Jena Philosophy of Spirit

[p. 280]

|280| to art be only relation to form, and that one abstract from the content; – but this content men do not let be taken from them – They demand essence – not mere form – The connoisseur is this observer of pure poetry, and of the understanding of the artist, [whether] the motifs, the detail, which is determined through the whole and brings it out – are chosen with understanding, the parts kept well apart, etc.

Art in its truth is rather religion. Elevation of the world of art into the unity of absolute spirit; – in the former each singular gains through beauty free life of its own – but the truth of the singular spirits is to be a moment in the movement of the whole – knowing of absolute spirit of itself as absolute spirit; it itself is the content of art, which is only the self-production of it, as self-conscious life reflected into itself in general –

In art α) this singular self one is only a particular one, the artist; – the enjoyment of the others is the selfless, universal intuition of beauty β) the determinateness is singular content – hence its immediacy as existence – as of the self separated from beauty – from the unity of individuality and universality, or of the self and its universal existence. – In religion, however, spirit becomes object to itself as absolutely universal, or as essence of all nature [, of] being and doing, and in the shape of the immediate self – the self is universal knowing, and the return thereby into itself – Absolute religion is this knowing – that God is the depth of spirit certain of itself, – thereby he is the self of all – The essence is pure thinking, – but externalized of this abstraction, he is actual self; he is a man, who has common spatial and temporal existence – and this singular one is all singular ones – the divine nature is not an other than the human – all other religions are imperfect; – either only essence – the terrible of the power of nature, in which the self is only null – or the beautiful religion, – the mythical – a play,

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