Looking forward to listening to these. Are these videos also on YouTube, by chance? I ask because I could grab a transcript from there (it is much faster for me to read than listen to the videos, and I tend to digest the written word better than oral presentations).
I'm excited to hear another perspective on this subject. I'm aware that Steiner specifically makes clear why only a very small group of people can understand what he means in 174b-2 when he says that for the next 1500 years only white skinned people can integrate with the Christ in the way necessary if humanity is to make it successfully into the 6th epoch.
That said, before we simply agree with a flat statement that none of us can understand what that means, we might also open the space to think about that very claim.
I'm very open to many reasons why context matters. But I'm hoping to hear people talk about the reasons why, perhaps, Steiner is over-stating the case that only people from a very specific region and time can understand this massive difference between white-skinned people and all non-white peoples.
My hope is that conversations can take place that at least allow for the possiblity that Steiner is making some errors in reasoning when he makes such claims.
If he isn't capable of making such errors, I guess we just assume that we simply have no way of knowing what it means that non-white people must wait till around 3500 before they can receive the gift of The Christ.
I wonder if we have evidence that the small group of white Germans that he was speaking to were able to grasp it?
What would that kind of evidence look like?
For instance, can we find any evidence that Scaligero's work on race and blood proves that he understood Steiner fairly well. Since he was not part of the region or exact time as those listening to that lecture, should we take any of Scaligero's accuracy as a sign that he was reaching very similar spiritual understandings completely independent of Steiner?
Full disclosure: I think Scaligero's work reflects major cognitive blind-spots and presuppositins that don't hold up, many of the same ones that I see Steiner reproducing.
That said, more than anything, it'll be such a relief to find an Anthroposophical space in which we can, before anything else, see if we agree with Steiner's presuppositions regarding who can and can't understand his words.
Hey Jeff, thanks for your interest and thoughtful comments on this topic. Can you clarify whether you have made these comments after having watched my videos or before? If before, I would prefer to wait to respond until after you have seen and responded to what I have to say there.
The person who sent me the link wanted me to observe a section of the second video. I'll come back after seeing them both and then we can have a proper conversation. Thanks for sharing them, and please let us know when they are up on Youtube because I also will want to read the transcript.
Robert, I've had a chance to listen and then read through the transcripts of these expanded talks. Thank you for taking the risk of wading into this terrain and for trying to articulate a genuine middle path that refuses the pathologically polarized “culture war” frame and asks for something more human and more spiritually mature. I also appreciate the way I see you implicitly inviting us to speak more consciously out of the North American folk soul about these questions, rather than importing European formulations as though they were universally applicable. I say you do this implicitly, since I also must say I think on occasion you may revert to lumping Europe and the Americas together. Obviously a lot is shared culturally, but as you also note, racial divisions are no longer viable realities on the American continent. That feels especially important given the context of GA 174B, which you quote: Steiner is explicit there that his spoken remarks arise from the immediate impulse of time, place, and audience, and shouldn’t be treated as universally true. From my standpoint as an American, that contextualization is tremendously important. What Steiner goes on to say in 174B about dark skin and the Christ impulse does not merely feel dated or awkward to me. I cannot digest it cognitively as anything but demonstrably false and morally deformed. Whatever one makes of his larger Christology (and I make of it quite a lot), it is simply not true that the capacity for Christ-inspired love is blocked by melanin. That’s precisely the kind of statement that, in my view, must be named as spiritually untrue. I say this not only out of my Americanness but as a human being striving to partake in the work of further incarnating Anthroposophia into earthly life.
Holding the tension of opposites is always wise council. But I think there’s still a real danger in letting the middle path harden into a pair of convenient caricatures. You do helpfully note that the capitalist-populist MAGA pole and the socialist-progressive decolonial/anti-Western pole each represent something like 20% of the U.S. population. Most Americans don’t live at the extremes. A similar point applies to the polarity regarding the ontology of race. In practice, most people (including most scholars who get grouped under “postmodern critical race theory”) would say race is a social construct AND has real causal effects; there’s no contradiction there. So I think there’s still some work to do if the critique of critical theory is going to land with the kind of concreteness and fairness you’re rightly asking of others in their readings of Steiner. For my part, I don’t accept that race is merely a social construct, because I reject the premise that nature and culture are separable realities in the first place. As you suggested, I see race as a fluid, evolving phenomenon that was once more biologically and spiritually salient than it is today. Today racial identity is increasingly atavistic insofar as it tempts us to regress into generic group identities instead of engaging in the difficult but essential work of individuation.
I want to underscore something I hear you circling that I also try to hold in my work on these questions: there is an important difference between saying Steiner uttered racist comments and saying that Steiner is simply “a racist,” full stop. I don’t think “Steiner is a racist” is an apt or illuminating statement, but I do think he sometimes fell into the trap of speaking from a place of racial prejudice, as many people of his time did, and, frankly, as almost all of us do in different company in our own way. The task, as I see it, is neither apology nor cancellation, but truthfulness: to refuse denial and resist ideological capture while doing the harder and perhaps less immediately emotionally gratifying hermeneutic work of clear moral- and scientific-spiritual investigation. If anthroposophy as a cultural impulse is to be stewarded into the future, it has to be strong enough to say, without evasiveness, where the bull broke the china. Of course, it will require just as much strength to acknowledge where the eagle's insights, even if unpopular in the well-meaning but confused eyes of whatever the latest corporate-approved DEI fads are, remain true.
