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 itself.

Despite these only apparent shortcomings, Spirit here takes a decisive step, a necessary step and no one should expect to come to itself fully in only one culture. As opposed to Indian culture here «the interior is held fast against the immediacy of existence.» More precisely: «The inner as the negative of vitality, as the dead;» To spell this out: the inner is the dead, that which negates life. Hegel continues: the negative is here understood not as evil or pernicious hence «not as [merely] the abstract negation … but in concrete gestalt itself.» The inner is Spirit awakening to itself, understanding itself as negation to life, hence as what is dead; this is more concrete for Hegel, because it is a starker difference, than assuming an abstract good versus evil in the form of two opponents for example. More concrete because it requires an affirmation of the negation, as it were. Spirit splits itself from the outer, and brings forth for itself an interiority that is dead for the outside.

This is why Egyptian symbolism of death is not vain abstraction or sheer nothingness, as we encounter in the Nirvana for example. Instead, it is «content of what is alive» as continuous negation of the immediate of life, thus this depicts Spirit’s self-acquisition, even if not yet in its full concrete freedom. «Knowing oneself, however, is the principle of freedom,» Hegel argues. This self-knowing is still foreign to the Egyptian spirit, but we can witness Spirit here being on the way there. The Egyptians had not yet penetrated «to the concept of the free Spirit». Still, they dwell with the utmost negative that is death and thus bring about the separation of spirit from world. This very separation must of course ultimately also again be overcome so that we arrive at a mediated immediacy, or spirit recognising culture, society, art as its product through differentiation. The separation between this life and an afterlife is a crucial step for consciousness to come into its own, it is symbolic of the separation or split consciousness must make from immediate existence to full freedom. Here Hegel sees a «separation from the natural and the spiritual or intellectual, des Geistigen». The achievement of Egyptian Spirit is thus the separation from immediate life so that a crucial step towards the liberation of consciousness can be taken. Of course, spirit must come to naturalness as well and cannot alienate itself absolutely from nature, as Hegel is sometimes misunderstood.

Through separating from the immediately given of everyday life, but remaining on the level of visual perception, the Egyptian mind brings forth an independent realm, a «state of the invisible», as Hegel says, echoes of which can still be found today, just to mention, when we mistakenly assume Plato dreamt of an invisible eternal world of ideas; in the Egyptian invisible state Osiris os as Amanthes eternal judge. This is the work of the imagination, not of thought that comes into its own. In Egypt the visual, the imaginal and the imaginary remain at the forefront, bringing about their own kinds of abstractions.

This split of inner and outer is reflected in their art. In their monumental buildings, temples, secret hallways, and of course in their pyramids, which «harbour within themselves an interiority» invisible to the outer. The pyramids especially, which on the one hand depict crystals but which are on the other hand entirely sublated from «mere naturalness» by their very geometric form are mirrors of how the imagination envisions a realm of the dead in distinction from everyday life. The pyramid is there only for its concealed interiority and thus for death. Its split between inner meaning and outer appearance leave it firmly in the symbolic order. The pyramid merely points to a certain significance, or implies it, but it does not capture or conceptualise the full meaning. Hence there is no harmony between inner and outer is in fully objective art which classical Greece accomplished. The pyramid is «outer form and shell». The pyramid hides within itself «free and living spirit» yet it does not itself become an expression thereof.

Nevertheless, the pyramid is a realm of death and of the invisible and is therefore truly art. Here art and religion are unified still in expressing the divine and the truth. Its outer form is still necessary inso far as it depicts a transgression of the simply natural. Granting a realm of death is symbolic for absolute negativity and thus is of a realm of freedom already.

Yet, even though an interiority is assumed it remains hollow, or simply put, dead. According to Hegel, in Egypt «the interiority of subjectivity is still outside itself» and thus it cannot develop itself to its own «free beauty». That is to say, subjectivity does not become true substance here, it continues to have mediation outside itself. There is an inkling of subjectivity but it is captured in purely exterior terms, the innerness is not genuine interiority of human subjectivity. Hegel sees Memnons as symbolic for the still exterior nature of awakening subjectivity. They are «rigid, stiff and without life» hence their interiority is entirely exterior. We cannot assume, looking at them, an interiority that could just come out of itself, as we can witness with statues of Classical Greece for example. Memnons in turn face the sun so that during dawn when morning dew warming up from the light of the sun causes the statues to give off a sound, as Herodotus describes. This sound is caused by the outside. They lack an internal spiritual soul and so require stimulation from the outside. For Hegel this symbolises the Egyptian spirit as a whole: the light coming from the outside, or meaning of life coming from the outside and enlivening the dead interior. This is in line with how the Egyptians understood life and ironically also with the New Age interpretation of Egypt as the result of literal Alien life-form intervention.

In sum, human subjectivity remains silent in Egypt. The human being in Egypt is only ensouled out of a «natural moment» as for example by the light of the sun, which brings forth an interior that is not capable to emerge freely and by itself.

Hence, Egyptian art remains of an «enigmatic symbolism» and its artworks are riddles. But not just any riddle. Hegel refers to it as «the objective riddle itself», for which the Sphinx is the symbol above all, and to this day, and it was the Greek spirit that solved its riddle. The notion of Egyptian art as the objective riddle itself expresses that here subjectivity gets stuck, as it were, as it moves outside itself, and objectifies itself thus only as enigma to itself.

The sphinx is highest expression of exactly this. Its animal bodies, cut from hardest stone, covered in hieroglyphs, as Hegel points out, with human heads which appear to push themselves out of the animal body. «From the numb strength and force of the animalistic the human spirit wants to emerge without however coming a complete depiction of its own freedom and moving form» because here the human spirit remains mixed with parts alien to it. The Egyptian spirit remains a formidable riddle to itself. There is an urge for high intellectual spiritualness, true human freedom, but it stands in its own way and thus the human spirit in its urge becomes a riddle to itself.

For what is the famous riddle of the Sphinx which Oedipus solves? «What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet in midday, and three feet in the evening?» That it is the human being is the formidable riddle also to the Sphinx itself which is why the Sphinx disappears as Oedipus answers the question. The Sphinx’s riddle is what it wants to be itself but cannot. Only with the Greeks does human self-knowledge, hence the principle of freedom, fully enter into history: Know Thyself! Gnoti Seauton.

Trace the beginnings of the human Spirit in Egypt with my colleague Carla Berenice’s course The Egyptian Mind

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