| Region | Western Philosophy |
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| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
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| Color | #B0C4DE |
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| Image name | RSteiner.jpg|thumb|Rudolf Steiner |
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| Name | Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner |
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| Birth date | 25(27?) February 1861 |
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| Birth place | Kraljevec, Austria-Hungary, now Donji Kraljevec, Croatia |
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| Death date | 30 March 1925 (aged 64) |
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| Death place | Dornach, Switzerland |
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| School tradition | Phenomenology, Holism, Monism |
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| Main interests | Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of science, Esotericism, Christianity, Spiritual Science, Freemasonry |
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| Influences | Franz Brentano, Wilhelm Dilthey, Fichte, Hegel, Goethe, Schiller, Max Stirner, Schopenhauer, Eduard von Hartmann, Nietzsche |
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| Influenced | Andrei Bely, Owen Barfield, Josef Beuys, Peter Deunov, Jennifer M. Gidley, Wassily Kandinsky, Albert Schweitzer, Richard Tarnas |
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| Notable ideas | Anthroposophy, Anthroposophical Medicine, Biodynamic Agriculture, Eurythmy, Spiritual Science, Waldorf Education |
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Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (25 or 27 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an
Austrian philosopher, social thinker, architect and
esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher. At the beginning of the 20th century, he founded a spiritual movement,
Anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy growing out of European
transcendentalism and with links to
Theosophy.
Steiner led this movement through several phases. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and mysticism; his philosophical work of these years, which he termed spiritual science, sought to provide a connection between the cognitive path of Western philosophy and the inner and spiritual needs of the human being. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, eurythmy) and architecture, culminating in the building of a cultural center to house all the arts, the Goetheanum. After the First World War, Steiner worked with educators, farmers, doctors, and other professionals to develop Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine as well as new directions in numerous other areas.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual component. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which “Thinking … is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.” A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.
Biography
Childhood and education
Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (June 23, 1829, Geras or
Trabenreith,
Irnfritz-Messern and lived
Geras Abbey,
Waldviertel - 1910, Horn), left a position as
huntsman in the service of Count Hoyos in
Geras, northeast
Lower Austria to marry Franziska Blie (May 8, 1834,
Horn, Waldviertel - 1918, Horn), a marriage for which the Count had refused his permission. Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in
Kraljevec in the
Muraköz region, then part of the
Austrian Empire (present-day Donji Kraljevec,
Međimurje region, northernmost
Croatia). In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to
Mödling, near
Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to
Pottschach, located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian
Alps in
Lower Austria. In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers at the university in Vienna,
Karl Julius Schröer, suggested Steiner's name to Joseph Kürschner, editor of a new edition of Goethe's works. Steiner was then asked to become the edition's scientific editor.
In his autobiography, Steiner related that at 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, he met a simple herb gatherer, Felix Koguzki, who spoke about the spiritual world "as one who had his own experience therein..." This herb gatherer introduced Steiner to a person that Steiner only identified as a “master”, and who had a great influence on Steiner's subsequent development, in particular directing him to study Fichte's philosophy.
In 1891, Steiner earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock in Germany with a thesis based upon Fichte's concept of the ego,
Writer and philosopher
In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of
Goethe's works, Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in
Weimar. Steiner remained with the archive until 1896. As well as the introductions for and commentaries to four volumes of Goethe's scientific writings, Steiner wrote two books about Goethe's philosophy:
The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and
Goethe's Conception of the World (1897). During this time he also collaborated in complete editions of
Arthur Schopenhauer's work and that of the writer
Jean Paul and wrote numerous articles for various journals.
During his time at the archives, Steiner wrote what he considered from that time forward to be his most important philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom or The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity - Steiner's preferred English title) (1894), an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a path upon which humans can become spiritually free beings (see below).
