The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6)
PART III. Constitution

C. Art, Religion, and Science

The absolutely free spirit, having taken its determinations back into itself, now generates another world. It is a world which has the form of spirit itself, where spirit’s work is completed in itself and the spirit attains a view (Anschauung) of what is spirit itself, as itself. As intelligence, the existent (das seyende) has the form (Gestalt) of something other; as will it has the form of itself.

Being-recognized (Anerkanntseyn) is the spiritual element, but it is as yet indeterminate in itself and is therefore [to be] filled out with manifold content. The coercive law is the movement of this content, i.e., the universal seeing itself as mediation. The constitution is its [i.e., the free spirit’s] creation of the content out of itself – constituting itself, but in the form of object. [The spirit] makes itself into [its] content, and as government it is the self-certain spirit: it knows that this is its content and that it [i.e., spirit] is the power over it [this content] – [it is] spiritual content. Accordingly, it must now create this content as such, as self-knowing.

Thus, at the immediate [level], spirit is art: the infinite knowledge, which, immediately alive, is its own fulfilment – the knowledge which has taken back into itself all the exigency of nature, of outer necessity, and [has bridged] the division between self-knowledge and its truth. Immediately, art is form, indifferent to the content – form which could cast itself into any content [and] bring that content to view as something infinite, allowing its inner life, its spirit, to come out, [and] making it its object as spirit. Art sways between form and the pure self of form – and thus between plastic and musical art.

Music is the pure [experience of] hearing, wherein the formative element brings nothing into being but the transitory sound, and the melody of harmonic motion moves itself to the triad turned back into itself. It is formless motion – the dance of this motion itself as the invisible presentation, belonging to time.

[At] the other extreme, sculpture is the quiescent presentation of the divine. Between these two [poles] there are painting (the plasticity that takes color [all] to itself, the selfish [medium] in the form of pure sensation in itself); and poetry (plasticity as representation of form in the musical, whose sound, extended to language, has content in itself).

Absolute art is that whose content is equal to its form. Everything can be elevated into art. Yet this elevation is an alien fancy: as existing content, seen prosaically, it must itself be equal to the form. This is spirit itself. Hence nature poetry is the worst – landscape art, etc. – since that which gives it life contradicts the form in which it immediately is. [This is the] modern formalism in art. [There is, it says,] poetry in all things, a yearning for all, not an external force; things are that way in themselves (an sich), in God’s view – yet this “in themselves” (dieses Ansich) is abstract, not equal to their existence. This purely intellectual beauty – this music of things – has the Homeric plasticity as its opposite. The former is unsensory, the latter a sensory viewing (Anschauung). Here we do not have the form of the symbol, of [figurative] meaning – this is touched upon quietly, from a distance. Here the meaning itself is to come forward, but the form is lost. Art is in this contradiction with itself: that if it is independent it must be extended to allegory, and then it has vanished as individuality; and with the [figurative] meaning demoted to individuality, [meaning] is not expressed.

Art creates the world as spiritual and as open to view. It is the Indian Bacchus – not the clear self-knowing spirit but the inspired spirit (begeisterte Geist) which envelops itself in sensation and image, wherein the fearful is hidden. Its element is vision (Anschauung) – but vision is the immediacy, which is not mediated. This element is therefore not adequate to the spirit. Art can therefore give its forms only a limited spirit.

Beauty is form; it is the illusion of absolute vitality, sufficient to itself, self-enclosed and complete in itself – this medium of finitude. Vision cannot grasp the infinite – it is merely an intended infinitude. This god as statue, this world of song encompassing heaven and earth, the universal essences in individual mythic form, the particular essences, and self-consciousness – all this is [merely] intended, not true representation (Vorstellung); it has no necessity to it [which is] the form of thinking. Beauty is much more the veil covering the truth than the presentation (Darstellung) of it. Thus, as the form of life, the content is not adequate to it, is limited.

The artist therefore often demands that the relation to art be only a relation to form, and that one should abstract from content. Yet people will not let this content be taken from them. They demand essence [i.e., meaning], not bare form. The connoisseur, [however,] is the one who contemplates pure poetry and the artist’s understanding [in a work of art]the motifs, the detail which is determined by the whole and brings it out, selected with understanding, the parts being kept well distinct from one another, etc.

