Rather, religion in the form of art concerns the internal development of one and the same
religious
form.
Hegels Philosophy of the Historical Religions
in egypt, consciousness breaks with this immediacy of sen- sible representations.
egyptian religious art uses an abundance of natu- ral images, but the nile, the sun, plants, animals and human figures are bestowed with a symbolic meaning, which elevates them above the nat- ural.
(l2 24, 632/525) symbolism in egyptian art is carried out into the smallest detail.
even the number of columns and steps toward a platform is not determined functionally, but symbolises, for example, the different months or the number of feet the nile has to rise for the irrigation of the land.
The symbol mixes the natural with inner substance, which has sub- jectivity as its essence, and makes the subject intuitable; it is domination of the natural, inner reality that exists in an external form.
The enigmatic sphinx counts, for hegel, as the ultimate symbol of egyptian mind: "The sphinx, in and for itself a riddle, an ambivalent statue, half animal and half human, can be seen as a symbol for the egyptian mind as such: the human head, looking out of the animal body, presents the mind beginning to elevate itself out of nature.
"23 The sphinx counts even as the symbol of symbolism itself.
24
The enigmatic character of the sphinx is that it symbolizes a twofold movement, in which the struggle between inner essence and external form is recognizable: on the one hand
the movement of the inner, of subjectivity, to liberate itself from the mere natural, on the other hand the drive or impulsion (Trieb, Drang) toward intuition and labour. 25 egypt as a whole is driven toward the expression
23 hegel, Werke 12, pp. 245-46.
24 hegel, Werke 13, p. 465.
25 in the Pha? nomenology of Spirit and elsewhere, hegel characterizes egyptian religion
as the religion of the artificer (see above, note 13). it is evident that the dialectic of lord- ship and bondage is present at the backstage of this characterization: in the egyption religion, the consciousness of the bondsman (servant, labourer), which has shuddered in
? herman van erp
of its spirit in enormous works of art, without achieving complete clarity. Temples, pyramids and other graves cover a hidden realm that does not come to daylight. 26 in a comparable mode, Priests, scribes and embalmers of mummies frequently appear in sculptures and paintings wearing animal masks, which hide the human being as subject. (l2 27, 635/528)
Both sphinx and animal masks can be considered as symbols for the mediation (Vermittlung) between spirit and nature, which is character- istic for the religions of the near east. (cf. l2 24, 359, 259) mediation is the opposite of immediacy and a break with undeveloped, abstract unity, which is hegel's determination of the preceding natural religions. it is the necessary activity of thinking, starting from the difference between the moments of a concept and connecting them, without coming already to a complete unification or reconciliation. The mediation in egyptian religion still has the character of an exterior mixture of the essential elements, in which that what is present and living is intermixed and combined with the idea of the divine. (l2 27, 634/527) hegel speaks in chemical metaphors about this thinking as a compound of colliding elements and mixture full of fermentation. (l2 24, 370/271, 372/273, 379/280) it is characteristic for a riddle to bring together two elements in a conflicting manner that asks for a solution. The egyptian way of treating their dead bodies presents also an enigmatic mixture of nature and spirit, of body and soul. hegel refers to herodotus, who says that the egyptians were the first who taught that souls are immortal (l2 27, 633/526), but he himself is reticent concerning this point. Their belief in immortality is moulded in a form of building and labour that is aimed at the retaining of the soul, whereas spirit should lib- erate itself. mummification of animals is also an indication that the care for the dead body is not a genuine concern with spiritual life. 27 egyptian art is the product of this fermentation of spirit; it is a step toward a spiri- tual relationship with the infinite.
according to hegel, egypt is the country of origin of a religious art that fulfils the need for making the subject manifest in representations. That need exists where the natural level of life is sublated (l2 24, 373-375/274-75): "the natural moment must be mastered everywhere in such a way that
fear of death (the absolute master), breaks with its thing-like, animal life and develops itself, through its own labour, as the actual master of an objective world.
26 subjectivity will come to clarity only in the laws and rules that make a people to a political community. (cf. l2 24, 379-381/280-281)
27 hegel writes in a short note that the egyptian realm of the dead is not a spiritual realm because animals and cattle, too, belong to it. (hegel, Werke 11, p. 558)
96
? the religions of persia, syria and egypt 97
it serves only for the expression and revelation of spirit. " (l2 27, 636/529) The imperfection of egyptian art is that it remains largely portraying and distortion (Verzerrung) (l2 24, 378-380/279-80). however, it has already in itself, especially in its architecture, a craving for the beautiful and for fine art, which is more than imitation, and without dispersion in wild phan- tasy. (hegel qualifies hindu temples and their statues as bizarre, far from beautiful. ) egyptian art bears in itself contradictions, which are connected with the attempt to determine the idea of god in the external shape of an immense architecture, as if god could be produced in a work of art, produced by human beings. here we find a relationship between spirit and its creation, but not yet reconciliation (l2 24, 375-378/276-78). The fact that the statues of the gods must be consecrated, counts for hegel as an indication of the awareness concerning the deficiency of the artefacts in representing the divinity. also, the work of art itself is an expression of this deficiency, because external shape and inner spirit are still sepa- rated. The statues have a meaning without being actually animated and spirited. Their meaning is the inner that is longing for coming outward, struggling for expression. for the purpose of illustration, hegel refers to the difference between the pyramid, which looks like a crystal hiding the soul of a dead person, and a greek statue of a human body, the external shape in which the inner beauty of the soul comes to expression. (l2 27, 638-639/530)
Conclusion
egyptian art is the expression of the fermentation of subjectivity, its crav- ing for freedom and beauty. Therefore, egypt is the transition par excel- lence to the spirit of the greek. The egyptian spirit itself remains a riddle, like its language, which, for hegel, only existed in its silent buildings and enigmatic hieroglyphs (ibid. ). The spirit of the egyptian people is itself an enigma, while in greek works of art everything is clear (l2 27, 636/529). in greek representations of human beings and gods, spirit comes to a free expression of itself. The greek themselves were also aware of this freedom and put this awareness, still naively, in words in the myth of oedipus, who liberated the (greek! ) city of Thebe from the plague of the sphinx by resolving its riddle. oedipus gave the answer to the question of the sphinx: what goes first on four, than on two and finally on three legs? The answer to the riddle is man. The content of the enigma, hidden in the egyptian religion, is the human being, the free, self-knowing spirit. (l2 27, 639/532)
Religion in the foRm of ARt Paul Cobben
1. introduction
in his Phenomenology of Spirit, hegel classifies religion in three stages: natural religion, religion in the form of art, and revealed religion. in each of the three stages, the godhead is an absolute master that is served by humankind. But the relationship between master and servant is submit- ted to variation. in natural religion, the godhead is an absolute power that leaves no room for human independence. At the level of religion in the form of art, the human being recognizes its own essence in the divine essence: man has learnt to understand himself as a free being. however, at this stage, freedom has not yet emancipated itself from nature. here, free- dom only exists as the freedom that is incorporated in natural relations. Spirit and nature shape a harmonic unity. only at the level of revealed religion is freedom understood as the essence of nature: the natural world can become valid as the reality in which the divine freedom manifests itself. now, man can understand himself as the 'son of god'. he not only recognizes oneself in the divine freedom, but also knows this freedom to be a super-sensual, absolute being that manifests itself in human freedom.
