ABSTRACT
On a closer look, one can narrow this non-biological spectral body to the so-called anal object. Surprisingly, it was Hegel who first formulated its contours, in the chapter on “Natural Religion” in his Phenomenology of Spirit, where he develops the notion of the religion of the artificer (Kunstmeister), in which Natural Religion culminates and points towards its own sublation: after the notion of God as Light and the celebration of plant and animal as divine, where the object of veneration is something found in nature, subjects start to produce themselves the objects they honor (Egyptian pyramids and obelisks). 1 This artificer is to be opposed to the Ancient Greek artist (Kuenstler). An “artificer” is an artisan who is characterized by the two opposite features: in contrast to the artist's free subjectivity, his creativity is “blind” compulsion, epitomized by the Ancient Egyptian scene of tens of thousands people engaged in the building of the pyramid, performing it as “an instinctive operation, like the building of a honeycomb by bees”; 2 on the other hand, in contrast to the artist's organic spontaneity, the artificer's work is “reflected,” effort, not spontaneous outgrowth.
