The Tension Between East and West 2/e

This demanding set of lectures attempts to lift the veil from modern social and spiritual problems as experienced in the contrasts between East and West. By ascribing only vague and subjective validity to human thinking, modern science tries to invalidate the very faculty that gives us our human dignity. However, such “unreality” of thought images makes possible the inner freedom that scientific doctrine tends to deny in principle. The need arises from these contradictions to extend the limits of ordinary scientific thinking toward new investigative capacities.

In part one, “Anthroposophy and the Sciences,” Rudolf Steiner explains that this can be achieved in a healthy way through two kinds of meditative exercises very different from yoga and asceticism and ancient paths to higher knowledge. These disciplines lead to the discovery of a paradoxical truth: “If you would know yourself, look into the world. If you would know the world, look into your self."

The spiritual-scientific philosophy thus presented provides a framework through which the second half of the book, “Anthroposophy and Sociology,” considers how a healthy social life can be understood and formed. Today the old social instincts of humanity have grown uncertain, and the rational intellect is proving unsuited to comprehend and foster a truly human social life. While admitting that we are only beginning to discover the right relationship between individual and community, Steiner describes how a conscious spiritual life offers the same social certainties as did the earlier, “instinctual” human life. He explains how we may find a way from our highly developed sense of a personal self toward the global social organism.

When the riddles of existence concern the human soul, they become not only great problems in life but life itself. They become the happiness or sorrow of human existence. And not a passing happiness or sorrow only, but one we must carry for a time through life, so that by this experience of happiness or sorrow we become fit or unfit for life. — Rudolf Steiner

This book is a translation from German of Westliche und östliche Weltgegensätzlichkeit. Wege zu ihrer Verständigung durch Anthroposophie (GA 83, 3rd ed.), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1981.