Reverent Impiety: Reading Steiner's Christian Cosmology Against His Racialism

This talk affirms Dan McKanan's suggestion that the "hermeneutic of reverence" practiced by good-willed proponents of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy "might require a dose of antiracist critique" if the movement is to persist. Careful study of Steiner’s published works and lectures reveals that his evolutionary vision includes racialist categories as the temporary outcome of descending further into solidity than providence intended. While Steiner claimed race ceased to be a force during the Atlantean epoch and would disappear in the sixth Post-Atlantean period, his writings contain inconsistencies. At times, he envisions racial unity through mutual participation in the divine Anthropos; at others, he stresses the essential differences among races, associating them with distinct moral and spiritual capacities. The notion that karmic destiny is tied to racial genealogy provides a framework for legitimizing white supremacist paternalism a posteriori.

Rather than wholly dismiss Steiner as a white supremacist, this talk critiques his racial doctrine from within his Christian cosmology, arguing that the universality of Christ’s salvation contradicts racial hierarchies. Steiner’s inconsistencies raise broader epistemological questions: how much faith should one place in someone who claimed to report unfiltered spiritual facts when his racialist statements suggest otherwise? 

But perhaps, as Robert McDermott has suggested, there is an ironic silver lining here: “while these unenlightened statements are truly regrettable, they could have the positive effect of helping some of Steiner's followers free themselves from the fundamentalist assumption that his words should be taken as unquestioned truths instead of, as Steiner intended, progress reports to be continually checked and improved by subsequent exoteric and esoteric researchers.” The future of anthroposophy may rest upon whether its practitioners are willing to acknowledge and adequately address the issue of racialism and yet still aspire to bring the fruitful method articulated by Steiner forward by improving upon the progress reports he set forth over 100 years ago.