Art, in its truth, is closer to religion – the elevation of the world of art into the unity of the Absolute Spirit. In the world of art each individual [entity], through beauty, gains a free life of its own. Yet the truth of individual spirits is in their being an element in the movement of the whole. Absolute spirit knowing itself as absolute spirit: [this absolute spirit] itself is the content of art, which is only the self-production of itself, as self-conscious life reflected in itself, in general.

In art, (a) this individual self, this one, is only a particular self, the artist – the enjoyment on the part of others is the selfless universal intuition (Anschauung) of beauty; (b) the determinacy is individual content – hence its immediacy as existent, like that of the self [when] separated from beauty, from the unity of individuality and universality, i.e., [the unity] of the self and its universal existence. In religion, however, the spirit becomes its own object, as absolutely universal, or as the essence of all nature , of being and doing – and [yet] in the form of the immediate self.

The Self is universal knowing, and through this the return into itself. Absolute religion is this knowledge – that God is the depth of self-certain Spirit – thereby the Self of all. This knowledge is the essence, pure thought – yet, alienated (entäussert) from this abstraction, He is actual selfhood. He is a Person, having a common spatial and temporal existence – and this individual is what all individuals are. The divine nature is not other than the human. All other religions are incomplete [in this regard:] either [religions of] essence alone, the fearful essence of natural power wherein the self is nugatory; or the beautiful religion, the mythic, a game not worthy of the essence, without profundity and depth, where depth is [nothing more than] unknown destiny. The absolute religion, however, is the depth brought to daylight – this depth is the I, as the concept, the absolute pure power.

In it [i.e., the absolute religion], therefore, the spirit is reconciled with its world. Spirit, as existent, is its organization and progress through the social classes, distinct character and distinct duty, each self having a limited purpose and likewise a limited activity. The knowing of itself as essence – in right and duty – is empty as pure essence and pure knowing; [but] as fulfilled [it is] a limited many-sidedness, and the immediate actuality [is] an equally individual [knowing]. Morality, in its activity, is the elevation beyond class, advancing itself and the activity of its class – doing something for the universal.)

But the government stands over all – the spirit that knows itself as universal essence and universal actuality, the absolute Self. In religion, everyone elevates himself to this view of his own self as a universal Self. His nature, his class, fade like a mirage, like an island appearing as a fragrant cloud far at the edge of the horizon – [and] he is the equal of the prince; it is his knowing of himself as knowledge of spirit, [so that] for God he is worth as much as any other. it is the alienation of his entire sphere, his entire existing world. It is not that alienation which is only form, cultivation, and whose content is the [world of] sensory existence again – but rather the universal [alienation] of the entire actuality. This alienation restores the actual world to itself once again as complete.

The two realms – actuality and heaven – thereby come to be still far apart, however. Only beyond this world is the spirit reconciled with itself, not in its present. If it is satisfied with this world, then it is not the spirit elevating itself above its [immediate] existence. Spirit is to be shaken in this world, and in war and trouble it is shaken, and flees from this existence into thought. Yet there is a longing for heaven, and likewise a longing for earth – the former is for want of something better. By means of religion, the spirit has satisfied the trust that the events of this world and nature are reconciled with the spirit – and [that] no dissonance, no unreconciled selfless necessity rules in it.

Religion, however, is the represented spirit, the Self which does not bring together its pure consciousness with its actual consciousness, [and for which] the content of the former passes over into the latter as something different.

The thought – the inner idea – of absolute religion is this speculative idea that the Self is the actual, is thinking (Denken). Essence (Wesen) and being (Seyn) are [thus] the same. This is posited [in the ideal that God (the other worldly absolute essence) has become man, this actual man. But at the same time this actuality has annulled (aufgehoben) itself, become a thing of the past – and this God who is actuality and is [yet] an annulled actuality (i.e., a universal actuality) is the spirit of the community.

[The idea] that God is spirit – this is the content of this religion and the object of this consciousness:

(a) [as object] of pure consciousness, [as] the Eternal Being (Wesen), Son and Spirit; here these are all the same Being, [and] what is posited is not the distinction [between them, but] the indifference of immediate being;

(b) God, the essence of pure consciousness, becomes an “other” to itself: [this other is] the world. But this existence is [as] concept, being-in-itself, evil. And nature, the immediate, must be represented as evil, [the counterpart of God,] each of us coming to an insight into his own evil nature – i.e., so that the nature becomes the concept, the evil essence, being-for-itself (against the essence that is in itself) but at the same time the contrary, the essence that is in itself. [Thus, nature is evil in being God’s “other,” yet is like God in being self-sufficient.]

