Heidegger on Art and Art Works (Phaenomenologica)

PHAENOMENOLOGICA COLLECTION FONDEE PAR H.L. VAN BREDA ET PUBLIEE SOUS LE PATRONAGE DES CENTRES D'ARCHIVES-HUSSERL

99 JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS HEIDEGGER ON ART AND ART WORKS

Comite de redaction de la collection: President: S. Usseling (Leuven) Membres: L. Landgrebe (Köln), W. Marx (Freiburg i. Br.), J.N. Mohanty (Oklahoma), P. Ricoeur (Paris), E. Stroker (Köln), J. Taminiaux (Louvain-La-Neuve), Secretaire: J. Taminiaux

HEIDEGGER ON ART AND ART WORKS JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS

1986 MARTINUS NIJHOFF PUBLISHERS a member of the KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER

tt

Distributors

for the United States and Canada: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, USA for the UK and Ireland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, MTP Press Limited, Falcon House, Queen Square, Lancaster LAI 1RN, UK for all other countries: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, Distribution Center, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-22687

ISBN 90-247-3102-X (this volume) ISBN 90-247-2339-6 (series) First edition 1985 Second printing 1986

Copyright

© 1985 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, P.O. Box 163, 3300 AD Dordrecht, The Netherlands. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

CONTENTS

List of Symbols Used

IX

Preface

XI

PART I. Some Observations on the History ofAesthetics and on the Manner in which Heidegger Has Tried to Retrieve Some of its Essential Moments

1

§ 1. Introduction. Aesthetics: The Discipline and the Name

3

CHAPTER I. The Classical Conceptions of Beauty and Art § 2. Plato's Conception of Beauty and Art § 3. From Aristotle to the Middle Ages a) The Aesthetics of Aristotle b) The Stoics and the Eclectics on "Aesthetics" c) Plotinus d) St. Augustine § 4. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance a) Medieval Aesthetics. Aquinas b) The Renaissance

5 10 10 13 IS 16 17 17 20

CHAPTER II. Modern Aesthetics § 5. Baumgarten, Burke, and Herder a) Rationalism. Baumgarten b) Empiricism. Burke c) Romanticism. Herder § 6. Kant and Goethe

23 24 26 27 29

CHAPTER HI. Hegel § 7. Hegel's Aesthetics. Aesthetics and Art History § 8. On Beauty and Art in Hegel § 9. The Beauty of Art and its Particular Forms

35 38 41

VI CHAPTER IV. The Century after Hegel § 10. Richard Wagner § 11. Nietzsche's Concern with Aesthetics a) Nietzsche's Metaphysics. Will-to-Power. The Basic Questions of Philosophy b) Five Basic Theses on Art and their Implication § 12. Nietzsche on the Essence of Art a) On Rapture (Rausch) b) Rapture and the Form-Creating Force c) Art in the Grand Style d) On Truth and Art § 13. Neo-Kantianism and the Hermeneutic Tradition

46 48 48 SO 52 54 56 58 62 64

P A R T II. Heidegger's "On the Origin of the Work of Art"

69

Introduction

71

CHAPTER I. Introductory Reflections. - The Historical Context of the Lectures. - Their Subject Matter and Method Art. I. The Historical Context and the Character of the Lectures § 14. The Historical Context of the Holzwege Essay on Art a) From Being and Time to "The Origin of the Work of Art" b) The Epilogue and its Implications § 15. How Is Heidegger's Essay on the Art Work to B e Interpreted? Art. II. The Subject Matter and the Method of the Lectures § 16. Origin and Coming-to-Presence. Hermeneutic Phenomenology a) Origin and Coming-to-Presence. - The Question of Method b) Destructive Retrieve c) Phenomenology: The Method of Ontology 1. Phenomenon 2. Apophantic Logos and Truth 3. The Preliminary Conception of Phenomenology d) Hermeneutic Phenomenology § 17. The Hermeneutic Circle a) From Work to Art and from Art to Work. The Circle b) Understanding, Interpretation, and the Hermeneutic "As" c) The Hermeneutic Circle in Being and Time d) The Circle in Hegel and Heidegger

