St. Louis architecture unintentionally made national headlines, during the summer of 2020, after a brazen couple postured against a group of trespassers, on the lawn of their 1911 palazzo (Photo 1). The two brandished firearms, threatening those who ventured down the seldom visited street of Portland Place. Their 20,000 square foot, Renaissance revival home, served as the backdrop for a clash of worlds that remain separated by only four blocks. The event gave the country a glimpse of the grandeur hidden away in St. Louis streets, showcasing the city's turn of the century style. In this essay I’ll reveal how they became neighbors, tracing the cultural gulf between the two classes back nearly two-hundred years.
In the summer of 1673, Father Marquette and his companion, Joliet, paddled down the Mississippi from their Mission Station near the source of the river. Nine years later Rovers La Salle followed the Mississippi down to its mouth, claiming possession of the whole region, in the name of his King, Louis XIV of France. The first permanent settlement, west of the Mississippi River, wasn't established until 1735 at Saint Genevieve. From there, collections of frontier homes, which dotted the river’s banks, gained municipal status; St. Louis in 1764, Florissant in 1776, and St. Charles in 1784. The endless frontier provided virgin space and resources which were gathered and shipped downstream to the port of New Orleans. The Mississippi River funneled all of the newly accessed resources, from the northern Great Lakes and as far west as Denver. At the confluence of the Missouri, Illinois, & Mississippi River sat St. Louis, which served as a central hub for the quickly developing frontier. This continued for the next hundred years, supplying the people of the region with financial security, encouraging a laissez faire attitude we still hold today. John F. Darby commented on our relaxed position in 1823: “The inhabitants of St. Louis were beyond doubt the happiest and contented people that ever lived. They believed in enjoying life. There was a fiddle in every house, and a dance somewhere every night. They were honest, hospitable, confiding, and generous. No man locked his door at night and the inhabitant slept in security.” American and Europeans alike flocked to the lush river valley in search of mercantile and to serve the growing community. The convergence of the three rivers echoed the biblical story of the Garden of Eden. The garden is said to be the confluence of four major rivers, which provided the necessary nutrients to sustain the most mythical region in human history. Missouri officially joined the United States in 1821 with a population of 66,607, St. Louis approximated 5,000 citizens. In only ten years the state’s population quadrupled. Many of the inhabitants were Irish and German immigrants who brought their traditions and religions with them, together they constructed the Old Catholic Cathedral (Photo 2), completed in 1834, on the riverfront which remains standing today. Its Neoclassical architectural style was in high fashion at the time. The columns and triangular pediment at its entrance reflect those which adorn the front of both the U.S. Capitol building and The White House, both were completed just a few years before the cathedral. The United States, being the first representative democracy in two thousand years, heralded a new found hope for individual liberty, not seen since antiquity. The U.S. capital was to serve as a new Athens and its architecture was reflective of this noble pursuit. The structures of this time contained many of the motifs found in ancient Greece and Rome. Neoclassical buildings are highly symmetrical, typically having two axes, their columns diminish those who walk through them and provide a sense of awe and confidence in the ideas the structure intends to embody. Banks are often stylized this way to provide security to those who trust their life’s earnings to the institution. These notions were held across the continent as the burgeoning nation defined its own ideals. Mid-century, European immigrants flooded the United States, fleeing religious persecution, crop failure, and famine. They brought the architecture of their homeland with them, and what followed was a series of Romantic revivalist movements, the most common being Gothic revival, showcased by St. Patrick’s cathedral in New York City. The style served as a response to the Neoclassical style, now perceived as callous and unemotional due to its limited ornamentation. The Romantic movement began in Europe with a renewed religious and nationalist fervor, leading to England, Germany, and France each claiming their nation as the birthplace of the style. The most popular novel at the time, Victor Hugo’s, Hunchback of Notre Dame, used the 12th century cathedral as its focal point and established France as a major player in the movement’s success. The focus of the style was to glorify Christian values, every line pointed up toward heaven, the fine details in its ornamentation encouraged individual craftsmen to put one’s whole effort into their work. Those that looked upon gothic architecture are inspired for opposite reasons found in neoclassicism, the solidity perceived in dominating columns was replaced by towering precipices of steeply pitched roofs and crowning gables. At the height of domestic American unrest, caused by the abolitionist movement of the 1850’s, many incorporated gothic architecture in homes (Photo 3) and churches to represent the combination of orderly, classical ideals, that appeal to the intellect and fanciful, romantic ideals, which appeal to the emotions. With the ensuing war, the style went on to become an embodiment of the evil struggle that had taken place, a forgotten home on a distant hilltop, remembered as a dark memory of our nation’s past. The Civil War began in 1861, and particularly affected Missouri due to the split nature of the state during the conflict. North nor South wished to trade with the divided state, the Mississippi River which tied the north and south together, along the western frontier, had all but dried up. In an effort to codify the nation after the Civil War, the federal government planned to connect existing railroad infrastructure in the east to those out west, with the Transcontinental Railroad. When the project was completed in 1869, these railroads stripped much of the dependency from river boat traffic allowing Kansas City and Chicago to boom financially. Commerce was no longer making it from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; the economic development of St. Louis and the rest of the state was severely retarded, while providing a particular environment for the cultural enrichment of the frontier. The Civil War placed Missouri into a distinctive position in the development of the west. In our state, North and East met with South and West, at the borderland of civilization in the Americas. The deeply contrasting lifestyles combined to create a unique leadership style which helped incorporate states that had recently joined the Union. Another byproduct of the conflicts was the rapid industrialization of the United States. New railroads throughout the nation meant materials became cheaper and more accessible to the common citizen, what resulted was an explosion of revivalist architecture that evolved through the Gilded Age and into the 20th century. This period in American architecture is known as Historicism, and was evidence of a general longing for the peace and slow pace of life of pre-Civil War America that we've never recovered. Industrialization allowed for machine made products to be mass produced, lumber could be made cheaply which allowed time for more details to be incorporated in new buildings. In 1832, innovations in construction design, called ‘balloon framing’, meant the amount of material needed to erect homes was vastly reduced. This is the origin of the modern 2x4 and 16 - 24 inch stud spacing. Additionally, balloon framing introduced a standard model for home construction, in the same way the recently developed ‘assembly line’ expedited manufacturing. Structures that were commonly made of wood, such as homes, schools, or hotels, revealed their trusswork and became colloquial known as American Stick Style (Photo 4). Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal boards create elaborate patterns on the facade, however, if you look past these surface details, a stick style house is relatively plain. The footprint of structures at this time grew larger, providing space for indoor plumbing that had been, until now, unavailable to the average American. However, with increased commercialization of building supplies, the quality of these construction materials rapidly diminished. One major drawback of these new construction styles was the threat of fires, the interior space of walls allowed for a fire, which started in the basement, to travel to the top floors of a structure unencumbered, trapping its occupants inside. Homes at this time were still heated using wood and coal stoves, making this threat a real concern. In 1849, St. Louis fell victim to a fire which destroyed a significant portion of the city, this coincided with a severe cholera outbreak; nearly ten percent of the city’s population died as a result of the collapsed infrastructure. This led to the implementation of a number of building codes that demanded new structures to be built using brick or stone, and the development of a new water and sewer system to help contain future outbreaks. Historicist architecture can be further broken down into a number of sub-genre, including, Victorian, Mansard, and most importantly, Richardsonian Romanesque, which revitalized the use of masonry and brick in the United States. Henry Hobson Richardson was the most prominent architect of the late 19th century, until his death at age 47, in 1886. He rejected the rapidly deteriorating quality of machine-made building supplies and encouraged the fine work of craftsmen, reminiscent of the neo-romantic works of earlier. While Richardson himself did not design any buildings for the St. Louis region, it is difficult to find structures, built in the late 19th century, that didn’t include a number of his trademark motifs (Photo 5). The recent city fire essentially made this new style into law. Rundbogenstil, which translates to ‘round arch style’, was not only Romanesque Revival, but rather a combination of several different European styles that all used the Roman rounded arch, the most prominent example of which can be found downtown, at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery (Photo 6), built in 1879. At this point, St. Louis was the Silicon Valley of the Gilded Age, entrepreneur and artist alike flocked to the Gateway City to embellish the future with their own perspective and flair. Industry in the region recovered from its post-Civil War recession, and the approaching new century was received optimistically by the hands of inspired, young architects. New foundry techniques replaced brittle cast iron and malleable wrought iron with carbon steel, which allowed for stronger, taller buildings to populate our city centers that were quickly diminishing in available space; instead of building out, they built up. Metal frames replaced load bearing stone walls, and the invention of the elevator, in 1853, meant heights could be reached in access of five floors. This took place across the nation in industrial urban centers such as Chicago, New York, and St. Louis. The Home Insurance Building, constructed in 1885, is widely considered to be the first skyscraper. Formerly located in downtown Chicago, the building stood ten stories high, and weighed one-third that of a similar structure which used traditional masonry techniques. Its iron skeleton allowed for a thin stone facade, allowing space for large windows; city officials were shocked by the departure from tradition and halted its construction repeatedly to ensure the populace of its structural integrity. Artistically it remained unfinished, lacking much of the ornamentation expected of buildings that size at the time. The