Twelve lectures, held in Dornach and Bern from November 29 to December 21, 1918 (CW 186).
The lecture course in this volume was given by Rudolf Steiner in Dornach, Switzerland, in November and December of 1918, shortly after the armistice that brought the First World War to a close. Throughout the war, those living in Dornach could hear the thunderous drumfire on the Western front in neighboring Alsace, as they worked to build a house of peace, the First Goetheanum, on the Dornach hill. In these lectures, published here in their complete form as a Collected Works volume for the first time in English, Rudolf Steiner seeks to awaken his listeners to the need for new social ideas, new social forms, in the wake of the catastrophe of World War I. This requires us to become increasingly conscious of the forces and dynamics at work in social life.
