The deepest insights are often, or perhaps always, the simplest realizations. “The human only becomes human among humans.” A statement of simple words from the philosopher Johann Fichte, and yet it takes a long life to unpack this sentence, to explore it, and to learn to live it. “It may be easy, but what’s easy is hard,” wrote the other Johann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Just as the spirit is simple and elementary, so are the paths to it. Hardly any field of life demonstrates this more impressively than eurythmy. I ask Stefan Hasler what is important in a eurythmy course, and he replies: “Few words! What touches us in all these moments of shared eurythmy is the immediate and direct experience of movement—the experience is what speaks.” Then Stefan offers an image: “Just as children are genuine and direct in their gestures and facial expressions, we adults can be the same when we experience what and how we move, when the gesture becomes an experience. We move beautifully, and that touches us.” What are the conditions for this? Stefan’s answer is short, two words that seem to contradict each other: “Soberness and joy.” And so it becomes very simple again—as with everything childlike, as with the deepest insights.
The quote by Johann Fichte is the title of the commemorative publication 50 Jahre Stiftung Humanushaus [50 years of the Humanushaus Foundation].
Translation Laura Liska
Image Eurythmy at work, with the kitchen and housekeeping team at the Arlesheim Clinic. Photo: Nicolai Rissmann