In 1896, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche asked Steiner to help organize the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg. Her brother by that time was non compos mentis. Förster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher; Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom. Of Nietzsche, Steiner says in his autobiography, "Nietzsche's ideas of the 'eternal recurrence' and of 'Übermensch' remained long in my mind. For in these was reflected that which a personality must feel concerning the evolution and essential being of humanity when this personality is kept back from grasping the spiritual world by the restricted thought in the philosophy of nature characterizing the end of the 19th century." "What attracted me particularly was that one could read Nietzsche without coming upon anything which strove to make the reader a 'dependent' of Nietzsche's." and the journal lost more subscribers when Steiner published extracts from his correspondence with anarchist writer John Henry Mackay. and against Steiner himself by right-wing nationalists.
Reacting to the catastrophic situation in post-war Germany, Steiner had gone on extensive lecture tours promoting his social ideas of the Threefold Social Order, entailing a fundamentally different political structure; he suggested that only through independence of the cultural, political and economic realms could such catastrophes as the World War be avoided. He also promoted a radical solution in the disputed area of Upper Silesia - claimed by both Poland and Germany: his suggestion that this area be granted at least provisional independence led to his being publicly accused of being a traitor to Germany.
In 1919, the political theorist of the National Socialist movement in Germany, Dietrich Eckart, attacked Steiner and suggested that he was a Jew. In 1921, Adolf Hitler attacked Steiner in an article in the right-wing Völkischen Beobachter newspaper that included accusations that Steiner was a tool of the Jews, and other nationalist extremists in Germany called up a "war against Steiner". The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich led Steiner to give up his residence in Berlin, saying that if those responsible for the attempted coup [Hitler and others] came to power in Germany, it would no longer be possible for him to enter the country; he also warned against the disastrous effects it would have for Central Europe if the National Socialists came to power.
Increasingly ill, his last lecture was held in September, 1924. He continued to write on his autobiography during the last months of his life; he died on 30 March 1925.
Spiritual research
From 1899 until his death in 1925, Steiner articulated an ongoing stream of experiences that he claimed were of the spiritual world — experiences he said had touched him from an early age on.
Steiner believed that through freely chosen ethical disciplines and meditative training, anyone could develop the ability to experience the spiritual world, including the higher nature of oneself and others.''
Steiner led the following esoteric schools:
His independent Esoteric School of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1904. This school continued after the break with Theosophy but was disbanded at the start of World War One.
A lodge called
Mystica Aeterna within the
Masonic Order of Memphis and Mizraim, which Steiner led from 1906 until around 1914. Steiner added to the Masonic rite a number of Rosicrucian references. The figure of
Christian Rosenkreutz also plays an important role in several of his later lectures.
The School of Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society, founded in 1923 as a further development of his earlier Esoteric School. The School of Spiritual Science was intended to have three “classes”, but only the first of these was developed in Steiner's lifetime. All the texts relating to the “School of Spiritual Science” have been published in the full edition of Steiner's works.
Philosophical development
Goethean science
In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between 1884 and 1897, Steiner presented Goethe's approach to science as essentially
phenomenological in nature, rather than theory- or model-based. He developed this conception further in several books,
The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and
Goethe's Conception of the World (1897), particularly emphasizing the transformation in Goethe's approach from the physical sciences, where experiment played the primary role, to plant biology, where imagination was required to find the biological archetypes (
Urpflanze), and postulated that Goethe had sought but been unable to fully find the further transformation in scientific thinking necessary to properly interpret and understand the animal kingdom.
Steiner defended Goethe's qualitative description of color as arising synthetically from the polarity of light and darkness, in contrast to Newton's particle-based and analytic conception. He emphasized the role of evolutionary thinking in Goethe's discovery of the intermaxillary bone in human beings; Goethe expected human anatomy to be an evolutionary transformation of animal anatomy.
Steiner postulates that the world is essentially an indivisible unity, but that our consciousness divides it into the sense-perceptible appearance, on the one hand, and the formal nature accessible to our thinking, on the other. He sees in thinking itself an element that can be strengthened and deepened sufficiently to penetrate all that our senses do not reveal to us. Steiner thus explicitly denies all justification to a division between faith and knowledge; otherwise expressed, between the spiritual and natural worlds. Their apparent duality is conditioned by the structure of our consciousness, which separates perception and thinking, but these two faculties give us two complementary views of the same world; neither has primacy and the two together are necessary and sufficient to arrive at a complete understanding of the world. In thinking about perception (the path of natural science) and perceiving the process of thinking (the path of spiritual training), it is possible to discover a hidden inner unity between the two poles of our experience.
A new stage of Steiner's philosophical development is expressed in his Philosophy of Freedom. Here, he further explores potentials within thinking: freedom, he suggests, can only be approached asymptotically and with the aid of the "creative activity" of thinking. Thinking can be a free deed; in addition, it can liberate our will from its subservience to our instincts and drives. Free deeds, he suggests, are those for which we are fully conscious of the motive for our action; freedom is the spiritual activity of penetrating with consciousness our own nature and that of the world, and the real activity of acting in full consciousness.
Spiritual science
In his earliest works, Steiner already spoke of the "natural and spiritual worlds" as a unity. Spiritual training is to support what Steiner considered the overall purpose of human evolution, the development of the mutually interdependent qualities of
love and
freedom.
Breadth of activity
After the
First World War, Steiner became active in a wide variety of cultural contexts. He founded a school, known as the
Waldorf school, which later evolved into a worldwide school network. The agricultural system he founded, now known as
Biodynamic agriculture, was one of the initial forms of and has contributed significantly to the development of modern
organic farming. His
work in medicine has led to the development of a broad range of complementary medications and supportive artistic and biographic therapies. Homes for children and adults with
developmental disabilities based on his work (including those of the
Camphill movement) are widespread. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries, and he influenced
Joseph Beuys and other significant modern artists. His two Goetheanum buildings are generally accepted to be masterpieces of
modern architecture, and other anthroposophical architects have contributed thousands of buildings to the modern scene. One of the first institutions to practice
ethical banking was an
anthroposophical bank working out of Steiner's ideas.
Steiner's literary estate is correspondingly broad. Steiner's writings are published in about forty volumes, including books, essays, plays ('mystery dramas'), mantric verse and an autobiography. His collected lectures, making up another approximately 300 volumes, discuss an extremely wide range of themes. Steiner's drawings, chiefly illustrations done on blackboards during his lectures, are collected in a separate series of 28 volumes. Many publications have covered his architectural legacy and sculptural work.
Education
As a young man, Steiner already supported the independence of educational institutions from governmental control. In 1907, he wrote a long essay, entitled "Education in the Light of Spiritual Science", in which he described the major phases of child development and suggested that these would be the basis of a healthy approach to education.
In 1919, Emil Molt invited him to lecture on the topic of education to the workers at Molt's factory in Stuttgart. Out of this came a new school, the Waldorf school. During Steiner's lifetime, schools based on his educational principles were also founded in Hamburg, Essen, The Hague and London; there are now more than 1000 Waldorf schools worldwide.
Social activism
For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active as a lecturer on social questions. A petition expressing his basic social ideas (signed by
Herman Hesse, among others) was very widely circulated. His main book on social questions,
Toward Social Renewal, sold tens of thousands of copies. Today around the world there are a number of innovative banks, companies, charitable institutions, and schools for developing new cooperative forms of business, all working partly out of Steiner's social ideas.
Steiner suggested that the cultural, political and economic spheres of society needed to be sufficiently independent of one another to be able to mutually correct each other in an ongoing way. He suggested that human society had been moving slowly, over thousands of years, toward articulation of society into three independent yet mutually corrective realms, and that a Threefold Social Order was not some utopia that could be implemented in a day or even a century. It was a gradual process that he expected would continue to develop for thousands of years. Nevertheless, he gave many specific suggestions for social reforms that he thought would increase the threefold articulation of society. He believed in equality of human rights for political life, individual freedom in cultural life (including the sciences, arts, education and religion), and voluntary, uncoerced cooperation between organizations of producers, distributors and consumers to provide solidarity in economic life.
Architecture and visual arts
Steiner designed 17 buildings, including the
First and Second Goetheanums. These two buildings, built in Dornach, Switzerland, were intended to house a
University for Spiritual Science. Three of Steiner's buildings, including both Goetheanum buildings, have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture.
