Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner 1900

Rudolf Steiner (February 27, 1861, Murakirály, Hungary (today Donji Kraljevec, Medjimurje County, Croatia – March 30, 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, literary scholar, architect, playwright, educator, and social thinker, who is best known as the founder of "anthroposophy" and its practical applications, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, the Camphill movement for handicapped adults and children, anthroposophical medicine, the new art of eurythmy and other new impulses in art, architecture, and others.

Steiner characterized history as essentially shaped by changes formed through a progressive development of human consciousness. The activity of individualized human thinking was seen as a relatively recent advance which led to the dramatic developments of the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. In his epistemological works, he advocated the Goethean view that thinking itself is a perceptive instrument for ideas, just as the eye is a perceptive instrument for light.

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."

-Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts (1924)

Goethean scholar, philosopher, phenomenologist of spirit and sense perception

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

Steiner displayed a keen and early interest in mathematics and philosophy. From 1879-1883 he attended the Technische Hochschule (Technical University) in Vienna, where he concentrated on mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1891, with his thesis Truth and Knowledge, he earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock in Germany.

Rudolf Steiner 1889

In 1888, Steiner was invited by Grand Duchess Sophie of Saxony to edit the complete edition of Goethe's scientific works in Weimar, where he worked until 1896. During this time he also collaborated in a complete edition of Arthur Schopenhauer's work.

He wrote his seminal philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom) in 1894, which advocated the possibility that humans can become spiritually free beings through the conscious activity of thinking (see section on 'Philosophical Debate').

In 1896, Friedrich Nietzsche's sister, Forster-Nietzsche, asked Steiner to set the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg in order. Her brother by that time was no longer compos mentis. Forster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher and Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom. This book may be of interest, but arguably is not in the category of Steiner's most important works. Students of philosophy in particular are likely to find much more substantial grist if they start with Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom and his doctoral thesis, Truth and Science (Wahrheit und Wissenschaft). See also the list of (mostly non-philosophy) works in the 'Selected Bibliography' at the bottom.

In 1897, Steiner moved to Berlin to edit the Magazin für Literatur.

A turning point came when, in the August 28, 1899 issue of this magazine, he published an article entitled "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, eventually becoming the head of its German section. It was also within this society that Steiner met Marie von Sievers, who would to become his second wife.

Beginning around this time, c. 1900, till 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. Steiner sought to apply all his training in mathematics, science, and philosophy in order to produce rigorous, intersubjectively testable presentations of those experiences. He also sought to bring a consciousness of spiritual life and non-physical beings into many practical domains—medicine, education, science, architecture, special education, social reform, agriculture, drama, among others. Steiner held that non-physical beings were in everything, and that through freely chosen ethical disciplines and meditative training, anyone could develop the ability to experience such beings, and thus be strengthened for creative and loving work in the world.

Steiner sought to be phenomenological. Like Edmund Husserl and Jose Ortega y Gasset, but preceding them, Steiner was intimately familiar with the philosophical work of Franz Brentano and Wilhelm Dilthey, both of whom were central precursors of the phenomenological movement in European philosophy. Steiner was also deeply influenced by Goethe's phenomenological approach to science.

Unlike the theosophists, Steiner encouraged the development of artistic efforts within the Society — and this was poorly received. Steiner also strongly objected when the leaders of the Theosophical Society declared that Krishnamurti was the reincarnation of Christ (Krishnamurti himself later repudiated the attempt to make him into a reincarnated messiah, shocking the other Theosophical leaders). Steiner quickly denied Krishnamurti was Christ, and held that Christ's earthly incarnation was a unique event. Steiner held that what trained spiritual vision could discover about most of the rest of humanity—namely that the human being goes through a series of repeated earth lives—did not apply to Christ. These and other conflicts eventually led Steiner and most of the German branch of theosophists to separate from the main body of theosophists, and found the Anthroposophical Society in 1912.

The society remained active, and after years of extensive touring and lecturing, the organization needed a home for their activities. In 1913, construction began on the first Goetheanum building, in Dornach, Switzerland, designed by Steiner himself. It was built entirely by the work of volunteers who offered their skills of craftsmanship and trade. 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. By 1919, the world premiere of a complete production of Goethe's Faust had been produced there — the same year as the founding of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart.

The Goetheanum developed as a cultural centre which included activities in mathematics, medicine, biodynamic agriculture, and schools of painting, sculpture, speech and drama, and eurythmy, a new movement art form Steiner developed in conjunction with Marie Steiner. On New Year's Eve, 1922, the first Goetheanum building was burned down by arsonists. Unwavering, Steiner began work on a second Goetheanum building — still under construction when he died in 1925.

During the Christmas conference in 1923, he founded the School of Spiritual Science. At this time, Steiner said that, while the foundation stone for the first Goetheanum had been laid in the earth, he wished to lay the new foundation stone in the hearts of those gathered. The distinction makes clear that the first Goetheanum was a building, a "physical" architecture embodying the spirit, hence it was known as the house of the word, while the new impulse consists of the spiritual architecture of those human beings active in it. This School of Spiritual Science has become increasingly active since Steiner's day, and is structured like a university. As such, it has various sections or faculties. Within the society, it is seen as a centre of activity in education, agriculture, art, natural science, medicine, literature, philosophy, and economics.

Waldorf education

As a young man, Steiner already supported the independence of educational institutions from governmental control. In 1907, he wrote a long essay, titled 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, on behalf of workers of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, invited him to lecture on the topic of education. This, and subsequent lectures, formed the basis for the Waldorf Education movement, known in some countries as Steiner Education — including, perhaps, the largest independent schooling system in the world. As of 2004, there are some 870 schools worldwide, including about 170 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Somewhat independently of the Waldorf schools, a separate school for Spiritual Science was founded at the Goetheanum during Christmas, 1923. Within the Anthroposophical Society, it is seen as a centre of research in education, agriculture, art, natural science, medicine, and economics. This school has become increasingly active since Steiner's day.

Waldorf education, sometimes called Steiner education, is a world-wide movement based on an educational philosophy first formulated by Austrian Rudolf Steiner and which grew out of his spiritual science, anthroposophy. With a goal of educating the "whole child", Waldorf educators place a strong emphasis on balancing the child's natural stages of development with creativity and academic excellence. There is a strong emphasis on the arts, social skills, and spiritual values.

Waldorf education is practiced in Waldorf schools, homeschools, and special education environments. There are now over 900 Waldorf schools throughout the world including Europe, North & South America, Africa, Australasia, and Japan.

Description

Waldorf education is principly based on the work of Rudolf Steiner and was later developed by Hermann von Baravalle and Caroline von Heydebrand among others. Waldorf schools employ a curriculum that focuses on the developmental stages of childhood. In general, there are three larger phases: early childhood, when learning is experiential and sensory; the middle, or elementary years, when learning is imaginative and takes place through creative and especially artistic activity; and adolescence, when learning is abstract and intellectually rigorous. Inside these three, roughly seven-year phases are smaller stages of development.

The education addresses subjects on three levels:

• the head or the intellect. The education claims to teach the student to think for themselves.
• the Heart. The education's stated aim is to instill a sense of feeling and spirit.
• the hands. Waldorf schools work to involve arts and crafts, everything from painting to coppersmithing.

Though the emphasis in the early years is clearly on learning through doing (hands), in the middle phase on learning through feeling (heart) and in the middle and high school years on learning through understanding (head), all of these aspects are included in appropriate ways throughout the school years. This has social consequences as well; no one is good at all the subjects offered in a Waldorf school (two foreign languages, crafts, painting, drawing, singing and instrumental music, mathematics, language and literature, nature studies and natural science), nor is anyone poor at all of these. The broad curriculum thus encourages a social environment of cooperation and mutual appreciation.

Often there is an attempt to integrate these three elements into the teaching of all subjects. A conscious effort to build a sense of community and environmental responsibility is fostered at every level, including parents, teachers/staff, students, and alumni. Movement, sport and drama are employed throughout; in fact, a type of body movement called eurythmy is taught to every age group.

Further, Waldorf education makes no sharp division between theoretical and practical subjects, the arts and logic subjects like math. Steiner repeatedly emphasized the unification of the three subjects of art, spirituality, and science, since he believed these had a common root in the human expression of culture, as stated in his The Arts and Their Mission lecture from 1923.

Waldorf Schools are co-educational, and predominantly comprehensive. Most are run co-operatively and are self-administered. In both Australia and New Zealand some schools have successfully integrated with the state-funded school system, with some adaptation for state-prescribed curricula. Most have no school uniform.

The schooling is divided into 3 stages (see Pedagogy below) of Kindergarten (early years to 7), Middle (Elementary) school (7 to 14 ) and Upper (High) school (14 to 19).

Pedagogy

Steiner developed a 3-stage pedagogical model of child development that is utilised in Waldorf education. His description preceded but in some respects is analogous to the three stages of conceptual development observed and described by psychologist Jean Piaget in the 1960s. Steiner's approach, however, views a child's physical, emotional, and cognitive development as expressions of the process of incarnation of an immortal soul in its gradual embodiment in the human body which will be its temporary earthly vehicle. Childhood thus includes but three of the seven-year cycles of development that define human biography.

Stage 1: birth to age 7

The child at this early stage learns through imitation and example, so it is best to surround him with the goodness of the world and caring adults to emulate. Waldorf teachers work to support the amazing physical and spiritual growth the child experiences at this time.

Emphasis is placed on traditional household activities such as cooking, fingerknitting, helping with household duties, storytelling, rhyming, and movement games. Children are not taught specific academic subjects at this time, including reading and writing, and are sheltered from the media and even stories which include violence.

At approximately age seven, it is believed that the initial physical growth stage of the child is completed. Two signals that this stage is complete are the ability to reach over his head to touch the opposite ear, and the change of the teeth. As reprinted from the Foundations of Human Experience, Lecture 9: "...when their change of teeth is complete, it reflects the conclusion of the development of the head".

Stage 2: age 7 to puberty

Academic instruction is integrated with arts, spirituality, craft, and physical activity. As Steiner stated in The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, "...the child should be laying up in his memory the treasures of thought on which mankind has pondered...".

The curriculum is highly challenging, structured, and creative. In Waldorf schools, one teacher often aims to stay with a class as it advances from its first year all the way through to year eight, teaching the main subject lessons. Specialist teachers are utilized for subjects such as foreign languages, handwork and crafts, eurythmy, games and gymnastics, and so on.

In the middle school years of seven and eight, some schools employ specialist teachers for mathematics, science, and/or literature as well. These are seen as transitional years when the pupils still need the support of a central teacher, but also the in-depth education possible only through more specialized support teachers. The approach to teaching these years is changing rapidly in Waldorf schools, and the combination of teachers employed in different schools for the academic subjects in the middle school runs the gamut from a central teacher teaching all of these to only using specialist teachers.