Wainwright Building (Photo 7), completed in 1891, located in downtown St. Louis, is nationally recognized as the first fully aesthetically expressed skyscraper. Its style incorporates a tripartite system found in the architecture of antiquity while remaining wholly focused on the future. A cornice, above the second floor, defines the lower third from eight identical stories of recessed windows, and is crowned by a wide frieze of celery-leaf filigree with bulls-eye windows, beneath a deep cornice. Upon its completion, the building was nationally celebrated, architect Frank Lloyd Wright dubbed it "the very first human expression of a tall steel office-building as Architecture.” Listed as one of the ten buildings that changed America, in 2013, it proved to be the model for artistic urbanization in our nation through the early 20th century. American citizens took a renewed interest in quality construction again, birthing the American Craftsman, or Arts & Crafts style home, which showcased natural materials, recognized skilled labor, and marked the end of an overdependence on machined goods. Homes were built with the comfort of the occupant in mind, floor plans were designed practically, and faux-historic qualities found in Victorian homes were removed. Low pitched roofs, exposed rafters, and shingled roofs invited homeowners into the architectural process. Homeowners were encouraged to either improve their existing space or construct a home from scratch using ready made, commercial products, such as the Sears mail order home. In 1904, the world descended on St. Louis as the city hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, now known as the World’s Fair. This event crowned St. Louis, America’s fourth largest city, as the cultural epicenter for the western world, and savored the remaining success of the American Gilded Age. The city received gifts such as the Jefferson Memorial Hall, the main entrance to the exposition, and a colossal bronze statue of Saint Louis, now placed in front of the St. Louis Art Museum, which commemorates the event that took place on the 1,300 acre expanse of Forest Park. The opulence produced during the late 19th century came to an end with passing of necessary economic reform, new taxes and social spending gave a majority of Americans a better life and the opportunity to own a house of their own. The elite fled the now demolished Vandeventer Place, and constructed new privately owned streets, Westmoreland & Portland Place just north of Forest Park. Their seclusion didn't last, increased mobility, with the introduction of the car and tram systems, took families out of downtown areas. Coal powered factories ruined the quality of life of downtown areas, those able to, took their ‘flight from blight’, and built homes of their own on the city’s outskirts. Rows of homes, nicknamed ‘American four squares’ (Photo 8), in the Arts & Crafts style, were constructed in every direction, radiating from the city center. The Shaw neighborhood, surrounding Tower Grove Park, Wellston, and Bevo Mill, to name a few, welcomed American and immigrant families alike, establishing America’s first generation of middle-class suburbs. This same practice took place across America, massively improving the lives of those burdened by the economic malpractice of the Gilded Age, but created problems of its own in the process. Did the Arts & Crafts movement remain faithful to its origins? There has been a hundred years of architectural advancement since the World’s Fair, and each decade since has come with its own logic and philosophies, which correspond to the form and function of its structures. The first of which, Prairie Style, was championed by Frank Lloyd Wright, while its intentions were noble and the work completed is remarkable, it set in motion a series of architectural abominations. Hegel defines architecture as man's escape from nature, the teepee or lean-to, was a recognition by primitive man that the materials of this world can be molded to suit our needs. Until the 20th century, mankind remained in constant struggle with nature, the ornate facades of neoclassic cathedrals and their maximalist interiors were a rejection of our animal origins. However, with the continued use of formal science and pragmatic economics, the Industrial Revolution firmly supplanted the human capacity to conquer the material world. In Wright’s view, we had gone too far in removing ourselves from nature. His focus was to blur the lines between the interior and exterior, to selectively incorporate what humanity had lost in this ongoing struggle, in new and interesting ways. One such innovation was the use of a floating cantilever, a technique which seemingly defined physics. Walls were no longer required to provide support for a building, this allowed windows or negative space to bring the environment into the interior (Photo 9). This technique echoed those used in our first skyscrapers, as stronger materials opened the doors to a new century of home design. For many of us in the 21st century the gimmick has grown stale, a hundred years of modern architecture has brought us back the problems Wright was originally challenged with. We’ve devalued labor for so long that no skilled craftsmen are alive to impart their knowledge on a new generation of architects. This is made apparent by our total lack of recognition of master architects today. Additionally, we have fallen into the unmitigated commercialization faced during the Gilded Age, which has put traditional construction techniques economically out of reach for even our elite. We are left to celebrate the same tired works of Wright and not much else. How can we? The works of today’s architects no longer outlive the designer, structures have become a time/cost analysis, and are only meant to live the length of its mortgage. Although I've used the two terms interchangeably in this essay, I want to make a distinction between architecture and a building. Architecture acknowledges the mental quality of a structure, it intentionally indicates how we think, move, and relax within its space, it is everything beyond which is materially useful, afterwich ‘beauty’ enters incidentally. A building relies on its function to define its form, shipping containers are akin to wasp nests, between these two poles is a spectrum of structures that are reflective of the attitudes and ideals held by those that construct them. A work of art strives for mastery over the material and creates for creation’s sake, all other labor is proof of our enslavement to the material body. Pre-modern architecture served our civic duty to enhance the environment for the benefit of our children. Now, we can neither accept the vision of a single person, nor collectivize to create works that inspire future generations. City centers are one of the few things available to the entire community, rich and poor, dumb and intelligent alike, it's a shared space that outlasts its designers, and serves as a passive instruction manual for those to come. Our modern buildings feel sterile and artificial. To many, a historic brick structure provides a sense of comfort but can this be explained without becoming nostalgic? The age of a building is visually apparent even if it's only recognized by our subconscious. New or recently cleaned brick structures are unsettling, the physical and chemical weathering a structure undergoes allows us to place it within our timeframe of understanding. For example, important institutions, such as city hall or a library, constructed from masonry, provide a sense of solidity in the ideas contained within its walls; the ivy creeping up its sides relate to our biological selves, and prove the institution will live beyond ourselves. Today’s structures seem to deteriorate at the mere thought of belonging to our earthly world. We see ourselves as a reflection of these artificial spaces, planned, predictable beings, available for consumption. The choice of materials in architecture directly impacts our senses, cedar can provide a peppery spice to the nose, its grain mimics the fingerprints that embrace it, and footsteps drum a rhythm to those who share the space, all of which is absent in an artificial box. Modern buildings use form and color to represent its dominance over nature by using physical and visual separation, its interior favors aesthetics over the comfort of the occupant. The once novel cantilever and steel skeleton now make up nearly every modern structure, defying the laws of physics man has been demanded to obey, this causes an apparent physical imbalance, nauseating those on the 70th floor of a New York City skyscraper or at your local McDonalds (Photo 10). The square footage we expect has outgrown our capacity to produce the necessary materials. McMansions grasp at every design feature to add interest to its blank exteriors, by reducing our architecture to a simple commercial enterprise it allows no space for ornamentation or detail. Architectural virtue is expressed by the details laid down by individual craftsmen, not only the planning or form of the structure. In these details the craftsmen build a memory of their presence that outlives them. Combined these efforts intend to enrich the lives of those who inhabit the space. Where are the civics? As evil as the robber barons of the Gilded Age are made out to be, they were at least civically minded. Andrew Carnegie published The Gospel of Wealth, in 1889, in an effort to encourage philanthropy amongst his peers, claiming the man who leaves behind millions after his death, will pass away “unwept, unhonored, and unsung.” Regardless of where he places his funds, for a man to die wealthy is to die disgraced. While he was hesitant to directly benefit his employees through increased wages, he worried the poor would become indulgent in their new found wealth, but recognized the need for community improvement. “The best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise; parks, and means of recreation, by which men are helped in body and mind; works of art, certain to give pleasure and improve the public taste, and public institutions of various kinds, which will improve the general condition of the people; in this manner returning their surplus wealth to the mass of their fellows in the forms best calculated to do them lasting good.” Today’s robber barons are dorks, unable to see the lasting impact they have the capacity to create. I would rather be ruled by those with a sense of taste instead of recluses who amassed their wealth by capturing the means of broadcasting. The elite of the past produced material goods, not digits on a screen and used their wealth to found universities, libraries and other civic centers, which passively benefit us all. Instead our urban centers waste away as the world becomes increasingly atomized and online. North St. Louis has decomposed into an architectural wasteland, the once thriving Gilded Age empire has collapsed into ruin. American citizens should be forced to tour its forgotten neighborhoods, the same way German civilians toured concentration camps after the fall of the Nazi regime. As a nation we must confront the atrocities we’re complicit in, witness the remains of our grandeur at the height of our success, not for the sake of architectural enhancement, but to rescue the people we have left exiled and abandoned.
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“History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes”- M. Twain, Missouri native, is the figurehead for late 19th century America, and his quote sums up my motivations for retelling this period of our history. Over the course of Dusty Ideals, I hope to unveil the blossoming phase of our nation, when its ideas were most impassioned and acknowledged by the rest of the world. Our cultural influence has consumed the globe, since the Gilded Age, but along the way we've lost sight of the ideals that made us so popular; coming into the 21st century, we struggle to maintain a national identity at all. Though our nation’s history is fraught with missteps and contradictions, we must look to our past to remind us of our collective pursuit.
