The Four Temperaments:

by Rudolf Steiner

1 lecture, Berlin on March 4, 1909 (CW 57) “The two streams in the human being combine to produce what is commonly known as a person’s temperament. Our inner self and our inherited traits comingle in it. Temperament is an intermediary between what connects us to an ancestral line and what we bring with us.... Temperament strikes a balance between the eternal and the ephemeral.” ― Rudolf Steiner From personal spiritual insight, Rudolf Steiner renews and broadens the ancient teaching of the four temperaments. He explains how each person’s mixture of temperaments is shaped, usually with one dominating. Steiner provides lively descriptions of the passive, comfort-seeking phlegmatic; the fickle, flitting sanguine; the pained, gloomy melancholic; and the fiery, assertive choleric. He also offers practical suggestions for teachers and parents in addressing the differing manifestations of the temperaments in children, as well as advice intended for adults’ personal development.

Genres: Spirituality, Philosophy, Psychology, Nonfiction, Parenting

40 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Author 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.

Reviews

[César Haro · Rating 2 out of 5]

El intento de estructurar alrededor de una teoría de la mente lo que parecen notas sueltas es fragilísimo. ¡Y eso que la teoría propuesta parece tener potencial! La editorial antroposófica debería reeditar las obras de Steiner en una recopilación que tenga mayor sentido práctico, mayor carácter didáctico y ejemplos actualizados.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessante come opera, non di facilissima comprensione secondo me. Necessità di una lettura con calma e non troppo frettolosa.

[Konstantin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Temperament can be defined as the two streams (heredity [our present life] and reincarnation [our past lives]) combining to give our personality "special coloring".

4 basic temperaments:
1. Choleric
2. Sanguine
3. Phlegmatic
4. Melancholic

Each person is a combination of different temperaments, with one temperament being dominant.

"It is one of life's important tasks to direct and guide the temperaments. But to carry this out properly we need to observe one basic principle: always to work with what is there, not with what is not".

We cannot change our temperament. We must accept our innate temperament and then we can learn to display it under the right circumstances. For example "Melancholics should not close their eyes to life's pain but rather seek it out; should feel compassion to redirect their suffering outwards".

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rudolf Steiner can be difficult to read. Once you start to read though the book transforms you. This book is very helpful in defining the temperaments. If you study human personality at all I highly recommend you read this book.

[Melsinyork · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard work to read. Interesting but not gripping

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly insightful, but I wish Steiner offered more depth in defining each of the temperaments.

[Jennet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea.