On Immanuel Kant's 'Critique of Judgement': A Glimpse of Eternity - part five

Spirits are not finely touched

But to fine issues.

- William Shakespeare, 'Measure for Measure', Act 1, Sc. 1

Systematic unity, purposiveness, the supreme being, all are considered step by step in Immanuel Kant's, (1724 - 1804), 'Critique of Judgement', beginning by deriving from aspects of a discursive understanding the necessary role of the regulative idea of systematic unity and thereupon arguing that to conceive of nature as a systematic unity is in effect to conceive of it as purposive and as created according to the wise intentions of an 'original understanding' or 'cause of the world' which amounts to a mode of understanding whose cognitive powers far surpass those of us mere mortals. And pay attention to what is really being implied subsequent upon our understanding as discursive or a 'power of concepts' and the contingency with which a discursive understanding must draw swords, for there is contingency to begin with in the 'variety of ways in which [the given sensible particulars] may come before our perception' and secondly in the relation of our concepts or universals to the sensible given. This latter contingency proceeds from the fact that for our discursive understanding 'the particular [das Besondere] is not determined by the universal and therefore cannot be derived from it alone'. For our discursive understanding universal principles underdetermine the particulars following under them and perceptual content is presented to us with no identity conditions on its own while concepts discursively constitute some similarities as identity conditions thereby glossing over many other aspects. Every one of the similarities and features at issue are poorly defined in terms of perceptual resources alone and our understanding radically simplifies what is perceptually presented.

Were our understanding intuitive it would have to contend with neither kinds of contingency, for an understanding that is intuitive there is no contingency 'in the way nature's products in terms of particular laws harmonize with [it]'. And it is in light of the two kinds of contingency associated with a discursive mode of cognition that Kant proceeds to argue for the role of maxims in regulating our empirical inquiry, (this is very clever stuff, I will give him that, and it takes an equal amount of cleverness to refute it). The logical maxim of the 'Critique of Pure Reason' that lays the necessity upon us to search for unity in nature's diversity appears in the 'Critique of Judgment' as the rule governing the faculty Kant now identifies as 'reflective judgment' and he assigns reflective judgment the role of reducing the variety of the given sensible particulars to identity, of seeking some general concept or universal under which to subsume the diversity of species. '[I]f ... the particular is given and judgement has to find the universal for it, then this power is merely reflective [reflektierend]'. In searching for some universal under which to subsume the given diversity, reflective judgement searches for the unity of particular empirical principles or laws under more general principles, and its role contrasts with that of 'determinative [bestimmende] judgement' which is 'subsumptive [subsumierend]'. Determinative judgement begins with some universal, some a priori rule, law, or principle, and subsumes the particular under it, for instance, determinative judgement subsumes all objects of nature under the principles of pure understanding, all objects of nature must conform to, be subsumed under, the law, for instance, that all events are caused.

Reflective judgement seeks unity in diversity and in searching for unity it is 'obliged to ascend from the particular in nature to the universal'. Reflective judgement in turn 'requires a principle', a 'transcendental principle' that it gives 'to itself', and this is the principle that 'what to human insight is contingent in the particular (empirical) natural laws does nevertheless contain ... a law-governed unity'. Reflective judgement must assume that the 'particular in nature’s diversity must (through concepts and laws) harmonize with the universal in order that the particular can be subsumed under the universal'. In the absence of such an assumption of harmony, 'our empirical cognition could not thoroughly cohere to form a whole of experience'. The reasoning here in essence reproduces the reasoning in the corresponding discussions of the first Critique whereby we could form neither empirical concepts nor empirical laws or generalizations did we not divide the phenomena of nature into genera and species.

We need to presuppose, then, that nature admits of such division, that it has 'a certain order in its particular rules' and is thus a systematic unity. By means of a 'transcendental principle' we assume the 'harmony of nature with our cognitive power', because 'without presupposing this harmony, we would have no order of nature in terms of empirical laws, and hence no guide to using those laws in the experience and investigation of nature in its diversity'. Furthermore, to assume that the 'particular in nature's diversity must ... harmonize with the universal' is to 'think of nature ... according to a principle of purposiveness for our cognitive power'. It is by means of this transcendental principle of purposiveness and the more specific maxims 'based on' it that 'a cognizable order of nature in terms of [empirical] laws is possible':

'A principle like this is expressed in the following propositions: that there is (in nature) a subordination of genera and species that we can grasp; that every [genus] ... approaches every other by a common principle, so that a transition from one to the other and thus to a higher genus is possible; that although it initially seems to our understanding unavoidable to assume for every specific difference in natural effects as many kinds of causality, those effects may however fall under a small number of principles'.

- 'Critique of Judgement'

Just as in the first Critique, Kant insists in the 'Critique of Judgment' that the principle of purposiveness is a 'subjective principle (maxim) of judgment'. The principle is necessary for any discursive form of understanding, but we have no way of knowing that it is also valid for other forms of cognition. We thus have no justification for assuming that the principle 'attaches to the object rather than merely to ourselves, as subjects'. Purposes in nature 'are not given to us by the object: we do not actually observe purposes in nature ... but we merely add this concept ... in our thought'. The principle of purposiveness is therefore a principle reflective judgment prescribes 'not to nature' but 'to itself '. It is a heuristic principle specifying that 'however nature may be arranged in terms of its universal laws, any search for its empirical laws should follow both this principle of purposiveness and the maxims based on it, because only to the extent that this principle has application can we make progress in using our understanding in experience and arrive at cognition'.

Although subjective as a principle of reason the principle of purposiveness is at the same time objective for it is 'both objective and contingent [zugleich objektiv und zufällig]'. The principle of purposiveness is contingent for we can at most demonstrate its conditional necessity, that is to say, its necessity for a discursive understanding such as ours, and we are without any guarantee for presupposing its validity for other forms of cognition, nevertheless Kant will insist that the principle is objective and for the same reasons that he presented us with in the first Critique:

'In common with all the principles of pure reason, the principle of purposiveness is for our discursive form of understanding an indispensable condition of empirical inquiry. Did we not presuppose that nature is purposive, did we not in other words assume that the given sensible particulars harmonize with our cognitive power, we would have no order of nature in terms of empirical laws, and hence no guide to using those laws in the experience and investigation of nature in its diversity'.

- 'Critique of Judgement'

And furthermore, Kant contends that we can only make the idea of purposiveness 'comprehensible' to ourselves if we 'think of it, and of the world as such, as a product of an intelligent cause (a God)', and he then proceeds with the further contention that to conceive of nature as a product of an intelligent cause is to conceive of it as it were created by a form of understanding not subject to the limitations of our own:

'[T]his distinguishing feature of the idea of a natural purpose concerns a peculiarity of our (human) understanding in relation to the power of judgment and its reflection on things of nature. But if this is so, then we must here be presupposing the idea of some possible understanding different from the human one'. This would be an understanding, in his words, for which there is therefore no contingency 'in the way nature’s products harmonize with [it] in terms of particular laws'.

- 'Critique of Judgement'

Kant explicitly identifies the form of understanding he is thinking of here as that of the intuitive intellect and there is for the intuitive intellect no contingency in the relation between its particular laws and nature's products in virtue of the intuitive intellect being a form of cognition 'wholly independent of sensibility'. And because sensible intuitions for it fall away it has no need of the functions or concepts of thought, it cognizes not by means of concepts or analytic universals but rather from the 'synthetically universal (the intuition of the whole as whole) to the particular'. For this form of understanding, the intellectus archetypus or 'original understanding' as 'cause of the world', 'the possibility of the parts, in their character and combination, depends on the whole' and Kant identifies the intuitive intellect and the divine understanding or 'cause of the world', albeit by his own account an intellect that is intuitive or non-discursive is an intellect that is productive of its own objects or intuitions, and such a definition does not commit him to the view that the intuitions of the intuitive intellect must be identical to those of a divine mind, other models of what an intuitive understanding might be like are therefore compatible with Kant's own definition of this mode of understanding as original versus dependent.