Stage 3: after puberty

The child is helped to begin a guided, but independent search for truth in himself and the world around him. As stated in Education for Adolescents (1922), "The capacity for forming judgments is blossoming at this time and should be directed toward world-interrelationships in every field." Idealism is central to these years, and the education constantly directs pupils to motivating impulses that can stimulate their enthusiasm. It is claimed a combination of highly analytic thinking with idealism is cultivated.

Instead of having one main teacher who teaches most subjects, the students in high school have many specialist teachers. They begin to grasp concepts and analyze the facts and knowledge they learned in the earlier stages. All students continue to take courses in art, music, and crafts on top of the full range of sciences, mathematics, language and literature, and history normal to most academically-oriented schools.

Teacher training

Specialist Waldorf education teacher training colleges, based on hundreds of pedagogical lectures Steiner gave, are in operation throughout the world. Spiritual theory based in anthroposophy is still taught to every aspiring Waldorf teacher, though it should be noted that the influence of the spiritual teachings varies greatly among the schools and other educational environments.

Wider social purpose

Besides seeking to foster creative development of the "whole child," Steiner also started the Waldorf movement in order to help fulfill a social purpose: that education, while remaining fully accessible and available to all regardless of economic background, should eventually cease to be controlled by the State, and should instead come to depend on the free choices of families and teachers freely developing a highly pluralistic and diverse range of schools and educational options.

Steiner held that where the State administered education, culture was crippled in its ability to impartially distinguish good from bad in state action and in economic life. Without the capacity to make impartial, independently-based critiques, i.e., critiques not controlled by the state and economic interests, society would proceed relatively blindly. He also held that educators whose methods and work were determined by the State often had their competencies and creativity greatly weakened through the lack of full self-responsibility and independence.

Social health, he believed, required education to be a matter of freedom and pluralism, such that teachers and parents should be permitted to make a thousand different educational flowers bloom, and then all families should be enabled to choose freely from the highly diverse and spontaneously evolving range of options. At the same time Steiner was flexible and pragmatic, and understood that compromises with the State would have to be made, and that even in an ideal system a few legal restrictions (such as health and safety laws), provided they were kept to a minimum, would be necessary and justified.

History

Waldorf education was developed by Rudolf Steiner as an attempt to establish a school system that would facilitate the inclusive, broadly based, balanced development of children. Though he had written a book on education, The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, twelve years before, his first opportunity to open such a school came in 1919 in response to a request by Emil Molt, the owner and managing director of the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Company in Stuttgart, Germany. The name Waldorf thus comes from the factory which hosted the first school.

Steiner insisted upon four conditions before opening:

1. that the school be open to all children;
2. that it be coeducational;
3. that it be a unified twelve-year school;
4. that the teachers, those individuals actually in contact with the children, have primary control over the pedagogy of the school, with a minimum of interference from the state or from economic sources.

The first year the school was a company school and all teachers were listed as workers at Waldorf Astoria, but beginning with the second year the first school was independent.

Within a few years, many other Waldorf schools modeled on the Stuttgart school opened in other cities. Most of the European schools were closed down by the Nazis but after World War II were reopened. Today (2005) there are over 900 independent Waldorf schools worldwide, including over 150 in the United States, and 31 in the UK and Ireland. There is also a large homeschooling movement utilizing Waldorf pedagogy and methods.

There is a growing Waldorf charter school movement. Many public school teachers have brought aspects of Waldorf education into their classrooms, as well. In Europe, especially in Switzerland, there is much more integration of the Waldorf approach and public education than in the USA.

Steiner's educational philosophy is continually being developed further. Journals of note publishing such material include the Erziehungskunst, the organ of the German Association of Waldorf Schools, the Research Bulletin of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America and Paideia, the journal of the Steiner-Waldorf Schools Fellowship in Britain.

Critical debate surrounding the Waldorf teaching method

Waldorf education does not teaching reading and academics until approximately age 6-7. Critics claim that a "window" of intellectual opportunity is lost.

Studies in England have shown that, in fact, Waldorf pupils' reading skills tend to lag behind state-educated pupils in the first few grades, but they also show that by 5th grade (11 years of age) the Waldorf pupils have caught up and thereafter are ahead of children of the same age who are educated in state schools. Research by Piaget and others also supports the view that early academic learning actually interferes with the development in early childhood of faculties that will enhance later learning capacity. (David Elkind: Early Childhood Education: Developmental or Academic) They maintain that the literacy-building techniques Waldorf schools use during early childhood—storytelling, music and singing, games, speech, and movement exercises—help to nourish imagination and a love of language which will be carried long after the child learns to read. It is worth noting that Finland, which sends its children to school at a comparable or later age, is one of the most literate societies in the world.

Waldorf schools appreciate the spiritual origin of the human being, which many interpret to be religious. Virtually all world religions are included in the curriculum as mythologies or in the study of historical cultures. No particular religion is universally emphasized, but the schools often attempt to bring the local religious beliefs and practices alive inside of the school, as well; in Israel, this occurs through Jewish festivals, in Europe generally through Christian festivals, in Egypt, through Muslim festivals, and so on. The increasingly multi-cultural nature of many societies is transforming the ways these festivals can take place; this is perhaps especially true of the schools in the United States. In a genuine Waldorf school, though teachers will have studied Anthroposophy, Steiner's spiritual philosophy and world-view, this philosophy is never taught to pupils; the schools are becoming increasingly professional in this regard.

In 2005, a UK government-funded study praised the schools' ability to develop students through closer human relationships rather than relying purely on tests, but reported that the state sector could provide guidance to Steiner schools in teacher training and management skills.

Activism and the threefold nature of social life

For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active and well-known in Germany in part because in many places he gave lectures 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, Die Kernpunkte der Sozialen Frage (available in English today as 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 estmated 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."

Outlook on social history

In Steiner's various writings and lectures he held that there were three main spheres of power comprising human society: the cultural, the economic, and the political. In ancient times, those who had political power were also generally those with the greatest cultural/religious power and the greatest economic power. Culture, state, and economy were fused (for example in ancient Egypt). With the emergence of classical Greece and Rome, the three spheres began to become more autonomous. This autonomy went on increasing over the centuries, and with the slow rise of egalitarianism and individualism, the failure to adequately separate economics, politics, and culture was felt increasingly as a source of injustice.

The three kinds of social separations Steiner wanted strengthened

1) Increased separation between the State and cultural life

Examples: The state should not be able to control culture; i.e., how people think, learn, or worship. A particular religion or ideology should not control the levers of the State. Steiner held that pluralism and freedom were the ideal for education and cultural life.

2) Increased separation between the economy and cultural life

Examples: The fact that churches, temples and mosques do not make the ability to enter and participate dependent on the ability to pay, and that libraries and museums are open to all free of charge, is in tune with Steiner’s notion of a separation between cultural and economic life. In a similar spirit, Steiner held that all families, not just rich ones, should have freedom of choice in education and access to independent, non-government schools for their children. Other examples: A corporation should not be able to control the cultural sphere by using economic power to bribe schools into accepting ‘educational’ programs larded with advertising, or by secretly paying scientists to produce research results favorable to the business’s economic interests.

3) Increased separation between the State and the economy (associative economics)

Examples: A rich man should be prevented from buying politicians and laws. A politician shouldn’t be able to parlay his political position into riches earned by doing favors for businessmen. Slavery is unjust, because it takes something political, a person’s inalienable rights, and absorbs them into the economic process of buying and selling. Steiner also advocated a more humanly oriented form of capital economy precisely because unfettered capital tends to absorb the State and human rights into the economic process and transform them into mere commodities.

Education's relation to the state and the economy

Steiner’s view of education’s social position calls for special comment. For Steiner, separation of the cultural sphere from the political and economic spheres meant education should be available to all children regardless of the ability of families to pay for it and, on the elementary and secondary level, should be provided for by private and|or state scholarships that a family could direct to the school of its choice. Steiner was a supporter of educational freedom, but was flexible, and understood that a few legal restrictions on schools (such as health and safety laws), provided they were kept to an absolute minimum, would be necessary and justified.

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" and three examples of macrosocial imbalance:

1. Theocracy,
2. Communism/state socialism,
3. Conventional capitalism

Steiner held that the French Revolution’s slogan, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” expressed in an unconscious way the distinct needs of the three social spheres at the present time: liberty in cultural life, equality in a democratic political life, and (uncoerced) fraternity/sorority in economic life. According to Steiner, these values, each one applied to its proper social realm, would tend to keep the cultural, economic and political realms from merging unjustly, and allow these realms and their respective values to check, balance and correct one another. The result would be a society-wide separation of powers. Steiner argued that increased autonomy for the three spheres would not eliminate their mutual influence, but would cause that influence to be exerted in a more healthy and legitimate manner, because the increased separation would prevent any one of the three spheres from dominating. In the past, according to Steiner, lack of autonomy had tended to make each sphere merge in a servile or domineering way with the others.

For example, under theocracy, the cultural sphere (in the form of a religious impulse) fuses with and dominates the economic and political spheres. Under communism and state socialism, the political sphere fuses with and dominates the other two spheres. And under the typical sort of capitalist conditions, the economic sphere tends to dominate the other two spheres. Steiner points toward social conditions where domination by any one sphere is increasingly reduced, so that theocracy, communism, and the standard kind of capitalism might all be gradually transcended.

For Steiner, threefolding was not a social recipe or blueprint. It could not be "implemented" like some utopian program in a day, a decade, or even a century. It was a complex open process that began thousands of years ago and that he thought was likely to continue for thousands more.

Apart from his central book on social questions, Toward Social Renewal, there are at least two others available in English: World Economy (14 lectures from 1922) and The Social Future (revised edition 1972).

Architecture, eurythmy and free spiritual culture

First Goetheanum.

Steiner developed an organic style of architecture for the design and construction of some seventeen buildings. The most significant of these are the first and second Goetheanums. These two structures, both built in Dornach, Switzerland (the first beginning in 1913), 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 (Goulet 1982).

The first Goetheanum was burned down by arsonists on New Year's eve 1922. Several surrounding buildings he designed survived the blaze (the Glasshaus, Haus Duldeck, the Transformerhaus, etc.).

Construction of the second Goetheanum building began on the same site shortly before he died in 1925. He conceived it as an organic extension and metamorphosis of the first building, inspiring and pre-dating architects such as Le Corbusier, and Eero Saarinen's Kennedy Airport (1962).

Within the Society, Steiner met his wife Marie von Sievers, with whom he developed a new artform (that also has therapeutic uses) known as Eurythmy (German: "Eurythmie") — sometimes referred to as "visible speech and visible song". Eurythmy is a work in progress; Steiner could only introduce foundational principles that continue to be developed today. The underlying idea is that 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.

