Building the Temple of Memory: Hegel's Aesthetic Narrative of History

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Building the Temple of Memory: Hegel's Aesthetic Narrative of HistoryAuthor(s): Joshua Foa DienstagSource: The Review of Politics, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 697-726Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review ofPolitics

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BUILDING THE TEMPLE OFMEMORY:HEGEL'S AESTHETICNARRATIVE OF HISTORYJoshua Foa Dienstag

This article examines Hegel's philosophy of history with the intention ofonce again rendering it strange. Hegel's "historicism"has been accepted for solong that the actual terms of his history are rarely examined afresh. But hisaccount of the past, it is argued here, is best understood through the vocabularyof art and beauty that he develops in the Aesthetics.Historical forms cannot bewholly grasped through the vocabulary of dialectical reason, but ought to beseen as "shapes"in a strong sense. Two principle conclusions follow from thisreassessment:The firstis that the Philosophy f History s best understood neitheras an optimistic accountof rationalprogress,nor as a tale of the "endof history"in liberaldemocracy,but as an attempt to "seduceus to life"-that is, an attemptto reconcile us to the world throughthebeautyof history.The second conclusionis that this attemptmust fail. It failsbecause, in his effortto discernbeauty in thepast, Hegel imposes a completeness upon time that excludes the possibility of afuture. Whetherintentionallyor not, Hegel's pessimism about art is transmittedto his philosophy of history.The Temple of Memory thatHegel builds to shelterour souls ends up imprisoning them instead.Famishedfor history, nourished on history, Hegel'sphilosophy,without understandingthat it did so, yetadvocatedfasting. -Benedetto Croce

It is widely accepted thatHegel attempted to marshalmost ofthe human past into a single storyline.1Indeed, Hegel's writingson history are often stereotyped to the point that they seem tooI wish to thank George Kateb, Alexander Nehamas, Alan Ryan, AmyGutmann, David Steiner,DanteGermino,George Klosko,JenniferMnookin andthe participants at the University of Virginia's Political Philosophy Colloquiumas well as the anonymous refereesof the ReviewofPoliticsfor theircomments onvarious versions of this article.1. See, e.g., Peter Singer, Hegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983),chap. 2; Charles Taylor,Hegel (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1975),chap. 15;J.N. Findlay,ThePhilosophy f Hegel(New York:Macmillan Co., 1958),p. 334;AlexandreKojeve,Introductiono theReadingof Hegel(Ithaca,NY: Cornell

University Press, 1969), p. 130 ff. Hegel's teleology has both inspired Marxists

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familiar to warrant serious investigation. The loss that resultsfrom this unfortunate habit is not merely to one's reading ofHegel, but also to one's appreciation of the role of history inpolitical theory generally, precisely because Hegel is so oftentaken to typify such theory. In the attempts of twentieth-centuryliberals, conservatives and others to distance themselves fromhistoricalthinking, Hegel has become the arch-villain of "histori-cism."2Hegel's historicism has been accepted for so long in fact,that the actual terms of his history are rarely examined afresh.This situation is compounded by the relative neglect of Hegel'sextensive discussion of history in his lectures on the history of thefine arts (hereafter, the Aesthetics).3By examining Hegel's aes-thetics in conjunction with his lectures on world-history, we can

and embarrassed many of his liberal and communitarian inheritors.The latterhave often tried to jettison Hegel's historicismwhile arguing that the rest of hisphilosophy can stand on its own, or perhaps with a little help, as a defensiblemodel of social organization.(See,e.g.StevenSmith,Hegel'sCritique fLiberalism:Rights in Context [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989]; and CharlesTaylor, HegelandModernSociety Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress,1979].The former have attempted to invigorate the teleology with a radicalizedpolitics.See, e.g., Herbert Marcuse, Reasonand Revolution Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1941];and, of course,KarlMarx,"TheCommunist Manifesto"[PartI]and"The GermanIdeology" [PartI]).2. The analysis that typifies this view is probably that of KarlPopper, TheOpen Societyand Its Enemies Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1950), pp.223ff.; see also George Dennis O'Brien,Hegelon Reasonand History (Chicago:University of ChicagoPress, Chicago,1975),for a defense of a "weak"version ofthe progress thesis. But I am thinking less of sophisticated treatments of Hegelthan of the way in which the term"philosophyof history"is used, with Hegel inmind, as an intellectual placeholder for a state-centered view of inevitableprogress-an evaluation which has survived even as much of Popper's work hasfallen into disrepute. This situation necessitates that anyone using the termdissociate themselves from this meaning even though they no longer identify itwith any particular author (e.g., David Carr, Time, Narrative and History[Bloomington:IndianaUniversity Press, 1986],p. 1).3.Throughoutthearticle,Hegel's texts will be noted as follows: ThePhilosophyof History, PH; Lectureson the Philosophyof WorldHistory (Introduction), PH;Aesthetics,AE;numbers following these designations refer to page numbers oftheSibree,Nisbet and Knoxtranslationsrespectively. PhenomenologyfSpirit,PS;Philosophyof Right,PR;and Encyclopedia ogic(Lesser),LG;will be followed bynumbers indicating paragraphs in the Miller, Knox and Wallace translations.The numbers may be followed by "A" or "n"to indicate an addition or note toHegel's main text.

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discover an aspect of his approach to the past that neither hiscritics nor his defenders have fully appreciated.While the themes that Hegel develops in the these textsare, arguably, echoed in all his writings, they differ sufficientlyfrom the common understandings of Hegel's historicism to beconsidered separately in their own right. We will therefore, inlarge part, be reading elements of Hegel's corpus (the Aestheticsand the Philosophy of History) against the grain of the whole,with the goal of indicating, in a preliminary way, how thatwhole might be re-imagined. In the Aesthetics,Hegel offers usa perspective on history at once powerful and fraught withdangers. Indeed, the dangers stem directly from its power-the capacity to view history from an aesthetic perspective.Beyond the integration of this perspective with the rest ofHegel's theory, then, there lurks the larger question of whatthis approach to history has to offer us of itself.4To consider history aesthetically does not mean simply tobeautify it. Just as a decision to evaluate an action morallydoes not dictate whether one judges it as good or evil, viewingan object from an aesthetic point of view does not predeter-mine the evaluation of it as beautiful or ugly. One of Hegel'saims in the Aesthetics is to make history seem a fit object (or,rather, set of objects) for aesthetic judgment. Though he doesultimately find that there is a beauty to history, this does notfollow directly from his use of aesthetics. But Hegel's stand-point does have other important effects on his lectures on thephilosophy of history. While the historical dynamism that weassociate with Hegel's dialectic does not disappear, the his-torical stages depicted there are, I contend, as a consequenceof the aesthetic perspective, considerably more static thanthose of the Phenomenology.In these texts, Hegel does not

always view the state as a dynamic creature, but often depictsit as a motionless shape or edifice, best evaluated in aesthetic

4. Anne-MarieGethmann-Sieferthas also recentlyattempted to connect andrehabilitateHegel's aesthetics and history (DieFunktion erKunst n derGeschichte[BouvierVerlag,1984]).She does so, however, by readingthese texts throughthelectures of the Jena period and by jettisoning some of Hegel's more difficultpositions about the "endof art."Itis precisely thesepositions thatIwill be takingmost seriously.