That is to say, God appears as actual in nature. [Yet with God immanent in nature,] everything “beyond” has fled. That this opposition [between the here and the beyond] is itself now void – that the evil, the actuality that is for itself is not in itself but is universal – this presents itself as well in the sacrifice of the God – man: (a) the sacrifice of divinity, i.e., of the abstract Being (Wesen) from “beyond,” has already occurred in his becoming actual; (b) [the sacrifice is also in] the elevation (Aufheben) of actuality, its becoming universality ([as] universal spirit – but this is [merely] a representation for consciousness); likewise [it has become:] (c) the universality of the Self in itself; i.e., the community must renounce its being-for-self and [the world of] immediate nature. That is, it must also view [the world] as evil, and this view of the evil is overcome (hebt sich auf) in the grasp of that representation [of a universal spirit]. Presentation in worship, wherein that self [i.e. the community] gives itself the consciousness of unity with the [supreme] Being (Wesen). Devotion knows itself in him: worship (Kultus).

This universal spirit (i.e., the spirit of the community) is [that of] the state, of the church, the existent actual spirit, which has become its own object as spirit – but as representation and faith. It is the spirit of the community, but in its representation it flees beyond its own self, far remote from it. That immediate knowing is not united with this otherness. Everything [in this religious expression] has the form of representation, of the beyond – without concept, without necessity, [but as mere] occurrence, contingency. Indeed, the word [is] the eternal resolution and will of God – yet [it is] only said, not comprehended, not concept, not Self.

The church has its opposite in the state, i.e., in the existent spirit. The church is the state elevated (erhoben) in thoughts – i.e., man lives in two worlds. In the one, he has his actuality that vanishes, his natural aspect, his sacrifice, his transitoriness; in the other, [he has] his absolute preservation, knows himself as absolute essence. He dies away from the actual world, knowingly and intentionally, in order to gain the eternal, the unactual life in thought, [as] universal Self.

Yet this eternal has its existence in the [cultural] spirit of a people (Volksgeist). It is the [cultural] spirit which itself is but spirit [as actually existent, in the state], through this movement – [although] opposed to it in form, [yet] identical to it in essence. The government knows this, the cultural spirit knows – that it itself is the actual spirit, containing itself and the thought of itself.

It is the fanaticism of the church to wish to establish the eternal, the heavenly kingdom as such, on earth – i.e., against the actuality of the state, [like] keeping fire in water. [Yet] the actuality of the heavenly kingdom is the state itself: reconciliation, in thinking, of the essences of both, through the church.

If they are unreconciled, then state and church are incomplete.

The state is the spirit of actuality. What reveals itself in it [i.e., the state], must be commensurate to it [i.e., to the spirit of actuality]. The state need not respect conscience – this is the inner, [and] whether it is to count as action or as principle of action must be revealed in those [elements] themselves.

The church is the spirit that knows itself as universal: the internal, absolute security of the state. The individual counts as individual; everything external is in itself insecure and unstable. In the state is [the individual’s] complete guarantee [of security]. What a person does [on the basis of] religion he does from his thought of himself, insofar as [that self-conception] is not a [broader] insight [of] universal thoughts, without ignoring the varying many-sided aspects of the individual. This is duty (Pflicht); i.e., to this I must yield. It is – is justified in the absolute essence. Morality [is grounded] in the absolute essence, insofar as it is my knowing – [but] there, [as universal, it is] absolute essence in general.

Religion as such is in need of the existent world, of the immediate actuality. It is the universal, therefore under the dominance of the state, is used by it, serves it. Used – because religion is what lacks actuality (das Wirklichkeitslose), having its selfhood in the actual spirit, [and] thus is as negated (als aufgehobenes). On the other hand, religion is [rather] the thinking which elevates itself above its actuality: this inner stubbornness that [leads one to] give up one’s own existence and be ready to die for one’s thought; it is the unconquerable [in the individual], who dies for the [sake of] the thought, for whom the pure thought is everything; [religion is] his inner thinking as such, having the meaning of action which otherwise appears as something contingent. So high has thinking as such been raised – [in the individual] going to death happily for the sake of faith. The state that subordinates itself to the church, however, has either surrendered to fanaticism and is lost; or else a priestly regime has been established, demanding not the alienation (Entäusserung) of action and existence and specific thoughts, but of the will as such and indeed of the will in existence as such – and certainly not toward the universal, the being-recognized, but rather toward a single will, as such.

Heaven flees from religion in the actual consciousness – man falls to earth and finds the religious [aspect] only in the imagination. That is, religion is so intrinsically selfless that it is the spirit merely representing itself – i.e., so that its elements have, for it, the form of immediacy and occurrence, without being conceived or comprehended. The content of religion is probably true – but this being-true (Wahrseyn) is an assurance without insight.

This insight is philosophy – the absolute science. Its content is the same as that of religion, but its form is conceptual. [It can be divided into:] (a) speculative philosophy – [concerning] absolute being which becomes “other” to itself, becomes relation to itself [in] life and knowledge, and a knowing knowledge, spirit, spirit knowing itself; (b) natural philosophy – [concerning the] expression of the Idea in the forms of immediate being. It is the going into itself, evil, becoming spirit, [becoming] the concept existing as concept. This pure intelligence, however, is likewise the opposite, the universal, indeed sacrificing itself and thereby becoming the actual universal – and the universal actuality that is a people; [it is] created nature, the reconciled essence in which each one takes his being-for-himself, through his own alienation and [self-]sacrifice.

In philosophy it is the I as such that is universal – the I that, in the concept, is the knowing of the absolute spirit, in itself, as this. There is no other nature here, not the non-present unity, nor a reconciliation that is to exist and to be enjoyed in the beyond, in the future. Rather, it is here, here the I knows the absolute. It knows, it comprehends, it is no other, [it is] immediate, it is the Self. The I is this indissoluble connection of the individual with the universal – of individuality as the universality of all nature, and the universality of all essentiality, all thinking.

The immediacy of spirit is the [cultural] spirit of a people (Volksgeist) – i.e., as existent absolute spirit. Religion [is] the thinking spirit, but which does not itself think, not about itself. Therefore lit has] no identity with itself, no immediacy. This knowledge on the part of philosophy is the restored immediacy. Philosophy itself is the form of mediation, i.e., of the concept. As immediacy, the self-knowing spirit in general is what is disunited in nature – and [in] the knowledge of itself. And this spirit is consciousness, immediate sensory consciousness which is something “other” to itself in the form of something existent. Spirit is its [own] quiescent work of art, the existing universe, and world history.

Philosophy alienates itself from itself – at its beginning it arrives at the immediate consciousness which is that same disunited consciousness. Thus philosophy is man in general. And as [it is] the [ultimate significance] of man, so it is for the world; and as with the world, so with man. One stroke creates them both.

What was there before this time? – [in] the other of time (not another time, but eternity, the thought of time)? In this, the question [itself] is suspended (aufgehoben), since it refers to another time. But in this way, eternity itself is in time, it is a “before” of time. Thus it is itself a past, it was, was absolutely, is no longer. Time is the pure concept – the intuited (angeschaute) empty self in its movement, like space in its rest. Before there is a filled time, time is nothing. Its fulfilment is that which is actual, returned into itself out of empty time. Its view of itself is what time is – the nonobjective. But if we speak of [a time] “before” the world, of time without something to fill it, [we already have] the thought of time, thinking itself, reflected in itself. It is necessary to go beyond this time, every period – but into the thought of time. The former [i.e., speaking about what was “before” the world] is the bad infinity, that never arrives at the thought from which it goes forward.

This division is the eternal creation, i.e., the creation of the concept of spirit – this substance of the concept, which supports itself and its opposite. The universe [is] thus immediately free of spirit, but must nonetheless revert to it – or, rather, [in] spirit’s own activity, its movement. Spirit is to produce the [final] unity for itself – likewise, in the form of immediacy it is world history. In it, this [antithesis] is overcome – namely, that only in themselves are nature and spirit one being (Wesen). Spirit becomes the knowing of them [and thereby unites them].

 


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