Talk:Anthroposophy

Notice: Pete K is indefinitely banned from editing this article.

The user specified has been banned by the Arbitration committee from editing this article. Posted by Penwhale for the Arbitration committee. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education/Review.

Categories

Wikipedia:Categories#Articles states clearly that "Categorizations should generally be uncontroversial; if the category's topic is likely to spark controversy, then a list article (which can be annotated and referenced) is probably more appropriate." Categorizing this as pseudoscience is certainly likely to spark controversy and so clearly violates the guideline. hgilbert (talk) 13:25, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

That's a misinterpretation of the guideline. It says that controversial categories should be converted into list articles. It doesn't tell you t remove categories from articles just because they are controversial. A properly sourced "defining" category should always stay in an article, even if some editors consider it controversial. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:50, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Philosophy

The article asserts that Anthroposophy is a philosophy. Are there any reliable sources backing this claim? Wikipedia has this to say on philosophy: "Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument". I would like to dispute the claim that (1) A. is systematic in its approach, as well as the claim (2) that it is reliant on rational argument. Anthroposophy is a revealed "truth", essentially a doctrine of faith discovered (invented?) by Steiner. 90.129.23.220 (talk) 13:03, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Both citations at the end of that sentence are to sources that confirm this. Britannica starts its article on anthroposophy as follows: "anthroposophy, philosophy based on the premise that the human intellect has the ability to contact spiritual worlds."

Of course, one could claim that any philosophy is a revealed truth, a doctrine of faith; how can we empirically prove Plato's cave metaphor, or Aristotle's ethical theories, or Husserl's bracketing and epoche? hgilbert (talk) 16:49, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Links to Anthroposophical Societies

These links have been removed; the edit summary suggests looking at WP:EL. This policy suggests including official links meeting these criteria:

1. The linked content is controlled by the subject (organization or individual person) of the Wikipedia article.
2. The linked content primarily covers the area for which the subject of the article is notable.

These seem to be met by the Anthroposophical Societies' own web pages. Should the links be restored?hgilbert (talk) 01:26, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Not restore: compare with - Theosophy, Theosophical Society, Anthroposophical Society, Royal Society, Royal Academy of Arts etc. etc. Qexigator (talk) 06:30, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

They all have links to the official website(s). hgilbert (talk) 14:29, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Not quite: compare Theosophy with Anthroposophy and Theosophical Society with Anthroposophical Society. I have added a similar cap link to Anthroposophy. Qexigator (talk) 14:57, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Racism

This article appears to whitewash, no pun intended, the racist beliefs of Steiner as if they were a mere product of his time. Racism is an inherent part of anthroposophy. That Steiner was racist is not an opinion but a fact. Steiner believed the white race was superior to the black and Asian races. Why not include some actual quotes from Steiner concerning race:

“On one side we find the black race, which is earthly at most. If it moves to the West, it becomes extinct. We also have the yellow race, which is in the middle between earth and the cosmos. If it moves to the East, it becomes brown, attaches itself too much to the cosmos, and becomes extinct. The white race is the future, the race that is spiritually creative.”

“The Jews have a great gift for materialism, but little for recognition of the spiritual world.”

“Negroes” are “decadent" and “completely cut themselves off from the spiritual world”

“[I]f we give these Negro novels to pregnant [white] women to read, then it won’t even be necessary for Negroes to come to Europe in order for mulattos to appear. Simply through the spiritual effects of reading Negro novels, a multitude of children will be born in Europe that are completely gray, that have mulatto hair, that look like mulattos!”

"Today's red and black races descend from abnormal humans and have not participated in the evolution led by whites"

“If you look at pictures of the old American Indians the process of ossification is evident in the decline of this race ... [A] representative of these old American Indians still preserves a memory of that great Atlantean civilization [i.e., the civilization of Atlantis] which could not adapt itself to later evolution ... The Atlantean had not assimilated all that the Venus, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter Spirits [i.e., gods] brought about in the East, to whom we owe all the civilizations which reached their zenith in Europe ... The descendant of the brown race did not participate in this development.”

https://sites.google.com/site/waldorfwatch/steiners-racism

Smiloid (talk) 09:20, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

He was indeed a racialist. If he was a racist it's more complicated, because he did not advocate fight between races or oppression of people of other races than white, instead he (in his own awkward way) sought to help them evolve, and saw whites as having a role in making other races evolve. Anyway, direct quotes from Steiner are considered original research according to ArbCom. Tgeorgescu (talk) 11:03, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

And the Anthroposophical Society is and was open to people belonging to all races, therefore they don't discriminate. Tgeorgescu (talk) 11:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

A detailed arbitration proceeding (see header) excluded the use of Steiner quotes here and in other anthroposophy-related articles. Can you find reliable sources other than those already cited? hgilbert (talk) 22:02, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

If not I suggest that the tag should be removed. hgilbert (talk) 21:32, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Any comments, pro or con the tag, or suggestions as to how to alter the article using secondary and tertiary reliable sources? Otherwise this seems a clear case of drive-by tagging. hgilbert (talk) 09:56, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

From what I understand any problems Hitler may have had with Anthroposophy did not mean that they disagreed on the matters of race but that Hitler considered it a threat to his dominance. Contrary to the false implications of this article Anthroposophy is as racist as National Socialism. Smiloid (talk) 00:46, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

It's strange, then, that the Waldorf school in South Africa a welcomed children of all races even during apartheid.

You need to find WP:reliable sources, then their evaluations can be included. hgilbert (talk) 05:04, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

"It's strange, then, that the Waldorf school in South Africa a welcomed children of all races even during apartheid." The old "some of my best friends are black" defense Smiloid (talk) 10:12, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you realize what the National Socialists did. Welcoming people of all races, religious convictions, political beliefs, and ethnic backgrounds into the schools was not really what they were famous for. hgilbert (talk) 11:26, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Here is a very clear refutation of racial terminology given by Rudolf Steiner himself: "That is why it is absolutely essential to understand that our anthroposophical movement is a spiritual one. It looks to the spirit and overcomes the effects of physical differences through the force of being a spiritual movement. Of course, any movement has its childhood illnesses, so to speak. Consequently, in the beginning of the theosophical movement the earth was divided into seven periods of time, one for each of the seven root races, and each of these root races was divided into seven sub-races. These seven periods were said to repeat in a cycle so that one could always speak of seven races and seven sub-races. However, we must get beyond the illness of childhood and clearly understand that the concept of race has ceased to have any meaning in our time." Full analysis can be found here: http://defendingsteiner.com/misconceptions/r-race.php 83.84.227.137 (talk) 16:41, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

In the Dutch TV show Hokjesman, http://www.uitzendinggemist.nl/afleveringen/1327665 , a cultural anthropologist asked a librarian from a large Dutch book shop if there any objective books about anthroposophy and she answered "as far as I know, there are no such books" or something like that. So, the problem is that there are almost no third-party, objective sources about anthroposophy, that's why people tend to do original research or trust sources like "we from the WC duck recommend the WC duck". Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:18, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Evolution

This is a complex topic, given the cycles within cycles of anthroposophy's descriptions. I've tried to clarify the description using terminology that is less confusing (Steiner emphasizes that what he calls planets are nothing like our present conception, so using the word without long explanations is pretty misleading --I've tried to work around this.) a good source should be found, however. HGilbert (talk) 01:19, 21 October 2013 (UTC)