Eurythmy performances are still held at the Goetheanum in Dornach, and at various theatres throughout the world. There are now a number of Eurythmy schools where a full four-year training is given.

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.

As a sculptor, his primary work was The Representative of Humanity (1922). This enormous work carved in wood is still on display at the Goetheanum in Dornach.

Weleda, biodynamic farming, Camphill

A philosophic basis rooted in a practical sensibility yielded continuations to his work. In 1921, pharmacists and physicians gathered under Steiner's guidance to create a pharmaceutical company called Weleda, which now distributes natural medical products worldwide.

In 1924, a series of lectures to a group of farmers concerned about the destructive trend of "scientific farming" originated the practice of biodynamic agriculture, which is now practiced throughout much of Europe, North America, and Australasia. Biodynamic farming is not merely organic — in addition it works with the movement patterns of the stars and the moon, and with the non-physical beings in nature, and seeks to do testable research on how agriculture can produce the best quality food.

In 1939, based on a series of lectures Steiner gave in the 1920s on special education, physician Karl Konig founded the Camphill Movement in Scotland as a place to provide treatment for children with severe learning disabilities. There are currently more than a dozen Camphill Villages and eight Colleges providing a home for more than 1000 residents.

A few aspects of Steiner's way of thinking

According to Steiner, a real spiritual world exists out of which the material one gradually condensed, so to speak, and evolved. The spiritual world, Steiner held, can in the right circumstances be researched 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 so that a practitioner's consciousness could enter the 'spiritual world'. Details about the spiritual world, he said, could on such a basis be discovered and reported, not infallibly, but with approximate accuracy.

Yet Steiner was periodically at pains to discourage taking his spiritual research reports as either accurate or inaccurate 'information' — an interpretation he considered relatively superficial. Steiner preferred for readers to enter into the process of his thinking and not cling too rigidly to the fixed results, i.e. the thoughts that crystallized out of that process. He often said there was a hidden life in thinking and advised people to attend more to the spirit or 'drift' of his words than to the letter. Otherwise readers would fall into an excessive literalism and turn his work into a doctrine, a result he said he wanted to avoid.

Those of Steiner's students alert to this distinction (e.g. Georg Khulewind, author of From Normal to Healthy) are wont to affirm Steiner’s claim that remaining actively within the process, as opposed to the results of Steiner's thinking, can have the effect of awakening one gradually into forms of superconscious spiritual awareness. Steiner claims to offer a gradual experiential path from ordinary conceptual thinking into forms of thinking perceptive of living spiritual beings and mobile realities in the spiritual world. Perhaps because the spiritual path Steiner offers claims to be based, in many respects, on the gradual transformation of thinking into a wholly new activity of the whole person — an activity of thought, feeling and will seamlessly integrated into a form of spiritual awareness that eventually leaves the body and peregrinates through spiritual worlds — Steiner's teaching has attracted a number of trained scientists, physicians, and scholars in various fields.

Steiner periodically affirmed that gaining access to the unusual forms of consciousness supposedly embodied in some of his works was not a matter of believing in or having faith in whatever he chose to say about spiritual beings. It was rather that some of the thinking in some of those works, if adequately penetrated with one's own active questioning, thinking and feeling, would eventually reveal itself as a kind of spiritual music full of aesthetic tensions and relaxations and various kinds of spiritual dynamism, and this spiritual dynamism, full of complex metamorphoses of form and color, would itself eventually be perceived as the speaking and singing of real, living spiritual beings and of a real spiritual world. And this would still be only a hint of what a student could experience who learned to enter the spiritual world fully and carry out further 'research.'

Steiner also occasionally averred that this consciousness of the spirit was not so much related to the content of his statements, where he tells readers the characteristics of this or that spiritual being (or something similar) that he says he has perceived. It was not so much such content that was effective, he said, but rather something a bit deeper, within the content, that he indicated would lead one to begin to enter higher states of awareness and 'hear' or 'see' spiritual beings as one thought through his 'research reports'. The mere content was so to speak thrown up to the surface of Steiner's thinking by the style, or more precisely, by the movement and metamorphic-metaphoric process of his thinking, and it was this underlying formative process (or portions of it in some of his lectures and books), he said, that could gradually lead to a sort of superconsciousness awareness of living in spiritual worlds at least as real and persuasive as the physical world. Whereas mere content could be memorized like recipes, and then parroted mindlessly, formative process could only be experienced if one actively recreated it from within.

Some of Steiner's more philosophically inclined students argue that an obstacle to 'getting' Steiner, in the just mentioned sense, is that reading for people today is rarely a process where the dynamic birth of the conceptual out of a pre-conceptual background is felt and recreated as we read each word. When reading is creative today, that creativity tends to be confined within conceptual life, and only rarely extends to the threshold between conceptual and pre-conceptual life, the threshold where not just this or that concept, but conceptuality itself, can be experienced in the process of its creative origination, and seen at its core as fundamentally an imaginative birthing activity. Lacking awareness of this particular threshold, we also lack consciousness of the elastic poetic dynamism at the very basis not only of our most 'literal' ideas and scientific terminologies, but at the basis of the world process itself.