What makes this time so interesting is its duality between the ruthlessness of unbridled capitalism, and the triumphant growth of a nation. Its citizens grappled with the mechanisms of life practically, and employed them most effectively in the accumulation of wealth. The people were materialist, ignored the idyllic notions held by their grandparents, which led to a civil war, and sought to construct a nation of both personal and economic liberty. The industrial economy, Gilded leaders and taxpayers produced twenty-eight consecutive federal surpluses, the only generation in American history to leave behind a smaller debt than they inherited. However, the Gilded was no golden age, it was, as the name suggests, a time of cheap commercialization and forgerry. Ironically, this is also when The United States reached its highest cultural and aesthetic value; the nation was not yet on the world stage, wholly isolated, able to evolve philosophically and industrially, for its own sake. Many of our American icons were composed during this period, including Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, the Pledge of Allegiance, America the Beautiful, Semper Fidelis, and construction of the Statue of Liberty; on its podium, a bronze inscription titled “The New Colossus”, inviting those persecuted and oppressed to flock to American shores for comfort. The light cast by her torch reaches across the Atlantic, bringing her liberty to shores abroad, the absolute symbol of American expansionism. The Gilded Age is set between the end of Reconstruction, in 1877, and the assassination of popular, two-term president, William McKinley, in 1901. His successor, Theodore Roosevelt, was our champion of the Spanish-American War, who embodied the adventurous spirit of frontiersmen and gold-rushers alike, the cowboy-politician made real. Roosevelt would go on to reign in corrupt industry and government, providing a ‘Square Deal’ to hard working Americans. His progressive domestic policies lifted the economic weight crushing the impoverished classes of America, however, these policies wouldn't have been possible without the direct subordination of lesser nations during his days in office. This essay dives into the ethics of nation building during the late 19th century, the opportunities we capitalized on to exalt the nation to a world power, and how our culture has swayed from the intentions of our written ideals. A hero can only test his strength against an equally capable opponent; during adolescent America this opposition would come from the failing Spanish Empire. At the time, Spain claimed much of the territory in the western hemisphere, making them our direct competitor in the expansion of American influence. During the 15th and 16th century the Spanish Empire focused their efforts on land discovery and acquisition, allowing them first access to new materials found in the Americas, reaching its peak in the early 17th century and lasting another hundred years. Their decline began in the early 19th century as their global territory became overextended, leaving them militarily vulnerable. When the American colonies gained independence from England they inspired others in the west, under European colonial rule, to overthrow their existing rulers. Spain became the main target during this American upheaval. Simultaneously, Napoleon was busy conquesting much of Europe, causing political and economic instability throughout the continent. The Spanish Empire could no longer suppress rebellions occurring oceans away when a war was being waged at the nation’s doorstep. By the mid 1820’s much of South America had gained independence, and drastically limited Spain’s supply of precious metals, which fueled its military efforts internationally. Additionally, Spain could no longer afford Florida, ceding it to the U.S. in 1819, and lost the war for Mexican independence in 1821. The political and cultural rot within Spain was proving to be too much. The empire was in peril, Thomas Jefferson forecasted the fall of the Spanish Empire in the 19th century and planned for the seizing of its assets. The U.S. had taken an interest in Cuba, it served as the gateway to the Gulf of Mexico, benefiting us both economically and militarily. We attempted to purchase the island from Spain on two occasions, both offers were rejected. Other European nations shared this interest, prompting the U.S. to give Spain an ultimatum, if they were to relinquish control of Cuba it can only be for the benefit of the U.S., backed with the threat of war. To put a further halt to European expansionism in the west, President Monroe championed the Monroe Doctrine, a declaration of intent to become a player in global politics. Passed in 1823, the bill restricted all European conquests in the western hemisphere, any military act would be interpreted as a direct threat against the sovereignty of the United States. This effectively made Spain our primary adversary in the Americas. In turn, the U.S. would not interfere with existing European colonies. Initially, the doctrine was largely ignored in Europe; the still blooming nation lacked a formidable navy, and needed to sort out its own domestic affairs. As the nation grew, in the 19th century, the Monroe doctrine began to gain validity. The bill set a precedent for western isolationism that would last until 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, drawing the nation into World War 2, its next test came at the height of the Cold War, ironically, during the Cuban Missile crisis. Middle century, the Spanish Empire was already in severe decline when a number of rebellions broke out in the Caribbean, and because rebellions are only failed revolutions, the Filipino and Cuban people began their fight for independence in 1895 & 1896, respectively. Rebel groups organized in Cuba and pushed Spain out of rural parts of the island. To further deter Spanish occupation the rebels took to destroying much of what made the land so valuable, its fields of sugar cane. They would rather see the land lay ruined than see it exploited by foreign invaders. This damaged relationships between rebel camps and everyday people. In an attempt to win over Cuban farmers, Spain implemented the ‘Reconcentration Policy’, a plan which called for the construction of small fortified villages to separate subservient farmers from militants. This strategy aimed to limit the flow of information and resources between rebel groups, divide the island into secure sections, and keep the rebellion from organizing and gaining trust of the greater Cuban population. Cubans had eight days to obey, those who remained outside of the camps were then considered enemies of the state and liquidated. Farmers faced equal pressure from the Cuban rebels, farms and homes would be burned to the ground if it was discovered a family was cooperating with the Spanish military. Life for the Cuban population grew appalling as families were either forced into these reconcentration camps, or shot by the opposing groups. By 1898 a third of the Cuban population was pushed into these camps, food and housing was scarce, famine and disease caused by the Reconcentration Policy, causing the deaths of roughly 400,000 people. Interest in the conflict by the American public was overwhelming; we sympathized with the freedom seeking Cubans. We had an incredible appetite for adventure, the conflicts were treated by our young men as the next Gold Rush, and was widely supported. The now wealthy and industrial United States sought to intervene on the Cubans’ behalf, aiding the rebels both financially and militarily, elevating tensions with Spain in the process. Spanish loyalists reacted by rioting in Havana, and destroying four printing presses that were critical of the Spanish occupation. In response, to protect American assets and lives in the region, the USS Maine was deployed to Havana Harbor in January 1898. In February of the same year, the USS Maine fell victim to a mysterious explosion, which sank the ship in the harbor, killing 260 men. The U.S. claimed a mine had been detonated beneath the ship's hull, a Spanish investigation suggested the explosion was caused by something inside of the ship, but the truth has been lost to history. The sinking of the USS Maine, with the sensationalized journalism of the day, sent the American public into a frenzy, demanding a retaliation from President McKinley. At the time much of the military power was held by the Congress, there was no federal military to raise. After the Civil War, the U.S. Army had shrunk to less than twenty-five thousand soldiers, and relied on the mobilization of each state’s National Guard, which swelled our forces to over two-hundred thousand. The people answered, nearly one-hundred thousand troops enlisted on the night of the attack on the USS Maine. Two months later Congress declared war on the Spanish, sending troops to Cuba to combat Spanish forces, and end the Cuban revolution. The Cuban revolutionaries were highly skeptical of our intentions with the island, fearful they would fall directly into U.S. control. To appease their concerns, in our declaration of war, we made it clear to the Cubans we had no desire to annex the island for ourselves but only fought on a humanitarian basis. Interestingly the Philippines and other Caribbean islands were left out of this liberty seeking resolution. In late spring of 1898, to further combat the Spanish Empire, the U.S. sent its Navy and Marines to the Philippines, to leverage a revolution that had been taking place for three years, a military advance done without consent of President McKinley. This forced the Spanish into a two front war, compounding their efforts to quell rebellions in both territories. The Spanish Pacific fleet was destroyed quickly in the campaign, after the Spanish failed to supply ammunition to their military, due to their territorial over extension. In August of that year, with the help of Filipino revolutionaries, the U.S. captured Manilla, Philippines, ending the Pacific campaign. After sixteen weeks of fighting Spain surrendered, signing the Treaty of Paris, ceding Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine islands to the U.S., and liberating Cuba, in keeping with our promise to the Cuban people. However, the U.S. almost immediately replaced Spain's position of authority in the newly acquired territories, sparking conflict with the revolutionaries who aided us in the effort to overthrow Spanish rule. Additionally, we feared another European power would come to capture the now unstable areas, this led to a U.S. occupation of the Philippines that lasted nearly fifty years. The American public justified our military actions under the ideas of Manifest Destiny, or ‘The White Man’s Burden’, in which the U.S. felt a sense of duty to enlighten and westernize indigenous populations, not only the American West but abroad. The racist connotations of these ideas are obvious, while the U.S. population felt it necessary to help these lesser peoples they became resentful when the discussion of statehood was raised. While the U.S. wanted to help these people, they had no business becoming full Americans. Soon after, the hypocrisy of our national identity, liberty, quickly became apparent. War with the revolutionary parties ensued, against the organized First Philippine Republic fighting would last for three years, in the more remote islands to the south, fighting with various rebel groups would last for fifteen years. Our drawn out fighting style is common against lesser developed groups, the industrial capabilities of the U.S. grants us incredible advantage in wars of attrition. The technological gap between the nations was obvious, like native Americans, the Filipinos were armed only with handheld blades, bows, and arrows, while the U.S. had graduated from rifled muskets of the Civil War, to repeating rifles like the Henry, Springfield, or Spencer. Shortly after the battle of Manilla the Filipino army understood they would not be able to maintain a direct confrontation with U.S. forces and resorted to guerilla style fighting. In our conflicts with Native Americans, settling the west, we developed methods to successfully combat these guerilla techniques Unlike the Napoleonic wars, which took place just a few decades early, warfare had lost all notion of honor, and military law was only written for European and American forces, they did not protect indigenous populations. The Industrial Revolution was an era of effective, pragmatic problem solving, this ethos was implemented in warfare, recognizing it as a statistical confrontation with life and death. Military success was reduced to quantifiable metrics, a cost benefit analysis. The value of human life, especially those of non-European descent were diminished to zero. New to tropical combat the United States’ borrow much of its strategy from Spain. Troops began to build fortified villages and walls to cordon off sections of jungle and island as secure areas, and curfews were established to differentiate obedient peasants from militants. We even paid Spain $20,000,000 to cover infrastructure the Spanish had built in their effort to stop the Filipino revolution. Our plan of action had become frighteningly similar to the Reconcentration Policy used by the Spanish in Cuba, condemning us to become the imperialist we sought to overthrow. Orders from military leaders shed all notion of integrity, allowing our troops to regress to the most barbaric behavior imaginable. As tactics became increasingly brutal, first hand accounts made their way back to The States, revealing to the American public the atrocities our soldiers were committing in the far east. “Last night one of our boys was found shot and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from General Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight; which was done to a finish. About 1,000 men, women and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger." - a soldier from New York state "We make everyone get into his house by seven p.m., and we only tell a man once. If he refuses we shoot him. We killed over 300 natives the first night. They tried to set the town on fire. If they fire a shot from the house we burn the house down and every house near it, and shoot the natives, so they are pretty quiet in town now." - Corporal Sam Gillis “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States." - Jacob H. Smith, Brigadier General These quotes, sourced from Miller's, 