In earlier times this series of Social Aesthetic Studies that is introduced by this first volume would hardly have needed a justification for
its supply of texts; but today it probably does. For bringing the social in
connection with the aesthetic seems, in view of our present state of affairs, only to cause bewilderment. On the one
hand, the conditions in which we are actively and passively embroiled lack
indeed all inducements for good taste, while on the other hand, the utilities
that we consider necessary in our lives require at most a glossy varnish, yet
scarcely real beauty itself. With every glance, meanwhile, that goes back more
than 150 years we become aware – be it with amazement or with fright in
view of our drab routine or snug self-deception – what supreme value the previous
civilizations attributed to the harmonious development of their representative
appearance; what pride the great figures of that world took in creating and
building an overworld. And the more we follow the epochs backward to
antiquity, the clearer the collective force of national cultures in works of
beauty comes to mind. To establish the
noble was not compulsory labor, but a joyful and glad confession; existence was
not a consumption of impressions, but the horticulture of expression spreading
throughout all branches of the empire. These peoples became themselves through
the fact that they created – not in order to construct a bulwark of utilities to
safeguard their survival – but to paint an image (however instinctive) of their
self-knowledge as that which, in itself, is bliss and therefore holy.
Social aesthetics
is the science of the future, just as aestheticism in general is the future of
science. A science of aesthetics must establish the future of our civilization,
in so far as our civilization is granted a future at all. Aestheticism as represented
here however, is not aesthetic sentimentality. On the contrary, it bears
witness to cognition, the cognition that is conscious of the basic demand of
our time, because it does justice to the demand that it must direct to itself.
This is the unbiased observation of its own activity. For out of unformed material
of perception it gives rise after all– through the evidence of the idea – to
the consciousness-form of our world. The reality that is reduced to its primordial
state by our sense-organs is not somehow reproduced in cognition by a process
of imitation, but co-produced in the co-creative act of knowledge. More
concerning this is developed in this series of publications – as well as in
other parts of the work by the author.
At the height of his cognitive existence, man is therefore not merely a
squatter jammed by the terror of information and the pressures to survive into
his accidental niche spanned by the force of circumstances. On the contrary, he
is a creative architect of expression, a designer, who even surmounts his
construction of a consciousness-formed world with his own form of liberty that
he forces upwards out of his will to construct. The meaning of one’s life is to
give the world a new meaning in the fulfillment of one’s own search for
meaning, and to recognize and time and again re-examine one’s creative task in
the mirror of the world of expression that one constructs around oneself. Materialism with
its whip of horror and opiate of bliss has stripped present-day
man of the dignity of his mission in life, releasing him into the waste and
squalor of the meaningless void. Social aesthetics is to reinstall him in his
mission and responsibility, not to ensure that he survives, but that he dare to ‘overbecome’
(German: Überwerden).
If our world does not substitute its
superstition of utilitarianism for enthusiasm for beauty, it will encircle
itself with an ever higher – and hence ever more in danger of collapsing –
robot-gigantism, and at the same time undermine itself with the horror of
modern dreariness. The only practical approach is the aesthetic one. He who
counters that life must be lived before it can be draped with the blossoms of
beauty may put up with the answer that it would be more consequent to depart
from such a senseless life that debases itself in yielding to its fascination
of fear and greed, instead of grasping its spur of its dignity.
The first edition of this series of
social-aesthetic studies contains the revised and enlarged text of The Principles of the Anthroposophical
Society as a Basis of Life and Path of Training that was long out of print.
Added to this were new editions of the also revised and enlarged essays A Path to the Spiritual Goetheanum and On the Nature of the Free School of
Spiritual Science, which complement the discourse of the first essay from
essential points of view.* In the
appendices one will find the text of the ‘principles' (originally statutes) of the Anthroposophical
Society, which Rudolf Steiner gave as
a basis for refounding the Society at the turn of the year 1923/24.** In that way, a publication has come
about which can not only help every new member of the Anthroposophical Society
to orientate himself, but which can perhaps also be welcomed by those wanting
to re-evaluate their decision to become members. This publication is also
intended as study-material for those wanting to occupy themselves – not just in
a receptive, but also in a cognitive manner – with an important field of the
spiritual science developed by Rudolf Steiner.
As a social-aesthetic study its aim is furthermore to contribute to a better
knowledge of our present state of affairs and to meet the dire needs of our
time.
Herbert Witzenmann
Garmisch-Partenkirche, Germany, January 1984
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