Hegel's "Aesthetics": Spirit Begins in Ancient Egypt
Trace the beginnings of the human Spirit in Egypt with my colleague Carla Berenice’s course The Egyptian Mind«Egypt is the Land of the Symbol» Hegel In his lectures on the «Philosophy of Art», or rather on how Spirit fulfils itself and comes to itself in and through art and how we can trace this coming-to-be in artworks, Hegel writes that Ancient «Egypt is the land of the symbol.» Egypt is where human spirit truly marks its beginning. We shall see why and how and it has everything to do with a magic power of the human spirit, which the Egyptians first developed. We know Hegel’s lecture series today rather unfortunately under the title «Aesthetics» suggesting his thought here addresses issues of contemporary aesthetic theory to do with perception or standards of tase and superficial beauty. The public title of Hegel’s lectures are a deflection from their true scope. For what Hegel is here after is how spirit unfolds, yonder of ordinary consciousness, historically and how it comes to itself precisely through Kunst, through art, through that which is artifice, not of nature but dirempted from it, self-split from nature. Before we turn to Egypt’s symbolism and what Hegel sees in it, a very brief detour through Geist, through spirit as Hegel outlines its unfolding in the Preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit, should help us understand better how spirit begins to come into its in Egypt. Vice versa Hegel’s thoughts on Egypt should help elucidate his perhaps more abstract passages in the Preface. At the risk of oversimplifying matters spirit comes into itself, and you can observe this with yourself, with your own self-consciousness and self-awareness, precisely in moments of negation, or negativity. It is when you say «no» to a situation that you begin to take yourself out of the immediately given. This need not be but may very well be a moment of freedom, of earning for yourself your own existence. Consider the following passage on death from the Preface which already leads us deep into Egypt’s unique accomplishment:«Beauty, powerless and helpless, hates understanding, because the latter exacts from it what it cannot perform. But the life of spirit is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction; it endures death and in death maintains its being. It only wins to its truth when it finds itself utterly torn asunder. It is this mighty power, not by being a positive which turns away from the negative, as when we say of anything it is nothing or it is false, and, being then done with it, pass off to something else: on the contrary, spirit, Geist, is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and dwelling with it. This dwelling beside it is the magic power that converts the negative into being.» Do we not understand Egypt symbolically the land of death? With its mortuary practices and cult surrounding the mummy, that sacred vessel that binds afterlife and this life? For Hegel, the life of spirit, the life in which spirit begins to come into itself, from simple consciousness, i.e., awareness of oneself as separate from the world, as subject as opposed to object, is the life that through dwelling with the most radical negativity, which we know in the form of death, comes to see the world not as alien but as product of itself. Subject and object are one. Society, history, culture are the products of spirit and mind, of Geist. Consciousness is a more immediate step, a part. Spirit comprises the whole. And Hegel sees precisely in Ancient Egypt and its art the significant first step on the trajectory of spirit’s totality. What, then, is it that Egypt accomplished? And how is Egypt the land of the symbol? We think of the pyramid and of course the hieroglyphs. What does Hegel see in Egypt? Hegel sees in it the culture that gave itself «the geistige, the spiritual task or the task of the mind, of the self-deciphering of spirit without however actually ever arriving at that deciphering.» Thus, spirit here awakens to itself, gives itself the task to decipher itself, but does not yet, given the monumental task this is, fully arrive at self-decoding, at making itself transparent to itself, as recognising the world as a product of itself. According to Hegel we today have the historical task, we as humans of spirit, of intellect, or mind if you prefer, to decipher that which has remained un-deciphered by spirit in Egyptian art and symbolism. But how does spirit arrive at that moment here in the first place? By negating the immediacy of everyday existence. The task for the men of intellect, or for the humans of the age of Spirit, hence is to follow the negativity of Spirit itself which already in Ancient Egypt concretised for itself the absolute in its freedom as negativity. In doing so, Spirit recognises itself and completes itself further and finds in Ancient Egypt’s art and symbolism an expression of itself. The notion of Egypt as the land of the symbol means that here art is not yet fully objective. Objectivity for Hegel means independence from the elements that make up an object. The stone used for a statue or temple is sublated. The marble used for a statue of Athena or the Veiled Christ in Sansevero disappears in the statue. It also means that inner spiritual idea and outer physical form match, which is not the case in Egypt. Its art remains symbolic as spirit tries to emerge from nature but remains to itself a riddle or enigma. Even though Spirit here begins to come into its own, it does not yet express itself with clarity, remains to some extent concealed from itself, which is why the symbolism of Egypt is an eternal riddle, and remained so even to the Ancient Egyptians themselves. By symbol Hegel means a sign that has as its meaning not what it immediately depicts but that portrays a generality related to it. A symbol however remains somewhat confused, as just outlined. There remains a distinction between visible image and intellectual content. A symbol always points at some more concrete meaning but as it remains external it strives beyond itself. As we shall see, the Sphinx is emblematic of this. The contents of the divine and the human are still conceived abstractly and thus no ideal human form can be made visible in their artworks and indeed gods are not depicted in ideal human form, as are Greek gods and Jesus Christ. Another form of beauty for Hegel is the depiction of free human life, also lacking in Ancient Egypt. Thus, Egypt is not a case of ideal beauty or indeed beauty in the first place. Egypt remains even to itself an enigma, because spirit is still confused about itself despite its achievements. Hence, there is a kind of unclarity in the language, as Hegel attests, which is in turn an expression of their unclarity about themselves. We look at them through a mirror brightly, for Hegel, through the mirror of fully self-recognised Spirit, and thus we are in the position to decipher how Spirit here begins. The Egyptians are, argues Hegel, the first true artistic people. In all senses of the word. They produce artworks and they also negate nature, sublate nature, in doing so, hence erect an artificial landscape. The Egyptian Spirit, or rather Spirit in Egypt, produces for visual intuition or perception, for Anschauung, for that which can be looked at. But not for thought. Even though Spirit here sets in, its own true inner life remains concealed for it. Instead, Spirit looks for clarification about itself in expressions of art, in the visual and sensual, but fails to do so in thought. Which, of course, the Greeks will accomplish first in philosophy, the thinking of thinking. The monuments we are familiar with, the pyramids, temples, statues, the artificial channels of the Nile, the artificial lakes even, are for Hegel ultimately a product of a creating spirit that does not becomes fully transparent to itself. Yet, through its violent erection of monuments and through its «infinite variety» this spirit attempted to advance to itself and reach itsel… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halkyon.substack.com
