A. Natural Religion

The space devoted to the three forms of religion distinguished here is severely unequal, with no more than a few pages on natural religion, which now appears as a main form of pre-Christian faith. In an early essay on natural and positive forms of religion, Hegel defines the former as that one religion corresponding to universal human nature19 In his later Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, he discusses natural religion in detail. In arguing against the idea of primal human innocence (for instance, in Rousseau's idea of the state of nature as intrinsically good), he defines natural religion as the initial stage in which the spiritual element, recognized as primary for human being, is present only in its simplest, undeveloped form. There he provides elaborately detailed, informed, separate accounts of Chinese, Buddhist, Lamaist, Persian, and Egyptian religions20 Here his treatment of this theme is less informed, generally unsympathetic, and rather cursory.

Natural religion features a division in the subject, since "the Spirit . . . is conscious of itself" and "for itself" (§684, 416), or self-conscious. Hegel's treatment of religion is concerned solely with this "opposition [Entgegensetzung]," since the shape it takes allows us to distinguish between religions; this is so even if "the series of different religions . . . sets forth again only the different aspects of a single religion" (§684, 417). The distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness is not overcome merely through thought, since "the represented [vorge-stellte] self is not the actual self" (§684, 417). The truth of a particular faith lies in the way that "actual spirit resembles the form in which it appears in religion," or in its "reconciliation [Versöhnung]" (§684, 418*). From this normative perspective, Hegel simply declares, intolerantly enough¾ perhaps influenced by Herder's view that Oriental religion is childlike21¾ that Oriental religion, which lacks this reconciliation, is untrue.

a. God as Light (Lichtwesen)

Hegel's survey of forms of natural religion starts with the Zoroastrian view of God as light, where it is only a "concept in contrast to reality [Realität]" (§685, 418*). Religion, which exists in different forms, does so initially as nonreflective, as something that simply is. This is a form belonging to "immediate Consciousness or to sense -certainty" (§686, 419) that only differs from sense-certainty through its spiritual character. In a series of metaphors, he describes this religion as "the light of sunrise," as "torrents of light," but also as "insubstantial," as "lacking understanding [unverstäindig]" (§686, 419), and as offering "merely names of the many-named One" (§687, 419). It is difficult to regard this description as more than minimally positive.

b. Plant and Animal

Hegel now turns to Eastern religion that at this point he seems to know no better, or to be more sympathetic to, than he was to Zoroastrianism. The difference between this and the preceding stage is that the religious individual has left immediate consciousness, or awareness of being, behind in favor of so-called spiritual perception. This is the level of "pantheism," which is marked by a multiplicity of different types of spirits· These include the guilelessness of so-called flower religion and animal religions that feature warring entities, or "a

host of separate, antagonistic national Spirits [Völkergeister] who hate and fight each other to the death" (§689, 420). Continuing his preference for spirit over reason, Hegel remarks that the form of religion in which we make religious objects, where "the self becomes a Thing" (§69, 421), is superior to the warring spirits. For here religion is actualized.

c. The Master Artificer (Werkmeister)

Hegel may have borrowed the term "Werkmeister" from Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who used it in his famous History of Ancient Art Among the Greeks22 to characterize Greek art, as Hegel does here. Winckelmann was a German archaeologist and historian of art who strongly influenced the German interest in ancient Greece, particularly Greek art, after the middle of the eighteenth century. Hegel cites him often in his Lectures on Aesthetics.

Werkmeister, which now literally means "foreman," derives from Werk, meaning "work, deed, production, performance, undertaking," and so on. It refers, in short, to doing or producing in general. It can be loosely construed as referring to the master worker, or master artificer, in this case the one who produces religious objects on a rather low level, as distinguished, say, from Greek art.

Such work is the result of abstract understanding, not of spirit. It is characterized as an unreflective, "instinctive working [Arbeiten]," comparable to the way that "bees construct their cells" (§691, 421"). Within natural religion, the religious individual who fashions material (like the slave in the master-slave relation) is no more than partially self-aware. "Work [Werk]" that results from "the abstract form of the understanding" is not "filled with Spirit" (§692, 421), since on this level religious individuals do not fully recognize themselves in what they make. Natural religion is marked by a "separation [Trennung]" between the work done and the worker, or the "in-itself which becomes the material it fashions, and the being-for-self which is the aspect of self-consciousness at work" that "becomes objective to it in its work" (§693, 422). The artificer appropriates "plant-life" that he fashions into "mere ornament" (§694, 422). This object partially overcomes the separation between the individual and existence. Although it "includes within it a shape of individuality," so that "the individual knows himself in his work," on this level religion still lacks language, or "the shape

and outer reality in which the self exists as self" (§695, 423), presumably since it is nonreflective.

Abandoning for a moment the external form of the self as what we ourselves produce, Hegel rapidly considers the contrary idea, in which spirit is present internally. He illustrates this in a tactless reference to the Black Stone of Islam, where "the covering for inner being . . . is still simple darkness, the unmoved, the black, formless stone" (§696, 423). Both types of religious spirit, as respectively an item in nature or a thing that is produced, are deficient. Hegel suggests that the "two have to be united" by the artificer (§697, 423). In this way, "in this work" the instinctive type of production is replaced by the self-conscious activity of the master artificer, in whose activity "Spirit meets Spirit," so that "Spirit is Artist" (§698, 424).