Again, some philosophical students of Steiner claim that one way of remaining within the process (as opposed to the results) of Steiner's thinking, would be to gradually learn through his works how to live consciously at the threshold where conceptuality comes into being. There one would supposedly no longer be confined to observing things that already are — one would begin to see realities emerging into being, and that would mean seeing to some extent into 'non-being' itself, and discovering there more than mere nothingness: a hidden life of creative non-material beings and processes in a non-material world.

Breadth of Activity

Rudolf Steiner is certainly remarkable for the breadth of his achievements. The school movement he founded has become as successful as those of Maria Montessori. Biodynamic agriculture is one of the two pillars of the modern organic farming movement, and is easily as important today as the ideas of Sir Albert Howard (recognized as the other founder of modern organic agriculture). Anthroposophic medicine has achieved as broad a range of medicinal remedies as Hahnemann's homeopathy; in addition, a broad range of supportive therapies - artistic and biographical - have arisen out of Steiner's work. The homes for the handicapped based on his work are as successful as those of L'Arche. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited in famous museums and galleries, and his pupils include Joseph Beuys and other significant modern artists. His two Goetheanum buildings are generally accepted to be amongst the masterpieces of organic architecture, and other anthroposophical architects have contributed thousands of innovative buildings to the modern scene. One of the first institutions to practice social banking was an anthroposophical bank. There are probably as many stage groups practicing his movement art, eurythmy, as those practicing Martha Graham's contemporary dance style. This list could be extended considerably.

The above comparisons are there to illustrate the point that anyone who had the success in any one of these fields that Steiner achieved would be of historical note. Since the Renaissance, there has probably been no one else who managed to found significant and successful movements in so many different fields. This is not to judge these movements themselves, merely to note the unusual breadth of his work.

Steiner's literary estate is correspondingly broad. Steiner's writings are published in about forty volumes, including essays, plays ('mystery dramas'), verse and an autobiography. His collected lectures make up another approximately 300 volumes, and nearly every imaginable theme is covered somewhere here. (Steiner's complete works in German are searchable at the Rudolf Steiner Archive).

In addition to these written works and lectures, Steiner's drawings are separately published in a whole series of volumes. Many publications have covered his architectural legacy and his sculptural work.

Steiner criticism

Though the emphasis anthroposophists place on individual freedom and thought limits the tendency toward group-think and prevents anthroposophy from turning into a cult - if a cult is something that deprives its members of spiritual and intellectual freedom - a critical approach to the works of Steiner is not as common as some would like and not always welcomed within some Anthroposophic circles. Given Steiner's clear statements about political democracy being the proper kind of State for humanity, his consistent and emphatic support for liberty and pluralism in education, religion, scientific opinion, the arts, and in the press, not to mention his rejection of the idea that the State should take over economic life - one cannot justly link Steiner or his movement with a totalitarian intent; rather the reverse, for his whole philosophy is based upon individual freedom.

There are scientists acquainted with the topics Steiner touched upon who regard his methodology as irreproducible and thus unscientific, and therefore completely disregard his works. However, a number of trained physicists, biologists, medical doctors, architects, philosophers, and other scholars claim to find creative genius in Steiner's comments on detailed aspects of each of their fields. Research centers staffed by trained professionals in various fields of study do research along lines suggested or inspired by Steiner's ideas. Some of the better known scientists and scholars who have been deeply influenced by Steiner are listed below.

There are some scientists and intellectuals who admire Steiner's efforts to transform ordinary thinking gradually into a higher thinking that is at the same time a perceiving of the spiritual world. Examples of books and authors profoundly influenced by Steiner: physicist Henri Bortoft's The Wholeness of Nature, physicist Arthur Zajonc's Catching the Light, physicist Georg Unger's Forming Concepts in Physics, physicist Stephen Edelglass' The Marriage of Sense and Thought, biologist Craig Holdrege's Genetics and the Manipulation of Life, theoretical chemist Jos Verhulst's Developmental Dynamics in Humans and Other Primates, theoretical chemist Georg Khulewind's From Normal to Healthy, biologist Wolfgang Schad's Man and Mammals: Toward a Biology of Form, medical doctor Robert Zieve's Healthy Medicine, medical doctor Victor Bott's Introduction to Anthroposophical Medicine, philosopher Owen Barfield's World's Apart, philosopher Richard Tarnas' Passion of the Western Mind, cultural critic Theodore Roszak's Unfinished Animal. See also computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum's comments on Steiner, or those of Albert Schweitzer. Andrei Belyi, the great Russian symbolist writer, was also profoundly influenced by Steiner and wrote essays about him.

Franz Kafka gave what, from his own particular literary perspective, was perhaps the highest compliment, in his diaries calling Steiner's mystery plays 'incomprehensible' (or something similar). See also the collection of scientific articles edited by physicist Arthur Zajonc and architect David Seamon, Goethe's Way of Science, A Phenomenology of Nature. Nevertheless, Steiner remains unknown by many and rejected by others.

The high regard in which Steiner is held within the Anthroposopical movement, which sees his teaching as foundational, has prompted some critics to see Steiner as a founder of a religion, not as a philosopher in the usual sense of the word. The idea, if there is a degree of truth to it, evolves from overzealous students, not from Rudolf Steiner.

Steiner frequently asked his students to test everything he said, and not to take his statements on authority or faith. He also said that if it had been practicable, he would have changed the name of his teachings every day, to keep people from hanging on to the literal meaning of those teachings, and to stay true to their character as something intended to be alive and metamorphic. Nor was Steiner shy about saying that his works would gradually become obsolete, and that each generation should rewrite them. Individual freedom and spiritual independence are among the values Steiner most emphasized in his books and lectures.

