Revolution
Revolution (from late Latin: revolutio "to roll back, to turn around") today refers in the broadest sense to a sudden, often violent change in intellectual, scientific, technical, social, political and/or economic respects and thus forms the opposite term to evolution, which is comparatively slow, steady and largely peaceful.
General
The word has been in use since the 15th century and initially referred to the rotation of the heavenly bodies in astronomy. It was also used in this sense by Nicolaus Copernicus in his work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), which was also revolutionary in intellectual history. In 17th century England, the term was used for the restoration ("rolling back") of the old pre-absolutist form of rule by the Glorious Revolution (1688). In the sense of a violent social and political overthrow from below, i.e. by the broad mass of the people, the term has only been understood since the French Revolution.
Anthroposophy and the Russian Revolution
In view of the Russian Revolution (1917) Rudolf Steiner remarked:
„But with these revolutions it has its peculiarity. Revolutions were there in the world. One of the greatest revolutions was that which took place through the rise of Christianity. What kind of revolution was that? It was a spiritual revolution. What was transformed were the conditions of spiritual life. What new things can really arise in humanity in this way through a metamorphosis in development can only be spiritual impulses at first.
The Christian revolution was a spiritual one. And what it had in its wake in terms of legal life and economic life was a consequence of the spiritual upheaval that took place through Christianity. Therefore, this upheaval was a great one, and those who know the development of Christianity know how profoundly drastic was the spiritual upheaval that came into the world through Christianity.
But let us now consider a revolution in legal relations, in political relations: We find such upheavals in the French Revolution or in the continental revolution of 1848. Study these revolutions and you will find: They achieved some things, they put some things in the place of the old; but much remained behind which was not at all a solution of previously raised demands, but was a solution of previously raised demands, remains which remained behind from these political revolutions, from the three elements of human life. One can trace them, the upheavals in the spiritual sphere, in the political-legal sphere; one upheaval in the spiritual sphere, that of Christianity; one upheaval in the political-legal sphere, the upheaval of the French Revolution and the revolution of 1848. Now one wants an upheaval in the economic sphere. Economic life cannot mechanise itself, it cannot transform itself. Those who are familiar with world-historical contexts know that there can be spiritual upheavals, because all other life can be fertilised by the spirit, and that something also remains of the legal relationships which are founded in the spiritual coexistence of human beings when they take place in an upheaval. But if the external itself, formed purely of itself, is to be transformed, this is an illusion. It is simply a law of world-historical development that where a merely economic revolution is to be carried out, as in present-day Russia, this economic revolution must be the gravedigger of modern civilisation before it does not take up again something truly spiritual.
It is true that Lenin and Trotsky are the last consistent formers of what has lived for decades in the Darwinism of the masses. But by attempting to realise what one could unilaterally form in ideas as mere economic ideas, and what one could believe in as long as it did not become practical, one becomes the gravedigger of civilisation at the very moment when one wants to introduce it into life. And death could only spread in the European East under the influence of such ideas if it were not realised that we need something quite different in our time: a renewal of spiritual life.“ (Lit.:GA 329, p. 213ff)
Literature
- Rudolf Steiner: Die Befreiung des Menschenwesens als Grundlage für eine soziale Neugestaltung. Altes Denken und neues soziales Wollen., GA 329 (1985), ISBN 3-7274-3290-X English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
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References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF. |
