Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (; 27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian New Age guru, philosopher, occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist,Some of the literature regarding Steiner's work in these various fields: and claimed clairvoyant and speaker with the dead. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by (Christian) Gnosticism or neognosticism.Sources for 'Christian Gnosticism' or simply 'Gnosticism': Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific.Sources for 'pseudoscientific': He was also prone to pseudohistory.Sources for 'pseudohistory':
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spiritualityR. Bruce Elder, Harmony and dissent: film and avant-garde art movements in the early twentieth century, , p. 32 by developing what he termed "spiritual science", in which he sought to apply the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, intending to differentiate his approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts.Sokolina, Anna, ed. Architecture and Anthroposophy. [Arkhitektura i Antroposofiia.] 2 editions. Moscow: KMK, 2001, 2010. 268p. 348 ills. 2001 , 2010 . In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.Christoph Lindenberg, Rudolf Steiner, Rowohlt 1992, , pp. 123–6
Steiner advocated what has been described as ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "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.". A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge..
Biography
Overview
Almost all biographies of Steiner are hagiography, except the books by Gebhardt, Ullrich, and Zander.Sources for 'hagiography':
Childhood and education
Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (1829–1910), left a position as a gamekeeper in the service of the House of Hoyos in Geras, Austria, to marry one of the Hoyos family's housemaids - Franziska Blie (1834–1918), a marriage for which the count had refused his permission. Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in now-Donji Kraljevec in the Međimurje (Muraköz) region of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire. In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to Mödling, near Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to , located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps in Lower Austria.
Steiner entered the village school, but following a disagreement between his father and the schoolmaster, he was briefly educated at home. In 1869, when Steiner was eight years old, the family moved to the village of Neudörfl and in October 1872 Steiner proceeded from the village school there to the realschule in Wiener Neustadt.Rudolf Steiner Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life: 1861–1907, Lantern Books, 2006
In 1879, the family moved to Inzersdorf to enable Steiner to attend the Vienna Institute of Technology,In Austria passing the matura examination at a Gymnasium (school) was required for entry to the University. where he enrolled in courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and mineralogy and audited courses in literature and philosophy, on an academic scholarship from 1879 to 1883. He completed his studies and the requirements of the Ghega scholarship satisfactorily.There was some controversy over this matter as researchers failed to note that at the time no "degrees" in the modern manner were awarded in Germany and Austria except doctorates. The research by Dr Sam confirms the details. Rudolf Steiner studied for eight semesters at the Technical University in Vienna - as a student in the General Department, which was there in addition to the engineering, construction, mechanical engineering and chemical schools. The general department comprised all subjects that could not be clearly assigned to one of these four existing technical schools. Around 1880 this included mathematics, descriptive geometry, physics, as well as general and supplementary subjects such as German language and literature, history, art history, economics, legal subjects, languages, The students in the General Department - unlike their fellow students in the specialist departments - neither had to complete a fixed curriculum nor take a final or state examination. They did not have to and could not - because that was not intended for this department, nor was the "Absolutorium". Final state examinations at the Vienna University of Technology only began in the academic year 1878/79. The paper reports how at that time, the so-called 'individual examinations' in the subjects studied seemed to be of greater importance and were reported first in the 'Annual Report of the Technical University 1879/80' - sorted according to the faculties of the Technical University. Steiner was in fact amongst the best student on these grounds and was cited by the University as one of its distinguished alumni. The records for the examinations he sat are on record as is the scholarship record. In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers, Karl Julius Schröer, referred Steiner to Joseph Kürschner, chief editor of a new edition of Goethe's works. Kürschner asked Steiner to become the edition's natural science editor,Alfred Heidenreich, Rudolf Steiner – A Biographical Sketch a truly astonishing opportunity for a young student without any form of academic credentials or previous publications. Before attending the Vienna Institute of Technology, Steiner had studied Immanuel Kant, Fichte and F. W. J. Schelling.Steiner, Correspondence and Documents 1901–1925, 1988, p. 9. According to Gary Lachman, "the general consensus on Goethe's scientific musings as this point was that they were useless as science and dreary as literature; in truth, no one else wanted the job of editing them."
Early spiritual experiences
When he was nine years old, Steiner believed that he saw the spirit of an aunt who had died in a far-off town, asking him to help her at a time when neither he nor his family knew of the woman's death.The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner. Esoteric Lessons 1904–1909. SteinerBooks, 2007. Steiner later related that as a child, he felt "that one must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself after the fashion of geometry ... [for here] one is permitted to know something which the mind alone, through its own power, experiences. In this feeling I found the justification for the spiritual world that I experienced ... I confirmed for myself by means of geometry the feeling that I must speak of a world 'which is not seen'."
Steiner believed that at the age of 15 he had gained a complete understanding of the concept of time, which he considered to be the precondition of spiritual clairvoyance. At 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, Steiner met an herb gatherer, Felix Kogutzki, who spoke about the spiritual world "as one who had his own experience therein".Steiner, GA 262, pp. 7–21.
Writer and philosopher The young Steiner emerged as an individualist, positivist, and freethinker who was not afraid to refer to scandalous philosophers such as Max Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche and Ernst Haeckel. His freethinking culminated in a contempt for religion and faith. He attributed almost pathological traits to Christianity. Steiner "was lecturing at many workers' colleges, and at the Giordano Bruno Union (a rationalist, anti-religious organisation) on the history of philosophy." Indeed, several authors see a change from the young this-worldly Steiner to the somewhat older other-worldly Steiner.
In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner 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. It was a low-paid and boring job. 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),"Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception", also translated as Goethe's Theory of Knowledge, An Outline of the Epistemology of His Worldview which Steiner regarded as the epistemological foundation and justification for his later work,Preface to 1924 edition of The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception, with Specific Reference to Schiller, in which Steiner also wrote that the way of knowing he presented in this work opened the way from the sensory world to the spiritual one. and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897).Rudolf Steiner, Goethean Science, Mercury Press, 1988 , , link During this time he also collaborated in complete editions of the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and the writer Jean Paul and wrote numerous articles for various journals.
In 1891, Steiner received a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock for his dissertation discussing Fichte's concept of the ego,His thesis title was Die Grundfrage der Erkenntnistheorie mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre – Prolegomena zur Verständigung des philosophierenden Bewusstseins mit sich selbst. submitted to , whose Seven Books of Platonism Steiner esteemed. Steiner's dissertation was later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge: Prelude to a Philosophy of Freedom, with a dedication to Eduard von Hartmann.Truth and Knowledge (full text). Two years later, in 1894, he published (The Philosophy of Freedom or The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, the latter being Steiner's preferred English title), an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a way for humans to become spiritually free beings. Steiner hoped that the book "would gain him a professorship", but the book was not well received. Steiner later spoke of this book as containing implicitly, in philosophical form, the entire content of what he later developed explicitly as anthroposophy.Sergei Prokofieff, May Human Beings Hear It!, Temple Lodge, 2004. p. 460
In 1896, Steiner declined an offer from Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche to help organize the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg. Her brother, Friedrich Nietzsche, was by that time non compos mentis. "Hoping for a job (which, in fact, he did not get), Steiner accepted the invitation immediately." Förster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher; Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom.Rudolf Steiner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom Garber Communications; 2nd revised edition (July 1985) . Online Steiner later related that: