Continued from Part 1
The third reason why Rudolf Steiner is important is his ideas regarding the modern world and the change and developments in civilization. I am not sure about his ideas regarding the ancient world, but I believe Steiner did have genuine insights about modernity.
Science as well as the social changes of the modern world is something genuinely new under the sun. Over the past four centuries much ink has been spilled trying to come to terms with this fact. Bruce Charlton has mentioned on his blog how different the pre-industrial age was. In particular, that rapid scientific progress is not normal. It is very rare and so far as we know has only showed up in one society. The ancient world was not just the modern with with science subtracted. It ran on entirely different principles.
It is very difficult for us moderns to imagine this fact. In fact, I believe that some people really do believe that a technological society is normal. They believe technology will just develop if it isn't constrained. That is the idea behind the meme that the Church held back progress during the Middle Ages. People will naturally become modern if some force isn't holding them back. That is also one reason why some people are interested in Atlantis. They cannot imagine that the ancient world was structured differently and so they imagine that known history is just a decline from the advanced technological days of Atlantis. But the problem with these ideas is that they have no explanation for where these forces opposed to progress come from. Also, they do not come to terms with the ancient world on its own terms. They view it as an aberration of modernity, when it was a completely different thing.
Steiner was able to go deeper into an understanding of the nature of the modern world and how it differs from earlier times. At bottom, the changes are spiritual in nature, including changes of consciousness. Steiner was able to go deeper than the cycle of civilization. Yes, there do seem to be patterns that repeat, but it makes more sense that rather than the changes over history being merely the working out of blind historical forces, there are qualities specific to each time period which allow us to go see a more comprehensible pattern.
Thanks for this - I think it is important to engage with Steiner in this kind of positive and critical way, if we are to get the benefit.
ReplyDeleteMost Anthroposophists, including the folks at Dornach HQ, have spectacularly failed the 2020 Litmus Tests - so it is clear that 'taking Steiner whole' does no good.
My sense about Steiner and materialism is that he regarded it as inevitable and necessary that society and individuals go-through this phase (i.e. to detach from the passive immersion in the divine) - but that this should be a very short, transitional phase leading on to 'Final Participation'.