As a sculptor, his works include The Representative of Humanity (1922). This nine-meter high wood sculpture was a joint project with the sculptor Edith Maryon; it is on permanent display at the Goetheanum in Dornach.
Steiner's blackboard drawings were unique at the time and almost certainly not originally intended as art works. Josef Beuys' work, itself heavily influenced by Steiner, has led to the modern understanding of Steiner's drawings as artistic objects.
Performing arts
Together with
Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Rudolf Steiner developed the art of
eurythmy, sometimes referred to as "visible speech and visible song". According to the principles of eurythmy, there are archetypal movements or gestures that correspond to every aspect of speech - the sounds (or
phonemes), the rhythms, and the grammatical function - to every "soul quality" - laughing, despair, and intimacy - and to every aspect of music - tones, intervals, rhythms, and harmonies.
As a playwright, Steiner wrote four "Mystery Dramas" between 1909 and 1913, including The Portal of Initiation and The Soul's Awakening. They are still performed today by Anthroposophical groups.
Steiner also founded a new approach to artistic speech and drama; see his Speech and Drama Course. Various ensembles work with this approach, called "speech formation" (Ger.:Sprachgestaltung), and trainings exist in various countries, including England, the United States, Switzerland, and Germany. The actor Michael Chekhov extended this approach in what is now known as the Chekhov method.
Anthroposophical medicine
From the late 1910s, Steiner was working with doctors to create a new approach to medicine. In 1921,
pharmacists and
physicians gathered under Steiner's guidance to create a pharmaceutical company called Weleda which now distributes natural medical products worldwide. At around the same time, Dr.
Ita Wegman founded a first anthroposophic medical clinic in Arlesheim, Switzerland (now called the Wegman Clinic).
Steiner's descriptions of certain bodily organs and their functions sometimes differ significantly from those found in medical textbooks. He stated, for example, that the heart is not a mechanical pump but a dynamic regulator of circulatory flow.
Biodynamic farming and gardening
Biodynamic agriculture, or biodynamics, comprises an ecological and sustainable farming system, that includes many of the ideas of organic farming (but predates the term). In 1924, a group of farmers concerned about the future of agriculture requested Steiner's help; Steiner responded with a lecture series on agriculture. This was the origin of biodynamic agriculture, which is now practiced throughout much of Europe, North America, and Australasia. A central concept of these lectures was to "individualize" the farm by bringing no or few outside materials onto the farm, but producing all needed materials such as
manure and animal feed from within what he called the "farm organism". Other aspects of biodynamic farming inspired by Steiner's lectures include timing activities such as planting in relation to the movement patterns of the
moon and
planets and applying "preparations", which consist of natural materials which have been processed in specific ways, to
soil,
compost piles, and plants with the intention of engaging non-physical beings and elemental forces. Steiner, in his lectures, encouraged his listeners to verify his suggestions
scientifically, as he had not yet done.
The early decades of the 20th-century agriculture started using inorganic fertilizers such as nitrogen "condensed" from the air and subsequently applied to the fields. Steiner believed that the introduction of this chemical farming was very detrimental. Stating "Mineral manuring is a thing that must cease altogether in time, for the effect of every kind of mineral manure, after a time, is that the products grown on the fields thus treated lose their nutritive value. It is an absolutely general law." Steiner was convinced that the quality of food in his time had degraded, and he believed the source of the problem was chemical farming's use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, however he did not believe this was only because of the chemical or biological properties relating to the substances involved, but also due to spiritual shortcomings in the whole chemical approach to farming. Steiner considered the world and everything in it as simultaneously spiritual and material in nature, an approach termed monism. He also believed that living matter was different from dead matter. In other words, Steiner believed synthetic nutrients were not the same as their more living counterparts.
The name "biologically dynamic" or "biodynamic" was coined by Steiner's adherents. A central aspect of biodynamics is that the farm as a whole is seen as an organism, and therefore should be a closed self-nourishing system, which the preparations nourish. Disease of organisms is not to be tackled in isolation but is a symptom of problems in the whole organism.
Biodynamic farming has had a significant influence on agriculture in some countries, including Germany, Switzerland and India.
