Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
— Walt Whitman, “America”
Just Released!
A Legacy Restated
The Work of Bernhard Behrens: Four Essays with Current-day Reviews
Edited by Christopher Houghton Budd
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These essays, written just after World War II by a German economist who arrived in the United States in 1940, provide an unexpectedly helpful contribution to an understanding of our present moment, writ large. Today, when the U.S. is coming to terms with its destiny and its true (as distinct from geopolitical) place in current and world history, seems a propitious time to republish these essays, which first saw the light of day in the mid-twentieth century.
Updated from the 1950s, the view of the challenges and possibilities that Bernhard Behrens provides remain as perceptive and insightful now as when written, especially in regard to economics and democracy. READ MORE
New Podcast!
Aleatory Encounters: Episode 3
What’s Your Story? w/ Signe Schaefer
Books by Signe Eklund Schaefer
Why on Earth?
Biography and the Practice of Human Becoming
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Life today poses many questions, both in our personal lives and in our participation in nature and the broader culture. We often focus on the outer needs for social, political, technological, or environmental change. However, can we really meet the challenges around us without also attending to our inner life and to our own evolving biography as it reflects and informs the outer world? READ MORE
She Was Always There
Sophia as a Story for Our Time
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“Who, or perhaps what, is she?” Signe Eklund Schaefer poses this question as she leads us into a heartfelt exploration of the great mystery that is Sophia. Her book does not take an academic or theological path but one that is personal and full of warmth and genuine interest in discovery that goes toward living reality, well beyond mere names and fixed ideas. As Schaefer says, she decided to “forego the idea of a straightforward narrative and instead interweave musings, poems, saved quotations, and other assorted notes from my many years of living with questions about and to her.” READ MORE
Coming in November
Elder Flowering
Lived Experiences of Growing Older
Edited by Signe Eklund Schaefer and Karen Gierlach
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The “social art” of biography work has grown from the insights of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science—insights that have proved useful in identifying and exploring the archetypal rhythms and milestones of human life. The most well-known, even obvious, of these are the roughly seven-year rhythms of early childhood, childhood, and adolescence, culminating in the transition to adulthood around the age of twenty-one.
But this and other archetypal rhythms continue to unfold throughout life, perhaps more subtly and certainly in the most differentiated and individualized of ways. These have often been explored, especially as they pertain to the "active years" of adulthood. But less has been written about the so-called elder years. This volume seeks to remedy that. READ MORE
From The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner
Rethinking Economics
Lectures and Seminars on World Economics
14 lectures in Dornach, July 14-August 6, 1922 (CW 340)
6 seminars in Dornach, July 31-August 5, 1922 (CW 341)
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“In this age of social, economic, and ecological disruption, many people are beginning to realize that perhaps the most important root causes for this crisis originate in an economic thinking that is increasingly out of touch with the social, ecological, and spiritual realities of our time. How, then, can we rethink and redefine the fundamental economic concepts that frame our discussions and shape our key institutions in society today? This is the big question on the table today. Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on economics ... offer a largely unused gold mine of fresh economic ideas that could not be more timely and relevant.” (from the foreword)
Rudolf Steiner gave this complex sequence of dense, subtle, multileveled lectures and seminars to students of economics in Dornach, Switzerland, during the summer of 1922. The course reflects a lifetime of thinking on the subject and marks the conclusion of his intense five-year period of activism in the service of social, political, and economic issues. During this time, which began as World War I was ending in 1917, he worked tirelessly to promote the cause of what he called “threefolding” (Dreigliederung), by which he meant rethinking the social order on the basis of clear separation and independence of the three fundamental spheres of activity that make up a society. He proposed three independent systems:
∞ an autonomous rights sphere (limited to judicial and political matters)
∞ an autonomous economic sphere (cooperative or associative by nature)
∞ and an autonomous spiritual-cultural sphere
The autonomy of these three spheres, he believed, would make possible a free, healthy, productive society and open the possibility of a lasting peace.
Rethinking Economics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the true nature of an economy and how it works. Steiner presents the basic elements of what it would take to create a just, socially responsible, and ecologically aware economy today. READ MORE
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