Rudolf Steiner Audio

CW 200 The New Spirituality and the Experience of Christ: Lecture 3: Development in the three streams arising from the decline of Rome. (23 October, 1920) by Rudolf Steiner

Oct 8, 2021
A tour through three cultural streams flowing from Rome into Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. Discussion of how language, secret traditions, and spiritual influences shaped national characters. Contrasts between materialist science, imaginative Eastern wisdom, and a center caught between them. Proposals for a renewed social balance separating economy, politics, and spiritual life.
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INSIGHT

Decadent Spiritual Inheritance

  • Rudolf Steiner argues Western spiritual life is a decadent inheritance from the ancient Orient that lacks real connection to earthly life.
  • He says this leads to an abstract faith separated from sensory reality, exemplified by Anglo-Saxon Puritanism.
INSIGHT

Rome Fell From Mixed Social Functions

  • Steiner links Rome's collapse to the chaotic mixing of spiritual, political and economic life.
  • He presents the Roman and Byzantine Empires as symbols of the Greco-Roman epoch's decay.
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Three Streams From Rome

  • From Rome's decline three cultural streams flowed: West (language), Center (thought), East (spiritual imaginations).
  • Steiner traces Latin language persistence and Germanic assimilation shaping Western peoples.
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