'Salome dancing before Herod', c.1876, Gustave Moreau. 'Whatsoever you desire I will give it you, even to the half of my kingdom, if you will but dance for me. O, Salomé, Salomé, dance for me! ... Ah! it is cold here! There is an icy wind, and I hear ... wherefore do I hear in the air this beating of wings? Ah! one might fancy a bird, a huge black bird that hovers over the terrace. Why can I not see it, this bird? The beat of its wings is terrible. The breath of the wind of its wings is terrible. It is a chill wind. Nay, but it is not cold, it is hot. I am choking. Pour water on my hands. Give me snow to eat. Loosen my mantle. Quick! quick! loosen my mantle. Nay, but leave it. It is my garland that hurts me, my garland of roses. The flowers are like fire. They have burned my forehead. [He tears the wreath from his head and throws it on the table.] Ah! I can breathe now. How red those petals are! They are like stains of blood on the cloth. That does not matter. You must not find symbols in everything you see. It makes life impossible. It were better to say that stains of blood are as lovely as rose petals. It were better far to say that....' Oscar Wilde, (1854 - 1900), 'Salome'.

Hmmm ... We can only make the idea of purposiveness comprehensible to ourselves if we think of it and of the world as such as a product of an intelligent cause (a God)? To conceive of nature as a systematic unity to conceive of it as purposive and as created according to the wise intentions of an original understanding or cause of the world which amounts to a mode of understanding whose cognitive powers far surpass those of us finite creatures such as ourselves?

Alas and alack, it is time to address the elephant in the room. I feel more confident and ready for it after being entertained by Salome one of the most inspirational female characters in Biblical history who had St John the Baptist, (c. 1st century BC – c. AD 30), well and truly sussed, a gift that smart women have, sussing out men that is. Probably because of evolution, there is certainly a great evolutionary advantage there. Anyway, I digress. We know how the story about atheism goes. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, (1821 – 1881), in novels such as 'The Possessed', presents atheism as a project of human self-deification. Atheists want to be God is how it is usually put. See my article On Immanuel Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason': Music at Midnight - part three. Dostoyevsky himself was an atheist until being jailed and exiled to Siberia ... amazing is it not it how people find God in prison, almost as if they see it as a ticket out of there? But: 'What man calls Absolute Being, his God, is his own being', said Ludwig Feuerbach, (1804 - 1872). 'The power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own being. Thus, the power of the object of feeling is the power of feeling itself; the power of the object of reason is the power of reason itself; and the power of the object of will is the power of will itself'. The mind of God is unknowable but in the meantime humanity has projected an image of itself, its motivations and desires and values into the fabric of the universe itself and called it God and atheists by not buying into it are not wanting to be God, it is the theists that want to be God, God conceived as a reflection of him or herself. We live in a moral universe, they say, by which they mean human morality. 'But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and do the work that men can do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves', said Xenophanes, (c. 570 - c. 478 BC).

Let us turn to the Absolute instead. Art, religion, absoluteness ... the capacity of expression emerges imaginatively in art hence rendering art a realm of meaning in its own right and cementing it to philosophy in relation to concreteness (cementing you see?) and a question arises as to how we are to interpret further this artistic capacity of expression, whether indeed we are to restrict it to a completely aesthetic presentation. Did the concept of creativity have for Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770 - 1831), exclusively aesthetic connotations or did it open on to the religious dimension of experience? (Exclusively because the aesthetic dimension of art is a given but granting this is it open to a religious interpretation? An aesthetic conception is merely contrasted with a religious conception). To answer this one must also confront the metaphysical significance of art in relation to Hegel's ascription to art of a certain absoluteness. The precise place of art in Hegel's philosophy of Absolute Spirit has generated controversy given its implication that philosophy is higher than art as also is religion, and philosophy is the ultimate activity which, it appears, supersedes art and places it below itself in a subordinate position, and furthermore there is Hegel's supposed proclamation of the death of art a proclamation he never actually made so we need to get that sorted out, its implication being that art is a thing of the past particularly in light of the scientific culture of our age. Both views misrepresent Hegel who was certainly not bent upon philosophically reducing art nor upon superseding it nor leaving it behind. He did argue for the absolute character of art after all and absoluteness hardly squares with reductionism or supersession.

How are we to understand the absolute character of art? How can art preserve its absolute character if religion and philosophy are also said to be absolute? How are we to situate art relative to the absoluteness of these other two? We must look more closely at the connection of art with religion in addition to the connection of religion with philosophy. The first of these will certainly shed light on the absoluteness of art and assist in our identifying what exactly is lacking in Kant's critique of aesthetic judgements. Indeed focussing upon the pairing of art and religion will extend for us the complete Hegelian three-step shuffle, art, religion, philosophy, for philosophical reflection simply cannot be left out of consideration here. A comprehension of art and religion will allow for a more discriminating perspective upon the interplay of all three activities that belong to Absolute Spirit and the relation of art and religion has significant implications for an overall interpretation of Hegel's thought which has reverberations not only in contemporary aesthetics but in contemporary politics and religion too. Aesthetic politics may seem an odd idea but no idea is too odd for some philosopher to take it seriously. For Hegel art contains the sensuous appearance of the Idea, the symbol of a rationality of reason that is beyond words, being non-discursive art is not a language thereby giving form to hidden ineffable content. Herbert Marcuse, (1898 – 1979), author of 'The Aesthetic Dimension', came to regard art as the last refuge of critical insights in a totally mobilised society and a 'rationality of gratification' can link rationality and instinct thereby overcoming mind-body dualisms that served to cement social bondage by relegating the ideal of freedom to the spiritual heavens leaving Earth to the expropriated and he saw art as having a dual role of ideology-critique and as socialist ontology (which I suppose makes him a left-Hegelian as opposed to a right-Hegelian though there are never clear cut and dry distinctions in such matters).

One may shed some light on art's absoluteness through addressing the questions of whether art for Hegel is an exclusively aesthetic or a religious phenomenon and what is meant by art as exclusively aesthetic and as religious. Art points beyond exclusively aesthetic considerations to a further religious significance a pointing beyond generating a transition grounded in the character of art itself, for art being religious is significant while implying no superimposition of a falsifying religious meaning nor any theological violence to the art work nor any diminution of the need to consider art on its own terms. Precisely to treat art on its own terms discloses the further thrust to the religious, indeed its implicit presence there. So, what marks art as an exclusively aesthetic phenomenon? How does art as religious contrast with the aesthetic conception? Such questions can be addressed historically in terms of Hegel's conception of Symbolical, Classical and Romantic types of art. And in terms of the systematic, philosophical issue of whether creativity is to be understood in an entirely humanized manner. Such comparison of the aesthetic and the religious will perhaps allow for a greater understanding of the continuing importance of art left-Hegelianism such as we find in Marcuse.

'Jezebel Advises Ahab', James Tissot, (1836-1902). 'I wish you’d forget your name and be yourself'. 'I'll be just what I please'. 'Trying to be Jezebel won’t get you anywhere. If you must know the truth, the name doesn’t mean what you think, anyway. The Jezebel of the Bible was a faithful wife and a good one according to her lights. She had no lovers that we know of, cut no high jinks, and took no moral liberties at all'. Jessie stared angrily at him. 'That isn’t so. I’ve heard the phrase, 'a painted Jezebel'. I know what that means'. 'Maybe you think you do, but listen. After Jezebel’s husband. King Ahab died, her son, Jehoram, became king. One of the captains of his army, Jehu, rebelled against him and assassinated him. Jehu then rode to Jezreel where the old queen mother, Jezebel, was residing. Jezebel heard of his coming and knew that he could only mean to kill her. In her pride and courage, she painted her face and dressed herself in her best clothes so that she could meet him as a haughty and defiant queen. He had her thrown from the window of the palace and killed, but she made a good end, according to my notions. And that’s what people refer to when they speak of 'a painted Jezebel', whether they know it or not'. - Isaac Asimov, (1920 – 1992), 'The Caves of Steel'.

Oh Jezebel I don't know how you got in my blood, was it the dangerous things you do?

What is involved in art considered as an aesthetic phenomenon? From an historical perspective the point might be forwarded through recalling how proceeding from the Renaissance art sought to liberate itself from the constraints of religious subservience and increasingly to assert its own autonomy with respect to ecclesiastical control, and particularly in the 19th art came to be perceived as an exclusively aesthetic sphere, which is to say, as a self-contained expression of the human spirit engendered by capacities of its own especially the imagination distinguished by certain characteristics that set it apart from other areas of human significance such as history and science. There was a lack of rigid division of labour prior to the 15h century and art was not a strongly separated, specialized activity, set apart from day to day life, including its religious dimension. The 19th century movement of l'art pour l'art is indicative albeit exaggeratedly of this strong impulse to render art completely self-contained.

Which did not stop the poet from conceiving of himself or herself as a new kind of secular priest or priestess, an aesthetic vates (Celtic prophet or prophetess) worshipping and ministering at beauty's shrine. There was certainly an endeavour afoot to make art into a religion in the19th century and the notion of the poet as vates was present in Hegel's friend Friedrich Hölderlin, (1770 - 1843), who in many ways epitomized the tension of the religious and the poetic prefiguring the split that was to become a pressing issue with the subsequent increasing secularization of life and responding to the hemorrhaging of the religious spirit within the poetic impulse.

'Apology'

by Friedrich Hölderlin 

Holy being! I have disturbed your golden,

divine rest often, and of the more secret,

deeper pains of life,

some you have learned from me.

O forget, forgive! Like that cloud

over the peaceful moon, I am going away,

and you remain and gleam in your

beauty again, you sweet Light!

'Abbitte'

Heilig Wesen! gestört hab' ich die goldene

 Götterruhe dir oft, und der geheimeren,

   Tieferen Schmerzen des Lebens

     Hast du manche gelernt von mir.

O vergiß es, vergib! gleich dem Gewölke dort

 Vor dem friedlichen Mond, geh' ich dahin, und du

   Ruhst und glänzt in deiner

     Schöne wieder, du süßes Licht!

The essential point here consisted in the assertion of art of its own independence even sometimes to the point of the artist setting him or herself apart from the common run of humanity by his or her special poetic apparel thereby asserting him or herself with emphatic distinctiveness, and a principal element here is that to comprehend art as an autonomous aesthetic activity is to judge as essential to it the idea of human expressiveness. And there lingers on a post- Kantian subjectivism intimately bound up with expressivist currents in aesthetics today for the expressivist ideal has a pervasive presence and an importance for all the areas of human meaning. (Expressivism in art: art connects with people through their senses anddefines art through the expression of emotion that is entailed by the artist in their artwork and the emotional impact that it has on the audience). What does the art work as expressive disclose? At bottom the fact that it originates in the creativity of the artist and that upon completion it presents itself for the aesthetic contemplation of its audience, and as an aesthetic phenomenon the art work is something made by man and woman albeit individuals of special genius, and something made for man's and woman's appreciation. A human being is to be seen not just as one thing of nature lost in muteness among its other silent things for as Hegel radically pointed out humanity like the Absolute in its truth is not just Substance but is also and more importantly to be seen as Subject:

'In my view, which can be justified only by the exposition of the system itself, everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject. At the same time, it is to be observed that substantiality embraces the universal, or the immediacy of knowledge itself, as well as that which is being or immediacy for knowledge. If the conception of God as the one Substance shocked the age in which it was proclaimed, the reason for this was on the one hand an instinctive awareness that, in this definition, self-consciousness was only submerged and not preserved. On the other hand, the opposite view, which clings to thought as thought, to universality as such, is the very same simplicity, is undifferentiated, unmoved substantiality. And if, thirdly, thought does unite itselfwith the being of Substance, and apprehends immediacy or intuition as thinking, the question is still whether this intellectual intuition does not again fall back into inert simplicity, and does not depict actuality itself in a non-actual manner'.

- 'Phenomenology of Spirit'

As such humanity can give articulation to its own reality as in the aesthetic realm he or she struggles with the initially amorphous character of his or her own sensuous being, an aspect of art with which Hegel was thoroughly conversant with especially as emphasized by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, (1788 – 1805).

Through his or her aesthetic production he or she endeavours to imaginatively articulate him or herself and his or her sense of being hence the aesthetic object discloses that man and woman is not merely a simple imitator or a passive mirror of a given external nature on the contrary it discloses the expressive powers of man and woman whereby his or her creative potentiality is actively realized. A human being as aesthetic does not simply mirror external nature, he or she also externalizes his or own nature and especially its plastic originary imaginative powers, and in the aesthetic products he or she brings forth into being he or she realizes, he or she recognizes, and he or she confirms his or her own creative powers. Art as an aesthetic phenomenon in this sense is to be understood in terms of its tendency to humanize art in its entirety whereby humanity becomes the beginning, middle and end of art, beginning because in the capacity of an artist he or she is an originating source, middle because in the art work he or she gives expressive form to him or herself thereby mediating with his or her own initially inarticulate reality, and end because the aesthetic products he or she brings into being are for the essential purpose of humanity's own self-contemplation.

Art emerges from and goes out of man and woman and passes through him and her and returns to man and woman once again and now with the gain of aesthetic articulation, and inn becoming aware of the aesthetic object as the expressive outcome of his or her own work, of the art work itself as the product of his or her own activity, the artist becomes conscious of him and herself, aesthetically self-conscious in and through the work he or she has created. Art is a form of man's self-knowledge even though a self-knowledge embodied in and mediated through the variety of sensuous objects comprising the aesthetic realm, and furthermore humanity's own nature seems so rich in latent resources that the task of giving it creative expression allows of an open ended future. Art as aesthetic offers a fertile understanding in terms of humanity itself and in this to assure art's future through its appeal to the hitherto unrealized, unexpressed, as yet unimagined wealth of humanity's being. And in terms of the absoluteness of art's the burden and the glory of this absoluteness rests upon the shoulders of humanity, such a view reflected in Friedrich Nietzsche's, (1844 - 1900), glorification of the artist creator as the supreme human type bearing also in mind his doctrine of man as the unfinished animal, that is to say being with an opening onto infinite promise:

'In man, creature and creator are united; in man there is matter, fragment, excess, clay, mud and madness; but in man there is also creator, sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divine spectator and the seventh day —- do you understand this antithesis?'

- 'Beyond Good and Evil'

And Hegel subscribes in significant measure to this understanding through his insistence that art be regarded as a genuine spiritual realm in its own right as expressed through the general orientation of his large systematic works and by the details of different discussions in the 'Lectures on Aesthetics'. For Hegel art discloses the plastic powers of human imagination and moulds an articulated image of humanity itself, providing humanity with a sensuous self-knowledge answering to his and her deepest needs and highest aspirations. Aesthetics places a strong accent on the creative, expressive powers of humanity in contrast to the merely imitative, a point granted by Hegel and a question arises as to whether we can restrict our considerations to humanity's creative power or rather in virtue of Hegel's not deny the artist's creative powers how are we to interpret the full significance of such powers? Is art to be subsumed under an entirely humanistic aesthetic? Must we make a model of Feuerbach's anthropological reduction of the religious realm, (see above), only now applying this model to the aesthetic realm in the form of the question: is the creative power of the artist also to be completely anthropologized?

There is a quite evident analogy here between the cases of art and religion and Hegel's movement from the anthropological to the speculative interpretation of religion reflects the shift from art as aesthetic to art as religious. But granting the real truth of the humanistic aesthetic must we rather comprehend its meaning in the light of a further consideration, an added complexity? Art as aesthetic phenomenon discloses it as the dialectical self-mediation of humanity in imaginative form and the question is whether or not humanistic self-mediation is adequate to the artist's creative power, whether this points to a more complex mediation where the dialectic is not just between humanity and his or her own self. In that Hegel holds to a transition from art to religion in his philosophy of Absolute Spirit the answer presents itself in the affirmative for we must grant an absolute dimension to man albeit the meaning of this absolute dimension directs us further than humanity for we must grant the essential truth of art as aesthetic but a philosophical examination of this truth points us further to art as a religious phenomenon.