1984, “Benevolent Assimilation”, prompted U.S. soldiers to kill children as young as ten; any hope of moral redemption in this campaign was extinguished. At war's end the U.S. calculated their losses at 4,200 Americans and 20,000 Filipino combatants. The ambient death caused by the instability in a warzone is far worse, to be a willing combatant for your nation is an honorable position, but any victim of collateral damage is a tragedy. While the U.S. claims 34,000 civilians died in the conflict, international estimates range between 300,000 and a 1,000,000. Some sources state the democide, political cleansing, the U.S. took part in, killed nearly 150,000 civilians, 15,000 more at the hands of Filipino nationalist and the collapsed infrastructure caused a severe cholera outbreak that killed roughly 200,000 people, from lack of resources. Domestically, the conflict served as a proto-Vietnam war for the late 19th century, forcing the American public to question the ethics of American Imperialism. During the Vietnam war our success was calculated by the ratio of Vietcong lives extinguished compared to the lives of our sons, destroying any notion of qualitative success in the process. After the ethical advance fought for during the Civil War, the American public was ashamed of its atrocities in the east., confronting the United States with a critical moral dilemma, if our nation was founded on ideals of democracy and liberty, how were we able to ethically become a world power? This question has plagued our nation since its birth, having only 15 peacetime years in its 247 year history. The Philippines would become the first country to fall victim to a new mode of colonialism, American Imperialism. Under it, the ruling nation has no desire for the dominated population to conform to its customs or traditions, nor the gentrification of the newly gained land mass, their only requirement is to exist for the economic good of the U.S. What followed was a string of military interventions, carried out by the U.S. Marine Corps, in South & Central America. Private industry teamed with the Federal government to disrupt political and economic stability in the region., crashing the value of assets in the process. With exclusive rights to newly acquired tropical land, these companies established fruit farms and sugar cane plantations. Any threat to American assets, would receive retaliation from military forces. This 36 year stretch of conflicts became colloquially known as the Banana Wars; in 1921, the Small Wars Manual was published, a guidebook to American Imperialism. These aggressive tactics were codified, in 1946, with the passing of the Bell Trade Act. Written by Missouri Congressman C. Jasper Bell, the act set preferential tariffs on U.S. exports to the Philippines, fixed the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and Philippine peso to 2:1, and granted parity rights to U.S. citizens. The Gilded Age robber barons had set their sights abroad, Filipino resources could now be pursued with impunity, crippling any hope for the nation to gain economic independence, serving as the final insult to the isolationist intention of the Monroe Doctrine. This style of conquest would be implemented for the next hundred years, under the pseudonym of Military Industrial Complex or Neoliberalism. Though the United States gained significantly in its 19th century conflicts, it sold a portion of its soul in the process. The American Revolution was a confrontation with our master, the English monarchical empire, who we rejected and transcended, the Civil War developed the labor dispute further, reaffirming individual sovereignty, our nation’s maxim, globally. Finally, the Spanish-American War synthesized the recently divided nation, satisfying the master/slave dialectic, and ascending the U.S. to a world power. Spain was the necessary combatant to develop the civil solidarity needed to become a 20th century power, and by gaining possession of the Philippines and Caribbean islands, we now had the moral obligation to provide stewardship to these developing nations, committing us to the ‘White Man’s Burden’. Since the Philippine-American war resources have been reserved for those outside of our nation’s borders, distracting us from the development of our own nation, and entangling us in the customs and traditions of a global community. The ideals our nation were founded on are beyond us, from which, we’ve fallen short, creating a moral thirst in us that has lasted since 1898. What it meant to be an American was severely abused, for we could no longer state, in good faith, that our intentions were the propagation and expansion of liberty, but instead the works of an economic leviathan. The United States lost a large part of its aesthetic appeal transitioning into the 20th century. I consider the Spanish-American war to be the ‘golden hour’ of American culture, the feeling felt in the last moments of a summer's day, the moment the setting sun spares us from its harsh midday light, while stripping us of the day’s remaining warmth; a confrontation with the quickly advancing darkness. Its fading light seduces us into decadence, we indulge ourselves in what we know to be the end of a certain comfort and ease. While its citizens were conflicted by the moral hypocrisy found in this approaching darkness, our nation was showered with gifts from around the world, crowning the United States of America as the world’s “New Colossus''. This essay covers the emergence of culture in a community, the qualities that allow for its continuation and adaptation, and its aim toward the good of the whole, while serving the individuals that make it up. Language is the first to reveal itself as the building blocks of a community, only then can it subdivide into the family. Although families can survive individually it is not optimal for the success of our species, we must rely on the collective effort of the community for support. Together these families come to similar values and select leaders amongst themselves. These leaders are the personification of their language, and wield influence to shape their collective future. When a community grows too large to effectively trade and barter for materials using language they employ a currency as a symbol of inherent value. Money is more fundamental to the human project than written language, the first things written down were receipts for wages of Mesopotamian workers in 3400 B.C., and the Mesopotamian currency predates these receipts by 1600 years. Together language, influence, and wealth make up the three tenets of Tradition; we'll work to develop these tenets, understand how they reveal themselves in our community today, and use them to bring about positive change for ourselves and the nation. As always, I’ll start from first principles and move quickly to get at the heart of the matter.
The individual is initially thrown into an external objective world; the family introduces a child to the world and how it operates. Since the family is an extension of the community, the child is already immersed in the customs of a greater whole. A community builds relationships with each other and forms a common understanding of particular things-in-the-world. These things are viewed by a population in their average understanding, meanings and feelings are essentially handed down to us by the many. These particulars hold a more common understanding through closer relationships (e.g. families, businesses, cities, nations, & cultures). As a population grows more closely related to one another a pattern of discourse emerges to best reflect shared experiences. The individual incorporates themselves into the consciousness of the community by mimicking its communication. Thus, the understanding of experiences have attached themselves to discussion prior to what is being spoken about. While interfacing with the world, it has been partially revealed to us, and in turn remains obscured by the concepts we’ve previously accepted. We hesitate to accept the natural world as it presents itself, confused by the a priori concepts of Tradition, which obscure our immediate perception. The world only becomes real when we externalize ourselves through work, imprinting meaning on the otherwise random events of nature. Using work, an individual draws the particular out of the universal state of nature, realizing himself in the process, and creating value for the community. A blacksmith produces tools for carpenters and chefs alike, who use them in their work, creating a reciprocal relationship with intrinsic value. We initially confront the world as it exists physically, but come to realize its essence reaches beyond the material world. The community allows an individual to offload their reasoning of the world on its traditions of language, the State, and wealth, an aggregate of the common good they recognize. As the human species separated themselves from Nature they took on unnatural habits to distinguish themselves from what is accidental. Etiquette is unnatural and demands work and attention to maintain it, with it we break ourselves from animalistic patterns. We started by cooking our food, and began using utensils to physically distance ourselves from our animal needs. When we’re finished with the meal we push in our chairs to distinguish ourselves from those that don't. Picture the days of powdered wigs and valets, cultured individuals must become artificial, beyond nature, in order to master it. Social circles form their own etiquette to separate themselves from the ‘out group’, this continues to the level of nation, as represented by our habit of standing during the national anthem. By adhering to the traditional etiquette you aim yourself toward the community’s theological good. While the individual molds themselves to the demands of the tradition, they are, at the same time, establishing an immaterial ideal in the actual world, by making the abstract beyond a reality. The work one performs sheds its particularity, and becomes more or less a measure of will power. Particularity becomes powerless, its purpose and content strains to maintain itself as individual, and instead dissolves into universality. It is not the specific job you hold but in what sphere you contribute. The beyond will power aims toward is referenced by what is ‘Kind’ to it, a German expression which holds a notion of honesty, and good intention, or a ‘good of its kind’. Culture is defined by its ‘kind’ because we aren't capable of grasping the whole of its essence in a particularity, like wise, we’re unable to fit the particular into culture because it only reveals a portion of its entirety. The purpose and content of will power belongs solely to the universal substance, which the human project hasn’t been able to wholly define. One elevates themselves above others in the community by incorporating traditional norms in their lives. A natural hierarchy forms based on the individuals’ effort to embody the traditions they live within, subverting personal impulses, becoming educated in cultural practices, the sciences, & popular talking points. We use wealth to measure the degree an individual has successfully achieved this. The amount of wealth an individual acquires is reflective of how accurately they invest themselves in the community using etiquette and language. Wealth is the substance of an individual life, by virtue of someone being-for themselves. The individual secures wealth for themselves when the will power they exert is recognized by the community, this newfound wealth remains at the disposal of the individual. Currency becomes analogous to language, as it’s shared by a community and is for the good of the whole, while remaining in the sole ownership of an individual. Although wealth is immaterial and devoid of any intrinsic value, it is the embodiment of labor and activity of all. The individual goes to work for himself and in turn works for the good of all. When the individual spends his wealth he is distributing its good to the rest of his community, thus, by the individual being-for-themselves they are at the same time contributing to the universal good of the community. Wealth on its own doesn’t allow experience of the universal whole but is transitory, and can only be enjoyed independently. This human tool breaks down the barriers of language and personal influence, it provides a standard of influence across all relationships, becoming a universal good available to everyone. The community flatters the individual with money to show respect and acknowledge their place in the whole. Due to the self-serving nature of wealth however, it can disrupt the balance of power in the community and must be moderated through the State. The State regulates the actions of the whole, limiting and defining the essence of the universal within the community. The State is made up of individuals that subvert their own wills and desires for the good of the community. It is this universal will power made real, the absolute ‘heart of the matter’ in which individuals find their essential nature expressed through laws. The individual that plays a role in the State finds it to be stifling to their individuality, and relies on the wealth it provides them for personal enjoyment, or being-for-oneself. The relationship between these two positions, influence, the State, being-in-self, and personal wealth, being-for-itself, is what guides the community toward its theological good, for a healthy culture must be good for the individual as well as the whole. Eventually an individual climbs the social hierarchy using common language, and wealth, becomes the embodiment of the community’s traditions and is crowned their monarch. They are distinguished by name, the particularity of language, brought down from the universality of the many. Through the monarch, the State is drawn out of the abstract universal and is given a voice. A valued monarch receives the accolades of his subjects, financially and in flattering language. Although the title ‘monarch’ comes with negative connotations, it's a neutral term that has operated successfully for thousands of years. It has a number of qualities that make it reliable: they act as a unifying symbol for the community and serve above the level of partisan politics, its mortal requirement adds stability and continuity, finally, they serve as the locus of tradition, granting stability to a nation with rapidly changing demographics. The monarch’s pathology is removed by remaining