SOCIAL THREEFOLDING
SOCIAL THREEFOLDING

Author: Rudolf Steiner

Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1855846187

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In the aftermath of the devastating First World War, Rudolf Steiner gained a reputation as a leading social thinker. One mainstream reviewer of his book Towards Social Renewal referred to it as '... perhaps the most widely read of all books on politics appearing since the war'. Steiner's proposals for the reconstruction of Europe and the rebuilding of society's crumbling social structure were thus publicly discussed as a serious alternative to both Communism and Capitalism.Steiner's 'threefold' ideas involved the progressive independence of society's economic, political and cultural institutions. This would be realised through the promotion of human rights and equality in political life, freedom in the cultural realm and associative cooperation in economics or business.In this carefully assembled anthology of Steiner's lectures and writing, Stephen E. Usher gathers key concepts and insights to form a coherent picture of social threefolding. Apart from fundamental lectures on the theme, the volume also features the full content of Steiner's unique Memoranda of 1917. The original texts are complemented with the Editor's introduction, commentary and notes.

Towards Social Renewal
Towards Social Renewal

Author: Rudolf Steiner

Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press

Published: 2013-05-17

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1855843021

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Although this book was first published in 1919, it remains highly relevant to social problems encountered today. Uniquely, Steiner's social thinking is not based on intellectual theory, but on a profound perception of the archetypal spiritual nature of social life. As he suggests in this classic work, society has three distinct realms - the economic, the political (individual human rights), and the cultural (spiritual). While social life as a whole is a unity, the autonomy of these three sectors should be respected if our increasing social problems are to be resolved. Steiner relates the ideals of 'liberty, equality and fraternity' to modern society. Economics calls for fraternity (brotherhood), political rights require equality, while culture should be characterised by liberty (freedom). The slogans of the French Revolution, he suggests, can only become truly manifest if our social thinking is transformed to correspond to the spiritual reality.

THE THREEFOLDING MOVEMENT, 1919
THE THREEFOLDING MOVEMENT, 1919

Author: Albert Schmelzer

Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1855845415

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Following the end of WW1, Germany faced a period of revolutionary upheaval and general unrest. In the midst of these tumultuous events, Rudolf Steiner’s pioneering movement for social threefolding rallied around a unique conception. Its three principal goals were to promote human rights and equality in political life, freedom in cultural life and associative cooperation in economic life. Albert Schmelzer’s engaging yet rigorous study, the most complete to date, recounts the movement’s practical attempts to bring about social threefolding in 1919, giving lively descriptions of the principal characters involved. Apart from this detailed history, The Threefolding Movement, 1919 offers an accomplished synthesis of the development of social thought and the complex politics of the day. Schmelzer studies threefolding within the context of evolving social ideas, comparing Steiner’s relevance to key political and cultural thinkers, reformers and radicals. Steiner emerges as a social innovator who was actively involved in the revolutionary situation of 1919, although he rejected violence and was a consistent advocate of democracy. A cursory analysis might suggest that Rudolf Steiner stood at the left of the political spectrum, but Schmelzer shows how his social ideas transcend the right-left divisions and polarizations of contemporary politics. Social threefolding is truly a new approach to human development – a fresh way to understand society that allows for a more creative and harmonious future.

Shaping Globalization
Shaping Globalization

Author: Nicanor Perlas

Publisher: Temple Lodge Publishing

Published: 2019-03-25

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1912230291

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Civil Society has become a major power in the world. The stunning defeat of the controversial and secretive Multilateral Agreement on Investments, the massive worldwide WTO protests and the yearly meetings of the World Social Forum are testimony to its coming of age. From these significant victories, civil society continued to catch world attention with the Arab Spring, the grassroots movement that helped elect former US President Barack Obama and the significant gains of the anti-fracking campaign. With tens of millions of citizens and over a trillion dollars involved in advancing its agenda, civil society now joins the state and the market as the third key institution shaping globalization. However, it cannot fully mobilize its resources and power as it currently lacks clear understanding of its identity. Shaping Globalization argues that global civil society is a cultural institution wielding cultural power, and shows how – through the use of this distinct power – it can advance its agenda in the political and economic realms of society without compromising its identity. Nicanor Perlas outlines the strategic implications for civil society, both locally and globally, and explains that civil society’s key task is to inaugurate ‘threefolding’: the forging of strategic partnerships between civil society, government and business. Such authentic tri-sector partnerships are essential for advancing new ways for nations to develop, and for charting a different, sustainable type of globalization. Using the model of the Philippine Agenda 21, we are shown how civil society and progressive individuals and agencies in government and business are demonstrating the effectiveness of this new understanding to ensure that globalization benefits the environment, the poor and society as a whole. This reprinted edition includes a new Afterword.