therefore, the position of religion in the form of art is in between: it is the transition from natural religion to revealed religion. it already expresses freedom, but this freedom is still immediate, i. e. , encased in natural relations. for this reason, the development of religion in the form of art consists of freedom's emancipation from these natural relations. in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, the equivalents of the stages of the religion in the form of art (the stages of the religion of the Beauty) maintain this in between position and, therefore, their development is also aimed towards the emancipation of freedom. 1 however, the system- atic elaboration of the development of these equivalents in the Lectures
1 Vgl. W. Jaeschke, Vernunft in der Religion, Stuttgart: fromann holzboog 1986, p. 208: "trotz der im Vergleich zu den Vorlesungen unterschiedlichen methodik zeigen die Resul- tate [der Religion in der Pha? nomenologie, P. C. ] A? hnlichkeit mit den spa? teren. " ("notwith- standing the methodological differences compared to the lectures the results (of the Religion in the Phenomenology) show equality with the later ones". )
? 100 paul cobben
lags behind the exposition of religion in the form of art given in the Phe- nomenology. As a result, my discussion of religion in the form of art takes its starting point from the Phenomenology and will, now and then, refer to subsequent versions in the lectures. 2
Religion in the form of art is already a religion of freedom. therefore, religion in the form of art belongs to the people who shaped freedom the first time, namely, the greeks, who created the first form of a democratic state (the polis). the fundamental basis for the existence of religion in the form of art is the ethical world of the polis. 3 the freedom that is practiced in the ethical institutions expresses the divine substance. it is no accident that the name of the city-state Athens is also the name of a goddess. 4 god- dess and city-state coincide. But there is also a distinction: Athens is also represented by a statue. in this sense, the statue can be understood as a copy or 'duplication' of Athens. to understand this duplication of Athens, the immediate form of the freedom of the polis has to be discussed.
2. the Polis as the immediate form of freedom
the city-state of the polis cannot be understood as the expression of a universal concept of freedom (nowadays, we would say, 'as the expression of human rights'), but is bound to a specific, traditional content. freedom is immediately identified with the specific view of the citizens of a spe- cific city-state. therefore, hegel remarks: "on account of this unity, the individuality is the pure form of substance which is the content, and the action is the transition from thought to actuality merely as the movement
2 it is conspicuous that hegel places the Jewish religion, time after time, prior to the religion in the form of art. however, this becomes comprehensible when one realizes that the god of the Jewish religion anticipates the religion in the form of art insofar as it expresses pure freedom, but falls subsequent to it insofar as this freedom does not yet appear in the world.
3 g. W. f. hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. The Lectures of 1827, one Volume edition, edited by Peter C. hodgson, oxford 2006, p. 331/535: "Because ethical life con- stitutes the essential foundation here, what we are dealing with is the initial [mode of] ethical life so to speak, ethical life in its immediacy. "
4 "the essential being of the god is, however, the unity of the universal existence of nature and of self-conscious Spirit which, in its actuality, confronts the former. At the same time, being in the first instance an individual shape, its existence is one of the ele- ments of nature, just as its self-conscious actuality is an individual national Spirit. " Hegel's Phenemenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. miller, oxford: oxford UP 1977, p. 428. [here- after all page numbers referring to this work will appear in parentheses PhSp within my text].
? religion in the form of art 101
of an insubstantial antithesis whose moments have no particular, distinc- tive content and no essentiality of their own" (PhSp, 281). it is exactly because of this reason that the polis can be considered as a work of art. the citizen who realizes the laws of the state (the human law) does so by realizing his 'pathos'. 5 the ethical content is immediately experienced by the citizen as the essence of his own freedom. he is not capable of relat- ing critically to this content. therefore, the content as 'thought', which hegel speaks about, has the status of an immediate evidence: its content is true because any thought of a possible alternative is lacking. freedom's immediate shape in the polis, i. e. , the freedom practically existing in the ethical institutions, which the citizen realizes in and by his actions, has the consequence that its unity only practically exists and can only come to consciousness in an external way, namely, in the statue of the god. in the statue, the polis is represented by a work of art; it is not brought to its philosophical concept. As the citizen expresses his pathos in ethical act- ing, so the artist expresses his pathos in the statue of god. 6
the representation of the city-state's unity as godhead does not explain the religion of art as polytheism. At best, it could be maintained that the multitude of city-states implies the multitude of gods. however, in this case, it would not be clear why those gods are valid for the other city- states. 7 When the drive behind the development of the religion of art
5 "the substance does appear, it is true, in the individuality as his 'pathos' . . . " (PhSp, 284).
6 in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. The Lectures of 1827 hegel discusses the activ- ity of the artist: "But the organ by which self-consciousness grasps this subsisting thing, this substantial and essential [being], is phantasy, which images what is initially abstract, the inwardly or outwardly subsisting [essence], and produces it as what first deemed to be a god. explanation here consists in making it representational, in enabling consciousness to represent to itself something divine" (p. 344/548) A bit further he says: "insofar as spirit has naturel and sensible existence, the human figure is the only way in which it can be intuited" (p. 347/551-552). Vorlesungen u? ber die Philosophie der Religion ii, frankfurt am main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1969: "Wie der gott, obwohl geistige, allgemeine macht, von der natu? rlichkeit herkommt, so muss er auch zum elemente seiner gestaltung das natu? rliche haben, und es muss zur erscheinung kommen, dass eben das natu? rliche die Weise des go? ttlichen ist. Der gott erscheint so im Stein, und das Sinnliche gilt noch als angemessen fu? r den Ausdruck des gottes als gottes" (p. 124). ("As the god, although a spititual, general power, originates from naturalness, he must also have the natural as the element of its incarnation, and it has to appear that precisely the natural is the mode of the devine. thus god appears in the stone and the sensual still appears as adequate for the expression of god as god").
7 in 1827 hegel combines polytheism with the immediacy of the ethical life in the polis. in its immediate form, "the ethical content fragments" and this fragmentation is repre- sented by a multitude of gods. By the way, in Vorlesungen u? ber die Philosophie der Religion ii, not the god of the polis, but Zeus is introduced as superior god: "Dagegen Zeus ist der
? 102 paul cobben
has been understood, it will also become clear why polytheism can have meaning in the single polis.
3. the internal Contradiction of the Polis
the democratic society, i. e. , the society of free citizens, has to solve, in one way or another, the conflict that can arise between individual and community. in principle, the free individual can determine the content of his action. therefore, it is not trivial that many free individuals can live together in one society. the free action of one does not need to be compatible with the free action of others. therefore, a free society is only possible if the free action of all can be brought to a harmonic unity. the polis succeeds in this by regulating the action of its citizens according to norms and values that are traditionally given. the citizens realize the morals of the state they are living in. this is exactly why the freedom of the polis has an immediate form. it is true that the actions of the citizens are free because the content of these actions is not imposed by nature; it is a traditional, human made content. But as traditionally determined, this freedom limits itself to the specific historic form in which human freedom can appear. therefore, the harmony of the polis is only possible as long as this restriction is respected. the pure free self, the self that has the ability to determine its action purely from out of itself, has to be distinguished from the real free self, the self that has given its action a specific historical content. the harmony of the polis can only exist if the pure self has been repressed in some way or, at least, gets no validity. the solution of the polis is the banishment of the pure self to the underworld. 8 As long as this banishment is effectuated, the harmony of the polis is not threatened. however, the pure self refuses its definitive confinement in the underworld. this is expressed in the development of the polis that can be characterized as the return of the repressed. the freedom of the pure self is the implicit presupposition of the polis. the pure self will invade the public domain of the polis step by step. Ultimately, the pure self can claim its place as the formal person. if this occurs, however, the polis is destroyed.
politische gott, der gott der Gesetze, der herrschaft, aber der bekannten gesetze, nicht der gesetze des gewissens" (p. 104). ("Zeus, however, is the political god, the god of the laws, the power, but of the known laws, not the laws of Conscience". )
8 The Lectures of 1827, p. 332/536: "the ethical is an objective content such that a sub- jectivity or this internal reflection is not yet present. "
? religion in the form of art 103
the development of the polis immediately reflects itself in the religion in the form of art, in which the self-consciousness of the polis is repre- sented. Without the threat of this decline the polis would be in perfect harmony and the motive to represent this harmony would be absent. this changes when the harmony is in danger. "Since the ethical nation lives in immediate unity with its substance and lacks the principle of the pure individuality of self-consciousness, the complete form of its religion first appears as divorced from its existential shape"9 (PhSp, 425).
