Sunday March 30, 2025
March 30, 2025, marks the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death. The founder of influential initiatives in education (Waldorf schooling), agriculture, (biodynamics), art (eurythmy), medicine, religion, esoteric schooling, and more, Steiner qualifies as both a Renaissance man (a true polymath!) and a spiritual teacher of international renown. This event aims to honor the man and his vision and to initiate the exploration of currents connecting Steiner’s legacy and the mission of Kosmos Institute.
“Who is Rudolf Steiner for Our 21st Century?”
Bruce Donehower
The year 2025 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the death of Rudolf Steiner, one of the most controversial, prolific, and enigmatic geniuses of the high modernist period in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Who was Rudolf Steiner?
If you take the easy way to an answer in a self-driving Google, you will find Rudolf Steiner described as a “New Age” philosopher, Austrian occultist, social reformer, educator, philosopher, pseudoscientific Eurocentric crank, clairvoyant, Christian visionary . . . .
But check your refrigerator or wine cellar. Do you have bio-dynamic organic vegetables or bio-dynamic wines? “Thank you, Rudolf Steiner.” Does a child you love attend a Waldorf-inspired school where “head, heart, and hand” are educated as an ideal spiritual unity? “Thank you, Rudolf Steiner.” Do you have a problem with allopathic medical modalities that see the human being as a “here today, gone tomorrow” biological fluke of random evolutionary couplings . . . and do you consequently prefer alternative medical modalities that treat the human being holistically as body, soul, and spirit? “Thank you, Rudolf Steiner.” Or perhaps you find yourself longing for insight into those perennial questions: “What is a Wisdom Tradition of the Being Human?” “What happens to me when I die?” Well, Rudolf Steiner had a lot to say on that topic, to be sure!
He described his anthroposophy as a renewal of the ancient wisdom tradition mysteries for our time.
But if that doesn’t float your boat, then you’re not alone. Many persons in our 21st century find Rudolf Steiner and Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy deeply offensive and highly questionable from a variety of well-reasoned social/political/cultural/philosophical perspectives—and many of these critiques align with postmodernist inquiries that take issue with late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century essentialist ideologies and Eurocentric assumptions.
BRUCE DONEHOWER, PhD is a scholar of British and German Romanticism with a special interest in German early Romanticism and Novalis. He is the North American representative to the School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum for the Section for the Literary Arts & Humanities. He is the author of The Birth of Novalis: Friedrich von Hardenberg’s Journal of 1797 (SUNY Press) and other publications. His most recent book, SancXtuary: A Fairytale will be published in spring 2025. Bruce regularly facilitates meetings, artistic events, and conferences for the Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities. In addition to scholarship, he performs as a classical guitarist and storyteller. He has a fourth Dan in Aikido (TAA) and practiced and taught Aikido for twenty-five years. Bruce has a PhD in English literature from UC Davis and an MA in German from UC Davis, where he taught for twenty-two years. For more information on Bruce and his activities, visit the Section website TheLiteraryArts.com or the Literary Arts YouTube Channel.
Anthroposophy and the Kosmos Institute Mission
Daniel Joseph Polikoff
Rudolf Steiner called his informing vision “anthroposophy”—the wisdom (sophia) of the human being (anthropos). Neither a “religion” in the usual sense of a system of belief associated with ritual forms of worship, nor the sort of intellectual theorization commonly identified as “philosophy,” anthroposophy represents a unique synthesis of traditional esoteric wisdom (both eastern and western) and modern scientific and artistic initiatives. Dr. Polikoff will trace some of the chief historical influences that—in accord with Steiner’s own formative understanding of “the evolution of consciousness”—shape the lineaments of anthroposophy. Touching on the Christ event, Rosicrucianism, Romanticism and German Idealism, and Steiner’s own unique turn-of-the-20th century moment, we’ll aim to gain a preliminary sense of the depth and breadth of Steiner’s anthroposophy and—crucially—its congruence with the “sophianic pedagogy” that underlies the Kosmos Institute vision of higher education.
Daniel Joseph Polikoff, Ph.D, received his Diploma in Waldorf Education from Rudolf Steiner College, and has taught at three Waldorf high schools as well as in the Steiner College Teacher Training program. As a parent of two Waldorf graduates, the husband of a eurythmist, and a speaker for the Bay Area Eurythmy Ensemble, his involvement with Steiner’s vision has been a daily affair for two-and-a-half decades. He spoke on “Emerson and Anthroposophy” at the September 2024 conference of the Literary Arts and Humanities section of the Anthroposophical Society, and delivered the keynote (“Sophianic Pedagogy in the era of the Polymath”) at the December 2024 Kosmos Winter Solstice Conference.
