Chapter V - "Heidegger's Philosophy of Art"

This chapter took us through Heidegger's On the Origin of the Work of Art, but in order to do so we needed to deal a little more directly with the "turn" I mentioned in my last blog. So the chapter opened with a brief review of Heidegger's major concepts as laid out in Being and Time before delving into some of the concepts laid out in his other works, and that would be needed to understand On the Origin of the Work of Art. The majority of the chapter deals with these overviews, before finally settling in to discuss the ideas regarding art themselves.

We are reminded that in order to achieve true, authentic existence Dasein ("there-being" or "Being There" in English) must tend toward Death, which is its final end. Being aware of yourself being thrown into the world and aware of your finite existence leads to this 'authentic living.' It means allowing Being to be open and show itself, which is at once a spontaneous event that is waited for, and a responsive event that is asked for and questioned. The thing to remember in the midst of all this complex philosophy is that "only Being can discharge openness" (123). That implies a necessary respect for being as well as an awareness of it. That is, remembering that it isn't YOU that creates or reveals this openness, but your engagement with the Other. It is this Other (Heidegger's "Being") in an active engagement with you that reveals openness. This is important to remember later when we circle back and discuss "revealedness" and "concealedness" creating strife in an art work.

Ferrara continues on to summarize how Heidegger was interpreting the works of famous Western thinkers (Kant, Hegel, Nietzche, etc.) "in an attempt to deconstruct the Western Metaphysical tradition" (123). In order to do that, he needed to backtrack a little regarding his own works, so he could break down a few false conceptions about him that his contemporaries and readers seemed to hold. In other words, if Heidegger wanted to move forward in the direction in which he wanted to go, he had to "shed the technical and manipulative style of Being and Time" (124).

When it moves into the overview of pertinent information regarding Heidegger’s theories on art contained in On the Origin of the Work of Art, things start getting ridiculously complicated. It was a dense, though fascinating few pages (and I must add this chapter was very enjoyable to read). He talks about Closed and Open, openness and spaciousness, spaciousness versus space itself, and the strife that occurs when Earth (the work materials) wants to close while the Spaciousness by nature Opens the window on to the historical/cultural world of the artist. It is this “strife” that makes art work, at the same time making an art work from an art object.

Heidegger uses two examples, a Van Gogh painting of peasant’s shoes, and an ancient greek temple. Regarding Van Gogh’s work, it is not the fact that it is a painting that makes it art. The “correct and factual representation” is not what matters to Heidegger in art, but the fact that the painting “discloses the being of the shoes” (129). Suddenly while looking at the painting, you can see the shoes for what they are and contemplate it, whereas when you are using the shoes or viewing them in their normal context, their “equipmental nature” hides the shoes’ “being” from view. The greek temple opens the world of the ancient Greeks, a historical/cultural setting that is now lost to us forever. That world is thrust forward because of the stone it is made of, the rock upon which it sits, the ways the stone has been worked. If you came across that same type of stone as a pebble in the street that you kicked, or a bench that you sat on, you would have taken no notice of it.

I love the way Ferrara worded it when he talked about how Heidegger “abandoned much of his earlier philosophical terminology and technical approach in Being and Time and moved toward a meditative and poetic stance” (124). I find it an interesting thing to note – in order to get his message across the way he wanted, he had to change the way he wrote. It reminds me, indeed, of art itself! Language, the written word is really just another form of it…if Heidegger were an artist and sought to present a subject to an audience in order to convey a particular message, it would make a major difference whether it was painted in oil or in watercolor, and whether on canvas or concrete. If it were pencil on lined paper the message would be equally different.

One of the things I loved was that comment, when speaking of how historical/cultural time-worlds are lost, it was said that ‘you can go back to the city, but the world is gone.’ I can’t remember now if that was mentioned in the reading, or if it was perhaps mentioned in class at one point. Either way, it stuck with me; it is so true, and something about that sentence made it very clear to me in very simple terms. I thought immediately of Vienna, and of Venice – two places where I felt particularly haunted by the past. “You can go back to the city,” yes, and it is a modern city entirely a part of the modern context. And yet the overwhelming relics that a past generation left behind lend an eerie, ethereal cast…their world is forced into the open before our eyes and forced to confront and interact with whatever is modern in the age of the present, ages who in turn leave their own relics, layer upon layer, like some kind of patchwork quilt or decoupage.