"The Case for Anthroposophy" is a small book edited by Owen Barfield, containing extracts from Rudolf Steiner's "Riddles of the Soul". Barfield was a life-long student of Anthroposophy, the spiritual worldview associated with Steiner and his Anthroposophical Society. I readily admit that Barfield's translation of Steiner's article is excellent. This must be the first time the notoriously unreadable Austrian occultist speaks to us in fluent English...or fluent anything! Besides, the Steiner extracts are extremely interesting. I don't think it's a co-incidence that Barfield, who usually stayed clear of the stranger ideas of Anthroposophy (at least in his published writings), choose to translate, edit and publish a relatively sophisticated philosophical text by his spiritual mentor.
"Riddles of the Soul" is an attempt by Steiner to justify Anthroposophical "spiritual science" (really a form of paranormal clairvoyance) epistemologically. It's intended to be read by sceptics and materialists, and functions as a kind of opening to Steiner's explicitly spiritual-religious works "Occult Science" and "How to know higher worlds". The article (or at least Barfield's edited version) doesn't really make a sustained, systematic argument. Rather, Steiner throws out pointers towards a more spiritual worldview.
He makes three especially pertinent observations. First, that empiricist epistemology sooner or later comes to a point beyond which it cannot go, an impenetrable mental wall in our own minds. To modern science and materialism, these are the "limits of knowledge". Steiner observes that those who press against the wall, continuing their search for further knowledge, eventually experience a kind of breach, and gradually acquire new "spiritual organs", making it possible for them to "see" a spiritual reality previously unknown. This, I think, is correct - it's certainly "phenomenologically" correct, since seers and mystics surely do experience this particular "breach in the wall". Steiner, naturally, interprets this phenomenon as representing something real. In this context, he denies that Anthroposophy has anything to do with hallucinations, "visions" and the like. It represents a higher stage of cognition than conclusions based on mere sense-impressions, not a lower one (compare Ken Wilber's pre-trans fallacy).
Second, Steiner points out that the "representations" given to us through our sense organs only represent one dimension of the observed phenomena, and a relatively restricted one at that. The real phenomenon is "deadened" by the process of representation. Yet, we *do* experience other dimensions of the surrounding world, too, but not through our sensory organs or the nerves. Steiner speculates that we experience feelings through the respiratory system, and willing through our metabolism. The bottom line is that most of our experiences are usually subconscious (compare the "prehending" of Whitehead's process philosophy). His point, of course, is that the spiritual realities are "hidden", as it were, in these subconscious experiences, but can be brought into consciousness by spiritual training.
Third, Steiner makes a few philosophical observations. He points out that empiricism has to posit the existence of logical laws without being able to really explain their origins or validity. How can something purely sensory or corporeal be in tune with the laws of logic? Isn't the psyche's discovery of logic a purely spiritual activity? In another extract, Steiner discusses the faculty of judgment and reaches the conclusion that a "sense of hearing" is different from both "being aware of words" and "comprehending thoughts". A "hearing" per se is no more a "becoming aware of words" than touching implies seeing! The point here is that our perceptual activity must be based on more than just the five senses. Where does the ability to bestow *meaning* come from? (Compare C.S. Lewis' "dangerous idea".)
"Riddles of the Soul" also contain some more surprising statements. Steiner actually says that clairvoyant experiences aren't "literal" in the sense of being similar to observations made through sense-impression. Thus, when a clairvoyant says that he sees something "yellow" in the spiritual world, he is actually suggesting the experience of something which evokes similar feelings as the earthly colour "yellow", not that he is observing something literally yellow. Steiner distinguishes between three quite different mental processes: psychic processes leading up to a spiritual perception, spiritual perceptions themselves, and spiritual perceptions translated into the concepts of ordinary consciousness. I find this statement intriguing, since Steiner's clairvoyant investigations of the spiritual realms are notoriously detailed and, indeed, literal. As far as I understand, devout Anthroposophists do interpret them literally: Lucifer and Ahriman are real beings, Atlantis and Lemuria are real sunken continents, Old Saturn or Old Moon are real former incarnations of Earth, the Norse god Vidar really does accompany Christ in the etheric, demons with webbed feet really do live near crocus plants (sic), and so on. Yet, in Barfield's rendering, Steiner takes the more sensible position that, of course, "spiritual science" isn't literal in *this* sense, but merely attempts to render spiritual realities into earthly, sense-organ bound language! It's "real" but not literal - daimonically real, perhaps? (Compare Patrick Harpur's ideas about a daimonic reality.)
"The Case for Anthroposophy" is one of the more interesting books I've read lately, and this review can't really do it justice. I gladly give it five stars, despite not being convinced by the more concrete "case" for following Steiner in particular (I'm not an Anthroposophist, nor even a fellow traveller). I nevertheless regard many of Steiner's arguments in these extracts as almost obviously true. It seems Barfield's case for Anthroposophy is definitely stronger than unthinking materialism...
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