Download or read book Goethe s World View written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Mercury Press (Canada). This book was released on 2023-02-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thoughts expressed in this book are meant by Rudolf Steiner to contain the fundamental elements that he observed in Goethe's worldview. There was a particular appeal for Steiner in observing what nature reveals of its being and laws as perceived by Goethe's refined organs of sense and spirit. He came to understand how Goethe experienced such revelations as good fortune and happiness so great that he sometimes valued them over his poetic gift. Rudolf Steiner "lived into" the feelings that passed through Goethe's soul when he said: "Nothing motivates us so much to think about ourselves as when, after a long interval, we finally see again objects of the highest significance, scenes of nature with particularly decisive characteristics, and compare the impression remaining from the past with the present effect. We will then notice by and large that the object emerges more and more, that, while we earlier experienced joy and suffering in our encounter with the objects and projected our happiness and perplexity onto them, we now, with egoism tamed, grant them their rightful due, which is that we recognize their particularities and learn to value their characteristics more highly by thus living into them. The artistic eye yields the first kind of contemplation; the second kind is suited to the researcher of nature; and I had to count myself, although at first not without pain, still in the end fortunate that, as the first kind of sense threatened to leave me by and by, the second kind developed all the more powerfully in eye and spirit." - Goethe
Download or read book Goethe s Opinions on the World Mankind Literature Science and Art written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by . This book was released on 1853 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nature s Open Secret written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Steiner Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of Steiner's introductions to Goethe's works re-visions the meaning of knowledge and how we attain it. Goethe had discovered how thinking could be applied to organic nature and that this experience requires not just rational concepts but a whole new way of perceiving. In an age when science and technology have been linked to great catastrophes, many are looking for new ways to interact with nature. With a fundamental declaration of the interpenetration of our consciousness and the world around us, Steiner shows how Goethe's approach points the way to a more compassionate and intimate involvement with nature.
Download or read book Goethe s Way of Science written by David Seamon and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1998-04-02 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines Goethe's neglected but sizable body of scientific work, considers the philosophical foundations of his approach, and applies his method to the real world of nature.
Download or read book Goethe s Theory of Knowledge written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Collected Works of Rudolf Stei. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written 1884-1885; first published 1886 (CW 2) As the editor of Goethe's scientific writings during the 1880s, Rudolf Steiner became immersed in a worldview that paralleled and amplified his own views in relation to epistemology, the interface between science and philosophy, the theory of how we know the world and ourselves. At the time, like much of the thinking today and the foundation of modern natural science, the predominant theories held that individual knowledge is limited to thinking that reflects objective, sensory perception. Steiner's view was eventually distilled in his Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts in 1924: There are those who believe that, with the limits of knowledge derived from sensory perception, the limits of all insight are given. Yet if they would carefully observe how they become conscious of these limits, they would find in the very consciousness of the limits the faculties to transcend them. In this concise volume, Steiner lays out his argument for this view and, moreover, begins his explication of how one goes beyond thinking to the observation of thinking itself. Goethe's Theory of Knowledge is essential reading for a deeper understanding of Rudolf Steiner's seminal work, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom. CONTENTS: Introduction by Christopher Bamford Preface to the Edition of 1924 by Rudolf Steiner Foreword to the First Edition (1886) by Rudolf Steiner A. Preliminary Questions 1. The Point of Departure 2. Goethe's Science According to Schiller's Method 3. The Purpose of Our Science B. Experience 4. Establishing the Concept of Experience 5. Examining the Essence of Experience 6. Correcting the Erroneous View of Experience as a Totality 7. The Experience of Each Individual Reader C. Thinking 8. Thinking as a Higher Experience within Experience 9. Thinking and Consciousness 10. The Inner Nature of Thinking D. Knowledge 11. Thought and Perception 12. Intellect and Reason 13. The Act of Cognition 14. Cognition and the Ultimate Ground of Things E. Knowing Nature 15. Inorganic Nature 16. Organic Nature F. The Humanities 17. Introduction: Mind and Nature 18. Psychological Cognition 19. Human Freedom 20. Optimism and Pessimism G. Conclusion 21. Knowledge and Artistic Creation Notes to the First Edition 1886] Annotations to the Edition of 1924 A Theory of Knowledge is a translation from the German of Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, mit besonderer R cksicht auf Schiller (GA 2). Previous translations were published as The Science of Knowing (1988) and The Theory of Knowledge implicit in Goethe's World-Conception: Fundamental Outlines with Special Reference to Schiller (1940).
Download or read book The Essential Goethe written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 1051 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published by Wordsworth Editions 1999 and 2007. First published by Princeton University Press in 2016.
Download or read book Aspects of Human Evolution written by Rudolf Steiner and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 1987 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 8 lectures, Berlin, May 29-July 24, 1917 (CW 176) How to Keep Your Soul Alive after Twenty-Seven This could have been the title of this book. The author shows that the natural development of the soul stops at around the age of twenty-seven. After that, nothing happens for our inner being unless we learn to make it happen. Part of the tragic nature of our time is that more and more people allow their soul life to die at twenty-seven, so that the remainder of their life becomes a kind of mummification. Steiner explains how, by exerting our thinking and feeling, we can keep our soul alive and growing. This is ultimately the only way we can make this incarnation a satisfactory one. Through such effort, we can continue to develop inwardly until a very advanced age--each year, becoming richer and more interesting than the one before. Aspects of Human Evolutionis a book that gives real meaning to the idea that we live in a state of becoming This book is a translation from German of Menschliche und menschheitliche Entwicklungswahrheiten. Das Karma des Materialismus (vol. 176 in the Bibliographic Survey).
Download or read book Goethe and World Literature written by Fritz Strich and published by Port Washington, N.Y : Kennikat Press. This book was released on 1972 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Goethe on Science written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goethe is best known for his color theory, but he was also an accomplished, well-rounded scientist who studied and wrote on anatomy, geology, botany, zoology, and meteorology. This book gathers, in the words of Goethe, his key ideas on nature, science and scientific method. It was Goethe belief that we should study nature and our world as people who are at home here, rather than as separate and alien from our own environment. He adopted a qualitative approach to science--one at odds with the quantitative methods of Newton, which were equally popular in his day. His is a sensitive science that includes our interrelationship with nature. Today, his ideas have been given special attention by scientists such as Adolf Portmann and Werner Heisenberg. Science, as conceived by Goethe, is as much a path of inner development as it is a way of accumulating knowledge. It thus involves a rigorous training of our faculties for observation and thinking. From a Goethean perspective, our modern ecological crisis is a crisis of relationship to nature. In this anthology, Jeremy Naydler provides the first systematic arrangement of extracts from Goethe's major scientific works. They give us a clear picture of Goethe's fundamentally unique approach to scientific study of the natural world. These extracts are fascinating and essential reading for anyone who believes we should regain our lost spiritual connection to nature.
Download or read book Goethe Life as a Work of Art written by Rüdiger Safranski and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and Kirkus Reviews This “splendid biography” (Wall Street Journal) of Goethe presents his life and work as an essential touchstone for the modern age. A masterful intellectual portrait, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art is celebrated as the seminal twenty-first-century biography of the writer considered to be the Shakespeare of German literature. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), a remarkably prolific poet, playwright, novelist, and—as Rüdiger Safranksi emphasizes—a statesman and naturalist, first awakened not only a burgeoning German nation but the European continent with his electrifying novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Safranski has scoured Goethe’s entire oeuvre, relying exclusively on primary sources, including his correspondence with contemporaries, to produce a “fresh and authentic” (Economist) portrait of the avatar of the Romantic era. Skillfully blending “artistic analysis with swift, sharp renderings” of the great political and intellectual figures Goethe encountered, “[Safranski’s] portrait of the prolific genius leaves the reader with lasting awe, even envy” of a monumental legacy (The New Yorker). As Safranski ultimately shows, Goethe’s greatest creation, even in comparison to his masterpiece Faust, was his own life.
Download or read book Love Life Goethe written by John Armstrong and published by Allan Lane. This book was released on 2006 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is often remembered only as a figure of literary genius, with little relevance to the way we live today. Yet Goethe was driven by much more than the desire for literary success- he wanted (much the same as us) to live life well. In Love, Life, Goethe, John Armstrong subtly and imaginatively explores the ways that we can learn from Goethe, whether in love, suffering, friendship or family. At the centre of this project is happiness- in an imperfect world, how can we live well with what we have, and accept what we haven't? From our lives at home, to our relationships, the politicians we choose, and our relationship with money, John Armstrong explores the main themes of our lives through the life of Goethe, and helps us learn how to live.
Download or read book Goethe s Conception of the World written by Rudolf Steiner and published by . This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a new release of the original 1928 edition.
Download or read book A Most Mysterious Union written by Steve Wilkerson and published by Chiron Publications. This book was released on 2019-06-20 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readers today are especially thrilled by the prospect of good news. Drought and global warming, civil war and famine, poverty and economic inequity—yes, bad news abounds. This book by Dr. Stephen Wilkerson, on the other hand, is about hope and optimism for the future. The recorded history of our world is largely one of a sometimes worthy patriarchal striving. It has, however, all too often been tarnished, marred, and horribly disfigured by the hatreds, intolerance, and destruction that have accompanied it. And the good news? There is another way, poignantly and persuasively outlined nearly two hundred years ago by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, involving the Divine Feminine. Goethe’s masterpiece, Faust, involves an immensely intelligent but profoundly narcissistic man, who cruelly and selfishly exploits and ultimately ruins the life of an innocent maiden. In the legend on which Goethe’s great work is based, Faust understandably winds up in Hell, just as he does in virtually every version of this well-known wager with the Devil. But in Goethe’s interpretation, the deeply flawed protagonist is received into Heaven by the Mother of God Herself. How and why can this be? Mankind’s long history of heroic accomplishment has never been sufficiently tempered by a sense of global community and cooperation that mitigate the horror and devastation that ever seem to march along beside a single-minded struggle to achieve and prevail. And how may this missing unity be brought about? Alchemy as understood in this book has nothing to do with an early and misguided chemistry and everything to do with the sort of individual transformation necessary for a better, more gracious, more inclusive world. The millennial patterns of blind violence and repression can only be ameliorated by a thoughtful and genuine embrace of open-minded reception of difference and heart-felt valuation of a larger, borderless world in which all grow together rather than further apart. Such is the promise of the final words in Goethe’s Faust: “The Divine Feminine leads us forward.”
