Hands of the Philosopher

GA 277d — Dornach

As an addition to the lecture series on anthroposophy and education that I am currently giving in England, the organizers also wanted some explanations about the art of eurythmy.

I wanted to show the audience how this art, like any other, is shaped by life in the sense that Goethe's beautiful thought that art is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which would never come to a revelation without it, becomes truth. Something that seemed far away but was actually very close to me came to mind, as I wanted to point out how eurythmy, as the art of movement of the individual human being or groups of people, becomes the revelation of the human soul through the human body. The memory of the philosopher Franz Brentano, whom I have often discussed in this weekly journal, came to my mind. We often become aware of what is particularly valuable to us in a characteristic way, which we can actually observe everywhere in life. However, we only truly appreciate the universal presence when we see it in the light of something particularly characteristic.

Many years ago, when I was in Vienna, I was always deeply impressed when I saw Franz Brentano, the outstanding psychologist, approach the lectern, then unfold his sheets of paper and make his gestures during the lecture. All this said as much as the words the philosopher spoke; indeed, I would almost say the paradox: it said more.

The right hand took the sheet of paper, but held it in such a way that one might almost have thought it would fall from the straight, extended fingers that only gently clasped it. It was more extended into space than held. The hand was mostly held in such a way that it hung down slightly from the extended arm. It was in a gesture in which a viewer can be, who contemplates an object that deeply occupies his soul. The left hand often supported the right in holding the sheet; more often it moved between the sheet and the table surface in a meaningful way. The finger movements were extremely expressive. One could get the impression that all these gestures aspired to be a direct expression of what was going on in the soul, and that the sheet of paper, which had to be held, actually only interfered with the unfolding of the gestures. The way the gaze fell on the sheet was quite appropriate for this impression. It passed, as it were, softly over the surface of the page. One could not think that he was reading; rather that he was adding something to what was already on the page.

All of this contained the entire soul contemplation of Franz Brentano. He always considered the outline of the human soul abilities that he provided to be something particularly important. In the scope of the soul life, he distinguished between imagination, judgment, and the feelings of love and rejection. The will was somewhat neglected. It was only considered to the extent that it lives in feeling. Franz Brentano's entire philosophy gives the impression of moving subtly and ingeniously within the realm of the inner soul, but shying away from grasping the external reality of the human being. As if it immediately felt uncertain in this grasping. There is something that prevents the soul from grasping the point where feeling realizes itself in will and seizes the outside world.

This character is inherent in Brentano's entire philosophy. It is a contemplation that feels uncertain about itself, about how it comes about, about what is being contemplated. It finds within itself something like a “thing in itself”; but it finds no justification within itself to speak robustly of one. But at the same time it also knows that all talk about the world remains blunt if the bridge to existence resting in itself cannot be found.

Brentano chose many starting points in an attempt to find this bridge. In the third chapter of my book “Von Seelenrätseln” (Mysteries of the Soul), I discuss how he was unable to advance his psychology, the first volume of which was published in the 1870s, because he could not find the bridge he was striving for.

Brentano held the things of the world in his thoughts just as he held the concept sheet in his hand. This hand only exerted as much force as was necessary to prevent the sheet from falling out. It let the sheet rest between its fingers; but did not hold it. And the gaze did not fall on the sheet, it fell over it; he did not read, but seemed merely to look at the forms of what was written.

So were this man's thoughts; they wanted to get to the heart of things, but shyly held back at the forms of the same as soon as they encountered them. They looked beyond things. They brushed past them.

There were really the experiences of the soul revealed in a clear way in the whole posture of the body, especially in the way the arms and hands were held. One might say that in his thoughts Brentano repeatedly made an attempt to change this posture; in his striving for his own gesture, his philosophy had become fixed through the nature of his personality. These gestures said in a precise form what thoughts, because they repeatedly fell into doubt, brought out of this precise form.

Those who have experienced something like this learn to look at the language of the human body. In its movements, the world becomes an admirable artist. She makes the soul, in which the spirit lives, visible to the eye. And to see the spiritual directly in the perceptible, so that one can stop at the visible and the thoughts as such fall silent; that is artistic contemplation.

Conquering an area of the spirit in such a way that it can be fully perceived by the senses has always led to an artistic realm in the development of humanity. Now, eurythmy seeks to express, as in a visible language, what can live in the soul through the movements that naturally follow from the human organism. It goes beyond mime, which only supplements speech here and there, but does not become completely the same as speech; nor does it become dance, which would have to lose the character of speech because it must not become a revelation of the soul-spiritual, but an overflow of the soul-spiritual into outer movement. Nothing should be said that is taken for granted against the full justification of these arts; they have their own beauty. Eurythmy presents itself independently as a visible language shaped by life that can become an art.