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Rudolf Steiner

(b Kraljevec, Croatia, Austria-Hungary [now Croatia], 27 Feb 1861; d Dornach, 30 March 1925). Austrian mystic and philosopher, active also as architect, designer and painter. He studied science and philosophy at Vienna University. From 1883 to 1897 he prepared an edition of the scientific writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose colour theory, aesthetics, morphological speculation and generally idealistic Weltanschauung had a profound and lasting influence on Steiner. In 1902 he became the Secretary-General of the German branch of the Theosophical Society (see THEOSOPHY). He was a prolific writer and lecturer, and during his theosophical period (1902-12) he worked towards a synthesis of German Romanticism and Anglo-Indian theosophy, drawing on the writings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Edouard Schur?, Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater, as well as Goethe. Through theosophical meditation Steiner claimed to have gained access to the inner worlds and hidden forces postulated by some Romantics. He published manuals for 'inner knowledge' such as Theosophie (1904) and Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriss (1910) and articles in the journal Luzifer-Gnosis (1903-8).

See the Abbreviations for further details.



 
 

(born Feb. 27, 1861, Kraljevic, Austria — died March 30, 1925, Dornach, Switz.) Austrian-Swiss social and spiritual philosopher, founder of anthroposophy. He edited the scientific works of Johann W. von Goethe and contributed to the standard edition of Goethe's complete works. During this period he wrote The Philosophy of Freedom (1894). Coming gradually to believe in spiritual perception independent of the senses, he called the result of his research "anthroposophy," centring on "knowledge produced by the higher self in man." In 1912 he founded the Anthroposophical Society. In 1913 he built his first Goetheanum, a "school of spiritual science," in Dornach, Switz. In 1919 he founded a progressive school for workers at the Waldorf Astoria factory, which led to the international Waldorf School movement. Steiner's other writings include The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1894), Occult Science (1913), and Story of My Life (1924).

For more information on Rudolf Steiner, visit Britannica.com.

 

(1861–1925)

Austro-Hungarian philosopher, artist, scientist, founder of Anthroposophy (knowledge produced by the Higher Self in Man), and architect. Much influenced by the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), he began designing objects in 1907, guided by ideas of empathy, natural philosophy, Expressionism, and Symbolism. He believed that spiritual laws and values could be expressed in architecture, and designed seven columns to be set up in sequence within the assembly-hall of the Theosophical Congress, Munich (1907): these represented the seven ancient planetary spheres of influence believed to regulate human development. In 1910 he designed an underground chamber for the Theosophical Society in Stuttgart, a windowless elliptical space with two rows of columns supporting arches and vaults bearing astral and Zodiac signs with a polyhedral glass centrepiece. In 1912 he began to plan a domed auditorium and theatre in which all the forms would relate harmoniously to each other and have a mnemonic content. This was realized eventually at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland (1913–20), a domed structure that was the epitome of Expressionism with a strong Symbolist and Jugendstil flavour. This somewhat sinister ‘temple of spiritual wisdom’ burned down in 1922, and was replaced by his second Goetheanum (1924, completed 1964), a remarkable Expressionist structure of reinforced concrete.

Bibliography

  • AAJ, lxxix/873 (June 1963), 371–83
  • Bayes (1994)
  • Biesantz et al. (1980)
  • Blaser (2002a)
  • Fant et al. (1969)
  • Kemper (1966)
  • Messina (1996)
  • Pehnt (1991)
  • Placzek (ed.) (1982)
  • Sharp (1967)
  • Jane Turner (1996)
  • Zimmer (1971)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

 

Steiner, Rudolf (Kraljević, Croatia, 1861-1925, Dornach nr. Basel), is the founder of Anthroposophy, of the Goetheanum (Hochschule für Geisteswissenschaften) in Dornach, and of schools bearing his name.

