Threefold Society
The Spiritual Tasks Of Europe In The Coming Millennium
© Terry Boardman Michaelmas 1997 It seems to be a common fin-de-siecle phenomenon that thinkers try, Janus-like, to sum up the essence of the dying century, and on the basis of their judgments of it, to make prognostications about the nature of the coming century. Since we live in a global media culture where ideas can flash around the world in seconds and be imprinted on the consciousness of millions on the same...
read moreOn Rudolf Steiner’s “Appeal To The German People and The Civilised World” (1919)
©Terry Boardman This essay first appeared as the Afterword to: Rudolf Steiner, Towards Social Renewal - Rethinking the Basis of Society (Temple Lodge Publishing, London, 1999) The years 1917 to 1919 were a time of the most profound social change throughout Europe. Impulses unleashed by the catastrophe of the war seemed about to transform European civilisation, and indeed, in some ways, it was transformed. Certainly, in those three years, the twentieth century, which, in the socio-political sense, has been marked by...
read moreThe Idea of the Threefold Society at the Dawn of the Third Millennium
© Terry M. Boardman March 1999 This essay first appeared in the collection of essays published as The Future Is Now – Anthroposophy at the New Millennium (Temple Lodge Publishing, London 1999) The 2nd millennium, which gave birth to innumerable dualisms, is about to give way to the 3rd, but the dualism of the waning age remains strong. On the global scale, the growth of Islamic fundamentalism as a reaction to what is perceived to be American neo-colonialism, and the American response to the Muslim world, has opened up the...
read moreWhat is Social Threefolding?
©Terry Boardman A lecture given at a conference of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain in Stourbridge, England 8.11.1997 The aim of this lecture is to throw some light on why the threefold archetype is so important in our time, both for society in general and for the Anthroposophical Society, and thereby to stimulate some enthusiasm for working with it and for it, including the threefolding of the Anthroposophical Society. In Anthroposophy we seek to work out of creative spiritual archetypes; we must therefore be clear about what...
read moreThe ‘Abolition’ of the Spirit: The Enigma of Canon XI – The Year 869 & Its Significance in the Destiny of Europe
This article first appeared in New View magazine Second Quarter Spring 2008 At the Christmas Conference for the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society Dec. 24th 1923 – 1st Jan. 1924 , Rudolf Steiner restored to western culture something that had been lost for nearly 1100 years, namely, the threefold image of Man – once known as the Trichotomy – the image of Man as consisting of body, soul and spirit. This had been missing since the year 869, when it was deviously ‘abolished’ by fiat of a Church Council. In the years...
read moreThe ‘Third Way’ of 1998 and the ‘New Politics’ of Today
This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 56 July-Sept 2010 Broadly speaking, one could say that the three main historical political parties in Britain – Liberal, Conservative and Labour – correspond to three key factors that have played a great role in British history since the seventeenth century. Respectively, these three aspects are: the Liberal concern for the liberty of the individual; the Conservative will to uphold the laws and customs of the land, and thirdly, the socialist yearning for just cooperation in...
read moreTo the Third Millennium: The Third Way or The Third Reich?
There has been a lot of babbling in the English-speaking media in recent years, most of it very unclear, about a "Third Way" in politics and even economics. The Internet is now stuffed with groups, media organs, even new political parties calling themselves "The Third Way". Many people, such as Tony Blair in the UK and his friend Bill Clinton in the US, have obviously had glimpses of this elusive creature. Serious academic tomes have been written about it. Social thinkers and philosophers such as the prophet of communitarianism, Amitai Etzioni in the US, have argued at least for the existence of its habitat, if not for the creature itself...
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