The Rudolf Steiner Archive

38. History from the Sixteenth Century to the Present, with Special Emphasis on Intellectual Life

[ 1 ] During the break following each lecture, the board took care of organizational matters and announced upcoming events. On this first evening, I was elected as the students’ representative, tasked with maintaining communication between the instructor, the students, and the board, as well as receiving and relaying requests and suggestions. […] After the break, as was customary for every lecture, a discussion ensued, which was unusually lively on this occasion. Steiner had [in his lecture]—and here I am quoting his own words from my notes—identified the epoch-making intellectual movement spearheaded by Voltaire and Rousseau as the precursor to the French Revolution. Voltaire, whom the clergy refused to grant a church funeral upon his death, but whose remains were then laid to rest by the Revolution with a magnificent funeral service in the Pantheon, thoroughly shook the traditional authority with his writings, which brought him persecution and imprisonment. Common sense laid the foundation here for a complete transformation of literary, religious, and political views. Voltaire embodied the spirit that would later break through and come to dominate during the Revolution. He may have been fickle in some respects and driven by frivolity and vanity—yet a consistent opposition to all forms of authority, which he attacked relentlessly, runs through all his writings. – Rousseau proclaimed his conception of the free development of the personality as rooted in nature with such uncompromising conviction and captivating force that he must be regarded as the greatest intellectual revolutionary of his century. His Emile was groundbreaking above all in its fundamental idea of educating people to become strong-willed individuals. He opposes mere hedonistic parasitism and sees the root of all evil in the establishment of private property. The Social Contract, with its stirring critique of the existing social order, became the standard work of the Revolution. It advocates the naturally given concept of the equality and freedom of all human beings. His writings were labeled godless, and Rousseau was able to escape arrest only by fleeing the country.

[ 2 ] Steiner, on the other hand, demonstrated through several historical periods just how much upheaval-causing events first took root and came to fruition in consciousness. It is simply the case that the architect first draws up the plans for his building; that even primitive man, before driving the first stake into the ground for his shelter, carries the location and the plan within his consciousness; that consciousness shapes existence—or that consciousness belongs to existence—and that both together come to give form to reality. Likewise, Steiner did not wish to view the task he had taken on that day as merely disseminating some knowledge and creating a storehouse of information in people’s minds; rather, he wanted to awaken independent thinking and the capacity for reflection, trusting in the powers of the will and the spirit. The ability must be awakened to recognize the demands of the times and to find the means to realize them. The social order of a bygone era—one that has outlived its usefulness and become obsolete in the present—must be reshaped. It is not enough—and here he echoes a statement by Karl Marx—it is not enough to interpret the world; one must change it. From this arises the necessity to find the insight needed for change, to develop intellectual strength and firm will—or, to put it simply: to revolutionize minds. That, and that alone, is the task of the educational system. And to conclude this debate, he quoted a verse by Friedrich Rückert:

Being does not come first and is conceived afterward;
rather, Being is brought forth by thought.
The precedence of thought over Being is evident in this:
The Creator’s thought is the inner foundation of creation.