On New Year’s Eve of 1922, a dream of the future human being burned until it vanished. Shortly after 10 p.m., white smoke rose from the east aisle of the St. John’s building, an imposing domed structure on a hillside near Dornach, near Basel, Switzerland.
Anthroposophy is a spiritual movement that began in the late 19th century. Rudolf Steiner, a German philosopher, and mystic, founded it.
Anthroposophy seeks to access the spiritual wisdom that underlies all of reality and to apply this wisdom in a practical way to help humanity and the world.
Anthroposophy has inspired many fields of work, including education, agriculture, medicine, architecture, and the arts.
Biographical Review of Rudolf Steiner, Creator of Anthroposophy
Rudolf Steiner was born in 1861 in Donji Kraljevec, a town that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today annexed to Croatia). His professional training took place in Vienna, where he ventured into areas such as physics, mathematics, and philosophy, his first encounter with the main works of the latter discipline.
He specialized as a doctor of Philosophy in 1891, and graduated from the University of Rostock (Germany). Two years later, he edited one of his most important publications, The Philosophy of Liberty, where he makes an incredible review of the legacy of the theorists who founded his thought, such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Fichte, and Schelling, to the point of being considered an expert in the studies of these theorists.
Another of his sources of inspiration was the famous and prolific German naturalist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to whom Steiner paid tribute when he founded the first headquarters of the anthroposophical movement, the Goetheanum, in Switzerland, which today is the world center of this discipline.
It should be noted that approaching the twilight of his life, Steiner endured the hostility of Nazism and other sides that opposed his philosophical thought, including burning the first Goetheanum to his opponents as a measure of intimidation of your society.
Most Important Characteristics of Anthroposophy
Some of the characteristic features of anthroposophy are:
- Self-knowledge as a path of evolution
As a first postulate, the discovery of a person about himself is the ideal path if he wishes to achieve the integral growth of his whole being.
- Empathy is a fundamental core of the human being.
The understanding that a person has towards the actions of others is what Rudolf Steiner called at the time an alien self, a sense that is based on the meeting of two people in their deepest sphere, without any prejudice and with the greatest possible empathy.
- Universal spirituality
Anthroposophical thought postulates that the spiritual growth of each person does not necessarily take place in a religious time or within the framework of social isolation but can be carried out through interaction with other people while dedicating a space to reflection, internalization, and meditation.
- Everyday life as a practice environment
For its part, anthroposophy has as its main characteristic the promotion of the practice of this thought in daily life, where the relationship with other people in the immediate environment contributes to self-knowledge of being and human growth.