Anthroposophy

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Anthroposophy
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Anthroposophy is a spiritual[1] new religious movement[2] which was founded in the early 20th century by the esotericist Rudolf Steiner[3] that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world, accessible to human experience. Followers of anthroposophy aim to engage in spiritual discovery through a mode of thought independent of sensory experience.[4]: 3–11, 392–5 [5] Though proponents claim to present their ideas in a manner that is verifiable by rational discourse and say that they seek precision and clarity comparable to that obtained by scientists investigating the physical world, many of these ideas have been termed pseudoscientific by experts in epistemology and debunkers of pseudoscience.[6]

Anthroposophy has its roots in German idealism, Western and Eastern esoteric ideas, various religious traditions, and modern Theosophy.[7] Steiner chose the term anthroposophy (from Greek ἄνθρωπος anthropos-, 'human', and σοφία sophia, 'wisdom') to emphasize his philosophy's humanistic orientation.[4][8] He defined it as "a scientific exploration of the spiritual world",[9] others have variously called it a "philosophy and cultural movement",[10] a "spiritual movement",[11] a "spiritual science",[12] "a system of thought",[13] or "a spiritualist movement".[14]

Anthroposophical ideas have been applied in a range of fields including education (both in Waldorf schools[15][16] and in the Camphill movement[17]), environmental conservation[18][19] and banking; with additional applications in agriculture, organizational development, the arts, and more.[20]

The Anthroposophical Society is headquartered at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Anthroposophy's supporters include writers Saul Bellow,[21] and Selma Lagerlöf,[22] painters Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint,[23][24] filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky,[25] child psychiatrist Eva Frommer,[26][27] music therapist Maria Schüppel,[28] Romuva religious founder Vydūnas,[29][30] and former president of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia.[31] While critics and proponents alike acknowledge Steiner's many anti-racist statements.[1][32][33] "Steiner's collected works...contain pervasive internal contradictions and inconsistencies on racial and national questions."[34][35]

The historian of religion Olav Hammer has termed anthroposophy "the most important esoteric society in European history".[36] Many scientists, physicians, and philosophers, including Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, Edzard Ernst, David Gorski, and Simon Singh have criticized anthroposophy's application in the areas of medicine, biology, agriculture, and education to be dangerous and pseudoscientific.[37] Ideas of Steiner's that are unsupported or disproven by modern science include: racial evolution,[38][39] clairvoyance (Steiner claimed he was clairvoyant),[40][41] and the Atlantis myth.[42]

  1. ^ a b Staudenmaier, Peter (2010). Between Occultism and Fascism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race and Nation in Germany and Italy, 1900–1945 (PDF) (PhD thesis). Cornell University. hdl:1813/17662. OCLC 743130298. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.
  2. ^ Sources for 'new religious movement':
  3. ^ Anthroposophy Archived 2021-02-08 at the Wayback Machine, 1998?, Encyclopedia Britannica online. "Anthroposophy, philosophy based on the premise that the human mind has the ability to contact spiritual worlds. It was formulated by Rudolf Steiner (q.v.), an Austrian philosopher, scientist, and artist, who postulated the existence of a spiritual world comprehensible to pure thought but fully accessible only to the faculties of knowledge latent in all humans."
  4. ^ a b Steiner, Rudolf (1984). McDermott, Robert (ed.). The essential Steiner : basic writings of Rudolf Steiner (1st ed.). San Francisco: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-065345-0.
  5. ^ "Anthroposophy", Encyclopædia Britannica online, accessed 10/09/07
  6. ^ Sources for 'pseudoscience':
    • McKie, Robin; Hartmann, Laura (28 April 2012). "Holistic unit will 'tarnish' Aberdeen University reputation". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
    • Gardner 1957, pp. 169, 224f
    • Regal, Brian (2009). "Astral Projection". Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia: A Critical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-313-35508-0. Retrieved 31 January 2022. The Austrian philosopher and occultist Rudolf Steiner (1861 - 1925) claimed that, by astral projection, he could read the Akashic Record. ... Other than anecdotal eyewitness accounts, there is no evidence of the ability to astral project, the existence of other planes, or of the Akashic Record.
    • Gorski, David H. (2019). Kaufman, Allison B.; Kaufman, James C. (eds.). Pseudoscience: The Conspiracy Against Science. MIT Press. p. 313. ISBN 978-0-262-53704-9. Retrieved 31 January 2022. To get an idea of what mystical nonsense anthroposophic medicine is, I like to quote straight from the horse's mouth, namely Physician's Association for Anthroposophic Medicine, in its pamphlet for patients:
    • Oppenheimer, Todd (2007). The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology. Random House Publishing Group. p. 384. ISBN 978-0-307-43221-6. Retrieved 31 January 2022. In Dugan's view, Steiner's theories are simply "cult pseudoscience".
    • Ruse, Michael (2013b). Pigliucci, Massimo; Boudry, Maarten (eds.). Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University of Chicago Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-0-226-05182-6. Retrieved 31 January 2022. It is not so much that they have a persecution or martyr complex, but that they do revel in having esoteric knowledge unknown to or rejected by others, and they have the sorts of personalities that rather enjoy being on the fringe or outside. Followers of Rudolf Steiner's biodynamic agriculture are particularly prone to this syndrome. They just know they are right and get a big kick out of their opposition to genetically modified foods and so forth.
    • Mahner, Martin (2007). Gabbay, Dov M.; Thagard, Paul; Woods, John; Kuipers, Theo A.F. (eds.). General Philosophy of Science: Focal Issues. Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Elsevier Science. p. 548. ISBN 978-0-08-054854-8. Retrieved 3 February 2022. Examples of such fields are various forms of "alternative healing" such as shamanism, or esoteric world views like anthroposophy ... For this reason, we must suspect that the "alternative knowledge" produced in such fields is just as illusory as that of the standard pseudosciences.
    • Carlson, Maria (2015) [1993]. No Religion Higher Than Truth: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922. Princeton Legacy Library. Princeton University Press. p. 136. ISBN 978-1-4008-7279-4. Retrieved 14 August 2024. Both turned out to be "positivistic religions," offering a seemingly logical theology based on pseudoscience.
    • Pattberg, Thorsten J. (2012). Shengren: Above Philosophy and Beyond Religion. LoD Press, New York. p. 125. Retrieved 15 August 2024. Worse, he couldn't be a real philosopher either; his theosophy and anthroposophy and the Waldorf humanism in particular were considered pseudoscience or at best pedagogy, not a philosophical system. Steiner's credentials were not university-level professional work. [...] German mainstream scholarship called him an 'autodidact, with a poor teacher' and 'gypsy-intellectual.'144 Not uncommon for practitioners at the fringes of society, he was accused of class treason.
    • See also Hansson, Sven Ove (20 May 2021) [3 September 2008]. "Science and Pseudo-Science". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 1095-5054. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
    • Ruse 2013a, pp. 128–
    • Dugan 2002, p. 31–33
    • Dugan 2007, pp. 74–76
  7. ^ Sources for 'Theosophy':
  8. ^ Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy, Anthroposophic Press 1995 ISBN 0880103876
  9. ^ Steiner, Rudolf (1965). Philosophie und Anthroposophie: Gesammelte Aufsätze, 1904–1918 (in German). Verlag der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung.
  10. ^ Carole M. Cusack; Alex Norman, eds. (2012). Handbook of new religions and cultural production. Leiden: BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-22648-7. OCLC 794328527.
  11. ^ Phillips, D. C. (2014-05-19). Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy. SAGE Publications. p. 847. ISBN 978-1-4833-6475-9. Archived from the original on 2021-06-01. Retrieved 2021-04-10.
  12. ^ Steiner, Rudolf (2002). What is anthroposophy?: three perspectives on self-knowledge. Christopher Bamford. Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press. ISBN 0-88010-506-2. OCLC 49531507.
  13. ^ Weiner, Irving B.; Craighead, W. Edward (2010-01-19). The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology, Volume 1. John Wiley & Sons. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-470-17025-0. Archived from the original on 2021-06-01. Retrieved 2021-04-10.
  14. ^ Herzig van Wees, Sibylle; Ström, Maria (2024). ""Your child will have a bird brain!": Vaccination choices and stigma among vaccine enquirers in Sweden: A qualitative study". Social Science & Medicine. 349: 116893. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116893. PMID 38663145.
