Arabism

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Arabism, which took up the impulses of the Academy of Gondishapur, prematurely brought the consciousness soul and the associated intellect to development, but not through man's own inner effort, but as if through a kind of revelation. Thus one could come to the knowledge of the outer nature, but the spiritual world remained closed. If it had not been for the flourishing Mohammedanism that curbed this impulse, man would have been cut off from his further spiritual development altogether.

Arabism and the Consciousness Soul

„Arabism is, on the one hand, a premature development of the consciousness soul. Through the soul-life working too early in the direction of the consciousness-soul, it offered the possibility of a spiritual wave pouring in from Asia through Africa, Southern Europe, Western Europe, which filled certain European people with an intellectualism which was not allowed to come until later; Southern and Western Europe received spiritual impulses in the seventh, eighth centuries which should not have come until the age of the consciousness-soul.

This spiritual wave could awaken the intellectual in man, but not the deeper experience through which the soul dives into the spirit-world. Now, when man in the fifteenth to the nineteenth century brought his faculty of knowledge into activity, he could only submerge himself to a depth of soul in which he had not yet encountered the spiritual world. The Arabism that entered European intellectual life kept the discerning souls away from the spirit world. It brought - prematurely - the intellect to bear, which could only grasp external nature.

And this Arabism proved to be very powerful. Whoever was seized by it, an inner - for the most part quite unconscious - arrogance began to seize the soul. He felt the power of intellectualism; but he did not feel the inability of the mere intellect to penetrate reality. So he abandoned himself to the outer sensuous reality which presented itself to man through itself; but he did not even think of approaching the spiritual reality.“ (Lit.:GA 26, p. 245f)

If it had not been for the flourishing Mohammedanism which dampened this impulse, man would have been cut off from his further spiritual development altogether. In this attenuated form, Arab culture was by all means an important cultural ferment for Europe.

„It was once the blessing of Europe that Arabic, Moorish culture spread over southern Europe. For that time it was fully entitled to that which, however, has now become ahrimanic.“ (Lit.:GA 159, p. 242f)

Arabism and Aristotelian Science

„The inner content of Mohammedanism is essentially based on simple monotheistic ideas, which are limited to a divine fundamental being, whose nature and form one does not particularly investigate, which one does not fathom, but in whose will one surrenders, which one believes. That is why this religion is created to evoke an enormous trust in this will, which leads to fatalism, to willless surrender. This is why it was possible for these tribes to extend Arab domination over Syria, Mesopotamia, North Africa to the empire of the Visigoths in Spain in just a few human ages, so that already at the turn of the 7th to the 8th century the Moors spread their rule there and put their own culture in place of the Visigothic one.

Thus something completely new and different poured into European culture. In the spiritual, religious sphere, this Arab culture had only a simple content, which founded certain powers in the soul, but did not generate many ideas, did not particularly engage the spirit. This spirit was not filled with thinking about dogmas, about angels and demons and so on. But if the spirit was not filled with this, it was filled with what the Christian-Germanic tribes lacked at that time: with external scientificity. Here we find all those sciences developed, such as medicine, chemistry, mathematical thinking. The practical spirit that had been brought to Spain from Asia now found activity in seafaring and so on. It was brought over at a time when a spirit without science had founded its empire there. The Moorish cities became places of serious, scientific work: we see there a culture that anyone who knows it can only admire, of which a Humboldt said: "This breadth, this intensity, this sharpness of knowledge is without precedent in the history of civilisation." These Moorish scholars are full of foresight and profundity, and not only adopted Greek science like the Teutons, but pre-formed it. Aristotle also lived on among these, but among the Arabs the true Aristotle as the father of science, revered with great foresight. It is interesting to see how what was pre-formed in Greece, the Alexandrian culture, lived on there, and thus we have touched on one of the strangest currents in human intellectual life. The Arabs provided the foundations for objective science. This first flowed from there into the Anglo-Saxon monasteries in England and Ireland, where the old energetic Celtic blood lived. It was peculiar to see what a lively intercourse was initiated between them and Spain, and how there, where profundity and the ability to think existed, science revived through the mediation of the Arabs.

And it is a strange phenomenon when we see further that the Arabs, who at first took possession of the whole of Spain, were soon outwardly defeated in the battle of Poitiers in 732 by the Franks under Charles Martell. But the spiritual power of the Arabs remains invincible, and just as Greek learning once conquered Rome, so Arab learning conquers the West, confronting the victorious Germanic tribes. Now, when science, which is needed to widen the field of vision for commerce and world traffic, comes into being, when urban culture arises, we see that it is Arabic influences that assert themselves here, entirely new elements that flow in here and try to adapt themselves to the old ones.“ (Lit.:GA 51, p. 132ff)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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