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.
...
https://substack.com/@footnotes2plato/note/c-196808250
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.