The Anthropology of performance: a model to understand the work of Rudolf Steiner
(the numbers in brackets refer to footnotes)
All along the year 2000 I have tried to find a point of reference to approach the ensemble of the work of Rudolf Steiner. My first objective was to discern the rapport between this vast work and the Mystery Dramas. The impression left on me by the preliminary research (DEA) [1] was of coherence between the theory and the practice, the idea and the performance. But I had spent one whole year just to measure the limits of his work. I only had one more year scholarship to finish the Ph.D.
Drafting the first chapter on Steiner's cyclic notion of history I believed to have found the key that would permit me the panoramic vision of anthroposophy and its relation to art.
According to Steiner, men and history progress, evolve in a cyclic context. His metaphysical vision of man started in a sort of prehistoric state of grace in which man was united to the divinity and belonged to the unitary reality. For Steiner that state corresponded to what he called the Phase of the image which, in its integral nature, manifested the intelligence of the Unique reality. After this period of unity man would have separated from the divinity to develop language - the fragmentation of reality - and his own personal vision of the world.
The first phase was the one of the spirit who unifies the image, the integral vision of reality. The second period was the one of the matter, the language that shatters that unified vision. I became interested on this approach to human history. From this point of view, the Prospettiva of the Renaissance painters looked like an obvious natural extension of abstract thinking determined by language.
Prospettiva, as described by Victor Turner's citation of Jean Gebser, in his article "The Anthropology of Performance" (Zygon, 1987) would be the model that explained the deep nature of Western Civilisation: an impulsion toward the spacialisation of time.[2]
The ensemble of Western Civilisation and the nature's dominating scientific impulsion evoked on us the idea of a new Hybris [3] seeking to establish the autonomy of man before God and the powers of nature. All this was evident in that key epoch of European culture which is the Renaissance as in the posterior development of modern science since XVII century (from Giordano Bruno, Kepler and Galileo to Descartes, Kant and Newton).
The object of Steiner's work seemed to be to claim the primitive and original intimate impulse of human culture of all times: the temporalisation (humanization) of space, namely the progressively deeper knowledge of the inner world of the human soul.
The final goal of this impulse - symbolized in the original Rose-Cross - was a kind of a synthesis between the two poles of reality (body [nature] and mind) where the subjective became objective and real.
Inasmuch as a system, such a design should forcefully include progressive levels of meaning accessible through a coherent method. We found this progression in the first works of Rudolf Steiner: Goethe and his vision of the world, The Philosophy of Freedom and other works where this prolific author analyses Goethe's tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.[4] This search of harmony between abstract thought and the spiritual mystery of nature would lead to a philosophy of nature in the first part of an iniciatic path.
Goethe's ideas, in particular his notions of entelechy and metamorphosis were for Steiner the basis of a new Weltanschauung (vision of the world) capable of surpassing so what he called the "truncated platonicism" (the question of dualism in the Republic, Book IV, the Myth of the Cavern) [5] the fundament of kantian dualism, as the nominalism which caracterised western culture's science. "Goetheanism" - the basis of anthroposophic thinking - was therefore a mean to understand the pole of nature.[6] Regarding the limit of knowledge it is in the Philosophy of Freedom that Steiner hoped to find the key to the resolution of the apory of the senses' independent thought.
Regarding Turner, his "metacultural" or philosophic-historical approach to the creating process of "sense" contained a series of universal elements wchich visibly contextualized Rudolf Steiner's Weltanschauung. Behind the Turnerian notions of Performance, Social Drama and Sense lied the same fundamental subject of Steiner: the opposition between the fixed rule and the science, on the one hand, and personal experience, the inner world of the soul (thinking, feeling and will) on the other hand. These dialectics between the subjective - the Performance - and the objective - the established rule - gave rise to the generating conflict of culture or Social Drama. Turner saw in the social drama the key to the generating process of sense which gives life and perenniality to culture (the performative genres). For Steiner, the harmony of the inner world of the soul trascended social and cultural conflicts inasmuch as a first step towards a superior level of culture or Iniciation.
In synthesis, if Turner talked about a Body, Brain and Culture, Steiner in turn spoke of body, soul and spirit.[7] If for Turner the core of the problem was the generating process of sense (crystallised mentality or Geist) [8] which regenerates culture, for Steiner the essential was the freedom of the soul and his access to a superior level of Sense.
