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Architecture as a Synthesis of the Arts:

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English (translation)Original German

220 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1999

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About the author

Rudolf Steiner

4,362 books1,110 followers
Author also wrote under the name Rudolph Steiner.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...


Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions,  differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.

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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
49 reviews2 followers
August 31, 2016
Rudolf Steiner traces the development of temple/church architecture from ancient Egypt through the 20th century. He then outlines his vision for the design of the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. "If all the work on this hill," he writes, "is filled with the spirit of love--which is at the same time the spirit of true art--then from our building there will flow out over the earth the spirit of peace, the spirit of harmony, the spirit of love." (p. 97). Though it is not strictly necessary, it is helpful in reading this book if the reader has a basic understanding of the main ideas and vocabulary of anthroposophy or theosophy. Rudolf Steiner's artistic vision is inspiring.
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93 reviews1 follower
August 20, 2024
This is difficult today because during earth evolution human beings have to develop their ego and for this reason they have risen out of the flowing sea of color so that they now see the world purely with their ego.
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