Greetings all,
I have decided to publish my essay that I wrote back in 2005 when I took the Foundation Studies course at the Rudolf Steiner Centre.
I decided to research Steiner's works on Evil as I find evil a fascinating topic because if one truly wants to live ethically and morally in this life, we must face evil with courage and we must examine it deeply to understand its true nature.
My entire essay is 11 pages so I will break it down in several pieces. Steiner's philosophy is based on his experiences of being able to perceive spiritual realities and that includes things such as angels or the dead. You may not believe in these things but please read and be open to the possibility. This can be an exercise to train one's thinking.
Enjoy!
The Origins of Evil
Evil has always been an important spiritual and philosophical topic for humans. I will briefly introduce some views on how people try to make sense of evil and its origin.
I will begin with the view of evil by the Stoics, a group of 4th and 3rd century B.C. of Greek philosophers who base their views on the teachings of Socrates and Plato. They tried to figure how one should live in the world and the came up with the Ideal concept of the Wise Man, one who has managed to conquer their emotions and passions. They believed that the ego needed clarity in the world but was clouded by their emotions and passions and so it was necessary to overcome this. They also believed that humans were free to choose this Ideal. They could choose to descend into a lower realm where they would let their emotions and passions run freely.
Saint Augustine believed that evil and wrongdoing did not exist but were negations or absence of good. He believed finite beings had weaknesses and could not continually do good deeds. As a result of this failure, good is limited and whatever is remaining, i.e. the shadow side is simply the absence of good. This view is simplistic because it is like saying coldness is simply the absence of warmth.
A common view on the origin of evil is that because humans live in matter, this creates a hindrance for the human spirit. The source of evil is the immersion of spirit in matter. Neo-Platonist, Plotinus, believed this.
Japanese philosopher Nakae Toju who lived in 17th century had a similar view. He saw the world as duality. Ri, was a realm of spirit and Ki was a realm of physical nature. Humans have both aspects and due to the combination of these two realms, human will and desires emerges. This creates the potential for evil.
Jacob Boehme believed that in order to become self aware, divine beings needed to encounter opposition. For example, when we wake up in the morning we become aware of ourselves by encountering objects in the physical world. He believes other beings cannot give us this opposition and that we have to be our own adversary and set boundaries within ourselves by creating this opposite.
Herman Lotze was a 19th century philosopher. For Lotze, the reality of evil in ourselves and in the world could not be denied. He believed that evil represents a threshold to our powers of perception. He rejected Leibniz’s idea that although much evil exists, this was the best possible world. Lotze argued that we could not claim God to be omnipotent if we attribute evil and wrong doing to a divine source and by doing so we would limit God’s omnipotence. Lotze’s conclusion was that the existence of good and evil must be due to a divine wisdom that we cannot fathom and which we are not capable of perceiving. He transfers our understanding of evil and wrong into an unknown and inaccessible world of wisdom.
For Steiner, the basic characteristic of the evil emanating from humans is egotism (selfishness). From the smallest oversight to the most horrible of crimes, egotism is the fundamental trait. We cannot seek the origin of evil in actions and deeds but must look upon the underlying tendencies.
There is a paradox that arises. When one prepares to enter the spiritual worlds, the forces that lead to egotism must be strengthened. If we only lived in the spirit world, we would only be able to develop inner capacities. It is only in the physical world where we develop morality and altruism. In the physical world we find the conditions to overcome this egotism. Our soul appears as a duality of spirit and matter. When it is the spiritual world, it must focus on itself and develop its inner strength and capacities whereas on earth it must learn to grow out of and beyond itself and unfold the capacities it developed in the spiritual world, so that it can be of significance and worth for the world.
For us this means that we must not transfer something that belongs in one world to another. Essentially everything has its place in the world and evil can arise when we take it out from where it belongs. Something good can become evil if it is being misapplied.
Another paradox is that when ascending into the spiritual world, we must penetrate it without egotism yet we must penetrate it with egotism.
The origin of evil is our higher nature. We have a potential for evil because we are spiritual beings.
Qualities such as cruelty and malice in the physical world, if withdrawn and applied to the spiritual world can become qualities that advance and perfect us.
It is our egotism that is responsible for how we apply these qualities. We can use them for productive and helpful reasons or for more destructive purposes, depending on how much egotism lives in us.
It is for this reason that philosophers like Lotze believe that our understanding of evil is inaccessible. His perceptual faculties are not prepared to perceive the spiritual world and evil cannot be explained in physical terms since is it a misuse of forces that are of the spiritual world. Any philosopher who disregards the world of spirit is unable to trace the origin of evil.
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