Steiner and Christianity
In 1899 Steiner experienced what he described as a life-transforming inner encounter with the being of
Christ; previously he had little or no relation to Christianity in any form. Then and thereafter, his relationship to Christianity remained entirely founded upon personal experience, and thus both non-denominational and strikingly different from conventional religious forms.
:The being of Christ is central to all religions, though called by different names by each.
:Every religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born.
:Historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed considerably in our times in order to meet the on-going evolution of humanity.
It is the being that unifies all religions — and not a particular religious faith — that Steiner saw as the central force in human evolution. He understood Christ's incarnation as a historical reality, and a pivotal point in human history, however. The "Christ Being" is for Steiner not only the Redeemer of the Fall from Paradise, but also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's "evolutionary" processes and of all human history. Michael Ende, Selma Lagerlöf, Andrej Belyj, David Spangler, William Irwin Thompson, and esotericist Édouard Schuré; the artists Josef Beuys, Wassily Kandinsky, and Murray Griffin; actor and acting teacher Michael Chekhov; cinema director Andrei Tarkovsky; and conductor Bruno Walter. Olav Hammer, though sharply critical of esoteric movements generally, terms Steiner "arguably the most historically and philosophically sophisticated spokesperson of the Esoteric Tradition."
Albert Schweitzer wrote that he and Steiner had in common that they had "taken on the life mission of working for the emergence of a true culture enlivened by the ideal of humanity and to encourage people to become truly thinking beings".
American writer and academic Robert Todd Carroll has said of Steiner that "Some of his ideas on education – such as educating the handicapped in the mainstream – are worth considering, although his overall plan for developing the spirit and the soul rather than the intellect cannot be admired".
Scientism
Olav Hammer critiques as
scientism Steiner's claim to use a scientific methodology to investigate spiritual phenomena based upon his claims of clairvoyant experience.
Race and ethnicity
Steiner's work includes both universalist, humanist elements and historically influenced racial assumptions. Due to the contrast and even contradictions between these elements, "whether a given reader interprets Anthroposophy as racist or not depends upon that reader's concerns." Steiner considered that every people, by dint of a shared language and culture, has a unique essence, which he called its soul or spirit, More specifically:
Steiner characterized specific races, nations, and ethnicities in ways that have been termed racist by critics including characterizations of various races and ethnic groups as flowering, others as backward or destined to disappear; including—at times, and inconsistently—portraying the white race, European culture, or the Germanic culture as representing the high point of human evolution as of the early 20th century, though describing these as destined to be superseded by future cultures.
Throughout his life, Steiner consistently emphasized the core spiritual unity of all the world's peoples and sharply criticized racial prejudice. He articulated beliefs that the individual nature of any person stands higher than any racial, ethnic, national or religious affiliation; and that race is rapidly losing any remaining significance for humanity. and criticizing some of the most prominent anti-Semites of the time as "barbaric" and "enemies of culture". Towards the end of his life and after his death, massive defamatory press attacks against Steiner were undertaken by early National Socialist leaders (including Adolf Hitler) and other right-wing nationalists. These criticized Steiner's thought, and Anthroposophy, as being incompatible with National Socialist racist ideology and charged both that Steiner was influenced by his close connections with Jews and that he was himself Jewish.[ On a number of occasions, Steiner promoted full assimilation of the Jewish people into the nations in which they lived, a stance that has come under criticism in recent years.][ He was also a critic of his contemporary Theodor Herzl's goal of a Zionist state, as well as of any other ethnically determined nation, as he considered ethnicity to be an outmoded basis for social life in today's world.
]
Bibliography
The more than 350 volumes of Steiner's collected works include about forty volumes containing his writings as well as over 6000 lectures.
Writings (selection)
Goethean Science (1883–1897)
Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886)
Truth and Knowledge doctoral thesis, (1892)
Intuitive thinking as a spiritual path, also published as the Philosophy of Freedom'' (1894) ISBN 088010385X
Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Age (1901/1925)
Christianity as Mystical Fact (1902)
Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man (1904)
Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos (1904) ISBN 0-88010-373-6
How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation (1904-5) ISBN 0-88010-508-9
The Education of the Child, (1907) ISBN 0-85440-620-4
An Outline of Esoteric Science (1910) ISBN 0-88010-409-0
Four Mystery Dramas'' (1913)
The Renewal of the Social Organism (1919)
Reordering of Society: The Fundamental Social Law (1919) (article)
Fundamentals of Therapy: An Extension of the Art of Healing Through Spiritual Knowledge (1925)
The Story of my Life (1924-5) (autobiography)
References
Further reading
Ahern, Geoffrey Sun at Midnight. The Rudolf Steiner Movement and Gnosis in the West, 2nd edition 2009, ISBN 978-0-227-17293-3
Ahern, Geoffrey Sun at Midnight. The Rudolf Steiner Movement and the Western Esoteric Tradition 1984, ISBN 0-85030-338-9
Almon, Joan (ed.) Meeting Rudolf Steiner, firsthand experiences compiled from the Journal for Anthroposophy since 1960, ISBN 0-9674562-8-2
Childs, Gilbert, ''Rudolf Steiner: His Life and Work, ISBN 0-88010-391-4
Davy, Adams and Merry, A Man Before Others: Rudolf Steiner Remembered. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1993.
Easton, Stewart, Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch, ISBN 0-910142-93-9
Hemleben, Johannes and Twyman,Leo, Rudolf Steiner: An Illustrated Biography. Rudolf Steiner Press, 2001.
Lachman, Gary, Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work, 2007, ISBN 1-58542-543-5
Lindenberg, Christoph, Rudolf Steiner: Eine Biographie (2 vols.). Stuttgart, 1997, ISBN 3-7725-1551-7
Lissau, Rudi, Rudolf Steiner: Life, Work, Inner Path and Social Initiatives. Hawthorne Press, 2000.
McDermott, Robert, The Essential Steiner. Harper Press, 1984
Seddon, Richard, Rudolf Steiner. North Atlantic Books, 2004.
Shepherd, A.P., Rudolf Steiner: Scientist of the Invisible. Inner Traditions, 1990.
Schiller, Paul, Rudolf Steiner and Initiation. Steiner Books, 1990.
Swassjan, Karen, The Ultimate Communion of Mankind: A Celebration of Rudolf Steiner's Book "The Philosophy of Freedom", ISBN 0-904693-82-1
Tummer, Lia and Lato, Horacio, Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy for Beginners. Writers & Readers Publishing, 2001.
Turgeniev, Assya, Reminiscences of Rudolf Steiner and Work on the First Goetheanum, ISBN 1-902636-40-6
Welburn, Andrew, Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy and the Crisis of Contemporary Thought, ISBN 0-86315-436-0
Wilkinson, Roy, Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to his Spiritual World-View, ISBN 1902636287
External links
;General
Rudolf Steiner Overview
The Anthroposophical Society in America
Goetheanum
Official site of the Rudolf Steiner Archive (German language)
;Writings
The Rudolf Steiner Online Archive
Steiner lending library
Rudolf Steiner Audio
A list of all English translations
;Articles about Steiner
Heiner Ullrich, "Rudolf Steiner", Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education (Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol.XXIV, no. 3/4, 1994, p. 555-572
Rudolf Steiner: 'Scientist of the Invisible' (Carlin Romano, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 53, Issue 37, 2007, p. B16)
Rudolf Steiner introduced by Owen Barfield.
Skeptics Dictionary
Steiner biography by Gary Lachman
Category:1861 births
Category:1925 deaths
Category:People from Međimurje County
Category:Alternative education
Category:Anthroposophy
Category:Anthroposophists
Category:20th-century philosophers
Category:Austrian philosophers
Category:German-language philosophers
Category:Austrian spiritual writers
Category:Austrian autobiographers
Category:Austrian Theosophists
Category:Austrian dramatists and playwrights
Category:Austrian architects
Category:Educationists
Category:Spiritual teachers
Category:Esoteric Christianity
Category:Hermeticists
Category:Modernist architects
Category:Expressionist architects
Category:University of Rostock alumni
Category:Austro-Hungarian people
Category:People from Horn District