Just to re-iterate the point at issue for me in any attempt to deal with 174b: I'm glad that you brought in Steiner's profound words uttered in the early days of WW1 that remain so essential to proper understanding. Your threefold methodology of eagle, lion, and bull is extremely helpful. But you did not address the elephant. The Christ impulse is not the private property of any people, phenotype, or culture. What say you?
Thanks for your comments and for your closing question. I would prefer to deal with questions like this in a longer format where I can bring in more nuance but I see the necessity of speaking to the 174B matter a little bit now. My perspective at this time is as follows:
The idea that a darker skinned person (or a person with more melatonin in their skin) is less able to absorb the Christ impulse is exactly the kind of seemingly logical inference from his words in this lecture that I believe Rudolf Steiner would have found to be “monstrous.” I find it to be a monstrous thought and so do you and so do most people, for good reason.
In these lectures, however, as I see it, RS is not speaking about individual human beings (which is the main focus of his eagle teachings) but rather about collective realities, about generic tendencies that live in groups of people by virtue of their race and ethnicity. As we know from Rudolf Steiner’s eagle teachings, he did not believe that any individual was bound to the tendencies living in them through their race and ethnicity, but he did believe that these collective tendencies will continue to play a strong role in the historical process, since people’s capacity to free themselves from these tendencies is only gradually emerging in human evolution.
So, what I understand him to be saying is simply that lighter skinned people have a particular karma with (or generic tendency toward a strong engagment with) matter, which is both a positive and a negative. It can mean a natural ability to infuse matter with their individual spirit or it can mean a natural tendency to let material realities eclipse an awareness of spiritual reality.
In other places, Steiner focuses much more on the shadow side of this karma, but here he focuses more on the positive side, which I think he felt the need to do because of all the shame and blame pouring down on Central Europe at that time. I think he wanted to rouse the central Europeans in that particular place to their true sense of mission, to the dignity of the central European striving at its best.
If we heard an African-American preacher giving a sermon in which he told the congregation that their dark skin gives them a special relationship to the working of Christ in the depths of the earth (which I think it does quite honestly), and that they should try to live up to or realize this mission, would we find that to be racist? Certainly, it could be interpreted in a racist way, but I am not sure I would qualify such a remark as inherently racist.
I think if asked Steiner would have affirmed that every race and culture has a special and unique relationship to the Christ Impulse. But he also would have said that any given period of history, some cultures are called to play a stronger role in the exoteric shaping of history than others. This is the deeper point he is trying to make here I think, he is saying to the Europeans: don't lose touch with your unique mission at this moment in history!
It is interesting this regard to note that Steiner somewhat conflates here the Slavic people (a white skinned people) and the Asian people (a brown skinned people), in that he sees both as having the tendency (or mission as I would call it) to hold back from Western culture and materialism—to preserve something of the past spirituality of humanity for the future when it will merge with what comes from the West. So here he switches over to realities of spiritual geography rather than race, which is an overall source of confusion in these lectures, that I will try to clear up later in my short course.
Personally, I feel that Steiner goes a little too far in his focus on the shadow side of the Asian and Slavic tendency to hold back from the West. Yes, that tendency has a shadow side but it also has an important light side, which I don’t feel Steiner brings out with sufficient clarity here.
Just think, for example, of how Paul Kingsnorth’s critique of transhumanism in his new book (Against the Machine) is informed by his relationship to Orthodox Christianity. Here we see, I think, a real quality of conscience arising that is informed by this Eastern quality that Steiner characterizes in such a negative manner in this lecture. Or should we look at the work of Paramahamsa Yogananda in America with the same lens with which Steiner characterizes the retrogressive tendencies working in the Krishnamurti affair In Europe? I personally don’t think so.
It is important to remember that Steiner articulated something I call the “magpie principle,” namely, the idea that all people and all cultures and races have both a light and a shadow side. Where I think Steiner often erred (typically in private lectures like this or in offhand comments) was in comparing the light side of one culture to the shadow side of another culture without making the subtleties clear. This is where I think his lack of experience of other cultures plays a role, and this is where I think we can bring a balance to Steiner’s Lion and Bull teachings today.
He makes it clear, for example, in this lecture, that it is important that certain cultures hold back from the stream of western culture and materialism, but he tends, as I see it, to not fully honor the importance of this gesture in the whole context of world evolution, but tends to somewhat demonize it using derogatory terms. This is where I think his Lion and Bull nature do get the better of him sometimes. He felt so strongly the need to uphold the dignity of the Cainite, egoic impulse of the West and of the white people, but sometimes he takes it too far I think, at least to the ears of people like us living 100 years later.
Having said that, I am sure a mathematical analysis would reveal that the vast majority of his cultural criticisms were leveled at his own culture. That is something that is also easy to forget.
Thanks, Robert. This is a helpful answer. I do take seriously the fact that karma adheres to ethnic groups as well as individuals, and in different and continually evolving ways. To reiterate a point we both feel is important for understanding 174b, I think the cultural and spiritual dynamics unfolding in the Western hemisphere and in the US in particular (at least I know it here most intimately) are radically distinct from those of Central Europe a century ago. I suspect present day Europe is also now in quite a different situation compared to what Steiner felt he was addressing in 1915.