Apparently, the religious representation has a double meaning. on the one hand, the representation already expresses the decline of the polis, for the religious consciousness is a manifestation of the principle of pure singularity. Without the emergence of self-consciousness, there would be no need for religion. on the other hand, the decline of the polis can be delayed when its absolute essence is represented by the religious con- sciousness. the religious representation contradicts the actual decline. for the religious consciousness, the polis still has an absolute essence, even though the facts show otherwise. here, religion functions as an ideo- logical consciousness, which is dedicated to the status quo.
in contrast with the development of natural religion, the development of religion in the form of art does not express itself in distinct religions and distinct forms of society.
Rather, religion in the form of art concerns the internal development of one and the same religious form. At the same time, this development presents itself as an unavoidable destiny and does not have the self-conscious form characterizing revealed religion.
4. the Work of Art within the Practical framework of the Polis
Before going into the development of religion in the form of art, it is advisable first to dwell upon hegel's view of the work of art and its practical meaning in the polis. how can the work of art express the self- consciousness of the polis and why can this representation contribute to the delay of its fall?
9 "indem das sittliche Volk in der unmittelbaren einheit mit seiner Substanz lebt und das Prinzip der reinen einzelheit des Selbstbewusstseins nicht an ihm hat, so tritt seine Religion in ihrer Vollendung erst im Scheiden von seinem Bestehen auf " (Phdg, 490/1). the english translation is obviously wrong. the point is not that the religion is divorced from the ethical substance, but that the religion only gets existence when the polis threatens to become ruined.
? 104 paul cobben
first, we have to know how hegel understands the 'work of art'. of course, the work of art is a work, which means it is a remaining product of human labour. What specific conditions, however, make the work a work of art? the first condition to distinguish a work of art from other works has to do with the content of that work. the content of the work can refer to other entities. A house, for example, refers to an individual who wants protection against hostile forces of nature. or, a hammer is a labour product that itself refers to labour and the resulting product. But the content of the work of art only refers to itself. the work of art repre- sents the absolute being, or at least an absolute being. in this sense, the work of art has a religious meaning.
this determination of the content of the work of art, however, is still insufficient. old egyptian mummies or the paintings in the pyramids, which are images of the gods, are also labour products with an absolute content. But they are not works of art in the strict hegelian sense of the word. According to hegel, the real work of art only appears in the Ancient greek world because, in that world, for the first time, the riddle of the sphinx was solved. 10 in the greek world, man has manifested himself as the absolute essence. the absolute being has been identified as human freedom. only a work that represents human freedom can rightly be called a work of art.
this conclusion, however, leads to a problem. if the work of art has to express human freedom, then the polis itself must be considered as the work of art par excellence. in this case, it becomes problematic to under- stand the reason and meaning behind representing the polis in another work of art. Why can the duplication of the polis in another work of art accomplish what the polis itself cannot, namely, a delay of decline?
from a certain point of view, the polis is, indeed, the perfect work of art. it is not only a work that embodies human freedom, but it is also the only existence of this freedom. freedom has no other mode of being. to be free means to be a citizen of the polis. to be a citizen of the polis means to be free. there is no way to be free outside the polis. the citi- zen has no conscience or subjective identity to differentiate between his public and subjective role. in this sense, freedom only exists insofar as it is practically performed. Any reflection on this freedom, any subjective
10 PhSp, 423: "But the work still lacks the shape and outer reality in which the self exists as self; it still does not in its own self proclaim that it includes within it an inner meaning, it lacks speech, the element in which the meaning filling it is itself present. "
? religion in the form of art 105
notion of the citizen about the fact that he is free, would destroy the spe- cific sense of freedom that is meant here. the polis would no longer be substantial, for its substantiality would be denied by subjective thinking. this means, in other words, that the polis, as a work of art, is the exclusive medium for this type of freedom to appear in. the polis is, in this sense, the ultimate society of artists.
But, once again, if the polis is such a perfect work of art, why are other works of art needed to represent its absolute essence? to answer this question, we must consider the specific difference between the polis as a work of art and other works of art. the difference is obvious. the citizen is immersed in the polis. he is part of its substantial reality. As a conse- quence, he is not able to relate himself to the polis as such. this is not the case where other works of art are concerned. the citizen can relate himself to other works of art as defined objects, i. e. , as objects that can be distinguished from the objective totality, from the polis. therefore, other works of art more adequately express the absolute being when the polis is threatened to decline. the threat of decline originates in the moment that the concrete reality of the polis is disturbed and the citizen devel- ops a specific and external relationship to the polis. for the citizen, this externality means that the polis is no longer the absolute being. this loss of the polis' absolute status can be undone by a work of art, which is not only an alternative representation of the absolute being, but which also incorporates the specific relationship of the citizen to the polis. if this specific relationship is part of the representation of the absolute being, it can appear as an absolute relationship, which is no longer a menace or threat to the stability of the polis. in the next paragraph, i will clarify this with an example.
5. how is a Specific Work of Art Capable of Delaying the inevitable Destiny of the Polis?
A provisional answer to this question has already been given. in the specific work of art, the specific relationship of the citizen to the polis is represented as an absolute one. But how can a specific work represent an absolute being? is not the work of art a human-made product? more- over, the specificity of the work of art not only expresses its distinction from other specific works, but also obviously refers to the relationship of the citizen to the polis. is not this relationship better expressed in con- ceptual terms? is not the sublation of the work of art announced by the
106 paul cobben
observation that it expresses a specific relationship? And how can we understand that a specific work of art expresses a specific relationship?
hegel characterizes the work of art as the individualisation and rep- resentation of the general spirit (PhSp, 426), i. e. , of the ethical spirit of the polis. What exactly does this mean? if the general spirit can be rep- resented, its absolute content must in some way be open to duplication. the work of art is a representation because its own content refers to the absolute content of the polis. to indicate this duplication, hegel uses the term "pathos. " this term shows up for the first time at the level of the ethical world, when hegel discusses the objective reality of the polis. "the substance does appear, it is true, in the individuality as his 'pathos' . . . " (PhSp, 284). Apparently, pathos is the absolute ethical content insofar as it is experienced by the citizen. here, there still is no question of duplica- tion in the strict sense. the work of art still is the polis itself. it is only by means of the individuality that the polis is a living entity. therefore, a distinction has to be made between the absolute content as the content of the individuality and the absolute content itself. the two distinguished sides, however, do not have their own mode of being.
