rubrics (I like that word), wrecking crews and hugfests

[Michael Bailey]

malignd wrote:
> I can't speak with any authority,  but it seems entirely possible--from what
> I know--that Bellow courted Rudolf Steiner for novelistic reasons.  He
> denied Steiner's request to review The Dean's December.

Rudolf Steiner, polymath and philosopher, passed away in 1925,
so it's hard to see how he could have reviewed any of Saul Bellow's books
in a physical sense.

Saul Bellow wrote a foreword to one of Steiner's books:
http://www.steinerbooks.org/detail.html?id=0880101873

Steiner followed Goethe to some extent; what I recall of Bellow's
mysticism also quoted Goethe, I think.  Goethe wrote about a theory
of vision, for instance, that ascribed an energetic potency coming
from the eyes and affecting objects so as to enable vision of them, right?

While this is demonstrably false within mechanistic paradigms,
there are certainly many ways to see the world, and sometimes
a (great) notion might still seed productive thought even if false.

Or they might hold true within certain limited domains: a flat earth
is a workable perception as long as you're talking about a specific
subset of the surface.

There are a lot of such thought-provoking ideas within Steiner's writings.

The suspension of disbelief necessary to appreciate such theories
isn't too far from that which fiction asks for...
and the rewards are similar.  To me, non-negligible, valuable
in several ways.

Steiner was able, for instance, using his philosophy of medicine,
to palpably assist people.

http://www.skylarkbooks.co.uk/Rudolf_Steiner_Biography.htm

 In the early 1880's, Steiner became a private tutor to a family of four boys,
three of whom he was to give preliminary instruction prior to elementary school
and then to coach them through secondary school. The fourth was a backward
hydrocephalic 10-year old with poor general health, who had hardly mastered
the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic. He was considered to
be physically and mentally abnormal and it was doubtful whether he
could be educated at all.
Through Steiner's examination of the whole human and his ability to see where
the difficulties lie not just in the physiological processes, but through these
processes as expressions of particular soul and spiritual
difficulties, he was able
 to design a program of therapy and study for the boy. In two years he
made up the deficiencies in his elementary school studies and passed
the grammar school entrance examination. As part of his developmental
progress, his health also improved including the hydrocephalus.
Steiner continued to work with him through most of his general
education, after which the young man continued in study, eventually
qualifying as a medical doctor.




-- 
- "The whole point of life is to have a story" - Jeremy Cioara