The two virtues Steiner sets against envy and lying: goodwill brightens the astral body's aura, contentment strengthens the etheric body's life force.
Goodwill and Contentment in Anthroposophy is the name Rudolf Steiner gives to the paired virtues he sets against envy and untruthfulness in a lecture of 11 December 1910 in Munich, published in Paths and Goals of the Spiritual Human Being (GA 125). Goodwill (German Wohlwollen) is the capacity to experience another person's success as one's own; occultly observed, it makes the lights of the astral body shine, so the aura grows more luminous, more radiant, and more saturated, pouring soul warmth and a sense of well-being into the person. Contentment (Zufriedenheit) strengthens the etheric body's life force: Steiner notes that, other conditions being equal, wounds heal more easily in a contented person. Where envy is Luciferic and untruthfulness Ahrimanic, these virtues nourish the same two sheaths from the healthy side, returning karmically as a harmonizing presence and, in the next incarnation, as bodily skilfulness. Positive psychology studies comparable effects under Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory.
Goodwill and Contentment form the bright counter-pair to envy and lying in Steiner's practical anthroposophy. Rather than treating virtue as moral bookkeeping, Steiner reads each quality by what it does to the human sheaths: goodwill feeds light and warmth into the astral body's aura, while contentment keeps the etheric body's healing forces strong. Together they show how everyday feeling quietly builds, or wastes, the life we carry into our next incarnation.
In Steiner's Own Words
Everyone knows what a benevolent person is. A benevolent person is someone who feels satisfied when someone else succeeds or achieves something, when they notice good qualities in someone. Goodwill is present when, in a sense, one experiences what the other person experiences as one's own. This goodwill, in turn, has a very specific effect on our astral body, which is almost the opposite of the effect of envy. We see how the lights of the astral body shine when a person expresses goodwill. The astral body becomes brighter and more radiant when there are feelings of goodwill in the soul of the person. The aura becomes more luminous, more radiant and thus richer; it becomes more saturated, and it is then able to infuse into the person first something like warmth of soul and then even a sense of well-being.
What it Means Today
Steiner's claim reads less strangely beside the last twenty-five years of positive psychology. In 1998 the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson published the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions in the Review of General Psychology: where fear and anger narrow attention, emotions such as joy, gratitude, and warmth toward others broaden awareness and, over time, build durable physical, social, and psychological resources. In 2008 her team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that working adults assigned a daily loving-kindness meditation, a deliberate cultivation of goodwill, showed rising positive emotion across nine weeks, predicting greater life satisfaction and fewer reported illness symptoms.
The resonance with GA 125 is close: a feeling rehearsed daily becomes a measurable change in the vitality of the organism. Steiner simply describes the mechanism one level deeper, at the sheaths themselves: goodwill saturating the astral aura with light and soul warmth, contentment holding the etheric body's healing forces steady. Thalira synthesis: goodwill and contentment are daily deposits into the two bodies we spend later, first as a calming presence in this life, then as skilfulness in the next. The practice Steiner points to is concrete. When another person succeeds, work at experiencing the success as your own; when the day disappoints, seek out one thing that genuinely contents you. Do both for a season and notice what changes.
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