Lived Commitment

Peter Selg and Constanza Kaliks lead the General Anthroposophical Section at the Goetheanum. Here, they talk about the image and mission of the School for Spiritual Science, about commitment, and the difference between being an enthusiast or a representative for anthroposophy. Questions by Gilda Bartel.

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In your view, what is the significance of the School for Spiritual Science in these turbulent times?

Peter Selg: From the beginning, Rudolf Steiner considered an institute of higher education to be an impulse for research, teaching, training, and applied practice—the fundamental nature of every institute or university. Beginning in 1911, with the first circular letter about the future Johannes Building [Johannesbau] up until Steiner’s death, the founding of an institute of higher education was a response to a massive cultural and civilizational crisis. The aim was to humanize the social life of scholarship and the sciences. In the course of history, the School of Spiritual Science has become more of an internal enterprise. For a long time now, the “work of the School” has been understood in many places to consist of spiritual work in small groups on the texts and mantras of the so-called 19 Class Lessons. I don’t consider this to be in contradiction to the original impulse.

If, for example, I want to develop a new economic model and I want to reshape the economic landscape, then I think I would do this better if I were well-trained. Even in Rudolf Steiner’s first writings, there was a path of training for mastering tasks, not just for attaining “higher worlds” in the sense of an esoteric refuge. From the beginning, responsibility for outer civilization and inner training have belonged together. Now we have the twelve Sections. Through the productive application of anthroposophy, these Sections generate ideas for new approaches in a wide variety of fields. Working groups are formed all over the world. People come to the Goetheanum with the question: How can an encounter with the Goetheanum provide concrete help for our situation and our questions? There are excellent specialist contributions at the Goetheanum conferences, developed all around the world, and brought to the participants. In this way, they become known to those who are interested at an international level. The Sections are thus organs of perception for what is being achieved in the specialist fields at the Goetheanum and worldwide through anthroposophical initiative or with an anthroposophical perspective.

Constanza Kaliks: The spiritual foundation is a transformative element for the field in which one is professionally active. In some places and over many years, this spiritual foundation has developed to the point where it has come to be understood as the sole aim and sole content of the School, cultivated with great loyalty and dedication by many people. There is a growing awareness that transformative processes can be permeated by a spiritual search for knowledge in various fields of life. In education, for example, the existence of this School, which attempts to harmonize life and inner training, is greatly appreciated. I see enormous potential for development, but also the need to clarify the image of the School. It is an institute of higher education with specialist Sections that has spiritual knowledge as its basis for working. The raison d’être of an institute of higher education is its contact with the public—the social relevance of the questions it poses. Spiritual training does not belong directly in the public sphere, but it serves these transformative processes. The Goetheanum leadership and the Sections are working intensively to clarify this objective.

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