Anthroposophy (redirected from Spiritual science)

anthroposophy

Philosophy based on the view that the human intellect has the ability to contact spiritual worlds. It was formulated in the early 20th century by Rudolf Steiner and was influenced by theosophy. Steiner wanted to develop a faculty for spiritual perception independent of the senses, which he believed was latent in all human beings, and to this end he founded the Anthroposophical Society in 1912. Now based in Dornach, Switzerland, the society has branches worldwide.

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Anthroposophy 

a mystical doctrine about man that includes a method for self-improvement and development of man’s assumed occult faculties for spiritual dominion over nature—a system of psychosomatic exercises, a special pedagogical method, and so forth.

Anthroposophy sprang from theosophy. Its founder was the German mystic R. Steiner (1861–1925), who in 1913 established the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland. He expounded the fundamentals of anthroposophy in Occult Science (1910) and Anthroposophy (1924). In the spirit of pantheism, anthroposophy holds that God is dispersed throughout nature and that on the earth he is, so to speak, reborn in man. From such a point of view, anthroposophy interprets the myths and beliefs of all periods and peoples (R. Steiner’s Ancient Mysteries and Christianity, 1910). Sociopolitical contents of anthroposophy boil down to a utopia based upon the isolation of three spheres of social life: the state, whose only function is to protect groups of citizens from mutual enslavement (the sphere of freedom); an independent judicial system (the sphere of equality); and the economy, based upon the principle of free cooperation (the sphere of brotherhood).

Anthroposophy influenced certain representatives of art—the Russian poet Andrei Belyi, the German poet C. Morgenstern, the artist V. V. Kandinskii, and the German conductor B. Walter. Anthroposophy has spread to certain countries of Western Europe and to the USA, sometimes as a practical pedagogical method (in institutes, schools, and even kindergartens). Anthroposophy marks the crisis of traditional religions, which it is trying to replace, in its eclectic combination of modernized ideas of Christian mysticism with the accent on man’s natural potential.

REFERENCE

Geering-Christ, R. Was ist Anthroposophie? 2nd ed. Basel, 1947.