Rudolf steiner biography chart of alaol
Rudolf Steiner
Austrian esotericist (–)
For other people named Rudolf Steiner, see Rudolf Steiner (disambiguation).
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 or 25 February [1] – 30 March ) was an Austrianoccultist,social reformer, architect, esotericist,[11][12] and claimed clairvoyant.[13][14] Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom.[15] At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy.
His teachings are influenced by ChristianGnosticism[i] or neognosticism.[17][18][19] Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific.[20] He was also prone to pseudohistory.[21]
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality.[22] His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions,[23]:&#;&#; differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism.
In a second phase, beginning around , he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts.[24] In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education,[25]biodynamic agriculture,[26] and anthroposophical medicine.[25]
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach.
He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view in which "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."[27] A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.[28]
Biography
Childhood and education
Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (–), left a position as a gamekeeper[29] in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras, northeast Lower Austria to marry one of the Hoyos family's housemaids, Franziska Blie ( Horn – , Horn), a marriage for which the Count had refused his permission.
Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in Murakirály (Kraljevec) in the Muraköz region of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (present-day Donji Kraljevec in the Međimurje region of northernmost Croatia). In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to Mödling, near Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to Pottschach, located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps in Lower Austria.[25]
Steiner entered the village school, but following a disagreement between his father and the schoolmaster, he was briefly educated at home.
In , when Steiner was eight years old, the family moved to the village of Neudörfl and in October Steiner proceeded from the village school there to the realschule in Wiener Neustadt.[2]:&#;Chap. 2&#;
In , the family moved to Inzersdorf to enable Steiner to attend the Vienna Institute of Technology,[30] 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 to , where he completed his studies and the requirements of the Ghega scholarship satisfactorily.[31][32] In , 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, who asked Steiner to become the edition's natural science editor,[34] a truly astonishing opportunity for a young student without any form of academic credentials or previous publications.[35]:&#;43&#; In fact, it was a low-paid and boring job, according to Steiner himself.[15]
Before attending the Vienna Institute of Technology, Steiner had studied Kant, Fichte and Schelling.[13]
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.[36] 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&#;[37]
Writer and philosopher
The young Steiner emerged as an individualist, positivist and freethinker, who was not afraid to refer to scandalous philosophers such as Stirner, Nietzsche and Haeckel.
His freethinking culminated in a contempt for religion and faith. He attributed almost pathological traits to Christianity.[38]
In , as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe's works, Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. Steiner remained with the archive until It was a low-paid and boring job.[15] As well as the introductions for and commentaries to 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 (),[39] which Steiner regarded as the epistemological foundation and justification for his later work,[40] and Goethe's Conception of the World ().[41] During this time he also collaborated in complete editions of the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and the writer Jean Paul and wrote numerous articles for various journals.
In , Steiner received a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock, for his dissertation discussing Fichte's concept of the ego,[23][42] submitted to Heinrich von Stein&#;[de], 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 , 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 , Steiner declined an offer from Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche to help organize the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg.
Her brother, Friedrich Nietzsche, was by that time non compos mentis. "Hoping for a job (which, in fact, he did not get), Steiner accepted the invitation immediately."[45] Förster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher; Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom.[46] Steiner later related that:
My first acquaintance with Nietzsche's writings belongs to the year 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 influenceNietzsche'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 centuryWhat 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 , Steiner left the Weimar archives and moved to Berlin. He became part owner of, chief editor of, and an active contributor to the literary journal Magazin für Literatur, where he hoped to find a readership sympathetic to his philosophy.
Rudolf steiner biography chart of alaol brothers: He further emphasized in both his lecture and autobiography that it was important for him that he had already won his own basic insights into the subject of reincarnation and karma before he read the book in Likewise his interest in epistemology was not academic, but of deep personal significance, and he felt it to be the foundation for all his later philosophical and esoteric work. Steiner, Rudolf; Meuss, Anna R. Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner 27 or 25 February [ 1 ] — 30 March was an Austrian occultist , [ 10 ] social reformer , architect , esotericist , [ 11 ] [ 12 ] and claimed clairvoyant.
Many subscribers were alienated by Steiner's unpopular support of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair[29] and the journal lost more subscribers when Steiner published extracts from his correspondence with anarchist John Henry Mackay.[29] Dissatisfaction with his editorial style eventually led to his departure from the magazine.
In , Steiner married Anna Eunicke; the couple separated several years later. Anna died in [25]
Despite his fame as a teacher of esotericism, Steiner was culturally and academically isolated.
Worse, he couldn't be a real philosopher either; his theosophy and anthroposophy and the Waldorf humanism in particular were considered pseudoscience or at best pedagogy, not a philosophical system.
Steiner's credentials were not university-level professional work. [] German mainstream scholarship called him an 'autodidact, with a poor teacher' and 'gypsy-intellectual.' Not uncommon for practitioners at the fringes of society, he was accused of class treason.[48]
—&#;Thorsten J. Pattberg
Theosophical Society
Main article: Rudolf Steiner and the Theosophical Society
In , Steiner published an article, "Goethe's Secret Revelation", discussing 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.
Rudolf steiner biography chart of alaol He, his parents and a younger sister and brother, lived in the railway station itself close to the tracks. From on, Steiner showed signs of increasing frailness and illness. Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Education [ edit ].Steiner continued speaking regularly to the members of the Theosophical Society, becoming the head of its newly constituted German section in without ever formally joining the society.[23][49] It was also in connection with this society that Steiner met and worked with Marie von Sivers, who became his second wife in By , Steiner was appointed by Annie Besant to be leader of the Theosophical Esoteric Society for Germany and Austria.
In , Eliza, the wife of Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, became one of his favourite scholars.[50] Through Eliza, Steiner met Helmuth, who served as the Chief of the German General Staff from to [51]
Anna Eunicke was not pleased that her husband, having previously the reputation of a liberal academic, now joined the cult of a charlatan.
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 spiritual science. During this period, Steiner maintained an original approach, replacing Madame Blavatsky's terminology with his own, and basing his spiritual research and teachings upon the Western esoteric and philosophical tradition.
This and other differences, in particular Steiner's vocal rejection of Leadbeater and Besant's claim that Jiddu Krishnamurti was the vehicle of a new Maitreya, or world teacher,[53] led to a formal split in –13,[23] when Steiner and the majority of members of the German section of the Theosophical Society broke off to form a new group, the Anthroposophical Society.
Steiner took the name "Anthroposophy" from the title of a work of the Austrian philosopher Robert von Zimmermann, published in Vienna in [54] Despite his departure from the Theosophical Society, Steiner maintained his interest in Theosophy throughout his life.[55]
According to Helmut Zander, Steiner's clairvoyant insights always developed according to the same pattern.
He took revised texts from theosophical literature and then passed them off as his own higher insights. Because he did not want to be an occult storyteller, but a (spiritual) scientist, he adapted his reading, which he had seen supernaturally in the world's memory, to the current state of technology. When, for example, the Wright brothers began flying with gliders and eventually with motorized aircraft in , Steiner transformed the ponderous gondola airships of his Atlantis story into airplanes with elevators and rudders in [56]
Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities
The Anthroposophical Society grew rapidly.
Fueled by a need to find an artistic home for their yearly conferences, which included performances of plays written by Edouard Schuré and Steiner, the decision was made to build a theater and organizational center. In , construction began on the first Goetheanum building, in Dornach, Switzerland. The building, designed by Steiner, was built to a significant part by volunteers.
Steiner moved from Berlin[57] to Dornach in and lived there to the end of his life.[58]
Steiner's lecture activity expanded enormously with the end of the war. Most importantly, from on Steiner began to work with other members of the society to found numerous practical institutions and activities, including the first Waldorf school, founded that year in Stuttgart, Germany.
On New Year's Eve, –, the Goetheanum burned to the ground; contemporary police reports indicate arson as the probable cause.[25]:&#;&#;[59]:&#;&#; Steiner immediately began work designing a second Goetheanum building - this time made of concrete instead of wood - which was completed in , three years after his death.
At a "Foundation Meeting" for members held at the Dornach center during Christmas , Steiner founded the School of Spiritual Science.[60] This school, which was led by Steiner, initially had sections for general anthroposophy, education, medicine, performing arts (eurythmy, speech, drama and music), the literary arts and humanities, mathematics, astronomy, science, and visual arts.
Rudolf steiner biography chart of alaol family The building was never completed; the last details were being refined when it was burned in an arson attack in In Livak, Leonid ed. A petition expressing his basic social ideas was widely circulated and signed by many cultural figures of the day, including Hermann Hesse. He responded to every inquiry eagerly.Later sections were added for the social sciences, youth and agriculture.[61][62][63] The School of Spiritual Science included meditative exercises given by Steiner.
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 Threefold Social Order in which the cultural, political and economic realms would be largely independent. Steiner argued that a fusion of the three realms had created the inflexibility that had led to catastrophes such as World War I.
In connection with this, he 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.[64]
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.[65]
Attacks, illness, and death
The National Socialist German Workers Party gained strength in Germany after the First World War.
In , a political theorist of this movement, Dietrich Eckart, attacked Steiner and suggested that he was a Jew.[66] In , Adolf Hitler attacked Steiner on many fronts, including accusations that he was a tool of the Jews.[67] That same year, Steiner warned against the disastrous effects it would have for Central Europe if the National Socialists came to power.[66]:&#;8&#; In a lecture Steiner was giving in Munich was disrupted when stink bombs were let off and the lights switched out, while people rushed the stage apparently attempting to attack Steiner, who exited safely through a back door.[68][69] Unable to guarantee his safety, Steiner's agents cancelled his next lecture tour.[29]:&#;&#;[70] The Beer Hall Putsch in Munich led Steiner to give up his residence in Berlin, saying that if those responsible for the attempted coup (Hitler's Nazi party) came to power in Germany, it would no longer be possible for him to enter the country.[71]
From 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.[72]
Increasingly ill, he held his last lecture in late September, He continued work on his autobiography during the last months of his life; he died at Dornach on 30 March
Spiritual research
Steiner first began speaking publicly about spiritual experiences and phenomena in his lectures to the Theosophical Society.
By 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 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 mathematics, science, and philosophy to produce rigorous, verifiable presentations of those experiences.[73] He believed that through freely chosen ethical disciplines and meditative training, anyone could develop the ability to experience the spiritual world, including the higher nature of oneself and others.[29] Steiner believed that such discipline and training would help a person to become a more moral, creative and freeindividual – free in the sense of being capable of actions motivated solely by love.[74] His philosophical ideas were affected by Franz Brentano,[29] with whom he had studied,[75] as well as by Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Goethe's phenomenological approach to science.[29][76][77]
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.[78] 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.[79] He proposed that psychology, history, and the humanities generally were based on the direct grasp of an ideal reality,[80] 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.[81]
Steiner proposed that an understanding of reincarnation and karma was necessary to understand psychology[82] 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.[83] Beginning in , 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.[84] In an extensive series of lectures from February to September , Steiner presented further research on successive reincarnations of various individuals and described the techniques he used for karma research.[72][85]
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 Waldorf school,[86] which later evolved into a worldwide school network. He also founded a system of organic agriculture, now known as biodynamic agriculture, which was one of the first forms of modern organic farming.[87] His work in medicine is based in pseudoscience and occult ideas.
Even though his medical ideas led to the development of a broad range of complementary medications and supportive artistic and biographic therapies,[88] they are considered ineffective by the medical community.[89] Numerous homes for children and adults with developmental disabilities based on his work (including those of the Camphill movement) are found in Africa, Europe, and North America.[90] His paintings and drawings influenced Joseph Beuys and other modern artists.