Download or read book A Theory of Knowledge Based on Goethe s World Conception written by Rudolf Steiner and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Maxims and Reflections written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true ‘Renaissance Man’. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar’s court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics – and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.
Download or read book Goethe and the Sciences A Reappraisal written by F.R. Amrine and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: of him in like measure within myself, that is my highest wish. This noble individual was not conscious of the fact that at that very moment the divine within him and the divine of the universe were most intimately united. So, for Goethe, the resonance with a natural rationality seems part of the genius of modern science. Einstein's 'cosmic religion', which reflects Spinoza, also echoes Goethe's remark (Ibid. , Item 575 from 1829): Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would give up investigating. But how far will Goethe share the devotion of these cosmic rationalists to the beautiful harmonies of mathematics, so distant from any pure and 'direct observation'? Kepler, Spinoza, Einstein need not, and would not, rest with discovery of a pattern within, behind, as a source of, the phenomenal world, and they would not let even the most profound of descriptive generalities satisfy scientific curiosity. For his part, Goethe sought fundamental archetypes, as in his intuition of a Urpjlanze, basic to all plants, infinitely plastic. When such would be found, Goethe would be content, for (as he said to Eckermann, Feb. 18, 1829): . . . to seek something behind (the Urphaenomenon) is futile. Here is the limit. But as a rule men are not satisfied to behold an Urphaenomenon. They think there must be something beyond. They are like children who, having looked into a mirror, turn it around to see what is on the other side.
Download or read book Goethe s Botanical Writings written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about the golden youth and the Olympian old age of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, poet; less has been written, however, about Goethe the scientist, who, pursuing independent research in many fields, opposed the professional men of his day with brilliant theories of his own. The educated world, familiar with Faust, Werther, and Wilhelm Meister, is not so generally aware of the scientific achievements of the man who had a genus of plants (Goethea) and a mineral (goethite) named for him who coined and first used the word morphology; who contributed to the understanding of the physiology of color; who rediscovered and described the intermaxillary bone in man, propounded the vertebral theory of the skull, formulated a concept in botanical morphology that persists to this day; who discovered the volcanic origin of a mountain; who established the first system of weather stations; who made the first systematic classification of minerals and was among the first to use the comparative method in biology; and who came unwittingly close to achieving the greatest concept in biology—some say the greatest concept in the thinking of man—the theory of organic evolution and the descent of man. Even in those few cases where subsequent research has proved Goethe’s theories to be wrong, his supporting accumulation of facts has proved extremely valuable to science. Goethe was born at the beginning of a great scientific era. But he was a creative thinker; his was not the analytic mind that emphasized fine differences but the synthetic mind that sensed the unity behind the differences. He was also an ardent lover of nature, possessed of unlimited curiosity. Consequently, as a contemporary observed, "Whatever Goeth looked upon in nature immediately acquired the character of a living experience for him." Most of the material translated in this volume is taken from notes and essays which Goethe published from 1817 to 1824 in journal form. Occupying a central position is the most famous and lasting of his scientific writings, the essay on the metamorphosis of plants—an essay which is today considered "one of the minor classics of botany." One of the most important episodes in Goethe's life was his flight to Italy, where he was delighted by the climate and the luxuriance of the plant life. A fan palm in particular attracted his attention because its leaves seemed to exhibit a complete series of transitions from the simple lance-shaped first leaves to the most complex fan type. "At my request," Goethe wrote in his diary, "the gardener cut off an entire sequence of modifications for me, and I burdened myself with several pasteboard containers in which to carry these treasures around." From this beginning Goethe started to evolve his theory of plant metamorphosis, and he returned to Weimar convinced that he had found the secret. The literary student will find much to interest him in this translation—the poet's own account of his grief and suffering at the hands of misunderstanding friends, and his victory over a threatening neurosis. Such essays as "The History of My Botanical Studies" and "The Fate of My Manuscript" throw much light on the crucial middle period of Goethe's life. During Goethe's lifetime and after, there was a tendency to ignore his scientific accomplishments in the face of his literary works. Many felt that they were almost a crime against his poetry. A few, however, contended that in science lay the center and focal point of Goethe's mental life. Goethe, himself, toward the end of his life wrote, "For more than a half century I have been known as a poet, in my own country and undoubtedly also abroad; or at any rate I have been permitted to pass for one. But the fact that I have busily occupied myself with Nature in all her general physical and organic phenomena, constantly and passionately pursuing seriously formulated studies—this is not so generally known; still less has it been accorded any attention." "Minds like Goethe's," Thomas Carlyle said, "are the common property of all nations; and, for many reasons, all should have correct impressions of them." This translation will enable those not familiar with the German language to gain a direct impression of Goethe's mind as expressed in his botanical writings.
