AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jan 09, 2026 6:13 pm
I only listened to Segall's. It was heavy on philosophical correspondences with Whitehead, as usual. Phenomenological prompts were generally absent. I think some of the other presentations leaned pretty strongly into what JvH discussed above, criticizing Steiner for being a 'child of his times', which they imagine influenced his spiritual scientific claims about racial differentiations.
Now reading Segall's comments on the race theme. Despite the fact that he has often showed brilliant understanding of the only path philosophers can walk today (to accompany their discipline to a dignified death, so to say, in the arms of direct knowledge) he also demonstrates (not the first time) that he lacks a proper overarching grasp of Anthroposophy, in my opinion, and has not understood race. He writes:
Segall wrote:
...
What Steiner goes on to say in 174B about dark skin and the Christ impulse does not merely feel dated or awkward to me. I cannot digest it cognitively as anything but demonstrably false and morally deformed. Whatever one makes of his larger Christology (and I make of it quite a lot), it is simply not true that the capacity for Christ-inspired love is blocked by melanin. That’s precisely the kind of statement that, in my view, must be named as spiritually untrue. I say this not only out of my Americanness but as a human being striving to partake in the work of further incarnating Anthroposophia into earthly life.
...
replying to the Robert Karp, the author of one of those race-centered presentations. I have now watched the extended version of his talk (at double speed and skipping a little because he develops really slowly) and I actually found it quite good. Not mindboggling, but good as the perspective of someone who does his best to speak pedagogically to those who call Steiner racist under the effect of ignorance and misunderstanding.
"If anthroposophy is to fulfill its purpose, its prime task must be to rouse people and make them really wake up.
Merely knowing what's going on in the physical world and knowing the laws that human minds are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep, in a higher sense."
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Jan 09, 2026 6:13 pm
I only listened to Segall's. It was heavy on philosophical correspondences with Whitehead, as usual. Phenomenological prompts were generally absent. I think some of the other presentations leaned pretty strongly into what JvH discussed above, criticizing Steiner for being a 'child of his times', which they imagine influenced his spiritual scientific claims about racial differentiations.
Now reading Segall's comments on the race theme. Despite the fact that he has often showed brilliant understanding of the only path philosophers can walk today (to accompany their discipline to a dignified death, so to say, in the arms of direct knowledge) he also demonstrates (not the first time) that he lacks a proper overarching grasp of Anthroposophy, in my opinion, and has not understood race. He writes:
Segall wrote:
...
What Steiner goes on to say in 174B about dark skin and the Christ impulse does not merely feel dated or awkward to me. I cannot digest it cognitively as anything but demonstrably false and morally deformed. Whatever one makes of his larger Christology (and I make of it quite a lot), it is simply not true that the capacity for Christ-inspired love is blocked by melanin. That’s precisely the kind of statement that, in my view, must be named as spiritually untrue. I say this not only out of my Americanness but as a human being striving to partake in the work of further incarnating Anthroposophia into earthly life.
...
replying to the Robert Karp, the author of one of those race-centered presentations. I have now watched the extended version of his talk (at double speed and skipping a little because he develops really slowly) and I actually found it quite good. Not mindboggling, but good as the perspective of someone who does his best to speak pedagogically to those who call Steiner racist under the effect of ignorance and misunderstanding.
Pushing us to keep our focus on race and heredity is, in our time, one of the goals of the spirits of darkness. Karp is right when he states that whatever Steiner may have said about the differentiated tasks of different human streams and their evolution, he never meant to refer that to individuals. Individuals today are called to experience their incarnated individuality beyond their belonging to a certain stream of heredity.
Steiner wrote:These things simply are the truth, though it is a truth which people today find extremely unpalatable. For millennia, human beings have instilled the insistence on blood bonds into themselves, and out of sheer inertia they are letting the spirits of darkness take control of these habitual ideas. We therefore see insistence on tribal, national and racial relationships particularly in the nineteenth century, and this insistence is considered idealistic, when in reality it is an early sign of decline in humanity. Everything based on dominance of the blood principle meant progress for as long as it was under the authority of the spirits of light; under the authority of the spirits of darkness it is a sign of decline. The spirits of darkness made special efforts in the past to implant a rebellious feeling of independence in human beings at the time when hereditary traits were passed on in a positive sense by the progressive spirits. In the three ages of human evolution which now follow and will continue until the time of the great catastrophe, the spirits of darkness will make extreme efforts to preserve the old hereditary characteristics and inculcate human beings with the attitudes which result from such preservation; in this way they introduce the necessary signs of decline into human evolution.
