David Lorimer – Love of Life in Goethe and Schweitzer. 19 April 2023

Responding to a last-minute cancellation, David Lorimer regales us with an informative illustrated talk on two polymaths who were not merely philosophers, but whose love of life propelled them into action, so that they might be true to their nobler selves and fulfil their calling.

Goethe’s successful publication of Werther (1774) inspired the Romantic Movement: “For as God and Nature belong together, so the material and the spiritual belong together”. His Faust was a hubristic scientist challenging death, which is Nature’s device for the renewal of life. Although Goethe’s mysticism was pantheistic whereas Albert Schweitzer was an ethical Christian—an organist and a theologian in the Lutheran Church before becoming a missionary doctor in Gabon—Schweitzer greatly admired Goethe’s engagement with life, and David highlights his Four Studies of Goethe, published in 1949.

Both Schweitzer and C. G. Jung urged the individual to act with integrity and withstand the non-ethical masses, a position that prompted questions from the audience as to whether there remained a role for such heroes in this era of transition. Are we not aiming to create a more ethical and spiritual group consciousness to steer us into the future?

To round off, David reads a poem of renewal inspired by Goethe and airs a recording of Bach played on the organ by Schweitzer. A celebration of two innovative figures from former eras provides stimulus for creativity in our own times in a very interesting and thought-provoking session.

Report by Sue Lewis