas for Steiner, Christ's incarnation was a historical reality, and a pivotal point in human history.^{[citation needed]} In a lecture explaining the relationship between Anthroposophy and Christianity, Steiner explained:

"Spiritual science does not want to usurp the place of Christianity;^{[citation needed]} on the contrary it would like to be instrumental in making Christianity understood. Thus it becomes clear to us through spiritual science that the being whom we call Christ is to be recognized as the center of life on earth, that the Christian religion is the ultimate religion for the earth's whole future. Spiritual science shows us particularly that the pre-Christian religions outgrow their one-sidedness and come together in the Christian faith. It is not the desire of spiritual science to set something else in the place of Christianity; rather it wants to contribute to a deeper, more heartfelt understanding of Christianity."^{[citation needed]}

Divergence from conventional Christian thought

Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements. Only a very simplified account of those views can be given here, because, although they amount to only about 4% of his total works, that 4% still amounts to some 15 volumes of books and lectures — and many of the other 335 or more volumes contain additional scattered comments on Christianity.^{[citation needed]}

One of the central points of divergence is found in Steiner's views on reincarnation and karma; these are explicated in the article on Anthroposophy (see sub-section titled "Anthroposophy in Brief/Reincarnation and Karma").

Steiner also claimed that there were two different Jesus children involved in the Incarnation of the Christ: one child descended from Solomon, as described in the Gospel of Matthew; the other child from Nathan, as described in the Gospel of Luke. (The genealogies given in the two gospels diverge some thirty generations before Jesus' birth, and "Jesus" was a common name in Biblical times.) In Steiner's descriptions, the divine "Christ Spirit", the Son-God of the Trinity, incarnated in the Nathan-Jesus at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. Up until that moment, the Nathan-Jesus was a very great holy man, but not yet the divine Son of God.^{[citation needed]}

Steiner's view of the second coming of Christ is also unusual. He suggested that this would not be a physical reappearance, but rather, meant that the Christ being would become manifest in non-physical form, in the "etheric realm"[17] — i.e. visible to spiritual vision and apparent in community life — for increasing numbers of people, beginning around the year 1933. He emphasized that the future would require humanity to recognize this Spirit of Love in all its genuine forms, regardless of how this is named. He also warned that the traditional name, "Christ", might be used, yet the true essence of this being of love ignored.^{[citation needed]}

The Christian Community

In the 1920s, Steiner was approached by Friedrich Rittelmeyer, a Lutheran pastor with a congregation in Berlin. Rittelmeyer asked if it was possible to create a more modern form of Christianity. Soon others joined Rittelmeyer — mostly Protestant pastors, but including at least one Roman Catholic priest. Steiner offered counsel on renewing the sacraments of their various services, combining Catholicism's emphasis on a sacred tradition with the Protestant emphasis on freedom of thought and a personal relationship to religious life.^{[citation needed]}

Steiner made it clear, however, that the resulting movement for the renewal of Christianity, which became known as "The Christian Community", was a personal gesture of help to a deserving cause. It was not, he emphasized, founded by the movement known as "Spiritual Science" or "Anthroposophy," but by Rittelmeyer and the other founding personalities, with Steiner's help and advice. The distinction was important to Steiner because he sought with Anthroposophy to create a scientific, not faith-based, spirituality. For those who wished to find more traditional forms, however, a renewal of the traditional religions was also a vital need of the times.^{[citation needed]}

Reception of Steiner

• Stefan Zweig
  • "I had expected great things from his questing intellect....In his fantastic and at the same time profound knowledge I realized that true universality, which we, with the overweening pride of high school boys, thought we had already mastered, was not to be gained by flighty reading and discussion, but only by years of burning endeavor. "^[37]

• Anthony Storr ^[38]:
  • "His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional.... [H]is so-called thinking, his supposed power of supersensible perception, led to a vision of the world, the universe, and of cosmic history which is entirely unsupported by any evidence, which is at odds with practically everything which modern physics and astronomy have revealed, and which is more like science fiction than anything else."

• Robert Carroll ^[39]:
  • "There is no question that Steiner made contributions in many fields, but as a philosopher, scientist, and artist he rarely rises above mediocrity and is singularly unoriginal."

• Ken Wilber:^[40]
  • "[Steiner] was an extraordinary pioneer ... and one of the most comprehensive psychological and philosophical visionaries of his time."

