The University at the Threshold: Orientation through Goethean Science

‘Concern for the world today provides the impetus to ask of ourselves a profound question… how can our way of knowing, the very style of our thinking which informs our research and our 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 and capital using Goethean methodology. 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 Goethe’s Science of Living Form: The Artistic Stages (Adonis Press) and is a director of the Education for Social Renewal Foundation.