monarch until death, if they do not serve until death, they reserve opinion and will to benefit their life outside of office, instead of acting for the good of the community. Our primary concerns come from the absence of democratic representation, however, monarchs remain beholden to a broader social network, who use wealth as a proxy for truth seeking in the same way their populace does. In fact, most successful companies that produce innovative ideas operate as a monarchy, e.g. Jobs, Zuckerberg, Musk, & Bezos. These operators focused their will power in an industry during its infancy, escaping the regulatory control of the material world. The state, who adjusts painfully slow to current conditions, for good and bad, have not yet made policy that limit the financial influence these few can aspire to. So far we have outlined the conception and structure of Tradition, how it becomes self-certain, and the positive qualities that can be drawn from it. Traditions confront an individual as a force of Nature, who clash against this monolith with the abstract quality of their mind. The mind, by its being immaterial, allows for infinite renewal, contrasting itself from the rigidity of the natural world and Tradition. The individual is the epicenter of self & other, irrational & rational, and pure & actual, the balance of these forces becomes the objective of life, its incredible scale threatens to alienate us from the whole of the human experience. A person develops their intellect by how they maintain this balance, coming to understand their relationship to the actual world and their universal self. The intellectual apprehends Tradition as an external object, understands its influence, and rejects the parts of tradition it finds disagreeable, externalizing themselves with language in the process. This cycle of renewal births Culture. It is because an individual can throw out all meaning, their influence and wealth, their recognizable use of language, and the option to show discontent for the status quo, the monarch, that allows the individual to wholly free themselves for their work, potentially staking their life in the process. It is the absolute inversion of the universal, of what we stated up until now, that defines pure Culture. These opposing worlds of Tradition and Culture are directly proportional to each other, and must remain mutually opposed to grant significance to the other and themselves. Tradition is the commonly accepted reality by the community, made real through laws, whereas culture is made up of particularities that struggle to maintain any relation to each other. As something descends into particularity, it becomes more alienated from what is similar to it, but increases in aesthetic value. This is revealed in the world of art, as works of art are subdivided into medium and genre. The ideas that dominate a nation are difficult to define, as they are lost in the abstracted universal between Tradition and Culture. Part II This Tradition/Culture dialectic takes on characteristics of the Master/Slave dialectic, which I’ve previously discussed. The master is found in Tradition which reigns over the community through the State, wealth, and language. Culture plays the role of slave, for it is the denial of tradition and the a priori influences an individual is immersed in. Culture is wholly reliant on a stable, well-defined tradition to allow itself the freedom to definitively break the rules that Tradition upholds. Tradition maintains its truth by the self-certainty granted by the community through their collective aims and motivations, demonstrating the master/slave dialectic. It can not rely on captive subjects for honest feedback, and is only tested when confronted by free and novel ideas. For this same reason it is difficult to determine when culture passes into tradition. It is this very opposition that forces ideas to grow and develop. Mardi Gras is successful in St. Louis due to the city’s strong Catholic traditions. The neighborhood it takes place in, Soulard, embodies the soul of the city’s heritage in its architecture of French row houses, providing a venue to act against the purity Catholic dogma demands. The holiday is on the eve of the Easter season, a time of fasting and meditation, a singular internal struggle. In response, Fat Tuesday is the celebration of gluttony and the other, we join our community in the streets creating a culture of our own in the process. Another example: The Enlightenment was a period of intellectual and cultural movement in Europe from the late 17th century to the late 18th century. It was characterized by an emphasis on reason, scientific method, and individualism, and a rejection of traditional authority. The Catholic Empire was the most dominant monarchy in Europe from 1000 A.D. until its dissolution during the Napoleonic wars in the early 19th century. The Enlightenment was able to flourish due to its opposition against the Roman Catholic Empire. It took a hundred years for the scientific inquiry produced by the Enlightenment to replace the traditions formal religion supplied us with, and may not be capable of doing so fully. When Nietchez stated, “God is dead”, in 1882, it was not a secular victory but the confrontation with what our highest aims should be. The death of God is a tragedy, the human race is now forced to exalt earthly ideals to what is beyond man’s capabilities. The truth is no longer found in something beyond, represented by heaven, which we can objectively strive toward but is imminent. Life has lost the Christian quality of redemption, and its cycle of rejuvenation. The ethic of redemption was poorly taken up by the scientific method, and used as a world building tool. We can only be disappointed with the condition of the world, for we are unable to strive for anything better than our current State. Without philosophical opposition a community collapses into a monoculture, who is unable to adapt and transform. The struggle comes when applying it to the person, as of late we’ve had difficulties defining what wrong is, or if it exists at all. Leaving our community to aimlessly search for something to codify our national identity. What makes the American project significant is our denial of the tradition of a monarchy. The American colonies distinguished themselves by rejecting English Imperialism, and substituting it with American Imperialism, a culture of capitalism, which optimized the accrual of wealth. The western community recognized the utility of democracy, accepted it, and paid tribute to the U.S. by recognizing our currency, using English as the dominant business language, and in favorable trades. Our largest material exports: fuel, industrial supplies and capital goods, can’t compare to the cultural influence we’ve enticed the world with; American Culture(TM) is our greatest export. The American system allows monarchs to still reign at all levels of a community, until they come into direct confrontation with federal powers, either militarily or financially. Additionally, we employ a panel of monarchs to govern the Supreme Court, where the rights of individuals are upheld and expanded. The late 19th century had a slew of billionaires that rose to prominence; Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, & Carnegie hacked the truth seeking properties of wealth and, during the industrial revolution, pushed it to an unstable point, resulting in the Great Depression, for wealth no longer represented material reality. The stabilization of these forces came with the election of President FDR, who ostensibly reigned as monarch for twelve years, and used his influence to guide the nation to security. He was neither voted out or stepped down from his position, but passed away as president, fulfilling the monarchical requirement for mortality. Post World War 2, the American ideal was a rejection of communism, and the fear of authoritarianism. Electing FDR as president for four terms proved we were okay with a functional monarchy as long as it served the population. It wasn't until the rise of the Soviet Union and his death, in 1945, that we used our democratic means to pass laws preventing an individual from rising to a dangerously authoritarian position equal to the Soviet Union. By doing so we rejected our former self, under FDR and the Soviet Union in the process. The Cold War served us in the same way the Catholic Church served the Enlightenment, an established tradition from which to repel. Culture itself can be restraining to the population it serves, for there can be no culture without counter-culture. Today, much like the plastics we’ve put into our bodies, either intentionally or accidentally, our cultural climate has lost all essence of biodegradability, it is ever present thus unchanging. The refusal of death and redemption has animated cultural abominations who don't allow space for fresh ideas. The constant production of movie sequels or remakes is evidence of this. The culture we’ve willingly accepted has stifled any opportunity for a reimagination of cultural possibilities. All traces of counter-culture are consumed by social media platforms and distributed to us in palatable amounts. What appears as a diverse and welcoming online world is only diluting the aesthetic value of any particular movement, sterilizing its effectiveness in the process. We’re trapped in a consensus reality, where media platforms have funneled our collective conversation into narrow talking points. Google, Tik Tok and Twitter deliver a singular world view, reproducing what was most successful, leaving us trapped in a cultural death spiral. ChatGPT and other A.I. tools continue to narrow our world view by further filtering our web searches, eliminating any possibility for discovery, and limiting our potential to the average web browser. Any attempt to escape these thought tunnels is difficult to broadcast and are used as circular reasoning to grow the authoritarian presence in the U.S. We know the human project is capable of more, and we are ashamed of our ineptitude. My fear is not that our nation dies of a Great Freeze, where individuals become so separated that we forget what unites us, but that by rejecting the tradition of monarchy, in 1776, we have set the stage for an even more powerful authoritarian presence, who because of our representative democracy, remains disembodied, making it difficult to identify and overthrow. I see the true cultural divide lying between authoritarianism and libertarianism. For example, the debate over trans rights: the Right uses the power of the State to restrict the rights of individuals, the Left uses the same issue to enforce language laws, denying the being of the individual. The number of Americans this issue directly impacts is diminutive, but it is being forced on us daily, from seemingly all angles, keeping us from issues that galvanize a nation. If my advance towards authoritarianism is concerning we must recognize that the flow of wealth to the few has overshadowed the voices of the many, and the control and domination of the populace, through language, is equally dangerous. Both parties are aimed at taking autonomy from the individual, whether this is by the elected officials or a monarch through a corporation. The political parties we’ve grown up with have dissolved into an authoritarian monoculture which lacks any aesthetic depth, full of those who parrot the necessary language to get elected for its financial benefit. I believe the solution to our cultural drought is increased polarization, both politically and socially. By increasing political polarization in the U.S. we will see beyond the particular issues and recognize the bad faith actors who seek to loot from the cultural and economic excess produced by individual liberty. We often say this is the most divided our nation has ever been, however, the values our nation were founded on survived a civil war, which was rectified by another American monarchical figure, President Lincoln. Though I don't wish for the blood of my countrymen, by forcing our current political ideologies to their logical conclusion it forces them to state their beliefs and stake their life in the matter. All political beliefs will inevitably face opposition, those that are afraid of this confrontation are holding our nation back. Political polarization challenges individuals to think deeply about their political values and leads to the proliferation of diverse viewpoints and ideas, as different groups articulate their own values and beliefs. This can enrich the political discourse and lead to more creative and innovative solutions to societal problems. The American Tradition is grounded in individual liberty, if we lose sight of this, an imbalance of power in language, wealth, or influence will take hold, squandering our capacity to lead our civilization toward cultural prosperity. Cultural rejuvenation begins with the freedom of speech, with it we learn and grow from each other as a community. “In an attempt to reconcile the disparity between the mutually opposed ideas the tranquil consciousness understands the good and true to be a mix and unison of wisdom and folly, as much skill as baseness, has as many correct as false ideas, is absolute shamefulness and also perfect frankness and truth.” - G.W.F. Hegel I've essayed Georg Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic, as described in his book, Phenomenology of Spirit. Probably his most widely disputed topic; it summarizes the interaction between two individuals in a zero-sum game, how they can best utilize their relationship, and what occurs at their disagreement. These ideas became the foundation of a worldwide discussion regarding the treatment of the labor class in the 19th century, after the emancipation of slavery, in 1863, and the end of serfdom in feudal Russia, in 1861. His views fueled a labor reformation during the Industrial Revolution, inspiring Marx and other labor reformers to reconstitute the power of the populace. This set the stage for a hundred-year ideological debate between east and west during the Cold War. These mutually opposed cultures took Hegel’s Master/Slave morality and applied them to nation building. The discussion is grounded in how two parties initially conflict with each other, and how the relationship stabilizes thereafter. I’ll start from the principle of consciousness and progress quickly to get at the real difficulty on the topic of labor and each culture's implementation of Hegel’s ideas.
An individual looks out into the world, reflecting on what's around them, and acts on the inanimate by inflicting his desires on them. The individual aims to legitimize his impulses by manipulating the external object, destroying the independence of the other in the process. Inanimate objects freely allow a consciousness to inflict its will and wants, becoming a tool in the process of truth seeking. The consciousness then takes its own consciousness in hand, allowing it to separate their Being from the impulses that move them, producing a self-consciousness. One comes to recognize the ideals within themselves and realizes them by living for-oneself. The mind matures to a superposition between, while being it, is also for it, as it interacts with the environment. The individual finally encounters another equally self-certain individual, who acts and behaves according to themselves. They are equally independent and self-contained, and initially cannot be manipulated as inanimate objects are. The two persons cooperate only after they’ve agreed on a task, and work together to achieve it, each realizing their own self-certainty in the process. This forms a fundamental reciprocity in humans, each seeks to identify themselves in the world, using the other, via negation. By recognizing oneself we recognize the other, while indeed significant, is also limiting, for we remain trapped in our own experience. We remain opposed while still being wholly reliant on the other. When myself and the other fall into disagreement the other challenges my self-certainty. I am forced to reflect on what I believe to be true; the trouble is, I can only be satisfied when someone external to me agrees with the truth I’ve posited, as to avoid any notion toward solipsism. This paradox of reciprocity demands the preservation of the other, while at the same time destroying their logic, and by extension their existence. Even as the other agrees with me, they are transcended because I understand their limitations, for they require the reciprocity of other self-certain individuals, and are not absolute beings themselves. During a conflict the two parties become an interplay of forces which exert themselves equally on each other, revealed by Newton’s third law of physics. These forces realize themselves in humans upon our death. One party must inflict death on the other to remove the negation that opposes them. In doing so, they commit oneself to death, due to the reciprocal nature of the relationship. To achieve genuine freedom, one must be ready to stake one’s own life, and because one values the other as much as themselves, they must seek the other's death. Formal duels are the logical conclusion of being-for-oneself. In this moment, the two extremes collapse into one another, into a lifeless mass, for their strength exists only by the repulsion from the other. However, in most cases one party bows to the other, refusing to stake their life over the conflict. The victor becomes master over the slave. Those that surrender are still capable of being a person, but aren't able to wholly express themselves in complete individuality, due to being acted upon by the aggressor, who rises to the level of master. They exist opposed to each other, one realizes himself independently, while the other is a dependent consciousness whose essence is to serve, be-for-the-other, a slave. The master uses the dependence of the other to manipulate their thinghood, realizing himself in the process. He sees what is unessential in the character of the slave, changing them, reproducing the truth of his self-certainty. This causes a struggle in the mind of the master, reaffirming the paradox of reciprocity. As a self-conscious individual, the recognition one gets from an independent self-certainty is what justifies oneself, the dependency forced on the master by the slave disrupts this self-certainty, granting power to the slave. “What the lord does to the other he also does to himself, and what the bondsman does to himself he should also do to the other.” (pg. 116) This struggle between master and slave culminates in the recognition of the ultimate Lord, Death. The true fear of death shakes both men to the core, demanding a stable existence. It is the recognition of death which disrupts everything solid and stable, hindering slaves from challenging the rule of the master, in turn if a master puts his slaves to death he ceases to be a master at all. Since death, or transients, defines Nature, the power wielded by the master, over the slave, is reduced to a force of Nature. The death of the slave reaffirms his being-for-self as they begin to bracket the natural conditions of their existence, typically using a form of stoicism to manage his passions and expectations. The slave’s self-consciousness forced back into itself will transform into an independent consciousness. The slave is then put to work, initially for the well-being of his master, but comes to realize himself through the formative activity of Work. By crafting a chair he captures the fleeting moments of his life, and incorporates them materially in his work, granting himself immortality, and at the same time producing individuality or being-for-self, transcending the master. The master becomes dependent on the slave, for a wage and his inability to reproduce himself materially. The master realizes the slave no longer belongs to him but instead for-himself. A healthy personal relationship is not a zero-sum game and shall be exempt from this power dynamic; in them, the other is treated well for-their-own-sake, not as a means to an end. They are viewed as art should be, revered for their own independence and permanence. Marx and other postmodern theorists perverted the Master/Slave dialectic by making power the foundation of every relationship. Instead, the ideal relationship requires an exchange of power at every level, and at every time scale, removing the transactional characteristic entirely. This indicates man is beholden to something higher than their will to power. In business however, man enters with the intention of producing capital; he objectifies himself, using money as a proxy for the fitness of his truth. A janitor acts out the duties of a janitor and is compensated as such. The executive, while morally neutral, is closer to a mob boss, his relationships are contingent on their mutual success, with the threat of his destruction at their failure. If the executive or mob boss becomes a tyrant he is overthrown, to the benefit of the footmen, correcting the imbalance of power between master and slave. We have seen this played out in populist vs. elitist politics throughout mankind, most notably in the east with the rise and fall of communism, which theoretically valued the strength of the slave more than the master. In contrast, the west valued the strength of the master even after the emancipation of slaves, while cleansing itself of the ethical nightmare of human bondage. The difference in the demographic of the dominated populations resulted in drastically different outcomes for the respective cultures. Born out of an agrarian feudal system, the newly freed serfs of 1861 had established cultural ties in Russia, structured families, and a reverence for the collective. They championed a populist movement who went on to centralize means of production and implement Communism. To galvanize a nation toward a common mission, for a population of millions with diverse backgrounds, was a massive undertaking, made more impressive during a time pre-mass media. Against their best efforts to include the peasantry, information on the direction of the nation was disseminated from a single source, producing a new elite class, an intelligentsia. Noncompliant individuals in a communist state are threatened with jail or military conscription, served directly from the hand of a master. Serfs remained tied to the land, as the lords who governed them fifty years earlier were put to death or exiled, only to be replaced by banal, bureaucratic ideologues. The populace failed by handing their collective strength to new masters, and their failure to course correct when they became tyrannical, unwilling to fully stake their life for every bad actor. Once the pendulum of power swung back to the master the destruction of the slave utopia, in Communism, was imminent. Its collapse caused the deaths of millions from forced labor and targeted famine in Eastern Europe. The American South is more closely related to the aristocracy of the east, pre-Soviet Union, than its northern counterpart. The west recognized the moral issues of the Master/Slave dialectic and staked their lives to free those held in physical bondage. The masters of the south were disallowed direct rule over slaves, giving them up to a more abstract master in the Civil War. Newly freed slaves and immigrants from poor Europe, are characterized by their displacement from cultural ties, making it difficult for them to collectivize. These marginal communities became the target of exploitation in the new economic machinery of the Industrial Revolution. These groups were corralled into city centers which lacked stable infrastructure, in factories with appalling labor practices. While the end of slavery is complicated with its inherent racial distinction we are still correcting today, the west made a massive leap forward by blurring the lines between the lowest social classes, allowing everyone to ostensibly become a slave, in a formal sense. At-will employment obscures the stakes of life, when faced with homelessness and starvation the choice becomes a question of preferred employer, not the direct reprimand of a master. Our not being able to point at an individual master in the west is a great success. The economic forces that keep individuals in the labor market have become abstracted to the level of a force of Nature. Status is not determined via social class within the community but by the degree we are being-for-oneself, through work, making the individual both master and slave. Looking back, our choice was between two evils, rampant capitalism and authoritarianism. Both systems subject human life to brutal living conditions, and both are subject to immeasurable corruption. In the west, revolutions at a national scale are handled democratically instead of a direct confrontation between master and slave. We have implemented safeguards, through the Bill of Rights, in the event of a tyrannical leader, but my deeper concern is that masters continue to gain power while descending into obscurity, disillusioning us as to who we should revolt against. In the last two hundred years, humanity has worked to increase the levels of abstraction between master and slave by incorporating diversion at every level of the business relationship. The modern corporation distributes the role of master across a team of administrators, who enforce a self-certain ideology that they themselves have surrendered to. The corporate ideology has been passed down from a committee who are beholden to shareholders, who use capital as a proxy for the fitness of truth within the US economic market. The administrator is subservient to a higher order, which they impose on an attendant, who acts in service to the corporation, performing labor for-themselves under at-will employment. Their relationship demands the two maintain positive reciprocity toward each other to develop themselves commercially. These determinations flee the historical baggage of “master" and "slave”, and are an attempt to bring the conversation into the 21st century, but fail to recognize the extreme gulf between the two parties as they behave towards one another. If slaves are philosophically powerful under the rule of a master do they lose their strength by integrating into society at large? Can the case be made that some marginal groups are better off remaining in the fringes of society to maintain their aesthetic appeal? This is a distillation of the ideas recovered from Hegel’s Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics. His impact is immeasurable, having influenced framers of western society such as Marx, Heidegger, and finally Baudrillard, who took us beyond Hegel. He is the grandfather of the term ‘zeitgeist’, which references a common feeling or aesthetic a community shares during a particular time. Art is the manifestation of these thoughts and impressions of a people across time, enabling us to piece together a coherent telling of human history, and its progression into what has come to be known as ‘post-modern’. It wasn't until Baudrillard, in 1981, took us into post-modern territory that we surpassed Hegel’s logic. Our focus will remain on all mankind previous to that, so that we may not lose sight of the scale of the human endeavor.