it is at the level of religion in the form of art that hegel uses the term 'pathos' for the second time. here, the term has a negative meaning. As the pure form of the self, the individuality has lost all content. this loss, however, is no emancipation, is not yet liberation from substantial ties. the loss of the absolute content is experienced as an absolute empti- ness. or, rather, the absolute being is experienced in the mode of its total absence. this time, the negative, formless, but absolute content is called pathos. it is the pathos of the pure self in which all form has been con- centrated. the pure self relates itself to the formless essence, as "the pure activity. " "this pure activity, conscious of its inalienable strength, wrestles with the shapeless essence. Becoming its master, it has made the 'pathos' into its material and given itself its content, and this unity emerges as a work, universal Spirit individualized and set before us" (PhSp, 427). this makes clear in what sense the work of art is an individualisation of the general spirit. individuality has been the pure form of the absolute sub- stance itself. individuality and substance, however, disintegrate and are transformed into the relationship between the pure self and its pathos. the specific form of this relationship is objectified in the specific form of a work of art. Since the work of art gives a renewed and positive reality to the absolute content as well, the work of art can be characterized, indeed, as the individualisation and representation of the general spirit.
religion in the form of art 107
We can now deduce the promised example from the most immediate relationship between the self and the substance. the primary condition for thinking a relationship between both these terms is their mutual dis- tinction. if the self experiences itself to be distinguished from the ethical substance, the substance loses its absolute status. the specific form of the relationship between self and substance is that they are purely distinct. therefore, the substance can regain its absolute status if this form can be objectified in a work of art. the work of art we are looking for is identified by hegel as the statue of the god and the temple, the house of the god. the statue of the god is an idealized human being and represents, in hegel's interpretation, the citizen. the ethical substance, from which the citizen has separated himself, is represented by the temple. 11 the temple is the world of the god, like the ethical substance is the world of the citizen. how- ever, it is essential that the god and the temple are two distinct works. the result is that the relationship between self and substance is represented as an absolute one. the harmony, which was broken by the separation of the self and the substance, has been retrieved because the self has its own sub- stance in the statue and the substance has its own form in the temple. the substantial unity of the polis has been broken into the moment of the self and the moment of the substance. But because both these moments are, each for themselves, represented in a work of art, the distinction between them is sublated in the representation. Both works represent the absolute substance. therefore, their distinction is actually no distinction at all. the works express a specific logical relationship, namely, the relationship of stoicism. for the stoic consciousness, there is only one form, one ? o? o? , which is both the law of nature and the law of the self. therefore, there is no real distinction between nature and self. Correspondingly, the statue and the temple are both forms of one and the same absolute substance. thus, there is also no actual distinction between them. they represent, to recall a quotation i mentioned before, "the movement of an insubstantial antithesis whose moments have no particular, distinctive content and no essentiality of their own" (PhSp, 281).
11 "the first mode in which the artistic spirit keeps its shape and its active consciousness farthest apart in the immediate mode, viz. the shape is there or is immediately present simply as a thing. in this mode, the shape is broken up into the distinction of individual- ity, which bears within it the shape of the self, and of universality, which represents the inorganic essence in reference to the shape, its environment and habitation" (PhSp, 427).
? 108 paul cobben
the statue and the temple, however, are not the only works that rep- resent the ethical substance. the ethical substance of the polis is a com- posed unity that is internally structured by a multitude of moments. it will turn out that all these moments will be represented in a work of art. the differentiation within the religion in the form of art, i. e. , its distinction between a multitude of works, can only be understood if the constituting moments of the polis are explicated. therefore, the harmonic unity of the polis has to be analysed. in the next paragraph, this analysis begins with the situation in which the decline of the polis seems to be totally absent: there is harmony that seems to need no religion to maintain itself.
6. the Starting Point: the harmony of the immediate ethical World
obviously, in the harmonic point of departure of the polis, the pure self fails to appear in the public domain. hegel expresses this with the curious sentence: "As yet, no deed has been committed" (PhSp, 279). of course, this does not mean that hegel accepts the possibility of a society in which all deeds fail. here, 'deed' has a specific meaning (that can be distinguished from action). Deed does not imply the casualness of traditional norms and values that are simply lived. through a deed, the casualness is broken through, notably because its legitimacy is disputed by other deeds.
to gain insight into the greek world in which no deed in this pregnant sense has been fulfilled, we must look closer at the systematic place hegel attributes to the greek world within the development of the Phenomenol- ogy of Spirit. hegel designates the greek world as "the true Spirit," which is "self-supporting, absolute, real being" (PhSp, 264). hegel adds: "All pre- vious shapes of consciousness are abstract forms of it" (PhSp, 264). All forms of the appearing consciousness preceding hegel's discussion of the greek world are abstractions from the substantial reality of this world. therefore, the greek world has to be understood as the concrete totality of all forms of the appearing consciousness. this means that all moments developed by hegel in the first chapter of the Phenomenology (Conscious- ness) are part of the concrete reality of the polis. When the polis is con- sidered according to these moments of Consciousness, it appears as the society in which "no deed has been committed. " Consciousness relates to reality as one that is given sensorially. Consciousness tries to formulate general, theoretical knowledge about this reality and, ultimately, knowl- edge in accordance with laws. therefore, the reality of free action remains out of sight of Consciousness.
religion in the form of art 109
the first moment of Consciousness is the sense-Certainty. it tries to grasp reality as one that is immediately sensorially given. evidently, the greek world, as historical, is sensorially given too. But, in so far as the sense-Certainty cannot grasp its reality as a unity, forcing Consciousness to make the transition into Perception and Understanding, the unity of the polis escapes the multitude of ethical relations in which it appears so that, consequently, Perception and Understanding must be understood as moments of the polis. Perception's "[t]hing with many properties" can be found again twice: as the unity of the family appearing in the multitude of family members and as the unity of the state appearing in the multi- tude of citizens. Understanding appears in the laws underlying the unity of the family and that of the state: the law of the family (or the divine law) and the law of the state (or the human law). the distinction hegel makes at the level of Understanding between the first and the second law of Understanding (PhSp, 96) returns in the polis. from out of the objec- tifying perspective of Consciousness, the law of the state appears as the "eternal" law, remaining the same (the first law of Understanding). from out of this objectifying perspective, the law of the family (whose further development we will see later) appears as the second law of Understand- ing: "like becomes unlike and unlike becomes like" (PhSp, 96). As the sup- plier of citizens, the family is the presupposition of the law of the state. to fulfill this position, it must make the unlike (the natural individuals) like: it must educate the natural individuals to citizens. in this way, the like becomes unlike: the natural individual is split up into the natural indi- vidual and the citizen.
from the perspective of the Consciousness, there is no question of deed in pregnant sense, indeed. the content of the law of the state and the goal of education are fixed. this changes, however, if the polis is consid- ered from the perspective of Self-consciousness. from this perspective, the law is not something given in reality, but is grounded in a pure self. in the second chapter of the Phenomenology, hegel develops the conditions under which the pure self can really exist. it exists not in relation to the natural reality that is immediately given (s. Desire), but only within the framework of society. he expresses this societal order in the metaphor of the master/servant relation. 12 the pure self can only be real as servant, i. e. , as the servant of the societal order, which is the master.
12 translated as: "lordship and Bondage. "
? 110 paul cobben
in this context, it is not necessary to develop elaborately the transition from the pure self into the master/servant relation (lordship and Bond- age). We need only to understand that the basic thought underlying the master/slave relation is an Aristotelian one. man is a free being because he is able to produce a second nature. the state is the reality in which not the laws of nature are valid but the laws posed by the people themselves. therefore, the submission to the state (the serving of the master) is not a submission to a foreign power, but an act of freedom: it is self-submission to free human essence.
it is important not to understand the master/servant relation as a his- torical relation, as an act of recognition that leads to the constitution of a societal order. Rather, the relation is an explicitation of the being of the pure self. the reality of the pure self can only be understood in relation to an objective reality that can be considered as self-expression of the pure self: it is a state order recognized by the self as the expression of the self's pure essence. moreover, it is of importance that hegel shows that this recognition presupposes that the servant has experienced the fear of death. this experience must also not be understood as factual in time (i. e. , as if there is first the experience of the fear of death and, con- sequently, the decision to submit as servant). here, again, the experience is an explicitation of logical presuppositions. Without body the pure self cannot be real. this, however, does not imply that the self is determined by its body--this would destroy its purity. therefore, the pure self must not only experience that it is explicitly distinguished from its body, but also that it can express itself in its body. hegel combines the experience of the distinction between the pure self and the body with the fear of death. in the fear of death, the self experiences its body in the power of an abso- lute master (death), so that it is no longer in the power of the pure self.
The enigmatic character of the sphinx is that it symbolizes a twofold movement, in which the struggle between inner essence and external form is recognizable: on the one hand
the movement of the inner, of subjectivity, to liberate itself from the mere natural, on the other hand the drive or impulsion (Trieb, Drang) toward intuition and labour. 25 egypt as a whole is driven toward the expression
23 hegel, Werke 12, pp. 245-46.
24 hegel, Werke 13, p. 465.
25 in the Pha? nomenology of Spirit and elsewhere, hegel characterizes egyptian religion
as the religion of the artificer (see above, note 13). it is evident that the dialectic of lord- ship and bondage is present at the backstage of this characterization: in the egyption religion, the consciousness of the bondsman (servant, labourer), which has shuddered in
? herman van erp
of its spirit in enormous works of art, without achieving complete clarity. Temples, pyramids and other graves cover a hidden realm that does not come to daylight. 26 in a comparable mode, Priests, scribes and embalmers of mummies frequently appear in sculptures and paintings wearing animal masks, which hide the human being as subject. (l2 27, 635/528)
Both sphinx and animal masks can be considered as symbols for the mediation (Vermittlung) between spirit and nature, which is character- istic for the religions of the near east. (cf. l2 24, 359, 259) mediation is the opposite of immediacy and a break with undeveloped, abstract unity, which is hegel's determination of the preceding natural religions. it is the necessary activity of thinking, starting from the difference between the moments of a concept and connecting them, without coming already to a complete unification or reconciliation. The mediation in egyptian religion still has the character of an exterior mixture of the essential elements, in which that what is present and living is intermixed and combined with the idea of the divine. (l2 27, 634/527) hegel speaks in chemical metaphors about this thinking as a compound of colliding elements and mixture full of fermentation. (l2 24, 370/271, 372/273, 379/280) it is characteristic for a riddle to bring together two elements in a conflicting manner that asks for a solution. The egyptian way of treating their dead bodies presents also an enigmatic mixture of nature and spirit, of body and soul. hegel refers to herodotus, who says that the egyptians were the first who taught that souls are immortal (l2 27, 633/526), but he himself is reticent concerning this point. Their belief in immortality is moulded in a form of building and labour that is aimed at the retaining of the soul, whereas spirit should lib- erate itself. mummification of animals is also an indication that the care for the dead body is not a genuine concern with spiritual life. 27 egyptian art is the product of this fermentation of spirit; it is a step toward a spiri- tual relationship with the infinite.
according to hegel, egypt is the country of origin of a religious art that fulfils the need for making the subject manifest in representations. That need exists where the natural level of life is sublated (l2 24, 373-375/274-75): "the natural moment must be mastered everywhere in such a way that
fear of death (the absolute master), breaks with its thing-like, animal life and develops itself, through its own labour, as the actual master of an objective world.
26 subjectivity will come to clarity only in the laws and rules that make a people to a political community. (cf. l2 24, 379-381/280-281)
27 hegel writes in a short note that the egyptian realm of the dead is not a spiritual realm because animals and cattle, too, belong to it. (hegel, Werke 11, p. 558)
96
? the religions of persia, syria and egypt 97
it serves only for the expression and revelation of spirit. " (l2 27, 636/529) The imperfection of egyptian art is that it remains largely portraying and distortion (Verzerrung) (l2 24, 378-380/279-80). however, it has already in itself, especially in its architecture, a craving for the beautiful and for fine art, which is more than imitation, and without dispersion in wild phan- tasy. (hegel qualifies hindu temples and their statues as bizarre, far from beautiful. ) egyptian art bears in itself contradictions, which are connected with the attempt to determine the idea of god in the external shape of an immense architecture, as if god could be produced in a work of art, produced by human beings. here we find a relationship between spirit and its creation, but not yet reconciliation (l2 24, 375-378/276-78). The fact that the statues of the gods must be consecrated, counts for hegel as an indication of the awareness concerning the deficiency of the artefacts in representing the divinity. also, the work of art itself is an expression of this deficiency, because external shape and inner spirit are still sepa- rated. The statues have a meaning without being actually animated and spirited. Their meaning is the inner that is longing for coming outward, struggling for expression. for the purpose of illustration, hegel refers to the difference between the pyramid, which looks like a crystal hiding the soul of a dead person, and a greek statue of a human body, the external shape in which the inner beauty of the soul comes to expression. (l2 27, 638-639/530)
Conclusion
egyptian art is the expression of the fermentation of subjectivity, its crav- ing for freedom and beauty. Therefore, egypt is the transition par excel- lence to the spirit of the greek. The egyptian spirit itself remains a riddle, like its language, which, for hegel, only existed in its silent buildings and enigmatic hieroglyphs (ibid. ). The spirit of the egyptian people is itself an enigma, while in greek works of art everything is clear (l2 27, 636/529). in greek representations of human beings and gods, spirit comes to a free expression of itself. The greek themselves were also aware of this freedom and put this awareness, still naively, in words in the myth of oedipus, who liberated the (greek! ) city of Thebe from the plague of the sphinx by resolving its riddle. oedipus gave the answer to the question of the sphinx: what goes first on four, than on two and finally on three legs? The answer to the riddle is man. The content of the enigma, hidden in the egyptian religion, is the human being, the free, self-knowing spirit. (l2 27, 639/532)
Religion in the foRm of ARt Paul Cobben
1. introduction
in his Phenomenology of Spirit, hegel classifies religion in three stages: natural religion, religion in the form of art, and revealed religion. in each of the three stages, the godhead is an absolute master that is served by humankind. But the relationship between master and servant is submit- ted to variation. in natural religion, the godhead is an absolute power that leaves no room for human independence. At the level of religion in the form of art, the human being recognizes its own essence in the divine essence: man has learnt to understand himself as a free being. however, at this stage, freedom has not yet emancipated itself from nature. here, free- dom only exists as the freedom that is incorporated in natural relations. Spirit and nature shape a harmonic unity. only at the level of revealed religion is freedom understood as the essence of nature: the natural world can become valid as the reality in which the divine freedom manifests itself. now, man can understand himself as the 'son of god'. he not only recognizes oneself in the divine freedom, but also knows this freedom to be a super-sensual, absolute being that manifests itself in human freedom.
therefore, the position of religion in the form of art is in between: it is the transition from natural religion to revealed religion. it already expresses freedom, but this freedom is still immediate, i. e. , encased in natural relations. for this reason, the development of religion in the form of art consists of freedom's emancipation from these natural relations. in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, the equivalents of the stages of the religion in the form of art (the stages of the religion of the Beauty) maintain this in between position and, therefore, their development is also aimed towards the emancipation of freedom. 1 however, the system- atic elaboration of the development of these equivalents in the Lectures
1 Vgl. W. Jaeschke, Vernunft in der Religion, Stuttgart: fromann holzboog 1986, p. 208: "trotz der im Vergleich zu den Vorlesungen unterschiedlichen methodik zeigen die Resul- tate [der Religion in der Pha? nomenologie, P. C. ] A? hnlichkeit mit den spa? teren. " ("notwith- standing the methodological differences compared to the lectures the results (of the Religion in the Phenomenology) show equality with the later ones". )
? 100 paul cobben
lags behind the exposition of religion in the form of art given in the Phe- nomenology. As a result, my discussion of religion in the form of art takes its starting point from the Phenomenology and will, now and then, refer to subsequent versions in the lectures. 2
Religion in the form of art is already a religion of freedom. therefore, religion in the form of art belongs to the people who shaped freedom the first time, namely, the greeks, who created the first form of a democratic state (the polis). the fundamental basis for the existence of religion in the form of art is the ethical world of the polis. 3 the freedom that is practiced in the ethical institutions expresses the divine substance. it is no accident that the name of the city-state Athens is also the name of a goddess. 4 god- dess and city-state coincide. But there is also a distinction: Athens is also represented by a statue. in this sense, the statue can be understood as a copy or 'duplication' of Athens. to understand this duplication of Athens, the immediate form of the freedom of the polis has to be discussed.
2. the Polis as the immediate form of freedom
the city-state of the polis cannot be understood as the expression of a universal concept of freedom (nowadays, we would say, 'as the expression of human rights'), but is bound to a specific, traditional content. freedom is immediately identified with the specific view of the citizens of a spe- cific city-state. therefore, hegel remarks: "on account of this unity, the individuality is the pure form of substance which is the content, and the action is the transition from thought to actuality merely as the movement
2 it is conspicuous that hegel places the Jewish religion, time after time, prior to the religion in the form of art. however, this becomes comprehensible when one realizes that the god of the Jewish religion anticipates the religion in the form of art insofar as it expresses pure freedom, but falls subsequent to it insofar as this freedom does not yet appear in the world.
3 g. W. f. hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. The Lectures of 1827, one Volume edition, edited by Peter C. hodgson, oxford 2006, p. 331/535: "Because ethical life con- stitutes the essential foundation here, what we are dealing with is the initial [mode of] ethical life so to speak, ethical life in its immediacy. "
4 "the essential being of the god is, however, the unity of the universal existence of nature and of self-conscious Spirit which, in its actuality, confronts the former. At the same time, being in the first instance an individual shape, its existence is one of the ele- ments of nature, just as its self-conscious actuality is an individual national Spirit. " Hegel's Phenemenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. miller, oxford: oxford UP 1977, p. 428. [here- after all page numbers referring to this work will appear in parentheses PhSp within my text].
? religion in the form of art 101
of an insubstantial antithesis whose moments have no particular, distinc- tive content and no essentiality of their own" (PhSp, 281). it is exactly because of this reason that the polis can be considered as a work of art. the citizen who realizes the laws of the state (the human law) does so by realizing his 'pathos'. 5 the ethical content is immediately experienced by the citizen as the essence of his own freedom. he is not capable of relat- ing critically to this content. therefore, the content as 'thought', which hegel speaks about, has the status of an immediate evidence: its content is true because any thought of a possible alternative is lacking. freedom's immediate shape in the polis, i. e. , the freedom practically existing in the ethical institutions, which the citizen realizes in and by his actions, has the consequence that its unity only practically exists and can only come to consciousness in an external way, namely, in the statue of the god. in the statue, the polis is represented by a work of art; it is not brought to its philosophical concept. As the citizen expresses his pathos in ethical act- ing, so the artist expresses his pathos in the statue of god. 6
the representation of the city-state's unity as godhead does not explain the religion of art as polytheism. At best, it could be maintained that the multitude of city-states implies the multitude of gods. however, in this case, it would not be clear why those gods are valid for the other city- states. 7 When the drive behind the development of the religion of art
5 "the substance does appear, it is true, in the individuality as his 'pathos' . . . " (PhSp, 284).
6 in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. The Lectures of 1827 hegel discusses the activ- ity of the artist: "But the organ by which self-consciousness grasps this subsisting thing, this substantial and essential [being], is phantasy, which images what is initially abstract, the inwardly or outwardly subsisting [essence], and produces it as what first deemed to be a god. explanation here consists in making it representational, in enabling consciousness to represent to itself something divine" (p. 344/548) A bit further he says: "insofar as spirit has naturel and sensible existence, the human figure is the only way in which it can be intuited" (p. 347/551-552). Vorlesungen u? ber die Philosophie der Religion ii, frankfurt am main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1969: "Wie der gott, obwohl geistige, allgemeine macht, von der natu? rlichkeit herkommt, so muss er auch zum elemente seiner gestaltung das natu? rliche haben, und es muss zur erscheinung kommen, dass eben das natu? rliche die Weise des go? ttlichen ist. Der gott erscheint so im Stein, und das Sinnliche gilt noch als angemessen fu? r den Ausdruck des gottes als gottes" (p. 124). ("As the god, although a spititual, general power, originates from naturalness, he must also have the natural as the element of its incarnation, and it has to appear that precisely the natural is the mode of the devine. thus god appears in the stone and the sensual still appears as adequate for the expression of god as god").
7 in 1827 hegel combines polytheism with the immediacy of the ethical life in the polis. in its immediate form, "the ethical content fragments" and this fragmentation is repre- sented by a multitude of gods. By the way, in Vorlesungen u? ber die Philosophie der Religion ii, not the god of the polis, but Zeus is introduced as superior god: "Dagegen Zeus ist der
? 102 paul cobben
has been understood, it will also become clear why polytheism can have meaning in the single polis.
3. the internal Contradiction of the Polis
the democratic society, i. e. , the society of free citizens, has to solve, in one way or another, the conflict that can arise between individual and community. in principle, the free individual can determine the content of his action. therefore, it is not trivial that many free individuals can live together in one society. the free action of one does not need to be compatible with the free action of others. therefore, a free society is only possible if the free action of all can be brought to a harmonic unity. the polis succeeds in this by regulating the action of its citizens according to norms and values that are traditionally given. the citizens realize the morals of the state they are living in. this is exactly why the freedom of the polis has an immediate form. it is true that the actions of the citizens are free because the content of these actions is not imposed by nature; it is a traditional, human made content. But as traditionally determined, this freedom limits itself to the specific historic form in which human freedom can appear. therefore, the harmony of the polis is only possible as long as this restriction is respected. the pure free self, the self that has the ability to determine its action purely from out of itself, has to be distinguished from the real free self, the self that has given its action a specific historical content. the harmony of the polis can only exist if the pure self has been repressed in some way or, at least, gets no validity. the solution of the polis is the banishment of the pure self to the underworld. 8 As long as this banishment is effectuated, the harmony of the polis is not threatened. however, the pure self refuses its definitive confinement in the underworld. this is expressed in the development of the polis that can be characterized as the return of the repressed. the freedom of the pure self is the implicit presupposition of the polis. the pure self will invade the public domain of the polis step by step. Ultimately, the pure self can claim its place as the formal person. if this occurs, however, the polis is destroyed.
politische gott, der gott der Gesetze, der herrschaft, aber der bekannten gesetze, nicht der gesetze des gewissens" (p. 104). ("Zeus, however, is the political god, the god of the laws, the power, but of the known laws, not the laws of Conscience". )
8 The Lectures of 1827, p. 332/536: "the ethical is an objective content such that a sub- jectivity or this internal reflection is not yet present. "
? religion in the form of art 103
the development of the polis immediately reflects itself in the religion in the form of art, in which the self-consciousness of the polis is repre- sented. Without the threat of this decline the polis would be in perfect harmony and the motive to represent this harmony would be absent. this changes when the harmony is in danger. "Since the ethical nation lives in immediate unity with its substance and lacks the principle of the pure individuality of self-consciousness, the complete form of its religion first appears as divorced from its existential shape"9 (PhSp, 425).