Access to Steiner's original manuscripts is controlled by the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung. Most of the some 350 volumes of works by Steiner are based on stenographic reports of his lectures, also housed at the Nachlassverwaltung. The reliability and accuracy of these reports is variable. Many achieve a good or excellent, but certainly not perfect, standard; they are also regularly revised as new stenographs become available or the comparison of stenographs and/or notes yields new interpretations of the shorthand.

Steiner's views of Christianity have been criticized as heretical. Only a very simplified account of those views can be given here, because though they only amount to about 4% of his total works, that 4% still amounts to about 15 volumes of books and lectures — and many of the other 335 or more volumes contain additional scattered comments on Christianity. Steiner said that anyone could develop disciplined spiritual vision and that such vision could see that there were two 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— this might seem a bit less strange when one recalls that 'Jesus' was a common name in biblical times); that the divine "Christ Spirit", the Son-God of the Trinity, incarnated in the Nathan Jesus at the moment of the baptism by John; that up until the moment of the baptism by John in the Jordan, the Nathan Jesus was a very great holy man, but not yet the divine Son of God; that "the Christ Being" is 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; that Yahveh (Jehovah) dwelt in the moon, but Elohim in the Sun; and that the second coming of the Christ meant the Christ would, for slowly increasing numbers of people, become manifest in the etheric realm beginning around the year 1933. (Steiner was not referring to the hypothetical ether of 19th century physicists, and on several occasions carefully distinguished his own use of the term from their use of it.)

Occasionally Steiner is criticized for his advice to delay reading until students reach the age 6 or 7. Still, a government commission in Germany conducted a study in the 1990s and found that German Waldorf school (Steiner school) graduates scored significantly higher than German public school graduates on the Abitur, a high school graduate exam widely administered in Germany. The significance of this finding is questionable, because not all Waldorf students are admitted to prepare for the Abitur. On the other hand many Waldorf Schools have limited teaching staff, which results in most Waldorf students not having the possibility to select the subjects they want to be tested on for the Abitur, as is still done in public schools in some areas of Germany. But in the wake of the centralized Abitur this practice will eventually diminish in the next few years.

Philosophical debate

The claim he made in this book to have disproved transcendental idealism, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant—he had read the whole of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by the age of 14—has been rejected by some philosophers, accepted by others, and remains unknown to many.

Richard Tarnas, in his book The Passion of the Western Mind, includes Steiner as one significant figure within the whole history of thought. Tarnas wrote,

...at almost precisely the same time that the Enlightenment reached its philosophical climax in Kant, a radically different epistemological perspective began to emerge—first visible in Goethe...developed in new directions by Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Coleridge, and Emerson, and articulated within the past century by Rudolf Steiner. Each of these thinkers gave his own distinct emphasis to the developing perspective, but common to all was a fundamental conviction that the relation of the human mind to the world was ultimately not dualistic but participatory...In essence this alternative conception did not oppose the Kantian epistemology but rather went beyond it, subsuming it in a larger and subtler understanding of human knowledge. The new conception fully acknowledged the validity of Kant's critical insight, that all human knowledge of the world is in some sense determined by subjective principles; but instead of considering these principles as belonging ultimately to the separate human subject, and therefore not grounded in the world independent of human cognition, this participatory conception held that these subjective principles are in fact an expression of the world's own being, and that the human mind is ultimately the organ of the world's own process of self-revelation. In this view, the essential reality of nature is not separate, self-contained, and complete in itself, so that the human mind can examine it 'objectively' and register it from without. Rather, nature's unfolding truth emerges only with the active participation of the human mind. Nature's reality is not merely phenomenal, nor is it independent and objective; rather, it is something that comes into being through the very act of human cognition. Nature becomes intelligible to itself through the human mind. - Richard Tarnas, p.433-434, 1991.

On the basis of this epistemology, Steiner attempted to develop a qualitative science to complement the quantitative science of Newton, Galileo and Einstein. Steiner claimed that if one practiced various systematic forms of inner discipline, it would be possible to create an increasingly objective, testable knowledge of a noumenal or spiritual world. While small groups of scientists find brilliant originality in Steiner's scientific work and seek to carry it forward (see, for example, The Wholeness of Nature by physicist Henri Bortoft), the majority of scientists have never heard of Steiner, and of the minority who have, most probably take his work to be unscientific. Scientists developing Steiner's work argue that it sometimes doesn't receive a fair hearing because of prejudice against even the possibility of a qualitative science of non-physical worlds.

The renewal of religious life

In the 1920s, Steiner was approached by Friedrich Rittlemeyer, an eminent Lutheran pastor with a congregation in Berlin. Rittlemeyer asked if it was possible to create a more modern form of Christianity. Soon others joined Rittlemeyer - mostly Protestant pastors, but including at least one Catholic priest. Steiner offered counsel on renewing the sacraments of their various services, combining Catholicism's emphasis on a sacred tradition with the Protestant emphasis on freedom of thought and a personal relationship to religious life. Steiner made it clear, however, that the resulting movement for the renewal of Christianity, which became known as the Christian Community, was a personal gesture of help to a deserving cause. It was not, he emphasized, founded by the movement known as "Spiritual Science" or "Anthroposophy," but by Rittlemeyer and the other founding personalities with Steiner's help and advice. The distinction was important to Steiner because he sought with anthroposophy to create a scientific, not faith-based, spirituality. For those who wished to find more traditional forms, however, a renewal of the traditional religions was also a vital need of the times.

