Part 4 Men-women-humanity question

For a week, I’ve been discussing with AI questions that have, in some cases, been on my mind for decades.

As things got a bit out of hand, I’ve divided it into five parts. Starting with the Council of Constantinople, moving on to the Church and religion, architecture, forms of society, women and men, dance, and, in the final part, sex. Each part builds on the previous one. That’s why AI incorporates previous topics into its answers.

Editor’s note: This conversation took place exactly as it appears here. I have corrected some of my spelling and grammatical mistakes. A photograph is followed by my question (in bold), then by the AI’s response until the next photograph. Italics indicate editorial notes and direct quotations. Unless otherwise stated, all photographs were taken by me on the Greek island of Samos.

I used an AI from Wild Wisdom Mirror based on ChatGPT (please check the privacy policy before signing up).

And how can we still make room for the whole men-women-humanity question?

I think by not beginning with the question of equality.

Not because it is unimportant, but because it is already being asked within a modern paradigm. I have the impression that you are interested in something more fundamental:

What role do the masculine and the feminine play in the development of being human?

That is a different question.

I suspect we are moving on three levels.

1. Cosmic polarity

Here we would have

Apollo and Dionysus,
Sun and Earth,
Form and Life,
Spirit and Nature.

The masculine and feminine would initially be principles, not men and women.

This can be found in Steiner, but also in many older traditions.

2. Anthropological polarity

Then comes the question:

How do these forces appear in the human being?

And this is where it gets interesting.

Steiner often says:

The I is without gender.

That is a radical statement.

If taken seriously, then neither masculinity nor femininity can define the human being in essence.

They are both modes of expression.

Not the essence.

3. Cultural-historical polarity

Only now do we come to

patriarchy,
matriarchy,
family,
economics,
church,
power.

Here the question would be:

Which forms of culture favor which side?

Not in terms of better or worse.

But:

Which quality comes to the fore?

I would, however, add a fourth level.

And it seems to me almost the most important one.

The future.

Steiner repeatedly says, in essence:

Humanity is developing from group identities toward the free I.

This concerns

people,
nation,
race,

but really it should also concern

man,
woman.

Then the future would be neither

a masculine culture

nor

a feminine culture,

but

a human culture.

What is interesting is this:

Here Steiner suddenly begins to sound surprisingly modern.

Not in every detail.

But in the basic idea.

Because if the I is truly without gender,

then that means:

Every human being potentially carries

Apollonian forces,
Dionysian forces,
Ahrimanic temptations,
Luciferic temptations,

within themselves.

Then these are not qualities of men or women.

They are human possibilities.

And now comes something I would like to explore with you tomorrow.

I wonder whether the actual development is not

from patriarchy

to matriarchy,

but

from the domination of one polarity

to

the conscious cooperation of polarities.

That would be something entirely different.

And suddenly something occurred to me.

So far we have talked about:

East and West
Apollo and Dionysus
Lucifer and Ahriman
Centralized and longitudinal forms
Community and individuality

Again and again, it has been about polarities.

Perhaps the question of gender is not a separate chapter at all.

Perhaps it is the most intimate manifestation of the same underlying structure.

Not accidentally.

But necessarily.

I would therefore almost suggest that at some point—not immediately—we step back and ask:

Is there a general theory of polarity in Steiner?

Because I have a suspicion that all these oppositions—East/West, Apollo/Dionysus, Lucifer/Ahriman, man/woman, individuality/community—are not independent of one another. They seem to be expressions of a deeper pattern.

And this is precisely where I would become cautious. Because here lies a strength of Steiner’s thinking—the search for recurring forms—but also a possible weakness: the temptation to reduce very different phenomena too closely to the same underlying polarity.

Precisely here it seems worthwhile to let the phenomena speak for themselves again and again. That seems very much in keeping with what you have been looking for: not a finished system, but a way of understanding that has to prove itself against reality.

