Artistic feeling is the term Rudolf Steiner used for the capacity to perceive the non-physical qualities inherent to color, form and all sense phenomena. Artistic feeling can be exercised and developed through the arts but is by no means limited to the arts and artists. Artistic feeling is a capacity, like logical and mathematical thinking, that can be developed in all human beings as part of their essential humanity, but equally, as a practical capacity for meeting the evolving needs and challenges of human life.

Recent brain research as documented by individuals like Ian McGilchrist, demonstrate that our technological civilization is founded on a one-sided development of the left hemisphere of our brain. Only a concerted and sustained effort to cultivate the right hemisphere, and on that basis, a harmonious interaction between both hemispheres, will we be able to realize our full human potential. In this regard, artistic faculties and capacities have a vital role to play in counterbalancing the one-sided left-hemisphere nature of binary thinking and the technology founded on it.

Furthermore, artistic feeling allows us to experience the resonant and moral qualities of the sense world that prepare us for the eventual development of resonance and moral technologies, that is, to perceive and creatively work with etheric forces as we presently work with physical forces.

We will explore these perspectives with the aid of practical examples.