Having studied natural science at Vienna University, Steiner collaborated on the Weimar edition of Goethe's works, publishing Einleitung zu den naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften Goethes (4 vols.) during this period (1883-97) and Goethes Weltanschauung (1897). In 1902 he became head of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. But he dissociated himself from Theosophy by introducing the term Anthroposophy and in 1913 founded the Anthroposophical Society in order to promote his ‘Geisteswissenschaft’ (as distinct from ‘religion’), which was based on man's own innate capacity to relate to cosmic forces (he described Christ as ‘sun being’ (Sonnenwesen) in his theories on evolution); Steiner's adherents were not confined to Germany. He lectured and wrote extensively on his ideas (including Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, 1892; Die Philosophie der Freiheit, 1894; Die Rätsel der Philosophie, 1900; Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens, 1901; Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß, 1910; Vom Menschenrätsel, 1916; Von Seelenrätseln, 1917; Geisteswissenschaft und Medizin, 1920; and Anthroposophie, 1924). In 1913, the year of foundation, the building of the Goetheanum was begun according to plans designed by Steiner; after destruction by fire at the end of 1922 it was newly built in 1924, again according to his own plans (Wege zu einem neuen Baustil, 1914). An international cultural centre, it also served Steiner for vocal activities of speech and singing termed Eurhythmy (Eurhythmie), in which inner experience and ‘curative’ physical exercise collaborated in the attainment of artistic and therapeutic effects (Eurhythmie als sichtbare Sprache, 1927).

In 1919 the first school, of which Steiner was head until his death, was founded by a director of a cigarette-manufacturing firm (Waldorf) in Stuttgart, named after him Waldorfschule. It became the model for Steiner schools (Rudolf-Steiner-Schulen) in and outside Germany. The schools in Germany, which were prohibited in 1938 by the National Socialist regime and were refounded in the German Federal Republic, are centralized in Stuttgart (Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen). A practical application of his intricate anthroposophical methodology, the schools combined individualism with community life (the evolution of mankind remaining central to his convictions) on the principle of dividing education from infancy into three stages, each of seven years, in which imitation, the need for leadership, and the capacity for individual conceptual judgement were successively encouraged; learning and the exercise of crafts according to individual inclination and aptitude were to promote self-awareness, in which Steiner saw a prerequisite for the progression of the human spirit towards cognition (Die Erziehung des Kindes vom Standpunkt der Geisteswissenschaft, 1907, Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik, 1918). Steiner wrote four mystery plays, Die Pforte der Einweihung (1910), Die Prüfung der Seele (1911), Der Hüter der Schwelle (1912), and Der Seelen Erwachen (1913, collected 1935, repr. 1971).

Other reprints of Steiner's writings appeared in the 1950s and 1960s. A Gesamtausgabe appeared in 1935 (reissued 1962), and a new edition of his collected works, prepared by the Rudolf-Steiner-Archiv, from 1955. Diaries (14 vols.) were published 1961-7.

 
Philosophy Dictionary: Rudolf Steiner

Steiner, Rudolf (1861-1925) German anthroposophist. Steiner's doctoral dissertation from Vienna concerned the philosophy of Fichte; he also studied Goethe intensively. He eventually evolved a speculative and oracular metaphysic, anthroposophy, akin to theosophy, and postulating different levels of pscyh-ical and astral powers. His educational influence was more benign, stressing harmonious and natural development, and Steiner or ‘Waldorf’ schools based on his teachings exist in many countries.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Steiner, Rudolf
('dôlf shtīn'ər) , 1861–1925, German occultist and social philosopher. He was a leader in the founding of the German Theosophic Association (see theosophy). In time he abandoned theosophy and developed a distinctive philosophy which he called anthroposophy; this philosophy attempts to explain the world in terms of man's spiritual nature, or thinking independent of the senses. Translations of his works include Investigations in Occultism (1920) and Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1922). He also wrote many works on Goethe.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (rev. tr. 1951, repr. 1970).

 
Dictionary: Stein·er  (stī'nər, shtī'-) pronunciation, Rudolf 1861–1925.

Austrian social philosopher who investigated theosophy and founded anthroposophy.


 
Education Encyclopedia: Rudolf Steiner
(1861–1925)

Educator, philosopher, artist, and scientist, Rudolf Steiner founded the Freie Waldorfschule (Independent Waldorf School) in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919; its establishment led to the Waldorf educational movement with more than 800 schools worldwide in the early twenty-first century. Steiner's spiritual - scientific research is known as anthroposophy.

