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Religion in the Form of Art
In moving from 'natural religion' to 'religion in the form of art', Hegel makes clear that we are now considering the religious outlook of ethical Spirit, which (as we have seen) Hegel took to be exemplified by the Greeks. As previously, Hegel presents us with a picture that emphasizes the attractions but also the limitations of this ethical Spirit. Hegel makes clear that at the level of its religious consciousness, it represents a higher achievement than everything that has gone before, something that is made possible by the social form of the polis:
[Spirit] is for them neither the divine, essential Light in whose unity the being-for-self of self-consciousness is contained only negatively, only transitorily, and in which it beholds the lord and master of its actual world; nor is it the restless destruction of hostile peoples, nor their subjection to a caste-system which gives the semblance of organization of a completed whole, but in which the universal freedom of the individuals is lacking. On the contrary, this Spirit is the free nation in which hallowed custom constitutes the substance of all, whose actuality and existence each and everyone knows to be his own will and deed.
However, Hegel reminds us here that the harmony he associates with the polis is unstable, and its eventual dissolution is reflected in the 'absolute art' of Greek tragedy, in which religion in the form of art culminates, prior to the point at which 'Spirit transcends art in order to gain a higher representation of itself'. As we have seen, Hegel takes the turning-point from natural religion to religion in the form of art to involve a shift away from man's relation to nature, to man's relation to the polis, so that the gods now embody the state (as did the goddess Athena, for example), rather than natural phenomena: 'These ancient gods, first-born children of the union of Light with Darkness, Heaven, Earth, Ocean, Sun, the Earth's blind typhonic Fire, and so on, are supplanted by shapes which only dimly recall those Titans, and which are no longer creatures of Nature, but lucid, ethical Spirits of self-conscious nations'. However, although the gods now take on human form and are intrinsically related to the human community, it is at first difficult for the religious artist to bring the people together with these gods, when religious art takes on a sculptural form. At this stage, Hegel argues, the artist aspires to be merely a vehicle or instrument for the divinities, who tries to set aside his own creativity and simply be inspired by them; but he is also aware that he has laboured to create the statues, and so that he is also present in what he has made, standing between the people and their gods. Thus, although the worshippers may feel that the statue he has cast has made the gods present among them, the artist knows that he has created a mere representation, as he was unable to 'forget himself' in it. Rather than seeing its gods as mute, therefore, the religious community needs to make its divinities speak, so that they may be worshipped not only in sculptural form, but also through hymns, in which the writer may see himself as simply transcribing the words of the gods: 'The work of art therefore demands another element of its existence, the god another mode of coming forth than this . . . This higher element is Language - an outer reality that is immediately selfconscious existence . . . The god, therefore, who has language for the element of his shape is the work of art that is in its own self inspired, that possesses immediately in its outer existence the pure activity which, when it existed as a Thing, was in contrast to it'. Hegel contrasts this use of the hymn to the role of the oracle in religious cultures, where in the oracle the divinity speaks in an alien tongue, reflecting the fact that the oracle was used to settle contingent matters (like whether it would be good to travel) which were not covered by the laws of the gods (which everyone knew without having to consult the oracle). However, although the hymn marks an advance over the oracle, the worshippers nonetheless came to feel that it only makes god present to them in an impermanent way (in contrast to the permanence of the statue): we therefore move to a further form of religious life, of the cult, which attempts to overcome this defect by bringing speech and statuary together, as the worshippers sing hymns before the statues in order to welcome and receive their gods. In order for this to take place, the worshippers attempt to purify themselves and overcome their bodily selves (for they do not yet see evil as residing in the soul). They therefore sacrifice their material possessions, although paradoxically this sacrifice is also a prelude to a feast, which 'cheats the act [of sacrifice] out of its negative significance'. The cult attempts to resolve this tension by instead devoting itself to constructing holy buildings, where the creative individuality of the artist at the level of sculptural art is no longer so intrusive: 'this action is not the individual labour of the artist, this particular aspect of it being dissolved in universality'. Nonetheless, the temples hereby created now come to serve more as places where the city can parade and display its wealth and power. In this phase of religious development, consciousness has a joyous and affirmative relation to the divine, which is refiected in the feasting of the worshippers: 'In this enjoyment, then, is revealed what that divine risen Light really is; enjoyment in the mystery of its being' . However, the cult merely relates to the divine as nature: 'its self-conscious life is only the mystery of bread and wine, of Ceres and Bacchus, not of the other, the strictly higher, gods whose individuality includes as an essential moment self-consciousness as such'. In the games and processions the gods continue to be represented in human form, in the athletic champion who is a kind of living statue, and simultaneously a repository of national pride. However, religious consciousness comes to feel that it cannot properly represent its gods in this way, in terms of 'corporeal individuality' of the handsome warrior. It therefore turns from the plastic arts to literary forms: to the epic, tragedy, and comedy.
In the epic, the gods are seen to guide the actions and destiny of the heroes portrayed in the story, as a controlling agency: 'They are the universal, and the positive, over against the individual self of mortals which cannot hold out against their might; but the universal self, for that reason, hovers over them and over this whole world of picture-thinking to which the entire content belongs, as the irrational void of Necessity - a mere happening which they must face as beings without a self and sorrowfully, for these determinate natures cannot find themselves in this purity'. In tragedy, by contrast, the individuals appear more in control of their destiny in relation to the gods: they are 'self-conscious human beings who know their rights and purposes, the power and the will of their specific nature and know how to assert them'. Hegel argues that this difference is reflected in the fact that whereas in the epic the narrator is the 'minstrel' who stands outside the story, in tragedy the hero or heroine speaks for him or herself, and hence the actor plays a part in the drama. Nonetheless, a sense of powerlessness in relation to the gods is reflected by the chorus, which 'clings to the consciousness of an alien fate and produces the empty desire for ease and comfort, and feeble talk of appeasement'. What tragedy really reveals, however, is the split within ethical substance itself, between family and state, feminine and masculine, and the blindness of each side to its other, symbolized in the way the gods mislead the tragic heroes: 'The action, in being carried out, demonstrates their unity in the natural downfall of both powers and both self-conscious characters'. Because of the role of character in tragedy, the religious consciousness no longer thinks of these gods as agents directing the lives of the heroes; but instead the divine is viewed as fate. Hegel remarks that 'this Fate completes the depopulation of Heaven . . . The expulsion of such shadowy, insubstantial picture-thoughts which was demanded of the philosophers of antiquity thus already begins in [Greek] Tragedy'. This process continues further in comedy, as the representation of the gods using masks can be used to reveal that behind it all is just another actor. The gods therefore become merely abstract Platonic universals, mocked by Aristophanes in the Clouds, as religious consciousness no longer sets the divine apart from itself: 'It is the return of everything universal into the certainty of itself which, in consequence, is this complete loss of fear and of essential being on the part of all that is alien. This self-certainty is a state of spiritual well-being and of repose therein, such is not to be found anywhere outside of this Comedy'.
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