More than ‘bare’ life
Faced with the lockdown, the Humanities Section at the Goetheanum is finding new ways of working and is concentrating on publications, conferences and research projects.
In February, just before the lockdown, it was still possible to hold the East Asia Conference (Anthroposophy Worldwide 4/2020) and the conference on Rainer Maria Rilke that was devoted to the theme of ‘death’. The pausing enforced by the restrictions has led the Section team to ask what it is that seeks to newly come into being – and this includes new forms of working. Now we are in the process of assembling an international Section faculty and of completing publications on transhumanism, the Foundation Stone Meditation and the research project ‘The humanizing effect of literature’.
Sadly, the Whitsun Conference on the Goetheanum Glass Windows has to be postponed to 2021. We are looking forward, however, to the conference on ‘Esoteric Science’ from 6 to 11 July. We are also preparing next year’s conferences and research meetings.
The Goetheanum Leadership has developed cross-sectional research projects for which we will assemble working groups that will also cooperate with other institutions. Topics covered will include the physiological effect of language; technology and transhumanism as a challenge for humanity; beauty and art as a field of experience in the encounter with living forces.
The current crisis shows us at an existential level that being human involves more than just ‘bare’ life. It is therefore crucial that, based on an awareness of human wholeness, anthroposophy, literature, philosophy, history and art make themselves felt more profoundly and decidedly as individualizing disciplines in culture and civilization.