Apparently, the religious representation has a double meaning. on the one hand, the representation already expresses the decline of the polis, for the religious consciousness is a manifestation of the principle of pure singularity. Without the emergence of self-consciousness, there would be no need for religion. on the other hand, the decline of the polis can be delayed when its absolute essence is represented by the religious con- sciousness. the religious representation contradicts the actual decline. for the religious consciousness, the polis still has an absolute essence, even though the facts show otherwise. here, religion functions as an ideo- logical consciousness, which is dedicated to the status quo.
in contrast with the development of natural religion, the development of religion in the form of art does not express itself in distinct religions and distinct forms of society.
Rather, religion in the form of art concerns the internal development of one and the same religious form. At the same time, this development presents itself as an unavoidable destiny and does not have the self-conscious form characterizing revealed religion.
4. the Work of Art within the Practical framework of the Polis
Before going into the development of religion in the form of art, it is advisable first to dwell upon hegel's view of the work of art and its practical meaning in the polis. how can the work of art express the self- consciousness of the polis and why can this representation contribute to the delay of its fall?
9 "indem das sittliche Volk in der unmittelbaren einheit mit seiner Substanz lebt und das Prinzip der reinen einzelheit des Selbstbewusstseins nicht an ihm hat, so tritt seine Religion in ihrer Vollendung erst im Scheiden von seinem Bestehen auf " (Phdg, 490/1). the english translation is obviously wrong. the point is not that the religion is divorced from the ethical substance, but that the religion only gets existence when the polis threatens to become ruined.
? 104 paul cobben
first, we have to know how hegel understands the 'work of art'. of course, the work of art is a work, which means it is a remaining product of human labour. What specific conditions, however, make the work a work of art? the first condition to distinguish a work of art from other works has to do with the content of that work. the content of the work can refer to other entities. A house, for example, refers to an individual who wants protection against hostile forces of nature. or, a hammer is a labour product that itself refers to labour and the resulting product. But the content of the work of art only refers to itself. the work of art repre- sents the absolute being, or at least an absolute being. in this sense, the work of art has a religious meaning.
this determination of the content of the work of art, however, is still insufficient. old egyptian mummies or the paintings in the pyramids, which are images of the gods, are also labour products with an absolute content. But they are not works of art in the strict hegelian sense of the word. According to hegel, the real work of art only appears in the Ancient greek world because, in that world, for the first time, the riddle of the sphinx was solved. 10 in the greek world, man has manifested himself as the absolute essence. the absolute being has been identified as human freedom. only a work that represents human freedom can rightly be called a work of art.
this conclusion, however, leads to a problem. if the work of art has to express human freedom, then the polis itself must be considered as the work of art par excellence. in this case, it becomes problematic to under- stand the reason and meaning behind representing the polis in another work of art. Why can the duplication of the polis in another work of art accomplish what the polis itself cannot, namely, a delay of decline?
from a certain point of view, the polis is, indeed, the perfect work of art. it is not only a work that embodies human freedom, but it is also the only existence of this freedom. freedom has no other mode of being. to be free means to be a citizen of the polis. to be a citizen of the polis means to be free. there is no way to be free outside the polis. the citi- zen has no conscience or subjective identity to differentiate between his public and subjective role. in this sense, freedom only exists insofar as it is practically performed. Any reflection on this freedom, any subjective
10 PhSp, 423: "But the work still lacks the shape and outer reality in which the self exists as self; it still does not in its own self proclaim that it includes within it an inner meaning, it lacks speech, the element in which the meaning filling it is itself present. "
? religion in the form of art 105
notion of the citizen about the fact that he is free, would destroy the spe- cific sense of freedom that is meant here. the polis would no longer be substantial, for its substantiality would be denied by subjective thinking. this means, in other words, that the polis, as a work of art, is the exclusive medium for this type of freedom to appear in. the polis is, in this sense, the ultimate society of artists.
But, once again, if the polis is such a perfect work of art, why are other works of art needed to represent its absolute essence? to answer this question, we must consider the specific difference between the polis as a work of art and other works of art. the difference is obvious. the citizen is immersed in the polis. he is part of its substantial reality. As a conse- quence, he is not able to relate himself to the polis as such. this is not the case where other works of art are concerned. the citizen can relate himself to other works of art as defined objects, i. e. , as objects that can be distinguished from the objective totality, from the polis. therefore, other works of art more adequately express the absolute being when the polis is threatened to decline. the threat of decline originates in the moment that the concrete reality of the polis is disturbed and the citizen devel- ops a specific and external relationship to the polis. for the citizen, this externality means that the polis is no longer the absolute being. this loss of the polis' absolute status can be undone by a work of art, which is not only an alternative representation of the absolute being, but which also incorporates the specific relationship of the citizen to the polis. if this specific relationship is part of the representation of the absolute being, it can appear as an absolute relationship, which is no longer a menace or threat to the stability of the polis. in the next paragraph, i will clarify this with an example.
5. how is a Specific Work of Art Capable of Delaying the inevitable Destiny of the Polis?
A provisional answer to this question has already been given. in the specific work of art, the specific relationship of the citizen to the polis is represented as an absolute one. But how can a specific work represent an absolute being? is not the work of art a human-made product? more- over, the specificity of the work of art not only expresses its distinction from other specific works, but also obviously refers to the relationship of the citizen to the polis. is not this relationship better expressed in con- ceptual terms? is not the sublation of the work of art announced by the
106 paul cobben
observation that it expresses a specific relationship? And how can we understand that a specific work of art expresses a specific relationship?
hegel characterizes the work of art as the individualisation and rep- resentation of the general spirit (PhSp, 426), i. e. , of the ethical spirit of the polis. What exactly does this mean? if the general spirit can be rep- resented, its absolute content must in some way be open to duplication. the work of art is a representation because its own content refers to the absolute content of the polis. to indicate this duplication, hegel uses the term "pathos. " this term shows up for the first time at the level of the ethical world, when hegel discusses the objective reality of the polis. "the substance does appear, it is true, in the individuality as his 'pathos' . . . " (PhSp, 284). Apparently, pathos is the absolute ethical content insofar as it is experienced by the citizen. here, there still is no question of duplica- tion in the strict sense. the work of art still is the polis itself. it is only by means of the individuality that the polis is a living entity. therefore, a distinction has to be made between the absolute content as the content of the individuality and the absolute content itself. the two distinguished sides, however, do not have their own mode of being.
it is at the level of religion in the form of art that hegel uses the term 'pathos' for the second time. here, the term has a negative meaning. As the pure form of the self, the individuality has lost all content. this loss, however, is no emancipation, is not yet liberation from substantial ties. the loss of the absolute content is experienced as an absolute empti- ness. or, rather, the absolute being is experienced in the mode of its total absence. this time, the negative, formless, but absolute content is called pathos. it is the pathos of the pure self in which all form has been con- centrated. the pure self relates itself to the formless essence, as "the pure activity. " "this pure activity, conscious of its inalienable strength, wrestles with the shapeless essence. Becoming its master, it has made the 'pathos' into its material and given itself its content, and this unity emerges as a work, universal Spirit individualized and set before us" (PhSp, 427). this makes clear in what sense the work of art is an individualisation of the general spirit. individuality has been the pure form of the absolute sub- stance itself. individuality and substance, however, disintegrate and are transformed into the relationship between the pure self and its pathos. the specific form of this relationship is objectified in the specific form of a work of art. Since the work of art gives a renewed and positive reality to the absolute content as well, the work of art can be characterized, indeed, as the individualisation and representation of the general spirit.
