Recording of a lecture delivered on September 22, 2000, by Samuel S. Kutler as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on February 23, 1973, by Jacob Klein as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on May 5, 1972, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 15, 2023, by Daniel Carranze as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

The lecture conducts a close reading of Goethe's poem on the "Metamorphosis of Plants" by situating it within Goethe's larger scientific endeavor to understand what it means for a being to be a specifically living being, in particular what the kind of wholeness exhibited by the organism, whether plant, animal, or human, looks like. Particular attention will be paid to the philosophical resources upon which Goethe draws in his scientific investigation of nature, in particular Aristotle's four causes, the fourth, formal one of which is decisive for Goethe's morphology or study of living forms, and Spinoza's conatus, which Goethe understood as the organism's own endeavor to persevere in and more fully realize its own being.

Professor Carranza is an assistant professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures at Harvard University.

Recording of a lecture delivered on January 30, 2004, by Ralph Lerner as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 1, 2023, by Paul Vasile as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Mr. Vasile describes his lecture: "We'll explore practices of musicking rooted in the oral tradition and the ways they enrich and complexify how we interpret music from the page." 

Paul Vasile is a church musician, teacher, and composer who finds his greatest joy in collaborative and community-centered work.