Rudolf Steiner's Vision for the Future - Anthroposophical Society in ...

Keeping Faith with the Human Being
Greetings and welcome! With this issue we are evolving
the “News for Members” of the Anthroposophical Society
into a publication which we are calling simply being
human. We’ve talked about this step for two years, and are
taking it in time for Rudolf Steiner’s 150th anniversary year,
which also begins a second century of anthroposophical
collaborations in North America.
We are also making this issue much more widely available,
so we extend a welcome to new friends. being human
could not be a more inclusive title, and we mean for it to
point to that balancing act, of self-development both alone
and in relationships, which we all share in. To be human is
to be incomplete, unfinished, in progress. Messy, troubled,
despair-making; and then wondrous, hopeful, uplifting.
Between downdrafts and giddy exaltations we make our way
forward.
“Keeping faith?” Through much of the last fifty years the
thought has been present “in the culture” that the human
race is not a good thing. “We’re prone to violence and cruelty
and this beautiful Earth would fare better without us.” Such
was the voice of our collective “dark night of the soul.”
Being human isn’t easy, and we need the sober encouragement
of serious people. If our actions are not what they
should be, still it is we ourselves who know that, and it is we
who can change them. Already in his first foundational book,
The Philosophy of Freedom, the young Rudolf Steiner was
looking incisively at the condition of the human being: “We
have torn into two what is really an inseparable whole: the
human being. We have distinguished between the knower
and the doer and have left out of account precisely the one
who matters most of all: the knowing doer.”
That book was a key research into overcoming the
apparent limits of human consciousness. And he went on to
identify the key challenge, in How to Know Higher Worlds:
“Unless we learn to develop within ourselves the deeply
From the Editor
rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves,
we shall not find the strength to evolve to something higher.”
This very gifted man was an heir to the great culture of
Europe. He watched a thousand years of its culture wrecked
in “the Great War,” but he spent his days and years researching
the human condition and our potential for further
evolution. He came to see the human being quite objectively
not as a cosmic accident but as a cosmic participant on a
vast scale. And he became a master of practical action, helping
plant seed after seed of a healthier culture, a new global
civilization worthy of the best in us. He kept faith with the
human being, both the ideals of our conscience and the
reality of our needs and shortcomings. And because Rudolf
Steiner knew our capacity to grow, he was a mentor and
advisor on self-development, but not a guru substituting his
will for that of his admirers. And so he provided a great and
living map to the human future, both intimate and vast,
which he called anthroposophy, “the consciousness of our
humanity.”
In this issue
Our lead article by Prof. Frederick Amrine on page 7 is
a scholar’s thoughtful introduction to Rudolf Steiner presented
as a challenge to his colleagues to discover a genius, a
real giant in the intellectual and cultural history of our times.
Admittedly, Steiner did not focus on being available to the
academic world, but acted as something more like a great cultural
gardener. On page 68 we include a full lecture from
1909 which displays his reach, approach, and continuing
relevance: “From Creature to Creator: The Human Being and
Our Future Evolution.” Adding his research in consciousness,
in “spirit,” to natural scientific concepts of evolution, he
makes the further observation, both subtle and profound,
that evolution specific to human beings proceeds by “creation
out of nothingness.” It takes artistic and ethical perception,
as well as scientific, to reach such an insight.
being human is a quarterly publication of the Anthroposophical Society in America, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
View it online at www.anthroposophy.org — to advertise call Cynthia Chelius at 734-662-9355 — or email editor@anthroposophy.org.
first issue 2011 • 1