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terms.5While the lectureson aestheticsattempt o confine theirsubjectmatterto the fine arts (and are hardlysuccessful)thetheoryof aesthetics ketched here s not limited n itsapplicationto those arts. It is insteada general theoryof beautythat cangrapplewith anykind of humanactivity hatcan be said to havea shape.6Recentdebates about the "endof history," n whichHegel is routinely nvoked,thus often miss thepoint: t is not somuch thedirectionof Hegel'shistory hat s novel astheperspec-tive which he develops to assess historyin theoretical erms.Hegel's aestheticnarrativeof historyis best understood,I willargue,neitheras an inspirational ccountof progressnor as acritique of bourgeois generalities,but as an attempt, in theNietzschean ense,to seduce us to life.7By"seductiono life"I intend: o give meaning o the worldand thusto blockan interpretationf life thatis world-denying.A seduction requiresan attractionand an attractionrequiresbeauty.Givinga beautiful"shape" o the past allows us to beattracted o what would otherwiseseem disorderedand repul-sive.Thisbeautycanthen arousea passionforlife within us. Theseduction o life connectsaestheticsandHegel'spurpose nwrit-

5. As JeanHyppolite has shown, this depiction of social organization as awork of art dates from Hegel's Jena period (Introduction la philosophiedeI'histoirede Hegel [Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1983], p. 19ff., p. 89). But sinceHyppolite's focus is an interpretation of the Phenomenology, e considers thistheme's subsidiaryrole thereandneglectsits reemergencein the later lectures onartand history.6. Gestalt("shape")is the Germanword that Hegel uses most often in thiscontext, though he occasionally uses Form("form")or Bild("image").Though"shape"is the best translationof Gestalt, t is also the word thatusually stands incontrast to the German term for "content"(Gehalt). t has as well the subsidiarysense of "whole" or "character"which, while perfectly in accord with Hegel'susage, would later be emphasized by thepsychoanalyticcommunity to a degreethat is not evident in Hegel. While the terms do not mean precisely the samething, I have not been able to identify any way in which Hegel, in his usage,consistently differentiates them.7. Nietzsche discusses the "seduction to existence"and life in the thirdessayof On theGenealogy fMorals n decidedly ambivalent terms. On the one hand hecondemns thepain and distortion that the propagationof the "ascetic deal" as aseduction to life has caused. On the other hand, he recognizes the necessity andbenefits of such a project-a projecthe himself is engaged in. In making use ofthisconcept here, I share Nietzsche's uneasiness with it and, as will be clearfromwhat follows, hardly endorse it.



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ing history. Hegel desires us to embrace the past in a way thatthose who lived within it had no possibility (or need) of doing-we need to see the beauty of its whole shape. Our gaze has to bealtered so that the "slaughter-bench"elements of history do notcause us to turn away in disgust. Not that these are to be dis-missed or forgotten, but that they should find a place in thewhole. The Bible contains many stories of irreligiosity and her-esy, but is still considered a text that attracts readers to religiousdevotion. In the same way, Hegel's history may attractreaders tolife without being beautiful in every chapter.In the Introduction to the Phenomenology,Hegel says thatwhile he disagrees with the methods of the Romantics,he too hastheir aim of recovering "that lost sense of solid and substantialbeing" (PS 7). This feeling of loss remains the principal focus ofhis work even in his laborious reconstruction of history. Hisfundamental worry is to win us back to the world, to have thedetails of the past, in their accumulated weight, provide us witha sense of "substantialbeing."But he knows these details will notseem "solid" until they have a "form,"a shape or some sturdi-ness. This shape will ultimatelybe recognizable as the Temple ofMemory.8But the real danger of Hegel's strategy, I will argue, is not somuch that we gloss over the ugly past, but that we fall so deeplyin love with our own image (for Hegel thinks that history isnothing but the reflection of human spirit) that, like Narcissus,we become rooted to the spot, lost in admiration of and desire forour own reflection. The seduction is hazardous, I maintain, notbecause we ignore the faults of the past but because we becomeimprisoned in our memory of it.

8. The use of abuilding to symbolize humanhistoryis not Hegel's invention.He was undoubtedly drawing on Kant's remarks in the "Idea for a UniversalHistory with a Cosmopolitan Intent": "It remains perplexing that earliergenerations seem to do their laborious work for the sake of latergenerations, inorder to provide a foundation from which the latter can advance the buildingwhich nature has intended. Only latergenerationswill have the good fortunetolive in thebuilding" (ThePhilosophyfKant New York:Modem Library,1949],p.119). Hegel extends this view of Kant's considerably and puts significantlygreater weight on it than Kantwould have thought possible. (See,e.g. IPH12)

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The AestheticApproach o HistoryIn exploring the convergence of history and art in theAesthetics,we shall come to see that the former is as much Hegel'sconcern there as the latter. As much as art being examinedhistoriographically,it is as much Hegel's concernin these lecturesto examine the past from an aesthetic perspective. Before goinginto the details of that perspective itself, it may be useful toestablish in a preliminaryway that Hegel considers history in amanner which requires an evaluation in terms of beauty.When Hegel wrote of history in the most general way, heoften relied on a vocabulary of "shape."This usage appears evenin the Phenomenology here world-history is described as a longlabor of the world spirit which "embodied in each shape (Form)as much of its content as that shape was capable of holding" (PS29). The sequence of historical stages is characterized in the

Philosophy f Rightas a "series of shapes" (Reihevon Gestaltungen)and, Hegel says, "philosophic science must treat them accord-ingly" (PR 32). The various moments of Spirit's developmentappear in the actualworld as shapes and ought to be understoodas such. These shapes are the forms that Spirit takes withintime-they are the units which make up the totality called "his-tory." If we are to be reconciled to our past, to that which takesplace within time, it is these shapes that we must consider-"accordingly."In developing such a terminology, Hegel lays the ground-work for a parallel of historicalperiods or moments with worksof art. This identification takes place at several levels, each ofwhich will receive more attention below. The most general levelis the broad comparison between history and art. If both are"shapes," then both are open to an evaluation within aestheticcategories, as opposed to moral or epistemological ones (IPH21).But further, particular historical periods can be compared toparticularmodes of art (e.g.,Greece with sculpture, the East witharchitecture).At the most detailed level, historical moments canbe connected to particularworks. The GreatSphinx of Egypt, forexample, is for Hegel both a great artwork and a representationof the culmination of the pre-Hellenic world. That history couldbe described in this way leads to further conclusions about thephilosophy of history as well. As a collection of shapes, history

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comes to resemble a museum of enormous proportions, "a gal-lery of images" (eineGallerievon Bildern)or, as we shall later callit, a Temple of Memory (PS 808).The "series of shapes" that occupies Hegel in the Aestheticsand the Philosophy fHistoryis of interest both as a whole and asindividual moments. In this connection, two remarksthat Hegelmakes in the Phenomenologyre of some interest:These shapes, however, are ... actualities n the strictmeaning of theword, andinstead of being shapesmerelyof consciousness,areshapesof a world (PS 441).This remark emphasizes that, when he speaks of "shapes,"Hegel is referringto the past itself and not merely to our imagesof the past. He ascribes to the shapes of history the same degreeof reality that he does to art or any other object.9Though wecertainly interpret these shapes as we transplant them into anhistoricalaccount ("abetterand more exalted soil than the soil oftransience in which [they] grew"), we do not create them (IPH12). So while we do not make the shapes of history, we domanipulate them into a new shape, we "fashion [] a whole out ofmaterial from the past" (ibid). This construct is the Temple ofMemory itself which, as we shall see, is composed from thedifferent shapes of each historical stage. The single objectcalled"art"or "history"is made by transplantinglesser objects from a"transientsoil" to a morepermanentplace in the Absolute Present"thereby investing it with immortal life" (ibid). The second re-mark,though, indicatessomething aboutthephilosophy of historymore generally.But the length of this path [Wegs] has to be endured, because, for onething, each moment is necessary;and further,each momenthas to belingeredver,becauseeach is itselfacomplete ndividualshape,(PS29).Hegel's lectures on history represent the "lingering"that hecalled necessary in the Phenomenology.With this one word, he9. Of course, in Hegel's quasi-platonic idealism, the highest degree of"reality"is reserved for thoughts of "the Idea." My point, though, is that theshapes of history have as muchreality as all other objectswhich fall short of thispinnacle. This is what allows Hegel to speak of art and history in the samebreath.

