Below are quotes directly from Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy, about what Anthroposophy is. Before reading these, however, it is necessary nowadays to provide the following disclaimer:

 

             Steiner wrote and spoke in German, and the German word 'mensch' is often translated as 'human', 'human being', or 'man'. While the words 'man' and 'he' appear many times, it must be understood that Steiner was speaking to audiences composed of both men and women. Anyone well-acquainted with Anthroposophy understands the value that is placed upon the spiritual individuality of the human being, whose inner nature is universal and beyond the earthly differentiators of gender, race, nationality, and so on. It is to this inner nature that Steiner speaks:

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"Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in man as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need. He alone can acknowledge Anthroposophy, who finds in it what he himself in his own inner life feels impelled to seek. Hence only they can be anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and thirst."

 

"Anthroposophy communicates knowledge that is gained in a spiritual way. Yet it only does so because everyday life, and the science founded on sense-perception and intellectual activity, lead to a barrier along life's way - a limit where the life of the soul in man would die if it could go no farther...For at the very frontier where the knowledge derived from sense perception ceases, there is opened, through the human soul itself, the further outlook into the spiritual world."

 

"For certainty of feeling and for a strong unfolding of his will, man needs a knowledge of the spiritual world. However widely he may feel the greatness, beauty and wisdom of the natural world, this world gives him no answer to the question of his own being...The presence of this question must incessantly remain alive, in every human soul that is really awake, the longing for spiritual paths of World-knowledge."

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"Under Anthroposophy I denote a scientific investigation of the spiritual world which, while cognizant of the limitations of mere physical science and ordinary mysticism, and before attempting to penetrate into the spiritual world, first develops in the soul faculties not yet evident in ordinary consciousness and science."

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"A cognitional method of this nature can be called anthroposophical, and the knowledge of reality thereby attained - Anthroposophy...Anthroposophy does not lead away from reality to an unreal imaginary world; it embodies the search for a cognitional method in response to which the real world will reveal itself." 

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“The well-springs of Anthroposophy are opened, for the will of man - strengthened by love - to draw from them. Kindling the love of mankind, Anthroposophy grows creative in moral impulses to action and in the practice of a truly social life.”

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               Throughout his life, Steiner was able to elaborate Anthroposophy extensively. The results of Anthroposophical spiritual-scientific research have been applied and made effective in many fields of human endeavour over the last 100 years and into the present. If you are interested in learning more about Anthroposophy, please see the next page about getting started with Anthroposophy. 

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