What am I missing on Rudolph Steiner.

META: The thread concerns Jung’s critique of anthroposophy and related fields, namely the lack of provability of the assertions made therein. Jung’s critique is pasted below:

“I have also got to know very many anthroposophists and theosophists and have always discovered to my regret that these people imagine all sorts of things and assert all sorts of things for which they are quite incapable of offering any proof. I have no prejudices against the greatest marvels if someone gives me the necessary proofs. Nor shall I hesitate to stand up for the truth if I know it can be proved. But I shall guard against adding to the number of those who use unproven assertions to erect a world system no stone of which rests on the surface of this earth. So long as Steiner is or was not able to understand the Hittite inscriptions yet understood the language of Atlantis which nobody knows existed, there is no reason to get excited about anything that Herr Steiner has said…”

Response from u/Archeidos:

It’s important to remember that Jung was a psychiatrist dedicated to the methods of empirical science; and as such, he was approaching things from a perspective of a 20th century scientist.

Steiner, on the other hand: was foremost a mystic and a scientist secondarily. I consider him to be an absolute genius — but understanding him will require you to adopt a lens of a completely novel epistemology and metaphysics. He isn’t going to be for everybody, for that reason.

If you are interested in understanding him and his ‘spiritual science’ — I’d recommend his “Philosophy of Freedom” which sets the background for his epistemology. It’s there that he addresses the concern that Jung mentioned in the quote you provided.

In a further comment, the same user expands on the mode of phenomenology that Steiner had access to, and how his epistemology sprouts from that:

I think that’s a very valid concern. However, if I were to echo Steiner’s view in my own words, the issue is that… there are also valid concerns about the empiricist side of the spectrum; especially when it becomes a form of rigid empiricism (as it often does in our era).

What such an empiricist perspective does: is elevate the senses to such high repute, while often abstracting the minds role away from sense-perception. Yet, if we examine things here more closely — we find that our “senses” and our “sense-making” are inextricably linked and are co-causal… They are only “separate” via our concepts/categories.

To inquire: can one separate their senses from their “sense-making”? I think we find that we can’t. Our senses require a mind to make sense of them; and vice-versa.

Why is this relevant? Because contemporary society has engineered itself into a dominant epistemology and metaphysics which reinforces only a particular kind of “sense-making” — which is to say, a particular set of logics (or methods of cogitation) is preferred to all the other various forms of logic/cogitation.

Thus, we naturally begin to prefer formal, binary, and classical logics — which are well-suited for conveying information via vocal utterances. Alternative forms of private logic, such as doxastic, paraconsistent, intutionalistic, and others; are considered ‘unreliable’ — not necessarily because of any inherent flaw in them (cognitively speaking, they seem to use far more ‘horsepower’); but simply because others can’t easily verify/reproduce those thoughts/observations.

There is, therefore - a kind of ‘tyranny’ of the masses in our modern mode of cognition/‘sense-making’. It is a “democratic” mode of cognition — the authority is that which can be made consensus. This is empiricism in a nutshell.

In older societies; we often elevated certain individuals which were recognized as having exceptional intuitive or psychical capacities to that status of authority. As such, we had priests, sages, oracles, prophets, etc. A people/state which possessed such a mind was better suited for survival. There was a tyranny of the ‘wise persons’.

You’re right to be concerned that such a philosophy/modality is ripe with the opportunity for charlatanism. There are no doubt many charlatans who can and do look at the world as Steiner does; and lead people on for personal gain…

In my assessment; that is not what Steiner is doing. Steiner does not ask you to take his word for anything — he wants you to begin cogitating in these ways and verify them for yourself. He’s trying to remain as ‘scientific’ as this modality of consciousness allows one. He genuinely believes there are completely other dimensions of man’s phenomenology that most of mankind currently can’t access.

Needless to say… there’s a reason why this is occult and taboo, especially in academic circles. Bending people’s basic ontological notions of reality can be taken as quite unsettling…

Nonetheless, we tend to forget that there is a genuine ‘phenomenological rift’ in mankind today. Half of us believe in empirical sciences, secular humanism, and materialism — and the other half believes and experiences gods, angels, demons, paranormal encounters, aliens, and so on. This ‘rift’ is an Enlightenment era development; and sooner or later it will probably need to converge once again (lest one try and destroy the other or something).

Steiner’s understanding of the Logos is pretty egoic. He seems to mistake experiencing something universal as himself creating it or contacting a part of creation that make the universe “about me” in a myopic way.

I disagree with calling it egoic; rather, in light of what I wrote — Steiner simply sees it as something along the lines of the following aphorism: “It’s not that magic is real, nor that it’s a trick… It’s simply that - reality is a trick.”