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manages to make the process sound both like a casual strollthrough an art museum, and like the bedrock of philosophy andlife. Thenecessity of lingering is something Hegel finds in historyitself, as well as its philosophy. It is the only real answer heprovides to the question of why history takes so long if it is justthe development of a single idea.10Hegel views time here as asuccession of shapes. And if we do not tarryin the single, longcorridor of this museum we could traverse it in an instant. Butthe World Spirit lingers over each shape and thus, so must anyphilosophy which attempts to comprehend it.And linger Hegel does. For all the dynamism we normallyassociate with Hegel's history,1 in his later lectures on the sub-ject,what we largely receive is a series of static portraits.Thoughhe ridicules the "detailedportraiture"of "WalterScott'snovels,"no phrase could better capture his own approach to historicalwriting (IPH 19). And while he is fond of saying that each stagecontains the image of past stages and the seeds of the next (IPH82), when it comes time to describe transformationsin history,Hegel balks. He is more likely simply to say that the Idea "passesover" into its next form (IPH 148).This hesitation at the point of transition is the clearestway inwhich the language of the Philosophy f Historydiffers noticeablyfrom that of the Phenomenology.Dialectical progression is thetheme of the latter, but it is not the form that "history"takes.Where Gadamercan maintain of the Phenomenologyhat "Hegel'sclaim that the dialectical transitions are necessary is made goodand verified again and again if one reads carefully,"12 uch aclaim simply could not be made of the Philosophyof History.Gadamer's belief that an interpretationof a section of Hegel will

10. At PS 808he writes that the passage is slow "justbecause the Self has topenetrate and digest this entire wealth of its substance." But this is really noanswer at all. Why are we to think thatthis process must be a slow one? Is theresupposed to be something ontologically fundamentalabout the speedof humanthought?11. I think this image derives mostly from Marx's reading of Hegel, areading popular among Marxists and non-Marxistsalike. Indeed, it may even bemore popular among the lattersince it conveniently implicates Hegel in Marx'sapproach to history.12. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel'sDialectic(New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1976),p. 36.

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lead naturally to the next section is almost absurd in the contextof Hegel's history. The discussion of China, for example, endswith a long discussion of the arts and sciences in that culture-everything from medicine and astronomy to metalworking andporcelain manufacture are described (PH 134-38). In no way isone prepared for the description of India that begins bydesignating that culture as Absolute Being "presentedhere as inthe ecstatic state of a dreaming condition" (139). The constantconnections that characterize dialectic are largely absent fromthe Philosophy f History,replaced by the "galleryof images." Thetransition between images is abrupt, not fluid. What successHegel may have in endowing thought with a sense of motion inthe Phenomenologys not repeated (or even, I think, attempted) inthe Philosophy f History.13That this lack of dynamism saddles the latter book withconsiderable weaknesses is best illustrated through a compari-sonwithHegel'smost famousdialecticalepisode.InthePhenomenology,Hegel describes a master-slave dialectic that traces the advanceof Spirit through opposites. In this parable, progress is said tooccur in a paradoxical fashion. After a struggle for recognitionbetween two equals, the winning master subdues the haplessbondsman. But it is the ironic fate of the master to be the realloser in this situation. He settles into a repose which is ultimatelyenervating. The slave, because he continues to labor,also contin-ues to grow and eventually achieves a higher level of knowledgeand power than his master (PS 178ff).By the time Hegel comes to lecture on the philosophy ofhistory, this dialectic is considerably muted.14Masters are mas-

13. Such a conclusion must of course be somewhat provisional pending thearrival of the new edition of the Philosophy f History,which will contain muchmore material than those previous. Butthe characterof the material thatwe havemakes it seem unlikely to me that the new edition will alter this conclusion.14. Many commentators takeHegel at his word when he says in the PS andIPHthathe has accounted forhistory in this fashion. Thus CharlesTaylorwritesthat in Hegel's history "the motor force of movement is contradiction"(Hegel,p.390-91). But the brief summary of this history which follows deals hardly at allwith the stages other than the Greek and Germanand, more importantly, quotesonly from the introduction and never from thebody of the PHitself-because itwould be impossible to prove this view of Hegel's history with reference to thattext.

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ters and slaves are slaves. History is a succession of masters andthe slaves of one period never become masters of the next. In-deed, apart from a few oblique references (e.g., PH 407), thisdialectic makes no appearance in his lectures on history; slaveryis simply condemned rather than interpreted as containing asilver lining for the slaves. Without this motor, there is little thatdrives Hegel's history from one stage to the next.15 t remains asuccession of independent shapes whose connection is foundmore in the philosophy that links them and less in the empiricalprocess that actually connects them in time.The loss here is that the sense of irony which infuses thePhenomenologys missing fromthePhilosophyfHistory.The Greeksare crushed by "Romanpower" (PH277)and the Romansby "themight of the vigorous Turks"(PH 340).The irony of one's enemydeveloping in one's own house, which the master-slave episodedescribed, is absent. Marx,to be sure, found just such a relation-ship between the feudal lords and the bourgeoisie and thenbetween the latter and the proletariat.And Kojeve then tried tore-insert Marx's history into the Phenomenologytself ("History,"he says, "is the history of the working Slave").16Whatever merithis approach may have with that text, in the lectures on history,Egypt does not bear this relation to Greece,nor Greece to Rome.Historicalstages appearas a succession of shapes-not as a seriesof transitions,and certainlynot as the work of slaves. The sort ofphilosophy that investigates these shapes is the subject of thenext section.

Aesthetics and ActionHegel writes: "beauty can devolve only on the shape"(AE124). Shapes are neither true nor false, neither good nor evil.They are only beautiful or lacking in beauty, ugly. Hegel's ap-15.Perhapsthesimplest interpretationof the work of Marxand his successorsis that they have attempted to reintegratethe Hegel of the Philosophy f Historywith that of the Phenomenology.16.Kojeve,ReadingofHegel,p. 20. He finds the Master's role "tragic" p. 19),but Hegel finds little tragic in the earliest masters like the Persians or theEgyptians. Cooper, in attempting what Kojevedoes not, a "Kojevianreading"ofthe PH only succeeds in reading the Introduction of that work, and distorts thestructure of the rest of it when he briefly considers it (BarryCooper, The EndofHistory[Toronto:University of TorontoPress, 1984],chap. 3, p. 105ff.).

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proach to aesthetics bears enough similarities to that of Plato tomake the differences illuminating: where Plato's aesthetics in-cludes an inherent denigration of the arts, Hegel's provides aninherent defense.Plato thought art was twice-degraded. Art he saw as aninferior copy of reality which was itself an inferior copy of theForms.17ButHegel sees in "action" the possibility for humans topurify mere existence and bring it closer to the Idea, rather thanmoving it furtheraway:

Art liberates the true content of phenomena from the pure appearanceand deception of this bad, transitory world, and gives them a higheractuality, born of the spirit. Thus, far from being mere pure appearance,a higher reality and truer existence is to be ascribed to the phenomenaof art in comparison with [those of] ordinary reality (AE 9).18But it must be emphasized here that Hegel parts company

with Plato in stressing that it is human activity that brings the"actual"into existence.19 ndeed, in this matter, he has more incommon with Locke;his theory can even be seen as an attempt tointegrateboth of their perspectives. In his aesthetics, Hegel givesa spiritualized version of Locke's account of labor.20Locke feltthat labor infused objects with value. But since all labor was

17. See the Republic, k. 10.18. See William Desmond, "Art, Philosophy, Concreteness," The Owl ofMinerva16 (1984/85): 141.19.Arendt calls this "wish to substitute making foracting in ordertobestowupon the realmof humanaffairs the solidity inherentin work" a "Platonic"wish.This wish is clearly Hegel's as well. Yet it need not be associated with Plato (asArendt appears to want to do) on account of his hostility towards democracy.(Hannah Arendt, The HumanCondition[Chicago:University of Chicago Press,1958], pp. 225, 221). In any case, Plato's and Hegel's accounts of "making"arequite different.20. Whatdirectknowledge Hegel had of Locke'slabortheoryis hard to say.In Hegel's Lectures n theHistoryofPhilosophyBoston:Routledge &Kegan Paul,1974), III:295-313),he discusses Locke's Essayon HumanUnderstanding ut nothis other works. The edition thatHegel cites, however, does contain almost all ofLocke's opus. It is more probable,however, that Hegel absorbed Locke's labortheoriesthroughthemediation of Adam Smith and theotherclassical economistswith whom we know Hegel to have been familiar.Though they were certainlymore advanced than Lockein technicalmatters, they took up fromhim the ideaof human labor as the main creator of property and property rights as he

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equally fungible for Locke, its effects were largely undifferenti-ated. Hegel agrees that labor imparts value (PR 41ff). But headds to Locke's formulation a parallel account of the Idea beingmade manifest through human action. Ideas must "win theiractuality by man's act in order to come on the scene in theirproper shape" (AE213;c.f. 225). ForLocke, all labor is the same,its product is value. Hence, Locke's account of life in terms oflabor is somewhat colorless. For Hegel, the internal multiplicityof the Idea means that labor will bring forth a variety of shapesrather than a monotony of value.The Lockean side to Hegel's account of action explainssomething else: the sense in which the present can be said toown the past. In Locke's account of labor, the products of workcleave to theirproducer as property. So too with Hegel's accountof action. This holds both when individual human beings areinvolved, as well as when "the individuals we are concernedwith are nations, totalities, states" (IPH36). Even Hegel's heroesonly accomplish their aims by "arduous labours" (IPH 85). Theproducts of a culture belong to that culture in a strong sense ofthe word "belong."21 Labor produces property in the liberalsense, but the relation of the actual to the Idea leads to a view oflabor that emphasizes the particularity of acts, the specialnessof every moment of labor. Indeed, Hegel often describes thisprocess in terms that stress the creative powers of the individual.Actualization is described as a process whereby "man as spiritduplicates himself" (AE31). Butthe modifying phrase "asspirit"is important. It indicates that Hegel's is not a philosophy ofradical individualism, but of individuals as harbors for theIdea.This connection to the Idea lends an odd flavor to the word"action." Since things created by action are supposed to bedeeply rooted in the eternal Idea, it is hard to picture how theycan be "created"by people. In fact, Hegel pictures action as aarticulated it in the second of the Two Treatisesof Government. abine notes thesimilarity between Hegel's and Locke's accounts of labor in passing (HistoryofPoliticalThought Dryden Press, 1973],p. 599).21. Kojeve is certainly correct to point to the role of labor in the productionof culture(ReadingfHegel,p. 52).He is simply wrong toassociate thedevelopmentthrough labor with the political triumph of the slave.

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kind of "unveiling," in which shapes are ushered into the actualrealm from the possible one (AE93):Action alters nothing and opposes nothing. It is the pure form of atransition from a state of not being seen to one of being seen, and thecontent which is brought out into the daylight and displayed, is nothingelse but what this action already is in itself (PS 396).That is to say, action simply translates an initially implicit being into abeing that is made explicit (PS 401).Action is that which funnels the ideal into the real.22It is

Hegel's construal of things as disparate as the painting ofRaphael'sMadonnas and Alexander'sconquest of Persia as spiri-tual "labor" that allows him to consider all of their products as"actuality."Both great history and great art are the product ofaction, and their greatness is measured on Hegel's own scale ofbeauty.

And it is the same with the spirit of a nation; its activity consists inmaking itself into an actual world .... Its religion, ritual, ethics, customs,art, constitution, and political laws-indeed the whole range of itsinstitutions, events and deeds-all this is its own creation, and it is thiswhich makes the nation what it is (IPH58).Where Plato's idealism led him to value philosophical thoughtabove all other human activity, Hegel's idealism, filteredthroughLocke, leads him to an expansive notion of human action as thepath through which the Idea becomes real. So it is the labor-minded side of Hegel that forbids him to settle thequarrelbetweenpoets and philosophers by banishing the former, as Plato did.

22. It should be noted that this account of action accords with thePhenomenologyn the following way: Hegel also calls action the struggle anddissolution of difference (AE 179). But "difference" has a strictly ontologicalmeaning. Hegel calls it a limit or aboundary.It is the point where a thingends. Itis, then, roughly speaking, the boundary between the "is" and "is not" of thething. But then the dissolution of this boundary would mean, among otherthings, the joining of what is with what is not. And this is what Hegel meanswhen he speaks of making the implicit into the explicit-what is is brought inwhere it previously was not. See PS3, 166ff.

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710 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

BeautyItselfBeautyis the term of judgment that Hegel develops in theAesthetics o cover the history of art. But it also covers the historyof spirit that he gives in that text, as well as the history whichparallels it in the Philosophy f History."What s valid for the workof art as such is equally applicable to the external aspect of thehistorical reality there represented" (AE 273). Beauty is the mea-

sure of the actual. It exists when universal and particular aresuccessfully brought together by a middle term.23Justas Truthis the highest value in the conceptual world, thequality against which things there aremeasured, so Beauty is thehighest value in this world. A middle term is that which draws

23. Hegel rehabilitates the poets by finding that "art is the middle term"between "pure thought and what is merely external, sensuous and transient"(AE8, 163).And Hegel means by this that such thought should be presented inart "not in its universality as such" but in a form which has been "sensuouslyparticularized"(AE51).Thismeans that individual works of art cannotrepresentconcepts like "Justice"or "Love"or "Man" n the abstractbut must show themthroughindividual examples. This is themeeting of universaland particular.Tosimply take reality as it is found would be to leave the individual untouched bythe ideal. If a portraitis too accurate,Hegel thinks,it will be "disgustingly like"(AE 43). But the ideal cannot be directly represented. So, forexample, Raphael'sMadonnas (one of Hegel's favorite examples), "show us forms of expression,cheeks, eyes, nose, mouth, which, as forms, are appropriateto the radiance,joy,piety, and also the humility of a mother's love" (AE156).A representationof anindividual here communicates a universal idea (c.f.AE38,70,223,227).

Hegel also uses the language of the middle termto describehistory as well.For each of the cultures that Hegel describes in his history is also a shape thatmediates between the ideal realmand the particular.Thus, the middle termcanalso be "the system of structured shapes assumed by consciousness as a self-systematizing whole of the life of Spirit ... which has its objectiveexistence asworld-history" (PS 295). Indeed, following the account of actuality above, it ismore toward history than toward art that we would expect the account of the"middle term"to lead. Theparallelbetween the two becomes more pronouncedwhen considered through this lens of Hegel's logic.Beauty, in fact, makes its appearance through the logic. It is the qualitywhich characterizes that middle term which performs its mediating functionwell. "[I]tis precisely the unityof the Concept with the individual appearancewhich is the essence of the beautiful" (AE101;c.f. 22). As such, it is the perfectcategory with which to evaluate the products of labor known as the actual. The"middle term"is thus the minor premise in the three-linesyllogism which is thefoundation of Hegel's logic.



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the truth into actuality. Beauty is simply truth when it "exists,"that is, when it is made real or actual:The true as such exists also. Now when truth in this its external exist-ence is present to consciousness immediately, and when the Conceptremains immediately in unity with its external appearance, the Idea isnot only true but beautiful (AE 111).

Left in the realm of thought, the truth will remain true, butalways unactualized, and thus, unreal. Broughtdown to earthbylabor, it acquires the aspect of Beauty. It is a concept of beautywhich comprehends not just art,but everything that is "actual,"everything that is real and containsthe Idea (AE 114):"everythingbeautiful is truly beautiful only as sharing in this higher sphere"(AE 2). With an understanding of this beauty we can say moreabout the works of art which "exist"in both art and history. Andwe can begin to see why theirbeautiful shapes mean so much tothe overall project of Hegel's history: A seduction requires anattraction;an attractionrequiresbeauty.

