Anthroposophy

Reception

Religious Nature

As an explicitly spiritual movement, anthroposophy has sometimes been called a religious philosophy. In 2005, a California federal court ruled that a group alleging that anthroposophy is a religion for Establishment Clause purposes did not provide any legally admissible evidence in support of this view; the case is under appeal. In 2000, a French court ruled that a government minister’s description of anthroposophy as a cult was defamatory.

Statements on Race

Anthroposophical ideas have been criticized from both sides in the race debate:

• From the mid-1930s on, National Socialist ideologues attacked the anthroposophical world-view as being opposed to Nazi racist and nationalistic principles; anthroposophy considered “Blood, Race and Folk” as primitive instincts that must be overcome.
• “A naive version of the evolution of consciousness, a theory foundational to both Steiner’s anthroposophy and Waldorf education, sometimes places one race below another in one or another dimension of development”.

The Anthroposophical Society in America has stated:

• We explicitly reject any racial theory that may be construed to be part of Rudolf Steiner’s writings. The Anthroposophical Society in America is an open, public society and it rejects any purported spiritual or scientific theory on the basis of which the alleged superiority of one race is justified at the expense of another race.

Luc Paquin

Anthroposophy

Reception

Supporters

Anthroposophy’s supporters include Pulitzer Prize-winning and Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, Nobel prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, Andrei Bely, Joseph Beuys, Owen Barfield, architect Walter Burley Griffin, Wassily Kandinsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Bruno Walter, and Right Livelihood Award winners Sir George Trevelyan and Ibrahim Abouleish. Albert Schweitzer was a friend of Steiner’s and was supportive of his ideals for cultural renewal.

Scientific Basis

Though Rudolf Steiner studied natural science at the Vienna Technical University at the undergraduate level, his doctorate was in epistemology and very little of his work is directly concerned with the empirical sciences. In his mature work, when he did refer to science it was often to present phenomenological or Goethean science as an alternative to what he considered the materialistic science of his contemporaries.

His primary interest was in applying the methodology of science to realms of inner experience and the spiritual worlds (Steiner’s appreciation that the essence of science is its method of inquiry is unusual among esotericists), and Steiner called anthroposophy Geisteswissenschaft (Science of the mind, or cultural or spiritual science), a term generally used in German to refer to the humanities and social sciences; in fact, the term “science” is used more broadly in Europe as a general term that refers to any exact knowledge.

• [Anthroposophy’s] methodology is to employ a scientific way of thinking, but to apply this methodology, which normally excludes our inner experience from consideration, instead to the human being proper.

Whether this is a sufficient basis for anthroposophy to be considered a spiritual science has been a matter of controversy. As Freda Easton explained in her study of Waldorf schools, “Whether one accepts anthroposophy as a science depends upon whether one accepts Steiner’s interpretation of a science that extends the consciousness and capacity of human beings to experience their inner spiritual world.” Sven Ove Hansson has disputed anthroposophy’s claim to a scientific basis, stating that its ideas are not empirically derived and neither reproducible nor testable.

Carlo Willmann points out that as, on its own terms, anthroposophical methodology offers no possibility of being falsified except through its own procedures of spiritual investigation, no intersubjective validation is possible by conventional scientific methods; it thus cannot stand up to positivistic science’s criticism. Peter Schneider calls such objections untenable on the grounds that if a non-sensory, non-physical realm exists, then according to Steiner the experiences of pure thinking possible within the normal realm of consciousness would already be experiences of that, and it would be impossible to exclude the possibility of empirically grounded experiences of other supersensory content.

Olav Hammer suggests that anthroposophy carries scientism “to lengths unparalleled in any other Esoteric position” due to its dependence upon claims of clairvoyant experience, its subsuming natural science under “spiritual science”, and its development of what Hammer calls “fringe” sciences such as anthroposophical medicine and biodynamic agriculture justified partly on the basis of the ethical and ecological values they promote, rather than purely on a scientific basis.

Though Steiner saw that spiritual vision itself is difficult for others to achieve, he recommended open-mindedly exploring and rationally testing the results of such research; he also urged others to follow a spiritual training that would allow them directly to apply the methods he used eventually to achieve comparable results. Some results of Steiner’s research have been investigated and supported by scientists working to further and extend scientific observation in directions suggested by an anthroposophical approach.

Anthony Storr stated about Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy: “His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional.”

Luc Paquin

Anthroposophy

Relationship to Religion

Judaism

Rudolf Steiner wrote and lectured on Judaism and Jewish issues for much of his life. In the 1880s and 1890s, he took part in debates on anti-semitism and on assimilation. He was a fierce opponent of anti-semitism and supported the unconditional acceptance and integration of the Jews in Europe.[74] He also supported Émile Zola’s position in the Dreyfus affair. In his later life, Steiner was accused by the Nazis of being a Jew, and Adolf Hitler called anthroposophy “Jewish methods”. The anthroposophical institutions in Germany were banned during Nazi rule and several anthroposophists sent to concentration camps.