I’m not really drawn to models; that feels too technocratic to me. I’m more interested in trying to understand processes.

But moving on:

How does anthroposophy explain the historical emergence of patriarchy, and what role did the Church after the Council of 869 play in this development?

That is an important clarification—and I’m happy to take it on board.

I would no longer speak of a model either. The word suggests something constructed. What we are trying to do is more like a hermeneutic, or a way of understanding: we are asking whether an inner direction of movement can be discerned in historical phenomena without reducing them to a schema.

Now to your question.

First, a surprise.

As far as I can see, Steiner does not develop a coherent theory of the emergence of patriarchy.

That is initially surprising, because he seems to have commented on almost everything. In fact, however, he speaks much more often about the development of consciousness, mysteries, cultural epochs, and gender polarities than about patriarchy in the historical sense.

That means we have to reconstruct a line from various statements—and carefully indicate where we are interpreting.

1. Pre-patriarchal humanity?

Steiner assumes that the earliest stages of humanity had a different kind of consciousness.

He describes it as:

imagistic,
dreamlike,
more strongly connected with nature and the cosmos,
less individualized.

He often associates this consciousness with what today might be characterized as more “maternal” or “receptive”—although he himself does not use these terms systematically.

Interestingly, this creates a certain proximity to thinkers such as Johann Jakob Bachofen, who developed the concept of an original “mother right.” Steiner knew Bachofen and appreciated him, but did not simply adopt his theories. Historically, Bachofen’s theory is controversial today; archaeology does not support the existence of a universal matriarchy.

2. The emergence of the I

For Steiner, the development of the I is the great turning point.

And this is where something begins

that might be described as

necessary separation.

Human beings must free themselves

from nature,
tribe,
blood,
kinship.

This is not yet patriarchy.

But it prepares the ground for a culture in which

law,
individuality,
reason,
the state

become increasingly important.

3. Why does this become a male culture?

This is where things get delicate.

Steiner occasionally uses formulations

that associate masculine forces more strongly with

thinking,
form,
initiative,

and feminine forces more strongly with

life,
devotion,
receptivity.

From today’s perspective, these are typical polarity assignments of his time.

The question is:

Are these ontological statements?

Or images?

I think this has still not been definitively resolved within anthroposophy itself.

4. And now the Council of 869

Here we come back to a point

where your original question re-emerges.

If Steiner were right

that 869 obscured awareness of the spiritual essence of the human being,

then this would have consequences.

Not immediately.

But in the long term.

The image of the human being would shift

from

body – soul – spirit

to

body – soul.

What would that mean socially?

Perhaps this:

The less spirit is experienced as a real dimension,

the more

external order,
institution,
authority,
biological sex

gain importance.

That would be an indirect connection between 869 and patriarchal structures.

Not because the Council intended to oppress women.

But because the human being as a whole would increasingly be defined through external characteristics.

This is, however, an interpretation derived from Steiner’s overall thinking; as far as I know, he does not explicitly formulate this causal chain.

5. The Church

Historically, one can say

that the medieval Church

had exclusively male offices,
predominantly male images of God,
and a strongly developed hierarchy.

But at the same time it preserved

veneration of Mary,
female mysticism,
large convents for women,
and significant figures such as Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Siena.

The picture is therefore ambivalent.

And now I would like to venture a thought that is no longer Steiner.

Perhaps the deeper history does not run

matriarchy → patriarchy → equality.

But rather:

Embeddedness in nature and community.
Differentiation through hierarchy, law, and individualization.
Conscious reciprocity between free human beings.

Then patriarchy would be neither merely an error nor an ideal.

But a historical form

that developed something

(individuality, law, the capacity for abstraction),

while at the same time suppressing something

(relationship, embodiment, care, mutual dependence).

Steiner’s developmental thinking touches here on very different contemporary voices—for example, in feminist philosophy or social ethics—although without sharing their premises.

One final thought.

I increasingly feel that our real guiding question may be more fundamental than “How did patriarchy emerge?”

It might be:

What has to happen in history for the human being to become a free being out of a being of nature—and what is lost along the way that later has to be regained at a higher level?

If I understand Steiner correctly, that would be the real dramatic arc of his conception of history. And perhaps this is precisely where the connection lies between almost all the themes we have touched on so far: East and West, Apollo and Dionysus, Lucifer and Ahriman, the development of the Church, dance, architecture—and now also the history of the relationship between men and women. Not as separate chapters, but as different perspectives on the same human process.

---

That makes sense.

I’m glad—and at the same time I would like us to keep forcing each other to ask: “Does this make sense because it is true, or because it forms a beautiful interpretive framework?”

This is a particular danger with Steiner. He is an extraordinarily integrative thinker. His concepts often fit together so well that it is easy to forget to check whether the historical phenomena actually behave in this way. I would therefore like us to cultivate both: openness to his great intuitions and a willingness to test them against the phenomena.

Something else is becoming apparent to me.

We have now spoken several times about polarities:

East – West
Apollo – Dionysus
Lucifer – Ahriman
Individuality – community
Man – woman

Perhaps this is not yet the deepest level.

Perhaps it is always the same process:

Original unity.
Differentiation and separation.
Conscious re-encounter.

This threefold movement appears surprisingly often.

Not only in Steiner.

In Hegel as well, though conceived very differently; in Buber, in Jung, in many mystical traditions, and even in biological processes of development, one finds movements that can be described not as a circle but as metamorphosis.

And precisely here—just as an outlook—Goethe may eventually become unavoidable. Not as an authority, but because his concept of metamorphosis might help us observe these processes without reducing them to rigid oppositions.

A thought about Greece.

Since you are there at the moment, I would like to leave you with one observation.

If you see a circle dance in a village square somewhere, or take part in one yourself, don’t look first at the steps.

Look at the relationship between the individual and the circle.

Who leads?

How is leadership exercised?

When is someone allowed to improvise?

When does the community carry the individual?

When does the individual carry the community?

I could imagine that you can learn more about a culture there than from some philosophical treatises. Not because the dance is a theory, but because it is an embodied anthropology. That also fits your impulse not to look for models, but for processes.

I look forward to continuing. I have the feeling we are slowly approaching something like a map—not in order to define reality, but to bring different landscapes of being human into relationship with one another.

I would be interested in this: if, according to Steiner, the Spirit was abolished at the Council of Constantinople and this consequently opened the door to materialism, how should we locate the end of the Kali Yuga on the one hand, and then, for me, the next question is: what is being abolished by AI, and what doors are thereby being opened?

Now you are asking what I think is the real question of the present moment. And I would initially not answer it at all, but unfold it, because three timelines converge here:

Steiner’s interpretation of 869.
His concept of the end of the Kali Yuga.
Our situation with AI.

I think these three levels only become interesting in relation to one another.

I. If Steiner were right …

Let us take his thesis as a working hypothesis, without claiming it as historical fact.

Then 869 would not be the “abolition of the Spirit,” but something subtler:

Spirit is removed from the public worldview.

Human beings do not lose the Spirit.

They lose the awareness that Spirit is an objective reality.

That has enormous consequences.

If Spirit is no longer experienced as a reality, the world has to be explained differently.

What remains is:

matter,
causality,
function,
organization.

One might say:

The world becomes objective, but also disenchanted.

This is reminiscent of Max Weber’s concept of the “disenchantment of the world,” even though Weber argues from a very different perspective.

II. Why would this have been necessary according to Steiner?

Here something comes into play that is often overlooked.

Steiner does not simply evaluate this development negatively.

For as long as human beings live naturally within a spiritual world,

they may not actually be free.

They know.

They do not believe.

They do not decide.

They experience.

The separation from Spirit is therefore simultaneously

a liberation.