When I consider these questions about skin color and the Christ impulse from a US-centric perspective, looking at generic tendencies of peoples with lighter and darker skin tones, it feels evidently true not just a century ago but today that most white evangelical churches have by and large lost the plot entirely. Seems to me that, were Jesus to show up in our midst again today, these white churches, caught up in an idolatrous nationalist fervor and what the political philosopher William Connolly calls the "capitalist-evangelical resonance machine," would likely play the role of the Pharisees in condemning him as some kind of anti-American socialist blasphemer. Since Jesus probably had olive-brown skin, they'd no doubt also call ICE's tip line to have him deported. I don't mean to demonize an entire demographic, by any means. I simply raise this as a proportional counterpoint to Steiner's claim that dark skin houses demons that block the Christ. Maybe that made sense in Central Europe in 1915. I do not think it makes sense in 21st century America. The evidence, whether we consider individuals or generic groups, suggests the opposite.
I do not find it necessary to disavow Steiner as a spiritual teacher for these or other statements, even if I find them to be quite obviously racist (no matter what sort of esoteric spin we may want to give them). The prejudices he expresses in some of his statements to particular German-speaking audiences are hardly unique for that time and place. Racial prejudice is not a unique flaw of white people. All peoples have this tendency toward racial chauvinism. But this tendency to racial prejudice is distinct from the question of systematic white supremacist racism across US cultural, economic, and political institutions, which despite important advances since the 1960s is quickly being reversed under Trump. I don't mention systemic racism because I think DEI practices or race-based affirmative action in employment and education are any kind of solution--I think a lot of that is rather a symptom of the rot and only makes racial tensions worse. Steiner's eagle teachings on these questions are desperately needed, which is why I feel your method of distinguishing those from his lion and bull tendencies is potentially so helpful.
I'll be sharing my response after I finish both videos, but, Matt, one question for now:
I'll say more about this later, but I'm very grateful for how you framed several of the questions you're holding.
When you talk about Steiner saying it isn't 'universally true', I notice that I might be getting lost in several different meanings of 'universal'.
For instance, if Steiner gave a lecture about green marbles and he said, "The only people who will be able to understand me are people in this room today. Okay, having said that, I want you all to know that for the next 1500 years green marbles will not be able to roll uphill."
It sounds extreme, but I realize it really isn't that extreme in this context. What do we mean by not taking what he says as a universal truth? I can imagine that we want to be very sensitive to as much contextual information as we can gather, especially related to why Steiner might believe that only people in that room could understand him.
But if he is being very clear, repeatedly, as to the fact (his opinion) that green marbles can't roll uphill and he even repeatedly gives his opinion as to what causes green marbles to not have this capacity, I feel it might be okay for us to simply have a different point of view and even claim that he's just wrong about that.
Anyway, if you could just say a few words about what you meant by that term, it'll help me digest your comments and prepare my own.
Thanks for seeking clarification, Jeff. I take Steiner's meaning in context to be that, in the midst of world war pitting European nationalities against one another, it is not possible for him to speak in a way that would be understandable to all nations in the same way. When it comes to certain worldly issues, what is true for Germans in that moment will not be true for French people, even if they are all anthroposophists. He is clear that when he speaks out of the anthroposophical impulse, universally human truths can be heard. But this particular lecture was apparently spoken out of his sense of allegiance to German-speaking peoples, rather than out of an anthroposophical impulse. I think here of his admission in PoF that none among us is all individual or all genus. 174b is, at least in part, Steiner speaking as a member of a genus. I am able to withhold judgment about whether what he said to that particular group of people at that time is somehow "true" (in the sense that it is somehow appropriate for his/their group soul karma). I do not withhold judgment when speaking out of either my own sense of Americanness or my devotion to Anthroposophia: both compel me to reject the statement about skin color as false.
But do you see what I'm trying to get at between the distinction between legitimate tricky roles that context plays in how something can be understood versus specific claims like green marbels can't roll up hill or non-white people can't integrate with the Christ.
I'm having trouble expressing what i think is important as we take first steps in sorting out the area in which we obviously respect Steiner (or anybody) who is reminding us of the importance of context versus having the freedom to notice when an empirical claim can at least be pushed against with reason and observation.
I'm not saying we start by assuming Steiner was wrong about non-white people waiting behind until they are capable of integrating with The Christ. I'm saying we can't conflate two very different kinds of analysis from the start.
I sometimes hear fellow Anthroposophists suggesting (directly or indirectly) that we really have to hold off from assessing any claims Steiner makes until we can fully verify them ourselves. In my opinion, this creates a loop that will always feedback, at best, to a 'wait and see' type of approach that never takes actual steps forward in learning about Steiner's blind-spots and how they shaped his phenomenological experiences.
Much to consider, still working through Robert's after reading 174b-2.
I do want to ask you however whether "private property" is the term you wish to end with here? Such a strong association with the economic, and control of external circumstances...
Would "The Philosophy of Freiheit" better indicate the direction in which to find what Steiner is talking about here?
And is he saying that the "Christ impulse" can be the possession of any group at all?
Or that at the level of groups the support for the individual's search for the I AM is present or lacking?
"And is he saying that the "Christ impulse" can be the possession of any group at all?"
