To square the beasts

Of course it is always possible to state the opposite - and still speak the truth. So we could say: people don't think at all, the animals are better thinkers than human beings. Look at the bees, what a wonderful pure thinking they display by doing their bee-being. The actions of the animals display a complicated thinking. But for them there is of course no way of free thinking. Animals just act the thinking that is given to them as an instinct.

It has been said once in a while that human beings have thinking itself as their instinct. And the instinct then would actually mean that the freedom in thinking is a given fact. If that were true, human beings would do their thinking in the same perfect and highly instinctive way as a bee does its bee-being. But thinking in people seems to be a mess, a 'pell-mell', rather moved by something that has no thinking-regularity at all. In 1972 a Dutch cineaste (Bert Haanstra) tried to express this in a movie, called 'Bij de beesten af' (To square the beasts). You can watch the film on You Tube, the images speak the language. First it is shown how wonderfully vivid the instincts become in animals, by showing how they live. Then this is formed into a caricature by showing the beast-like behaving of human beings individually and in groups. You really would feel inclined to see the human race as a degeneration of the animal realm, not as the crown on it.  You can become a cynic through this film. Animals display their 'divine' instincts in a pure way, and there is no question of morality, they just are and do what they are. The contrast with the human being, then, is very painful. Humans seem to break through every pure human instinct by thinking and by doing many things with will and thought against the pure instincts of life. They are like beasts, but are really evil, because they have a smart mind that can think out all kinds of methods to ruin creation. And if human beings would start to live by instinct, it would really become worse and worse. So the question arises anew: What is a human being?

Over the past two years of writing my weekly blog post, I have tried to find and point to the symptoms in the human being that give us hope and trust that he or she has many more qualities in his/her predisposition than solely the capacity for destruction. The human being has a predisposition to overcome his animal instincts and raise himself to a level where an instinct can be found that we are not condemned to, but that we can make free. We can free this instinct and use it on a higher level. Steiner has been ingenious in finding this way. In his book about Nietzsche he formulated this principle as follows:
'Since the Dionysian spirit draws out of himself all impulses for his actions and obeys no external power, he is a free spirit. A free spirit follows only his own nature. Now of course in Nietzsche's works one speaks about instincts as the impulses of the free spirit. I believe that here under one name Nietzsche has collected a whole range of impulses requiring a consideration which goes more into individual differentiations. Nietzsche calls instincts those impulses for nourishment and self preservation present in animals, as well as the highest impulses of human nature, for example, the urge toward knowledge, the impulse to act according to moral standards, the drive to refresh oneself through works of art, and so on. Now, of course, all these impulses are forms of expression of one and the same fundamental force, but they do represent different levels in the development of this power. The moral instincts, for example, are a special level of instinct. Even if it is only admitted that they are but higher forms of sensory instinct, nevertheless they do appear in a special form within man's existence. This shows itself in that it is possible for man to carry out actions which cannot be led back to sensory instincts directly, but only to those impulses which can be defined as higher forms of instinct. The human being himself creates impulses for his own actions, which are not to be derived from his own sensory impulses, but only from conscious thinking. He puts individual purposes before himself, but he puts these before himself consciously, and there is a great difference whether he follows an instinct which arose unconsciously and only afterward was taken into consciousness, or whether he follows a thought which he produced from the very beginning with full consciousness.'

'A man who abandons himself merely to sensual instincts, acts like an animal; a human being who places his sensuous instincts under another's thoughts, acts unfree; only the human being who creates for himself his own moral goals, acts in freedom. Moral fantasy is lacking in Nietzsche's teaching. The one who carries Nietzsche's thoughts to their conclusion must necessarily come to this insight. But in any case, it is an absolute necessity that this insight be added to Nietzsche's world conception. Otherwise one could always object to his conception thus: Indeed the Dionysian man is no slave to tradition or to the “will beyond,” but he is a slave of his own instincts.' (GA 5, rs-archive)
 

Image from the movie of Bert Haanstra (1972)To square the beasts by Mieke Mosmuller