'Joseph and Potiphar's wife', Battistello Caracciolo, (1578 – 1635). 'And Zelicah answered them, saying, This day it shall be made known to you, whence this disorder springs in which you see me, and she commanded her maid servants to prepare food for all the women, and she made a banquet for them, and all the women ate in the house of Zelicah. And she gave them knives to peel the citrons to eat them, and she commanded that they should dress Joseph in costly garments, and that he should appear before them, and Joseph came before their eyes and all the women looked on Joseph, and could not take their eyes from off him, and they all cut their hands with the knives that they had in their hands, and all the citrons that were in their hands were filled with blood... And Zelicah saw what they had done, and she said unto them, What is this work that you have done? behold I gave you citrons to eat and you have all cut your hands. And all the women saw their hands, and behold they were full of blood, and their blood flowed down upon their garments, and they said unto her, this slave in your house has overcome us, and we could not turn our eyelids from him on account of his beauty. And she said unto them, Surely this happened to you in the moment that you looked at him, and you could not contain yourselves from him; how then can I refrain when he is constantly in my house, and I see him day after day going in and out of my house? how then can I keep from declining or even from perishing on account of this? And they said unto her, the words are true, for who can see this beautiful form in the house and refrain from him ... ' - 'Sefer haYashar'

Ah Potiphar's wife another inspirational, strong and liberated woman from the Bible.

Anyway I must focus, on to art as Religious. Through Symbolical, Classical and Romantic Art. In considering art as religious the focus is not upon religion in any sectarian sense and hence also not on art as subordinated to some ecclesiastical yoke, nor is the focus on a special category of art designated religious art as opposed to secular, profane art, that is to say, art dealing with subjects generally sanctioned as religious. The concerned is not with art employed as a means for a religious purpose or end, as it might be used for religious propaganda or in some forms of liturgical art, on the contrary art is not to be employed merely instrumentally for its activity is an end in itself a value of intrinsic worth and with the acceptance of this the question is whether or not the intrinsic worth of this activity calls forth a religious interpretation. Neither is the issue one of art and religion as two irreducible cultural categories essentially distinct yet capable of different combinations. The religious meaning of modern art is expressed by Paul Tillich, (1886 – 1965), thus: 'It is not an exaggeration to ascribe more of the quality of sacredness to a still life by Cézanne or a tree by Van Gogh than to a picture of Jesus by Uhde'. (Fritz von Uhde, (1848 – 1911,) German painter of genre and religious subjects. a bit too sentimental for my tastes).

The issue is rather to do with the metaphysical meaning of art's creative expressiveness, for a creative articulating power runs through all forms of expression as a continuous power, the same power that is Geist and that articulates itself in a plurality of different forms, and hence it is an error irrevocably separate these forms off deposited elsewhere for the question is not whether the artistic form can be reduced to the religious form or perhaps both to a third form for instance philosophy (a common interpretation of how philosophy relates to art and religion in Hegel whereby the emphasis falls upon the difference in the form of Geist and not upon the continuity of Geist itself as the active content working variously in all three forms) but, whether or not this creative articulating power expressed in art and in other forms can be completely characterized in aesthetic terms, whether the religious form brings out something essential that the exclusively aesthetical form does not fully manifest. That which unites the three highest activities, art, religion and philosophy, is not one particular form, but the very power of Geist itself, for it runs through all three and the focus upon art as religious is hence not upon one form alongside other forms but on the forming power itself which indeed is conspicuous in the creative expressiveness of art but which in virtue of it never being set apart merely as art's privileged possession demands more than aesthetic interpretation even in the realm of art itself.

In Hegel we find an historical consideration and a systematic, metaphysical point, the former having to do with the fact that even down to Hegel's own time we tend to discover a conspicuous intertwining of art and the religious. Granted their separation was already in process since the Renaissance and the 18th century emphasis upon taste as a special aesthetic capacity taken up philosophically in Kant's 'Critique of Judgment' reflects this separation, even to the extent of aesthetics itself becoming a distinct science with Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, (1714 – 1762), a good deal of which emphasis is retained in Hegel's 'Lectures on Aesthetics' yet Hegel always retained principle elements of the older outlook, unsurprisingly in view of his early desire together with Hölderlin to bring about a 'new mythology of reason', a desire impossible without the sacral power art. See the 'Earliest System Programme of German Idealism'. It is unfortunate in this context that in the 20th century Martin Heidegger's, (1889 – 1976), interlocutor in his dialogue of thinker and poet is frequently Hölderlin given that this dialogue has much to do with the kinship of poetry and the holy in an age which experiences the eclipse of divinity.

In the final movement to Absolute Knowing in the 'Phenomenology of Spirit' Hegel's focus is not upon art as aesthetic but upon Kunstreligion and the emergence of increasingly self-conscious artistry expressing itself through inanimate nature, through plant and animal life, to the highest self-conscious literature of a people, from the abstract, through the living to the spiritual work of art, and this emergence is essentially religious albeit we usually think of inspiration, rapture, dreams, the unconscious, to be more amenable to religious interpretation in terms of the pathos of the artist who receives the divine afflatus of the Muse.

Ah, the divine afflatus:

'The one-sidedness of immediacy on the part of the Ideal involves the opposite one-sidedness that it is something made by the artist. The subject or agent is the mere technical activity: and the work of art is only then an expression of the God, when there is no sign of subjective particularity in it, and the net power of the indwelling spirit is conceived and born into the world, without admixture and unspotted from its contingency. But as liberty only goes as far as there is thought, the action inspired with the fullness of this indwelling power, the artist's enthusiasm, is like a foreign force under which he is bound and passive; the artistic production has on its part the form of natural immediacy, it belongs to the genius or particular endowment of the artist,- and is at the same time a labour concerned with technical cleverness and mechanical externalities. The work of art therefore is just as much a work due to free option, and the artist is the master of the God'.

- 'Absolute Mind', in 'Philosophy of Mind'

So Hegel is not unmindful of this yet in addition affirms that a more complex fully religious significance develops with the development of self-consciousness. And religious significance does not drop from sight with the development of self-consciousness, as if the divine could only emerge in the darkness of night but rather this significance is progressively appropriated by man and woman, inwardized, interiorized, disclosing most fully the true nature of the human and divine and their essential relatedness, and the discussion of Kunstreligion displays how little art is aestheti" in the sense of a specialized, self-sufficient activity for instead of this compartmentalized l'art pour l'art, art here permeates the entire life of a people, in its ethical, political and religious manifestations. Kunstreligion discloses the world of a people, and so as art is a certain articulation of the whole.

An equally significant intertwining of religion and art is to be discerned in Hegel's schema for elucidating the historical development of art, namely in terms of Symbolical, Classical and Romantic art for the religious enters into all three types. Hence when Symbolical art is characterized as permeated by an opaque sense of the indefinite and the sublime, the religious note of reverence before mystery, of awe before the infinite, is unmistakeably present. Examples of Symbolical art are the bearers of forms of religious consciousness, for instance the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Egypt is the 'land of symbol' and the Sphinx is the 'symbol of symbols', and the religious note is equally present in connecting Symbolical art with the pantheism of the Orient, with Arabic mysticism, and the sublime poetry of the Israelites in the Old Testament.

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.

As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.

He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.

Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.

His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.

I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.

The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.