73 73 73 78 81 88 88 88 91 93 94 95 % 98 100 100 101 105 107

CHAPTER II. The Thing and The Work Art. I. The Ontological Question Concerning the Thing-Being of the Thing § 18. The Art Work Does Have a Thingly Character a) Art Works Are Things b) Traditional Interpretations of the Thing-Being of the Thing

110 110 110 112

VII § 19. Toward the Genuine Origin of the Hylemorphic Structure. Retrospect a) Equipment between Thing and Work b) Retrospect on the Critical Reflections on the Three ThingConceptions Art. II. From Equipment to Work of Art § 20. Elucidation of the Equipment-Being of Equipment by Means of a Work of Art a) A Pair of Fanner's Shoes as an Example of a Piece of Equipment b) The Illumination of the Equipment-Being of Equipment with the Help of an Immediate Experience with a Work of Art: van Gogh, Schapiro, Derrida § 21. The Truth Establishes Itself in the Work a) Reliability and the Hylemorphic Structure b) The First Characterization of the Work-Being of the Work: In It the Truth Establishes Itself. On the Essence of Art and the Artistically Beautiful c) Summary and Prospect CHAPTER III. Art Work and Truth Art. I. Some Essential Characteristics of Art Works § 22. How to Unfold the Essential Characteristics of Works of Art? a) The Art Work Stands on Its Own (Eigenständigkeit) b) The Coming-to-Pass of the Truth of Beings in a Greek Temple § 23. The Setting-Up and the Opening-Up of a World § 24. The Second Characteristic of the Work-Being of the Work. - The Unity of the Two Essential Characteristics a) The Making-Present of the Earth b) The Intimacy of the Battle between World and Earth Art. II. The Coming-to-Pass of the Truth in the Work of Art § 25. Heidegger's Conception of the Essence of Truth § 26. Truth as Correspondence and Truth as Non-Concealment. Truth and Work a) Truth as Non-Concealment b) The Strife between Truth and Untruth and the Battle between World and Earth. The Beautiful versus the True c) From Work and Truth to Truth and Art CHAPTER IV. Truth and Art Art. I. Artistic Production. The Work as Having-Been-Produced § 27. Artistic Production and the Clearing of the Openness in the Work a) Toward the Essence of Artistic Production b) The Establishment of the Clearing of the Openness of the Truth in the Work

118 118 122 125 125 125 127 132 132 134 135

138 138 138 141 144 149 149 154 155 155 163 163 165 166

168 168 168 171

VIII § 28. The Coming-to-Pass of the Truth Is Fixed as Gestalt. Having-BeenProduced a) The Coming-to-Pass of Non-Concealment Becomes Fixed as Gestalt b) Having-Been-Produced Is an Integral Aspect of the Work of Art Art. II. The Art Work Is to Be Kept in the Truth § 29. Art Works Are to Be Preserved a) Preservation as the Standing within the Coming-to-Pass of the Truth b) Preservation and Experiencing Works of Art § 30. Once More the Thingly Character of the Work a) From the Thingly Character to the Earthy Character of the Work b) Why Does the Thing Belong to the Earth?

174 174 177 179 179 179 182 183 183 184

CHAPTER V. On the Essence of Art. Its Coming-to-Presence and Its Abidance § 31. Toward the Essence of Art a) Art as the Origin of the Work, the Artist, and the Preserver b) Poetizing Is the Essence of Art c) The Essence of Art, Language, and Truth § 32. On the Coming-to-Presence of Poetizing a) Poetizing as the Originating, Founding, and Granting Institution of the Truth b) Art as Original Leap (Ur-Sprung) §33. On Thinking and Poetizing § 34. The Relevance of these Reflections for Contemporary Art Conclusion: Heidegger on Art