Hegel believes we became modern by first becoming sentient, wielding nature, and recognizing that it is our ability to build beyond ourselves that makes us human. Modernity, according to Hegel, begins in his time, around 1800, all men narcissistically believe the world is ending in their time. We'll follow Hegel’s logic to convince us why he was so lucky. Today we are tasked with understanding our appreciation of art, how it became so rooted in our lives, and how we use it to separate ourselves from nature. Artistic beauty stands higher than that of nature, for it stands separate and beyond which is produced determinately, according to the requirements of the environment in nature. Hegel explains the development of levels in art comprehension, which extend into the production of art itself. My feelings are that this comprehension extends into an understanding of life broadly, for a well formed life evades any formulaic process. A formula for art appreciation hasn't been calculated and tamed by the scientific process. The human capacity of plastic production is beyond the scope of the rules and regularity observed in scientific thought, for creative activities, born of imagination, are free from the rules and regularity in nature. Art is capable of representing divine ideals, unlike nature, which is bound by the laws of physics, the climate of particular regions, or the mode of biological reproduction. Science deals with what is strictly necessary, treating art in the same way reduces it to abstract simplicity, removed from reality. We must state early that, without the structure of Science, there can be no laws regarding universal taste, the themes of cultures from around the world cooperate towards Ideas beyond the barriers produced by distance or language. The beautiful transcends subjective feelings for taste is unable to distinguish universal principles, and the indications towards it in particular works. Man uses art as its tool to escape the formality required by nature, Dasein, being thrown into a super-sensuous world, looks around to find nothing one can relate to. He flees from the alienation of nature by externalizing attributes of himself, realizing himself physically, rescuing himself from the trap of immediacy through the permanence maintained in art, nature demands individuals, particularities, remain transient by definition. Art upholds a standard of fitness according to the concepts it aims to express. In immortalizing a smile in a photograph it grants permanence to a fleeting moment of happiness. In reflecting on the photo, man compares his immediate person against the happiness that once was. A smile can be demonstrated by a simple drawing with pen and paper, however, a smile is evidence of a uniquely human passion and can only be realized by one embodying joy. It allows for the recognition of an Ideal by determining the fitness of an image to its abstract concept. “Fine art is the reconciliation between pure thought and what is external, sensuous and transitory between nature with its finite actuality and the infinite freedom of the reason that comprehends it.(pg. 10)” This thinking does not aim to grasp itself as its particular form but to recognize itself in the other, “translating dispersed abstract particulars back into definite thoughts, thus restoring oneself.(pg. 15)” The realization of abstractions in art is the function of Spirit by virtue of it being a product of a thinking and contemplating consciousness. The Spirit is a concept not separate from reality, but intrinsically tends to realize itself. The need for self-production extends across other mediums, not only external things but oneself, their natural form and mind, the human spirit is evidence of this process. A cultivated person tends to realize themselves physically and mentally, displaying strength and discipline by practicing weightlifting and socially through an established career and network of like minded peers. Art is the revelation of the human spirit. What is Art? Art can not be made through natural processes but is realized by human activity. It was created for the pleasure of man, borrowed from his sensuous surroundings and addressed to himself. Art intends to excite the passions and emotions of man, one is indifferent to whether the effect is produced in the external environment or by other means, for the content of art is “all that finds a place in the mind of man.” A common objection to the lower status of nature is the argument that nature carries a divine right by being a product of the hands of God, whereas the works of humans are limited. This misconception implies God isn't capable of working through the hands and mind of man, instead divinity is in an operative mode within man that is appropriate to the essence of God. Logical ideas, thoughts, make up the core of the human mind, temporal only at the phase of spirit. Through art, God descends from obscurity and becomes a logical Idea, or Concept, forming a trinity with Nature and Man/Spirit. “A child's first impulse involves the practical modification of external things” i.e., they throw stones into a river, and stand admiring the circles which emanate across time and space from his doing. One relates to things using reason and logic to find himself in nature, thereby reproducing the inner essence of himself. Man’s consciousness is developed in two ways, first bringing his own mind to consciousness, by reflecting on works external to himself; secondly, by impacting his environment to strip the outer world of its alienation. This evokes a self-consciousness, an understanding that objectifies one's own Being, making it available to study. He satisfies his escape from the material world by producing works that are reflective of his inner being but wholly avoid a reproduction of himself. An artist is a craftsman which transforms the worldly into something digestible to himself, and in turn, their peers. Nature must be conquered before the production of art can take place, we do so by identifying what is beholden to us and consuming it, making an individual a mere concentration of the universal product they’ve consumed. Levels of Apprehension A completed work has a purpose in mind, although its creation is the free play of an effervescent individual mind, the work ultimately aims to translate a higher message. An artist lets their subconsciousness produce ideals out of universal validity, resisting the urge to self-edit, or unnecessarily injecting philosophy and intention into something that is to be ingested wholly and singularly. In our lowest mode of being man is propelled by the mere instinct and passions of his animal connection to nature. The mind recognizes objects in a purely sensuous apprehension, it naturally consists in looking, listening, feeling, and passive cognition. They do not open their mind to senses through the universal but in their particular being, remaining grounded in the moment. In order to satisfy his need for self-preservation he sacrifices, and consumes them, stripping the independence and freedom from it. This binds the individual to their impulses, he does not determine himself out of essential universality nor the rationality of his will but his desires. This aids in the distinction between natural items, trees to be used as lumber, or animals to be eaten, and a work of art, although art is often treated in the same manner. Taken further, if man objectifies the otherness of his peers, and acts through his desire, it can only result in destruction of the other. Desire consumes the whole being of man, so that he’s unable to separate himself as a universal being, separate from determinateness. His aim is to satiate the passions that immediately bore him, but by using reflection he begins to understand that his impulses are external to himself and open to manipulation. Art escapes practical desires of things in nature, for art is not serviceable to animalistic needs, and reveals itself to be useful in other modes. Art is an independent object one relates with as it appeals to the theoretical side of the mind. The reflection of art then reveals that its notion has the capacity to mitigate the intensity of desires. During theoretical contemplation one has no interest in consuming things in their particular but instead relates to them in their universal. All things outside of the self become alien. It is conceiving of things according to their notion, the universal which preserves itself in its particularizations, dominates alike itself and its others. As so, theoretical contemplation becomes the activity of undoing the alienation which has evolved from the notion. Desire isn't capable of displaying universality because the sensuous particularity can only be concerned with the individual. Theoretical contemplation invests itself in scientific inquiry by providing structure to the universal abstract, crudely quantifying enjoyment, and since science can only concern itself with practical inquiry, abstract contemplation falls to the level of desire. By transforming a concrete object into a theoretical abstraction it divests itself from the sensuous phenomenon that is the object. In contrast, artistic contemplation accepts the work of art just as it displays itself qua external, in immediateness, and sensuous individuality. Artistic contemplation cherishes the interest of the object as an individual existence and not set to work to transmute it into its universal thought and notion. Art must maintain the semblance of the sensuous, for if one were propelled by consumptive impulses they would work to materially or theoretically deconstruct through abstraction. Sensuous presence, while not ceasing to be sensuous, is liberated from the apparatus of material nature, thus the sensuous in art ranks higher than that of the immediate existence of things in nature. It occupies the space between the immediate sensuous and ideal thought. One must maintain that a work of art is separate from the subject but is instead for it. Art presents itself not for its own sake but with the purpose of satisfaction of a higher spiritual interest; the sensuous is spiritualized by it being a product of man. The artist must behave in the same manner as art, balancing between the element of sensuousness and immediateness. The genuine mode of production constitutes the activity of artistic fancy, a process of extruding consciousness but not contemplating oneself until it does so in sensuous form. At this point we have come close to the pinnacle of artistic contemplation but before productive expression can begin one must pass through the phase of espirit, or one who prevents the universal from emerging in his own life. “He may have all the main stakes in life understood, and maintain a substantive interest in what motivates himself and his peers but fails to apprehend this content in the form of its notion, nor is able to explain it to others in general reflections. He lives solipsistically, trapped in his capacity to explain his particular self and what occupies his mind to others. His imagination rests on his recreation of past experiences, relying on preservation instead of reflection, restricting the universal.(pg. 45)” In turn, an artist holds the capacity of creation of ideas and shapes, by demonstrating his ability to address the most profound and universal human interests in definite sensuous representations. Through the creation of art man externalizes himself, grasp his immediate being as momentary, and projects his thoughts and feelings into the future and into the lives of those who perceive his work. Everyone has the capacity to create art but due to it being an unconscious activity it takes substantial talent to attain art in its highest form. By aspiring to an artistic-life one makes plain to himself and others the motivations and attention necessary to form a comprehensive understanding of their life. The Ideal of Art Its content must be worthy of representation and should not be anything abstract in itself. The correspondence of the Idea and its plastic embodiment develop levels of excellency in art according to the realization of its Idea. The beautiful in art is not the Idea, which logic apprehends as the absolute, but how the Idea has been made into a concrete form fit for reality. The Idea must be defined in and through itself in concrete totality, thereby possessing its own particularization. For example, It was impossible to represent God as a total abstraction until He created Jesus, this developed into a Trinity of Persons into a One: Essentiality, Universality, and Particularity. The Christian God can only be represented in human form and man’s intellectual capacity, because God Himself is completely known in Himself as mind. How reality is molded into conformity with the conception of the Idea it's trying to develop, is the Ideal. The Ideal is not to be understood, any content may be fit to represent the subject according to the standard of its own nature, but it has no claim to the artistic beauty of the Ideal. Art is not solely a technical pursuit, the principle of imitation is purely formal, to reduce art to mere imitation of the natural world is insulting to the beautiful itself. These works fall short of an Ideal by incorporating a quantitative measure to its accuracy, and require superfluous labor to achieve the desired levels of mimicry. Quality is not determined by the defects in a work of art; defectiveness of form arises from defectiveness of content, for even defective art can be technically perfect, the ugly is a misunderstanding of a work’s concept. What is ugly is the result of superfluously abstracting a concept or an immature reflection on that which is ideal to the concept. Higher quality art holds the capacity to be contemplative toward sacred ideals. This pronounces that art does not contain its ideal within itself but is rooted in something beyond, making art a means to an end. The mitigation of passion releases man from his thrownness and becomes conscious of them as something external to him, towards which he must now enter into an ideal relationship with himself. Thus, the supreme goal of art is the improvement of mankind, it aims to purify the passions, not to simply provide pleasure and entertainment. Our method is reduced to an ought, it is not a direct representation of Idea as such, nor technical pursuit, but a good faith effort at the hands of an artist. Beauty is the unification of the rational and the sensuous, and this unification to be genuinely real. The universal and particular, freedom and necessity, of the spiritual and the natural, make up the essence of art. They come together not by denying its antithesis but by recognizing the other and forming a clear understanding of the conflict and its higher level resolution. Art therefore has the vocation of revealing truth in the form of sensuous artistic shape, out of the immediately sensuous and its inward abstractions. Women are more often the subject matter because it is in their character to combine the spiritual and the natural, spontaneously and immediately, an achievement of beauty. Art consciousness is developed by the expansion and reconciliation of the particularities of the Idea, a deeper understanding of a concept allows for a wide array of representation within a piece, and more concrete Ideas generate their true shape through a kind of imminence. Divisions of the Subject The content of art is the Idea, and its form lies in the plastic use of images accessible to the senses. Art along human history can be broken up into three epochs of creation, Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic. The first form of art does not possess individuality which the Ideal demands, it's a mere searching for its plastic portrayal, not genuine representation. The concept it aims to represent has not yet found the true form of itself, and therefore continues to struggle and aspires. Before written language, cave paintings described the available resources in the area through a semblance of the actual; buffalo and water were drawn into rudimentary maps to aid others seeking to satisfy their needs, not for explicit contemplation. This continues until the Idea is not satisfied in natural objects and takes to exploiting and exaggerating attributes to a level unrecognized in nature, introducing sublimity to representation, or going beyond itself. Natural objects are capable of interpreting the Idea because they contain universal meaning, but are only referenced through an abstract attribute; a lion is a symbol of strength. Natural phenomena and the human shapes are accepted, and left as they were, though at the same time understood to be inadequate to their significance, which is exalted far above any earthly content. “In spite of all aspiration and endeavor the reciprocal inadequacy of shape and Idea remains insuperable.