• Robert McDermott^[41]:
  • "a genius in twelve fields."
  • "...Steiner's Spiritual Science has proved productive of significant practical works."

Controversies

Rudolf Steiner's views on race and ethnicity

Steiner believed that humanity is made up of individuals first and foremost, each of which exists sui generis (as a unique entity unto him or herself); and that each individual's evolving soul and eternal spirit pass through successive physical incarnations in changing settings and races. For Steiner, of these three elements of every individual, body, soul and spirit; race and ethnicity are thus transient characteristics, associated with the body used for a particular incarnation, rather than essential aspects of the individual. Moreover, even in a given lifetime's bodily sheath, racial differences are minor influences compared to more individual factors.^[42] Through a person's "inner" development, racial or ethnic backgrounds become less significant, and the individual spirit — that which is truly unique — manifests itself to an even greater degree. Steiner also emphasized that race was rapidly losing any remaining significance for human civilization. One of his central principles was the need to combat prejudice: "any racial prejudice hinders me from looking into a person's soul".^[43]

When Steiner described what he believed to be the particular characteristics of races, ethnic groups, nations and other groupings of human beings, some of his characterizations are difficult to reconcile with his more general statements about the subordinate role race and ethnicity play in present-day humanity. These characterizations are considered racist by critics.^[44][45][46]

Steiner and Antisemitism

Beginning around the turn of the century, Steiner wrote a series of seven articles for the Mitteilungen aus dem Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus, a magazine devoted to combatting anti-Semitism, in which he attacked the anti-Semitism of the era. ^[47]

References

Bibliography

The style and content of Steiner's works can vary greatly. Therefore, while it might be stimulating to read a single lecture or book by Steiner, it would probably be a mistake, having read even four or five of his books, to suppose one has a representative picture of the whole body of his work. Many works are available in web versions through the Rudolf Steiner Archive. The full German texts of all of Steiner's published works is searchable at the Rudolf Steiner Archiv. A list of all English translations of all works by Steiner is available at this site.

Out of the 350 volumes of his collected works (including more than forty volumes containing his writings, and over 6000 published lectures), some of the more significant works include

Steiner's writings

Books

• Goethean Science
• Truth and Knowledge (doctoral thesis)
• Intuitive thinking as a spiritual path : philosophy of freedom (1894) E-version ISBN 088010385X
• Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886)
• Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Age (1901/1925)
• Christianity as Mystical Fact (1902)
• Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man (1904)
• Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos (1904) ISBN 0-88010-373-6
• Anthroposophy and the Inner Life (also published as Anthroposophy, an Introduction), Lectures from 1924 or 1925.
• How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation (1904-5) ISBN 0-88010-508-9
• The Education of the Child (1907)
• An Outline of Esoteric Science (1910) ISBN 0-88010-409-0
• Four Mystery Dramas - The Soul's Awakening (1913)
• Toward Social Renewal (1919)
• Fundamentals of Therapy: An Extension of the Art of Healing Through Spiritual Knowledge (1925)
• An Autobiography (1924-5)

Articles about social renewal

• Reordering of Society: Capital and Credit (1919)
• Reordering of Society: Requirements of Spiritual, Social and Economic Life (1919)
• Reordering of Society: The Fundamental Social Law (1919)

Steiner's lectures

The subjects of the over 6,000 published lectures by Steiner are classified by the publisher as follows (see complete catalog in pdf format):

General anthroposophy

• public lectures
• lectures for workmen at the Goetheanum
• lectures for members of the Anthroposophical Society
  • An Esoteric Cosmology (1906)
  • Occult Signs and Symbols (1907)
  • The East in the Light of the West (1909)
  • Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy (1912)
  • Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman (1914)
  • Preparing for the Sixth Epoch (1915)
  • Supersensible Knowledge (1916)
  • Cosmic and Human Metamorphoses (1917)
  • Evil and the Future of Man (1918)
  • On the life of the Soul (1923)
  • Man as Symphony of the Creative Word (1923)
  • Anthroposophy and the Inner Life (1924)
  • Knowledge of the State Between Death and a New Birth (1926?)
• lectures for members of the School of Spiritual Science
• lectures about karma and reincarnation
  • Manifestations of Karma (1910)
  • Reincarnation and Karma: How Karma Works (1922)
  • Buermann, Uwe, Die Anschauung des Karma bei Rudolf Steiner. Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 2006. ISBN 3-7725-1912-1

