Synopsis "The History and Actuality of Imperialism "

In 1920 Rudolf Steiner had already foreseen that the future imperialism would be economic rather than military or nationalistic. In these three lectures he describes the history of imperialism from ancient times to the present and into the future. The anglo-american would play an increasingly important role in future developments, so the English visitors who attended must have been especially attentive. These lectures are the 16th, 17th and 18th of 18 lectures in the lecture series entitled, Spiritual and Social Transformations in Human Evolution, published in German as, Geistige und Soziale Wandlungen in der Menschheitsenticklungen. They were given by Rudolf Steiner on February 20-22 1920, at Dornach, Switzerland. From Gasumptausgabe (collected works) #196.

Rudolf Steiner

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Rudolf Steiner (Donji Kraljevec, Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Croatia, February 25 or 27, 1861-Dornach, Switzerland, March 30, 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, literary scholar, educator, artist, playwright, social thinker, and occultist. He was the founder of anthroposophy, Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophic medicine, and the new artistic form of eurythmy.

He described anthroposophy as follows: Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge that would like to lead the spiritual in man to the spiritual in the universe. Those who feel certain questions about the essence of man and the world as a vital necessity as the one felt when we are hungry and thirsty can be anthroposophists.

Steiner proposed a form of ethical individualism, to which he later added a more explicitly spiritual component. He derived his epistemology from the worldview of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, according to which thought is an organ of perception just like the eye or the ear. Just as the eye perceives colors and the ear sounds, so thought perceives ideas.

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