American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner

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American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner: Emerson, Thoreau, Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey, Whitehead, Feminism

Few thinkers from outside the United States have touched American culture in as many ways as Rudolf Steiner. Agriculture, education, spirituality, and medicine—or more precisely, alternative practices in these fields—all bear clear marks of his influence, for those with eyes to see. Yet the very breadth of Steiner’s impact has perhaps made him harder, not easier, for observers of American culture to notice.

American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner aspires to raise Steiner’s profile by digging into just one field of inquiry: philosophy. Before he became known to the world as a transmitter of clairvoyant wisdom, Steiner was an academic philosopher, editor of the scientific writings of Goethe and author of a foundational work in philosophy, Die Philosophie der Freiheit (Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom), originally published in 1894. That book expressed in philosophical terms many of the ideas that would later emerge as integral to the spiritual science of Anthroposophy.

Though the authors cover a wide range of topics, most share an elegiac tone. They see great potential for dialogue between Rudolf Steiner and the great American philosophers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. American philosophy may have taken a wrong turn in the mid-twentieth century, when pragmatism gave way to a tradition of analytical philosophy that eschewed metaphysics as inherently meaningless and focused on the coherence or incoherence of linguistic structures. Nonetheless, many new sites of potential dialogue exist between Steiner and American philosophy.

Five of the articles in this volume were written as part of a seminar on Rudolf Steiner and American Thought as part of a Project for the Renewal of Philosophy, Science, and Education sponsored by Laurance S. Rockefeller. The contributors—David Ray Griffin, Gertrude Reif Hughes, Frank M. Oppenheim, S. J., Douglas Sloan, and Robert McDermott—were originally published in ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation (spring and summer 1991).

Few thinkers from outside the United States have touched American culture in as many ways as Rudolf Steiner. Agriculture, education, spirituality, and medicine—or more precisely, alternative practices in these fields—all bear clear marks of his influence, for those with eyes to see. Yet the very breadth of Steiner’s impact has perhaps made him harder, not easier, for observers of American culture to notice. The terms Waldorf education and biodynamic agriculture are more widely recognized than Rudolf Steiner himself or Anthroposophy. Anthroposophic initiatives are commonly understood in relation to parallel initiatives with different spiritual roots, rather than in relation to the rich fabric of Steiner’s worldview. Americans typically imagine biodynamic agriculture as a more intense form of organics and Waldorf schools as ‘like Montessori schools only more so.’ When I describe the Camphill movement, most interlocutors respond with ‘Is that like the L’arche movement?’ And thousands of shoppers at health food cooperatives and Whole Foods supermarkets purchase Weleda skin lotion, diaper cream, or homeopathic remedies with little sense of connection to Steiner’s vision of spirit active in the world. —Dan McKanan (from the foreword)

C O N T E N T S:

Preface by Robert McDermott
Foreword by Dan McKanan
Introduction by Robert McDermott

1. Hearing Steiner’s Anthroposophy in Emerson’s Prophetic Voice
by Gertrude Reif Huges

2. Deliberate Lives, Deliberate Living: Thoreau and Steiner in Conversation
by Rebecca Kneale Gould

3. William James and Rudolf Steiner
by Robert McDermott

4. Charles Sanders Peirce and Rudolf Steiner: Prophetic Philosophers
by Robert McDermott

5. Josiah Royce and Rudolf Steiner: A Comparison and Contrast
by Frank M. Oppenheim, S.J.

6. Steiner’s Anthroposophy and Whitehead’s Philosophy
by David Ray Griffin

7. John Dewey’s Project for “Saving the Appearances”
by Douglas Sloan

8. Rudolf Steiner’s Activist Epistemology and Feminist Thought in America
by Gertrude Reif Hughes

About the Author

Robert McDermott, Ph.D., is president emeritus and chair of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). His publications include Radhakrishnan (1970); The Essential Aurobindo (1974, 1987); The Essential Steiner (1984); (with Rudolf Steiner) The Bhagavad Gita and the West (2009); and The New Essential Steiner (2009). He has also published on William James, Josiah Royce, M. K. Gandhi, the evolution of consciousness, and American thought. His administrative service includes president of the New York Center for Anthroposophy; president of the Rudolf Steiner [summer] Institute; chair of the board of Sunbridge College (New York) and of Rudolf Steiner College (California). He was a member of the council of the Anthroposophical Society in America (1996–2004). He is the founding chair of the board of the Sophia Project, an anthroposophic home in Oakland, California, for mothers and children at risk of homelessness. He is a Lindisfarne fellow, a Fetzer mentor, and a member of the Esalen Corportion.

Dan McKanan is the Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, where he has taught since 2008. His research focuses on religion and social transformation, with special emphasis on intentional communities, sustainable agriculture, and leftist activism. His most recent book is Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism.

Additional information

Weight 20 oz
Dimensions 6 × 0.75 × 9 in
Author

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Editor

Robert McDermott

Foreword

Dan McKanan

ISBN13

9781584201373

ISBN10

1584201371

Published

December 2012

Format

Paperback

Pages

294

Publisher

Lindisfarne Books

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