My repeated study of 174b-2 is that Steiner is saying that only people with white skin can individuate The Christ at this time. He isn't suggesting some kind of Group Incorporation of the Christ; or at least not directly. But he is saying that his vision of individuation is that, for the time being, only white skinned people can do this. And he then states very clearly why. And he even states why this is natural and positive that non-white skinned people must wait and then carry the next wave forward.
To be clear, I don't have the impression that Steiner is speaking from ill-will or hatred.
But I don't agree with his observations or with his reasoning in this lecture.
That said, I appreciate the way this lecture ties together all his other statements and makes what used to sound like paradoxes actually cohere internally.
When he talks about racism or racial thinking coming to an end, we can see how that does not contradict his claim here that this 'end' need not be understood as immediate. Also, hateful and obsessive views about race can come to an end today, and that does entail that non-white people can integrate with the Christ.
So I don't even see it as a contradiction for Steiner to say: "Hey, there is no room for racism anymore; and the reason why is that white humanity won't be able to achieve their mission if they obsess about race. They need to achieve their mission in about 1500 years so that they can then help 'impregnate' all non-white people with the Christ, at which point, the non-white people will assume the cutting edge of evolution."
I don't agree, but that is coherent and internally consistent.
The point of my question, "And is he saying that the "Christ impulse" can be the possession of any group at all?", is my view that no group as a group can take in the "Christ impulse" as a group.
The Christ Impulse is not a group thing. That's what I mean. Yet we keep trying to link what Steiner says about this group or that group to access to the Christ.
Other beings can and do work through groups (per 174b-2); Christ works only through individuals and through the creation of universal humanity.
Steiner's race point, or one of them (in the Workers talks), is that an effect of the largest organ of our bodies, the skin (he had a lot to say about physiology) is to receive or reflect warmth and light. I don't know if that's true, I don't have more than a crumb of his vision. He takes that on to assert that darker skin takes in more warmth and light -- and I think he sees more there than materialistic warm and materialistic light. Having this -- may I say "higher warmth" and "higher light" available from outside, an individual currently incarnated with a darker skin coloration doesn't have to create those from scratch, de novo, inside themselves. The so-called "white" person will have to do this, which will either force him/her to develop capacities for doing that, OR -- Steiner doesn't specify this, but it's common sense -- a given "white" person will have to live with diminished warmth and diminished light, whether lower or higher.
And as specifically to the Germans, the potential I AM bearers among the Europeans, he makes totally clear on many occasions that their great guide, Goethe, is scarcely known to them in his time.
To recap, I read RS saying white skin forces individuals who seek spiritual warmth and light to develop the inner capacity of warmth-light creation. Dark skin, he says, makes this development unnecessary, and they are able to hold onto previous qualities of community etc. which must be preserved for the next cultural age.
Many white evangelical churches in the US are convinced that the teachings of Christ are fully compatible with "capitalist populism" and Trump-style glorification of wealth and fame. I chose my phrase "private property" with due consideration of these factors.
My next door neighbors are believers in the "prosperity gospels" and based on flat, unverified claims by authority figures, they have no problem seeing their wealth as verification of their deep connection to Christ.
Over the last fifteen years I've spoken to many Anthroposophists who will use crime statistics to argue that Steiner's claims about non-white skin in 174b-2 can be approached and verified statistically.
I consider myself an Anthroposophist, but only in the sense of a very tiny trickling stream that is just surfacing above the water and is still miles apart from the main River.
But I believe this strongly. If it is true that Steiner's teaching have the capacity to play an important role in 'racial healings', this will have to be expressed in the direct and concrete ways that we Anthroposophists (not claiming that you identify that way, Matt) address their direct questions regarding the systematic way Steiner explains his vast view in that lecture and, of course, in other lectures with similar kinds of comments.
For 10 years Iived in a town with a wonderfully creative Waldorf School. I informally became the person that teachers sent non-white people to in town who were considering Waldorf for their children and then read these comments by Steiner.
At that time, there weren't teachers who really knew how to have these conversations outside of the usual, "Well, we have to understand him in context and work with his core books for years before we can truely even begin to grasp the meaning of those statements. In the meantime, here are other quotes and lectures you should read to see what he belived about education."
I would like to think that any Anthroposophist at this time can readily see why those well-intended responses are lightyears from the kinds of conversations necessarily.
Those were some of the most intense, moving, painful, and educational conversations I've ever had. I never once even implied that the people's worries were grounded in any kind of ignorance. I always led with my own reasons for thinking that neither Steiner nor his most enthusiastic student's seem to recognize that his experience, and theirs, is shaped by blind-spots, like every human beings. And, then, I would try to express why there might still be real value in exploring Waldorf. I did this by talking about the difference between the kind of pure phenomenology Steiner was capable of versus what he felt was an 'exact clairvoyance' that might require lifetimes to even begin to verify.
As people began to see reasons to value this discrepancy, some of them felt there might be room for them within a Waldorf community. But, as you might suspect, by the time we got to 2016, the pain in reading some of Steiner explicit claims was just too much to keep listening to me.
Anyway, more soon. Thanks for the dialog. I find this to be one of the most important Anthroposophical conversations there is. It includes all of my other interests and passions regarding the importance and possible dangers of Steiner's work and how we take it up.
Looking forward to listening to these. Are these videos also on YouTube, by chance? I ask because I could grab a transcript from there (it is much faster for me to read than listen to the videos, and I tend to digest the written word better than oral presentations).
yes I think I can get them posted there in the next day and will send you the link!
