Bees In Philosophy: Lit & Phil Mini-course of Discussions: July-Dec. 2013
Second discussion summary: Bees and Aesthetics, Bees and Beuys
This month, we combined forces with the NPS group, Philosophical Explorations, and thus numbers
swelled to around twenty or so. We also began a little earlier too, at 10:30. The topic, Art and
Spirituality had been brought forward from December in order to accommodate those who were
only able to attend during the summer. I began by summarising the purpose of the project and what
had been covered in the first meeting (see previous discussion summary) and then we bravely
tackled metaphysics/ontology , art and aesthetics, spirituality, Rudolf Seiner, Joseph Beuys and bees!
Referring to Professor Jode’s illuminating short chapter on the sub-sections of philosophy in his
Teach-Yourself-Series “Philosophy” [see attachment on the website], I began by pointing out that an
important but often neglected subject is aesthetics which is itself a sub-grouping of metaphysics.
According to my Routledge Concise Encyclopedia of Philisophy (2000),Edward Craig considers
Metaphysics to be a broad area of philosophy marked out by two types of inquiry:
1) the most general investigation possible into the nature of reality per se and whether
there are principles applying to everything that is real, that is, all there is or that exists,
or, simply stated, “Being”. This can be put another, perhaps more useful way, as: if and
when we abstract from the particular natures of existing things that which distinguishes
them from each other, what can we confidently and reliably know about them merely in
virtue of the fact that they exist?
2) The seeking to uncover what is ultimately real, frequently offering answers in sharp
contrast to our everyday or familiar experience of the world.
However, it is very important to realise that these two questions are not the same thing at all, since,
someone who was quite unworried by the possibility that the world might really be otherwise than it
appears (and therefore regarded the second investigation as a completely trivial one), might still be
engaged by the question of whether there were any truths applicable to all existing things.
For example, Plato famously believed in the second definition and approach as exemplified in his
Theory of the Forms but one doesn’t have to agree with him at all when considering matters from
the first definitional approach. Aristotle, his famous pupil, proposed the first of these investigations
and called it, conveniently enough, “First Philosophy”, sometimes also, the “Science of Being”;
however, at some point in antiquity, his writings on the topic came to be known—via the arbitrary
cataloguing process—as the “metaphysics” (from the Greek for “after natural things”, that is,
whatever comes after the study of nature, which, in contrast to Plato, was Aristotle’s great
contribution to botany, biology and philosophy). This is as much as we know of the origin of the
word and it has, unfortunately, caused vast confusion ever since!
So much so, that most philosophers try to avoid such vagueness and perplexity by preferring to use
the very similar concept contained in the word “Ontology”. This is closely related to “Metaphysics”
in as much as it is usually taken to involve both “what is existence or being?” and “what
(fundamentally distinct) types of things exist?” without needing to raise the spectre of a possible
Reality existing behind appearances, which, all too easily, leads to the supernatural and the occult.
It is thus common to speak of a philosopher’s ontology, meaning the kinds of things they would take
to exist, or the ontology of a theory, meaning the things that would have to exist for that theory to
be true. Such clarifications are essential for any investigation of art or aesthetics, and especially so
when we come to examine—albeit briefly—Rudolf Steiner’s theory of anthroposophy and his
attitude to bees, and by extension, the strange avant-garde artwork of his follower, Joseph Beuys.
Jack Grassby had previously expressed to Sharon and me the insightful view, concerning the history
of bees and beekeeping, that both were marked by an almost total absence of connection to the
philosophical canon rather than by the opposite. This is undoubtedly true and is due to the fact that,
until comparatively recent times of scientific observation and empirical documentation, very little
indeed was reliably and actually known about the lifestyle of the honeybee and the hive. Instead,
this very mystery and ignorance produced a vast and continuous tradition of folklore and spirituallybased speculation regarding bees and the honeybee in particular. Early in historical times, man
regarded the honeybee as a sacred creature (for instance, the Ancient Egyptians and the Ancient
Greeks, the latter of whom symbolised honey and nectar as being among the daily diet of the Gods).
Highly instructive in this regard are some brief but very significant facts and dates re man and the
honeybee and the art or science of beekeeping:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
1586: The first recognition that the larger leader bee in the hive was not, in fact, the
“king” bee but a queen who laid eggs. In his Tratado Breve de la Cultivacion y Cura de los
Colmenes (Brief Treaty of the Cultivation and Treatment of Beehives), the Spanish
scientist, Luis Mendez de Torres, recognized that one key female figure was responsible
for the birth of all the bees in the hive—worker-bees, drones, and, of course new
queens. Nevertheless, Torres still somehow failed to realise the queen could mate.
