AEWCH 311: RUDOLF STEINER'S RADICAL SOCIAL-POLITICAL PROJECT with AARON FRENCH & HENRY HOLLAND
Against Everyone with Conner Habib
Against Everyone With Conner Habib
4.8 • 699 Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2025
⏱️ 155 minutes
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Summary
In this double-length and in-depth episode, I look at the social-political project of the late 19th early 20th century occultist, philosopher, and social reformer Rudolf Steiner with scholars and academics Aaron French and Henry Holland, who are writing Steiner's biography for SUNY Press, and have just offered the keynote at Harvard University's conference on Rudolf Steiner's life and work.
On this episode, we attend to a question Henry asks:
“Is a leftist reading of Steiner possible?"
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is against everyone with Connor Habib. Friends, this will be a more in-depth and perhaps |
| 0:06.6 | more personal introduction for this episode, with scholars and teachers Aaron French and Henry |
| 0:12.6 | Holland on Rudolf Steiner's radical, occultist and anarchist social political project. A little |
| 0:19.5 | background on why I did this episode and a few stories and a few thoughts before |
| 0:25.8 | we begin the episode proper here. |
| 0:28.8 | Just to say in regard to occultism and Rudolf Steiner and this show, across the over 300 |
| 0:34.9 | episodes of the show, I found myself bringing spiritual, esoteric, and occult |
| 0:40.9 | considerations to a lot of leftist thinkers and activists and artists who have left-aligned |
| 0:47.7 | politics. Leftism is supposedly antagonistic to this spiritual esoteric and occult perspective, and yet I continue to find a desire to discuss these topics with my guests and affinities between leftist politics, anarchist politics, socialist politics, as well as connections in thinking and history to occultism and esotericism. |
| 1:14.6 | And some of the most profound continental philosophers who are often drawn on by the left and progressive allies also have these affinities with occultism and esotericism. |
| 1:25.5 | And that's come up a lot as well, sometimes with |
| 1:28.6 | those philosophers directly on this show. One reason why I find it so important to bring |
| 1:35.2 | esotericism on this show as often as I do is because it offers a reframe of reality itself. |
| 1:42.9 | Even though esotericism is thought of as old, it presents a new way |
| 1:48.4 | of looking at the world that can offer wild and useful solutions at a time when the solutions |
| 1:55.0 | we are used to bringing to the challenges of the world seem tame, seem to no longer work, and the imaginations we |
| 2:02.4 | have for developing ways of being seem too limited to meet the challenges of our time. |
| 2:10.0 | My foundation for occultism really comes from esoteric Christianity, and to get more specific, |
| 2:16.9 | my foundation for esoteric Christianity. And to get more specific, my foundation for esoteric Christianity |
| 2:18.9 | comes at least in a large part from over two decades of engagement with Anthroposophy, |
| 2:26.2 | the occult approach developed by the late 19th, early 20th century philosopher, occultist, |
| 2:32.9 | and social reformer, Rudolf Steiner. If you don't know |
... |
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