The Shape(s) of the Past: The Temple of Mnemosyne"Beautycan devolve only on the shape." But how are we toknow the shape of the past? What shape or form can ancientcivilizations (or current ones for that matter) be said to have?Hegel responds to this challenge he has posed for himself in two(slightly circular)ways. At the level of the particularnation, heuses the art of that nation as a guide to its historical meaning.Thus, for example, the Pyramids and the Sphinx come to standfor Egypt, and, indeed, for all pre-Hellenic history. While it oftenappears ad hoc, this procedure allows Hegel to relate history asthe evolution of forms. At the higher level of history itself, how-

ever, Hegel does not rely on preexisting shapes but constructs hisown: the Temple of Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne is the Greek museof memory and it is in her honor that Hegel puts together hisnarrative. He uses Mnemosyne (as opposed to her daughter Clio,the muse of History) to emphasize the way in which we possessthe past, as the product of Spirit'slabor. Memories (as opposed to"the past") must always be someone'smemories, residing in aparticularmind, contributingto a personality. Where Clio repre-

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sents the exploration of an alien terrain by the historian, withMnemosyne we are always reminded that in her temple weexplore nothing so much as our own past and what we find thereis nothing but ourselves. This recognition is vital if the beauty ofthat temple is to seduce us to dwell within it. For Hegel,Mnemosyne is not just a Muse, but also a Siren.The Temple of Mnemosyne is a kind of repository, a kind ofartmuseum, where the goddess keeps the artifactsof history forthe perusal of the present. But it is more than that. It is Hegel'simage for the totality of the historicalprocess itself. And it is thistotality, rather than the image of the last (Germanic)state, that isthe goal of Hegel's story. It is the sum of images that is thefundamental thing. Spirit is evidenced in the series of shapes itassumes, and not just in the final shape, or any of the intermedi-ate ones. In the condensed history that appears in the Philosophyof Right, individual nations are "shapes" which "arewholly re-stricted on account of their particularity."It is the history of theworld as a whole which is "universal"(PR 344, 340; c.f. 259A).Spirit "accomplishes [its] end in the history of the world; itproduces itself in a series of determinate forms, and these formsare the nations of world-history"(IPH 64).It is for this reason thatthe perspective of the "absolutepresent"becomes necessary. TheTemple of Mnemosyne sits in the middle of a time warp, fromwhich point all of the past is equally near or far-it can be viewedas a whole: "Last of all comes the discovery that the wholeevolution is what constitutes the content and the interest" (LG237n). The Temple is not just a container of past shapes; it is itselfthe center of the exhibit. Hegel describes the temple thus:

Now when architecture has built its temple and the hand of sculpturehas set up within it the statues of the god, this sensuously present god isconfronted, thirdly,in the wide halls of his house by the community(AE85).Though this passage appears near the beginning of the Aes-thetics,deciphering it requiresa knowledge of the whole structureof that book. While Hegel acknowledges that each of the histori-cal eras he discusses contains all kinds of art, he nonethelessbelieves that each period has a kind of art most typical of it,which produces its characteristicshapes. The Symbolic period,

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embodying everything pre-Hellenic, has architecture as itsrepresentative kind of art. Sculpture is the form connected tothe Classical age, while painting, art and poetry all satisfy thespirit of the Romantic period (AE 82). The Classical age en-compasses both Greece and Rome, while everything thatfollows is termed Romantic. The structure of the Aestheticsreflects this division with the course of world-history beingcovered, in effect, twice. In the first half, Hegel recounts thehistory of art, and the history of the worlds which produced it,in the order of ages: Symbolic, Classical, Romantic. In thesecond half, he proceeds by covering different forms of art.But the effect is the same, since the forms correspond so wellto the ages: Architecture, Sculpture, and "the Romantic arts"(AE 791).Through the picture of the Temple, Hegel captures amoving story in a static image. Nor is it just the story of art."For in art we have to do ... with an unfolding of the truthwhich is not exhausted in natural history but revealed inworld-history" (AE 1236). The image of the construction of atemple is Hegel's ultimate distillation of the process of history.And it captures both the simplicity and power of his argumentas well as its reductiveness. When a nation's era ends "Memoryalone then still preserves the dead form" and "sets it up in theTemple of Mnemosyne, thereby investing it with immortallife" (PS 545; IPH 12). The three eras, through architecture,sculpture, and (let us say) poetry, provide us with temple,idols and congregation. It is the three stages of the Aestheticsand not the four stages of the Philosophyof History that formthe true structure of Hegel's narrative.Yet, as we use this framework to investigate the lectureson history, we must ask ourselves whether Hegel has suc-ceeded in creating an attractive temple. For if the structure isalready complete when we arrive there, the only task left to usis that of maintenance. Hegel thinks that "to dwell in what issubstantive" will allow us "to enjoy the present" (PR Pref.12).But we must wonder whether Hegel's philosophy of historyhas the very quality he condemned in nature: "in nature thereis nothing new under the sun, and in this respect its manifoldplay of forms produces an effect of boredom" (IPH 124).

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Art as HistoryI will not run through Hegel's narrative in a detailed way.The plot-one of spiritual and intellectual progress-is well-known and my purpose here is merely to alter how it isunderstood. In a general way, this should already have beenaccomplished in the account of how Hegel's history lies on top ofhis aesthetics. In what follows we shall pursue that theme in amore topical way. First we will explore some of the difficultiesthat appear as a result of Hegel's attempt to erase the boundarybetween art and history. The use he makes of Sophocles' playOedipusRex will be of particular importance here. Next we willconsider how we should understand each of the three eras Hegeldescribes. Finally, we will consider how an aesthetics that endswith the "dissolutionof art"must lead to an equallybleakhistory.Time seems most like an illusion in Hegel's writings on

history when it is considered as the process of Reason followingits one idea through to a conclusion:"temporalduration is some-thing entirelyrelative,and the spirit belongs to eternity.Duration,strictly speaking, does not exist for it" (IPH 209). He also speaksof history as a "day's work" in which "man has constructed abuilding" in which he houses an image of himself. All of historythen, even though it contains acts of labor,can be compressed toa wink in God's eye. The aesthetic view only offers a series ofimages that, like a film, can be run at any speed, producing eithera serious or a comic effect. And yet Hegel insists that each stagemust be "lingeredover, because each is itself a complete indi-vidual shape." Thewhole passage he says, cannot be understoodwithout a detailed comprehension of every form. Each stage isjust a frozen shape, and if we do not pause and linger, the wholeprocess could be recapitulated instantaneously. Lingering, hehopes, will allow time for the beauty of the shapes, and thestructure as a whole, to seduce us. His call to linger is more of aplea than an argument.In the aesthetic perspective on history which Hegel offers incertain of his texts then, it is the shapes of the past, the basicelements of the Temple, which are of significance, not the weakmortar which holds them together. Hegel's attention is focusedon nations as a whole; neither the individuals who make themup, nor the process which moves them along are as important.