  15. ^ Randoll, Dirk; Peters, Jürgen (2015). "Empirical research on Waldorf education". Educar em Revista (56): 33–47. doi:10.1590/0104-4060.41416. ISSN 0104-4060.
  16. ^ Goldshmidt, Gilad (2017-09-02). "Waldorf Education as Spiritual Education". Religion & Education. 44 (3): 346–363. doi:10.1080/15507394.2017.1294400. ISSN 1550-7394. S2CID 151518278.
  17. ^ Garfat, Thom (2011-10-31). "Discovering Camphill: a personal narrative". Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care. 11 (1). ISSN 1478-1840.
  18. ^ Paull, John (2013-07-01). "The Rachel Carson Letters and the Making of Silent Spring". SAGE Open. 3 (3): 215824401349486. doi:10.1177/2158244013494861. ISSN 2158-2440.
  19. ^ Backfish, Charles (2016). "Long Island Women Preserving Nature and the Environment" (PDF). Long Island History Journal – via stonybrook.edu.
  20. ^ Sources for 'additional applications':
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference :6 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference :7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  25. ^ Cite error: The named reference :8 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  26. ^ Cite error: The named reference Frommer 1995 p. was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  27. ^ Cite error: The named reference :13 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  28. ^ "Musiktherapie". www.musiktherapeutische-arbeitsstaette.de. Retrieved 2022-11-27.
  29. ^ Bagdonavičius, Vaclovas. "Similarities and Differences between Vydūnas and Steiner ("Berührungspunkte und Unterschiede zwischen Vydūnas und Steiner"). [In Lithuanian]. Vydūnas und deutsche Kultur, sudarytojai Vacys Bagdonavičius, Aušra Martišiūtė-Linartienė, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2013, pp. 325–330.
  30. ^ Jacobsen, Knut A.; Sardella, Ferdinando (2020). Handbook of Hinduism in Europe. Leiden: Brill. pp. 1177–1178. ISBN 9789004432284. Retrieved 9 December 2022. The philosopher Vilhelmas (Vilius) Storosta, or Vydunas (1868-1953), joined the Theosophical Society and was particularly interested in anthroposophy and its attempts to combine religion, science, and philosophy.
  31. ^ Urushadze, Levari Z. "Zviad Gamsakhurdia – the first President of Georgia". Georgian National Museum. Retrieved 9 December 2022. Gamsakhurdia, although his self-proclaimed Orthodoxy was overlaid with the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, promoted a distinct program of Orthodox Church-Georgian State cooperation in such spheres as education. It is interesting that "Steinerism" has come under attack in Madli [Grace], the monthly newspaper of the Georgian Patriarchate.
  32. ^ Segall, Matthew (2023-09-27). "The Urgency of Social Threefolding in a World Still at War with Itself". Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy. 19 (1): 229–248. ISSN 1832-9101.
  33. ^ McKanan, Dan (2017). "Ecology. The Boundaries of Anthroposophy". Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-29006-8.
  34. ^ Cite error: The named reference Peter was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  35. ^ See also Munoz, Joaquin (23 March 2016). "CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: THE CHALLENGE OF WALDORF EDUCATION FOR ALL YOUTH. Waldorf Education and Racism". The Circle of Mind and Heart: Integrating Waldorf Education, Indigenous Epistemologies, and Critical Pedagogy (PDF) (PhD thesis). The University of Arizona. pp. 189–190. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
  36. ^ Hammer, Olav (2021) [2004]. Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age. Numen Book Series. Brill. pp. 204, 243, 329, 64f, 225–8, 176. ISBN 978-90-04-49399-5. Retrieved 21 January 2022. See also p. 98, where Hammer states that – unusually for founders of esoteric movements – Steiner's self-descriptions of the origins of his thought and work correspond to the view of external historians.
  37. ^ Sources for 'dangerous' or 'pseudoscientific':
  38. ^ Staudenmaier 2010.
  39. ^ Staudenmaier 2008.
  40. ^ Ruse, Michael (12 November 2018). The Problem of War: Darwinism, Christianity, and Their Battle to Understand Human Conflict. Oxford University Press. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-19-086757-7.
  41. ^ Kreidler, Marc (23 July 2012). "Rudolf Steiner's Quackery". Quackwatch. Retrieved 5 September 2021.
  42. ^ Sources for 'Atlantis':
    • Staudenmaier 2008
    • Gardner, Martin (1957) [1952]. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Dover Books on the Occult. Dover Publications. pp. 169, 224f. ISBN 978-0-486-20394-2. Retrieved 31 January 2022. The late Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Anthroposophical Society, the fastest growing cult in post-war Germany... Closely related to the organic farming movement is the German anthroposophical cult founded by Rudolf Steiner, whom we met earlier in connection with his writings on Atlantis and Lemuria. ... In essence, the anthroposophists' approach to the soil is like their approach to the human body—a variation of homeopathy. (See Steiner's An Outline of Anthroposophical Medical Research, English translation, 1939, for an explanation of how mistletoe, when properly prepared, will cure cancer by absorbing "etheric forces" and strengthening the "astral body.") They believe the soil can be made more "dynamic" by adding to it certain mysterious preparations which, like the medicines of homeopathic "purists," are so diluted that nothing material of the compound remains.
    • Fritze, Ronald H. (2009). "Atlantis: Mother of Pseudohistory". Invented Knowledge. London: Reaktion Books. pp. 45, 61. ISBN 978-1-86189-430-4. For the Theosophists and other occultists Atlantis has a greater importance since it forms an integral part of their religious worldview.
    • Lachman, Gary (2007). Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Penguin Publishing Group. pp. xix, 233. ISBN 978-1-101-15407-6. Retrieved 29 February 2024. I formulated the cognitive challenge I was presenting myself with in this way: How can I account for the fact that, on one page, Steiner can make a powerful and original critique of Kantian epistemology—basically, the idea that there are limits to knowledge—yet on another make, with all due respect, absolutely outlandish and, more to the point, seemingly unverifiable statements about life in ancient Atlantis?