When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 1 - Waldorf Research Institute

would according to Paul Feyerabend’s happy-go-lucky “anything goes, civic
initiatives instead of epistemology.” 14
The second possibility was to tie science firmly into machine-type
thinking, cognition techniques for which computers may be used, cognition
technology making no claim for truth, programmed, recorded, monitored,
randomized techniques, i.e., developing a global science machine.
The third possibility was that the two original Aristotelian and Platonic
impulses be taken beyond the zero points they reached with Kant and
Wittgenstein so that they finally come together within the human being and
are applied one to the other. On one hand, this means that the mathematical
Platonic method of thinking is explored using the empirical Aristotelian
approach, that is, thinking itself becomes the object of empirical study.
On the other hand, it means that the empirical Aristotelian method of
sensory observation is penetrated with the mathematical Platonic method;
observation is filled with thought in full awareness.
If we considered the dynamic of conscious awareness development in
the history of science, this would be the logical next step. It would also be
the right method for entering again into the universals debate.
In short, Platonism and Aristotelianism must interpenetrate at the
methodological level. Encounter and collaboration between Platonism and
Aristotelianism are very much our concern in anthroposophy, though at
another level and in a different sense.
Historical situation in anthroposophy
Platonists meeting Aristotelians
In his karma lectures, Rudolf Steiner put great emphasis on two karmic
streams—Platonic and Aristotelian. He said that representatives of the two
streams would incarnate on earth before the end of the century and work
together to achieve maximum spread of anthroposophy at a particular point
in time. Their mission was to nurture spirituality in a civilization that would
otherwise go into decline and perish.
Steiner went on to say that it was important to discover to which of
the two groups each of us belongs. Characterizing the groups he referred to
“being tired of paganism” on one hand and of Christianity on the other. It
is not easy, however, to work with this today for it refers to earlier forms of
incarnation. Indeed, what do we mean by “Christianity” and “paganism”?
Isn’t it true that what we call Christianity is sometimes paganism and vice
versa?
It is my personal belief (in spite of and, indeed, in consequence of careful
study of the records made of the lectures) that those lectures do not provide
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