I am not even sure you are in disagreement with me. You may or may not be, all depending on the manner in which you understand the concept of instinct.
Instinct can be understood positively or negatively. When understood negatively, it refers to what is commonly referred to as “surrendering to instinct”.
When I speak of instinct I generally speak of it in negative sense, in contrast to will, which I understand in positive sense.
Note that will is not separate from instinct. It operates on instinct. It is that which determines which instinct you should be paying attention to in real time. It relies on pressure as a guide. Whatever exerts pressure is to receive immediate attention.
What does it mean to surrender to instinct? It means to go too deep into instinct thus repressing every peripheral stimulus.
Will is that which makes sure that each stimulus receives its own slice of attention so that no stimulus goes unregistered.
When stimuli is unregistered, it is pushed into the subconscious, from where it starts controlling the individual without his knowledge.
This is what I mean by “instinct”.
I hope you will agree that this is a bad thing under all circumstances. If you value autonomy above everything else – yes, survival including – then you would agree.
Instinct must be in front of our will, not behind it. We must be conscious of our instincts, not unconscious of them.
I can agree that this is a difficult feat when one is under severe pressure. I can agree that under sufficiently severe pressure even the most strong-willed people will temporarily succumb to instinct. But the superiority of autonomy (will) over heteronomy (instinct) nonetheless remains. The value of autonomy remains the same.
There is an interesting and very important distinction to be made between reason and will.
Reason is about devising a plan of action that has to be executed. In its strictest form, it leaves no room for improvisation.
A plan of action knows what has to be done in advance. It defines what is right in advance and determines what is wrong subsequently as that which is not right.
Reason makes clear separation between planning phase and execution phase. The planing phase is the reasoning phase during which a plan of action is constructed. The execution phase is, well, the phase during which a plan of action is executed.
There is no problem with reason per se. It only becomes a problem when it becomes too strict, leaving no room for improvisation.
The planning phase may or may not be creative. When it is not, we usually speak of people “following rules that have been devised by someone else”. For example, people who adhere to Bible would be an example of people who plan uncreatively. They simply execute what Bible tells them to execute. They do not think on their own. When planning is creative, we speak of reasoning proper. When people who plan creatively act, they are executing plans that they themselves have devised (or thought through, if they have picked them up from somewhere else.)
Similarly, the execution phase may or may not be creative. When it is not, we speak of people who stick too much to their plans, leaving little to no room for improvisation. Again, Christians who adhere to Bible would be an example. Not only do they plan uncreatively, but they also execute uncreatively. Beside Christians, people who know how to think but who do not know how to act would be an example too. They may be able to plan creatively, but that’s not worth much unless they can also execute creatively, which they can’t. On the other hand, when execution is creative, it means that the individual is acting within the rules, but also in his own way, thus allowing his character to be expressed.
Reason is fine so as long both of these phases – the planning phase and the execution phase – are creative. Reason ceases to be fine the moment either one of the phases becomes uncreative and too stuck in the old.
Because the purpose of reason is to produce a plan of action, and because a plan of action knows the exact steps of action to be taken in advance, we say that reason is conscious. When Nietzsche spoke against consciousness and in favor of unconsciousness he was speaking of the danger of reason enforcing strict rules of conduct that allow no room for improvisation, no room for uncertainty, no room for what we were not conscious of in advance.
There is another problem related to reason that arises from its desire to separate planning (= thinking) from execution (= action.)
It must be understood that drives are by their very nature selfish. They want independence. Each drive only desires its own expression and it does so for all eternity, with no end in sight. Drives, on their own, do not work with each other, but against each other.
Because drives are by their nature independent, no drive can lead to any other drive. Thought does not lead to action, nor does action lead to thought. Rather, thought leads to more thought, and action leads to more action.
The seperation of planning from execution leads to danger of either of these drives becoming independent and denying the other drive.
The idea that every action should be preceded by thought is one manifestation of such a denial. We can see here that planning phase has become independent by the fact that it is desiring more and more of itself and less and less of the other, the execution phase.
Eventually, when people realize that thinking is infinite, which manifests itself in the problem of infinite regress of reasons, they start asking questions such as “when should we put an end to thinking?” and coming up with superficial answers that do not deal with the underlying problem.
The only solution is WILL.
Now, will is quite different from reason. For the start, it does not know what has to be done in advance. It merely knows whether what is currently being done is wrong or not. Thus, it defines what is wrong in advance and determines what is right subsequently as that which is not wrong.
The sense of wrong is nothing but the sense that a drive is exerting pressure. It is a sign that one should switch one’s attention from whatever one is doing at the moment to something else, that which is knocking on one’s door of consciousness, desiring to live, to be given its own moment of expression.
Will does not think. It may invoke thinking, but it does not think on its own. What it does is it balances. It determines which drive – and thinking is a drive – will get the spotlight based exclusively on the feeling of pressure.
Thus, under severe pressure, there may be thinking involved, but the kind of thinking that is involved would be different from the one that is involved in peaceful situations.
This is natural because in peaceful situations there is little to no external stimulation whereas in alarming situations there is a lot of external stimulation. It is only natural to respond differently in different situations.
