Agrippa Von Nettesheim and Theophrastus Paracelsus, Steiner Rudolf

Three and a half years after the founding of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Germany, these talks were given to an audience of Swiss school teachers, most having little knowledge of Anthroposophy. This is the context of these lectures, which are among Rudolf Steiner's most accessible talks on education.

A teacher who attended the lectures wrote in the Berne School Paper "Every morning, as we listened anew to Dr. Steiner, we felt we had come closer to him and understood better what he had to say and how he had to say it. Daily, we newcomers gathered, asking ourselves: Why are more of our colleagues not here? It is untrue that anthroposophy limits a person, develops blinkers, or avoids real life.... Step by step, Dr. Steiner shows its application to life...illumining the details and disclosing their connection with profound questions of life and existence. I came to the conference to stimulate my school work. I found benefit in abundance. But also, I unexpectedly received a greater richness for heart and soul--and, from this in turn shall stream richness for my classes."

In other words, these lectures are ideal for anyone who is approaching Waldorf education for the first time. Using language that any teacher or parent can understand, Steiner goes into the essentials of his educational philosophy, providing many examples and anecdotes to convey his meaning. In this way, against the background of the developing child, he allows the curriculum and the method of teaching to emerge as the commonsense conclusion of practical experience.

German source: Die p dagogisch Praxis vom Geichtspunkte geisteswissenschaftlicher Menschenerkenntnis (GA 306).

Of all of his works, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is the one that Steiner himself believed would have the longest life and the greatest spiritual and cultural consequences. It was written as a phenomenological account of the "results of observing the human soul according to the methods of natural science.

This seminal work asserts that free spiritual activity--understood as the human ability to think and act independently of physical nature--is the suitable path for human beings today to gain true knowledge of themselves and of the universe. This is not merely a philosophical volume, but rather a warm, heart-oriented guide to the practice and experience of living thinking.

Readers will not find abstract philosophy here, but a step-by-step account of how a person may come to experience living, intuitive thinking--"the conscious experience of a purely spiritual content."

During the past hundred years since it was written, many have tried to discover this "new thinking" that could help us understand the various spiritual, ecological, social, political, and philosophical issues facing us. But only Rudolf Steiner laid out a path that leads from ordinary thinking to the level of pure spiritual activity--intuitive thinking--in which we become co-creators and co-redeemers of the world.

This volume is arguably the most essential of Steiner's works. The thoughts in this book establish the foundation for all of Anthroposophy.

C O N T E N T S

Preface by Rudolf Steiner

Science of Spiritual Activity (Freiheit)
1. Conscious Human Action
2. The Fundamental Desire for Knowledge
3. Thinking in the Service of Apprehending the World
4. The World as Perception
5. The Activity of Knowing the World
6. The Human Individuality
7. Are There Limits to Knowing?

The Reality of Spiritual Activity (Freiheit)
8. The Factors of Life
9. The Idea of Spiritual Activity (Freiheit)
10. Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Monism
11. World Purpose and Life Purpose (the Vocation of Man)
12. Moral Imagination (Darwinism and Morality)
13. The Value of Life (Pessimism and Optimism)
14. Individuality and Genus

Final Questions
The Consequenses of Monism

Appendices

The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is a translation from German of Die Philosophie der Freiheit (GA 4).

1. How the Book Came To Be
2. The Book's Aims and Artistic Composition
3. New Thinking
4. The Sphere of Freedom
5. New Willing
6. New Thinking, New Willing; The Thinking-Will
7. Transition to the Social Problem
8. The Socially Oriented Will
9. Forces at Work in the Contemporary Scene
10. The Book as a Training Manual
11. Confrontations
12. The Book's Christian Substance
13. Epilogue, Notes, Partial Bibliography, Collateral Reading