ATELIER FOR THE SOCIAL QUEST
Opening the Eye of the Imagination
A SELF-MANAGED COURSE OF STUDY
SOCIAL ART - SHAPING THE SOCIAL THREEFOLD
THE SOCIAL QUEST
The aim of Atelier for the Social Quest is to cultivate the imaginative form of thinking necessary to approach Steiner’s vision of the threefold social organism. How do we develop an exact form of social imagination? In the first place by allowing the living phenomena of nature to teach us a living form of thinking.
Virtually nowhere today in our universities is a genuine life science developed and practised. Science grasps only the mechanistic aspect of the natural order; likewise, the social sciences proceed abstractly, theoretically. The science initiated by the poet and “nature observer” J. W. Goethe was greatly furthered by Steiner in the 20th century. Goethean science is inherently artistic and participatory. It calls upon our sculptural, musical and poetical powers at every step of the way, in relation to the phenomena of the human world as much as those of nature.
". . . a spiritual contemplation of nature will provide means for the kind of training in thought which, among other things, makes it possible to comprehend the social organism".
Rudolf Steiner, The Renewal of the Social Organism
Sometimes it is spoken of as Goethean phenomenology. This approach seeks to engage with phenomena respectfully, to dwell in phenomena with an exact form of feeling, with a care and sensitivity that allows the essential idea of the phenomenon to “speak” directly to us in a language of form and gesture.
THE COURSE
Atelier for the Social Quest is a self-directed course made up of four study modules - Nature, Society, Self and Economics. The course is best done in a group situation - an "atelier" - but it can be worked with solo. The work is not assessed - what can grow out of it depends on individual and group initiative.
The journey of Atelier for the Social Quest begins with the study of natural phenomena – plants, animals, colours and the human form. The work of Goethe and Rudolf Steiner forms the basis of this study. Journal work includes both observations and artistic exercises.
Goethe, in his natural scientific studies, interpreted the language of living form in terms of these primary elements: the archetypal phenomenon, polarity, metamorphosis, intensification. In this course each of these principles is perceived within the realm of nature; each is vital in the later exploration of Steiner's picture of a threefold social order, which includes the study of economics and social evolution (self).
". . . Our science is a science of the dead world. Even biology never considers life, but only mechanistic functioning and apparatus of life ...".
D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious.
