"¿Quién es Rudolf Steiner . . . para nuestro siglo XXI?"

“On the Job” / Photo from Rudolf Steiner: Eine Bildbiografie

(Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 2021)

Queridos amigos,

In preparation for the 2025 North American Section Conference that will occur May 9-12 in San Francisco, I gave this lecture to a mixed audience on March 30, 2025 — the 100th anniversary day of Rudolf Steiner’s death in Dornach, Switzerland. I especially wanted to speak to a mixed audience — some were intimately familiar with Rudolf Steiner, some only casually familiar, and some had researched Rudolf Steiner and were critical for a variety of well reasoned social/political/spiritual/cultural reasons. But, as I said in my talk: Rudolf Steiner has always provoked criticism, if not outright enmity.

I think it is important that our Section speak to 21st-century audiences with diverse opinions and diverse backgrounds. As we know, the study of literature and the practice of literature (as well as science and other humanistic disciplines) benefit from forums of open inquiry and critical questioning. This is, after all, what we find in the Greek tradition — and in the many other global wisdom traditions that have thrived over centuries and which still speak freshly to the ever-present moment of our human condition. 

(And by the way: the theme of this lecture is our conference “theme-of-the-day” on May 11 for our three-day conference that starts on May 9. This is an Open Conference. Persons are invited to attend individual days or events or performances on a donation basis. The North American Section receives no monies from the Canadian or American Anthroposophical Societies or from the Goetheanum. The Section does not collect dues. Its events and initiatives rely completely on the generosity of Section friends and members who feel a heartfelt destiny connection to this Section of the School for Spiritual Science and who may find the Section’s research and initiatives relevant and important for our 21st century. Without such generosity and spiritual friendship, nothing would happen.)

Easter morning, 2025.  4.20.25