Ah, great. I'm looking forward to diving in as well!
I'm excited to hear another perspective on this subject. I'm aware that Steiner specifically makes clear why only a very small group of people can understand what he means in 174b-2 when he says that for the next 1500 years only white skinned people can integrate with the Christ in the way necessary if humanity is to make it successfully into the 6th epoch.
That said, before we simply agree with a flat statement that none of us can understand what that means, we might also open the space to think about that very claim.
I'm very open to many reasons why context matters. But I'm hoping to hear people talk about the reasons why, perhaps, Steiner is over-stating the case that only people from a very specific region and time can understand this massive difference between white-skinned people and all non-white peoples.
My hope is that conversations can take place that at least allow for the possiblity that Steiner is making some errors in reasoning when he makes such claims.
If he isn't capable of making such errors, I guess we just assume that we simply have no way of knowing what it means that non-white people must wait till around 3500 before they can receive the gift of The Christ.
I wonder if we have evidence that the small group of white Germans that he was speaking to were able to grasp it?
What would that kind of evidence look like?
For instance, can we find any evidence that Scaligero's work on race and blood proves that he understood Steiner fairly well. Since he was not part of the region or exact time as those listening to that lecture, should we take any of Scaligero's accuracy as a sign that he was reaching very similar spiritual understandings completely independent of Steiner?
Full disclosure: I think Scaligero's work reflects major cognitive blind-spots and presuppositins that don't hold up, many of the same ones that I see Steiner reproducing.
That said, more than anything, it'll be such a relief to find an Anthroposophical space in which we can, before anything else, see if we agree with Steiner's presuppositions regarding who can and can't understand his words.
Hey Jeff, thanks for your interest and thoughtful comments on this topic. Can you clarify whether you have made these comments after having watched my videos or before? If before, I would prefer to wait to respond until after you have seen and responded to what I have to say there.
The person who sent me the link wanted me to observe a section of the second video. I'll come back after seeing them both and then we can have a proper conversation. Thanks for sharing them, and please let us know when they are up on Youtube because I also will want to read the transcript.
Jeff, here are the links to the youtube recordings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTOiYw6ZwAI
https://youtu.be/ooR4cuzhSUI
Robert, I've had a chance to listen and then read through the transcripts of these expanded talks. Thank you for taking the risk of wading into this terrain and for trying to articulate a genuine middle path that refuses the pathologically polarized “culture war” frame and asks for something more human and more spiritually mature. I also appreciate the way I see you implicitly inviting us to speak more consciously out of the North American folk soul about these questions, rather than importing European formulations as though they were universally applicable. I say you do this implicitly, since I also must say I think on occasion you may revert to lumping Europe and the Americas together. Obviously a lot is shared culturally, but as you also note, racial divisions are no longer viable realities on the American continent. That feels especially important given the context of GA 174B, which you quote: Steiner is explicit there that his spoken remarks arise from the immediate impulse of time, place, and audience, and shouldn’t be treated as universally true. From my standpoint as an American, that contextualization is tremendously important. What Steiner goes on to say in 174B about dark skin and the Christ impulse does not merely feel dated or awkward to me. I cannot digest it cognitively as anything but demonstrably false and morally deformed. Whatever one makes of his larger Christology (and I make of it quite a lot), it is simply not true that the capacity for Christ-inspired love is blocked by melanin. That’s precisely the kind of statement that, in my view, must be named as spiritually untrue. I say this not only out of my Americanness but as a human being striving to partake in the work of further incarnating Anthroposophia into earthly life.
Holding the tension of opposites is always wise council. But I think there’s still a real danger in letting the middle path harden into a pair of convenient caricatures. You do helpfully note that the capitalist-populist MAGA pole and the socialist-progressive decolonial/anti-Western pole each represent something like 20% of the U.S. population. Most Americans don’t live at the extremes. A similar point applies to the polarity regarding the ontology of race. In practice, most people (including most scholars who get grouped under “postmodern critical race theory”) would say race is a social construct AND has real causal effects; there’s no contradiction there. So I think there’s still some work to do if the critique of critical theory is going to land with the kind of concreteness and fairness you’re rightly asking of others in their readings of Steiner. For my part, I don’t accept that race is merely a social construct, because I reject the premise that nature and culture are separable realities in the first place. As you suggested, I see race as a fluid, evolving phenomenon that was once more biologically and spiritually salient than it is today. Today racial identity is increasingly atavistic insofar as it tempts us to regress into generic group identities instead of engaging in the difficult but essential work of individuation.
I want to underscore something I hear you circling that I also try to hold in my work on these questions: there is an important difference between saying Steiner uttered racist comments and saying that Steiner is simply “a racist,” full stop. I don’t think “Steiner is a racist” is an apt or illuminating statement, but I do think he sometimes fell into the trap of speaking from a place of racial prejudice, as many people of his time did, and, frankly, as almost all of us do in different company in our own way. The task, as I see it, is neither apology nor cancellation, but truthfulness: to refuse denial and resist ideological capture while doing the harder and perhaps less immediately emotionally gratifying hermeneutic work of clear moral- and scientific-spiritual investigation. If anthroposophy as a cultural impulse is to be stewarded into the future, it has to be strong enough to say, without evasiveness, where the bull broke the china. Of course, it will require just as much strength to acknowledge where the eagle's insights, even if unpopular in the well-meaning but confused eyes of whatever the latest corporate-approved DEI fads are, remain true.
