ATELIER FOR THE SOCIAL QUEST
Shaping the Social Threefold
A SELF-ORGANISED STUDY COURSE
DEVELOPING SOCIAL ART ATELIERS
Atelier for the Social Quest is made up of four study modules - Nature, Society, Self and Economics.
We live in the age of smart cities, 5G/6G satellites and AI, set up for communication, to surveil and transmit, to harvest and process information. The digital reality which permeates modern society is the expression of a particular kind of logical mentality. We call it a mineral thinking because it can be developed artificially through the silicon chip and electromagnetic processes.
The immense danger is that this thinking will overshadow all other powers of human intelligence. A purely logical kind of thinking cannot think life. The living beings of nature, the human social organism, cannot be properly or adequately understood in this way. If life forms are confined to the logical structures of a mineral intelligence, then they can and will be enslaved.
How do we develop an exact form of imagination, a living social thinking? This is the inspiring question of Atelier for the Social Quest.
THE SOCIAL QUEST
Civilisation is a social quest. In work, in school and university studies, in different forms of community life, we can share in the building a future world which is true to the dignity of the human spirit.
An “atelier” is a studio, a workshop. Atelier for the Social Quest is social art studio, shaped and managed by the participants themselves. The different ateliers are ideally conducted in-person, with real human beings, but an online experience is also possible.
OPENING THE EYE OF A LIVING SOCIAL THINKING
The journey of Atelier for the Social Quest begins with the study of natural phenomena – plants, animals, colours and the human form. The aim is to develop an exact form of imagination, a living social thinking.
The natural scientific insights of the poet J. W. Goethe in the 19th century were developed further by Rudolf Steiner in the twentieth century. Their work forms the basis of this study. In this holistic science the scientific and artistic are inseparable.
The artistic observer learns how to read the language of nature and the social organism. This is the possibility of an exact imaginative thinking. Goethe, in his natural scientific studies, interpreted this language in terms of these primary elements - the archetypal phenomenon, polarity, metamorphosis, intensification.
A NEW FORM OF UNIVERSITY
A central part of the mission of Atelier for the Social Quest is supporting the coming into being of a new form of university. Its significance will not be that it introduces new faculties or a set of new philosophies. It will be groundbreaking because it will move beyond the kind of intellectuality which has been the hallmark of university education since medieval times. This university will cultivate an exact imaginative intelligence in every faculty, in every dimension of its teaching and research.
This will be a phenomenological university, grounded in Goethe's holistic science. For a study of the origin and necessity of this phenomenological university, click here:
Two main features of the new university are:
-
an orientation course in goethean science and art, for all students in all years of study,
-
the form and function of the new university will be an expression of the threefold social life.
There will need to be many tutors highly experienced in Goethe's way of science and the threefold social outlook; hence an important training role for Atelier for the Social Quest.
A newsletter is being produced to help prepare for this university. To go on the mailing list and to view past issues, click here:
THE THREEFOLD SOCIAL ORGANISM
The idea of the threefold social organism as articulated by Rudolf Steiner is not a theory - like, for example, the communist philosophy of Karl Marx. It is the product of an exact social imagination on the part of Steiner. The social threefold is an archetypal phenomenon.
The fundamental aim of Atelier for the Social Quest is to enter into Steiner's social thinking with exact artistic intelligence. If his ideas on the social threefold are taken as a social theory they lose all efficacy and moral power. They are simply not understood.
These ideas must be grasped with a living social thinking which requires a definite cultivation. This is why the Society unit of this course is approached by way of the Nature unit.
". . . 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