Anthroposophy as a Science, not a Religion
For political reasons related
to litigation in the U.S. for the purpose of banning WE from
public schools funded by tax payers, it has been important for
Waldorf critics to establish that anthroposophy is a religion.
I have no opinion about the politics involved, but seek to approach
the subject itself as honestly as I can.
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From: Tarjei Straume
Subject: anthroposophy as a science, not a religion
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 23:57:04 +0200
Because several subscribers to this list have
asked me to to explain what is meant by anthroposophically oriented
spiritual science being called a science, and why anthroposophy
is not a religion, I will attempt to provide a rudimentary answer
below, with the following limitations and disclaimers:
1) I am not a practicing spiritual researcher,
and I am not a trained scientist in any field. I am not a science
teacher; in fact, I am not a teacher at all. The point is that
I am a layman when it comes to any kind of science, and any questions
raised that belong to the field of professional scientists who
read the approapriate scientific journals and so on, will be
ignored by Yours Truly, whose scientific updates are limited
to popular science magazines, television programs, and news reports
in the media.
2) Although I am a Waldorf parent in Norway,
where the question as to whether or not anthroposophy, or WE
for that matter, is a religion or not, has zero implications
what legislation and funding of schools are concerned, I have
absolutely no personal preferences what the legal public school
controversy in America in relation to Waldorf is concerned. None
whatsoever, except that truth and honesty about anthroposophy
should not be compromised by either side. And I do suspect that
the temptation to bend or twist the truth for political purposes
is equally present on both sides of the fence in this controversy,
and that this is why the question about whether or not anthroposophy
is a religion has become such a hot potato on this list. Thus
honesty and objectivity is blurred by political motives on both
sides.
3) I am perfectly aware of the objections
raised against the claim that anthroposophically oriented spiritual
science is a science, namely that it is a mumbo jumbo pseudo-religious
hocus pocus cult and so on. I have already made my comments to
such endless tirades that will undoubtedly follow this post,
and I see no point in repeating them.
Spiritual science is called a science because
the mode of cognition employed is taken from the activity of
natural-scientific research, and because its findings are explained
in a language that can be properly understood only when met by
a thinking that is familiar with the world of science.
In his preface to the first edition of "Occult
Science, an Outline" (1909), Rudolf Steiner writes [with
my comments, and a footnote, in brackets]:
"A word may also be
addressed to those already predisposed to give the book a sympathetic
hearing. [Because my posts are addressed to the lurkers on the
list, I see no point in wasting time bickering and nit-picking
with biased objections here.] Although the book concerns researches
beyond the reach of the sense-bound intellect, nothing is here
presented which cannot be grasped with open-minded thought and
with the healthy feeling for the truth possessed by everyone
who will apply these gifts for human nature. The author frankly
confesses: he would like readers who will not accept what is
here presented on blind faith, but rather put it to the test
of their own insight and experience of life. [This does not only
refer to the spiritual test of supersensible research, but to
the test - unquestionably valid - of open-minded thought, the
test of healthy human intelligence and reflection.] He desires
careful readers - readers who will allow only what is sound and
reasonable. This book would not be valid if relying on blind
faith; it is of value only inasmuch as it can pass the test of
open-minded thinking. Credulity too easily mistakes folly and
superstition for the truth. People who are content with vague
belief in the supersensible may criticize this book for its excessive
appeal to the life of thought. But in these matters the scrupulous
and conscientious form of presentation is no less essential
than the substance. In the field of Occult Science irresponsible
charlatanism and the highest truths, genuine knowledge and mere
superstition are often separated by a thin dividing line, and
it is all too easy to mistake the one for the other."
When speaking about religion, Rudolf Steiner
talked about "mighty pictures" that stimulated the
life of feeling, and he pointed out that the life of thought
was neglected in religion - at least to a certain extent. In
the fifteenth century a certain change of consciousness began
to take place in the human soul, an objectifying of the intellect
so to speak, that began with the inventions and discoveries of
the fifteenth and sixteenth century and culminated with the explosion
of scientific inventions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
According to the anthroposophical view of
human evolution and of history, the development of objective
intellect capable of modern scientific research has a purpose
- a higher, divine-spiritual purpose. Man has to a considerable
extent turned his back on this purpose by applying his entire
intellectual capacity almost exclusively to external pursuits,
practical life, technological inventions and so on. In the spiritual
sphere, we have been satisfied with the simple and the child-like.
Many scientists exercise brilliant critical thinking in physical
research, but when approaching the riddles of the soul, of death
and immortality, of the meaning of existence and religion, they
are satisfied with what old scriptures are saying on unquestioned
authority. There is little will to find answers to such riddles
by own effort. A few philosophers and poets get away with it
as long as they don't call their quest a science. They get away
with it because they're artists, thus enabling their critics
to dismiss all of it as speculation and fantasy that artists
and poets alone are permitted to engage in.
(Texas is a perfect cultural example of the
dichotomy here described. They have the most advanced science
in the world, side by side with the most boneheaded, ignorant
fundamentlism ever found among modern Christians. There are also
advanced philosophers in Texas at the universities and so on,
but that is beside the point.)
Rudolf Steiner's claim may be formulated as
follows: Scientific pursuit has been enabled by the forces of
evolution that have made the mind independent, self-dependent,
and capable of objective logic. In this process, it has been
necessary to experience thoughts not as living beings, but as
dead abstractions controlled by thinker or the cognizer. The
time is ripe, therefore, to use this gift for what it was intended,
namely to replace religion and abstract metaphysics in a new
approach to understand our existence and our relationship to
the spiritual, to God. A new science is needed - not a new religion,
but a new science - a science extended to include the spiritual
as well as the physical aspect of reality. This, said Steiner,
is the will of the gods, and their purpose with the evolution
that has placed man on his own two feet, letting go of the apron
strings by which he has hitherto been clinging to the higher
powers, and still wishes to cling to. He must let go of them.