Just to re-iterate the point at issue for me in any attempt to deal with 174b: I'm glad that you brought in Steiner's profound words uttered in the early days of WW1 that remain so essential to proper understanding. Your threefold methodology of eagle, lion, and bull is extremely helpful. But you did not address the elephant. The Christ impulse is not the private property of any people, phenotype, or culture. What say you?
Hey Matt,
Thanks for your comments and for your closing question. I would prefer to deal with questions like this in a longer format where I can bring in more nuance but I see the necessity of speaking to the 174B matter a little bit now. My perspective at this time is as follows:
The idea that a darker skinned person (or a person with more melatonin in their skin) is less able to absorb the Christ impulse is exactly the kind of seemingly logical inference from his words in this lecture that I believe Rudolf Steiner would have found to be “monstrous.” I find it to be a monstrous thought and so do you and so do most people, for good reason.
In these lectures, however, as I see it, RS is not speaking about individual human beings (which is the main focus of his eagle teachings) but rather about collective realities, about generic tendencies that live in groups of people by virtue of their race and ethnicity. As we know from Rudolf Steiner’s eagle teachings, he did not believe that any individual was bound to the tendencies living in them through their race and ethnicity, but he did believe that these collective tendencies will continue to play a strong role in the historical process, since people’s capacity to free themselves from these tendencies is only gradually emerging in human evolution.
So, what I understand him to be saying is simply that lighter skinned people have a particular karma with (or generic tendency toward a strong engagment with) matter, which is both a positive and a negative. It can mean a natural ability to infuse matter with their individual spirit or it can mean a natural tendency to let material realities eclipse an awareness of spiritual reality.
In other places, Steiner focuses much more on the shadow side of this karma, but here he focuses more on the positive side, which I think he felt the need to do because of all the shame and blame pouring down on Central Europe at that time. I think he wanted to rouse the central Europeans in that particular place to their true sense of mission, to the dignity of the central European striving at its best.
If we heard an African-American preacher giving a sermon in which he told the congregation that their dark skin gives them a special relationship to the working of Christ in the depths of the earth (which I think it does quite honestly), and that they should try to live up to or realize this mission, would we find that to be racist? Certainly, it could be interpreted in a racist way, but I am not sure I would qualify such a remark as inherently racist.
I think if asked Steiner would have affirmed that every race and culture has a special and unique relationship to the Christ Impulse. But he also would have said that any given period of history, some cultures are called to play a stronger role in the exoteric shaping of history than others. This is the deeper point he is trying to make here I think, he is saying to the Europeans: don't lose touch with your unique mission at this moment in history!
It is interesting this regard to note that Steiner somewhat conflates here the Slavic people (a white skinned people) and the Asian people (a brown skinned people), in that he sees both as having the tendency (or mission as I would call it) to hold back from Western culture and materialism—to preserve something of the past spirituality of humanity for the future when it will merge with what comes from the West. So here he switches over to realities of spiritual geography rather than race, which is an overall source of confusion in these lectures, that I will try to clear up later in my short course.
Personally, I feel that Steiner goes a little too far in his focus on the shadow side of the Asian and Slavic tendency to hold back from the West. Yes, that tendency has a shadow side but it also has an important light side, which I don’t feel Steiner brings out with sufficient clarity here.
Just think, for example, of how Paul Kingsnorth’s critique of transhumanism in his new book (Against the Machine) is informed by his relationship to Orthodox Christianity. Here we see, I think, a real quality of conscience arising that is informed by this Eastern quality that Steiner characterizes in such a negative manner in this lecture. Or should we look at the work of Paramahamsa Yogananda in America with the same lens with which Steiner characterizes the retrogressive tendencies working in the Krishnamurti affair In Europe? I personally don’t think so.
It is important to remember that Steiner articulated something I call the “magpie principle,” namely, the idea that all people and all cultures and races have both a light and a shadow side. Where I think Steiner often erred (typically in private lectures like this or in offhand comments) was in comparing the light side of one culture to the shadow side of another culture without making the subtleties clear. This is where I think his lack of experience of other cultures plays a role, and this is where I think we can bring a balance to Steiner’s Lion and Bull teachings today.
He makes it clear, for example, in this lecture, that it is important that certain cultures hold back from the stream of western culture and materialism, but he tends, as I see it, to not fully honor the importance of this gesture in the whole context of world evolution, but tends to somewhat demonize it using derogatory terms. This is where I think his Lion and Bull nature do get the better of him sometimes. He felt so strongly the need to uphold the dignity of the Cainite, egoic impulse of the West and of the white people, but sometimes he takes it too far I think, at least to the ears of people like us living 100 years later.
Having said that, I am sure a mathematical analysis would reveal that the vast majority of his cultural criticisms were leveled at his own culture. That is something that is also easy to forget.
I hope this is helpful Matt, best, Robert
Thanks, Robert. This is a helpful answer. I do take seriously the fact that karma adheres to ethnic groups as well as individuals, and in different and continually evolving ways. To reiterate a point we both feel is important for understanding 174b, I think the cultural and spiritual dynamics unfolding in the Western hemisphere and in the US in particular (at least I know it here most intimately) are radically distinct from those of Central Europe a century ago. I suspect present day Europe is also now in quite a different situation compared to what Steiner felt he was addressing in 1915.
When I consider these questions about skin color and the Christ impulse from a US-centric perspective, looking at generic tendencies of peoples with lighter and darker skin tones, it feels evidently true not just a century ago but today that most white evangelical churches have by and large lost the plot entirely. Seems to me that, were Jesus to show up in our midst again today, these white churches, caught up in an idolatrous nationalist fervor and what the political philosopher William Connolly calls the "capitalist-evangelical resonance machine," would likely play the role of the Pharisees in condemning him as some kind of anti-American socialist blasphemer. Since Jesus probably had olive-brown skin, they'd no doubt also call ICE's tip line to have him deported. I don't mean to demonize an entire demographic, by any means. I simply raise this as a proportional counterpoint to Steiner's claim that dark skin houses demons that block the Christ. Maybe that made sense in Central Europe in 1915. I do not think it makes sense in 21st century America. The evidence, whether we consider individuals or generic groups, suggests the opposite.
I do not find it necessary to disavow Steiner as a spiritual teacher for these or other statements, even if I find them to be quite obviously racist (no matter what sort of esoteric spin we may want to give them). The prejudices he expresses in some of his statements to particular German-speaking audiences are hardly unique for that time and place. Racial prejudice is not a unique flaw of white people. All peoples have this tendency toward racial chauvinism. But this tendency to racial prejudice is distinct from the question of systematic white supremacist racism across US cultural, economic, and political institutions, which despite important advances since the 1960s is quickly being reversed under Trump. I don't mention systemic racism because I think DEI practices or race-based affirmative action in employment and education are any kind of solution--I think a lot of that is rather a symptom of the rot and only makes racial tensions worse. Steiner's eagle teachings on these questions are desperately needed, which is why I feel your method of distinguishing those from his lion and bull tendencies is potentially so helpful.
I'll be sharing my response after I finish both videos, but, Matt, one question for now:
I'll say more about this later, but I'm very grateful for how you framed several of the questions you're holding.
When you talk about Steiner saying it isn't 'universally true', I notice that I might be getting lost in several different meanings of 'universal'.
For instance, if Steiner gave a lecture about green marbles and he said, "The only people who will be able to understand me are people in this room today. Okay, having said that, I want you all to know that for the next 1500 years green marbles will not be able to roll uphill."
It sounds extreme, but I realize it really isn't that extreme in this context. What do we mean by not taking what he says as a universal truth? I can imagine that we want to be very sensitive to as much contextual information as we can gather, especially related to why Steiner might believe that only people in that room could understand him.
But if he is being very clear, repeatedly, as to the fact (his opinion) that green marbles can't roll uphill and he even repeatedly gives his opinion as to what causes green marbles to not have this capacity, I feel it might be okay for us to simply have a different point of view and even claim that he's just wrong about that.
Anyway, if you could just say a few words about what you meant by that term, it'll help me digest your comments and prepare my own.
Much appreciated!
Jeff
Thanks for seeking clarification, Jeff. I take Steiner's meaning in context to be that, in the midst of world war pitting European nationalities against one another, it is not possible for him to speak in a way that would be understandable to all nations in the same way. When it comes to certain worldly issues, what is true for Germans in that moment will not be true for French people, even if they are all anthroposophists. He is clear that when he speaks out of the anthroposophical impulse, universally human truths can be heard. But this particular lecture was apparently spoken out of his sense of allegiance to German-speaking peoples, rather than out of an anthroposophical impulse. I think here of his admission in PoF that none among us is all individual or all genus. 174b is, at least in part, Steiner speaking as a member of a genus. I am able to withhold judgment about whether what he said to that particular group of people at that time is somehow "true" (in the sense that it is somehow appropriate for his/their group soul karma). I do not withhold judgment when speaking out of either my own sense of Americanness or my devotion to Anthroposophia: both compel me to reject the statement about skin color as false.
Thanks, that helps.
But do you see what I'm trying to get at between the distinction between legitimate tricky roles that context plays in how something can be understood versus specific claims like green marbels can't roll up hill or non-white people can't integrate with the Christ.
I'm having trouble expressing what i think is important as we take first steps in sorting out the area in which we obviously respect Steiner (or anybody) who is reminding us of the importance of context versus having the freedom to notice when an empirical claim can at least be pushed against with reason and observation.
I'm not saying we start by assuming Steiner was wrong about non-white people waiting behind until they are capable of integrating with The Christ. I'm saying we can't conflate two very different kinds of analysis from the start.
I sometimes hear fellow Anthroposophists suggesting (directly or indirectly) that we really have to hold off from assessing any claims Steiner makes until we can fully verify them ourselves. In my opinion, this creates a loop that will always feedback, at best, to a 'wait and see' type of approach that never takes actual steps forward in learning about Steiner's blind-spots and how they shaped his phenomenological experiences.
Hey, Matt
Much to consider, still working through Robert's after reading 174b-2.
I do want to ask you however whether "private property" is the term you wish to end with here? Such a strong association with the economic, and control of external circumstances...
Would "The Philosophy of Freiheit" better indicate the direction in which to find what Steiner is talking about here?
And is he saying that the "Christ impulse" can be the possession of any group at all?
Or that at the level of groups the support for the individual's search for the I AM is present or lacking?
Thanks always for your serious thoughts.
