Through the Lens of Anthroposophy: What a Spiritual Worldview Has to Say About Religion, Race, Science and Society Today
by Floris Books • 26 June 2026 • Extract, Philosophy of Human Life • 0 Comments
What relevance do anthroposophy and the teachings of Rudolf Steiner have for the world today? Spiritual thinker Wolfgang Müller was initially sceptical that anthroposophy had any contemporary value. It wasn’t until many years after his first encounter with anthroposophy that a closer study of Steiner’s writings prompted him to make a radical reappraisal.
In Through the Lens of Anthroposophy, Müller explains how anthroposophy has important contributions to make towards our understanding of contemporary life.
In this extract from the introduction Wolfgang explains his journey from sceptic to an avid and engaged reader of Rudolf Steiner’s work.
From the Introduction
It is quite natural that people today are sceptical about anthroposophy and have questions about its founder. However, instead of taking anthroposophy in its entirety, they focus on a few marginal aspects and fail to recognise the ‘basic character of the whole’.
There is a tragedy in this, and that word is not an exaggeration. Anthroposophy is anything but an intellectual gimmick or an attempt to make ourselves spiritually cosy in the modern age. At its core, it wants nothing more than to focus on the full reality, including those aspects that have been ignored in modern times. Rudolf Steiner always described this narrowing down to what is material and measurable as a necessary process in human development. In entire lecture cycles, he explained why humanity had to step out of its former religious security and, as it were, achieve a cold relationship with the world in order to develop a free, autonomous ego-consciousness.
“Anthroposophy is anything but an intellectual gimmick or an attempt to make ourselves spiritually cosy in the modern age. At its core, it wants nothing more than to focus on the full reality, including those aspects that have been ignored in modern times.“
But now, today, a next step is necessary. With the power of our modern consciousness we must learn to perceive the full picture again in both its material and spiritual aspects, for they belong together, even if our epoch has no concepts for it. Anthroposophy is an attempt to develop such concepts.
Why do we need this? Because if we have a view of the world that only captures half of reality, we should not expect to be able to solve all of our problems. The burning issues of our time can only be tackled if human beings and the world we live in are understood more deeply than they currently are. It is as simple and as difficult as that.
Perhaps it would help if I briefly described the path that led me to anthroposophy. I come from a family with a scientific background. My parents studied medicine and dentistry, and they once told me about a lecture they had attended in which the professor gave his opinion on homoeopathy and its principle of dilution. He said that it was like pouring a jar of active ingredients into the Rhine near Basel and later filling a jar at the mouth of the North Sea and calling it medicine. The auditorium must have burst out laughing. I also remember my mother’s ironic remarks about an anthroposophical neighbour who dug up his garden soil in a special way and exposed it to the sunlight. She sounded embarrassed for them. Both my parents came from a Protestant background, which found expression in their commitment to others and their love of Bach’s Passions. They were certainly aware that the scientific approach doesn’t capture the whole of our existence. However, like so many people today, they left open the question of how religious statements about the world related to those elaborated by natural science.
“The burning issues of our time can only be tackled if human beings and the world we live in are understood more deeply than they currently are. It is as simple and as difficult as that.“
I first encountered anthroposophy through a friend, Andreas Bracher, whom I knew from my history studies, but I found little in it that appealed to me at the time. After a lively agnostic phase, I had familiarised myself with the great spiritual traditions, from the Bhagavad Gita to the Bible, from Lao Tzu to Meister Eckhart. But I didn’t know what to do with Steiner. The matter-of-fact way in which he spoke about soul and spirit was suspicious to me and seemed somewhat outdated.
At some point, my friend thought it would be interesting if I put my reservations down on paper. This resulted in an article entitled ‘Why Anthroposophy Is Not Catching On’. I even managed to get it published in the anthroposophical journal Die Drei, and it provoked considerable reaction.
I was in my mid-forties by then, and more time passed. It wasn’t until I was fifty-seven that things took a strange turn. I had been working on a thesis about certain historical political ideas, when I realised that my thoughts ran parallel to what Steiner called ‘social threefolding’. I went back to look at what he had said, and I have been reading Steiner almost every day since then.
I once told my mother about this. Despite her dementia, she remembered: ‘Didn’t you once write something critical about this?’ I said that I now saw things differently.
Whereupon, after a pause, out of the confusion of her world of thoughts, she spoke this one clear, beautiful sentence: ‘Yes, sometimes you have to change your mind.’
About the author
Wolfgang Müller studied history and literature at the universities of Heidlberg and Hamburg, Germany. He has worked in radio and television as an editor for science and contemporary history programmes. Wolfgang has published numerous articles and books. He lives in Hamburg.
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