691 - 693

[R Srivatsan]

C. The Artisan

691.  The first stage of a religion that focuses on art is the work of the artisan, who blindly produces what drives him, as an instrument of elementary spirit.  He produces "himself as object", i.e., he expresses himself with an instinctive labour like the bees produce a hive.

692.  This first production is abstract -- rectilinear, composed of crystalline shapes and planes (e.g., here would be the stones around the Sacred Forest near Shillong, or Stonehenge).  This form of reproduction does not carry significance within itself -- it is as yet chaotic, substantive, not spiritual (i.e., an expression of self-consciousness). 

Thus, these lifeless objects either carry the dead spirit of the ancestors, or simply reflect the meaning as something external (like sunlight at dawn) casts its glow on them.

693.  The artisan as he advances in his thought and skill (the working spirit) produces more complex artefacts, working from a subject object divide (his materials/output and himself) He is conscious of the object, and is self-conscious.  This is ensured by the artefact at his hand.  

This working spirit now is forced (because it is spirit) to sublate this difference -- to give his self-consciousness objectivity and to give the object a self-consciousness.  

However, both the subject (working spirit) and the object (spirit worked on) contain a differentiation between each and its milieu or its world.  Each now sees/ and is seen as a gestalt of a singular being and a concretely universal location.  The object is "seen" because it is the representation of the community's self-consciousness/consciousness.

Thus when the artefact begins to be seen/see itself and its surroundings,  something else occurs: the two sides (working-spirit and spirit-worked-on) come closer due to this investing of objectivity and subjectivity, the artisan sees himself in his object -- the object becomes anthropomorphic in the ontological sense. 

Thus the object is first of all the abstract side, the outcome, of the work of spirit, which latter does not understand itself as active, but only sees its investment in the object or artefact, i.e., a thing.  

The working spirit as a whole, i.e.,the artisan fully developed, has not yet appeared, but only is the essense, the inner truth, which presents itself to him and his community as a worker (active self-consciousness) and his object (the idol or statue or artefact).

Harris sees this stage of religion composed of these four moments extracted from the spirit of the community:

Consciousness: Understanding (natural or unselfconscious)
Self-consciousness:    Lordship and Bondage (as alienated worlds of Spirit and Nature or soul and body)
Reason:  Physiognomy and Phrenology (external relation of soul and body)
Spirit:  (The immediate identity of) Virtue and the Way of the World.

This is a bit of a stretch but acceptable.

Srivats

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R Srivatsan
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There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning – devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work … in old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion. - Simone de Beauvoir 

[R Srivatsan]

There is a bit I missed in 693:

When the artist represents the God in the world (the singular being on the one hand, and the gestalt or world within which he sees this singular being on the other) his representation too has an inner and outer -- a figure in a sanctum, an idol in a temple.  Temple architecture is born.

Srivats