My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

- 'Song of Solomon'

Similarly with Classical art in particularly the art of ancient Greece once again we are not in the presence of an aesthetic object though we do discover Hegel's particular interest in the human figure albeit the vital religious note is here too. Perfection of Classical art is to be found in the statutes of the Greek gods but this aesthetic perfection springs from the consummate balance with which they make present the gods in physical form and they disclose an immediate sensuous unity between the human and the divine in which all disproportion and discord between the two is banished. And the defect of Classical art lies in its tendency to restrict the expression of spirit, Geist, to the human spirit and figure, it is limited by its anthropomorphism . As with the perfection of Classical art so to with its limitation as we encounter a clearly religious import. 16

As for the third kind of art, Romantic art, the religious note is most insistent of all, somewhat ironically from an historical point of view, for Romantic art makes its most pervasive appearance at the threshold of that orientation towards humanistic modernity that defines art as an aesthetic phenomenon, and yet right at this threshold certain considerations imply that it is this form of art, in contrast to the Symbolical and the Classical, that is marked by the most explicit and complex religious import. For in Romantic art we encounter an inwardizing in man and woman himself or herself of the sense of the infinite, as Hegel points out in his Lectures (and cf Errinerung in the Phenomenology), the infinite is not just out there as it tends to be in Symbolical art nor is it completely proportioned to the human figure as physical, as it tends to be in the aesthetic perfection of Classical art. Deep down within himself man and woman is a kind of world. Grande profundum est ipse homo, St. Augustine, (354 - 430 AD) had exclaimed in his own religious exploration. Man himself is of great depth (well some men and women are anyway). Nec ego ipse capio totum quod sum. We are not who we think we are. (For Augustine it is not the external world of things but the inward self that is the proper uichest way to God and Augustine has been spoken of as an ancestor of existentialism which in turn has been called a late product of the romantic spirit). A similar thought is not uncharacteristic of many 19th century Romantics nor of Hegel's own exploration of the self especially in the Phenomenology.

The inwardized infinite will be progressively construed by Hegel in a more exclusively humanistic manner, indeed such a humanizing of the infinite tends to go hand in hand with creativity theories of art, an essential ingredient to art as an aesthetic phenomenon, yet for Hegel this inwardizing of the infinite entails the struggle to bring to light within the interior recesses of man and woman him or heself the ultimately religious significance of experience. Romantic art becomes possible only after the human spirit has passed historically through the Christian religion for in this religion man and woman him or herself, especially in the depths of his or her inward subjectivity becomes the richest disclosure of the meaning of divinity, namely of God as spirit of Geist and it is this disclosure of Geist in its true form that Romantic art struggles to effect, and furthermore the sensuous embodiment essential to the aesthetic side of art may not always be completely adequate to this task. Unmistakeably with Romantic art we are witness to a transition beyond art, or rather witness to art pointing beyond itself to a significance which calls for a fuller religious form. Hence Hegel speaks of Romantic art as 'the self-transcendence of art but within its own sphere and in the form of art itself', Art is its own sphere but within its own sphere the transcendence of the merely aesthetic is already at work yet also this transcending is not the simple negation or supersession of art but is rather entangled with its highest attainment and fulfillment. Art itself sacrifices its own exclusively aesthetic form to open out upon a fuller religious configuration.

'Samson and Delilah', Solomon Joseph Solomon, (1860 – 1927). 'At Gaza and at Ashkelon,(Note: (Delilah conceiveth the design of ensaring Samson.)) / The obscene Dagon worshipping / Thy face was fair to look upon, / Yet thy tongue, sweet to talk or sing, / Was deadlier than the adder's sting. .... Nor wouldst not give him any rest, (Note: (Samson being weakened by lust and overcome by Delilah's importunities and guile telleth her wherein his greath strength consisteth.)) .... Then 'gainst the Doric capitals, / Resting in prayer to God for power, / He will shake down your marble walls, / Abiding heaven's appointed hour, / And those that fly shall hide and cower. / But this Delilah shall survive, / To do the sin already done, / Her treacherous wiles and arts shall thrive, / At Gaza and at Ashkelon, / A woman fair to look upon'. - Edgar Lee Masters, (1868 - 1950).

Maybe some women are worth the loss of strength and vitality ... I keep calling upon Biblical muses to get me through this ...

Where was I? Yes, art as religious. Creativity and Geist. Such historical considerations concerning Symbolical, Classical and Romantic art bring us directly to the philosophical point with regard to art's metaphysical meaning. Romantic art allows us to affirm humanity's creativity, yet how do we reconcile this with the purported religious import of the same art? We must conceiving humanity's creativity in other than exclusively humanistic terms for humanity's creativity must be seen to participate in and disclose a creativity, an expressiveness that in the end is more than man as a finite individual, (think of how the poet's words come to say more, suggest more than he or she self-consciously intends, how the power of language, logos, takes on an inexhaustible life of its own, never entirely within his or her possession), the power of Geist understood in an absolute sense and regarded thus the crucial point is not to reduce art to religion but rather to elevate art as aesthetic. Art as aesthetic insists upon humanity's creative powers, art as religious concurs but goes further as these powers themselves point to a more fundamental creative expressiveness, that of Absolute Spirit. Art here has metaphysical significance because the powers it expresses are not private or subjective in the pejorative sense nor are they simply man and woman's possessions they are rooted in the nature of actuality itself and of a piece with its most fundamental essence. For art as 'religious cannot be completely characterized as humanity's sensuous self-knowledge. Nor is the outcome of the artistic act solely a human product, a human artefact. The artist struggles with his or material and gives it form and his material is not only external matter but also his or her own self yet in his or her struggle with his external and internal matter he or she is really wrestling with a power that is not simply external or internal, neither just the external things of nature, nor his or her own finite self. This power is Geist and it too becomes ingredient in art's self-knowledge and in the embodied product of creation. Art as religious endeavours to effect for man and woman the imaginative articulation of this power and it strives to capture in the art work some conjunction of finite man and woman and this power and it is the struggle for this conjunction that confers the added complexity on art as religious.

The absolute character of art is certainly intelligible for rt is absolute in the mode of its activity, humanity's creative powers are grounded in and disclose the absolute power of Geist. Art is absolute also in the actuality with which it deals, the actuality of Geist which it seeks to present in its imaginative articulations and all great art endeavours to realize this double objective, to disclose the dignity and glory of humanity in its original and creative powers and to strain to display the bond between these powers and what is absolute. Great art strains both inwards and upwards towards a limit that is religious, great art gives us images of the divine in humanity and thereby in humanity gives us images of the divine. The point might be further developed in this way. The Romantic and modern emphasis upon creativity and"expressiveness points to a norm immanent within art itself and this immanence sometimes tends to be counter-posed to the transcendence characteristic of the more classical, imitation theory of art. Imitation involves the relation of an image (the imitation) to a transcendent original (the model or paradigm external to the image). Hence it might appear that this imitation theory is more consistent with art as religious in this sense, the transcendent original seems to guarantee the difference between humanity's creativity and something further and also appears to justify the reference of artistic activity to some reality other than humanity. A chief difficulty with imitation is its tendency to produce dualism which may lend itself to a diminution and subordination even denial of art's immanent creative powers a diminution to be rejected but we must ask how art is to be justified as religious without falling back upon imitation or something like it and thereby falling into the unacceptable dualistic consequences that seem to necessarily follow.

Well, we must conceive the contrast of creativity and imitation less starkly and not so strongly as a pair of opposites, we must not completely repudiate imitation while endeavouring to incorporate it within art in a non-dualistic way. That is to say ancient Classical imitation refers the art image to an external god and so tends to appear as antithetical to modern, Romantic creativity while Hegel's view represents an attempted synthesis of the justified emphasis of both these possible positions albeit the Hegelian imitation does not principally refer outside to an external god, art is rather a sort of interiorized imitation where the god of its reference is most properly discovered within the self as an originating source of creative power. Imitation is after all a relation of appropriation and so as a mode of representation always involves some inwardizing movement of spirit, and the norm of this interiorized imitation' is an immanent one and so joins up with the notion of creativity. The more accomplished an imitation becomes the more it begins to present itself as a creation in its own right and at a certain point of accomplishment they begin to shade into each other and at this point imitation and creation cease to be merely opposites.

