User:Crzrussian/Rudolf Steiner's views on race and ethnicity

The views of Rudolf Steiner on the subject of race and ethnicity are complex and, in recent years, some of these views have provoked controversy. Steiner's comments on race and ethnicity, and the related controversies, are summarized here.

The individual and the race

1. Humanity is made up of individuals, each of which exists sui generis: as a unique entity unto him- or herself.
2. Each individual passes through incarnations in various races. Race is a transient characteristic, not an essential aspect of an individual.
3. Each individual seeks to transform the body inherited in a given lifetime – all that is inherited by being part of a family, ethnic group or race – into a more individuated form. Individualities who effect this transformation and individuation more completely and successfully are little determined by their genetic makeup. Those who are less able to effect it are more strongly determined by their genetic characteristics (including racial background).
4. Races arise, develop and decline. “A race or nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type, the further they have worked their way from the physical and perishable to the supersensible and imperishable. The evolution of humanity through incarnations in ever higher national and religious forms is thus a process of liberation. The human being must finally appear in harmonious perfection.”
5. Individuals who attach themselves too strongly to any particular race are inevitably caught in that race’s decline; those who free themselves from racial attachments pass from race to race as these develop. ‘Races would never become decadent, never decline, if there weren't souls that are unable to move up and unwilling to move up to a higher racial form.’
6. All races are currently in decline. The “black race” once led humanity; the “red race” followed; the “yellow race” followed this; though the “white race” has led the progress of humanity most recently, it too is in decline and has the potential to descend to a lower level than any race hitherto.
7. Humanity now has the task of progressively eliminating the significance of race altogether; "someone speaking today of the ideal of races and nations and of tribal affiliation speaks of decadent impulses of humanity....through nothing will humanity be brought more into decadence than if the ideals of race, nation and blood continue to hold sway. The future evolution of humanity depends upon this." "Today, the idea of culture has superseded the idea of race."
8. In particular, humanity has the task of freeing itself from an instinctive spirituality connected to one's racial and ethnic inheritance. This can be promoted when people of several races or ethnic groups inter-marry, for children who have a mixed ethnic or racial background can thus more easily find their way to a new, universally human spirituality.
9. Remnants of race are still significant in our day; we have not yet overcome this completely. As races partly determine the genetic inheritance, they provide more ‘advanced’ or ‘backward’ bodies for souls’ incarnations. But: “No soul is bound to a backward body if it does not bind itself to it.”
10. Nevertheless, racial differences present in the physical body are "mere trifles by comparison with differences in individual gifts and skills"; "We are equal as human beings" through all bearing a human countenace and form.
11. The Anthroposophical Society seeks to overcome racial differences: it "unites in a single spiritual impulse those who belong to the most various races and peoples...We try to gather together what was dispersed about the world, and members of the various nations embrace one another in brotherhood, become brothers in our fold."

Particular racial or ethnic groups

Many people find some of Steiner’s descriptions of particular races or ethnic groups troubling or problematic, and in some cases difficult to reconcile with his more general statements about the role race and ethnicity play in present-day humanity. Such descriptions include:

