I want to move in the direction of clarifying what it is **specifically** that Rudolf Steiner claimed Rome ‘alone’ was awake to.
For today, I will focus on more comments from the 1920 lecture I quoted yesterday, and the talk that followed it. When the webblog resumes Monday, I plan to expand on these themes. Again, I implore you to bear in mind all the **caveats** I voiced yesterday, in regards to what I now quote:
“Since the middle of the fifteenth century, what has appeared as philosophy, science, public opinion, world conception, apart from the Roman Catholic Church, is for, the most part void of spirit."
In this, Steiner includes much at very least of, "the natural scientific trend inaugurated by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler ... out of which Darwin, Huxley and so on have blown the last remnant of spirit …”
But Steiner contends that an all-dominating worldview devoid of spiritual mystery can only bring ruin. As he says in the lecture that follows this one:
“For if only the materialistic knowledge that has been developed in the last three to four centuries should continue to permeate human evolution … the present social chaos of the civilized world will repeatedly recur …
What science has been able to give humanity, since the middle of the fifteenth century has certainly been sufficient for the making of technical discoveries, has been sufficient to spread over the earth a network of commerce and business intercourse, but it does not suffice for the creation of social arrangements …
As long as an external, material science is alone recognized, so long will humanity be in the grip of chaotic social conditions.”
‘Chaotic social conditions’ may be understated here. From all I have read, I believe Steiner would classify both the Communist and Capitalist empires that continued to ascend after his death in 1925, as having the most **grievous** of social conditions. In chilling lectures with astonishing foresight, he foretells a grave future for a humanity based on either Materialistic Communism or Capitalism.
Steiner would affirm, I believe, that our society is still running on a spiritual ‘capital’ accumulated in the past – before the rise of a modern epistemology and science that marginalised the Spirit. But this ‘capital’ is now being rapidly exhausted. And a society based only on materialistic conceptions can only grow ever worse.
I return now to the original lecture. Though most regrettably I feel, Steiner labels Rome’s direction as ‘extremely harmful’, he also says: "it must be recognised that the Catholic Church has shown great foresight …
The Catholic Church long ago foresaw the [modern] social condition … the Catholic Church took her own measures to make her influences felt in these social conditions …
In face of the rising tide of naturalism [Rome] throws down the gauntlet before all this rising materialism … It demonstrates the only wakeful consciousness within our sleeping civilization …
Modern civilization is asleep … Rome is awake … Rome was wide awake and made in advance her necessary preparations … That Rome is awake is revealed by the mighty drama [of the seven decades previous to 1920] unrolled in the [1854] definition of the dogma of the Immaculate conception; in the [1864] Syllabus condemning eighty modern truths; in the declaration of the Infallibility of the Pope; in the naming of Thomas Aquinas as the official philosopher of the Catholic priesthood; and finally in the anti-modernist Oath."
Now, Rudolf Steiner, it must be said, condemns this trajectory. Nonetheless it is based, as he says in the next lecture, on ‘magnificent foresight … [with] a real spiritual basis, a spiritual foundation that is rooted in a real spiritual life and not in mere abstraction."
Now, my quoting Rudolf Steiner at length should not be taken as an endorsement of his views. For example, I lament most deeply Steiner’s assertion that the Catholic Church had nothing left to offer humanity. As far as I can see, this only creates tragedy at the present time ...
I reproduce his comments, then, not to propagate Anthroposophy, but in my belief that, for friends of a Hermetic persuasion concerned with the same issues as myself, they may suggest most useful avenues of reflection. As they have done for me. Webblog will resume on Monday with further considerations in this territory.
4 comments:
This text is an amalgamation of many different comments from lectures of 3rd and 6th June 1920, given in in Dornach, Switzerland. They not been published in English to the best of my knowledge.
My amalgamation does not follow the order of the original comments. But I hope re-ordering them in this way can bring certain points to light, and I believe I have endeavoured to be scrupulous in trying to record Steiner’s meaning.
For example I wanted to include a comment that 300 or 400 years ago ‘even then the Roman Catholic Church was already awake’ to what I take Steiner as meaning or at least including, the dangers of philosophical materialism.
But I avoided using it, because in Steiner’s seemingly somewhat erratic (yet profound) kind of lecturing, I could not be *absolutely* certain his reference to four centuries ago was in regard to the same issues. Though personally, I believe it was.
I believe Steiner is saying that the deep spiritual practices of greatly educated clerics does indeed produce most vivid insight.
Finally these lectures I believe, are out of copyright. I doubt the uncredited translation is in copyright. But if I err, and objections exist, I can supply a translation myself.
As a newer movement in the church, the Jesuits have often been criticized for being too liberal. They were criticized for wearing saffron in China. Pascal attacked them for supporting probabalism (but then, Pascal hung around with the Jansenists). Say what you will, the Jesuits consistently engage the world
(even if many of them seem paralyzed to make any claim beside peace and justice).
It would seem to me that Steiner is praising the church for recognizing the emptiness and nihilism of modernity (being awake), but also critizing the church for not engaging these ideas in battle. Looking over the signs that Steiner name, the ‘extremely harmful’ trajectory appears to be a response that is predominately formalistic: dogmas, decrees, entrenchment of authority, etc. This unfortunate trajectory has meant that the world has often been abandoned to its own emptiness and those in the church who opposed the emptiness were labeled "la nouvelle theologie." This trajectory has changed.
See, for example, Henri de Lubac's work, The Drama of Atheist Humanism.
Apparently, Jonathan Edwards, an American Puritan, also was wide awake for he read Locke, Hume, etc. I've only read Gura's biography of Edwards, but he looks very interesting.
Mamapelican, Fred - Thank you!
Worlds within worlds within worlds here.
Which I hope to unpack more of what I see here.
Yes to both of you - there is a new trajectory! And I too wonder indeed what Rudolf Steiner would have said. (Hint: Though Steiner died in 1925, I also feel that the beings he worked with are not necessarily uninvolved with the new trajectory)
And though Mamapelican, I have been exploring and thinking along the lines that you indicate, your indications, Fred of la nouvelle theologie (and Walker Percy) are new to me ...
I am very grateful indeed for the great richness and intelligence being brought to these comments, and will be saying more ...
"The world has often been abandoned to its own emptiness' ... Very stirring ...
Let's see. "La Nouvelle Theology" was the disparaging term used to refer to Henri de Lubac and others, elsewhere discussed under the term, "ressourcement."
And Walker Percy offers a splendid semiotic analysis of the self, which strikes me as accessible to Western rationalists including a certain strain of Western Buddhism. In order for different people to talk, they have to discover a common vocabulary.
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