(pg. 85)” Art comprehension graduates to the Classical age when the physical form becomes an appropriate embodiment of the Idea. In classical art the particularity of the content consists in being itself a concrete idea, and, as such, the concrete spiritual. Idea must search within Nature for what possesses free individual spirituality, and discovers it in the human form. The classical phase is the perfect conformity between the spiritual and sensuous existence. Greek mythology is the culmination of this artistic ideal of myths, Stoicism and the power to formally wield nature, the absolute limit of imagination in worldly form. Mythology adheres to the immediacy art should maintain, however, as we look back on the classical age we inject philosophical interpretation into its stories. Prometheus bringing fire to man is interpreted as the abstract gift of intelligence, instead of accepting the gift of fire as literal fact. Classical art fails by restricting the Idea to the human mind, not realizing it as a universal being, limiting the ideal to the human form. The Greek god is a product of incomplete ideals and limited imagination, therefore has the bodily shape of man. “The circle of his power and of his being is individual and individually limiting. It has attained the highest excellence, of which the sensuous embodiment of art is capable.”(pg. 86) If art, at this stage, is in any way defective, it is in art as a whole, in the limitations of its sphere. This limitation stems from the object of art being the Mind, a conception that is infinite concrete universality. “Mind cannot be represented according to its true notion, for mind is the infinite subjectivity of the Idea (pg. 87)”, and remains tied to the bodily medium as the existence appropriate to it. "Man breaks the boundary of merely potential and immediate consciousness, so that just for the reason that he knows himself to be animal, he ceases to be animal, and as Mind, attains to self-knowledge." If the unity of the human and divine nature is elevated from the immediate to a conscious unity, it follows that the true medium of content is no longer the immediate human shape but self-conscious inward intelligence. Spirit finally frees man’s inner world from his bodily form by unifying his nature with the beyond of possibility and allows spirit to pursue it, this development pushes us into the final phase of art comprehension, Romanticism. Romanticism is a byproduct of the “invention” monotheism, which provides an absolute that can be distributed to the many. Christianity, made available through Jesus, brings God before our intelligence as spirit, or mind - not as a particularized individual spirit, but as absolute and in truth. For this reason Christianity retires from the sensuousness into intellectual inwardness. The unity of the human and divine nature is to be realized by spiritual knowledge, or kinship with Jesus. Thus the new content, won by this unity, is not inseparable from sensuous representation, but is freed from immediate existence. The final stage of art is free concrete intellectual being, which has the function of revealing itself as spiritual existence for the inner world of self. It is this inner world that forms the content of the Romantic. Romanticism is what defines man as modern, allowing us to escape the bindings of an Essential reality, into spiritual human freedom. Degrees of Fine Art Not all art is created equal, it’s initially revealed in the maturity of the concept a piece of art attempts to convey. Though everyday items such as knives and forks are considered art, higher forms attempt to develop a whole world-process rather than some peripheral aspect of it, contributing more to the development of man’s (spirit) self-consciousness than the production, use and contemplation of knives and forks. Its status is also shaped by the limitations within the medium itself. Artistic comprehension that is grounded by desire is limited in its possibilities, its art is determined by impulse. Man acknowledges his separation from nature by recognizing his immediacy and developing a self-consciousness. Consciousness makes God its object, in which the distinction of objectivity and subjectivity is done away with and we advance from God as such to the devotion of the community, for God is living and present in all members of subjective consciousness. The community is the spiritual reflection into itself, and is the animating subjectivity and inner life which brings about the diverse representation of Idea across all mediums. These three modes of apprehension present themselves in the world through linear development. Fine art can only present itself to two senses, sight and hearing. Smell, taste, and feeling have to do with its physical matter, and by observing art in these ways the object is tampered with; art must maintain its independence through its permanence. Fine dining cannot be considered high art due to its explicit satisfaction of desires, relieving hunger thus destroying the dishes independence. Over the course of the meal its arrangement changes visually from what the “artist” initially lays down, putting its perception in the hands of the patron, all the while changing materially by reduced temperature or chemical processes within the dish itself. The physical senses restrict man to the material world. Architecture presents itself one step removed from nature, a structure pioneers a space for adequate realization of the Idea. Its form is more or less determined by the use of the structure and the materials available for construction. For what takes place within a structure defines its meaning, not the shape it maintains, though, the mass and space of a building is intrinsically connected to its value as a piece, in its immediacy. It is, however, unable to break from the laws of physics, nature, to develop new abstract understandings of the Idea, grounding it in symmetry. For these reasons architecture remains a symbolic art but within the temple individuality permeates the inert mass, while the infinite and no longer material mind concentrates itself and gives shape to the corresponding bodily existence. Sculpture places the spirit before us in its bodily form and in immediate unity with spiritual and the sensuous. It represents that which is solid in itself, not broken up or unstable but standing firm and singular. Its form must be animated by one’s content of spiritual individuality. Primarily through the human body, Classical art begins to take aim at the mind of the individual. At its highest achievement sculpture shatters into the multitudinous inner lives of individuals, whose unity is not sensuous but purely Ideal, later progressing into a common religion among peoples. God is the alternation between His unity with himself and his realization in the individual’s knowledge and in its separate being, as also in the common nature and union of peoples. “In the community, God is released from the abstraction of unexpanded self-identity, as well as from the simple absorption in a bodily medium, by which sculpture represents Him… He is thus exalted into spiritual existence and into knowledge, into the reflected appearance which essentially displays itself as inward and as subjectivity… God, through self-manifestation, is human passion, action, and incident, and in general, the wide realm of human feeling, will, and its negation - is for its own sake the object of artistic representation.”(pg 92) In conformity with the content of mind (God), art has transcended the sensuous external and is solely subjective inwardness. Media that escape the material, are represented by visual illusion, musical sound, and language; these are indications of inward perceptions and concepts, shared by the community. The visual arts are of the first order removed from the external world, the lack of operative heavy matter, like architecture, or the complete sensuous attributes of space, in sculpture, elevates paintings to the abstract or, for the mind exclusively. Paintings use contrast and illusion to produce theoretical space. Its range of expression is more diverse than the mediums previously discussed, the content of painting includes the whole realm of particular existence, the highest embodiment of the mind down to the most isolated object of nature, are available for representation. Mountains may be scaled down, spared from their fate of constant erosion and deterioration. Illusion allows for nature to enter the realm of art by escaping its transients, gaining permanence, while staying clear of all efforts of mere duplication. At the time of Hegel visual art had begun to romanticize, slowly exiting classical age thinking, individualizing God in man. This continues today, as artists take to canvas to present their subconscious as they fancy. Music continues to the next level of abstracting the universal. Music treats the sensuous as ideal, by negating and idealizing a singular point, indifferent to space, which was the soul focus in a painting. It relates itself in no way to the material world, but is capable of inspiring the passions in a physical way. Passions can only be experienced in their immediacy, therefore music must be enjoyed as its positive essence is projected into the negative space of silence, the immediacy of music is evidence of its temporal ideality. However, music finds its limits by remaining beholden to laws on the part of tones, their relation and succession. Poetry evades these laws entirely and is no longer sensuous but sign, as evidence of Concept or the Idea. Concepts find their notion and develop into Words as a community comes to an agreement on their shared experience, forming language. Community remains to be the aggregate understanding of God, or divine ideals. Poetry forces the audience to reflect on language and express signs in the full array of their notion. During pre-written history stories passed down in the community formed an adolescent form of poetry. The sound needed to express written symbols is merely symbolic, poetry may be reduced to letters which have no inherent value or expression of their own. This leaves more to the interpretation of the audience, and allows their mind to determine the content for its own sake. Poetry is the universal art of the mind, which has become free in its own nature, expressed exclusively in the inner space and inner time of ideas and feelings. Poetry transcends itself by abandoning the unity of mind and sensuous medium altogether, passing from the poetry of imagination into prose of thought organically. Artists reveal themselves at all ages but as their medium progresses it demands they develop a temporal consciousness of their own. An architect must attend to much training, as they learn to conquer nature, whereas a musical virtuoso can express themselves at a young age due to the subconscious element of their medium. Still musical artists express themselves earlier in life in contrast to poets or novelists, whose wordsmithing requires a deep understanding of language and demands a living of life to fully comprehend their community, or disembodied God. Genius is the revelation of subconscious talent through repetitive reflection, industry, and practice. Conclusion Hegel asserts humanity was at its best in the mode of Classical thinking, when we were individually limited in our range of interest and impact due to our apprehension of art being singular and whole. The human condition was accepted singularly and wholly, by recognizing we are the highest achievement of mind and nature. Humans have surpassed nature, with the advent of Christianity; the value of the material world has been diminished by our striving toward ideals beyond the material, in Heaven, in turn, opening the doors of Hell, by our failure to apprehend the Ideal in ourselves. Does this view change with the introduction of Existentialism or has Art come to completion upon entering the Romantic period of the early 19th century? According to Baudrillard, we’ve advanced into post-modernism by grounding our images in themselves, losing all frames of reference to the Idea and not allowing for the particular manifestation of an Ideal; the beyond essentially spirals into oblivion. Art has become its own monolith, a reconstruction of the Tower of Babel, a stack of lifeless corpses with the hopes of reaching for something that's already inside of us. |
Zachary MatthewsLiving among the ruins of a Gilded Age empire Archives
April 2023
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