Races

• He suggests that the white race provides a genetic makeup most helpful in the present age, because it supports a strong relationship to external sense impressions, but sees all races as being in decline from the height of their cultural evolution, sometimes using the term ‘decadent’. The white race is also presently in decline, though not so long.
• At the beginning of 1915, shortly after the beginning of WWI, he suggested that eventual battles between the 'white' and ‘colored’ races "in many areas" would be inevitable in about 1,600 years because of the different relationship of the 'white' and 'colored' races to spiritual experience: the former experiencing spirit as something inward and subjective, the latter as something external and objective. After these battles, which are being prepared already today, the further cultural development of humanity will be based on an experience of spirit as objective reality.
• He joined other Germans in protesting the French for the housing and deployment of black African soldiers in Europe. He states that this "cultural brutality" will work to the disadvantage of the French peoples, in particular weakening the French stock.
• He states that "In spiritual culture Asians are today still ahead of Europeans." But he also states "It is often pointed out nowadays that their inherent qualities are bringing about significant progress in the Japanese. This is an illusion. They are not developing as a result of their own characteristics. Their victory in the last war [the 1905 war between Russia and Japan] was achieved by means of warships and guns invented by Europeans -- by exploiting an alien civilisation. Progressive development is only possible when a people can evolve by virtue of its own intrinsic nature. That is the crucial point."
• He states that those who incarnate in the non-white races at present have tended to connect themselves with their racial background too closely, and are thus caught in that race’s decline. (Note that he emphasizes that every individual must be treated as a special case, however, and not treated according to their genetic heritage.)
• He speaks of the tragic inevitability that the Native Americans, to whom he attributes an unusually highly developed spirituality, but one preserved through a hardening of the organism, would be extinguished or uprooted. He suggests that Native Americans, extirpated by the European population that colonized America, would be or already were being reborn as Europeans, and that the larger part of the West and Central European population at the beginning of the 20th century had lived in their previous lives as Native Americans.

Peoples

• He speaks of the Mongolian and Japanese peoples having "not descended so deeply, nor have they entangled themselves so much in the physical plane nor done so much towards its conquest as the people of Europe." He connects this with their being a civilization, that had retained certain qualities from Atlantean (Cenozoic time), but remained stationary, and later degenerated. "
• He speaks of Europe being in decline as a civilization, that it causes cultural damage, and that "everyone coming to Europe from Asia has reached the conclusion: These Europeans, they are really all barbarians."
• He speaks of the peoples of the West being very good at physical, chemical and astronomical discoveries, but lacking real productive capacities.
• He describes the mission of the Semitic peoples (note that this includes both Arab and Jewish peoples, and thus Islam and Judaism) as bringing a monotheistic/synthetic perspective as a balance to polytheism and analytic consciousness.
• He speaks of the greatest mission of the Jewish people having been to provide a body into which the Christ being (the Messiah) could incarnate, and — on one occasion — that this people's next contribution to world evolution would be to mingle itself with the rest of humanity. On another occasion, however, he speaks of the Jews having a second mission in relation to Christ: to spiritualize Christianity itself.
• He speaks of anti-Semitism being a "danger for Jews", but also "for non-Jews"; he considers anti-Semitism a sign of twisted thinking, stupidity, inferiority of spirit and showing a lack of ability to make ethical judgments. "It really doesn't matter whether someone is a Jew or a German...That's so obvious, that one is almost dumb saying it. How dumb then must someone be who says the opposite!"
• Yet he said "It certainly cannot be denied that Jewry today still behaves as a closed totality, and as such it has frequently intervened in the development of our current state of affairs in a way that is anything but favorable to European ideas of culture. But Jewry itself has long since outlived its time; it has no more justification within the modern life of peoples, and the fact that it continues to exist is a mistake of world history whose consequences are unavoidable. We do not mean the forms of the Jewish religion alone, but above all the spirit of Jewry, the Jewish way of thinking."

Other

• He states "But, gentlemen, we already today have come somewhat to a time of old age weakness of the Earth. Therefore all of humanity has become weaker with regard to the force that pushes nourishment through the body. Who must therefore [logically] first disappear from the Earth? The black [eyed and haired] ones have more stamina; they have a larger pushing force. The blond ones have a lesser pushing force, and [therefore] will perish earlier." "You see, when we really study science and history, we must conclude that if people become increasingly strong, they will also become increasingly stupid. If the blonds and blue-eyed people die out, the human race will become increasingly dense if men do not arrive at a form of intelligence that is independent of blondness. Blond hair actually bestows intelligence. ... It is indeed true that the more the fair individuals die out the more will the instinctive wisdom of humans vanish."

The significance of racial heterogeny

Finally, Steiner connects the very possibility of Christ's appearance on Earth with an inter-racial culture:

'Christ could be born in Galilee just because members of many peoples from various parts of the world were assembled in one spot; there was far less blood relationship, and, above all, far less faith in this [i.e. these relationships] than in Judea, in the narrow circle of the Hebrew people. Galilee was a heterogenous racial mixture....Christ's task was intimately connected with this mixing of blood.'

The bridge between individuality and race or ethnicity

In an early pre-Anthroposophy (1894) essay, Steiner defined his understanding of the relationship between the individual and his or her inherited characteristics as follows:

A racial group is a totality and all the people belonging to it bear the characteristic features that are inherent in the nature of the group. How the single member is constituted, and how he or she will behave, are determined by the character of the racial group. Therefore the physiognomy and conduct of the individual have something generic about them. If we ask why some particular thing about a person is like this or like that, we are referred back from the individual to the genus. The genus explains why something in the individual appears in the form we observe.

The human being, however, makes him- or herself free from what is generic....A person develops qualities and activities of his or her own, and the basis for these we can seek only in the person him/herself. What is generic in a person serves only as a medium in which to express his or her own individual being. Any person uses as a foundation the characteristics that nature has provided, and to these each gives a form appropriate to his or her own being. If we seek in the generic laws the reasons for an expression of this being, we seek in vain. We are concerned with something purely individual which can be explained only in terms of itself. If a person has achieved this emancipation from all that is generic, and we are nevertheless determined to explain everything about him in generic terms, then we have no sense for what is individual.

It is impossible to understand a human being completely if one takes the concept of genus as the basis of one's judgment.

— Steiner

To bridge the span between Steiner's general opposition to race and ethnicity as factors in judging individuals and his statements about particular races and ethnic groups, Steiner's four-fold view of the human being can be helpful. According to Steiner, the human being is composed of:

• a physical body, initially determined by the genetics of inheritance (and thus connected with the race) but transformed by the individual to a greater or lesser extent over the course of life;
• an organization of life-processes and habits, initially formed by the language and traditions in which the individual is brought up (and thus connected with the ethnic group), later transformed and individualized to a greater or lesser extent by the person; Steiner often used the terms etheric body or life body to describe this organization;
• a pattern of consciousness initially determined by the culture but transformed and individualized to a greater or lesser extent over the course of a person's life; Steiner often used the term astral body or sentient body to describe this pattern;
• an ego or individuality, bringing from the spiritual world capacities and intentions unique to this person, and which are manifested and realized through the physique, life and consciousness of the human being.

Thus, racial, ethnic and cultural characteristics provide a starting point for the individual's development, but never adequately describe his or her living reality. Not only does each individual begin life with a unique constellation of determined characteristics from these sources, he or she also comes with completely unique characteristics - especially intentions and capacities - from previous lives manifesting through the ego itself. Thus, from the anthroposophical point of view,

"The true problem behind racism is modern materialism. An attitude that divides human beings according to bodily characteristics comes out of the conviction that the body is the most important, or even the essential aspect of a person. The final consequence of materialism is the identification of the human being with his or her physical existence. The result of this identification is racism, which takes all statements about a person's physical qualities as statements about the person as a whole."

Metamorphosis in Steiner's descriptions of races

Beginning in 1904, Steiner began to speak using an essentially theosophical vocabulary about "root races" and "sub races" of root races, that represented a human evolution that stretched back from far prehistoric, mythological times and refer to the stages of humanity during the development of our present solar system (Steiner speaks of Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian, and Atlantean ages preceding all historical records, closely following Blavatsky in this respect). The "sub races of Atlantis", that in Steiner's view reflect the development of mankind during Tertiary and Quaternary, (Cenozoic time), were referred to as "Rmoahals", "Tlavatli", "Original Toltecs", "Original Turanians", "Original Semites", "Original Akkadians" and "Original Mongoles".

By 1906, Steiner had begun to distance him from the use of "root races" and "sub races of root races" to describe this evolution, by 1907 he had ceased to make any more use of these terms, and by late 1909 he described this vocabulary as a "childhood illness of the theosophical movement", and stated that "The concept of race ceases to have any significance specifically in our time." He no longer used the term race to describe a chronological succession of cultures during post-glacial time. He began instead to speak about the "cultural epochs" of prehistorical and historical time, naming these after what he considered the dominant culture of each historical period: an original Indian epoch, an original Persian epoch, an Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonean cultural epoch, a Greco-Roman and modern epoch.