Steiner emphasized Judaism’s central importance to the constitution of the modern era in the West but suggested that to appreciate the spirituality of the future it would need to overcome its tendency toward abstraction. Important early anthroposophists who were Jewish included two central members on the executive boards of the precursors to the modern Anthroposophical Society, and Karl König, the founder of the Camphill movement. Martin Buber and Hugo Bergmann, who viewed Steiner’s social ideas as a solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict, were also influenced by anthroposophy.

There are several anthroposophical organisations in Israel, including the anthroposophical kibbutz Harduf, founded by Jesaiah Ben-Aharon. A number of these organizations are striving to foster positive relationships between the Arab and Jewish populations: The Harduf Waldorf school includes both Jewish and Arab faculty and students, and has extensive contact with the surrounding Arab communities. In Hilf near Haifa, there is a joint Arab-Jewish Waldorf kindergarten, the first joint Arab-Jewish kindergarten in Israel.

Christian Community

Towards the end of Steiner’s life, a group of theology students (primarily Lutheran, with some Roman Catholic members) approached Steiner for help in reviving Christianity, in particular “to bridge the widening gulf between modern science and the world of spirit.” They approached a notable Lutheran pastor, Friedrich Rittelmeyer, who was already working with Steiner’s ideas, to join their efforts. Out of their co-operative endeavor, the Movement for Religious Renewal, now generally known as The Christian Community, was born. Steiner emphasized that he considered this movement, and his role in creating it, to be independent of his anthroposophical work, as he wished anthroposophy to be independent of any particular religion or religious denomination.

Luc Paquin

Anthroposophy

Relationship to Religion

Christ as the Center of Earthly Evolution

Steiner’s writing, though appreciative of all religions and cultural developments, emphasizes Western tradition as having evolved to meet contemporary needs. He describes Christ and his mission on earth of bringing individuated consciousness as having a particularly important place in human evolution, whereby:

• Christianity has evolved out of previous religions;
• The being which manifests in Christianity also manifests in all faiths and religions, and each religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born;
• All historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed considerably to meet the continuing evolution of humanity.
  Spiritual science does not want to usurp the place of Christianity; 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.

Thus, anthroposophy considers there to be a being who unifies all religions, and who is not represented by any particular religious faith. This being is, according to 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. To describe this being, Steiner periodically used terms such as the “Representative of Humanity” or the “good spirit” rather than any denominational term.

This view has certain similarities to the concepts of Christogenesis advocated by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Divergence from Conventional Christian Thought

Steiner’s views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements:

• One central point of divergence is Steiner’s views on reincarnation and karma.
• Steiner differentiated three contemporary paths by which he believed it possible to arrive at Christ:
  Through heart-filled experiences of the Gospels; Steiner described this as the historically dominant path, but becoming less important in the future.
  Through inner experiences of a spiritual reality; this Steiner regarded as increasingly the path of spiritual or religious seekers today.
  Through initiatory experiences whereby the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection are experienced; Steiner believed this is the path people will increasingly take.
• Steiner also believed 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.)
  His view of the second coming of Christ is also unusual; he suggested that this would not be a physical reappearance, but that the Christ being would become manifest in non-physical form, visible to spiritual vision and apparent in community life for increasing numbers of people beginning around the year 1933.
• He emphasized his belief that in the future humanity would need to be able to recognize the Spirit of Love in all its genuine forms, regardless of what name would be used to describe this being. He also warned that the traditional name of the Christ might be misused, and the true essence of this being of love ignored.

Luc Paquin

Anthroposophy

Place in Western Philosophy

Steiner built upon Goethe’s conception of an imaginative power capable of synthesizing the sense-perceptible form of a thing (an image of its outer appearance) and the concept we have of that thing (an image of its inner structure or nature). Steiner added to this the conception that a further step in the development of thinking is possible when the thinker observes his or her own thought processes. “The organ of observation and the observed thought process are then identical, so that the condition thus arrived at is simultaneously one of perception through thinking and one of thought through perception.”

Thus, in Steiner’s view, we can overcome the subject-object divide through inner activity, even though all human experience begins by being conditioned by it. In this connection, Steiner examines the step from thinking determined by outer impressions to what he calls sense-free thinking. He characterizes thoughts he considers without sensory content, such as mathematical or logical thoughts, as free deeds. Steiner believed he had thus located the origin of free will in our thinking, and in particular in sense-free thinking.

Some of the epistemic basis for Steiner’s later anthroposophical work is contained in the seminal work, Philosophy of Freedom. In his early works, Steiner sought to overcome what he perceived as the dualism of Cartesian idealism and Kantian subjectivism by developing Goethe’s conception of the human being as a natural-supernatural entity, that is: natural in that humanity is a product of nature, supernatural in that through our conceptual powers we extend nature’s realm, allowing it to achieve a reflective capacity in us as philosophy, art and science. Steiner was one of the first European philosophers to overcome the subject-object split in Western thought. Though not well known among philosophers, his philosophical work was taken up by Owen Barfield (and through him influenced the Inklings, an Oxford group of Christian writers that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis) and Richard Tarnas.

Christian and Jewish mystical thought have also influenced the development of anthroposophy.

