This
foreword is being written on the eve of my departure for a third working visit
to America to participate in three conferences, the second of which is this
year’s Social Science Section annual conference for members, followed by one
for the general public from July 9 –11 in New Lebanon, NY. In continuation of
the theme of last year’s conference at Kimberton Hills, PA, the emphasis will
be on deepening our understanding of the threefold nature of the social
organism – in the Anthroposophical Society as well as in the world at large. In
the fourth edition of my booklet Munsalvaesche
in America – Towards the New Grail Community, I reported on some
fundamental aspects of last year’s Social Science Conference, in which I
participated with David Schwartz, Steve Burman and others in what by many was
regarded as a fruitful seminar on the ‘principles’. As a contribution to this
year’s theme of “elite globalization”, I then offered to present a translation
of Herbert Witzenmann’s introduction to Rudolf Steiner’s course on world
economy entitled The Just Price – World Economy as Social Organics. This
proposal which has recently met with a favorable response by Bernard Wolf, one
of the organizers of the conference along with Claus Sproll, I hope to realize
in the two weeks between the end of the first astrosophical conference on the
Grail in Boulder (StarHouse) [1]
and the start of the Social Science Section gathering in New Lebanon, NY.
My
underlying motive for bringing this work forward at this point is the insight
that the idea of social organics can be applied, is indeed inherent to the
Anthroposophical Society as well as to the world at large, but that with
respect to the Society it takes on the form of the ‘principles’ and with
respect to the world at large it must be clothed in terms of Rudolf Steiner’s
course on world economy. In that sense social organics can address the esoteric
as well as the exoteric, the internal and external matters that so demand our
urgent attention and call for resolute action: the state of the
Anthroposophical Society and the world situation that are so mysteriously but
inexorably intertwined.
As
a fitting close to this fourth edition, I would like to share a passage I read
while browsing through a friend’s library in Ithaca, NY. It is taken from the
book The Life of Greece by the
American philosopher and historian Will Durant and can be read (on p. 290) in
the chapter XIII The Morals and Manners
of the Athenians dealing with the education of young men of Athens:
“At nineteen they are
assigned to the garrison at the frontier. There they are entrusted for two
years with the protection of the city against attack from without and within.
Solemnly, in the presence of the Council of Five Hundred, with hands stretched
over the altar in the temple of Argoulos,[2]
they take the oath of the young men of Athens:
"I will not disgrace the sacred arms nor will I abandon the man next to
me, whoever he may be. I will aid to the ritual of the state, and to the holy
duties, both alone and in company with many. I will transmit my native
commonwealth not lessened, but larger and better than I have received it. I
will honor those who from time to time are judges; I will obey the established
statutes, and whatever other regulations the people shall enact. If anyone
shall attempt to destroy the statutes I will not permit it, but will repel him
both alone and with all. I will honor the ancestral faith.”
This
passage is highly interesting in the light of what Rudolf Steiner described as
the sole task of the Council during the Christmas Conference: realizing the all
encompassing statutes (later called principles) of the Anthroposophical
Society. However, it is no longer a question of merely “obeying the established
statutes”, as in the days of old Athens, but of freely comprehending,
implementing and defending them as the charter of a universal society of free
spirits.
Robert J.
Kelder,
Amsterdam, June 12, 1999
[1] In this conference I will present my annotated
translation of Werner Greub’s From Grail
Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, which is appearing today,
one day before my flight to Denver tomorrow morning. Update: A second, revised
and enlarged edition appeared in 2001.
[2] Argoulos as
such is not listed in the 1972 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. What is
probably referred to here is Argolis
or Argolid, the celebrated capital of
Argos, “a name apparently signifying an agricultural plain, which was applied
to several districts in ancient Greece…Traditionally the city was said to have
been founded by the mythological Phoroneus, the son of the river-God Inachus
about 1750 B.C. Derivations of a royal family from a god frequently implied
that the human founder arrived as an invader, and this date is compatible with
that assigned by many philologists and archeologists to the arrival of the
first Greek-speaking people (the beginning of the 2nd millennium
B.C.).”
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