Name: The Tension Between East and West: (Cw 83)
Price: 40.01 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Steiner, Rudolf ; Steiner-Von Sivers, Marie ; Rowley, B. A.
ISBN: 9781621483274

portada The Tension Between East and West: (Cw 83)

The Tension Between East and West: (Cw 83)

Type

Physical Book

Author

Rudolf Steiner

Introduction by

Marie Steiner-Von Sivers

Translated by

B. A. Rowley

Publisher

Steiner Books

Language

English

Pages

312

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

23.4 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm

Weight

0.48 kg.

ISBN13

9781621483274

Edition No.

0002

Synopsis "The Tension Between East and West: (Cw 83)"

10 lectures at the Second International Congress of the Anthroposophical Movement, Vienna, June 1-12, 1922 (CW 83)In ordinary consciousness, we combine our thoughts logically and thus make use of thinking to know the external sensory world. Now, however, we allow thinking to enter into a kind of musical element, but one that is undoubtedly a knowledge element; we become aware of a spiritual rhythm underlying all things; we penetrate into the world by beginning to perceive it in the spirit. From abstract, dead thinking, from mere image-thinking, our thinking becomes a thinking enlivened in itself. This is the significant transition that can be made from abstract and merely logical thinking to a living thinking about which we have the feeling it is capable of shaping a reality, just as we recognize our process of growth as a living reality. -- Rudolf SteinerThis demanding set of lectures attempts to lift the veil from modern social and spiritual problems as experienced in the contrasts between East and West. By ascribing only vague and subjective validity to human thinking, modern science tries to invalidate the very faculty that gives us our human dignity. However, such "unreality" of thought images makes possible the inner freedom that scientific doctrine tends to deny in principle. The need arises from these contradictions to extend the limits of ordinary scientific thinking toward new investigative capacities.In part one, "Anthroposophy and the Sciences," Rudolf Steiner explains that this can be achieved in a healthy way through two kinds of meditative exercises very different from yoga and asceticism and ancient paths to higher knowledge. These disciplines lead to the discovery of a paradoxical truth: "If you would know yourself, look into the world. If you would know the world, look into your self." The spiritual-scientific philosophy thus presented provides a framework through which the second half of the book, "Anthroposophy and Sociology," considers how a healthy social life can be understood and formed. Today the old social instincts of humanity have grown uncertain, and the rational intellect is proving unsuited to comprehend and foster a truly human social life. While admitting that we are only beginning to discover the right relationship between individual and community, Steiner describes how a conscious spiritual life offers the same social certainties as did the earlier, "instinctual" human life. He explains how we may find a way from our highly developed sense of a personal self toward the global social organism.When the riddles of existence concern the human soul, they become not only great problems in life but life itself. They become the happiness or sorrow of human existence. And not a passing happiness or sorrow only, but one we must carry for a time through life, so that by this experience of happiness or sorrow we become fit or unfit for life. -- Rudolf SteinerThis book is a translation from German of Westliche und östliche Weltgegensätzlichkeit. Wege zu ihrer Verständigung durch Anthroposophie (GA 83, 3rd ed.), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1981.

Rudolf Steiner

(Author)

View Author's Page

Rudolf Steiner (Donji Kraljevec, Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Croatia, February 25 or 27, 1861-Dornach, Switzerland, March 30, 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, literary scholar, educator, artist, playwright, social thinker, and occultist. He was the founder of anthroposophy, Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophic medicine, and the new artistic form of eurythmy.

He described anthroposophy as follows: Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge that would like to lead the spiritual in man to the spiritual in the universe. Those who feel certain questions about the essence of man and the world as a vital necessity as the one felt when we are hungry and thirsty can be anthroposophists.

Steiner proposed a form of ethical individualism, to which he later added a more explicitly spiritual component. He derived his epistemology from the worldview of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, according to which thought is an organ of perception just like the eye or the ear. Just as the eye perceives colors and the ear sounds, so thought perceives ideas.

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