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The bulk of his lectures in the Philosophy f Historyare concernedwith the social structure, customs, religion and constitution ofthe nations discussed, taken as a whole. Little attention is paid toconnections between nations and only slightly more to the evolu-tion within them. The "heroes" of Hegelian history are, then, notso much an integral part of the Hegelian narrative as they arenotably perfect epiphenomena. A hero can "makeno distinctionbetween himself and the spirit of the nation" (IPH52; c.f. 76,82).Rather than standing apart from the nation, the hero typifies it,even if, in the perfection of his personification,he is not a typicalindividual. Heroes do not link the ages, they only help usher inthe mature period of their age.24As an example of the difficulties to which this static accountof states leads, consider the transition between the Oriental andthe Greekeras (PH219ff.).Thoughit is well known that Alexanderis one of Hegel's heroes, Hegel actually spends more time withOedipus than with the Macedonian. The true transition betweenthe two periods occurs, it nearly seems, in Sophocles' tragedyOedipusRex,which Hegel treats here as if it were as good as fact.The dialogue between Oedipus and the Sphinx is whereHegel locates the end of the OrientalSpiritand the beginning ofthe Greek. For he has described the Great Sphinx of Cheops asthat piece of art which best captures the spirit of the asiatic era.Half-human, half-animal, trepresentsthe effortof spiritto emergeout of nature. To Hegel, all of Egyptian society exists mostly topose a question it is incapableof answering. Thus Hegel seems tothink that the Sphinx does not know the answer to the riddle itposes to Oedipus (a perversely brilliant thought, really). Theriddle is "What s it thatwalks on four legs in the morning, two inthe afternoon and three in the evening?"And Oedipus's answer,"Man," precipitates both the end of the Egyptian era and thebeginning of the Greek. The former is captured in the self-de-struction of the animal Sphinx and the latterby the replacement

24.Theonly heroesclearlymentionedareAlexander,JuliusCaesar,Napoleonand (though it's rarely noted), the Persian EmperorCyrus (PH 187). None ofthese stand between epochs but rather at the center of them. They do not see thefuture, they merely see the present more clearly than their contemporaries;indeed, they embody that present. This even applies to Cyrus who, in theperfection of his despotism, is said to typify the Oriental stage.

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of the Sphinx with Apollo and the Sphinx's riddle with theDelphic command "Man,know thyself" (c.f.AE 361).An ingenious reading of Sophocles, all will agree. Butslightlybizarre to us as a descriptionof historical transition. And yet, thisuse of Sophocles is in line with Hegel's general approach tonations as shapes. Since the Sphinx had come to stand for theOrient, the destruction of its form was much more important inHegel's narrative than the defeat of the Persians at Salamis.25Similarly, the single god Apollo (Athena might have served aswell) represents the Greeks in their emphasis on the single hu-man form. As much as Greece over Asia, we have in thisrecounting the ascendence of sculpture over architecture.26 t isonly through such mythical encounters of shapes that Hegel candescribe the change of epochs in a manner loyal to his account ofthe nations themselves and to his general descriptionof historicalstages as "shapes."27

Butin an importantsense, his account of the transitionhere isnot loyal to his account of the nations themselves. Though hisdescriptions are often selective, it is not his normal practice tosummarily substitute fiction or drama for fact. His aestheticperspective, however, has strongly suggested this option forsuch transitions. By depicting the nations as stable, self-subsis-tent wholes, Hegel has left himself little grounds for explainingtheir evolution. In depriving cultures of the fluidity embodied in

25. The battle that freedGreece fromthe threatof dominationby thePersianEmpire.26. Lestanyone suffer under theillusion that theSphinxis itself a sculpture,Hegel assures us that it has "acompletely architecturalcharacter" AE644). Heallows at otherpoints thatit may representa transitionbetween architectureandsculpture, but that,of course, dovetails neatly with its position in the story here.27. Not to mention the fact that Hegel has to twist the patternof history inorder to make it fit his scheme. Despite the fact that the Egypt of the Pharaohsexisted half a millennium earlier,Hegel places it within his section on the Persianempire. The excuse for this is that, much later, Egypt was occupied by thePersians, but the real reason is that Hegel needs Egypt and the Sphinx torepresentthe "oriental"spirit thatwas overcome by the Greeksin theirdefeat ofthe Persians. It's all ratherarbitrary IPH200-1)."The nward or ideal transition,from Egypt to Greece is as just exhibited. But Egypt became a province of thegreatPersiankingdom, and the historical transitiontakesplace when the Persianworld comes into contact with the Greek" (PH 221). This distinction between"ideal"and "historical" ransitionsoccursnowhere else in Hegel thatI amaware of.

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the master-slave dialectic, he has made it difficult to explain thetransitions between stages with reference to the stages them-selves. This is what makes the pages on Oedipus, as brilliant asthey may be in themselves, appear incongruous in comparison towhat has preceded them. Theproblem is not just thatHegel mustignore the fate of Oedipus or misread the Sphinx as a work ofarchitecture. It is rather that the discussion of Indian castes orPersian despotism or even of Egyptian architecture in no wayprepares us for finding a historical transition such as this in anAttic tragedy as opposed to an actual conflict between Greeksand Orientals.Though Hegel needs a confrontation of shapes todescribe a transition that is in some sense loyal to his descrip-tions, his retreat into drama (and his adhoc use of it) only remindus that any movement through the gallery of images is some-thing of ourown making and not drivenby theimages themselves.The seamless dialectical progression of the Phenomenology asbeen replaced by a parade of sphinxes and statuary where eachimage does not seem to touch any other of its own accord. It is thehistorian's hand which sets them in motion.

The Three Shapes of HistoryHaving pointed to some of the difficulties in a history ofshapes, we should nonetheless consider what Hegel intends inhis selectionof various works of art as signifiersforentirehistoricaleras. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Hegel has selected afew shapes fromhistoryand then, at times,warps both his historyand his aesthetics to conform with them. Despite a broad displayof erudition, the Pyramids,the Sphinx,Greeksculpture, Raphael'sMadonnas and tragic Shakespearean characters form a smallinner circle of figures to which Hegel returns almost obsessively.28

They form the elements of the Temple of Memory: Symbolicarchitecture raises the building; Classical sculpture forms the

28. To the reply thattheselection is not arbitrarybut paradigmatic (asHegelno doubt believed) the response can only be that the text does not make theirparadigmatic status compelling. Hegel does not really discuss, forexample, whyShakespeare'scharactersaremore perfectlymodern thanthose of Moliere,or forthatmatter,of DaVinci or El Greco. He merely repeatedly asserts the centralityofthe former.

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gods; and the Romantic arts provide the spiritually completehuman beings who compose thecongregation.This is thestructureHegel's history creates;it invites us to dwell in the figured past,reconciled to it, ratherthan pursue an uncertain future.THESYMBOLIC:

Hegel begins his account of history with an appraisal of theearly Chinese and Indian civilizations. But he also says that theyare outside the scope of history proper and that it is only thePersian Empire that "constitutes strictly the beginning of world-history" (PH 174). This corresponds to a lack of attention to thearts of these earlier civilizations in the Aesthetics.There it isasserted that "the thorough elaboration of symbolic art, both inits special content and in its form, we have to seek in Egypt" (AE354). His early appraisal of the Far Eastern cultures in thePhenomenologyeveals that he believes them to have, "the 'shape'of 'shapelessness"' (PS 686). It is this odd, in-betweencharacterizationof the FarEast as both shape and not-shape thatallows it to have the position in history that it does-both a partof it and not a partof it. We might compare it to the ground uponwhich the Temple of Memory is built: it contributes nothing tothe structure, yet it is a necessary predecessor. Only after thispoint does human labor occur and make shapes which areincorporated into the Temple.So it is Egypt, and only Egypt, wherein Hegel locates theheart of the firstage of world-history,whether under the name of"Oriental"or "Symbolic."Egypt receives over two-thirds of thespace purportedly devoted to Persia in the Philosophyof History(198-222).Over and over again, Hegel describes both the Orientaland Egyptian spiritas characterizedby a "riddle"or an "enigma."Though he seems to waver as to whether the Pyramids (AE356)or the Sphinx (AE 360; PH 199) best typifies this condition, hedescribes the condition itself consistently: "Spirithas still, as itwere, an iron band around its forehead" (PH 207). Humanity isstill struggling to emerge out of nature and this in-between posi-tion is reflected in the "actualization" that takes place at thisstage. Instead of freedom we have "Spiritsunk in Nature, and theimpulse to liberate it" (PH 218). Though the Egyptians them-selves seem not to have known it, Hegel asserts that all theirsociety presents us with is "theenigma of its being" (PH207;220).

