In truth, it was from a specifically human personal relationship, as of a man to a woman, that the relationship of human beings to philosophy arose during the age when philosophy directly took hold of the whole spiritual life of human evolution. This relationship - if you are not to take these words lightly, but take a little time to find the meaning behind them - has grown cold, truly cold. It has even become ice-cold. When we pick up most books on philosophy today - even those by philosophers who struggled and attained the finest possible relation to philosophy - we must really say that the relationship, so ardent when people viewed philosophy as a personal being, has grown very cold.
Philosophy is no longer the "woman" she was to Dante and others who lived in his time. Philosophy meets us today in a shape we may speak of by saying, "The very form of philosophy that confronts us in the nineteenth century, in its highest development - as German idealism, the philosophy of concepts, the philosophy of Objects - shows us that its role in the spiritual development of humanity has been played out."
It is really very symbolic when we take up Hegel's philosophy, especially The Encyclopedia, and find that the last thing presented in this nineteenth-century volume is about how philosophy understands itself. It has comprehended everything else; finally, it grasps itself. What is left for it to understand? This is a symptom of philosophy's end, even though - since Hegel's death - many questions remain unanswered.
The radical thinker Richard Wahle has followed this thought through in his book The Whole of Philosophy and its End and he has ably worked through the thesis that everything achieved by philosophy may be divided among the various departments of physiology, biology, aesthetics, and so forth, and that when this has been done, nothing remains of philosophy. Of course, such books go too far, but they contain a deep truth - that spiritual movements have their time and day, and that, just as a day has its morning and its evening, spiritual movements, too, have their morning and evening in the history of humanity's development.
We know we are living in the age that is preparing the spirit-self. Thus, we know that, though we live in the age of the Spiritual Soul, the Spirit-Self is being prepared. Just as the Greeks lived in the age of the Intellectual Soul, and looked toward the dawn of the Spiritual Soul, so we live in the age of the Spiritual Soul and seek to prepare the age of the Spirit-Self.
The Greeks established philosophy, which, despite Paul Deussen and others, did first exist in Greece during the unfolding of the Intellectual Soul when human beings still directly experienced the lingering influence of the objective Sophia; and Philosophy then came into being, and Dante could view her as a real, concrete being who brought him consolation when Beatrice was torn from him by death; in the same way, we now live in the age of the Spiritual Soul and look toward the dawn of the age of the Spirit-Self, and we know in this way that something is again becoming objective to human beings - something that looks forward to the coming times that will be gained by what we have won through the time of the Spiritual Soul.
What, therefore, must be developed? It must unfold that, once again, as a matter of course, a "Sophia" becomes present. But we must learn to relate this Sophia to the Spiritual Soul, bring her down directly to human beings. This is happening during the age of the Spiritual Soul. And thereby Sophia becomes the being who directly enlightens human beings. After Sophia has entered human beings, she must take their being with her and present it to them outwardly, objectively. Thus, Sophia will be drawn into the human soul and arrive at the point of being so inwardly connected with it that a love poem as beautiful as Dante wrote may be written about her.
Sophia will become objective again, but she will take with her what humanity is, and objectively present herself in this form. Thus, she will present herself not only as Sophia, but as Anthroposophia – as the Sophia who, after passing through the human soul, through the very being of the human being, henceforth bears that being within her, and in this form she will confront enlightened human beings as the objective being Sophia who once stood before the Greeks.
Such is the progression of human evolutionary history in relation to the spiritual questions we have been considering. Here I must leave the matter to all those who wish to examine in even greater detail, following the destiny of Sophia, Philosophia, and Anthroposophia, how we may show how humanity develops progressively through those parts of the soul we call the Intellectual Soul, the Spiritual Soul, and the Spirit-Self. People will learn how profoundly what anthroposophy gives us is based in our whole being. What we receive through anthroposophy is our very own being.
This once floated toward us in the form of a celestial goddess with whom we were able to enter into relationship. This divine being lived on as Sophia and Philosophia, and now we can once again bring her out of ourselves and place her before us as the fruit of true anthroposophical self-knowledge. We can wait patiently until the world is willing to test the depth of the foundations of what we have to say, right down to the smallest details. It is the essence of anthroposophy that its own being consists of the being of the human, and its effectiveness, its reality, consists in that we receive from anthroposophy what we ourselves are and what we must place before ourselves, because we must practice self-knowledge.
What, therefore, must be developed? It must unfold that, once again, as a matter of course, a "Sophia" becomes present. But we must learn to relate this Sophia to the Spiritual Soul, bring her down directly to human beings. This is happening during the age of the Spiritual Soul. And thereby Sophia becomes the being who directly enlightens human beings. After Sophia has entered human beings, she must take their being with her and present it to them outwardly, objectively. Thus, Sophia will be drawn into the human soul and arrive at the point of being so inwardly connected with it that a love poem as beautiful as Dante wrote may be written about her.
Sophia will become objective again, but she will take with her what humanity is, and objectively present herself in this form. Thus, she will present herself not only as Sophia, but as Anthroposophia – as the Sophia who, after passing through the human soul, through the very being of the human being, henceforth bears that being within her, and in this form she will confront enlightened human beings as the objective being Sophia who once stood before the Greeks.
Such is the progression of human evolutionary history in relation to the spiritual questions we have been considering. Here I must leave the matter to all those who wish to examine in even greater detail, following the destiny of Sophia, Philosophia, and Anthroposophia, how we may show how humanity develops progressively through those parts of the soul we call the Intellectual Soul, the Spiritual Soul, and the Spirit-Self. People will learn how profoundly what anthroposophy gives us is based in our whole being. What we receive through anthroposophy is our very own being.
This once floated toward us in the form of a celestial goddess with whom we were able to enter into relationship. This divine being lived on as Sophia and Philosophia, and now we can once again bring her out of ourselves and place her before us as the fruit of true anthroposophical self-knowledge. We can wait patiently until the world is willing to test the depth of the foundations of what we have to say, right down to the smallest details. It is the essence of anthroposophy that its own being consists of the being of the human, and its effectiveness, its reality, consists in that we receive from anthroposophy what we ourselves are and what we must place before ourselves, because we must practice self-knowledge.
-Rudolf Steiner's lecture on "The Being of Anthroposophy" (1913), given on February 3, 1913. Berlin, during the First General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society at Berlin: http://www.southerncrossreview.org/39/steiner-sophia.htm
Dante's treatise Il Convivio, on how to read esoterically, can be found here: https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/library/the-convivio/
Dante's treatise Il Convivio, on how to read esoterically, can be found here: https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/library/the-convivio/
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