Rudolf Steiner was born in Kraljevec, Austria-Hungary (now Croatia). His father was stationmaster on the Southern Austrian Railroad. Rudolf Steiner first attended the Volksschule, then the scientific Realschule in Wiener Neustadt, and graduated from the Technical University in Vienna in 1884. In 1882 he was offered the editorship of Goethe's natural scientific writings for the Kürschner edition of German national literature. Steiner was called to Weimar, Germany, as collaborator at the Goethe-Schiller Archives in 1890, and remained there until 1897. His principal publications during the Weimar period were Wahrheit und Wissenschaft (Truth and science) in 1892; Philosophie der Freiheit (Philosophy of freedom) in 1894; and Goethes Welt-anschauung (Goethe's world conception) in 1897. Moving to Berlin in 1897, Steiner became the editor of the weekly Magazin für Literatur. He taught history at the Berlin Workers' School from 1899 to 1905.

In 1900 he was asked by leaders of the Theosophical Society to speak on his own spiritual - scientific research. This led, in 1902, to his being asked to head the newly established German section of the International Theosophical Society. By 1912 it had become clear that the insights derived from Steiner's spiritual - scientific research led in a different direction than those represented by the Theosophical Society. Early in 1913, those members who wished to follow the path described by Rudolf Steiner established the Anthroposophical Society. Steiner served as the new society's adviser and mentor. His principal publications during this period were Theosophie (Theosophy) in 1904; Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten (How to attain knowledge of higher worlds) in 1904/1905; and Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriss (An outline of occult science) in 1909.

During the years from 1910 to 1913, Steiner wrote and directed four dramas portraying the destinies of a community of spiritually seeking individuals. Plans developed for a festival center in Munich that, in fact, led to construction of a festival and study/research/teaching center in Dornach, Switzerland. The original building, designed by Steiner, came to be known as the Goetheanum. Under construction from 1913 to 1920; the Goetheanum burned to the ground on New Year's Eve 1922/1923. It was replaced by the present building of reinforced concrete, according to Steiner's sculptured model, created in 1924.

In 1917 Steiner completed thirty years of research on the threefold nature of the human being. These findings became the basis for his later work in education, medicine, social science, and the arts and sciences. Rudolf Steiner died in Dornach, Switzerland. His written and published works total more than thirty volumes and some 6,000 lectures, many published in book form.

Steiner's Pedagogical Approach

The distinguishing feature in Steiner's educational philosophy is that it is based on a perception of the human being as threefold, comprising body, soul, and spirit. In Steiner's view, the human bodily organism, in the mature adult, is built up of four interactive members, of which only the physical/mineral body is directly perceptible to the physical senses. The three supersensible members manifest in and through the physical organism and are directly perceptible to spiritual perception and cognition. Sustaining the life and growth of the physical body is the human "etheric" or "life" body, a characteristic held in common with the plant kingdom. Penetrating the physical and etheric bodies is the "astral" body, instrument of consciousness and emotion, which is shared with the animal kingdom. Penetrating physical, etheric, and astral organisms is the human ego, unique to the human species. The human soul, which mediates between the human spirit and the bodily organism, is endowed with the capacities of thinking, feeling, and will. It is the task of education, from birth to adulthood, to exercise and nurture the human bodily instruments and the soul, to become as responsive, as flexible, and as readily available to the individual human ego as possible. The true fruits of education in childhood come to full expression in the later years of human life.

The developmental process underlying Steiner's education is the result of the unfolding of the three supersensible members from birth to the "coming of age" at twenty-one. This process proceeds in three stages of approximately seven years each. During the first phase, from birth to about the seventh year, the etheric or life body gradually penetrates the physical organism, culminating in the change of teeth. The astral, or "soul" body, penetrates the physical/etheric organism approximately from seven to fourteen years, culminating in the reproductive, sexual changes at puberty. And the ego gradually penetrates the physical, etheric, and astral organisms at about twenty-one. Psychologically, this latter culmination manifests in the individual's ability, not only to know, but to know that she/he knows. Consciousness is transformed into self-consciousness.

