The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Announcement of a Youth Section

[ 1 ] In addition to the sections already mentioned, which the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum is striving to establish, another should be added. This will be possible if the Executive Council’s intentions are met with a corresponding willingness on the other side. In every age, youth has stood in a certain contrast to old age. Many people take comfort in this truism to gloss over the phenomena of life among today’s youth.

[ 2 ] But this comfort could easily turn into disaster.

[ 3 ] We should understand today’s youth—in light of the “spirit of the times”—both in their troubling deviations and in their all-too-justified quest for something other than what the older generation offers them.

[ 4 ] First, there are the young people who are pushed into an academic career by the circumstances of their lives. They are presented with “science”—solid, reliable science that bears fruit for practical life. It would be nonsense to rail against this science, as many laypeople do. But young people’s spirits freeze in the face of this science before they have a chance to recognize its solidity, its reliability, and its fruitfulness for practical life.

[ 5 ] Science owes its greatness to a strong opposition that has driven it since the mid-19th century. At that time, people became aware of how easily human beings drift into the uncertainty of knowledge when they rise from the lowlands of research to the heights of a worldview. People believed they had witnessed cautionary examples of such an ascent.

[ 6 ] And so the aim was to free “science” from any worldview. It was to stick to the “facts” in the valleys of nature and avoid the high paths of the spirit.

[ 7 ] When people were waging opposition against that worldview, they derived a certain spiritual satisfaction from their opposition. The opponents of that worldview in the mid-19th century were elated by their fighting spirit.

[ 8 ] Today’s youth can no longer share in this joy. They can no longer stir up feelings of satisfaction in their souls by witnessing the struggle against the “uncertainty” and “herd mentality” of this worldview.

[ 9 ] After all, there is simply nothing left today to fight against. It is impossible to advocate for freeing “science” from “worldview.” For the worldview has since died out. |

[ 10 ] In contrast, however, the sensibility of youth has made a discovery. By no means a discovery of the intellect, but one that springs from the whole, undivided human nature.

[ 11 ] Young people have discovered that it is impossible to live a dignified life without a worldview. Many older people have heard the “evidence” against a worldview. They have yielded to the power of that evidence. Intellectually, young people no longer concern themselves with this power of evidence; but they instinctively sense the powerlessness of all intellectual proof when the human heart speaks from an invincible urge.

[ 12 ] Science presents itself to young people as solid and reliable; but it owes this solidity to its lack of a worldview. Young people crave a worldview. Yet science still needs young people.

[ 13 ] At the Goetheanum, the aim is to understand young people in such a way that, together with them, we seek paths to a worldview. And there is the hope that, in the light of this worldview, a true love of science will be fostered. The goal is not to lose science in worldview-based daydreaming, but rather to gain it all the more through an awakened spiritual experience.

[ 14 ] The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society asks young people if they would like to understand it as well. If it finds this understanding, then the “Section for the Spiritual Aspirations of Youth” can become a vibrant force.