Steiner continued to speak about the "five races" present in modern times in various areas of the earth: the black race, the brown or Malay race, the yellow or Oriental race, the white or Caucasian race, and the red (Native American) race. While he considered the human forms, that developed as the "sub races of Atlantis" as a normal form of sequential "race" formation during "Atlantis" (Cenozoic time), he considered the formation of all of the "five main races of mankind" during the time to constitute an abnormal form of race formation, that increasingly will disappear during the coming 5,000 years.

Recent Charges of Racism

Report by the Anthroposophical Society's Commission on Racism

In 1998, the Dutch Anthroposophical Society created a highly biased commission of academics closely connected to anthroposophy to "investigate" whether Steiner made racist comments and whether racism existed in anthroposophy or Waldorf schools. This was in response to very valid charges that some Dutch Waldorf schools were teaching racist material.

The chair of the commission was Ted A. van Baarda, director of the Humanitarian Law Consultancy in The Hague. He studied international public law at Leyden State University and completed his thesis at the University of Twente in 1992 on the subject of colliding human rights. In 1993 to 1994 he served as General Secretary of the Conference on the Rights of Children in Armed Conflict and subsequently organized a conference on civil-military cooperation. He teaches at the Military Staff College (Instituut Defensie Leergangen Ypenburg) near The Hague and, on an occasional basis, at the Netherlands Institute on International Relations "Clingendael." He has written widely in journals and the popular media on issues of international law and morality.

The commission "investigated" every one of Steiner's comment in the over 350 published volumes of his writings, lectures and letters which they "believed to be relevant". Their (not surprising) conclusions follow:

• The Commission emphasizes that Rudolf Steiner's concept of man is based on the equality of all individuals, and not on some supposed superiority of one race over another.

• The conclusion of the Commission is that sixteen statements, if they were in public by a person on his or her own authority, could be a violation of the prohibition of racial discrimination under the Criminal Code of the Netherlands.

• The Commission finds again that any suggestion that racism is an inherent part of Anthroposophy, or that conceptually Steiner helped prepare the way for the holocaust, has proven to be categorically wrong. As a matter of fact, the investigation of the Commission shows that, beginning in the year 1900, he clearly spoke and wrote against the dangers of anti-Semitism, including in the periodical of a then existing German association against anti-Semitism existing at that time.

In a widely-published event, the Commission announced on February 4, 1998, that there was no ground for accusations that the work of Steiner contains a racial doctrine or any statements made with the purpose of insulting persons or groups of people on the basis of their race. These controversial (to say the least) findings have been refuted by Steiner's own words.

As to Waldorf education, the Commission (again, not surprisingly) concluded, in agreement with the prior judgment of Dutch Government Education Inspectors (Onderwijsinspectie), that racism does not exist there. The Commission did, however, acknowledge the existence until quite recently of a custom of stereotyping in the subject of ethnology [in the Dutch schools in particular], which could lead to discrimination and which must be prevented. As has been previously reported, the [Dutch] Waldorf schools took measures against this in 1995 and supplemented these in 1998 with their own anti-discrimination code and an "independent" commission that monitors compliance.

Hansson article

In his article The Racial Teachings of Rudolf Steiner Professor Sven Ove Hansson states:

• If you are a serious student of Steiner's writings, it quickly becomes obvious that the question of human races was not immaterial. Steiner returned again and again, and often in a quite detailed manner, to the origins and characteristics of human races. This is an important part of his writings on the progress and development of humanity.

• The physiological characteristics which traditionally (but quite in conflict with modern biology) is called a human race are achieved through heritance. Steiner, who did not believe in biological Evolution, thought that it was only recent that the racial characteristics became hereditary. His spiritual science showed that "historically, the racial characteristics came from where people were born".

• In a different context, he described the blacks as "the last remnants of the group of humans by which the intestines are hardened", and wrote further:

"But the people that didn't develop their id, that was too exposed to the influence of the sun, they were like plants: They produced far too much carbon under their skin - and became black. That is why the negroes are black."

