The Social Archetype: Realizing Society’s Threefold Unity, A New Goetheanism

We live in a time of multiple challenges to our rights and freedoms – not only in authoritarian regimes but also in liberal democracies around the globe. As the storm clouds of crisis gather, Rudolf Steiner’s social vision – now a century old – offers a clear way forward. Radical in his time and still so today, Steiner’s ‘social threefolding’ is not conceived as a logical ‘system’. Rather, his picture of society as a living threefold unity, as a social ‘organism’, is an artistic insight that needs to be grasped imaginatively. To understand its three dimensions – the economic, the political-legal and cultural-spiritual spheres – and how they relate to each other, is to experience them inwardly. This requires a living, creative thinking that is able to enter the archetypal forces behind the concepts: a modern-day, truly Goethean approach to the social sciences. In an illuminating study, Hoffmann’s dynamic presentation enables us to develop precisely such an artistic–imaginative understanding of the threefold social organism. He achieves this through clear descriptions of its principles and practical governance, whilst offering wise advice regarding the adaptation of education – at school and tertiary levels – for a threefold society.