1609: Charles Butler’s Feminine Monarchie was the first full-length book on beekeeping
written in English. In this, he worked out that bees produced wax from their own bodies
and not from plants as previously considered by no less a personage than Aristotle in his
History of Animals (“The honeycomb is made from flowers and the materials for the wax
they gather from the resinous gums of trees, while honey is distilled from dew and is
deposited chiefly at the raisings of the constellations or when a rainbow is in the sky.” As
cited in The Bad beekeeper’s Club, page 158, by Bill Turnbull, the BBC correspondent and
tv presenter). Butler also identified the drones as male bees but erred in asserting that
worker bees also lay eggs [actually, there is an exception to this usual rule as they do in
the rare circumstance of no queen being available—in order to raise a new one]
1771: Slovenian beekeeper Anton Janscha, for the very first time, saw the queen flying
out of the hive and returning fully fertilised. She also was observed at that same time to
be carrying away with her both the semen and the genitalia of the male drone bee(s).
1778: The blind Huber and his industrious and meticulous servant and assistant,
Burnens, also recorded, in Switzerland, the inferred fact of the queen’s dramatic mating
flight, without actually observing it first-hand. They also confirmed most of what is now
scientifically known about the actual habits and lifestyle of honeybees and the hive.
1859: Reverend Millette of Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania, was the very first recorded
observer actually to witness the moment of copulation itself when “the queen chanced
to fall to the ground in the middle of her mating flight “ while in close contact with the
drone before the latter expired “having lost the ‘speciality of his sex’. . . It was later still
that it was discovered that the queen usually mates with more than one drone, albeit on
a single mating flight. It was also only over the course of the second half of the
nineteenth century that scientists began to unravel the puzzle of how the bee colony
determines the sex of the eggs that the queen lays, according of the needs of the society
as a whole.” (Bee Wilson, The Hive: the Story of the Beehive and Us (2004, pages 104-5).
Thus, it is with no little—but not inconsistent-- surprise, in view of the above, that Rudolf Steiner, in
his nine 1923 lectures on bees revisited this mystical aspect of the bees and the hive. Steiner
passionately considered that modern science and commercial beekeeping practices had largely and
detrimentally overlooked the spiritual, metaphysical, and biodynamic dimension of apiary science.
To cite the blurb on the back cover of the 1998 Anthroposophic Press’ book, “Bees: Lectures by
Rudolf Steiner: “In 1923 Steiner predicted the dire state of the honeybee today. He said then that in
fifty to eighty years we would see the consequences of mechanizing the forces that had previously
operated organically in the beehive, such as the practice of artificially breeding queen bees. The fact
that over sixty percent of the honeybee population has died during the past ten years and that this
same phenomena is occurring around the world should urge our attention to the importance of the
issues discussed in these lectures. Rudolf Steiner began this series of lectures on bees in response to
a question from an audience of construction workers. From physical depictions of the daily activities
of bees to the loftiest esoteric insights, the lectures describe the unconscious wisdom contained in
the beehive and its connection to our experience of health, culture, and the cosmos. They are
essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the true nature of the honeybee, as well as
those who wish to heal the contemporary crisis of the beehive.”
Much of this non-holistic ecological global crisis of the honeybee—upon whom we so depend for the
greater part of our pollinated food supply—has been caused by Man: by his Cartesian dualistic
approach to nature which sees it as something separate for himself and thus amenable completely
to instrumental and pragmatic exploitation, whether for food, commercial profit, or, as recently, as
an ally in the quest for medical scanning knowledge and the detection of diseases. Steiner’s
anthroposophy is a metaphysical system of esoteric and occult theorising of some complexity and
opaqueness. His bee lectures firmly reflect this. What is not clear, however, is whether we should
regard his analyses and observations, his self-proclaimed “spiritual science” as commendable and/or
acceptable. And, furthermore, is his system a philosophical one embracing a consistent and
intelligible ontology and social ethic? And where does art and aesthetics and Joseph Beuys come
into the picture? Such were the interesting questions we went on to animatedly discuss in our
roundtable format after I had briefly set the scene of what is meant philosophically by the aesthetic.
In Book X of his “The Republic”, Plato places Socrates and Glaucon in a dialogue concerning the
meaning, status and usefulness of craftsmanship and the representational arts generally. Plato
hereby established his classical theory of art as imitation or “mimetic” of ontological objects which
surround us and which themselves are mere imitations of true Reality which exists beyond the
senses and the observable and the experienced world of familiarity. [please see the attachment
“Plato’s Theory of Art in his The Republic”].