I think that accusing Steiner of racism may be signaling (among other possible things) an implicit strong centeredness within the current particular incarnation, and stream of heredity. Whereas, one could say, in the large scheme of things, we are all part of all streams of heredity, if we only zoom out of our identification with the incarnated body in a particular time and place.
"If anthroposophy is to fulfill its purpose, its prime task must be to rouse people and make them really wake up.
Merely knowing what's going on in the physical world and knowing the laws that human minds are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep, in a higher sense."
I think that accusing Steiner of racism may be signaling (among other possible things) an implicit strong centeredness within the current particular incarnation, and stream of heredity. Whereas, one could say, in the large scheme of things, we are all part of all streams of heredity, if we only zoom out of our identification with the incarnated body in a particular time and place.
I actually posted a comment on Karp's article, drawing on a comment Cleric made to FB on the infamous "white skin" lecture some time ago, which basically conveyed the same thing you express above. Karp seemed to resonate with it. Another Substack acquaintance saw the comment and messaged me with the following, which also makes sense to me and seems helpful to contemplate. In all cases, I think the accusers fail to realize the race topic, and Steiner's spiritual understanding of it, is much deeper and multifaceted than they can currently imagine.
"Greetings Ashvin, I came across your response to Robert's post on Steiner's views on race and I resonated with what you wrote. I have arrived at a somewhat similar understanding, which has helped depolarize what has been shared by accounting for higher-ordered perspectives. As I understand things, the human physical form is the expression or manifestation of a collection of spiritual intents, which include everything from temperaments and gifts to biological and cultural characteristics, such as our gender, race, and nationality. What we commonly understand as 'race' is simply the outer expression of a particular idea-formation of the "I," which can cohere loosely or strongly to certain ideas that must be overcome in order to phenomenologically encounter Christ. From this view, skin color can be understood as a visual testament to this underlying relationship; while at the same time being independent of one's capacity to cohere one's "I" in a new, different fashion. In other words, it's mainly indicative, not deterministic, which is why today the 'color line,' while still present, is also diminishing by becoming increasingly 'blurred'. When we listen to mixed-race people speak about the challenges of their dual identities, we can often hear them as if they are being wrestled between race-bound consciousness and something more free. I'm also thinking about how blood, too, from this level, is not merely a fluid made up of plasma and cells, but the physical expression of the "I" and its constellation of prior intents and experiences. So our bodies are how we think. I hesitate to say race is an "initial condition" though because I can imagine more advanced souls consciously choosing a physical form without encountering the same challenges."
"They only can acquire the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol... those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in the involucrum for antennae yet to come."
"If anthroposophy is to fulfill its purpose, its prime task must be to rouse people and make them really wake up.
Merely knowing what's going on in the physical world and knowing the laws that human minds are able to perceive as operative in this world, is no more than being asleep, in a higher sense."
I think a key element underlying such presentations is a failure to suspect any alternative possibility for engaging with Steiner's observations. Of course, that failure generally stems from a lack of sensitivity to the cognitive gradient. The way I see it, the 'racist' claims that are attributed to Steiner in such a presentation are not much different than attributing the claim that the physical heart is not a pump or that the motor neurons are not directly involved in actuating will impulses. These claims are obviously erroneous if they are completely flattened to the focal plane, and we imagine Steiner is doing the same thing. In other words, the presenter fails to distinguish experiences along the gradient that are being intermixed and expressed in certain unfortunate ways (mostly due to the relatively limited intellectual lattice available for such expressions at the time).
Therefore, I think the best hope for clarifying the issues with such presenters is to draw their attention to alternative possibilities of engaging with Steiner's 'errors' and tracing them along the cognitive gradient. They have to eventually realize that there is a much deeper, spiritual scientific way of understanding how such expressions took shape, rather than lazily attributing them all to myopic cultural biases and flawed scientific assumptions that were unconsciously imported into the spiritual observations. I may try to formulate a response to the article that takes this approach. We can at least hope that it piques their interest in exploring alternative possibilities of understanding what's going on in these controversial domains.
"They only can acquire the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol... those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in the involucrum for antennae yet to come."
It's almost painful to read stuff like this. Framing the discussion in terms of "essentialism" evidences such a cursory, superficial understanding of Steiner as to render the account wholly unserious.