Publications

The style and content of Steiner's works can vary greatly. Therefore, while it might be stimulating to read a single lecture or book by Steiner, it would probably be a mistake, having read even four or five of his books, to suppose one has a representative picture of the whole body of his work. Out of the 350 volumes of his collected works (including roughly forty written books, and over 6000 published lectures), some of the more significant works include

• The Philosophy of Freedom (1894)
• How to Know Higher Worlds (1904-5)
• Anthroposophy and the Inner Life (1924)
• Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886)
• Theosophy (1904)
• Study of Man (1919) (Waldorf Education)
• Practical Advice To Teachers (1919)
• The Education of the Child (1907)
• Toward Social Renewal (1919)
• An Outline of Esoteric Science (1913)
• Four Mystery Dramas - The Soul's Awakening (1913)
• Truth and Science (doctoral thesis)
• Man as Symphony of the Creative Word (1923)

Primary sources

• Steiner, Rudolf. 1919. The Foundations of Human Experience, ISBN 0880103922 - these lectures were given to the teachers just before the opening of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart.
• Steiner, Rudolf. 1919. Practical Advice to Teachers , ISBN 0880104678 - also held in Stuttgart in 1919.
• Steiner, Rudolf. Discussions with Teachers, ISBN 0880104082
• Steiner, Rudolf Education As a Force for Social Change, ISBN 0880104112
• Steiner, Rudolf The Spirit of the Waldorf School, ISBN 0880103949
• Steiner, Rudolf Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Lectures and Addresses to Children, Parents, and Teachers, 1919–1924, ISBN 0880104333
• Steiner, Rudolf The Genius of Language: Observations for Teachers, ISBN 0880103868
• Steiner, Rudolf Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner: 1919–1924, ISBN 0880104589
• Steiner, Rudolf The renewal of education through the science of the spirit - these lectures were held in Basel in 1920, ISBN 0880104554
• Steiner, Rudolf Education for Adolescents, ISBN 0880104058
• Steiner, Rudolf Soul Economy: Body, Soul, and Spirit in Waldorf Education, ISBN 0880105178
• Steiner, Rudolf Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 1, ISBN 0880103876
• Steiner, Rudolf Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 2, ISBN 0880103884
• Steiner, Rudolf The Spiritual Ground of Education, ISBN 0880105135
• Steiner, Rudolf The Child's Changing Consciousness: As the Basis of Pedagogical Practice, ISBN 0880104104
• Steiner, Rudolf A Modern Art of Education, ISBN 0880105119

Secondary sources

• Bärtges, C. and Lyons, N.: Educating as an Art, NY 2003
• Blunt, Richard Waldorf Education. Theory and Practice, Novalis Press, Cape Town 1995.
• Gilbert, Harlan: At the Source: the Incarnation of the Child and the Development of a Modern Pedagogy, Association of Waldorf Schools of North America, Fair Oaks 2005.
• Gloeckler, Michaela: A Healing Education, Rudolf Steiner College Press, Fair Oaks, 1989.
• Goulet, Patrice, "Les Temps Modernes?", L'Architecture D'Aujourd'hui, Dec. 1982, pp. 8-17.
• Harwood, A. C.: The Recovery of Man in Childhood
• ____________ . : The Way of A Child
• Koepke, Hermann: Encountering the Self, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY 1989

External links

• Rudolf Steiner Overview
• Rudolf Steiner and Criticism
• The Anthroposophy Network
• The Rudolf Steiner On-Line Archive
• Steiner Books
• History of Camphill

Waldorf Resources

• Association of Waldorf Schools of North America
• Steiner-Waldorf Schools Fellowship
• Bob and Nancy's Services with a link to various Waldorf resources
• Steiner College
• Waldorf Resources reviews of Waldorf materials & resources
• Wonder Homeschool A parent-to-parent resource on Waldorf homeschooling and guide to available curriculum resources (formerly Wonder Ranch Homeschool)
• Therapeutic Homeschooling Resources for homeschooling children with bipolar disorder using Waldorf Education.
• Camphill Communities Intentional communities of people with disabilities that recognize the potential, dignity, spiritual integrity, and contributions of each individual.

General Articles

• "Schooling the Imagination" by Todd Oppenheimer (a winner of the National Magazine Award for public interest reporting), from a September 1999 Atlantic Monthly article — a picture of Waldorf education in practice, showing how some minority children do in Waldorf
• BBC News story on 2005 UK study

Discussions and Reviews of Waldorf Schools

• Waldorf Education Discussion List
• Waldorf Homeschooling for Special Needs Children Discussion List
• The "waldorf-critics" Discussion List Archives
• British governmental Department for Education and Skills review of Waldorf schools
• OpenWaldorf.com - topics, tools, and community for curious Waldorf parents
• Whats Waldorf? (salon.com) A prospective school parent's attraction to Waldorf education and ultimate decision to send her kids to the local public school.
• A British governmental study reports that Waldorf education is a highly structured, disciplined educational model. The emphasis on arts and creativity complements a challenging curricula.
• Thebee , a site critical of the anti Waldorf PLANS site.
• Waldorf Answers Adherants of Waldorf Education tackle common criticisms
• Positive Views of Waldorf: Comments on Waldorf and Steiner from Nobel Prize Winners, Scientists, Artists, Actors, Politicians & Professors of Education

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