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115 the religion and songs of souls What kind of knowledge is it that considers what continues to exist outside and independently of all relations, but which alone is really essential to the world, the true content of its phenomena, that which is subject to no change, and is therefore known with equal truth for all time, in a word the Ideas that are the immediate and adequate objectivity of the thingin -itself, of the will? It is art, the work of genius. It represents the eternal Ideas apprehended through pure contemplation , the essential and abiding element in all the phenomena of the world. According to the material in which it repeats, it is sculpture, painting, poetry or music. Its only source is knowledge of the Ideas; its sole aim is communication of this knowledge. —Schopenhauer1 Hegel’s attention to religion created as much debate about his religiosity as there has been about Du Bois’. Around the mid-nineteenth century, James Stirling wrote that “the secret of Hegel” was that he was a Christian. More recently, however, philosopher Robert C. Solomon concluded that Hegel was “not the great abstract thinker of Christianity but rather the precursor of atheistic humanism in German philosophy.” Solomon maintained that “Hegel used religion and religious vocabulary as his instruments, as if the last logical consequence to be drawn from Christian doctrine is humanism, and the final meaning to be given to theological terminology is a meaning which refers strictly and exclusively to man’s conception of himself.” Hegel’s early writings more than suggest that he (at least then) held little regard for religious dogma. But, as Solomon concluded , and as Hegel’s subsequently toned-down writing on religion certainly suggests, “he recognized its social power.” For Hegel, and for Du Bois, too, it seems, religion generally (as opposed to a particular orthodoxy,) was, as Solomon continued, 5 116 The Religion and Songs of Souls a striving for the infinite . . . the “genuine infinite” of total comprehension and participation in the world. . . . Religion is mankind’s impulse to a better life. It is not the lust for “otherworldly” after-life of the Christian Heaven but the “this worldly” aspiration of great artists , philosophers, statesmen, and truly religious people. Anticipating Nietzsche, Hegel tells us that religion is a “Reconciling Yea” to the world, not an escape from it.2 Hegel’s linking philosophy to experience (life in the world) was undoubtedly important. But in addition to demonstrating that philosophy/ knowledge was conditioned by historical and social circumstances, Hegel also posited that beyond perceptual knowledge in and of the world and everyday life in general there existed a higher level of knowing that was “eternal.” For one important earlier metaphysician (Leibniz), this eternal was an all-knowing God. In Hegelian idealism, however, even though he provided no illustration of it, “finite creatures” (humans) are capable of realizing/manifesting this eternal (absolute) knowledge. The discussion of the development of this knowledge ultimately comes to focus on the art and religion of the folk. Hegel’s discussion of religion, his penultimate step to Absolute Knowledge, is divided into three parts that Hegel scholars regularly relate to consciousness, self-consciousness, and reason and spirit. They are “Natural Religion,” “Religion in the Form of Art,” and “The Revealed Religion.”3 A brief examination of them might further illuminate aspects of Du Bois’ discussions in “Of the Faith of the Fathers” and “Of the Sorrow Songs.” Hegel’s discussion of “natural religion” begins with a focus, literally, on nature—plants, animals, and other “natural” manifestations of spirit/ god. But eventually, Spirit “appears as an artificer [Hegel’s taskmaster] and . . . produces itself as object” (PS §691). We would recognize some of these objects as obelisks, pyramids, and statues. While the “in-itself” of the object and the self-consciousness (the “of itself”) of the artificer-spirit are both apparent, they are separate. But, as Solomon points out, creating “its sacred images through art instead of simply finding them growing and running around in the woods,” makes it easier to realize eventually “that one is oneself sacred, not only as object or object-maker but, more essentially, as subject.” Until that happened, Hegel characterized this “as art” (that was not also “in art”) as inferior and abstract, merely “an object for devotion or appreciation” and nothing more because, as Solomon put it, “[a] statue is always just a statue”; it resembles a person, but “it is not yet ‘like himself.’”4...

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