Education and science

• education
  • Study of Man (1918)
  • Practical Advice To Teachers (1919)
• medicine
  • Medicine: An Introductory Reader (ed. Andrew Maendl, M.D.) ISBN 1-85584-133-9.
  • Spiritual Science and Medicine (1920)
  • Physiology and Therapeutics (1920)
  • Fundamentals of Anthroposophical Medicine (1922)
  • The Human Heart (1922)
• science
  • First Scientific Lecture: The Light Course (1919-20)
  • The Origins of Natural Science (1923). ISBN 0-88010-140-7
• Agriculture
  • Agriculture Course, ISBN 1-85584-148-7
• Sociology
  • Social Understanding Through Spiritual Scientific Knowledge (1919)
  • Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being (1918)

Religion

• Christianity
  • Collected Christmas lectures (various dates)
  • Collected Easter lectures (various dates)
  • Collected Ascension and Pentecostal lectures (various dates)
  • Collected Michaelmas lectures (various dates)
  • The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers: Lucifer, Ahriman, Asuras. Mephistopheles and Earthquakes. (1909)
  • The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul (1912-13)
  • Anthroposophy and Christianity (1914)
  • Fifth Gospel, ISBN 1-85584-039-1
  • Pre-Earthly Deeds of Christ (1914)
  • Self Knowledge and the Christ Experience (1923)
• lectures for The Christian Community

Steiner Schools

• List of Waldorf Schools

Works about Steiner by other authors

• Ahern, Geoffrey Sun at Midnight. The Rudolf Steiner Movement and the Western Esoteric Tradition 1984 ISBN 0-85030-338-9
• Almon, Joan (ed.) Meeting Rudolf Steiner, firsthand experiences compiled from the Journal for Anthroposophy since 1960 ISBN 0-9674562-8-2
• Childs, Gilbert, Rudolf Steiner: His Life and Work, ISBN 0-88010-391-4
• Davy, Adams and Merry, A Man Before Others: Rudolf Steiner Remembered. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1993.
• Easton, Stewart, Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch, ISBN 0-910142-93-9
• Hemleben, Johannes and Twyman,Leo, Rudolf Steiner: An Illustrated Biography. Rudolf Steiner Press, 2001.
• Lindenberg, Christoph Andreas, Rudolf Steiner: Eine Biographie (2 vols.). Stuttgart, 1997. ISBN 3-7725-1551-7
• Lissau, Rudi, Rudolf Steiner: Life, Work, Inner Path and Social Initiatives. Hawthorne Press, 2000.
• McDermott, Robert, The Essential Steiner. Harper Press, 1984
• Seddon, Richard, Rudolf Steiner. North Atlantic Books, 2004.
• Shepherd, A.P., Rudolf Steiner: Scientist of the Invisible. Inner Traditions, 1990.
• Schiller, Paul, Rudolf Steiner and Initiation. Steiner Books, 1990.
• Swassjan, Karen, The Ultimate Communion of Mankind: A Celebration of Rudolf Steiner's Book "The Philosophy of Freedom", ISBN 0-904693-82-1
• Tummer, Lia and Lato, Horacio, Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy for Beginners. Writers & Readers Publishing, 2001.
• Turgeniev, Assya, Reminiscences of Rudolf Steiner and Work on the First Goetheanum, ISBN 1-902636-40-6
• Welburn, Andrew, Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy and the Crisis of Contemporary Thought, ISBN 0-86315-436-0
• Wilkinson, Roy, Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to his Spiritual World-View, ISBN 1-902636-28-7

External links

General

• Goetheanum
• Rudolf Steiner Overview
• The Anthroposophy Network
• The Calendar of the Soul
• Article about Steiner by Gary Lachman published in the Fortean Times
• The Anthroposophical Society in America
• "News" of the anthroposophical movement
• U.S. Directory of Initiatives

Writings

• The Rudolf Steiner Archive
• Steiner Books Press
• Steiner lending library
• Philosophy of Freedom website

Practical activities

• Emerson College in the UK
• Rudolf Steiner Foundation
• Association of Waldorf Schools of North America
• Steiner/Waldorf Schools Fellowship of the UK
• Camphill Association
• The Christian Community
• Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association

Articles about Steiner

• Heiner Ullrich, "Rudolf Steiner", Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education (Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol.XXIV, no. 3/4, 1994, p. 555-572

Further interest

• See photos from Motzstraße 30, Schöneberg, Berlin, where Rudolf Steiner lived from 1903 to 1923.