This can be made clearer by reference to the analogous problem of religious representation whereby the most adequate religious representations do not try to immoveably fix the divine in sensuous externality, rather they point to spirit in the medium of sense, representing the divine as indwelling and hence again their representing, imitating intention is an interiorizing movement not an exteriorized one. For their intent is to represent Geist, and this cannot be effected without this inward turn. Humanity discovers itself most fully in this turn, but not just as representing an external divinity, but as creatively taking part in the process of Geist itself. Jacques Maritain (1882 – 1973) makes a similar point by asserting that the artist does not just copy creation but continues creation. Creativity need not be discarded as Classical mimesis implies nor need humanity's creativity be inflated into the fullness of the Absolute itself, as some extreme Romantics aspired to do. The issue is not with regard to either this mere diminution of humanity nor yet of its simple divinization for iIt is possible to affirm man's creativity while still seeing this in the context of a creativity more ultimate than humanity.

And let us not downplay the ambiguity of the Classical and Romantic categories are notoriously ambiguous while recognising that Hegel's view of art as religious brings them together for apart from the triadic categorization the Classical and Romantic in Hegel's rendition of the concepts emphasize pivotal elements in the religious and the aesthetic conception of art. Hence the Classical focuses upon representations of the divine in human statues of the gods while the Romantic imaginatively explores the enigmatic recesses of the self. Art might be seen as religious for ultimately art points beyond any simple antithesis of these two possibilities. And a returning to Classical representation or mimesis is put out of the picture as we move beyond the exclusively aesthetic rendering of the Romantic self, the sense of divinity must be incorporated as an immanent norm, such is the religious significance of Romantic art, the inwardizing in humanity itself of the sense of the infinite, and the revelation of an immanent norm is precisely what is at stake in the interiorized imitation that comes to expression in human creativity.

'Eva pärast pattu langemist', ('Eve After Falling Into Sin'), 1883, Johann Köler. 'Wheresoever she was, there was Eden ... After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her....I should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life'. - Mark Twain, (1835 – 1910), 'Adam's Diary'.

The contrast of the aesthetic and religious reading of creativity runs thusly, in the aesthetic interpretation humans are involved in an imaginative conversation with him or herself, this conversation is complex and rich and indeed its internal intricacy can be conceived dialectically, humanity is both sides of the conversation, the speaker, the spoken and his or her own listening interlocutor, and the discords, the clashes, the contradictions within humanity engender this conversation, just as the conversation sometimes yields to man or woman's own agreement with him or herself, unity with him or herself, peace with him or herself. And yet the dialectic of this conversation makes it ultimately to be a humanistic monologue and in the contrasting religious interpretation of creativity, a further complexity is inherent in the dialectic which makes the conversation into a different dialogue. In this dialogue man and woman comes to hear him or herself but always within the context of a conversation with what is more ultimate than the finite individual, something that cannot be completely anthropologized.

Art must make way for religion in an even fuller way, as lending itself to an exclusively aesthetic reading art tends not to always bring out the full dialectical interplay of the human and the divine, and furthermore tensions between the two may not be entirely resolved on artistic grounds alone. That is to say, humanity's finite creative power may not be fully known for what it is in the context of the infinite power of the divine, and outside of this context there is always the risk of an inadequate conception of human power. In religious terms God is at work in the artist but the artist as a finite individual may fail to see the significance of this and his or her failure may take the form of asserting the work to be his or her's alone as modern, individualistic doctrines of originality tend to imply,or it may take the opposite form whereby the artist contends this work is not mine at all but the outcome of some completely other agency, some foreign force which invades him or her with inspiration. One view may elevate self-activity to an unsurpassed degree; the other may stress the receptivity of the self to a point approaching sheer passivity. The notion of inspiration, as in Plato's, (c. 429 – 347 B.C.), divine madness, or Nietzsche's Dionysian intoxication, is very important for the religious interpretation of art. The issue is not one of denying the experience but of whether our interpretation of it entails the complete abnegation of finite selfhood. As for the contrast of passivity and self-activity, we might think of the contrast between some Medieval artists who did not sign their work and some contemporary artists whose signature on a table napkin is sold. We do not buy pictures of apples and pears, say, but a Cézanne, a Matisse, we buy the artist in his self-expression, the artist's name.

Neither alternative ought to be asserted exclusively or as they stand in their one-sidedness. The creative power of art reveals a complex conjunction of self-activity and receptivity to what is ultimate, or what religious representation depicts as the union of the human and the divine, one must avoid a humanism making humanity foreign to the power of the divine, and also any alienating religion which makes the divine power completely foreign to man, as say in the estranged form of worship of the unhappy consciousness. Both these views come down to competing dualisms which, albeit they seem to face in opposing directions, are actually complementary. What is principally at issue is how we are to understand the riddle of Geist itself which cannot be simply reduced to either God or man nor to the competing theological and humanistic dualisms, rather humanity and God both are Geist which is the energy that dynamically articulates their distinct reality and their inseparable continuity. As articulated in humanity, as creative in humanity, Geist is not reducible to more normal humanistic terms, it is more than the finite individual, hence Hegel's way of exploiting the more than finite connotations of the religious representation of God. At the same time, since the riddle turns on the enigma of Geist one ought not to get bogged down in the representation God in a manner which simply reifies or objectifies Geist as an infinite being over against man. The competing theological and humanistic interpretations sometimes do bog down in complementary dualisms such that it is forgotten that it is the reality of Geist and what this means that is at stake. One might perceive humanity and God as two representations, that is to say, concrete articulation of Geist that itself is not reducible to one or the other in a dualistically exclusive way, though again the language of religious representation in its acknowledgement of both the infinite and the finite is ultimately more adequate to the absoluteness of Geist than is the humanistic interpretation.

And so to the aesthetic and the religious. The issue of art as aesthetic and religious throws some light upon the differing political readings of Hegel, the so called left-Hegelians and right-Hegelians that epitomise respectively a humanistically oriented and religiously inclined view of Hegel corresponding very broadly, to the two possible interpretations of art offered above, the complementary dualisms in relation to art can be perceived to clarify many of the differences thought to separate Left and Right readings. Those who are sympathetic to the defense of the religious dimension of Hegel are at times classified as to the right albeit this classification is not always discriminating enough with respect to the differences between possible religious interpretations ranging along the spectrum from the orthodox to the heterodox. Often, nonetheless, the religious reading of Hegel is thought to emphasize God to the point of the attenuation of finite humanity precisely as finite. It is not only religious critics like Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, (1813 - 1855), who tend to fault Hegel on his purported attenuation of finiteness. 20th century philosophy in the main regarded itself as un-Hegelian on this issue, whether in Continental thought with its emphasis on finiteness, particularly with Heidegger and subsequent developments shaped by his influence or in the Anglo-American analytic tradition with its anti-systematic stress, its rejection of idealism, and its often modest conception of the capacity of philosophy.

Humanity risks becoming absorbed in God and it may be suggested that this absorption of the finite so proceeds that traditional theism yields way to pantheism, not that Hegel was a pantheist whatever you may have heard. There are many instances where the implication of Hegel's thinking does seem to attenuate the difference of the finite and the infinite yet also it is to be recognized that it is no part of Hegel's deepest intentions to eliminate this difference. The interpretation developed above of art as religious buttresses the view that Hegel does not seek to commit us to the eradication of this difference. For the artist, on his or her own terms and as a finite individual, is a real center of creative power. He or she is not the mere passive puppet of a domineering divine power, yet within the realization of his power, his or her participation in the divine power is revealed. And while the difference remains it now ceases to be a mere dualistic opposition between Absolute Geist as infinite and the creative expression of Geist in finite humanity. Recall Hegel's own remarks on pantheism in the 'Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences' that indicate his refusal to destroy that difference in a manner quite compatible with critiquing the relation of finite and infinite conceived as one of dualistic opposition. The unity of the divine and the human can be viewed from very different angles ranging from the mystical to the reductionistic and in the Aesthetics Hegel speaks of Christianity and its art form, romantic art, as completing the anthropological principle, the revelation of God in human form. This completion need not imply a humanistic reduction, or anthropological reduction of God, but rather the revelation of the full religious significance of the anthropological, the human. A religious completion of the anthropological by Christianity but one must be attune to Hegel's ambiguous complexity in relation to religion.