religion in the form of art 107
We can now deduce the promised example from the most immediate relationship between the self and the substance. the primary condition for thinking a relationship between both these terms is their mutual dis- tinction. if the self experiences itself to be distinguished from the ethical substance, the substance loses its absolute status. the specific form of the relationship between self and substance is that they are purely distinct. therefore, the substance can regain its absolute status if this form can be objectified in a work of art. the work of art we are looking for is identified by hegel as the statue of the god and the temple, the house of the god. the statue of the god is an idealized human being and represents, in hegel's interpretation, the citizen. the ethical substance, from which the citizen has separated himself, is represented by the temple. 11 the temple is the world of the god, like the ethical substance is the world of the citizen. how- ever, it is essential that the god and the temple are two distinct works. the result is that the relationship between self and substance is represented as an absolute one. the harmony, which was broken by the separation of the self and the substance, has been retrieved because the self has its own sub- stance in the statue and the substance has its own form in the temple. the substantial unity of the polis has been broken into the moment of the self and the moment of the substance. But because both these moments are, each for themselves, represented in a work of art, the distinction between them is sublated in the representation. Both works represent the absolute substance. therefore, their distinction is actually no distinction at all. the works express a specific logical relationship, namely, the relationship of stoicism. for the stoic consciousness, there is only one form, one ? o? o? , which is both the law of nature and the law of the self. therefore, there is no real distinction between nature and self. Correspondingly, the statue and the temple are both forms of one and the same absolute substance. thus, there is also no actual distinction between them. they represent, to recall a quotation i mentioned before, "the movement of an insubstantial antithesis whose moments have no particular, distinctive content and no essentiality of their own" (PhSp, 281).
11 "the first mode in which the artistic spirit keeps its shape and its active consciousness farthest apart in the immediate mode, viz. the shape is there or is immediately present simply as a thing. in this mode, the shape is broken up into the distinction of individual- ity, which bears within it the shape of the self, and of universality, which represents the inorganic essence in reference to the shape, its environment and habitation" (PhSp, 427).
? 108 paul cobben
the statue and the temple, however, are not the only works that rep- resent the ethical substance. the ethical substance of the polis is a com- posed unity that is internally structured by a multitude of moments. it will turn out that all these moments will be represented in a work of art. the differentiation within the religion in the form of art, i. e. , its distinction between a multitude of works, can only be understood if the constituting moments of the polis are explicated. therefore, the harmonic unity of the polis has to be analysed. in the next paragraph, this analysis begins with the situation in which the decline of the polis seems to be totally absent: there is harmony that seems to need no religion to maintain itself.
6. the Starting Point: the harmony of the immediate ethical World
obviously, in the harmonic point of departure of the polis, the pure self fails to appear in the public domain. hegel expresses this with the curious sentence: "As yet, no deed has been committed" (PhSp, 279). of course, this does not mean that hegel accepts the possibility of a society in which all deeds fail. here, 'deed' has a specific meaning (that can be distinguished from action). Deed does not imply the casualness of traditional norms and values that are simply lived. through a deed, the casualness is broken through, notably because its legitimacy is disputed by other deeds.
to gain insight into the greek world in which no deed in this pregnant sense has been fulfilled, we must look closer at the systematic place hegel attributes to the greek world within the development of the Phenomenol- ogy of Spirit. hegel designates the greek world as "the true Spirit," which is "self-supporting, absolute, real being" (PhSp, 264). hegel adds: "All pre- vious shapes of consciousness are abstract forms of it" (PhSp, 264). All forms of the appearing consciousness preceding hegel's discussion of the greek world are abstractions from the substantial reality of this world. therefore, the greek world has to be understood as the concrete totality of all forms of the appearing consciousness. this means that all moments developed by hegel in the first chapter of the Phenomenology (Conscious- ness) are part of the concrete reality of the polis. When the polis is con- sidered according to these moments of Consciousness, it appears as the society in which "no deed has been committed. " Consciousness relates to reality as one that is given sensorially. Consciousness tries to formulate general, theoretical knowledge about this reality and, ultimately, knowl- edge in accordance with laws. therefore, the reality of free action remains out of sight of Consciousness.
religion in the form of art 109
the first moment of Consciousness is the sense-Certainty. it tries to grasp reality as one that is immediately sensorially given. evidently, the greek world, as historical, is sensorially given too. But, in so far as the sense-Certainty cannot grasp its reality as a unity, forcing Consciousness to make the transition into Perception and Understanding, the unity of the polis escapes the multitude of ethical relations in which it appears so that, consequently, Perception and Understanding must be understood as moments of the polis. Perception's "[t]hing with many properties" can be found again twice: as the unity of the family appearing in the multitude of family members and as the unity of the state appearing in the multi- tude of citizens. Understanding appears in the laws underlying the unity of the family and that of the state: the law of the family (or the divine law) and the law of the state (or the human law). the distinction hegel makes at the level of Understanding between the first and the second law of Understanding (PhSp, 96) returns in the polis. from out of the objec- tifying perspective of Consciousness, the law of the state appears as the "eternal" law, remaining the same (the first law of Understanding). from out of this objectifying perspective, the law of the family (whose further development we will see later) appears as the second law of Understand- ing: "like becomes unlike and unlike becomes like" (PhSp, 96). As the sup- plier of citizens, the family is the presupposition of the law of the state. to fulfill this position, it must make the unlike (the natural individuals) like: it must educate the natural individuals to citizens. in this way, the like becomes unlike: the natural individual is split up into the natural indi- vidual and the citizen.
from the perspective of the Consciousness, there is no question of deed in pregnant sense, indeed. the content of the law of the state and the goal of education are fixed. this changes, however, if the polis is consid- ered from the perspective of Self-consciousness. from this perspective, the law is not something given in reality, but is grounded in a pure self. in the second chapter of the Phenomenology, hegel develops the conditions under which the pure self can really exist. it exists not in relation to the natural reality that is immediately given (s. Desire), but only within the framework of society. he expresses this societal order in the metaphor of the master/servant relation. 12 the pure self can only be real as servant, i. e. , as the servant of the societal order, which is the master.
12 translated as: "lordship and Bondage. "
? 110 paul cobben
in this context, it is not necessary to develop elaborately the transition from the pure self into the master/servant relation (lordship and Bond- age). We need only to understand that the basic thought underlying the master/slave relation is an Aristotelian one. man is a free being because he is able to produce a second nature. the state is the reality in which not the laws of nature are valid but the laws posed by the people themselves. therefore, the submission to the state (the serving of the master) is not a submission to a foreign power, but an act of freedom: it is self-submission to free human essence.
it is important not to understand the master/servant relation as a his- torical relation, as an act of recognition that leads to the constitution of a societal order. Rather, the relation is an explicitation of the being of the pure self. the reality of the pure self can only be understood in relation to an objective reality that can be considered as self-expression of the pure self: it is a state order recognized by the self as the expression of the self's pure essence. moreover, it is of importance that hegel shows that this recognition presupposes that the servant has experienced the fear of death. this experience must also not be understood as factual in time (i. e. , as if there is first the experience of the fear of death and, con- sequently, the decision to submit as servant). here, again, the experience is an explicitation of logical presuppositions. Without body the pure self cannot be real. this, however, does not imply that the self is determined by its body--this would destroy its purity. therefore, the pure self must not only experience that it is explicitly distinguished from its body, but also that it can express itself in its body. hegel combines the experience of the distinction between the pure self and the body with the fear of death. in the fear of death, the self experiences its body in the power of an abso- lute master (death), so that it is no longer in the power of the pure self.