• The "race" which Steiner described in positive terms was - not surprisingly - the white one. When listing the different "races," he described how they were inflicted by "hardening" of different organs. The list ended with those people who "did not become hardened at all." They were found in "those areas that comprise of today's Europe and Asia."

• Elsewhere, he stated that "the most mature characteristics are found in the European area. It is simply (a natural) law."

• According to Steiner's teachings on soul travel, the same soul could assume different "races" in different lives. What race it would be depended on how you behaved in the previous life. "A soul can be incarnated in any race, but if this soul doesn't become evil, it doesn't need to be reincarnated in a descending race, it will reincarnate later in an ascending race."

He concludes that to remove the racial teaching from Anthroposophy is no easy task. "What is at stake is the very foundation of the movement, namely the belief in Rudolf Steiner's spirit visions as a source of knowledge."

Some comments by Steiner on race and ethnicity, in chronological order

"Those who judge human beings according to generic characteristics only reach the boundary, beyond which people begin to be beings whose activity is based on free self-determination....Characteristics of race, tribe, ethnic group and gender are subjects for special sciences....But all these sciences cannot penetrate through to the special nature of the individual. Where the realm of freedom of thought and action begin, the determination of individuals according to generic laws ends."

"Value should be attached solely to the mutual exchange between individuals. It is irrelevant whether someone is a Jew or a German ... This is so obvious that one feels stupid even putting it into words. So how stupid must one be to assert the opposite!"

"I have never been able to see anti-Semitism as anything except a view that indicates in those who hold it an inferiority of spirit, a lack of ability to make ethical judgments and a tastelessness ... that is an insult to any normal way of thinking."

"Anti-Semitism is a mockery of all belief in ideas. It is a mockery especially of the idea that humanity rises above any specialized form (tribe, race, nation) in which this humanity expresses itself."

"Anti-Semitism is not only a danger for Jews, it is also a danger for non Jews. It arises out of a way of thinking that does not seriously strive for sound, straightforward judgments. Anti-Semitism promotes this way of thinking. And anyone who thinks philosophically should not just observe that passively. The belief in ideas will only return to prevalence if we oppose the contrary unbelief in all areas as energetically as possible.“

"The most important principle adopted by the theosophical movement is: to form itself into the core of a general fraternity amongst all human beings built on the love of one's fellows. In doing this the theosophical movement will comprehensively prepare human beings for a world view in which not mutual struggle but love is the creative and formative element."

"In regard to present humanity ... it no longer makes sense to speak simply of the development of the races. In the true sense of the word this development of the races applies only to the Atlantean epoch ... External physiognomies then differed so greatly that one could actually speak of different forms ... In our own epoch the concept of race will gradually disappear along with all the differences that are relics of earlier times. Thus everything that exists today in connection with the [different] races are relics of the differentiation that took place in Atlantean times. We can still speak of races but only in the sense that the real concept of races is losing its validity."

"In primeval ages of humanity love occurred between those linked together by the bonds of consanguinity, and very great importance was attached to love having this physical basis of blood relatedness. Christ came in order to spiritualize this love, in order on the one hand to detach it from the bonds in which consanguinity enveloped it, and on the other in order to bring in the strength and impulse for spiritual love [...] 'Galilean' signifies 'the one of mixed race'. Christ Jesus goes to Galilee, to those who are most mixed. From that which comes into being in reproduction through mixing there will arise what is not bound to the physical basis of love."

“On the day when it comes about that the Brahmin not only loves and understands the Brahmin, the Pariah the Pariah, the Jew the Jew, and the Christian the Christian; but when the Jew is able to understand the Christian, the Pariah the Brahmin, the American the Asiatic, as a human being, and put himself in his place, then one will know how deeply it is felt in a Christian way when we say: 'All human beings must feel themselves to be brothers, no matter what their religious creed may be.' ”

"[Jesus felt]: All the forces of soul which I believed had been bestowed upon me lead only to the realisation that in the evolution of the Jewish people there is no longer the capacity to reach the heights of Divine revelations."