Plato regarded all such art as mere mirror-imaging and thus inferior and of little interest as all such
was three-times removed from his ideal and perfect Forms of Beauty, Justice, Goodness, etc. Such a
theory of beauty and imitation held the intellectual and philosophical field for over two millennia
and, in fact, only began to be challenged after the invention of the camera at the end of the
nineteenth-century which encouraged artists to adopt new and unrepresentational methods and
conceptual viewpoints. This ushered in what we know as postmodernism in art and led onto the post
post-modernism or abstract expressionist and conceptual schools that is exemplified in the stunning
range of work of the contemporary avant-garde artist, the German-born, Joseph Beuys. Beuys, it has
but recently been realised, was an enthusiastic student and reader of Steiner’s voluminous
anthroposophical writings and artwork, especially the 1923 lectures on bees, which in turn greatly
influenced Beuys and his complex artwork and conceptual performances and Actions.
Such artwork cannot possibly fit into Plato’s Imitation Theory and I specifically cited Arthur C.
Danto’s seminal 1964 article entitled “Artworks” to illustrate the new aesthetic and ontological
questions raised by such non-representational and revolutionary artwork. For example, Danto cites
Van Gough’s extraordinary early Dutch painting “The Potato Eaters” as well as Robert
Rauschenberg’s and Claes Oldenberg’s respective sculptural beds to illustrate his criticism of the
non-utility of Plato’s art theory. In so doing, he makes a very powerful and persuasive case for saying
such art objects create their own extended ontological value and clearly exist in their own rights.
Such artworks do not exist as mimetic forms or objects of imitation. They are, in fact, quite unique,
and not copies of anything. Danto’s new theory—ironically termed by him the “Real Theory”, has
opened up vast new creative concepts and ontological possibilities, and it is significant that Danto is
not only an American philosophical professional but was also an artist of the New York abstractexpressionist school of the fifties so knows well of that which he speaks.
Such ontological and artistic possibilities are both thoroughly and enthusiastically investigated by
both Steiner and Beuys but this is not the place to detail them. Several relevant attachments of book
excerpts, articles, and reviews are available on this website which should, it is hoped, provide
sufficient explication. I particularly recommend the brief introduction by Gunther Hauk and the
Afterword Essay by David Adams, From Queen Bee to Social Sculture: The Artistic Alchemy of Joseph
Beuys”, both in the Steiner book on bee lectures cited above. The latter, again according to the rear
cover blurb, stresses that Steiner’s “elemental imagery and its relationship to human society played
an important role in Beuys’s sculptures, drawings, installations, and performance art. The essay on
Beuys adds a whole new dimension to these lectures, usually viewed as specific to biodynamic
methods and beekeeping.”
To conclude this summary of a vivid and far-ranging discussion last Saturday morning at the Lit &
Phil, other interesting areas of comparative philosophical debate were touched upon by the group.
These included (in no particular order): Marcel Duchamp’s infamous “Urinal” sculpture/object
(thanks Jack!); Immanuel Kant’s epistemology of contrasting cognitive phenomenological knowledge
via space-time a priori categories with the unknowable “things-in-themselves” noumenon (me, I
think!); Arthur Schopenhauer’s “Will as Representation” challenge to Kant’s Critique of Practical
Reason, the ethical categorical imperatives and “the moral law within” notions (!) via the famous
misanthrope and mysoginist’s assertion that the contemplation of art brings but a fleeting but
much-needed relief from pessimism and the suffering of living (thanks Bill!); and Soren Keirkegaard’s
Christian Existentialist theory of classical beauty which states that outside inspiration is vital for an
artist to create the greatest of art which is always unique and unrepeatable, thereby avoiding the
instinctual fate of the honeycomb of bees which, although startlingly impressive is identically and
uniformly produced and thus does not qualify as “beautiful” or “aesthetic”.
Kierkegaard would argue then that we are not bees precisely because we have great art. We
amateur philosophers knew better and were quite unable, of course to come to any conclusion
whatsoever! [Kierkegaard’s Victorian Age pre-postmodernism observation came from me, citing
Volume I of his Either/Or opus. I also cite this in full in my posted Preview on the website for this
group discussion]; and, finally, we did manage, somehow, to also briefly discuss the current global
ecological crisis of the honeybee both by reference to the recent BBC Horizon documentary, “Who’s
Killing the Bees”, produced and narrated by bad beekeeper above, Bill Turnbull, as well as via a
honeyed oration by our own David Dobereiner who most poetically stated that each and every
flower is absolutely unique—as, also, is he!.
Coincidentally, poetry (along with Plato and honey as poison) is our next group’s subject on Saturday
September 21st, and you are all cordially invited once again! So I will now leave you with Malcolm’s
excellent exit joke which stumped us all: “What is in the eye of the bee-holder? Answer: “Beauty!”
Peter Tooth