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The riddle-posing Sphinx thus becomes the best representa-tion of this condition (see PS 697). Even when he considers thePyramids for this role, it is not so much for theirshapes perse asbecause they "concealin themselves an inner meaning" (AE 356).The riddle sums up the Symbolic age-which gets its name fromthe idea of one thing standing for another (i.e., "What is it that...?"). What Oedipus does is to give the simple name for the seriesof traits that the Sphinx has listed; a name Hegel believes theEgyptians did not know themselves. Architecture is the formtypical to this period because it is the formof artclosest to nature.Thus, on the ground of the prehistoric, the Egyptians have con-structed the first element in Hegel's image of the past-the wallsof temple itself. Since the Greeks solved the Egyptians' riddle, itfalls to them to shape the next element in the composition.THECLASSICAL:

"Theninto this temple, secondly, he god enters himself as thelightning-flash of individuality ... This is the task of sculpture"(AE 82). And of the Greeks. Hegel finds that sculpture is "somuch the centre of the classical form of art that here we cannotaccept"a division of its study into differentperiods; he dismissesearlier and later sculpture as poor imitations of (or anticipationsof) the Greekperiod (AE708).And this identification of sculptureand Greeceruns both ways: "Greece s not to be understood at itsheart unless we bring with us as a key to our comprehension aninsight into the ideals of sculpture" (AE 719). The ideal forms ofGreek sculpture are at the root of his interpretationof the Greekperiod, and for that matter, the Roman as well. Though he doesnot fix on a single work, as in the Symbolic,his focus with Greekstatuary serves the same function as his concentration on theSphinx.29t embodies his image of this stage in world-history andserves as the Classicalcontributionto the Temple of Mnemosyne.Hegel also argues that Greek sculpture was simply the mostperfect form of artas such. Among the various kinds of art,it methis standard of beauty most completely; its limitations reflected

29. Among his favorites are the Elginmarbles and a bust of Zeus attributedto Phidias. But since, as with the Pyramids, he considered the sculpture as aproduct of an entire culture,individual authorshipis not important to him.

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merely the limitations of art itself. The discussion thus leavesopen the possibility that the quality of beauty could be possessedto a higher degree by anotherproduct of labor,not an artwork,ata later date.30Thesculpted human form (and Hegel hardly thinksany othersculpture worthy of thename)is theperfectembodimentof individuality (AE 433). "Man" is the Greek answer to theEgyptian riddle-and individuality is the characteristic whichbest typifies the Classical age as Hegel describes it (AE302;481).He calls it "Individualityconditioned by Beauty" (PH 238).Now, sculpture is the perfect form of artbecause it perfectlyreflects the stage of spirit that it expresses.31But this is not thehighest stage of world-history since it is still concerned with theexternal-the body-and not with the spiritual itself. What isperfect about these sculptures is that there is no conflict internalto them, as there was for Egyptian art in the division between"spirit" and "nature": "the Greek gods, in so far as Greek artrepresents them as free, inherently and independently self-suffi-cient individuals, are not to be taken symbolically; they contentus in and by themselves" (AE 313). The society of Greece issupposed to display this same perfection of individual form aswell as this sense of satisfaction. Thus, Hegel interprets the an-cient Olympic games as a place where "the human beingelaborates his physical being, in free, beautiful movement andagile vigor, to a work of art"(PH 242; c.f. PS 725). Likewise, theAthenian polity, he claims, was without internal disruption. Likethe statue of Athenaherself, hecityis serene and united(PH 252-3).The only deficiency is that this perfect union of form andcontent is not conscious of itself as such. It lacks the inner self-awareness of its own beauty.TheIdea is stillimperfectlyactualizedin the real world. Thus, Greek social life is "unreflectingethicalexistence" where citizens perform their duties "virtually byinstinct" (IPH 202, 97). "Of the Greeks ... we may assert, that theyhad no conscience" (PH 253).This lack of inwardness is reflected

30. What I have in mind here are both the state of the Romanticstage, andthe Temple of Mnemosyne as a whole. Both are discussed below.31. Hegel maintains that this is so because sculpture represents the humanshape best of all art(thoughnot perfectly). Architectureand paintings or poetry,though they represent something abouthumanity fairly well, do not mimic thehuman form, nor the idea of humanity relevant to that stage of history, asexactly. See below for a discussion of "theRomantic arts."

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in sculpture by the "sightless" eye, the blank stare, that Hegelfinds always accompanies the beautiful bodily shape in Greekart. "The light of the eye [] is absent" (AE 520-1; 731ff.). In its"eternal serenity and bliss" the image of the Greek god missesthe innerbeauty of the human, even as it perfectly captures theouter (AE 436). Thus, the limitations of the Greeks are thelimitations of art itself: as something material, it must alwaysstop at the surface;32t has no inside.With this in mind, Hegel casts all of Roman history in thesame minor role that earlier belonged to Oedipus-that of atransition to the next period. Rome goes nearly unmentioned inthe Aesthetics and Hegel claims that virtually all of its art isderivative from that of Greece (AE514).He seems to feel that theGreeks have contributedall the poetry to the classicalperiod andthe Romans all the prose (PH 288). Thus, Rome seems like noth-ing so much as a poor reflection of Greece, save only for theappearance of Jesus Christ.33ustas Oedipus destroyed the formof the Symbolic age, Hegel calls Rome "the demolition of beautyand joyous customs" whose only original form of artis satire (AE514-5).Rome leaves no distinctive shape behind in the Temple ofMnemosyne. The contribution of the classical period is the per-fectly carved god who stands in the structuredonated by symbolicarchitecture.Wholly contented, the Greek god posed no riddle,but he is superseded all the same by a society which, if its art isless perfect, nonetheless has a superior beauty in itself.THEROMANTIC:In this last stage of human history, known as the Germanicage in the Philosophy f History,beautiful artis still produced. Butthe highest beauty moves from the fine arts to individuals andsociety itself. Where the beauty of the Classical period rested inimages of the human body, the Romantic period houses beautyin real human beings. The best actualization of the Idea nowexists in the nonphysical manifestations of human society andthe human soul. But this does not mean that the Romanticperiod

32. This is Nietzsche's phrase.Tohim, it was a compliment.33. Of course, Jesus is the real Oedipus figure here. Where Oedipusproclaimed the age of "man,"Hegel calls Jesus"manas man,"thatis, man-who-is-aware-of-himself-as-man (PH 328).

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has no image to contribute to the Temple of Mnemosyne: nosingle work of art, but the community itself is the shape thatappears in Hegel's image of the past-thus completing anhistorical trinity.Of course, artstill exists in this period, and it even reflects thehigher stage of the spirit which has arrived. It is just that it doesnot reflect it particularlywell, as classical art did for its stage ofthe spirit: "external appearance cannot any longer express theinner life" (AE 527). So the previous expressions of beauty in thefine arts become "something subordinate, and beauty becomesthe spiritualbeauty of the absolute inner life" (AE 518). Humansthemselves, rather than images of them, become the locus ofbeauty, the actualization of the idea. Where the classical age hadthe image of man in Oedipus, the Romanticage has Jesus, whosehumanity Hegel never ceases to emphasize (e.g.,AE 536ff.).Thishighest stage of the spirit is still measured in aesthetic terms:"beauty will now reside ... in the inner shape of the soul" (AE531).ForHegel, this does not mean that all humans must be identi-cal, any more than all Greeksculptures had to be identical whenthey reflected the same sort of beauty. It is as a congregation,rather,or as a community, that he thinks of the Romanticpopula-tion. Eachsoul a beautiful shape unto itself,buteach participatingas well in the larger beauty of the whole (PH 416-7):"the commu-nity ... has its real vitality in the government as that in which ithas an individual form"(PS 455).Where Classicalbeauty was theform of the god, the last beauty in history is "the form of the Self"(PS 798). Man's search for beauty, for the perfect realization ofthe Idea in the actual world, has led him through art back tohimself. It is not hard to understand Hegel's obsession withGreek statuary;all along he knew that the highest beauty was inthe individual form-Greek sculpture was the best foreshadow-ing of that beauty.Modern humans form the congregation at the Temple ofMnemosyne. They are the last element in the composition Hegelhas made, representing the last period of history. With this thetriune work is complete; nothing could be added to it. Itsperfectness results, for Hegel, both from the fact that it containsthe highest forms of humanity and from its "threeness" which