"... as regards ... what is independent of our bodily makeup we are all individually made; each one of us is his or her own self, an individual. With the exception of the far less important differences that show up as racial or national differences ... but which are (if you have a sense for this you cannot help noticing it) mere trifles by comparison with differences in individual gifts and skills: with the exception of these we are all equal as human beings ... as regards our external, physical humanity. We are equal as human beings, here in the physical world, specifically in that we all have the same human form and all manifest a human countenance. The fact that we all bear a human countenance and encounter one another as external, physical human beings... this makes us equal on this footing. We differ from one another in our individual gifts which, however, belong to our inner nature."

“And it is national chauvinism that is ringing through the whole civilized world today. This is merely the social counterpart of the utterly reactionary world-view that tries to trace everything back to inherited characteristics.”

"[T]he representative people for the development of the consciousness soul, hence for what matters particularly in our age, is the Anglo-Saxon nation. The Anglo-Saxon people are those who through their whole organization are predisposed to develop the consciousness soul to a special degree. The prominent position occupied by the Anglo-Saxon nation in our time is indeed due to the fact that this nation is especially suited for the development of the consciousness soul."

”Those who are fanatics and find their way into Anthroposophy through their fanaticism rather than through their inner life are the very ones who select the sharpest terms of abuse for all that is American ... It is not our task as Europeans to grumble about the Americans all the time, for it is up to us to found a civilization across the whole earth that is put together out of all that is best.”

"No doubt about it, the soul becomes corrupted through using the French language...It is also possible at the present time that the French will even ruin their own blood, the very element which has kept their language going as a corpse. That is a terrible thing the French people are doing to other people, the frightful cultural brutality of transplanting black people to Europe. It affects France itself worst of all. This has an incredibly strong effect on the blood, the race. This will substantially add to French decadence. The French nation will be weakened as a race."

"[W]e are not justified in thinking that human beings were originally like the savages of today. The savages have developed into what they now are--with their superstitions, their magical practices and their unclean appearance--from states originally more perfect. The only superiority we have over them is that, while starting from the same conditions, we did not degenerate as they did. I might therefore say: The evolution of man has taken two paths. It is not true that the savages of today represent the original condition of mankind. Mankind, though to begin with it looked more animal-like, was highly civilized. ... Just as the present savages have fallen from the level of the human beings of primeval times, so the apes are beings who have fallen still lower."

“... In spiritual culture Asians are today still ahead of Europeans. And if we in Europe cannot find anything better than what the Asians already have by way of a piritual culture, then why should one take missions and suchlike to Asia in the first place? They are not needed there!”

"Something has to be accessible to every person without distinction of race, ethnic group, class, etc. to be contemporary today." Further: "The Zionist movement separates a part out of the whole of humanity. For this simple, obvious reason such a movement is not possible today."

"[T]he European sort of invention is impossible for either the Chinese or the Japanese."

Undated

“The first thing Europeans should learn is that they must not just carry their knowledge to Asia; they should learn very attentively what the Asians know. Then they would know, for example, what Tibetan wisdom is. So then they would not tell the Asians things in the old way but in the new way, making use of what Tibetan wisdom is. By respecting the culture of the others they would achieve something. This is what Europe must learn."

"Seeing how Europeans carry on over in Asia really makes one sweat blood. What they do destroys everything Asia has and leads absolutely nowhere. The real trouble of course is that Europe itself is in trouble and that it is difficult to imagine how Europe will ever be able to get out of this trouble. The great trouble is that Europe itself is in decline and that it cannot get away from all the cultural damage in which it is stuck if people do not make up their minds to take on a genuine culture of the spirit. Many people still do not believe this. And this is how it has come about that everyone coming to Europe from Asia has reached the conclusion: These Europeans, they are really all barbarians."

“... They have reached this conclusion because so much of the ancient wisdom of the spirit and the ancient knowledge of the spirit has still been preserved in Asia; because of this, what Europeans know appears to Asians to be childish. All the things so much admired in Europe appear terribly childish to people in Asia!"