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Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner #CW 271
Art and Theory of Art: Foundations of a New Aesthetics (CW 271) (Volume 271)
An Author’s Summary, 1888
Four Essays Written between 1890 and 1898
Eight Lectures between 1909 and 1921 (CW 271) “The challenge of saying something about art was personal for Rudolf Steiner. He experienced it as deeply connected with his biography. It is not for nothing that, in the last lecture of this volume, he points to his repeated attempts to develop a new approach and new forms of expression for speaking about art. We find at least three forms of this attempted approach in this book.” ― Zvi Szir (from the introduction) The subject, practice, and vital importance of art was a thread that ran through Rudolf Steiner’s life, from his early work as a scholar of Goethe, through his time as an editor of a literary and arts journal in Berlin in the 1890s, and to his two and a half decades as a spiritual researcher and teacher. Understanding and articulating the significance of art was a perennial challenge for Rudolf Steiner. This volume of Steiner’s Collected Works is unique in that it showcases a survey of both early written works and later lectures to anthroposophic audiences, and in doing so presents a picture of a lifetime of intensive effort to convey something essential about the arts. Beginning with his early philosophical work and literary criticism at the end of the nineteenth century and on into his later lectures, this volume follows Steiner’s endeavor to reveal in words the mystery obscured by the vague concept of what “art” is. Viewed as a whole, this volume forms one of the most provocative collections of the twentieth century on the subject of art. It offers a unique analysis of the origin, foundation, and method of the creative process. This book is a translation of Kunst und Grundlagen einer neuen Ästhetik, 3rd edition, published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland, 2010 (GA 271).
Four Essays Written between 1890 and 1898
Eight Lectures between 1909 and 1921 (CW 271) “The challenge of saying something about art was personal for Rudolf Steiner. He experienced it as deeply connected with his biography. It is not for nothing that, in the last lecture of this volume, he points to his repeated attempts to develop a new approach and new forms of expression for speaking about art. We find at least three forms of this attempted approach in this book.” ― Zvi Szir (from the introduction) The subject, practice, and vital importance of art was a thread that ran through Rudolf Steiner’s life, from his early work as a scholar of Goethe, through his time as an editor of a literary and arts journal in Berlin in the 1890s, and to his two and a half decades as a spiritual researcher and teacher. Understanding and articulating the significance of art was a perennial challenge for Rudolf Steiner. This volume of Steiner’s Collected Works is unique in that it showcases a survey of both early written works and later lectures to anthroposophic audiences, and in doing so presents a picture of a lifetime of intensive effort to convey something essential about the arts. Beginning with his early philosophical work and literary criticism at the end of the nineteenth century and on into his later lectures, this volume follows Steiner’s endeavor to reveal in words the mystery obscured by the vague concept of what “art” is. Viewed as a whole, this volume forms one of the most provocative collections of the twentieth century on the subject of art. It offers a unique analysis of the origin, foundation, and method of the creative process. This book is a translation of Kunst und Grundlagen einer neuen Ästhetik, 3rd edition, published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland, 2010 (GA 271).
240 pages, Paperback
Published October 19, 2021
About the author
Rudolf Steiner
4,454 books1,130 followersAuthor also wrote under the name Rudolph Steiner.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 9, 2023
"Only through living artistically into the full human soul do you struggle upward into the regions of the sphere toward which knowledge strives."
Spiritually enlightening, beautifully focused on the abyss of the in-between, how that abyss provides answers if we ever figure out how to properly explore it. Just a little plagued by the Kantian method of putting everything into symmetrical, logical, connective boxes, instead of just letting things/arguments be asymmetric lol.
"But as true as it is that we must sin when using such a phrase, 'Create, artists, do not speak.' so it is equally true, I believe, that we always have to atone for such a sin, that we always must try, when talking about the arts, to create in speaking. Create, artists, do not speak; and if, as a human being, you are required to speak about the arts, then try to speak creatively, to create in your speaking."
Steiner's essay/lecture "The Being of the Arts" (my favorite from this book) illustrates this idea brilliantly. He conveyed something by speaking artistically, poetically, almost better than he did with his philosophical, argument-based lectures. A beautiful, spiritual, bible-like story about embodying the arts, using them as reflections of parts of our soul.
Spiritually enlightening, beautifully focused on the abyss of the in-between, how that abyss provides answers if we ever figure out how to properly explore it. Just a little plagued by the Kantian method of putting everything into symmetrical, logical, connective boxes, instead of just letting things/arguments be asymmetric lol.
"But as true as it is that we must sin when using such a phrase, 'Create, artists, do not speak.' so it is equally true, I believe, that we always have to atone for such a sin, that we always must try, when talking about the arts, to create in speaking. Create, artists, do not speak; and if, as a human being, you are required to speak about the arts, then try to speak creatively, to create in your speaking."
Steiner's essay/lecture "The Being of the Arts" (my favorite from this book) illustrates this idea brilliantly. He conveyed something by speaking artistically, poetically, almost better than he did with his philosophical, argument-based lectures. A beautiful, spiritual, bible-like story about embodying the arts, using them as reflections of parts of our soul.
Displaying 1 of 1 review