The aesthetic and religious reveals a point of contact as it happens between Hegel and Kierkegaard albeit the latter saw himself as religiously set against Hegel precisely on this supposed attenuation of finiteness within the Hegelian system, but they had a common attitude to the merely aesthetic, despite its indispensable role in human existence both deeply agree on the insufficiency of the exclusively aesthetical to meet man's fullest demands for absoluteness. Kierkegaard understands this demand as most fully realized in religion while Hegel ultimately gives the palm to philosophy but both regardless of their difference, seem to concur on this essential, if it is not to ultimately atrophy and perhaps deform its own inherent seriousness, the aesthetic must be open to the religious, in Kierkegaard's case in terms of the different stages of life's way, in terms of his disclosure of the inner tensions of the purely aesthetical and the necessity for it to yield to the ethical and the religious, in Hegel's case in the self-transcending of art as aesthetical with the emergence through it of Geist in its religious and philosophical forms. Kierkegaard at times speaks of Hegelianism as an aesthetic system implying here a certain limitation and there is a revealing contrast here between Kierkegaard and Hegel, for Kierkegaard the aesthetical, when viewed from the absolute seriousness of religion, is not ultimately serious, being a kind of game, a playing with life's possibilities, not an ultimate coming to terms with actuality. For Hegel, given the relation of art and religion, there is a deeper seriousness to the aesthetical, even on its own terms, it is a coming to terms with the actual, with all the seriousness, pathos and depth of its concern with the absolute.

So much for right-Hegelian aesthetics. Hegel's view of art, taking seriously art's claim to absoluteness, does illuminate the possibility of dialectically balancing the artist, as a finite creator, with Absolute Geist, as infinite creative power, without causing to vanish the difference of the two. In the left-Hegelian aesthetic however this difference tends to vanish in a contrary way, for here it is humanity itself that tends to become the creative power, the absolute creative power. The Promethean proclivites of left-Hegelian humanisms finds its expression in the reinterpretation and transformation of any religious reading of creativity. It is the left-Hegelian view that bears more directly upon the fate of art as an aesthetic and religious phenomenon after Hegel for after Hegel art tends to lose much of its religious implication and the aesthetic conception, in so far as it puts the emphasis on man's expressiveness and originality, comes to dominate.

Karl Marx, (1818 – 1883), usually dumped into the left-Hegelians camp was stirred to write poetry in his youth (hopefully none of it survives) but in later years placed more emphasis upon the productive powers of humanity, on its ability to make itself in and through its productions, and this can be regarded as but a more proletarianized version of the aesthetical conception. Homo aestheticus to homo faber to homo oeconomicus although I myself never advanced much from homo erectus. The humanistic emphasis is upon humanity's self-activity now materialized and made sensuously actual through the historical process of production. Marx speaks of humanity's ability to produce according to the 'laws of Beauty' and links this with what makes humanity's productive powers specifically human. The early humanistic Marx expressed the aesthetical dimensions inherent in his vision and it is there too in the mature Marx. In 'Grundrisse' the true realm of freedom is said to lie beyond simple material production and he cites the case of the composer to illuminate what is involved in genuinely free activity, this is more than mere amusement, involving as it does the serious discipline and intense exertion of self-realization. The humanistic, aesthetic and economic strands are intertwined, Hegel's aesthetics are important for the problem of fragmentation of modern man and woman without recourse to conceptual reductionism, labour takes on a creative or poetic meaning in the production of the total human.

The aesthetical is inseparable from the full active realization of the human and in its own way epitomises humanity's self-realization and the line of this left-Hegelian heritage extends deeply into our time, and furthermore in its specifically aesthetical form. We find it in the work of György Lukács, (1885 – 1971), and art was important for many of the Frankfurt school, for instance the importance of music for Theodor W. Adorno, (1903 – 1969), and Walter Benjamin's, (1892 – 1940), view of 'the author as producer'. Marcuse endeavoured to to reassert the essentially liberating power of the aesthetic, free society requires free senses and imagination, aesthetical freedom and political liberty are inextricably linked. Even among the French existentialists, notably Jean-Paul Sartre, (1905 - 1980), we find the aesthetic conception coupled with aspects of the humanistic Marx. Literature particularly is disclosed not only as the reproduction of humanity's drama in society, it displays, indeed participates in the self- production of historical man and woman. Albert Camus, (1913 - 1960), also places the artist, conceived of as a creator, at the centre of a world which has discarded Hegel's Absolute, and any nostalgia for such an Absolute. Like Nietzsche's Dionysian man, the artist becomes a guardian against nihilism, a rebel struggling for man's meaning against an absurd world. Even a dash of Marxist proletarianism is introduced into this aesthetical ideal, for given that we must have plumbers as well as painters, Camus' solution lies in turning the plumber into an artist. In Camus we have Hegelianism without the Absolute. Though Camus seems to find something absolute in art, and though this seems akin to Hegel, the precise nature of this absoluteness is not Hegelian for it is one which rejects the relation of art and religion, indeed defines art in its opposition to religion, not in their dialectical kinship.

The crucial point concerns the shift of the centre of absoluteness to humanity itself which is is bound up with the entire modern philosophic problem of subjectivity, whether the creativity of the self is completely independent and self-sufficient, or only intelligible in relation to something more ultimate. Clearly art as religious points to this second possibility, though the first possibility that has been most prominent since the historical disintegration of the Hegelian system. According to Charles Taylor, (1931 -), the self has been loosed from its anchor in cosmic Geist and made absolutely creative on its own account. This development is related to the fact that in the 19th century art as aesthetic itself sometimes tried to assume a kind of religious character. Art as aesthetic made its own claims to absoluteness, as in the aesthetic human of the 19th century for whom art is all, or the whole. The issue is whether or not this represents an adequate response in relation to art's claim to absoluteness. When Hegel grants art a place in Absolute Spirit it was not an anticipated endorsement of the exclusively aesthetical view in this 18th century sense. Hegel would concur with the position implied by Heidegger vis à vis Richard Wagner's, (1813 - 1883), effort to turn art into a kind of religion, rather than art's completion this may indicate decline in that the effort to make the artist the sole creative absolute represents an attenuation of the sense of the absolute. We are in need of a sense of the absolute stronger than the merely aesthetical can give to us and the aesthetic human of the 19th century might seem to signify a reaching out of art to the totality of life, but often there is a paradoxical reversal in this. The aesthetic human motivated by artistic purity is rather tempted by the ivory tower and so towards isolation from that totality. Against the mediocrity, crassness, philistinism of life, the 'aesthetic man exaggerates this separation to the point of wearing a special artist's uniform, almost, one suspects, in imitation, perhaps parody, of the priest's special garb. Art is turned into a totality itself demarcated from other cultural fields. This is only partly an index of the supposed poverty of common life, more importantly it is sign of the separation, alienation, estrangement of the artist, and a struggle against the waning powers of art to affect the whole of life, that waning of art's power which has been mischaracterised as the death of art which Hegel never said as must keep emphasising... So what did he say?

'Judith with the head of Holofernes', Nicolas Régnier (1591–1667). 'I have no use for the biblical Judith. There, Judith is a widow who lures Holofernes into her web with wiles, when she has his head in her bag she sings and jubilates with all of Israel for three months. That is mean, such a nature is not worthy of her success [...]. My Judith is paralyzed by her deed, frozen by the thought that she might give birth to Holofernes' son; she knows that she has passed her boundaries, that she has, at the very least, done the right thing for the wrong reasons'. - Christian Friedrich Hebbel, (1813 – 1863), playwright, who wrote a play about Judith. I like her. Crossing boundaries is my thing. I have not seen the Serov opera but I would hope it has much singing and dancing.