All along the year 2000 I have tried to find a point of reference to approach the ensemble of the work of Rudolf Steiner. My first objective was to discern the rapport between this vast work and the Mystery Dramas. The impression left on me by the preliminary research (DEA) [1] was of coherence between the theory and the practice, the idea and the performance. But I had spent one whole year just to measure the limits of his work. I only had one more year scholarship to finish the Ph.D.
Drafting the first chapter on Steiner's cyclic notion of history I believed to have found the key that would permit me the panoramic vision of anthroposophy and its relation to art.
According to Steiner, men and history progress, evolve in a cyclic context. His metaphysical vision of man started in a sort of prehistoric state of grace in which man was united to the divinity and belonged to the unitary reality. For Steiner that state corresponded to what he called the Phase of the image which, in its integral nature, manifested the intelligence of the Unique reality. After this period of unity man would have separated from the divinity to develop language - the fragmentation of reality - and his own personal vision of the world.
The first phase was the one of the spirit who unifies the image, the integral vision of reality. The second period was the one of the matter, the language that shatters that unified vision. I became interested on this approach to human history. From this point of view, the Prospettiva of the Renaissance painters looked like an obvious natural extension of abstract thinking determined by language.
Prospettiva, as described by Victor Turner's citation of Jean Gebser, in his article "The Anthropology of Performance" (Zygon, 1987) would be the model that explained the deep nature of Western Civilisation: an impulsion toward the spacialisation of time.[2]
The ensemble of Western Civilisation and the nature's dominating scientific impulsion evoked on us the idea of a new Hybris [3] seeking to establish the autonomy of man before God and the powers of nature. All this was evident in that key epoch of European culture which is the Renaissance as in the posterior development of modern science since XVII century (from Giordano Bruno, Kepler and Galileo to Descartes, Kant and Newton).
The object of Steiner's work seemed to be to claim the primitive and original intimate impulse of human culture of all times: the temporalisation (humanization) of space, namely the progressively deeper knowledge of the inner world of the human soul.
The final goal of this impulse - symbolized in the original Rose-Cross - was a kind of a synthesis between the two poles of reality (body [nature] and mind) where the subjective became objective and real.
Inasmuch as a system, such a design should forcefully include progressive levels of meaning accessible through a coherent method. We found this progression in the first works of Rudolf Steiner: Goethe and his vision of the world, The Philosophy of Freedom and other works where this prolific author analyses Goethe's tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.[4] This search of harmony between abstract thought and the spiritual mystery of nature would lead to a philosophy of nature in the first part of an iniciatic path.
Goethe's ideas, in particular his notions of entelechy and metamorphosis were for Steiner the basis of a new Weltanschauung (vision of the world) capable of surpassing so what he called the "truncated platonicism" (the question of dualism in the Republic, Book IV, the Myth of the Cavern) [5] the fundament of kantian dualism, as the nominalism which caracterised western culture's science. "Goetheanism" - the basis of anthroposophic thinking - was therefore a mean to understand the pole of nature.[6] Regarding the limit of knowledge it is in the Philosophy of Freedom that Steiner hoped to find the key to the resolution of the apory of the senses' independent thought.
Regarding Turner, his "metacultural" or philosophic-historical approach to the creating process of "sense" contained a series of universal elements wchich visibly contextualized Rudolf Steiner's Weltanschauung. Behind the Turnerian notions of Performance, Social Drama and Sense lied the same fundamental subject of Steiner: the opposition between the fixed rule and the science, on the one hand, and personal experience, the inner world of the soul (thinking, feeling and will) on the other hand. These dialectics between the subjective - the Performance - and the objective - the established rule - gave rise to the generating conflict of culture or Social Drama. Turner saw in the social drama the key to the generating process of sense which gives life and perenniality to culture (the performative genres). For Steiner, the harmony of the inner world of the soul trascended social and cultural conflicts inasmuch as a first step towards a superior level of culture or Iniciation.
In synthesis, if Turner talked about a Body, Brain and Culture, Steiner in turn spoke of body, soul and spirit.[7] If for Turner the core of the problem was the generating process of sense (crystallised mentality or Geist) [8] which regenerates culture, for Steiner the essential was the freedom of the soul and his access to a superior level of Sense.
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