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.
