Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 71

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 25 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

During his Vienna period Steiner also fell under the sway of Nietzsche, the outstanding anti-democratic thinker of the era, whose elitism made a powerful impression. The radical individualism of Max Stirner further contributed to the young Steiner's political outlook, yielding a potent philosophical melange that was waiting to be catalyzed by some dynamic reactionary force. The latter appeared to Steiner soon enough in the form of Ernst Haeckel and his Social Darwinist creed of Monism. Haeckel (1834-1919) was the founder of modern ecology and the major popularizer of evolutionary theory in Germany. Steiner became a partisan of Haeckel's views, and from him Anthroposophy inherited its environmentalist predilections, its hierarchical model of human development, and its tendency to interpret social phenomena in biological terms.

This next paragraph is a beautiful work of polemic, once again devoid of even the slightest hint of substantiation. It also has the chronology wrong, for Steiner encountered the works of Haeckel long before reading Nietzsche, and Stirner was the last of the three whose works Steiner read. Most would agree that Nietzsche was an outstanding anti-democratic thinker of his era, but did Steiner fall under his sway in the manner implied? And what was Stirner's influence on Steiner? Did it really yield "a potent philosophical mélange that was waiting to be catalyzed by some dynamic reactionary force"? (And why must it be a reactionary force that catalyzes this potent philosophical mélange? Could it not have just as easily been progressive force? Ah yes, the thesis is that Steiner was a proto-Nazi, so he must be socially reactionary.) Finally, what was Steiner's relationship to Haeckel? It seems that Steiner is quite a passive sponge under all this influencing. Was he the only person to have read Nietzsche, Stirner and Haeckel? Must anyone of that period who read all three also become an anti-democratic radical individualist and Social Darwinist? Let us look at the allegations one at a time, in my next entries.