The Threefold Social Order
The Threefold Social Order

Author: Rudolf Steiner

Publisher: SteinerBooks

Published: 1966-03-15

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 1621510263

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Lecture collection: January 19, 1911 - January 25, 1912 (CW 60/61) "In our long human journey, individual and collective, the journey that science calls evolution, many indeed are the turning points. But they are not so much turning points in outer, material manifestation in the fossils of paleontology, for those fossils are only the shed garments worn by humans in an earlier age, vestments designed by providence to meet the need of a changing human consciousness moving through time. Where the real evolution occurs, for which the necessary outer garments are tailored over time, is in the realm of consciousness as it transitions from spirit to matter and back to spirit." --Edward Reaugh Smith (from the introduction) Rudolf Steiner gave the six lectures in this volume between January 1911 and January 1912. Soon after Steiner's death in 1925, Marie Steiner--realizing the importance of those lectures for understanding the evolution of consciousness and the central role of the Christ event in that process--collected them under the title Turning Points in Spiritual History. According to Rudolf Steiner, Earth is the crucible of cosmic evolution, and earthly evolution is accomplished through humanity. Further, there were five turning points--or critical, transformative moments--in the process leading to the culmination of the Christ's incarnation through the Mystery of Golgotha. Each of those five points is exemplified by an individual: Zarathustra, Hermes, Moses, Elijah, and the Buddha. Each of these lectures deals in turn with one of these great beings. In them, Steiner provides us with astonishing views of esoteric history and shows the remarkable ways in which the spiritual world guided and nurtured the spiritual evolution in preparation for the Christ's appearance on Earth.

Rethinking Economics
Rethinking Economics

Author: Rudolf Steiner

Publisher: SteinerBooks

Published: 2013-06-01

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 162148050X

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Rudolf Steiner gave this complex sequence of dense, subtle, multileveled lectures and seminars to students of economics in Dornach, Switzerland, during the summer of 1922. The course reflects a lifetime of thinking on the subject and marks the conclusion of his intense five-year period of activism in the service of social, political, and economic issues. During this time, which began as World War I was ending in 1917, he worked tirelessly to promote the cause of what he called “threefolding” (Dreigliederung), by which he meant rethinking the social order on the basis of clear separation and independence of the three fundamental spheres of activity that make up a society. He proposed three independent systems: (1) an autonomous rights sphere (limited to judicial and political matters), (2) an autonomous economic sphere (cooperative or associative by nature), and (3) an autonomous spiritual-cultural sphere. The autonomy of these three spheres, he believed, would make possible a free, healthy, productive society and open the possibility of a lasting peace. Rethinking Economics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the true nature of an economy and how it works. Steiner presents the basic elements of what it would take to create a just, socially responsible, and ecologically aware economy today.

Are There People Without a Self?
Are There People Without a Self?

