Who is Rudolf Steiner?
Rudolf Steiner was born in Kraijevec, Austria in 1861, and died in Dornach, Switzerland in 1925. He showed early evidence of the most varied gifts – a precise, probing, scientific mind combined with a natural clairvoyant ability to see into the spiritual world, a determined need to think things out for himself, and a profound reverence for the divine.
He first made his mark as a philosopher and as the editor of Goethe’s scientific writings. He also recognized the revolutionary spirit in Nietzsche. But Steiner’s destiny led him in a different direction. Profound cognitive experiences determined that his task would be to serve the spirit. While recognizing the integrity of modern science’s phenomenological empiricism, he also knew that the time had come to extend the field of science to include investigation of the supersensible. Working at first within the Theosophical Society, but always speaking and writing out of his own experience, Steiner developed the foundations for a thoroughly modern spiritual-scientific discipline that would transform spiritual and cultural life.
In countless lectures and books, Steiner created the body of knowledge and practice known as Anthroposophy, which not only challenged and extended the underlying methods of modern knowledge, but stimulated many practical cultural initiatives, such as Waldorf education, biodynarnic agriculture, the art of eurythmy, the movement for a threefold social order, and anthroposophical medicine.