In this episode the upcoming 100 years Rudolf Steiner Conference at Harvard is discussed, the research of one of its main organizers, Dan McKanan, and its potential significance.
Webpage for conference:
https://pes.hds.harvard.edu/steinerconference
References:
Ed. Johannes Kronenberg and Lammerts van Bueren
(2025) On the Earth We Want to Live. Springer Nature, forthcoming
Dan McKanan
(2017) Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism. (Berkeley, CA: Univ of California Press).
This episode of Questions of Courage offers reflections on the contemporary Russian novelist and writer Victor Pelevin, and particularly the intersection in his work of aesthetics and Buddhist orientations of liberation.
References:
BOMB Magazine | Victor Pelevin. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2002/04/01/victor-pelevin/
Pelevin. Generation P ; Curtea Veche Publishing.
-The Blue Lantern; Faber, 2001.
-The Clay Machine-Gun; Faber & Faber, 1999.
Victor Pelevin: anatomist of the new Russia | Profiles | Jason Cowley | journalist, magazine editor & writer. https://www.jasoncowley.net/profiles/victor-pelevin
Solovyov, V. S. Lectures on Divine Humanity; Lindisfarne Press, 1995.
In this episode the new Pegasus Project is introduced which involves the fabrication of a new generation of analogue projection instruments, the creation of an ensemble of light artists, the collaboration with an ensemble of singers and a tour of schools and youth groups. Reflecting on current screen culture and technology use among young people an unusual area of opportunity presents itself here, something highlighted by testimony from young people who have been involved in earlier iterations of the project. The project timeline and opportunities for collaboration and support are described as well.
References:
https://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/
Veit, W.; Stuten, J. Bewegte Bilder: der Zyklus “Metamorphosen der Furcht” von Jan Stuten: Entwurf zu einer neuen Licht-Spiel-Kunst nach einer Idee von Rudolf Steiner; Urachhaus, 1993.
Haidt, J. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness; Random House, 2024.
Mattis, O. Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900; [Published on the Occasion of the Exhibition “Visual Music”], Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, [23 June - 11. September 2005], the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Thames & Hudson, 2005.
Nationalism is one of the most powerful aspects of political life, connected with the defining conflicts of today.
This episode is dedicated to exploring the differences between nations and states, how they are
confused, and how they have come to be seen as intrinsically bound up together in recent centuries. While there
is a largely unconcious conventional notion that nations should ideally have their own states, there is a way to
look at things that reveals the opposite. It shows that the fusion of nations and states is not an ideal but a source of
conflict and the degradation of national cultureitself, and a central problem of political thoughts and life today.
References:
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London - New York: Verso, 2006.
Gottlieb, Gidon. Nation Against State: A New Approach to Ethnic Conflicts and the Decline of Sovereignty. Council on Foreign Relations, 1993.
Jefferson, Thomas. Thomas Jefferson: Writings (LOA #17): Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters. Library of America, 1984.
Steiner, Rudolf. Towards Social Renewal: Rethinking the Basis of Society. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1999.
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
This episode explores some of author Marilynne Robinson’s thoughts about the importance of seeing people as spiritual beings and how this relates to the history of civil and political rights in North America, and especially the USA. These thoughts are connected with current tensions within both US universities and society at large, and the role that artistic education plays in being able to experience a deeper, spiritual facet of human beings.
References:
Rachel Feintzeig, (2025) Opinion | Zombies Are Better Than the Alternative. The New York Times, 25 May. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/opinion/last-of-us-finale.html, accessed 4 June 2025.
Marilynne Robinson, (2010) Absence of Mind: Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self. (Yale University Press).
Marilynne Robinson, (2019) Which Way to the City on a Hill? The New York Review of Books. Available at https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/which-way-city-hill/, accessed 4 June 2025.
Rudolf Steiner(2006) Becoming the Archangel Michael’s Companions: Rudolf Steiner’s Challenge to the Younger Generation (CW 217). (SteinerBooks).
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
This episode explores challenging experiences that young people can have when they first enter college and university with enthusiasm for existential, heartfelt questions. It is not uncommon for young people to feel that the attitudes and methods they meet in the classroom and their professors cannot reach deep enough into the questions they are most passionate about and driven to explore. This can lead to disappointment and a temptation to turn away from their passions for knowledge, growth and understanding. There are, however, ideas, orientations and contemporary calls for expanding the understanding of science in ways that can accommodate the exploration of deeper questions and riddles that are not only intellectual but matters of the heart. Jeffrey Kripal’s suggestion that a new school of the “Superhumanities” is called for, as well as Hubert Dreyfuss and Charles Taylor’s ideas of Pluralist Robust Realism are introduced as examples.
References:
Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor (2015) Retrieving Realism. (Harvard University Press).
William James (2008) Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy. (Cambridge Scholars Publisher).
Jeffrey Kripal (2022) The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities. (University of Chicago Press).
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
Currently in the USA there is a “revolution of common sense” underway under the banner of nationalism, competition for natural resources and economic growth without regard for ecological limitations. In the last two episodes Steiner’s notion of aesthetic culture, that embraces not only the arts and humanities but also natural science and economics, was presented as an alternate vision for a revolution of common sense. Some of the most positive developments of the last century, the emergence of the modern environmental movement and social-ecological finance and banking, have recently been shown to be connected with Steiner’s influence in these areas by Dan McKanan. This episode presents two examples of strategies, in modern political thought and philosophy, to navigate tensions between “anaesthetic” and technocratic tendencies in the natural sciences and economy on the one hand, and lived, human experience on the other. What comes to the fore is a gap, one that a true revolution of common sense might fill.
References:
Glazebrook, Trish (2004) Global Technology and the Promise of Control, in David Tabachnick and Toivo Koivukoski (eds), Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy. (SUNY Press, Albany).
Heidegger, Martin (1977) The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. (New York: Harper Collins).
McKanan, Dan (2017) Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism. (Berkeley, CA: Univ of California Press).
Stallabrass, Julian (2020) Contemporary Art: a Very Short Introduction. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
Building on the previous episode this session explores the connection between natural science, as intuitive, empirical understanding, and Steiner’s associative economics, particularly the idea of true price. The result is a picture of a revolution of common sense that counters nationalism, fosters sober judgement across from natural and social conditions of life and encourages global, voluntary cooperation in a fraternal spirit. It is a revolution of common sense in stark contrast with what is currently being championed under the same name.
Steiner, Rudolf (2013) Rethinking Economics: Lectures and Seminars on World Economics. Vol. CW 340-41. (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks).
Steiner, Rudolf (2021) Die Philosophie der Freiheit: Grundzüge einer modernen Weltanschauung - Seelische Beobachtungsresultate nach naturwissenschaftlicher Methode. Vol. GA 4. (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag).
McKanan, Dan (2017) Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism. (Berkeley, CA: Univ of California Press).
Groh, Trauger, and Steven McFadden (1998) Farms of Tomorrow Revisited. (Kimberton, PA: SteinerBooks).
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
Talk of a revolution of common sense in the USA and around the world is focused on nationalism, economic competition and development without regard of environmental and ecological considerations. This episode suggests the revolution offers a false promise even while the widespread appeal of the idea of a revolution of common sense is deeply justified. In this episode Goethe’s natural scientific method of intuitive understanding is presented as a discipline of common sense, or aesthetics, with reference to the role it played during the emergence of the modern environmental movement and green banks. A follow up episode indicates how this is connected with Rudolf Steiner’s associative economics, how Goethe’s primal phenomena is for theoretical philosophy what true price is for economic, practical philosophy.
References:
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1975) Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften Ed. Rudolf Steiner. Vol. I-V. (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag).
Förster, Eckart (2017) Die 25 Jahre Der Philosophie. (Frankfurt, Germnay: Vittorio Klostermann GmbH).
McKanan, Dan (2017) Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism. (Berkeley, CA: Univ of California Press).
https://www.natureinstitute.org/
https://science.goetheanum.org/en/section/natural-science-section
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
While the idea of multi-dimensional beings is discussed in the congress of the United States in open hearings, it can take courage to try to understand Ufology and experience. This session explores recent research, especially on UFO experiencers, by sociologist D.W. Pasulka, and Rudolf Steiner’s presentation of late Medieval consciousness in Leading Thoughts, situating them in a larger understanding of development and human evolution.
References:
Pasulka, D. W. (2019) American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. (Oxford University Press).
Pasulka, D. W. (2023) Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences. (St. Martin’s Publishing Group).
Steiner, Rudolf (1998) Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts. (Rudolf Steiner Press).
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
Even though many people feel it is meaningful to speak of the light and colors when trying to express something deeper in human nature, in most places we are asking to be judged as superstitious or naïve if we insist on speaking about the spiritual aura. In many places it is perhaps most associated in some places with traveling carnival culture and the desire to be entertained. One might have one picture taken, with aura included, in the same booth where one can have a palm reading. When are these perceptions pathological and how can they be approached in a discerning way?
References:
Sebastian Barry (2017) Days Without End. (Penguin).
Rudolf Steiner (2005) Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man. (Rudolf Steiner Press).
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
How can we contemplate history with an openness for its greater meaning? Many young people who are studying in the social sciences or anthropology may feel drawn to ask this question, but today, without a doubt, it takes courage to think about this. This segment focuses on the development of perspective painting during the European Renaissance, looking back toward eastern iconographic painting and looking forward to modern art with the question of what they could signify if we have openness to greater spiritual meanings in history.
References:
Barfield, Owen (2013) The Camera and the Harp, in , The Rediscovery of Meaning: And Other Essays. (UK: Barfield Press).
florensky, Pavel (1996) Iconostasis. (Crestwood NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press).
Mulisch, Harry (1997) The Discovery of Heaven. (Penguin Publishing Group).
Solovyov, Vladimir (1995) Lectures on Divine Humanity. (SteinerBooks).
Steffen, Albert (1968) Geist-Erwachen im Farben-Erleben: Bertrachtungen, Skizzen, Erinnerungen. (Verlag für Schöne Wissenschaften).
Steiner, Rudolf (2023) The Arts and Their Mission: (CW 276). (SteinerBooks).
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
People all around the world watched the inauguration in the USA, a country with so much wealth, influence and power, hoping to gain some understanding of what is happening. What is the deeper meaning of the “revolution of common sense” promised by the incoming administration? What does this turn of events express? How can they be understood and what do they demand of us? This episode explores dynamics from recent centuries to contribute to this need of orientation, and to suggest what a true revolution in common sense requires.
References:
Phil Klay (2022) Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War. (Penguin Publishing Group).
James W. Douglass. (2010) JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. (Simon and Schuster).
William F. Pepper (2018) An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. (Verso Books).
Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy. The White House. Available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declassification-of-records-concerning-the-assassinations-of-president-john-f-kennedy/,
Charles Taylor (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries. (Duke University Press).
Hilary Osborne (2018) What is Cambridge Analytica? The firm at the centre of Facebook’s data breach. The Guardian, 18 March. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/what-is-cambridge-analytica-firm-at-centre-of-facebook-data-breach.
See Arthur Zajonc (1998) Goethe’s Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Natureand Ed. David Seamon. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press).
Dan McKanan (2017) Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism. (Univ of California Press).
In 2024 an event was hosted at the Goetheanum that focused on the global significance of these approaches to economics. https://www.worldgoetheanum.org/en/wgf-2024/wgf-2024-review. See also Otto Scharmer’s reflections here: https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/rethinking-economics/
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
At the Section’s international gathering of 2024 in the Netherlands one of the tasks that was explored was creating pictorial expressions of anthroposophy. Many of the basic works of anthroposophy, in the form of books and writing, were not written for young people. Over the years this task has been taken up by different individuals in different ways. An event in February at the Goetheanum is also a contribution to this project. It is called “A Quest for a Pictorial Understanding of Anthroposophy.” In this episode Nathaniel Williams shares a dream of freedom, a small expression from recent work.
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
What are the options today for students who are looking for centers of learning defined by an interest in the living spirit in the human being and the world? Not long ago they may have found themselves in the humanities departments around the world, but today they might be drawn to contemplative studies programs. This is connected with two trends in higher education that can be traced back to crisis years of the 1960s. One trend tries to understand knowledge ultimately in terms of power, the other aspires to develop it into love. The Goetheanum, an independent college for contemplative understanding and practice that was founded a century ago, appears as interwoven with deep questions of university students when seen in this light.
Mirabai Bush (2010) Contemplative Higher Education in Contemporary America. Available at https://mindfulcampus.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/mbush-contemplativehighereducation.pdf.
Michel Foucault (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group).
Mary Caroline Richards (1973) The Crossing Point: Selected Talks and Writings. (Wesleyan University Press).
Rudolf Steiner (2013) Constitution of the School of Spiritual Science: An Introductory Guide. (Rudolf Steiner Press).
Arthur Zajonc (2009) Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love. (Lindisfarne Books).
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
Saul Bellow and the Marginalization of the Spirit
The public image of Saul Bellow is a testimony of the tendency to marginalize spiritual orientations and ideas, and the courage it takes to engage with them. Bellow is one of the most influential and celebrated writers in the English language from the last century, winning national books awards, the Nobel prize and a Pulitzer. This episode explores the dynamics connected with the silence around his lifelong engagement with spiritual and esoteric thoughts and practices.
Saul Bellow (2010) Saul Bellow: Letters. (Penguin).
Saul Bellow (2013) More Die of Heartbreak. (Penguin UK).
Andreas Bracher, ed. (2021) Saul Bellow und die Anthroposophie. (Perseus-Verlag).
Edward Mendelson (2011) The Obedient Bellow. The New York Review of Books.
Kai Sina (2023) Bellow und Goethe: Dass er das so ernst nimmt. FAZ.NET. Available at https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wissen/geist-soziales/bellow-und-goethe-dass-er-das-so-ernst-nimmt-18763527.html
Rudolf Steiner (1987) Boundaries of Natural Science. With a preface by Saul Bellow. (SteinerBooks)
Rudolf Steiner (2021) Art and Theory of Art. (SteinerBooks, Incorporated).
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
Really, what if we are all coming back?
Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of color blindness, wrote an article where she muses on the possible reality of reincarnation and karma, and what implications this might have for social and political life. She shares how the questions arose organically for her when she was young, though she eventually dismissed them and embraced a study of politics, and the use of thought experiments of prenatal awareness in constitutional design as they are developed by John Rawls in his famous Theory of Justice. In this episode the challenges of seriously considering the possibility of reincarnation and karma are touched on as well as contemplative research approaches developed by Rudolf Steiner, indicating one possibility of serious exploration in this direction.
Alexander, Michelle. “Opinion | What If We’re All Coming Back?” The New York Times, October 29, 2018, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/opinion/climate-change-politics-john-rawls.html
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow. The New Press, 2012.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Oxford University Press, 1999.
Steiner, Rudolf. Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man. Anthroposophic Press, 1988.
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations.
In this Episode conversations with Kelley Buhles are explored which focused on the social and economic dimensions of gift money. The idea of three distinct types of money is introduced, purchase money, loan money and gift money and the potential of gift money is explored. This episode shares from one of the conversations taking place as preparation for the upcoming event: “Working for Freedom and the Common Good”, September 19-21 at the Goetheanum, an intergenerational conversation about global economic cooperation and peace 100 years after the first “World Power Conference”.
References:
Kelley Buhles website: https://www.buhlesconsulting.com/
Rudolf Steiner. Rethinking Economics
“Working for Freedom and the Common Good” website: https://www.worldgoetheanum.org/en/wgf-2024
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations
In this Episode conversations with Susan Witt and David Fix from the Schumacher Center for a new Economics are explored which focused on the social and economic dimensions of land ownership. The episode moves through a simple and elegant characterization of economics shared by Susan, how to understand what a commodity is and how treating land like a commodity unleashes anti-social dynamics in the economy and drives unjust inequality. This episode shares from one of the conversations taking place as preparation for the upcoming event: “Working for Freedom and the Common Good”, September 19-21 at the Goetheanum, an intergenerational conversation about global economic cooperation and peace 100 years after the first “World Power Conference”.
References:
“Working for Freedom and the Common Good” website: https://www.worldgoetheanum.org/en/wg...
Schumacher Center for a New Economics: https://centerforneweconomics.org/
Rudolf Steiner. Rethinking Economics
Thomas Piketty. Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations
This year, 100 years after the first “World Power Conference”, the World Goetheanum Association and the Youth Section of the Independent School for Spiritual Science are collaborating on a special event, an intergenerational conversation about global economic cooperation and peace. It is an event for everyone who is interested in working towards a vision of a global economy dedicated to cooperative, associative economics. In this episode Daniel Dunlop, the first World Power Conference of 1924, and the work of Walter Johannes Stein are introduced and how they relate to the upcoming event.
References:
“Working for Freedom and the Common Good” Website: https://www.worldgoetheanum.org/en/wg...
T. H. Meyer. D.N. Dunlop, A Man of Our Time: A Biography. Temple Lodge Publishing, 2014.
Rebecca Wright, Hiroki Shin, and Frank Trentmann. 2013. From World Power Conference to World Energy Council: 90 Years of Energy Cooperation, 1923-2013. London: World Energy Council.
Basel, Perseus-Verlag. 2023. “W.J. Stein: The Earth as a Basis of World Economy.” Perseus Verlag. https://perseus.ch/archive/11950.
Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations
