death_date death_place era birth_place school_tradition influences main_interests notable_ideas name birth_date image article_title birth_name region
30 march 1925 -lrb- aged 64 -rrb- dornach , switzerland 20th-century philosophy murakirály -rrb- , austria-hungary -lrb- now donji kraljevec , croatia holism , monism franz hartmann , hegel , kant , schelling , schiller , brentano karl julius schröer daniel nicol dunlop , wassily kandinsky , , edouard schuré , albert schweitzer , richard tarnas , valentin fichte tomberg , goethe , eduard von metaphysics , christianity , epistemology , philosophy of science , esotericism anthroposophy , spiritual science , waldorf education , holism , holism , in science anthroposophical medicine , biodynamic agriculture , eurythmy rudolf steiner 27 -lrb- 25 ? -rrb- february 1861 steiner um 1905.jpg rudolf steiner
 rudolf joseph lorenz steiner western philosophy
rudolf steiner

rudolf joseph lorenz steiner -lrb- 27 -lrb- 25 ? -rrb-
february 1861 -- 30 march 1925 -rrb- was an austrian philosopher , social reformer , architect , and esotericist .
steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published philosophical works including `` the philosophy of freedom '' .
at the beginning of the twentieth century , he founded an esoteric spiritual movement , anthroposophy , with roots in german idealist philosophy and theosophy ; other influences include goethean science and rosicrucianism .
in the first , more philosophically oriented phase of this movement , steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality ; his philosophical work of these years , which he termed `` spiritual science '' , sought to apply the clarity of thinking characteristic of western philosophy to spiritual questions , differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism .
in a second phase , beginning around 1907 , he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media , including drama , the movement arts -lrb- developing a new artistic form , `` eurythmy '' -rrb- and architecture , culminating in the building of the goetheanum , a cultural centre to house all the arts .
in the third phase of his work , beginning after world war i , steiner worked to establish various practical endeavors , including waldorf education , biodynamic agriculture , and anthroposophical medicine .
steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism , to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach .
he based his epistemology on johann wolfgang goethe 's world view , in which `` thinking ... is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear .
just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds , so thinking perceives ideas . ''
a consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge .
