Before we examine this problem any further, I would like to point out once again that we are pursuing it here only from one quite specific perspective and thus in a one-sided fashion. We cannot claim in any way to be offering a complete and thoroughly developed determination of the essence of animality. If it is indeed true that this interpretation of essence must be drawn independently from the phenomenon of animality, it is equally true that it remains utterly rooted in the problematic of metaphysics which must be adequately clarified.
§59. Clarification of the structure of behaviour in a
concrete way: the relationality of animal behaviour,
as distinct from the relationality of human action.
Our question now is: To what extent does this captivation announce itself in seeing, hearing, and so on? Captivation designates the fundamental character of the animal's being absorbed in itself Seeing, seizing, catching, and so on always take place from out of the drivenness of an instinctual and subservient capacity for the same. As being capable of this or that form of behaviour in each case, capability for . . . drives through and is driven through the behaviour itself This means that behaviour as such is a being driven forward-and that also means a being driven away. In general, seeing, hearing, and seizing are a being related to. . . . Not indeed in the sense that seizing something is an independent movement, or that the unfolding of this movement then additionally comes into connection with what is seized. But rather in the sense that the movement is intrinsically a movement toward . . . , a reaching out for . . . . Seeing is the seeing of what is seen, hearing is the hearing of what is heard.
Of course, one will say: this is fundamentally obvious. And yet everything depends upon correctly grasping the obvious here, which has not been comprehended by far, and indeed not comprehended specifically in relation to what we are calling animal behaviour. The task is to see precisely what kind of relationality lies in this behaviour; to see above all how the relationality of the animal's behaviour toward what it hears and what it reaches for is distinguished from human comportment toward things, which is also a relatedness of man to things. In smelling, the animal is related to what it smells, and indeed in the manner of capable reference toward. . . . At the same time this instinctual reference toward . . . is subservient as such. The act of smelling stands intrinsically in the service of further behaviour.
In order now to bring the peculiar character of behaviour into view, we must take our methodological point of departure from a consideration of those forms of behaviour which are more remote, with respect to their consistent and intrinsic character, than those forms of comportment displayed by the