Tag: Anthroposophy
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Sacred Hospitality and the Dynamics of Initiation: Dialogue with Orland Bishop
This transcript is an abridged version of Orland and Matt’s conversation. For the full two hours, including dialogue with CIIS students, see the video at the bottom of this post. Abridged transcript: Orland Bishop: Thank you so very much. Since the inspiration to have this forum and arriving here this evening, so much has unfolded in…
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Roberto Unger’s Religious Revolution and Its Anthroposophical Resonances
I picked up Roberto Unger’s book The Religion of the Future (2014) for the first time yesterday. On the back cover of his book, this excerpt is printed: Everything in our existence points beyond itself. We must nevertheless die. We cannot grasp the ground of being. Our desires are insatiable. Our lives fail adequately to express our…
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The Evolution of Consciousness and the Destiny of America (Dialogue with Formscapes)
In a spontaneous three-hour livestream, Kehlan and Matt explored the thoughts of influential thinkers and the implications of America’s Pluto Return. They discussed consciousness evolution, materialism’s challenges, and the spiritual mission of the U.S. They expressed concerns over populism and the need for a moral vision amidst societal fragmentation, emphasizing a harmonious approach to spirituality…
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Becoming Michael’s Companions: Reflections on the Age of the Consciousness Soul
In October of 1922, Rudolf Steiner met with about 80 young people between the ages of 18 and 25 in Stuttgart to deliver a series of 13 lectures that have since been translated and published as Becoming the Archangel Michael’s Companions: Rudolf Steiner’s Challenge to the Younger Generation. Below are my fragmentary comments on the text. Steiner…
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Rudolf Steiner and the Dream of External Matter: Toward a Physiosophy of the Senses
Over the weekend, I gave a talk at the Mysteries of Technology Conference: “Etheric Imagination as Participatory Knowing“ Unfortunately, I had to skip a few slides due to time constraints, so I wanted to share those ideas here. Below is something of an addendum to that talk, so a lot of what follows will make…
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Rudolf Steiner’s Threefold Social Organism
An abridged transcript of my talk is below. For a more in depth look at social threefolding, you can also check out my article “The Urgency of Social Threefolding in a World Still At War With Itself” (2023). I am grateful for the invitation to share a bit about the threefold social organism, or social threefolding…
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Etheric Imagination as Participatory Knowing: A Process-Relational Reading of Rudolf Steiner’s “Light Course”
Transcript: It’s really lovely to be here this morning, though it’s quite early for me. I’ve been enjoying the last three days of the Mysteries of Technology conference very much, and I’m very grateful to have been invited. I think what MysTech is doing is important, not only for the wider world to see the ways in…
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Artificial Intelligence, Moral Imagination, and Spiritual Evolution (dialogue with Roman Campolo)
Roman and I had another wide-ranging dialogue. Topics traversed include:
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Debating the Place of the Human in Cosmology with Brendan Graham Dempsey
After some back and forth in his Facebook group, Brendan was gracious enough to invite me on his Metamodernism podcast to discuss several core ideas, including the nature of scientific inquiry, the role of human experience in understanding the cosmos, and the limitations of mechanistic models in science. We discussed the intersection of philosophy, science,…
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Summary Reflections on Rudolf Steiner’s “Interdisciplinary Astronomy” (GA 323)
Our Urphänomen reading group is back in action, this time reading Steiner’s lecture cycle titled Interdisciplinary Astronomy (1921, GA 323). Frederick Amrine recently published a wonderful new translation. Earlier this week I summarized lecture 5 (video above). Below is a rough transcript of my reflections: The key issue here for Steiner is that we need…
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From German Idealism to Anthroposophy: The Spiritual Scientist Podcast
Mick Young invited me on his Spiritual Scientist podcast to discuss the importance of German Idealism in Rudolf Steiner’s development. I introduce the concept of ‘etheric imagination’ as a form of cognition by which we can consciously participate in the formative forces responsible for generating living organisms, including our own bodies. Participating in these etheric…
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The End of “Philosophy of Freedom”
Our study of Steiner’s book isn’t merely an intellectual exercise; it represents a form of fellowship that has been palpable throughout our journey. Even though it’s saddening to conclude today, remember that we are merely finishing this book, with much more lying ahead of us. My lecture focuses on the final chapter, “The Consequences of…
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Topological Inversions in the Life, Death, and Rebirth of Human Beings (lecture by Rudolf Steiner during WW1)
Rudolf Steiner Nachlass-VerwaltungTranslated by ChatGPT4 GA 174b – Lecture Eight Stuttgart, March 15, 1916 CLICK HERE FOR A PDF OF THIS LECTURE TRANSCRIPT The last time we spoke here, during my previous presence, we examined some spiritual facts that relate to the life of the human soul after the human has passed through the gateway…
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Rudolf Steiner and Racism
Update Jan 31, 2024: The conversation continues on our Urphänomen Substack page. As a teacher, I do my best to actively encourage deep and sustained dialogue about the racism, implicit or explicit, that shows up in the statements or actions of any figure studied with my students. Many modern European and American thinkers, including all…
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Thinking with Rudolf Steiner
It is hard to believe I’ve been thinking with Steiner for almost 15 years. He is, as the late BBC documentarian and author Jonathan Stedall put it in the title of his 2011 biopic, a “challenge.” In contemporary German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s words: Steiner created a kind of antenna anthropology that we can no longer…
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Urphänomen Reading Group – Rudolf Steiner’s “Riddles of Philosophy”
Below is a playlist featuring the recordings of our Urphänomen Reading Group, which is open to anyone interested (message us on Patreon or email archetypalphenomenon@gmail.com to join). New sessions will be added to this playlist as we go. We are reading the works of Rudolf Steiner, starting with Riddles of Philosophy. Next we’ll be reading…
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The brain is not a computer, and thinking is not information-processing.
Sharing an email response to a question I received about the possibility of explaining human consciousness computationally, and whether such explanations might be compatible with Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science. I do not think the computational paradigm has much to teach us about the sort of Sophianic consciousness Steiner attempted to unveil. I summarized my thoughts…
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Robert McDermott & Matt Segall on Rudolf Steiner’s 12 Ways of seeing the world
see also: Foreword to an upcoming anthroposophical book on twelve ways of seeing the world
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Foreword to an upcoming anthroposophical book on twelve ways of seeing the world
Below is the draft of a foreword I’ve coauthored with Robert McDermott. The book, Twelve Ways of Seeing the World by Mario Betti, should be out later this year via Hawthorn Press. Betti’s book builds fruitfully upon the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. You can read Steiner’s original lectures on the topic of the 12 human worldviews…
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Saul Bellow on Rudolf Steiner, Boredom, Sleep, and Death
Wanted to share this before going to bed. Here are a few words about “the famous but misunderstood Dr. Rudolf Steiner” from Bellow’s Pulitzer Prize winning work of fiction Humboldt’s Gift: It wasn’t that I minded giving information to honest scholars, or even to young people on the make, but I just then was busy, fiercely, painfully busy–personally…
Footnotes2Plato 