ABSTRACT
This chapter starts out from the Kantian differentiation between sensualism and rationalism; then shows how the more recent anthropological discussion attributes a much higher value to sensualism than historic educational concepts did. It advocates employing Steiner's concepts not as fixed truths, but as instruments for observation in a heuristic sense. Pedagogic anthropology aims at reflexively anchoring anthropologically based maxims of action in the pedagogic discourse of modern times. In 1919, Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf schools, explained in a lecture on the topic “The Independent School and the Threefold Order [of the Body Social]”: “The challenge at present is to anchor the school fully in a freedom of life and spirit. Steiner bases his study of the human being on a radically new anthropology, only specific to Waldorf education; he does not take recourse to the insights of developmental psychology or even developmental biology.
