University at the Threshold: Orientation through Goethean Science

The author of this book argues that care is an essential aspect of scientific inquiry and that the Goethean approach, which combines science and art, can help us to understand the world better. He calls for a grounding in Goethean science for all students as a preliminary to their specialist and professional studies and concludes with a case study of the economic and capital using Goethean methodology.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 202 pages
Publication date: 26 October 2020
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press

Concern for the world today provides the impetus
The impetus to ask ourselves a profound question: how can our way of knowing, the very style of our thinking, which informs our research and teaching, come to express care, to reveal itself to be a deed and duty of care? Basing this practical study on the human quality of care for the world around us, Nigel Hoffmann takes us to a threshold beyond which lies a true science of living form. Care, he says, springs from the whole human being – the thinking, heart, and will – and is implicit in the scientific method of conscious inner participation in nature that derives from the work of the poet and scientist Goethe. The Goethean approach – a living form that unites science and art – is not an alternative to contemporary science but complements it. Artistic practice, says Hoffmann, is a guide across the threshold and into the sphere of the living whole. But artistic sensibility can be raised to a higher possibility of itself, allowing us to discover the faculties of cognitive feeling and cognitive will. The author calls for a grounding in Goethean science for all students as a preliminary to their specialist and professional studies. He introduces us to the concept of the metamorphosis of the university – from the doctoral ideal to the ideal of the whole human being – and concludes with a case study of the economic sphere. This profound book indicates a transformative path for human culture and civilization in the 21st century.

NIGEL HOFFMANN PhD has for eighteen years been a high school teacher, in Australian and Swiss Rudolf Steiner schools. He is the author of Goethes Science of Living Form: The Artistic Stages (Adonis Press) and is a director of the Education for Social Renewal Foundation.

Weight: 336g
Dimension: 182 x 233 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781855845831