No Negative Judgments?
From: Steinerhead
Date: Wed Dec 10, 2003 7:35 pm
Subject: No negative judgments?
From the WC list, in Brackets:
You can read the entire exchange at [this
link].
[What exactly do you mean
by "reactionary"? Is this term meant to cover only
those aspects of Steiner's work which you think connect him to
right wing, racist ideology?
Peter.S:
Yes. I use the term more or less interchangeably with "right-wing".
Or do you use the word
in a more general sense as a negative judgement of the philosophical/religious
character of Steiner's work.
Peter S.
No. I do not have a negative judgement of the religious character
of Steiner's work; and while]
Mike:
Didn't he call Anthroposophy a "seudo-religion" in
one of his articles? I know for a fact that in one of my exchanges
with him he mentioned Steiner's "platitudes on Love".
I would classify these as "negative judgments of the religious
charactor of steiner's work", driven by a polemic and predominant
intellectual bias. On top of that I have never read anything
that he has written that even remotely lends to the idea that
he actually _ likes _ anything about Steiner. Thus the following
statement:
[I find much of Steiner's
early philosophical writing derivative and unpersuasive, I don't
think it is significantly related to his racist views, for the
most part.]
Mike:
For the most part?
[According to standard conceptions
of racism and antisemitism, it is indeed true that a number of
Steiner's doctrines are racist and antisemitic. My analysis holds,
in addition, that these teachings perform a crucial function
within anthroposophy's cosmology and that simply removing them,
without putting something else in their place, would indeed cause
the ideological edifice of anthroposophy to collapse. I could
go into more detail on that score if you like.]
Another Polemic tirade: The insertion of the
Christ impulse into humanity is indeed central to Anthroposophy,
but he completely and casually denies this and says that he does
not have negative judgment of the religious character of Steiner's
work. And he has repeatedly denied that his own non-religious
affiliation and political views has any bearing on his own interpretation
of history.
A chronological conglomeration of historical
facts (i.e. events that actually happened) is one aspect of understanding
history, and I have to give Peter some credit here. But another
important (more important IMO) aspect of understanding history,
where I think Peter falls way short, is in the rhelm of compassion,
and empathy, which I see as essential to forming an understanding
the complexities of human nature, and the history that is created
therein.
Truth and Love
Mike Helsher
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