The educational insights arising through this developmental process are characterized in Steiner's pedagogy in the following way: During the first phase (0 - 7) the child's basic cognitive faculty is imitation. With the change of teeth, a significant portion of the etheric-formative forces that have shaped the child's organism are released and become available to the child as the awakening faculty of imagination. With the physical changes at puberty, a significant portion of the astral forces is freed from the organism and is now available as intellectual cognition and emotional response. During adolescence, the "personality" gradually yields to the "individuality." Language reflects this. Per-sonare means to "sound through." As in Greek drama, in which the god speaks through the mask, personality is the "mask" through which the individual sounds. The individuality is that in the human being which cannot be further divided, is "indivisible."

This developmental picture gives rise to Steiner's pedagogical approach in practice. The key to preschool education is imitation, not intellectualization. In these years it is primarily through the imitative will that education occurs. The key to elementary education is learning through imagination - through story, myth, art, narrative, and biography - and doing. In these years, human feeling is the primary focus. And the time to exercise and challenge the intellectual intelligence, human thinking, is primarily in adolescence.

The original Waldorf School in Stuttgart began with 253 children in eight grades. It soon grew to be the largest private school in Germany, with more than 1,000 students, through high school. When Hitler came to power in 1933, there were seven Waldorf Schools in Germany, all of which were closed by the National-Socialist government. The Stuttgart school reopened in 1945 under the auspices of the American Occupation Forces in southern Germany. In the early twenty-first century, there are more than 180 Waldorf schools in Germany. The first school in the English-speaking world opened in England in 1925. In 1928, the Rudolf Steiner School opened in New York City. There are 152 Waldorf schools in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and there are 11 Waldorf teacher training centers. They are represented by the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA).

Bibliography

Barnes, Henry. 1980."Waldorf Education: An Introduction." Teachers College Record 81 (3):323 - 336.

Barnes, Henry. 1991. "Learning That Grows with the Learner." Educational Leadership: Journal of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development 49 (2):52 - 54.

Barnes, Henry. 1997. A Life for the Spirit: Rudolf Steiner in the Crosscurrents of Our Time. New York: Anthroposophic Press.

Harwood, A. Cecil. 1982. The Recovery of Man in Childhood. New York: Anthroposophic Press.

Steiner, Rudolf. 1971. Human Values in Education. London: Rudolf Steiner.

Steiner, Rudolf. 1986. Soul Economy and Waldorf Education. New York: Anthroposophic Press.

Steiner, Rudolf. 1988a. Kingdom of Childhood. New York: Anthroposophic Press.

Steiner, Rudolf. 1988b. The Child's Changing Consciousness and Waldorf Education. New York: Anthroposophic Press.

— HENRY BARNES

 
(1861-1925)

Founder of the Anthroposophical Society. He was born on February 27, 1861, at Kraljevic, Austria, but a year later his parents moved to Vienna. He grew up a Roman Catholic and attended a technical college in Vienna. While in college he attended lectures at the university, where he was attracted to the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He did intense study in Goethe's writings, in which he developed an expertise. Because of his technical background and his competence in the subject, he was invited to edit a critical edition of Goethe's scientific writings. Eventually he was offered a position at the Goethe Archives in Weimar.

As a young man Steiner became interested in the occult. He was a member of the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis) for a brief period and in the late 1890s moved to Berlin, where he became affiliated with the Theosophical Society. He soon rose to leadership of the German section of the society.

Almost from the beginning Steiner had opposed what he considered a downplaying of Christ in Theosophical teachings. Theosophy considers Christ but one member of the vast spiritual hierarchy. His differences were brought to the fore, however, in 1910, with the announcement by international president Annie Besant that a young Indian boy was to be the new world savior. To Steiner, and many others who identified themselves as Theosophists, the emergence of Jiddu Krishnamurti and the formation of the Order of the Star of the East was very clearly an un-Christian statement. Steiner moved to oppose Besant and Krishnamurti by declaring that membership in the German section of the Theosophical Society and the Order of the Star were incompatible. Besant revoked the charter of the German section.

