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Subject: Steiner on the invalidity of the concept of
race proper the last 9-10 000 years
[someone] wrote: "what is the point you are making about race being synonomous to the concept of peoples?"and "how did he [Steiner] distance himself from the root race concept? has he written that somewhere?"http://www.people.virginia.edu/~dnp5c/Victorian/ : 'In the preface to his 1903 play John Bull's Other Island, George Bernard Shaw insists that "there is no Irish race any more than there is an English race or a Yankee race" (Prefaces [1938 ed.] 443; qtd. Foster [1993] 13). The tinge of beleaguered exasperation, or at least of weariness, that lingers about Shaw's assertion surely reflects the preoccupation of the century just past with the notion of race and its implications for Britain's status in imperial and international engagements. Indeed, "race" was a remarkably persistent -- and diffuse -- trope in the most diverse Victorian discourses and fora; Henry Mayhew delineates "races" of costermongers and chimneysweeps in his London Labour and the London Poor, while one book review addresses itself to the "race of scholars" ("Celtic Scotland." Quarterly Review 135 [1873]: 68-98). At various times apparently synonymous with what late twentieth-century readers would understand as "nation," "language-group," "ethnicity," "religious sect," or just plain "group," "race" became over the Victorian period an increasingly loaded -- and yet increasingly common -- catchword for almost any sort of division or subdivision of humanity that a given writer sought to describe, to explain, or to dramatize, to condemn or to celebrate. ...' http://hem.passagen.se/thebee/Steiner/GA117-1909-12-04.htm Steiner 1909: "The concept of race in a proper sense was only useful at the old Atlantis. Therefore we have, as we count with a real evolution of humanity, not used the concept of race for the post-Atlantean time. We don't speak of an Indian race and so on, as it isn't proper any more. We speak of an Old Indian cultural epoch, of an Old Persian cultural epoch and so on. It would have completely no sense if we were to speak of that we in our time were preparing for a sixth 'race'. If we in our time still see remains of the old Atlantean differences, remaining old group soulishness, so that you still can speak of a differentiation into races - what is preparing itself for the sixth epoch consists specifically in getting rid of and leaving behind that which is 'racial character'. That is the important thing. Therefore it is necessary, that that movement that is called the anthroposophical movement, that prepares for the sixth epoch in its basic character takes up especially this task of getting rid of that which related to 'racial character' and to unite people of all races, of all nations and in this way bridging this differentiation, these differences, this abyss, that exists between different groups of people. Because that which are old racial points of view has a physical character, and that which will develop into the future has a spiritual character. That is the reason it is so urgently necessary that our anthroposophical movement is a spiritual movement, that looks at that which is spiritual and overcomes specifically that which is based on physical differences out of the force of this spirituality. It is completely understandable that every movement has its child diseases and that one at the beginning of the theosophical movement described what it is about as if the evolution of the Earth so to speak was diferrentiated into seven epochs - they were called 'main races' (here 'main races' refers to the theosophical concept seven "root races". In "Mission of Folk Souls" [1910] 'main races' refers to what during a greater part of the 20th century was considered to be the five races of mankind Comment. S.N.) - and that every 'root race' was differentiated into seven 'sub-races', and that everything would repeat itself that way for ever, so that you for ever could speak of seven 'races' and seven 'sub-races'. But one has to overcome this child disease and become clear about that the concept of race ceases to have any meaning/importance specifically in our time' Something else is preparing itself - something that in the most eminent sense has to do with the human individuality - the ever more increasing individualisation of man. What it is about is that this development of the individuality is supported in the right way, and the anthroposophical movement has to support this development of individuality in man in the right way.'' 4 December 1909, in: The deeper secrets of the development of humanity in the light of the gospels (GA 117) Compare posting Thu, 24 May 2001 15:07:31 +0200 'Steiner [1924] on the Archangel Michael on nationalism' Regards, Sune Nordwall
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