His two Goetheanum buildings are considered significant examples of modern architecture,[91][92][93][94][95] and other anthroposophical architects have contributed thousands of buildings to the modern scene.[96]
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 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.[97][98]
Steiner has speculated about creating artificial life (and maybe about artificial intelligence), but such speculations were by no means a novelty.[99]
Education
Main article: Waldorf education
As a young man, Steiner was a private tutor and a lecturer on history for the Berlin Arbeiterbildungsschule,[] an educational initiative for working class adults.[] Soon thereafter, he began to articulate his ideas on education in public lectures,[] culminating in a 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.[] His conception of education was influenced by the Herbartian pedagogy prominent in Europe during the late nineteenth century,[]:&#;,&#;ff&#;[] though Steiner criticized Herbart for not sufficiently recognizing the importance of educating the will and feelings as well as the intellect.[]
In , 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 , 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 at an Anthroposophy Summer School organised by Eleanor Merry.[] The Oxford Conference and the Torquay teacher training led to the founding of the first Waldorf schools in Britain.[] 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 Waldorf schools worldwide.
Benjamin Lazier calls Steiner a "maverick educator".[]
Biodynamic agriculture
Main article: Biodynamic agriculture
In , a group of farmers concerned about the future of agriculture requested Steiner's help. Steiner responded with a lecture series on an ecological and sustainable approach to agriculture that increased soil fertility without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.[26] Steiner's agricultural ideas promptly spread and were put into practice internationally[] and biodynamic agriculture is now practiced in Europe,[] North America, South America,[] Africa,[] Asia[] and Australasia.[][][]
"Steiner’s 'biodynamic agriculture' based on 'restoring the quasi-mystical relationship between earth and the cosmos' was widely accepted in the Third Reich (28)."[]
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 manure and animal feed.
Plant or animal disease is seen as a symptom of problems in the whole organism.
Rudolf steiner biography chart of alaol death This man, Felix Koguzki, possessed the capacity to see beyond the plants into their essence, and further to their relationship to health, on an intuitive level. He didn't know what he was getting himself into, yet he poured over the book for months until he felt he understood it. 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. Elements in New Religious Movements.Steiner also suggested timing such agricultural activities as sowing, weeding, and harvesting to utilize the influences on plant growth of the moon and planets; and the application of natural materials prepared in specific ways to the soil, compost, and crops, with the intention of engaging non-physical beings and elemental forces.[citation needed] He encouraged his listeners to verify such suggestions empirically, as he had not yet done.[]
In a newspaper editorial, Peter Treue, agricultural researcher at the University of Kiel, characterized biodynamics as pseudoscience and argued that similar or equal results can be obtained using standard organic farming principles.
He wrote that some biodynamic preparations more resemble alchemy or magic akin to geomancy.[]
Anthroposophical medicine
Main article: Anthroposophical medicine
From the late s, Steiner was working with doctors to create a new approach to medicine. In , 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.[] It is a form of alternative medicine based on pseudoscientific and occult notions.[]
Social reform
Main article: Threefold Social Order
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 social reform, Toward Social Renewal, he suggested that the cultural, political and economic spheres of society need to work together as consciously cooperating yet independent entities, each with a particular task: political institutions should be democratic, establish political equality and protect human rights; cultural institutions should nurture the free and unhindered development of science, art, education and religion; and economic institutions should enable producers, distributors, and consumers to cooperate voluntarily to provide efficiently for society's needs.[] He saw this division of responsibility as a vital task which would take up consciously the historical trend toward the mutual independence of these three realms.
Steiner also gave suggestions for many specific social reforms.
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[]
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[]
According to Cees Leijenhorst, "Steiner outlined his vision of a new political and social philosophy that avoids the two extremes of capitalism and socialism."[]
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."