Union of Science and Spirit

Steiner believed in the possibility of applying the clarity of scientific thinking to spiritual experience, which he saw as deriving from an objectively existing spiritual world. Steiner identified mathematics, which attains certainty through thinking itself, thus through inner experience rather than empirical observation, as the basis of his epistemology of spiritual experience.

Luc Paquin

Anthroposophy

Esoteric Path

Prerequisites to and Stages of Inner Development

• A person seeking inner development must first of all make the attempt to give up certain formerly held inclinations. Then, new inclinations must be acquired by constantly holding the thought of such inclinations, virtues or characteristics in one’s mind. They must be so incorporated into one’s being that a person becomes enabled to alter his soul by his own will-power. This must be tried as objectively as a chemical might be tested in an experiment. A person who has never endeavored to change his soul, who has never made the initial decision to develop the qualities of endurance, steadfastness and calm logical thinking, or a person who has such decisions but has given up because he did not succeed in a week, a month, a year or a decade, will never conclude anything inwardly about these truths.
  -Rudolf Steiner, “On the Inner Life”

Steiner’s stated prerequisites to beginning on a spiritual path include a willingness to take up serious cognitive studies, a respect for factual evidence, and a responsible attitude. Central to progress on the path itself is a harmonious cultivation of the following qualities:

• Control over one’s own thinking
• Control over one’s will
• Composure
• Positivity
• Impartiality

Steiner sees meditation as a concentration and enhancement of the power of thought. By focusing consciously on an idea, feeling or intention the meditant seeks to arrive at pure thinking, a state exemplified by but not confined to pure mathematics. In Steiner’s view, conventional sensory-material knowledge is achieved through relating perception and concepts. The anthroposophic path of esoteric training articulates three further stages of supersensory knowledge, which do not necessarily follow strictly sequentially in any single individual’s spiritual progress.

• By focusing on symbolic patterns, images, and poetic mantras, the meditant can achieve consciously directed Imaginations that allow sensory phenomena to appear as the expression of underlying beings of a soul-spiritual nature.
• By transcending such imaginative pictures, the meditant can become conscious of the meditative activity itself, which leads to experiences of expressions of soul-spiritual beings unmediated by sensory phenomena or qualities. Steiner calls this stage Inspiration.
• By intensifying the will-forces through exercises such as a chronologically reversed review of the day’s events, the meditant can achieve a further stage of inner independence from sensory experience, leading to direct contact, and even union, with spiritual beings (“Intuition”) without loss of individual awareness.

Spiritual Exercises

Steiner described numerous exercises he believed would bring spiritual development; other anthroposophists have added many others. A central principle is that “for every step in spiritual perception, three steps are to be taken in moral development.” According to Steiner, moral development reveals the extent to which one has achieved control over one’s inner life and can exercise it in harmony with the spiritual life of other people; it shows the real progress in spiritual development, the fruits of which are given in spiritual perception. It also guarantees the capacity to distinguish between false perceptions or illusions (which are possible in perceptions of both the outer world and the inner world) and true perceptions: i.e., the capacity to distinguish in any perception between the influence of subjective elements (i.e., viewpoint) and objective reality.

Luc Paquin

Anthroposophy

Social Goals

For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active and well known in Germany, in part because he lectured widely proposing social reforms. Steiner was a sharp critic of nationalism, which he saw as outdated, and a proponent of achieving social solidarity through individual freedom. A petition proposing a radical change in the German constitution and expressing his basic social ideas (signed by Herman Hesse, among others) was widely circulated. His main book on social reform is Toward Social Renewal.

Anthroposophy continues to aim at reforming society through maintaining and strengthening the independence of the spheres of cultural life, human rights and the economy. It emphasizes a particular ideal in each of these three realms of society:

• Freedom in cultural life
• Equality of rights, the sphere of legislation and the judiciary
• Fraternity in the economic sphere

Esoteric Path

Paths of Spiritual Development

According to Steiner, a real spiritual world exists, out of which the material one gradually condensed and evolved. Steiner held that the spiritual world can be researched in the right circumstances through direct experience, by persons practicing rigorous forms of ethical and cognitive self-discipline. Steiner described many exercises he said were suited to strengthening such self-discipline; the most complete exposition of these is found in his book How To Know Higher Worlds. The aim of these exercises is to develop higher levels of consciousness through meditation and observation. Details about the spiritual world, Steiner suggested, could on such a basis be discovered and reported, though no more infallibly than the results of natural science.

• 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.

Steiner regarded his research reports as being important aids to others seeking to enter into spiritual experience. He suggested that a combination of spiritual exercises (for example, concentrating on an object such as a seed), moral development (control of thought, feelings and will combined with openness, tolerance and flexibility) and familiarity with other spiritual researchers’ results would best further an individual’s spiritual development. He consistently emphasised that any inner, spiritual practice should be undertaken in such a way as not to interfere with one’s responsibilities in outer life. Steiner distinguished between what he considered were true and false paths of spiritual investigation.

In anthroposophy, artistic expression is also treated as a potentially valuable bridge between spiritual and material reality.

Luc Paquin