Anthropos

Anthropos (Greek: ἄνθρωπος, from anti and tropos, literally: "the one turned against") is what the ancient Greeks called the upright, striding human being. Man, who is most clearly distinguished from the animal precisely by his upright posture, which he owes to his uprightness, which springs from the human I, thus spans, as it were, his being between earth and heaven and receives from both sides, from the sensual and from the spiritual world, the impulses which fill his intellectually gifted soul and which he must actively and independently combine with one another through the power of his individual I. The anthropos is the one who is able to stand upright and to walk upright. The anthropos detaches himself from nature, overcomes the natural instincts, and at the same time also confronts the world of the gods as an independent, even rebellious being who defies the gods, who creates his own firm standpoint in his soul, based on the intellect, from which he views and judges the world. This refers to the development of the intellectual soul, which flourished in the Greco-Roman culture.

„Within the theosophical world-view one must again feel something of what the Greek spirit, touched by ancient theosophy, already put into the word anthropos -- human being. The one who looks to the heights - that is how one could translate it into our present expression, if one wanted to translate it correctly. "He who looks to the heights" is at the same time the definition of man expressed in the Greek word anthropos, that is: he who seeks his origin in the heights of life, and he who finds his own reasons only in the heights of life, that is man according to the feeling of the Greek world.“ (Lit.:GA 137, p. 11)

The Anthropos in the Valentinian Gnosis

In the Gnostic system of the Valentinians, the Anthropos is one of the eight supreme Aeons emanated from the Godhead and together form the so-called "Eightness" (Greek ογδοάς Ogdoas), which consists of 4 male-female pairs. The female partner of the Anthropos is the Ecclesia (Greek: ἐκκλησία "church"), by which, however, not the outer earthly church but its heavenly archetype is meant.

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Der Mensch im Lichte von Okkultismus, Theosophie und Philosophie, GA 137 (1993), ISBN 3-7274-1371-9 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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