Architecture and visual arts
Steiner designed 17 buildings, including the First and Second Goetheanums.[] These two buildings, built in Dornach, Switzerland, were intended to house significant theater spaces as well as a "school for spiritual science".[] Three of Steiner's buildings have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture.[][]
His primary sculptural work is The Representative of Humanity (), a nine-meter high wood sculpture executed as a joint project with the sculptor Edith Maryon.
Biography chart organizer In other projects. If I have one, what is it like? New Religious Movements and Comparative Religion. Retrieved 15 AugustThis 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.[][][] 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.[] 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.[]Joseph Beuys' work, itself heavily influenced by Steiner, has led to the modern understanding of Steiner's drawings as artistic objects.[]
Performing arts
See also: Eurythmy
Steiner wrote four mystery plays between and The Portal of Initiation, The Souls' Probation, The Guardian of the Threshold and The Soul's Awakening, modeled on the esoteric dramas of Edouard Schuré, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.[] 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 , 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.[][]
Together with Marie von Sivers, Rudolf Steiner also developed the art of eurythmy, sometimes referred to as "visible speech and 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, and the grammatical function – to every "soul quality" – joy, despair, tenderness, etc. – and to every aspect of music – tones, intervals, rhythms, and harmonies.
Esoteric schools
See also: Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development
Steiner was founder and leader of the following:
- His independent Esoteric School of the Theosophical Society, founded in This school continued after the break with Theosophy but 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 until around Steiner added to the Masonic rite a number of Rosicrucian references.[]
- The School of Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society, founded in 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.[61][63][] Steiner gave members of the School the first Lesson for guidance into the esoteric work in February 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 []
Philosophical ideas
Goethean science
See also: Goethean science
In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between and , 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 () and Goethe's Conception of the World (), particularly emphasizing the transformation in Goethe's approach from the physical sciences, where experiment played the primary role, to plant biology, where both accurate perception and imagination were required to find the biological archetypes (Urpflanze).
He 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.[] Steiner 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.[] 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.
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.[][][] According to Dan Dugan, Steiner was a champion of the following pseudoscientific claims:
- Goethe's Theory of Colours;[]
- "he called relativity 'brilliant nonsense'";[][]
- "he taught that the motions of the planets were caused by the relationships of the spiritual beings that inhabited them";[]
- vitalism;[]
- doubting germ theory;[]
- non-standard approach to physiological systems, including claiming that the heart is not a pump.[]
According to Rudolf Steiner, mainstream science is Ahrimanic.[]
Knowledge and freedom
See also: The Philosophy of Freedom
Steiner approached the philosophical questions of knowledge and freedom in two stages.
In his dissertation, published in expanded form in 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.
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 considered what appears to human experience as a division between the spiritual and natural worlds to be a conditioned result of the structure of our consciousness, which separates perception and thinking.
These two faculties give us not two worlds, but 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.[74]:&#;Chapter 4&#;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."[]
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,[] and the real activity of acting in full consciousness.[74]:&#;–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."[23]
Steiner affirms Darwin's and Haeckel's evolutionary perspectives but extended this beyond its materialistic consequences; he sees human consciousness, indeed, all human culture, as a product of natural evolution that transcends itself.
For Steiner, nature becomes self-conscious in the human being.
Steiner's description of the nature of human consciousness thus closely parallels that of Solovyov.[]
"Steiner was a moral individualist".[ii][]
Spiritual science
See also: Anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development
In his earliest works, Steiner already spoke of the "natural and spiritual worlds" as a unity.[29] From on, he began lecturing about concrete details of the spiritual world(s), culminating in the publication in 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,[] 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.[]
In the years – 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.[] Some of these were later collected and published as books, such as How to Know Higher Worlds (–5) and Cosmic Memory.
The book An Outline of Esoteric Science was published in 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 spiritual science is possible, with radically different epistemological foundations than those of natural science. He believed that natural science was correct in its methods but one-sided for exclusively focusing on sensory phenomena, while mysticism was vague in its methods, though seeking to explore the inner and spiritual life.
Anthroposophy was meant to apply the systematic methods of the former to the content of the latter[][]