(This is why Steiner admired atheists and valued them more than
theologians, who merely gleaned their wisdom from what was merely
handed down to them from the ancients.)
Dan Dugan made the claim in an earlier post
that Rudolf Steiner was not a scientist, giving rise to the endless
dispute about what science is, and what a scientist is, by definition.
Rudolf Steiner was first of all an epistemologist. and epistemology
is the science of all sciences. In "Truth and Science"
(1892), he writes in "Preliminary Remarks":
"Epistemology is the
scientific study of what all other sciences presuppose without
examining it: *cognition* itself. It is thus a philosophical
science, fundamental to all other sciences. Only through epistemology
can we learn the value and significance of all insight gained
through the other sciences. Thus it provides the foundation for
all scientific effort. It is obvious that it can fulfill its
proper function only by making no presuppositions itself, as
far as this is possible, about man's faculty of knowledge. This
is generally accepted. Nevertheless, when the better-known systems
of epistemology are more closely examined it becomes apparent
that a whole series of presuppositions are made at the beginning,
which cast doubt on the rest of the argument. It is striking
that such hidden assumptions are usually made at the outset,
when the fundamental problems of epistemology are formulated.
But if the essential problems of a science is misstated, the
right solution is unlikely to be forthcoming. The history of
science shows that whole epochs have suffered from innumerable
mistakes which can be traced to the simple fact that certain
problems were wrongly formulated. To illustrate this, we need
not go back as far as Aristotle's physics or Raymond Lull's *Ars
Magna*; there are plenty of more recent examples. For instance,
innumerable problems concerning the purpose of rudimentary organs
of certain organisms could only be rightly formulated when the
condition for doing so had first been created through the discovery
of the fundamental law of biogenesis. While biology was influenced
by teleological views, the relevant problems could not be formulated
in a way which could lead to a satisfactory answer. For example,
what fantastic ideas were entertained concerning the function
of the pineal gland in the human brain, as long as the emphasis
was on its purpose! Then comparative anatomy threw some light
on the matter by asking a different question; instead of asking
what the organ was "for," inquiry began as to whether,
in man, it might be merely a remnant from a lower level of evolution.
Another example: how many physical questions had to be modified
after the discovery of the laws of the mechanical equivalent
of heat and of conservation of energy! In short, success in scientific
research depends essentially on whether the problems can be formulated
rightly. Even though epistemology occupies a very special place
as the basis presupposed by the other sciences, nevertheless,
successful progress can only be expected when its fundamental
problems are correctly formulated."
The reason why Steiner had the greatest interest
in Immanuel Kant was that the latter was generally considered
to be the founder of modern epistemology. And it was Kant's dualism,
drawing an eternal, inviolable, uncrossable frontier between
the known and the unknown, between the here and the beyond, between
science and religion, that Steiner confronted with his monism.
Kant postulated that there was something beyond the reach of
human cognition that could only be speculated upon and theorized
about. Steiner, on the other hand, claimed that anything permanently
beyond the reach of cognition and the grasp of knowledge had
to be dismissed as pure superstition. By monism, Rudolf Steiner
meant that everything in existence is within the grasp, or potential
grasp, of human cognition, and that everything else - a postulated,
unexperienced something "out there" - should be dismissed.
(This kind of monism has nothing whatsoever to do with epistemological
or moral relativism, and it is certainly no threat to medical
research and practice, like John Morehead and his fellow Protestant
theologians speculate.)
If Kant is indeed the father of the epistemology
usually applied in conventional natural science, and if Steiner
has indeed established that the premises of this epistemology
is flawed, we're dealing with a pioneer in the philosophy of
science that is comparable to Galileo and Copernicus. It took
a long time before the Western culture learned to adjust from
a reality based upon theology and astrology to physical science,
from a geocentric to a heliocentric astronomy. This went contrary
to everything they had understood as the very foundation of reality
on which the ancient scriptures were based.
Steiner is not suggesting that we should go
back to the Middle Ages, or to the Gnostics, or go back to the
Bible and Aristotle and Plato. He is saying none of these things.
Steiner's suggestion is to become aware of latent faculties of
clairvoyance that will develop in the future in humanity, and
to discipline these faculties and use them in scientific research
- *spiritual-scientific* research.
I have pointed out earlier that the classification
of anthroposophy as a religion may be justified from a certain
point of view for various reasons. By the same token, it is perfectly
justified to classify anthroposophy as part and parcel of the
New Age Movement. But these classifications are true only when
seen from a specific vantage point from the outside; they have
to be abandoned for a proper investigation and study of anthroposophy.
Because the bottom line is that anthroposophy is not a religion;
it is a science. Rudolf Steiner made that very clear, and if
we back off on this in order to meet the demands of the Scientific
Community and various other papacies around the world that have
not questioned or re-examined their own epistemology, we are
violating intellectual honesty and denying the revolutionary
epistemology outlined above. And epistemology is, after all,
the science of all sciences.
Cheers
Tarjei Straume
Greetings from Uncle Taz
http://www.uncletaz.com/
Anarchosophy, anarchism, anthroposophy, occultism,
Christianity, poetry, plays, library, articles, galleries, marijuana,
criminality, death, skulls, skeletons, banners, links, links,
links. Big section in Norwegian.
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