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reflects both his trinitarianismand the roots of his logic in thethree-line syllogism (see note 23). Each element reflects perfectlyHegel's idea of beauty-they represent generalities in specificforms. Together they performthis function forhistory as a whole.The End of History

At times, Hegel hints that there might be future stages tohistory, that it is only a limitation of philosophy that it cannot seeinto the future (e.g.,PH350). Butit is a note he strikesvery rarely,and it is discordant with his overall theme. His major chord israther heard in statements like, "The end of days is fully come,"and "the Christian world is the world of completion" (PH 342).34He even says flatly that "Europeis the absolute end of history"(IPH 197).35The development of man is complete, the Temple ofMnemosyne is a perfect tripartite image. The only thing lackingis the ringing down of the curtain.Or is it lacking?The end of the Philosophy f History s wildlyanti-climactic. It is hard to take seriously Hegel's laundry-listdescription of European states as a conclusion or his subsequentdeclaration that he has completed a "theodicy" (PH 450-7). TheAestheticsoffersa more complete but also moredisturbingaccountof the present. Art does not just culminate at the end of history-it actually ends. As Roman satire ended classical art,Shakespearean comedy ends art completely. Art is literallydissolved in laughter: "comedy leads ... to the dissolution of art

34. R. G. Collingwood (and others) have tried to excuse Hegel's lack offuture on the grounds that, in Hegel's view, the future could not be examined"philosophically"in the way the past could be, because it had not yet occurred(The Idea of History [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956], p. 113ff.). ButCollingwood does not come to grips with theway Hegel declareshistory completein the present. Hegel does not merely plead that he cannot go further-he saysthere is nowhere else to go.35. For this reason, it seems to me that when, for example, Hegel says thatAmerica is "theland of the future,"he does not mean that he expects thata newform of man or of government will appear there,but ratherthat (the final formhaving worked itself out in Europe)the activity of the future will be its workingitself out in America. But this does not reallyinvolve any addition to "history";tis merely the geographic spread of the final historical moment. The"congregation,"as it were, will get larger;but it will not change in character.

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altogether" (AE 1236). When art has run its course, it does notend in a holding pattern but rather fades to black:No Homer, Sophocles, etc., no Dante, Ariosto, or Shakespeare canappear in our day; what was so magnificently sung, what so freelyexpressed, has been expressed; these are materials, ways of looking atthem and treating them which have been sung once and for all. Only thepresent is fresh, the rest is pale and paler (AE 608).6

This haunting line, of a life grown "paleand paler"points to theemptiness of Hegelian theodicy or perhaps of modernity itself.Having crammed so much into the past, by making the past acomplete shape, Hegel has left nothing for the future.This lack of a future will haunt the Temple of Mnemosyne.Or rather fail to haunt it. Where Marxfound in Hegel's teleologythe idea of a future haunting the present, for Hegel, no specterhaunts Europe at all. The world has no future, and thus thoughevents may continue, none of them will have significant meaning.For what does Hegel offer us but a life grown "pale and paler"?Even on his own terms, Hegel's history condemns itself. Bydeclaring history complete, he has reduced it to the status ofnature which he declared earlier must dissatisfy us because itcontains"nothingnew under the sun."Thoughthis reconstructionof history has the virtue of a beauty which nature does not, itshares the negative trait of staleness with nature. Perhaps thereconciliationhe offers is enough in the way of compensation forHegel; but he clearlydid not think this the case with nature itself.Does the attraction to the past that the discovery of beauty in itcreates compensate sufficiently for the threat of boredom thatresults from lack of novelty?Hegel aims, by his history, to seduce us to life, to the lives weare living now, and this in two ways. He wants to bindus to ourhistory by his account of it as human labor and thus, our prop-erty. But he also wants to attractus to it by his account of it asactualization and thus, beauty. As we saw above, because his-torical actions are the product of human or national labor, theyadhere to those who perform such labor as their property. In

36. Here Hegel is playing on the contrast between the words fahl ("pale")andfrisch which means "fresh"but also "ruddy"or "healthy"of face.

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describingall of humanhistoryas theproductof a singlehumanspirit, Hegel makes all of it into our property.But it is ourproperty n the twofoldsenseI outlinedbefore.Its momentsareour characteristicss well as ownedobjects.We candecry t,butwe cannotseparateourselves rom t. It is not ourhistorybutourmemory.Weare bound to itby anidentity hatadmitsof nothingdeeperthan itself. ThusHegelanswersthe romantic ryfor "thelost sense of solid and substantialbeing."His philosophy ofhistory gives its audienceback their lost sense of substancebygivingthemall of humanhistoryas themselves.Andtheshapeitarrives n is this three-sidedTemple.ButHegel tries to make his audience ove this Temple,andthemselves,by makingit beautifulas well. The aestheticsthatunderlieshis accountof history s meantto do justthis. Lockeanlaboris not enough,for readersmight reject he past in them-selves if theyfoundit too abhorrent.Beauty s alsorequired.Theaccountof actionas the transmission f ideas intoreality,wherethey take on the qualityof beautyis the ungainlyelement ofseduction n Hegel'swork.Beauty s notjustof interest o Hegelas an attribute f art.By gazingon allof historyas theemergenceof beauty,he hopes that it will replacefor us what comfortwefoundin earliermythsorearlierphilosophies.By linkingnationsto beautifulobjects,ndeedby makinghem into suchobjects,hehopes to make us find historybeautiful tself. Austere as hisphilosophy sometimesseems, his unlikely goal is to help us"enjoythe present"(PRPref.12).His philosophyurges us to-ward no particularuture.His Temple s meantto be a placewecanhappilydwell.But Hegel leaves us with nothing to do in the house ourpredecessorshave built.The AbsolutePresentresonates oo wellwith the EternalPresent hatNietzsche dentifiedas thedwellingplaceof the lastman.The LastMan, t will berecalled,s trappedby his own memory.Rather han a resource or his creativity,memoryhas becomea wall thattrapsman in thepresent,unableto change. "Happiness"s justwhat the Last Men enjoy.In itsperfect completeness,the Temple of Mnemosyneis a perfectprison.This is the result of the attempt o put all of history ntoone form.Inhis zealousness o tieup all the loose ends,to bringevery line of plot to a conclusion,Hegel succeeds too well. By

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putting all of humanity into its own past actions, he as much assays that we have no future.Hegel says we cannot philosophize about the future, but wesee now that this is more than a limitation of philosophy. For it isreally the conclusion of his philosophy that there is no future.And it is for this reason that we must declare Hegel's attempt atseduction seriously compromised. Without a future, it is notreally "life"that he is seducing us to at all, but the remembranceof life in an ever-repeating picture-show. Life,even on Hegel'sterms, is the production of the new, the actualization of the Idea.He cannot promise that kind of future. A seduction requiresbeauty, yes, but it also requires promise-a hint, a hope, ofsomething to come. The life Hegel desires to seduce us to is thecontinual unfolding of the human spirit in time. But the meansofhis seduction is to imagine the finish of that unfolding. It is theprocess of actualization that Hegel thinks is the essence of, say,the artist, or any other laborer of the spirit. But there will be nosuch labor,no such actualization,in the future. Hence, there willnot truly be any life.The completion of the Temple of Mnemosyne is the "perfec-tion" of our memory. Nothing need ever be added to it. Withouta future, no new thoughts will disturbthe structure'sstability.Afuture that contains things new and different rests on the imper-fection and incompleteness of all interpretations of the past.Hegel's problem is not (as is often said) that he worships thepresent; it is that he loves the past too much. His is a strangelyhistorical narcissism.

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Building the Temple of Memory: Hegel's Aesthetic Narrative of History