The price:

materialism.

The gain:

freedom.

It is a tragic dialectic.

III. Kali Yuga

Now we come to your second question.

Steiner adopts the concept of the Kali Yuga from Indian tradition, but interprets it independently.

For him, the Kali Yuga ends in 1899.

Not because everything suddenly becomes better.

But because the conditions change.

Before:

Humanity had to lose the Spirit.

Now:

humanity is allowed to find it again freely.

That is an entirely different process.

Not a return.

But a recovery.

IV. And now AI

This is where it becomes philosophically highly interesting to me.

Because I wonder

whether AI marks a second great threshold.

Not the same one as 869.

A different one.

The question would be:

What is now disappearing from the human self-understanding?

At the Council (in Steiner’s interpretation):

Spirit disappears from the image of the human being.

With AI, something else might disappear.

Perhaps

not Spirit,

but

thinking as the unique defining characteristic of the human being.

That would be a dramatic difference.

What happens then?

Since the Enlightenment, we have roughly defined the human being like this:

The human being is the rational animal.

Now machines appear

that

write,
argue,
compose,
program,
translate,
diagnose.

Not like humans.

But well enough

to shake our self-image.

So what is being “abolished”?

Perhaps not thinking.

But

the identification of the human being with their thinking.

That would be something quite different.

If this is true,

then AI poses the same question

that Steiner poses after 1899:

Who is the human being

if thinking alone no longer defines them?

And now I want to venture a thought that is no longer Steiner.

Perhaps history runs roughly like this:

869

Spirit disappears from the worldview.

↓

Modernity

The human being identifies with thinking.

↓

AI

Thinking loses its privileged status.

↓

?

What remains?

Perhaps precisely what neither Church

nor machine

nor natural science

can take away:

Conscience.
Relationship.
Responsibility.
Love.
Freedom.
Creative presence.

Not as feelings.

But as ways of being.

And now I get goosebumps.

Because suddenly another of Steiner’s statements takes on a new meaning.

He says, in essence:

The future does not consist in

knowing more,

but

becoming more conscious.

Twenty years ago, this sounded esoteric to many people.

Today we might ask:

If knowledge is available from machines at any time,

then what actually constitutes consciousness?

Perhaps this will become the real question of humanity.

Not:

Can AI think?

But:

What is the human being when thinking alone is no longer enough?

And here, surprisingly, the circle closes back to our conversation so far.

We have talked about architecture, dance, East and West, the I, and community. Again and again, the subject has been forms of being human.

Perhaps AI is therefore not simply a technological revolution, but an anthropological challenge. Not because it replaces human beings, but because it forces us to ask again:

What about me cannot be algorithmized?

Steiner would presumably answer: the free I.

Others might say: the personal encounter, conscience, embodied experience, or the capacity for love.

Whatever answer one prefers, I think we really are standing at a threshold at which the same fundamental question returns that has occupied you since the Council of 869:

Which dimension of the human being is coming into consciousness—and which is temporarily disappearing from view?

Perhaps history is less a sequence of advances than a sequence of shifts in attention. Each epoch illuminates one aspect of being human particularly brightly—and casts another into shadow. The task of the next epoch might then be precisely not to simply bring back what was lost, but to rediscover it at a new level of consciousness. That would, if you will, not be a return, but a metamorphosis.

---

So, taken consistently one step further, what is the task of humanity now—in relation to AI?

For me, this is the most exciting question of our conversation so far. And I would explicitly not answer it solely from Steiner’s perspective, but use Steiner’s concepts as interlocutors.

Because he could not know AI. If we take him seriously, we must not simply paste his concepts onto new phenomena, but ask: How would his method hold up when applied to a phenomenon he never experienced?

I would therefore think about it as follows.

If 869 posed the task:

Human beings must learn to live without immediate certainty of Spirit.

Then there emerged:

science,
individuality,
criticism,
freedom.