Author: Erdmuth Johannes Grosse

Publisher: Temple Lodge Publishing

Published: 2021-10-14

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 1912230801

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‘That in our times a kind of supernumerary person is appearing who is egoless, who in reality is not a human being, is a terrible truth.’ – Rudolf Steiner Are there people on earth today who do not have a self – a human ego or ‘I’? The phenomenon of ‘egolessness’ – the absence of a human being’s core – was discussed by the spiritual teacher Rudolf Steiner in lectures and personal conversations. An egoless individual, he intimated, is an empty sheath through which other spiritual entities could operate. Erdmuth J. Grosse brings together many little-known quotations from Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual research and supports them with a wealth of disquieting reports, testimonies and examples from literature and politics. He places these insights within the broader context of the riddle of the human self, throwing light on the spiritual development of the individual and humanity as a whole. In this thought-provoking study, Grosse goes on to discuss the role of comets, the effects of cyanide on the human constitution – especially in the light of the Holocaust – and the hidden effects of ceremonial magic, occult lodges, cults and sects. In conclusion, he offers positive solutions to humanity’s present predicament by describing the healing impulses of social threefolding, the invisible spiritual beings seeking to help humanity, the role of the gods, the Christ impulse and the true goals of human evolution.

The Three-Fold Commonwealth
The Three-Fold Commonwealth

Author: Rudolph Steiner

Publisher: Maine Press

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 144555996X

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Problems of Society
Problems of Society

Author: Rudolf Steiner

Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press

Published: 2016-03-21

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1855844834

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'Whatever turbulent outward events occur in the world, whatever form is taken by things seeking to work their way out of the depths of human evolution, we only really hearken to the true, underlying nature of these events ... if we observe the world from a spiritual perspective.' – Rudolf Steiner. In seeking to heal the many social crises of our time, Rudolf Steiner urges us to turn away from 'fixed principles, theories or social dogmas' and to rediscover the real nature of the human being. This inner reality – that cannot be understood in materialistic or deterministic ways – is the only basis on which society can truly be founded. But it is not sufficient to speak of well-meaning ideas, he says, unless we are also active in working for change; change that begins with each of us. In 1919, a year marked by strong social and political upheavals, Steiner was deeply concerned with questions relating to society. Having published a book on the subject (Towards Social Renewal), he embarked on a major campaign to publicize his 'threefold' social ideas. In addition to public lectures, however, Steiner sought to deepen the subject in a series of talks to members of the Anthroposophical Society. These lectures, gathered in this volume, reveal the 'inner' or 'esoteric' aspects of the social question. They complement Steiner's very practical efforts to realize threefolding in the historical context of his time. Whilst Steiner's suggestions for social change may not seem self-evident to pragmatic thinking, they will strike a resonant chord in many who seek deeper answers to the social problems of our times – problems that politicians seem unable to remedy. Amidst the many themes tackled here, Steiner addresses the issue of nationalism as a retrograde tendency; the tasks of Central Europe and Britain in relation to the East; the incarnation of Ahriman in the West, and the historical incarnation of Lucifer in the third millennium BC.

Anthroposophy A-Z
Anthroposophy A-Z

Author: Henk van Oort

Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1855843471

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Rudolf Steiner's spiritual philosophy is the inspiration for many successful initiatives in the world today, from the international Steiner Waldorf school movement to biodynamic agriculture and its increasingly popular produce. Steiner developed his philosophy in dozens of books and many thousands of lectures. His teaching contains dozens of new concepts and ideas, and as a result he had often to create his own vocabulary. In this practical volume - a companion to his Anthroposophy, A Concise Introduction - Henk van Oort gives concise definitions of many terms and concepts in Steiner's worldview, from the most commonplace to the more obscure. Anthroposophy A-Z can be used as a reference guide, but also as a gateway into Rudolf Steiner's manifold world of spiritual ideas and concepts. Anthroposophy can be seen to be a new language - a language that can lead to the world of the spirit. It was with this awareness that Henk van Oort took the initiative to write this glossary. Ultimately, he has written the sort of inspiring handbook that he wished had existed when he first became acquainted with anthroposophy over 40 years ago. HENK VAN OORT, born in 1943, trained as a primary teacher before taking a Masters degree in English at the Amsterdam University. He has taught for 40 years in primary and secondary education, including class teaching in a Steiner school, teaching English, and running educational courses and seminars for teachers and parents. His interest in literature and poetry has led to his appearance at storytelling and poetry seminars, and his introductory courses to anthroposophy have proved to be highly successful. Based in Bergen N.H. in the Netherlands, Henk van Oort is married and the father of three grown-up children. He is the author of Anthroposophy, A Concise Introduction.