The nature of man : approached through the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner

THE NATURE OF MAN APPROACHED THROUGH THE PHILOSOPHY OF RUDOLF STEINER

How can we today approach this problem of human nature which has been a central issue in the culture of every age? We are living in a time intellectually dominated by the methodology of that natural science which came into existence in the 16th and 17th centuries and which has progressively transformed both our outer civilisation with its technology and our inner life of values and meanings with its compulsive materialism. This natural science has become the main factor for good and ill in our modern world and yet it remains an enigmatic factor, difficult to grasp, chaotic in its conceptions but calling forth unprecedented expenditure of material and intellectual resources. There is an understandable revulsion against the consequences of the technologies which arise from this natural scientific movement and threaten our outer civilisation and even the planet itself with disasters of many kinds. We have become alarmed by the pollution of our outer and inner environments and disgusted by the ruthless exploitation of Mother Nature in pursuit of commercial, political and military supremacies. Unfortunately much of this revulsion wishes only to go back to before this terrifying age, to a prescientific conception of things. Apart from the impossibility of putting the clock back to a time which we would certainly find morally as well as physically and intellectually unspeakably cramped and unacceptable, we should also perhaps be in danger of throwing away the baby with the bath water, were we to be able to do so. Can we hope to discover the baby, that child ofour natural science, which, to judge from the crisis of our time, is in

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