Well done. This part of the future of freeing Steiner from himself. I'm glad you don't shy away from using Staudenmeier. So many anthroposophists simply insult him and leave it at that, which I find completely inadequate. Steiner's racialism is incompatible with Christianity, esoteric or otherwise.
Thoughtful critique. The ethnos vs race distinction is crucial, and the genetic falsification angle provides empirical grounding for what Christianity already teaches about universal humanity. I've been wrestling with how to hold reverence for historical thinkers while acknowledging their embeddedness in harmful epistemologies, and the "reverent impiety" framing captures that tension well. The Charleston example drives home that skin-based essentialism collapses under real-world scrutiny.
Thanks for writing this up and sharing it, Ashton. I feel it is important for so many different reasons. For me personally, what I find most important (after disavowing claims that are clearly simply repetitions of old racist tropes) is that we strike up a conversation about Steiner's clairvoyant development, that we not merely say, "There are some statements of his we should disavow and put behind us," but, instead, use these as just one part of an attempt to understand how Steiner could have thought he was doing 'exact research', even having profound clairvoyant experiences, and yet was, like most researchers, making all sorts of observational and cognitive errors in the process.
My fear is that we not only ignore certain statements from Steiner but that we ignore the opportunity to understand how his incredible self-confidence in only uttering things he knew were 100% true might be intricately involved in various cognitive-emotional-developmental blind-spots.
My growing hunch is that the kind of clairvoyance that Anthroposophy is urging us towards simply isn't very much like the form that sprang up in spiritualist movements and manifested in people like Blavatsky and Steiner.
The very fact that we know Steiner wasn't having any experience like Blavatsky until he began ferociously reading her around 1903 should be massively interesting to any study of why his clairvoyance took on a certain form.
Anyway, I hope my sub-interest in how the racial stuff connects to methodology becomes interesting to you at some point, because we need your kind of thoughtfulness, observation, and articulateness to help begin this study of clairvoyant development. If Steiner was wrong about its form, it'll certainly not be folks who share that form that begin to find the truth. Heck, regarding the first stage of what he called 'exact clairvoyance', I don't think there has been anybody who meets his criteria sense him; and he thought there would be a lot of them doing independent work by now.
This typically is explained way by the old, "We have let Steiner down by not doing the work," but I think that might be growing very tired. Maybe there are other reasons that good, hard workers are not developing the kind of 'exact clairvoyance' that Steiner said was absolutely essential for the future he envisioned. That future deeply included many of the ideas you quote from in your paper.
Well done. This part of the future of freeing Steiner from himself. I'm glad you don't shy away from using Staudenmeier. So many anthroposophists simply insult him and leave it at that, which I find completely inadequate. Steiner's racialism is incompatible with Christianity, esoteric or otherwise.
Much of what Steiner says on race is as unchristian as what Kant said, and Steiner was significantly influenced by Kant: https://blackcentraleurope.com/sources/1750-1850/kant-on-the-different-human-races-1777/
I'll be interested to see what you produce next
Thank you Stewart, really appreciate these encouraging words.
Thoughtful critique. The ethnos vs race distinction is crucial, and the genetic falsification angle provides empirical grounding for what Christianity already teaches about universal humanity. I've been wrestling with how to hold reverence for historical thinkers while acknowledging their embeddedness in harmful epistemologies, and the "reverent impiety" framing captures that tension well. The Charleston example drives home that skin-based essentialism collapses under real-world scrutiny.
Thanks for writing this up and sharing it, Ashton. I feel it is important for so many different reasons. For me personally, what I find most important (after disavowing claims that are clearly simply repetitions of old racist tropes) is that we strike up a conversation about Steiner's clairvoyant development, that we not merely say, "There are some statements of his we should disavow and put behind us," but, instead, use these as just one part of an attempt to understand how Steiner could have thought he was doing 'exact research', even having profound clairvoyant experiences, and yet was, like most researchers, making all sorts of observational and cognitive errors in the process.
My fear is that we not only ignore certain statements from Steiner but that we ignore the opportunity to understand how his incredible self-confidence in only uttering things he knew were 100% true might be intricately involved in various cognitive-emotional-developmental blind-spots.
My growing hunch is that the kind of clairvoyance that Anthroposophy is urging us towards simply isn't very much like the form that sprang up in spiritualist movements and manifested in people like Blavatsky and Steiner.
The very fact that we know Steiner wasn't having any experience like Blavatsky until he began ferociously reading her around 1903 should be massively interesting to any study of why his clairvoyance took on a certain form.
Anyway, I hope my sub-interest in how the racial stuff connects to methodology becomes interesting to you at some point, because we need your kind of thoughtfulness, observation, and articulateness to help begin this study of clairvoyant development. If Steiner was wrong about its form, it'll certainly not be folks who share that form that begin to find the truth. Heck, regarding the first stage of what he called 'exact clairvoyance', I don't think there has been anybody who meets his criteria sense him; and he thought there would be a lot of them doing independent work by now.
This typically is explained way by the old, "We have let Steiner down by not doing the work," but I think that might be growing very tired. Maybe there are other reasons that good, hard workers are not developing the kind of 'exact clairvoyance' that Steiner said was absolutely essential for the future he envisioned. That future deeply included many of the ideas you quote from in your paper.
Thanks again!