And some women are worth losing your head over.

'But while on the one hand we give this high position to art, it is on the other hand just as necessary to remember that neither in content nor in form is art the highest and absolute mode of bringing to our minds the true interests of the spirit. For precisely on account of its form, art is limited to a specific content. Only one sphere and stage of truth is capable of being represented in the element of art. In order to be a genuine content for art, such truth must in virtue of its own specific character be able to go forth into [the sphere of] sense and remain adequate to itself there. This is the case, for example, with the gods of Greece. On the other hand, there is a deeper comprehension of truth which is no longer so akin and friendly to sense as to be capable of appropriate adoption and expression in this medium. The Christian view of truth is of this kind, and, above all, the spirit of our world today, or, more particularly, of our religion and the development of our reason, appears as beyond the stage at which art is the supreme mode of our knowledge of the Absolute. The peculiar nature of artistic production and of works of art no longer fills our highest need. We have got beyond venerating works of art as divine and worshiping them. The impression they make is of a more reflective kind, and what they arouse in us needs a higher touchstone and a different test. Thought and reflection have spread their wings above fine art. . . . However all this may be, it is certainly the case that art no longer affords that satisfaction of spiritual needs which earlier ages and nations sought in it, and found in it alone, a satisfaction that, at least on the part of religion, was most intimately linked with art. The beautiful days of Greek art, like the golden age of the later Middle Ages, are gone'.

- 'Lectures on Aesthetics'

As for the death of art that Hegel never said he was attune to the waning power of art in the contemporary era, an inappropriate centring of the absolute completely in humanity whereby the loss of art is a religious event. That art becomes separated from the totality of life and sets itself up as a totality is very significant here in being tied with the loss of the religious dimension of the aesthetic for it is this dimension which might support art's claim to absoluteness, and so give it some power over the whole, the totality of life. The aestheticising of art appears to disclose the highest glorification of art yet this aestheticising discloses art no longer immersed in but cut off from the sense of life's wholeness. The aesthetic glorification of art might be thus seen as an endeavour to stem the internal haemorrhaging of art which results when its intimacy with a religious sense of the totality departs. Art itself erected into a kind of religion might be seen as an effort to reassert the old, true powers of art but cut off from the wholeness of life (a separation perhaps justifiable in reaction to the spiritual malaise of aspects of 19th century life), any genuine religious inspiration becomes increasingly difficult and both art and religion begin to wither together. Art as aesthetic loses its ground in the religious opening to powers of being more ultimate than finite man and for Nietzsche the self of modern subjectivism will finally run itself aground on to the rocks of contemporary nihilism.

Left-Hegelianism recognizes the ultimate bankruptcy of sheer aestheticism particularly in its 19th century form and does endeavour to further radicalize the substitution of the aesthetic for the religious hence reverberating in contemporary politics are some themes of Hegelian aesthetics, for left-Hegelianism ushers the artist out of the ivory tower and onto the barricades, out of the holy temple of contemplative art and into the raw struggle of the practical world of action and the image of the creative artist shifts from the solitary, secular priest to that of the socially engaged engineer, or a member of the elite avant-garde of revolutionary praxis, and revolution itself becomes a new religion with a concept of creativity originally borrowed from aesthetics but now called upon to perform its work in the real, material world. Before the aesthete was content to dream up imaginative worlds in the art work, now the revolutionary in the artist insists that the dream be realized in fact, that through action it be translated from ideal image into material reality.

This reflects Marx's own endeavour to shift philosophy itself from contemplative thought to revolutionary praxis where the point is not to rationally interpret the world in the manner of Hegel but to actively change it as Marx hoped to do (and we have seen where that leads... spare us from philosophers who want to change the world they are too often wrong). The point becomes not just the aesthetic creation of works of art but the political creation of a new society as itself a kind of work of art and there existed a widespread sympathy among 20th century artists for revolution and revolutionary figures in politics. This sympathy had its roots in a left interpretation of Hegelian aesthetics where it is not just a question of the aesthetic versus the religious conception of art, but also of the revolutionary versus a religious interpretation. The 'aesthetic conception has been radicalized in its vision of creative originality into an inspirer, an expression and sustainer of revolutionary politics. The dream of a common mission between the artistic avantgarde and the political avantgarde.

If the argument concerning art as an aesthetic and religious phenomenon holds good then neither the right nor the left alternative is adequate for art cannot be completely humanized in a manner which makes irrelevant the question of the contribution of something more than humanity. Nor can what is more than humanity be so emphasized in art that the real creative contribution of the human individual is neglected. A sheerly aesthetical view might situate man and woman in the centre but into humanity the Hegelian absolute would vanish. A sheerly religious view might put the absolute at the centre but into its power the creative contribution of humanity would be absorbed, and so man and woman as artist would vanish. Hegel's view of art as religious on the other hand incorporates the aesthetic but art does not vanish into religion nor is religion reduced, rather we find a complex balance of aesthetic and religious considerations whereby the aesthetic points beyond itself to the religious but the creative contribution of humanity is not thereby jeopardized, while the bond between art and the religious safeguards art's own participation in what is ultimate. The affirmation of art's absoluteness within the realm of Absolute Spirit is just such a complex balance.

Because of its complexity and internal tensions, this balance is easily upset, for instance in the left-Hegelian stress upon the aesthetic rather than the religious, just as the aesthetic' and religious tend to be assimilated in a certain fashion rather than balanced, so also do the political and religious become assimilated rather than balanced. Just as art and religion were deeply intertwined for Hegel so also were religion and politics,(recall also the interplay of the aesthetical and the political during Hegel's own time, for example in the manner William Wordsworth, (1770 – 1850), was intoxicated for a time at least by the French Revolution, and the political concerns of Lord Byron, (1788 - 1824). But here a distinction essential to the Hegelian balance is banished in the left-Hegelian appropriation for in this latter Absolute Spirit tends to be collapsed into objective spirit, or rather objective spirit in the shape of the political is elevated into the Absolute and comes to possess something of the ultimacy and centrality previously possessed by art and religion. Art and religion may well be deeply rooted in the political but they are marked by a dimension not entirely reducible thereto, as we must grant if we acknowledge some truth in the distinction between objective and Absolute Spirit.

The politicizing of art and religion goes hand in hand with a turn to human history acknowledged by left-Hegelians to have been initiated by Hegel but mystified, that is to say, distorted and left incomplete by him because of his religious and speculative concerns. This turn to history it is contended must now be completed through a more thoroughgoing, anthropological, entirely immanent appropriation. In this turn to history, the completion of history figures as one of the central controversial questions. Ah what a tangled web is woven in the possible relations between the aesthetic, the religious, and the political, but let us not get drawn into whether or not Hegel's philosophy of art can throw any light on the so called end of history nonsense postulated by Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama, (1952 -) regardless of further essential dimension of art's tie with absoluteness. I may take that up some other time.

'But if the perfect content has been perfectly revealed in artistic shapes, then the more far-seeing spirit rejects this objective manifestation and turns back into its inner self. This is the case in our own time. We may well hope that art will always rise higher and come to perfection, but the form of art has ceased to be the supreme need of the Spirit. No matter how excellent we find the statues of the Greek gods, no matter how we see God the Father, Christ, and Mary estimably and perfectly portrayed: it is of no help; we bow the knee no longer before these artistic portrayals'.

- 'Lectures on Aesthetics'

'Tamar', Herman van der Mijn, (1684 – 1741). 'And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also'. - ' 'Genesis', 38. 8 - 10. 'For having traffic with thy self alone, / Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive'. - Shakespeare, 'Sonnet IV'. 'As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation . . . too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished . . . It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private–though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh'. - Mark Twain, (1835 - 1910), 'Masturbation: Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism'.

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