With 55 of the 65 chapters with him, Steiner in 1913 reorganized the membership as the Anthroposophical Society. The name of the organization was taken from a alchemical work by Thomas Vaughn, Anthroposophia Theomagica. He created a Gnostic-like theology and during the remaining years of his life wrote voluminously, developing his perspective in every area of life, especially art, education, natural farming, and religion. In 1922 he introduced the Christian Community as a related church structure for those members who wanted more traditional worship.

Steiner died on March 30, 1925, at Dornach, in German-speaking Switzerland. From there the movement was later able to survive the destruction of occultism in Germany by the Nazi regime. His movement began to spread internationally in the 1920s and is now represented across Europe and North America.

Sources:

Easton, Stewart. Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch. Spring Valley, N.Y.: Anthroposophical Press, 1980.

Rittelmeyer, Friedrich. Rudolf Steiner Enters My Life. London: George Roberts, 1929.

Steiner, Rudolf. Christianity as Mystical Fact. West Nyack, N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1961.

——. Cosmic Memory. West Nyack, N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1959.

——. The Course of My Life. New York: Anthroposophical Press, 1951.

Wachmuth, Guenther. The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner. New York: Whittier Books, 1955.

 
Wikipedia: Rudolf Steiner
Western Philosophy
20th-century philosophy
RSteiner.jpg
Rudolf Steiner

Name

Rudolf Steiner

Birth

February 25, 1861 (Donji Kraljevec), Croatia)

Death

March 30, 1925 (Dornach, Switzerland)

School/tradition

Phenomenology, Holism, Monism

Main interests

Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of science, Esotericism, Christianity, Theosophy, Freemasonry

Notable ideas

Anthroposophy, Anthroposophical Medicine, Biodynamic Agriculture, Eurythmy, Spiritual Science, Waldorf Education

Influences

Aristotle, Aquinas, Jacob Boehme, Franz Brentano, Meister Eckhart, Fichte, Hegel, Goethe, Nietzsche, Schiller

Influenced

Owen Barfield, Josef Beuys, Wassily Kandinsky, Albert Schweitzer, Richard Tarnas, Ken Wilber

Rudolf Steiner (25 February 186130 March 1925), born in Donji Kraljevec, Croatia, was an Austrian philosopher, literary scholar, educator, artist, playwright, social thinker, and esotericist.[1][2][3] He was the founder of Anthroposophy, Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine,[4] 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.[5]

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.”[6]

Biography

Childhood and education

Steiner's father, Johann, had left his position as huntsman in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras to marry (the Count had refused his permission). He became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, at the time of Rudolf's birth stationed in Murakirály in the Muraköz region, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Donji Kraljevec, Međimurje region, northernmost Croatia). Steiner's mother's maternal name was Franziska Blie. In the first two years of his 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 present-day Burgenland.[4]

The young Rudolf 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 Schröer, suggested Steiner's name to Professor Joseph Kürschner, editor of a new edition of Goethe's works. Steiner was then asked to become the edition's scientific editor.[9]

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.[7]

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.[10]

Rudolf Steiner 1889
Enlarge
Rudolf Steiner 1889

Writer and philosopher

In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kurschner 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 1896. 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 (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 Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche asked Steiner to set the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg in order. Her brother by that time was no longer compos mentis. Förster-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."[8] "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'."[8].

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.[9] 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.[10][9] Dissatisfaction with his editorial style eventually led to his departure from the magazine.

In 1899, Steiner married Anna Eunicke. They were later separated; Anna died in 1911.

Rudolf Steiner 1900
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Rudolf Steiner 1900

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 Charles Webster 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 1899 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.[9] Steiner aimed to apply his training in mathematics, science, and philosophy to produce rigorous, verifiable presentations of those experiences. [11]

Steiner 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.[9] Steiner believed that such discipline and training would help a person to become a more moral, creative and free individual - free in the sense of being capable of actions motivated solely by love.[12]

Steiner's ideas about the inner life were influenced by Franz Brentano[9] - 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.[9][13][14]

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.[15] 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 [16], and against Steiner himself. [17]

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.[18]

In 1919, the political theorist of the National Socialist movement in Germany, Dietrich Eckart, attacked Steiner and suggested that he was a Jew.[19] In 1921, Adolf Hitler attacked Steiner in an article in the right-wing "Völkischen Beobachter" newspaper[20] 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; [21] he also warned against the disastrous effects it would have for Central Europe if the National Socialists came to power.[22]

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.[23]

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.[24]

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.[24]

Knowledge and freedom

Steiner approached the philosophical questions of knowledge 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.[25]

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. [12]

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."[26]

A new stage of Steiner's philosophical development is expressed in his Philosophy of Freedom. 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,[27] and the real activity of acting in full consciousness.[12] (See the main article on the book Philosophy of Freedom for a fuller exposition.)

