Deleuze's Bêtise: Dissolution and Genesis in the Properly Human Form of Bestiality

Abstract

According to Deleuze, stupidity (bêtise) is the properly human form of bestiality. With this notion, he does not seek the properly human aspect of man in a difference vis-a-vis animals (be it of degree or of nature), but in a community of living beings. He challenges therefore classical philosophical anthropology, which defines the properly human by a fixed place in the grid of nature. Confronted with stupidity, the human being loses his place at the summit of the scala naturae. All determinations, the noble and the vile, the human and the animal, collapse: the human individual is forced to face with terror the pure ground. But unlike the satirical vision of humanity, which tolerates and even enjoys human misery as it tumbles down the ladder of being, stupidity cannot stand indifference and homogenization. Stupidity becomes a royal faculty that allows us to experience the field of Ideas that is the transcendental, genetic condition of all that exists.