Healthy Thinking

Introduction We are thinking of a renewal of the whole scientific and spiritual worldview of the present into the near future. (Rudolf Steiner in the public lecture of June 10, 1920 in Stuttgart)   In 1888 Rudolf Steiner published in the “German Weekly Bulletin” a diagnosis on “The Spiritual Signature of the Present” (in GA 30). It was not very reassuring for him, since he had come to the conclusion: “With all the progress that we have to record in the most diverse fields of culture, we cannot deny that the signature of our age leaves much, very much to be desired. Our progress is mostly only in breadth and not in depth. But for the content of an age only the progress in depth is decisive.” It was this one-sided insistence on experience with simultaneous contempt for everything ideal that made the young Rudolf Steiner take up his pen. The forgetting of the basic ideas of German idealism, whose outstanding representatives included such personalities as Fichte, Hegel, and also Goethe and Schiller, was a particular alarm sign for him. What, then, was the central concern of German idealist philosophy? Rudolf Steiner: “Breaking with dogma in the field of thought, breaking with commandment in that of action, that must be the unalterable goal of further development. Man must create happiness and satisfaction out of himself and not let it come to him from outside.” When Rudolf Steiner wrote these words, European humanity had narrowly missed the outbreak of a great war. It was the great Balkan crisis of 1885 to 1888, the struggle for the delimitation of the spheres of influence in and around Bulgaria, which almost led to a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia and whose pull the other great European powers could hardly have escaped. Fortunately, the prudent forces working to maintain peace still retained the upper hand. Years later, in an intimate circle of members in Vienna, Rudolf Steiner again expressed his concern about social developments. On 14. April 1914 (in GA 153) he warned, starting from the lack of coordination of production with consumption: “He who has a spiritual view of social life sees such a cancer formation; he sees how terrible tendencies to social ulcerations are sprouting up everywhere. This is the great cultural concern that arises for the one who sees through existence. This is the terrible thing which has such an oppressive effect and which, even when one could otherwise suppress all enthusiasm for spiritual science, [...] leads one to cry out, as it were, to the world for the remedy for what is already so strongly in the offing and which will become stronger and stronger.” What Rudolf Steiner foresaw in anxious foreboding was to become reality in the next few weeks in the most comprehensive way: On June 28, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated; the ensuing July crisis ended on July 28 with the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia. Thus the fate took its course. As a result of the existing alliance relationships, most of the European powers became involved in the gruesome warlike carnage of the following years. The First World War and with it the “primordial catastrophe of the 20th century” became reality.   The primordial catastrophe of the 20th century   Not only did World War I develop into a total war with millions of victims at the front and at home, but the social upheavals it triggered, in the face of the political lack of ideas in the democracies, led to the establishment of fascist and communist dictatorships and finally, in 1939, to the unleashing of an intensified apocalyptic warfare. Especially the view on Germany seems to more than justify the nowadays almost common phrase of a primordial catastrophe. The irresponsibility of its political leadership had steered the country into the abyss; with the peace treaties negotiated in the Paris suburbs, the sole blame for the outbreak of the war was placed on it and its allies. The defeated Central Powers were to be weakened politically and economically so that no warlike threat could emanate from them any longer. Rudolf Steiner saw in the whole event first of all a threat emanating from the periphery of Europe to the spirituality germinating in German idealism, the central basis for a renewed spiritual world view. Rudolf Steiner in “Thoughts during the War” (previously in GA 24, in the future in GA 255), published in 1915: “The fact that the time must come when, in the spiritual sphere, the world-view of the German being, which is based on the spiritual, will have to conquer its world validity — of course, only through a battle of spirits — against those which [...] have their representatives from the English being: the fact of the present war can be a warning for this. But this has nothing to do directly with this war.” Even if Rudolf Steiner at first ruled out a direct connection with the events of the war, he was nevertheless convinced that “England saw herself threatened by the development which Germany had necessarily to strive for in the latest period.” It had to undertake everything “that could contribute to removing the nightmare that Germany's cultural work was causing it.” In the course of the war Rudolf Steiner's point of view broadened — clearly perceptible in his “Contemporary Reflections: The Karma of Untruthfulness” (GA 173 and 174), which he held in Dornach at the request of members of various nationalities at the turn of the year 1916/1917. Long-term, occultly supported Anglo-Saxon striving for world power in conflict with the world mission of German spirituality — in this he saw the deeper background of the unfolding primordial catastrophe. The legitimacy of the German position seemed to him unquestionably given. Increasingly, however, the failure of the German leadership, the entire ideological nullity of the German elite and the resulting dangerous irresponsibility of the policy of the Central European powers came to the fore for him. Thus, for example, in the Dornach members' lecture of November 16, 1918 (in GA 185a) — days after the fall of the Empire in Germany and in Austria-Hungary: — he said: “You see, everything that has been done wrong, if I may use the expression, by the central powers, what the various rulers have sinned, what untruthfulness there has been in the events, that will come to light. The events have developed in such a way that the world will find out in the relatively not at all distant future everything that has been sinned against by the Central European rulers.” And in the Dornach discussion evening of July 19, 1920 (in GA 337b) on the question of who had actually been in charge in pre-war Germany: “Wilhelm II? He really could not rule, but it was a question of a certain military caste being there, which maintained the fiction that this Wilhelm II meant something — he was only a figurehead with theatrical and comedic airs, who acted out all sorts of things to the world in a comedic way. It was a kind of theatrical play, maintained by a military caste, which now acted not exactly out of mere ‘nature’ and out of ‘voluntary subordination and trust’, but out of something quite different, out of all kinds of old habits, comforts, out of the view that this is just the way it has to be — a view, however, that was not rooted very deeply in the human breast. So this whole lay, and it was more held than it really governed. [...] Then, in addition to what held together this comedy play out of the military castes, there came, in the last decades, the still much more repugnant big industrialism and big trade, which thus added up and which so thoroughly inwardly, out of mendacious impulses, maintained this monarchical principle.” In view of this complete failure of the leading strata, Rudolf Steiner wrote in the “Preliminary Remarks” to the Memoirs of the German Chief of Staff at the Outbreak of War (previously in GA 24, in future in GA 255) — the records of Helmuth von Moltke were to be published in 1919 in connection with the agitation for the threefold idea, but this was then not possible: “One must point to these things if one wants to speak of the ‘guilt’ of the German people. This ‘guilt’ is, after all, of a very special kind. It is the guilt of an entirely apolitical thinking people, to whom the intentions of its ‘authority’ have been veiled by impenetrable veils. And which, out of its apolitical disposition, did not even suspect how the continuation of its policy had to become war.” But Rudolf Steiner was not concerned with exonerating the German people, but with clarifying as truthfully as possible the actual events that had led to the catastrophe of the world war. For him, the failure of the people — especially of the Germans — lay in the lack of understanding of the actual social necessities of development. Hence Rudolf Steiner's conclusion in the Dornach member lecture of September 30, 1917 (in GA 177): “The present is a time [...] of which one can say that much will have to change in the thinking, in the feeling, in the willing of people. The directions of the soul will have to become different. This is what time will demand.” He saw the prevailing of destructive-violent processes on the outer physical plan as caused by the lack of spiritual life on earth. Rudolf Steiner in the same lecture: “And from this we get the practical call to do all that is in us to promote the only thing that in the future will be able to take away from humanity — the destructive forces — spiritual life.”   Signs of impending doom   At first, people were completely under the spell of the effects of the disruptive forces. The social consequences of the mass deaths and mass mutilation were indeed incalculable. A profound traumatization and destabilization of societies, combined with economic hardships and political violence, were characteristic of the years following the end of the First World War, the European post-war period. It became apparent that the abstract ideals proclaimed by the victorious powers — for example, the Fourteen Points of American President Thomas Woodrow Wilson — were unable to hold their own in the face of political and economic power interests. The former Central Powers, headed by Germany, found themselves exposed to the will to annihilation of the victorious powers. At least, this was how the vast majority of people in Central Europe felt in view of the unilateral provisions of the Paris Suburban Treaties of 1919 and 1920. Political servitude and economic exploitation instead of the promised self-determination in freedom — this was the reality for the defeated Central Powers. Rudolf Steiner also lived in this feeling. He was all the more impressed by the writing of the English economist John Maynard Keynes, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace Treaty,” published in German in 1920. In his writing, Keynes — who had participated in the Versailles peace negotiations as a member of the British delegation — accused the statesmen of the victorious powers of a one-sided representation of interests without a view of the whole. Ultimately, such a lack of ideas could only lead to the “downfall of the West,” as the cultural philosopher Oswald Spengler had described it in his first volume, “Gestalt und Wirklichkeit” (“Shape and Reality”), published in 1918. However, there was a radical draft of the future in the form of the Marxist-Leninist utopia of a classless society, the realization of which was sought in the violent and totalitarian form of a dictatorship of the proletariat under the leadership of the communist party. Rudolf Steiner could not discover any future value in these attempts; it was precisely the abstractness of the principles, characterized by scientific thinking, to the exclusion of the living human being, that was bound to have a devastating effect on the foundations of social coexistence. Rudolf Steiner saw his view confirmed by Jenö Varga's 1920 writing, “The Economic Problems of Proletarian Dictatorship,” in which Varga — as an authoritative figure within the communist council dictatorship in Hungary — described in all candor the difficulty in applying communist principles. Rudolf Steiner saw these three writings as symptomatic of the social situation in the immediate post-war period: Behind the façade of the melodious abstractness of Western democratic ideals, in the end, only pure power interests were hidden. Even the Marxist counter-draft could lead to nothing other than the total disruption of social coexistence. This mood of doom settled in the hearts of the people; it was the end of the unbridled belief in progress that had prevailed before the war. What prevailed was the consciousness of living in a shattered and divided world — in a world of crises.   Speeches for the future   Rudolf Steiner wanted to fight against this general mood of doom. He was not only concerned with pointing out the conditions that had to lead to the downfall, but also with the prerequisites for a socially fruitful new beginning. And this could only happen on the basis of a truly sustainable — that is spiritual — world view. Thus Rudolf Steiner wrote in his appeal “To the German People and to the World of Culture” (in GA 24, in the future in GA 255a), which was presented to the public for the first time on February 15, 1919: “In place of the petty thinking about the most immediate demands of the present time, there should now be a great train of outlook on life which strives to recognize the forces of development of the newer humanity with strong thoughts and which dedicates itself to them with courageous will. The petty urge should cease, which renders harmless as impractical idealists all those who direct their gaze to these forces of development. The arrogance and haughtiness of those who think of themselves as practitioners and who have brought about misfortune through their narrow sense masked as practice should cease. Consideration would have to be given to what the practitioners, who are called idealists but are in fact real practitioners, have to say about the developmental needs of the new age.” However, it was not only the idea of the threefold social structure — the idea of a horizontal federalization of society according to the three functional systems of intellectual life, legal life and economic life — which he hoped would lead to a new beginning in society, but also a fundamental public understanding of the humanistic approach he advocated. This “progress of the world view of spiritual science from the abstract to the concrete, from the merely thought-like, which imagines itself to penetrate into reality, to the truly reality-like” (public lecture of June 10, 1920 in Stuttgart, in this volume), i.e. a vivification of the view — this was his great concern after the attempt to bring the idea of threefolding as an igniting idea among the masses had finally proved to be in vain towards the end of 1919; people had remained attached to their one-sided party thinking. Rudolf Steiner, supported by a small circle of collaborators of the Tripartite Alliance and the Anthroposophical Society, felt all the more obliged to stand up in public for the spiritual upheaval he considered necessary. He wanted to speak about “The Spiritual demands of the Coming Day,” about “The Spiritual Crisis of the Present and the Forces for Human Progress” — these were the titles of his public lectures of March 4, 1920 and November 10, 1920 in Stuttgart (in this volume). In the course of 1920 he held lectures with this concern in various places. He was convinced (in the lecture of November 10, 1920 in Stuttgart, in this volume): “We will see the thinking man of action, the feeling man of law, the brotherhood-minded man of will emerging from a real spiritually oriented world knowledge, and we will thus gain from such an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science a new force for the progress of humanity out of the spiritual crisis.” Rudolf Steiner's public “Present Speeches” organized by the Stuttgart Initiative Circle in 1920 prove to be particularly impressive — they are united in the present volume. They were held in a climate of increasing rejection of anthroposophical endeavors. This opposition was fueled by the many practical efforts of the anthroposophical movement to demonstrate the fruitfulness of its worldview. On September 7, 1919, the Waldorf School was opened; in the first half of the next year, economic associations were founded to financially support anthroposophical cultural endeavors — on March 13, 1920, “Der Kommende Tag A.G.” in Stuttgart and on June 16 the “Futurum A.G.” in Dornach. These were large-scale projects that, beyond their narrower purpose, aimed at a fundamental change in economic activity and thus at defusing the social question. The Goetheanum, provisionally opened on September 26, 1920, but not yet fully completed, as the seat of the “School of Spiritual Science,” was a striking expression of the claim to a holistically oriented scientific methodology. It is not coincidental that this provisional opening was connected with the holding of the First University Course, which took place from September 27 to October 16 in the Goetheanum building. Already in the spring of 1920, from March 24 to April 7, a kind of precursor course had taken place in Dornach under the title “Anthroposophy and the Specialized Sciences” (in GA 73a), which bore witness to the fertilization of the sciences by anthroposophy. This course was intended to bear witness to the fertilization of the sciences by anthroposophy. At this time, that is, on April 9, 1920, the participants in the first medical course given by Rudolf Steiner went public with a “declaration” in which they confessed: “The Free School of Spiritual Science ‘Goetheanum’, which is approaching its architectural completion in Dornach, stands as testimony to the inner content and creditworthiness of this whole school of thought, for whose medical-scientific fruitfulness the undersigned specialists vouch with their name.” In addition to these large public lectures, Rudolf Steiner also gave lectures for the members of the Anthroposophical Society, in which he illuminated the spiritual background of contemporary events in addition to his public lectures. They are summarized in the volume “Spiritual and Social Transformations in Human Evolution” (GA 196). In view of the darkness of confusing events, it was important for him to set points of orientation, to understand the fundamental developments. Thus Rudolf Steiner made it clear to the Stuttgart members on November 14, 1920 (in GA196), Rudolf Steiner made it clear to the Stuttgart members: “And while the beings which man saw in the old times in the phenomena of nature were of a Luciferic nature, the beings which work in the machines, in the technicisms, are of an ahrimanic nature. So man surrounds himself with an ahrimanic world, which becomes completely independent. You see, what is the meaning of the development of mankind — out of the Luciferic world, which, however, still works into his consciousness and there determines his destiny, man sails, and indeed just in the present time with a certain rapidity, into an ahrimanic world.” It is precisely the lack of awareness of such spiritual backgrounds that Rudolf Steiner felt to be a great danger for human beings. In the same lecture: “A great danger exists that this ahrimanic world, because it acts upon his will, which he cannot get directly into his consciousness through intellectualistic science, will seize the will of man and he will become quite directionless within the demonic powers of technicisms.” This was Rudolf Steiner's depressing concern for the future of humanity. And hence his public commitment to directed action: “We are thinking of a renewal of the whole scientific and Spiritual worldview of the present into the near future.” Turning to spirituality as a means of shaping the social future — only in this way could one hope to do justice to the cultural legacy of German idealism, but also to set an effective counterweight to the Western claim to power. Rudolf Steiner was convinced of this. Alexander Lüscher