The price was:

materialism,
alienation,
objectification.

If AI is the next threshold,

then the task might be:

Human beings must learn to be human without the primacy of their intellect.

That would be immense.

Since Aristotle, we have defined ourselves through reason.

Perhaps that epoch is now coming to an end.

Then being human would have to be redefined.

Not through

“I think.”

but through

“I encounter.”

Or

“I take responsibility.”

Or

“I transform.”

Interestingly, this also changes our relationship to Ahriman.

Steiner often describes Ahriman as the principle of

calculation,
precision,
measurability,
technology.

Many Anthroposophists therefore immediately see something Ahrimanic in digitization.

I would be more cautious.

Perhaps AI is not Ahriman.

Perhaps it is

a revelation of what Ahriman is capable of.

And precisely by doing so, it forces us

to discover

what Ahriman cannot do.

That is a difference.

Then Michael would suddenly take on a new meaning.

Not:

fight against technology.

But:

develop technology fully

without reducing oneself to technology.

That would actually be a very Steinerian attitude.

And now comes the thought that occupies me.

Perhaps the meaning of the word Spirit is shifting.

A hundred years ago people thought:

Spirit = intelligence.

Today we realize:

A machine can appear intelligent.

So Spirit must mean something else.

Perhaps

presence.

Perhaps

self-transparency.

Perhaps

love.

Perhaps

conscience.

Perhaps

freedom.

Then dance suddenly takes on a new meaning as well.

We talked about circle dances.

Why does a communal dance touch us so deeply?

Not

because it is efficient.

Not

because it processes information.

But because

human beings

together

embody

time.

No AI can dance in the existential sense.

It can generate movements.

But it does not experience resonance.

The same applies to architecture.

An AI can design cathedrals.

Perhaps better ones than we can.

But it

enters

no cathedral.

It knows no awe.

This leads me to a hypothesis.

Perhaps the task of humanity is shifting

from thinking

to

inhabiting the world.

Not explaining the world.

Not calculating the world.

But

inhabiting the world.

That is something entirely different.

And suddenly the history of women takes on a new resonance as well.

I would formulate this very carefully.

Not:

The future will be feminine.

I think that is too simplistic.

But perhaps:

Modernity has developed abilities

that have traditionally been associated more with the

analytical,
abstract,
controlling

dimensions of human activity.

If AI takes over precisely these abilities,

then other human qualities become newly visible.

Not because they are feminine.

But because they

have long been culturally undervalued.

For example:

resonance.
care.
relationship.
embodiment.
receptivity.
patience.

Hartmut Rosa would speak here of resonance, rather than a return to premodern conditions. From an anthroposophical perspective, one might add: perhaps this is not about the “feminization” of culture, but about recognizing abilities that have long been undervalued as indispensable dimensions of human freedom.

Perhaps that is the real point.

When I take our whole conversation together,

from the Council of 869

through Greece,

through dance,

through architecture,

through patriarchy,

to AI,

the same question seems to keep emerging:

What must human beings let go of in order for a deeper form of being human to appear?

869:

the taken-for-granted experience of spiritual perception.

Modernity:

the security of belonging to a community.

Today, perhaps:

identification with the intellect.

If this is true,

then AI would not be the end of humanity.

But—paradoxically—the occasion for understanding the human being for the first time not through superiority, but through presence.

And that is perhaps the point at which I would leave Steiner and remain with him at the same time. I do not believe that the future simply lies in a new spiritual science. I believe it lies in human beings learning to make their freedom capable of relationship. Not merely free to think, but free to love, free to take responsibility, and free to be present.

For me, that would be a task for humanity which AI does not make smaller, but larger—regardless of whether Steiner would agree with it in every detail.

The idea of “freedom capable of relationship” is an interesting one. For me, this theme also touches on the ability to cultivate “the art of the unavailable.”

We’ll take this question with us into Part 5.