The sacred instinct of art and religion (archive)

I agree with the evolutionary psychologists in seeing art as a special element of our instincts, with the survival value of art provided by not a single genetic impulse but, as Denis Dutton pointed out it is a complicated ensemble of impulses involving response to the environment, appeals to color and sound, social status, puzzles, erotic interests, etc. It is almost impossible to make a rational system out of it.

But some evolutionary thinkers then go on to say that the greatest art sets us above the instincts that make the art possible, and that art transcends our animal selves. They would probably say the same about religion. But this is where the ideal of the instincts, the Will, or Tirips enters the picture. The activation of life inwardly by Tirips (the Will-To-Godhood) is the zenith of the material instincts, virtually a supermaterial instinct, shaped by outside evolution and natural selection, which seeks ascending levels of Godhood as the greatest possible success in survival and reproduction. This is how both art and religion are activated by a sacred instinct, the zenith of the material instincts, which can affirm and define the greatest art and religion as an affirmation of the sacred.