Steiner affirms Darwin's and Haeckel's evolutionary perspectives but extends 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:[28]

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.[29]

Spiritual science

Main article: Anthroposophy
See also: Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development

In his earliest works, Steiner already spoke of the "natural and spiritual worlds" as a unity.[9] 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.[9] Steiner articulated three stages of any creative deed:[12]

  • Moral intuition: the ability to discover ethical principles appropropriate to the circumstances at hand: situational ethics
  • Moral imagination: the imaginative transformation of an ethical principle into a concrete intention for the future evolution of the particular situation
  • Moral technique: the realization of the intended transformation, depending on a mastery of practical skills.

Steiner termed his work from this period on Anthroposophy. He emphasized that the spiritual path he represented builds upon and supports individual freedom and independent judgment, whereby for the results of spiritual research to be appropriately presented in a modern context they must be in a form accessible to logical understanding, so that those who do not have access to the spiritual experiences underlying anthroposophical research can make independent evaluations of the latter's results.[12]

Breadth of activity

Steiner had a wide breadth of activities. He founded the Waldorf education school movement,[30] and the Biodynamic agriculture he founded has contributed significantly to the modern organic farming movement.[31] Anthroposophic medicine has created a broad range of anthroposophical medicines; in addition, a wide range of supportive therapies — both artistic and biographical — have arisen out of Steiner's work.[32] The homes for the handicapped based on his work (the Camphill movement) are widely spread.[33] 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,[34] and other anthroposophical architects have contributed thousands of 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." [35]

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.[36]

First Goetheanum.
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First Goetheanum.

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.[37]

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.

The Representative of Humanity (detail).
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The Representative of Humanity (detail).

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 [38]

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).

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.[39] 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.[40]

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

Christ as the center of earthly evolution

Steiner describes Christ's being and mission on earth as having a central place in human evolution, emphasizing that, according his understanding:[41]

The being of Christ is central to all religions, though called by different names by each.
Each religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born.
The historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed considerably to meet the on-going evolution of humanity.

It is the being that unifies all religions — and not a particular religious faith — that Steiner saw as the central force in human evolution. He understood Christ's incarnation as a historical reality, and a pivotal point in human history. The "Christ Being" is for Steiner, however, not only the Redeemer of the Fall from Paradise, but also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's "evolutionary" processes and of all human history, manifesting in all religions and cultures. [41] The essence of being "Christian" is, for Steiner, a search for balance between polarizing extremes.[42]

Divergence from conventional Christian thought

Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements.[43] 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 posited 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.[36] (The genealogies given in the two gospels diverge some thirty generations before Jesus' birth.)

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" — 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.[43]

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 several Roman Catholic priests. Steiner offered counsel on renewing the sacraments of their various services, combining Catholicism's emphasis on the rites of a sacred tradition with the emphasis on freedom of thought and a personal relationship to religious life characteristic of modern, Johannine Christianity.[36]

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 movement founded by Rittelmeyer and others independently of the Anthroposophical Society.[36] The distinction was important to Steiner because he sought with Anthroposophy to create a scientific, not faith-based, spirituality.[41] For those who wished to find more traditional forms, however, a renewal of the traditional religions was also a vital need of the times.

Reception of Steiner

Olav Hammer, though sharply critical of esoteric movements generally, terms Steiner "arguably the most historically and philosophically sophisticated spokesperson of the Esoteric Tradition."[44]

Steiner's work has influenced a broad range of noted personalities. Among these have been many writers, artists and musicians; these include Inkling and philosopher Owen Barfield, Pulitzer Prize-winning and Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow,[45] Andrej Belyj,[46][47]