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Re: "Between Racism and Universalism"


 

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Thanks to Ton and Peter for shedding light into dark corners. As I read this post I felt an emotional reaction bubbling up, perhaps stemming from disgust and/or sadness. I remember researching these topics after we pulled our kids from a Waldorf school, and deeply regretting having participated for too many years. While such specific Steiner quotes are historically interesting (albeit disturbing), when seen as a sum of its parts, the puzzle become more than individual pieces. Much more. Anthroposophy becomes a way of thinking. Of the human condition. Of life itself. From pigeon-holing children into one of four temperaments in the year 2022 (!), to dumping Indigenous peoples into the dustbins of karmic necessity, this way of thinking is, IMO, not only psychologically unhealthy, but profoundly disrespectful and dangerous.

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Only recently do we have the Catholic Church beginning to take some responsibility for the atrocities of residential schools (including countless unmarked graves of Indigenous children) and other abusive behaviour. Unlike Steiner¡¯s Anthroposophy, however, the extinction of Indigenous people does not form part of Catholicism¡¯s foundation. Reconciliation ¨C although slow and messy ¨C is possible ¨C as seen by the Pope¡¯s recent apology tour of Canada.

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Anthroposophy? Nope. ¡°Oh, Steiner said some things that are difficult to understand . . . to the uninitiated.

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Peter wrote: ¡°Thankfully, Steiner was mistaken about these matters.¡±

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Indeed. (sigh)

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-Walden

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From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Peter Staudenmaier
Sent: August 28, 2022 9:11 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [waldorf-critics] "Between Racism and Universalism"

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Hi Ton,

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thanks for pointing out the other translation of the Folk Souls book, which is indeed closer to the original. For those interested, it is here:

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It seems to me that the karmic and cosmic elements are essential to the book as a whole, even simply at a textual level. This is by no means due to the translations; in the original, there are a dozen references to karma, and quite a few more to "cosmic powers" and "cosmic missions" and "cosmic evolution" and such. More importantly, those elements can't be disentangled from the passages on climate and environment. The whole point for Steiner was that the spiritual and the material are interwoven; that is why his racial doctrines matter to his overall theory of cosmic development. Racial evolution is integral to cosmic evolution, overseen by various classes of spirits and unfolding through a succession of stages, accessible to Steiner via the Akashic records.

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Here is another excerpt about?Native Americans from the book, showing how Steiner presented the spiritual origins of physical processes:

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"Finally, what we may describe as the abnormal Spirits of Form who have their centre in Saturn, act upon the glandular system, but in a roundabout way through all the other systems. Therefore in all that we must describe as the Saturn-race, in everything to which we must attribute the Saturn-character, we must look for something which draws together and embraces that which leads again to the evening twilight of humanity, whose development brings humanity in a certain way to a real conclusion, to a dying away. The expression of this action on the glandular system is seen in the American Indian race. From that action comes its mortality, its disappearance. The Saturn influence acts through all the other systems finally upon the glandular system. It separates out the hardest parts of man, and we may therefore say that this dying-out consists in a sort of ossification, and this may also clearly be seen in the outer form.

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If you look at the pictures of the old American Indians, the process above described is palpable in the decline of this race. In a race such as this, everything which existed in the Saturn-evolution is now present in them, and that in a special manner; it has withdrawn into itself and left man alone with his hard bone system, and brought him into decline. One feels something of this truly occult activity, if one observes how, even in the nineteenth century, a representative of these old Indians speaks of how in him there dwells what formerly was great and mighty for man, but which could not possibly go along with further evolution. "

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Steiner's various claims about the supposed extinction of Native Americans, including several that you cited, were part of a widespread ideology at the time. Like other theosophical thinkers, Steiner gave an esoteric interpretation to this ideology, but the underlying beliefs were fairly common in European and Euro-American racial theories of the era. The extinction narrative was often combined with Romantic notions about the regrettably now archaic spiritual grandeur of Native American cultures. This context is crucial to understanding Steiner's statements. In several cases?Steiner extended this ideology to other indigenous peoples (and sometimes Chinese and Jews as well); consider his claims in Outline of Occult Science about the obsolete "race-types" that are "bound to become extinct" and "destined to speedy extinction."

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Thankfully, Steiner was mistaken about these matters. Despite the prevalence of 'extinction' ideology, Native Americans were not in fact dying out in the early years of the twentieth century, and the ideology was not hard to see through. Others refuted it explicitly at the time; for a vivid example, see the article titled "Indians Are Not Dying Out: Anthropologist Says That General Idea of Extermination Is Erroneous" published in the New York Times on July 11, 1912. Here is how Audrey Smedley explains the 'extinction' ideology in her classic study Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview (Routledge 2012):

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"The apparent unwillingness of the Indians to either transform themselves culturally or submit to the depredations of white settlers and traders came to be interpreted by many as evidence of an inferior racial character." (165) "As with the Negro, white Americans looked for explications and justifications for their practices and policies in what they thought were the intrinsic characteristics of the Indians themselves." (166) In the eyes of many Europeans and Euro-Americans, Indians were "diseased and degraded" and "headed for inevitable extinction under the advance of white civilization." (166)

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For those interested in exploring this topic further, there is some excellent research that helps make more sense of Steiner's teachings along these lines. The most thorough study in English, with many sections that are immediately reminiscent of Steiner, is Patrick Brantlinger's book Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races 1800 ¨C 1930 (Cornell University Press, 2003). For the German readers I recommend Norbert Finzsch, "'Der kupferfarbene Mensch vertr?gt die Verbreitung europ?ischer Civilisation nicht in seiner N?he': Der Topos von der dying race in Deutschland, den USA und Australien" in Claudia Bruns, ed., Wissen ¨C Transfer ¨C Differenz: Transnationale und interdiskursive Verflechtungen von Rassismus ab 1700 (G?ttingen: Wallstein, 2018), 67-90.

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Peter S.

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From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of ton majoor <tonmajoor@...>
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2022 9:01 AM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [waldorf-critics] "Between Racism and Universalism"

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Steiner's picture of human evolution in GA 121, 100 and 11 seems to be more monogenistic and dynamic (normal human development, migration, modification, higher stage of culture, degeneration, progressive intermingling, acquire forces, ossification, common ancestry, stand still, stunted),

instead of polygenistic and typically determined (different groups of people, racial characters, destiny, civilized and uncivilized peoples, side branches, racial constitution, primitive people, savage tribes).


The older translation of the Folk-Souls has not 'destined' and 'destiny of the races', but 'that which takes place with the races':

"Upon the peculiarity of this line depends that which takes place with the races [German: mit den Rassen sich abspielt] on the surface of our earth and that which is brought about by the forces which are not under the influence of the normal Spirits of Form."??


Ton

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