Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 80

The quote in my last post shows that Steiner praised Haeckel for being a modern thinker – for the processes of his thought and for his general direction, and not for any specific results. Steiner also speaks of the feeling that Haeckel's contemporaries (and Steiner includes himself) have about Haeckel's work. And Steiner states that Haeckel's general direction is correct, even as he registers his metaphorical reservations to some of Haeckel's specific conclusions.

Besides the Law of Recapitulation, Steiner valued Haeckel's actual courage to think beyond the narrow confines of his specialty and grapple with the deeper questions of existence. Whether Haeckel's results were correct or not was immaterial to Steiner; the effort was rare and deserved praise.

Then for the first time I saw in Haeckel the person who placed himself courageously at the thinker's point of view in natural science, while all other researchers excluded thought and admitted only the results of sense-observation. The fact that Haeckel placed value upon creative thought in laying the foundation for reality drew me again and again to him. (Rudolf Steiner. The Course of My Life. Chapter 30 )