John Beck
Regarding the question:
"And is he saying that the "Christ impulse" can be the possession of any group at all?"
My repeated study of 174b-2 is that Steiner is saying that only people with white skin can individuate The Christ at this time. He isn't suggesting some kind of Group Incorporation of the Christ; or at least not directly. But he is saying that his vision of individuation is that, for the time being, only white skinned people can do this. And he then states very clearly why. And he even states why this is natural and positive that non-white skinned people must wait and then carry the next wave forward.
To be clear, I don't have the impression that Steiner is speaking from ill-will or hatred.
But I don't agree with his observations or with his reasoning in this lecture.
That said, I appreciate the way this lecture ties together all his other statements and makes what used to sound like paradoxes actually cohere internally.
When he talks about racism or racial thinking coming to an end, we can see how that does not contradict his claim here that this 'end' need not be understood as immediate. Also, hateful and obsessive views about race can come to an end today, and that does entail that non-white people can integrate with the Christ.
So I don't even see it as a contradiction for Steiner to say: "Hey, there is no room for racism anymore; and the reason why is that white humanity won't be able to achieve their mission if they obsess about race. They need to achieve their mission in about 1500 years so that they can then help 'impregnate' all non-white people with the Christ, at which point, the non-white people will assume the cutting edge of evolution."
I don't agree, but that is coherent and internally consistent.
The point of my question, "And is he saying that the "Christ impulse" can be the possession of any group at all?", is my view that no group as a group can take in the "Christ impulse" as a group.
The Christ Impulse is not a group thing. That's what I mean. Yet we keep trying to link what Steiner says about this group or that group to access to the Christ.
Other beings can and do work through groups (per 174b-2); Christ works only through individuals and through the creation of universal humanity.
Steiner's race point, or one of them (in the Workers talks), is that an effect of the largest organ of our bodies, the skin (he had a lot to say about physiology) is to receive or reflect warmth and light. I don't know if that's true, I don't have more than a crumb of his vision. He takes that on to assert that darker skin takes in more warmth and light -- and I think he sees more there than materialistic warm and materialistic light. Having this -- may I say "higher warmth" and "higher light" available from outside, an individual currently incarnated with a darker skin coloration doesn't have to create those from scratch, de novo, inside themselves. The so-called "white" person will have to do this, which will either force him/her to develop capacities for doing that, OR -- Steiner doesn't specify this, but it's common sense -- a given "white" person will have to live with diminished warmth and diminished light, whether lower or higher.
And as specifically to the Germans, the potential I AM bearers among the Europeans, he makes totally clear on many occasions that their great guide, Goethe, is scarcely known to them in his time.
To recap, I read RS saying white skin forces individuals who seek spiritual warmth and light to develop the inner capacity of warmth-light creation. Dark skin, he says, makes this development unnecessary, and they are able to hold onto previous qualities of community etc. which must be preserved for the next cultural age.
Many white evangelical churches in the US are convinced that the teachings of Christ are fully compatible with "capitalist populism" and Trump-style glorification of wealth and fame. I chose my phrase "private property" with due consideration of these factors.
My next door neighbors are believers in the "prosperity gospels" and based on flat, unverified claims by authority figures, they have no problem seeing their wealth as verification of their deep connection to Christ.
Over the last fifteen years I've spoken to many Anthroposophists who will use crime statistics to argue that Steiner's claims about non-white skin in 174b-2 can be approached and verified statistically.
I consider myself an Anthroposophist, but only in the sense of a very tiny trickling stream that is just surfacing above the water and is still miles apart from the main River.
But I believe this strongly. If it is true that Steiner's teaching have the capacity to play an important role in 'racial healings', this will have to be expressed in the direct and concrete ways that we Anthroposophists (not claiming that you identify that way, Matt) address their direct questions regarding the systematic way Steiner explains his vast view in that lecture and, of course, in other lectures with similar kinds of comments.
For 10 years Iived in a town with a wonderfully creative Waldorf School. I informally became the person that teachers sent non-white people to in town who were considering Waldorf for their children and then read these comments by Steiner.
At that time, there weren't teachers who really knew how to have these conversations outside of the usual, "Well, we have to understand him in context and work with his core books for years before we can truely even begin to grasp the meaning of those statements. In the meantime, here are other quotes and lectures you should read to see what he belived about education."
I would like to think that any Anthroposophist at this time can readily see why those well-intended responses are lightyears from the kinds of conversations necessarily.
Those were some of the most intense, moving, painful, and educational conversations I've ever had. I never once even implied that the people's worries were grounded in any kind of ignorance. I always led with my own reasons for thinking that neither Steiner nor his most enthusiastic student's seem to recognize that his experience, and theirs, is shaped by blind-spots, like every human beings. And, then, I would try to express why there might still be real value in exploring Waldorf. I did this by talking about the difference between the kind of pure phenomenology Steiner was capable of versus what he felt was an 'exact clairvoyance' that might require lifetimes to even begin to verify.
As people began to see reasons to value this discrepancy, some of them felt there might be room for them within a Waldorf community. But, as you might suspect, by the time we got to 2016, the pain in reading some of Steiner explicit claims was just too much to keep listening to me.
Anyway, more soon. Thanks for the dialog. I find this to be one of the most important Anthroposophical conversations there is. It includes all of my other interests and passions regarding the importance and possible dangers of Steiner's work and how we take it up.