Anthroposophy in the Light of Goethe's Faust: Writings and Lectures from Mid-1890s to 1916 (Cw 272)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great German polymath poet, scientist, dramatist, and novelist, was a major influence throughout Rudolf Steiner's life and teaching. When Steiner was still a student, he was asked to write introductions to Goethe's scientific writings (1884-1890). This work became the first volume in his own Collected Works, inspiring two further volumes: on Goethe's epistemology (1886) and Goethe's philosophy (1894). As Steiner moved closer to the esoteric world, he also gave seminal lectures on Goethe's fairy tale, "The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily." Only gradually and tentatively, however, did he finally approach Goethe's masterwork, the epic drama, Faust. This book contains eighteen lectures given between 1910 and 1916. A (forthcoming) companion volume (CW 273) contains lectures given between 1916 and 1919. Taken together, these two volumes illuminate in deeply esoteric ways both anthroposophy and Goethe's own astonishing vision; the first volume focusing more on anthroposophy, the second more on Faust. After ten informative extracts, spanning twenty years (from the 1880s to 1909) and illustrative of Steiner's ever-changing approach, the first lecture sets the tone for this collection: Goethe sought spiritual science, and Faust is the record of his striving. We are led to see how Goethe's great Faust drama is everywhere filled with embryonic insights that, when developed by Steiner, become anthroposophy. This theme is then unfolded, with ever-deepening focus, in lecture after lecture. Whether it is a question of the spiritual nature of matter, reverence for truth and knowledge, reincarnation, the Mystery of Golgotha, evil, the world of the elementals, aesthetics, the challenge of the times, or human destiny and evolution, these lectures show Goethe as a great initiate and develop anthroposophy-spiritual science-in a profoundly esoteric light.