190 192 194 202 209

Notes

211

Bibliography

231

Index

239

186 186 187 188 190

LIST OF SYMBOLS USED

1. Works by Heidegger ED EM FD FW G GP GR HB HD HW ID KPM LFW ML N P PG SD SF SG SU SZ TuK US VA W WD WG WM WmF

Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens Einführung in die Metaphysik Die Frage nach dem Ding Der Feldweg Gelassenheit Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie Grundbegriffe Brief über den "Humanismus" Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung Holzwege Identität und Differenz Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz Nietzsche "Vom Wesen und Begriff der Phusis" Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs Zur Sache des Denkens Zur Seinsfrage Der Satz vom Grund Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität Sein und Zeit Die Technik und die Kehre Unterwegs zur Sprache Vorträge und Aufsätze Wegmarken Was heisst Denken? Vom Wesen des Grundes Was ist Metaphysik? Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit

X WP WW

Was ist das - die Philosophie? Vom Wesen der Wahrheit 2. Works on Heidegger

FvH F.-W. von Herrmann, Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst WBH W. Biemel, Martin Heidegger. An Illustrated Study WRH W.J. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought

PREFACE

This book grew from a series of lectures presented in 1983 in the context of the Summer Program in Phenomenology at The Pennsylvania State University. For these lectures I made use of notes and short essays which I had written between 1978 and 1982 during interdisciplinary seminars on Heidegger's later philosophy in general, and on his philosophy of language and art in particular. The participants in these seminars consisted of faculty members and graduate students concerned with the sciences, the arts, literature, literary criticism, art history, art education, and philosophy. On both occasions I made a special effort to introduce those who did not« yet have a specialized knowledge of Heidegger's philosophy, to his later way of thinking. In this effort I was guided by the conviction that we, as a group, had to aim for accuracy, precision, clarity, faithfulness, and depth, while at the same time taking distance, comparing Heidegger's views with ideas of other philosophers and thinkers, and cultivating a proper sense of criticism. Over the years it has become clear to me that among professional philosophers, literary critics, scholars concerned with art history and art education, and scientists from various disciplines, there are many who are particularly interested in "Heidegger's philosophy of art". I have also become convinced that many of these dedicated scholars often have difficulty in understanding Heidegger's lectures on art and art works. This is'understandable. It is wellknown by now that Heidegger's later philosophy; to which his reflections on art and.art works belong, are very difficult, indeed, and that they perhaps belong to the most difficult works in philosophy ever written. Secondly, those who are familiar with philosophical aesthetics and its history know that virtually all philosophical works on art and art works are often difficult to understand, simply because it appears not to be easy to speak about art and art works in a manner which truly says something important about art; at any rate, in my opinion the works on aesthetics by Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche are not easily understood either. Finally, Heidegger usually assumes that his audience already has a broad and deep knowledge of the history of philosophy, literature, art history, etc.; yet due to the enormous expansion of knowledge over the past hundred years, and because of changes in our entire

XII educational "system", such knowledge can no longer be universally assumed today. It is for this reason that I have made a serious effort here first to place Heidegger's reflections on art in their proper historical context (Part I) and to explain his own conception of the essence of art as clearly and faithfully as possible (Part II). As for the latter, I have also discussed briefly the most important ideas of Heidegger's fundamental ontology (Being and Time) as well as some ideas of his later philosophy (world, truth, Being, etc.), insofar as they appear to be immediately relevant to his "philosophy of art". Heidegger has concerned himself with art and art works on several occasions. The best known treatises on art and art works are the following: 1) the series of three lectures, entitled "The Origin of the Work of Art" (1935); 2) the lecture course "The Will to Power as Art" (1936-1937); 3) Heidegger's meditations on and elucidations of the poems by Hölderlin, Rilke, George, and Trakl (19361959); and 4) his lecture on the origin of art, delivered in Athens in April of 1967.' In this book I shall focus mainly on "The Origin of the Work of Art". For the other essays, lectures, and lecture courses I must refer to some of my other publications. Yet, as I have said already, in order to make Heidegger's position outlined in the three lectures mentioned more understandable, I have made an effort to place Heidegger's reflections in their proper historical and ontological perspectives, and have added from other works what seemed to be relevant to my main goal, namely, to give the reader a clear, concise, and responsible account of Heidegger's conception of art and art works.2 As for Part I, in my brief overview of various aesthetic theories of the past I have tried to do for Heidegger what Heidegger himself has done for Nietzsche, that is to mention briefly those details of the history of aesthetics, which are directly relevant to a proper understanding of Heidegger's own conception. In so doing, however, I have used Heidegger's own account of this history to the degree that this is available to us today. For those periods of the history of aesthetics, not explicitly discussed by Heidegger, I have made use of other sources. But even here I have tried to follow the "spirit" of Heidegger's own approach. Thus instead of in those instances trying to give the reader a systematic account of the origin, development, and history of "aesthetics", I have dwelled only on those events and issues that are important to understand Heidegger's conception of art, as well as the ideas of those authors from whose works Heidegger himself takes his point of departure, and whose conception he himself critically discusses; the latter is true particularly for the aesthetic theories of Plato, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. In this historical part I have made use mainly of Heidegger's Nietzsche lectures, particularly of those from the Winter semester of 1936-1937 which, as was said already, were devoted to "Will to Power as Art". In these lectures Heidegger made a number of historical remarks of great importance (on six major periods in the history of aesthetics, on Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, Wagner, and obviously Nietzsche himself)3 on which I have relied heavily in this part of the present book. Yet for the third period of art history distinguished by

XIII Heidegger and for the period after 1830, as well as for the period between Plato and Baumgarten, I have used ideas of Tatarkiewicz, Kuhn, Gilbert, Dilthey, and Gadamer.4 Here the reader will wonder why I thought it to be important to add from the history of aesthetics certain periods not mentioned by Heidegger himself. There were two important reasons which have led me to the decision to include a few brief remarks on Aristotle, the Stoa, Plotinus, St. Augustine, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and on modern and contemporary aesthetics. First of all in part I, I was not trying (as Heidegger's intention was in his Nietzsche volumes) to introduce the reader to the thought of Nietzsche; rather it was my intention to provide him with the kind of information that may be helpful in understanding Heidegger's own position. Secondly, we shall see that Heidegger's own position was deeply influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche and not, as some might have expected, by Kant. To explain Nietzsche's position in regard to the aesthetics of "Platonism" as well as to explain the origin of the aesthetics of Kant on the one hand and that of Hegel on the other, it appeared necessary to say something about the other periods mentioned. It should be noted, however, that here I have limited myself to what I think is indispensable for a proper understanding of what Heidegger tries to accomplish in his reflections on the essence of art. As for Part II, generally speaking, I have focused mainly on the three lectures, entitled "The Origin of the Work of Art". First I have made an effort to structure the text and to divide it into a small number of sections. In so doing, I have made extensive use of the excellent commentary on these lectures by F.-W. von Herrmann.5 Secondly, in each section I have provided the reader with a paraphrase of Heidegger's text in which I have aimed first and foremost at achieving accuracy, clarity, and completeness. Thus in each case I have followed the text as closely as possible, even though I have not tried to translate Heidegger's text. By the way, I find Hofstadter's translation excellent and, thus, do not mean to suggest here that my paraphrase should be taken as a replacement or substitute for the official translation; rather my paraphrase is meant to clarify Heidegger's original text, i.e., the German as well as the English text. As everyone knows a translator often has to cope with very important and difficult problems, about which someone who merely is concerned with giving a paraphrase, does not have to worry. Contrary to the case of the translator,,the one who gives a paraphrase can add to the text, omit certain passages, make minor changes, elaborate, summarize, and explain. Where I have quoted Heidegger literally I have indicated this in the usual manner with quotation marks. As a rule I have then used the translation by Hofstadter, but I have had access also to an unpublished translation made by Zygmunt Adamczewski. In many instances I had to adapt the existing translations to the terminology used in this book, which to a very high degree has been derived from Richardson's book on Heidegger.6 Thirdly, in each section I have added reflections taken from Heidegger's other works, from commentators such as von Herrmann,

XIV Biemel, Birault, Richardson, Taminiaux, Gadamer, Derrida, and others, or taken from other sources, including ideas of my own, which I thought could help the reader understand Heidegger's text. And as I have indicated already, the readers for which this book is meant primarily are not the very few specialists in Heidegger's philosophy, but rather those philosophers, literary critics, art historians, art educators, and scientists who, although they may not be "specialists" in Heidegger's philosophy, have come to the conviction that Heidegger has some very important things to say about the origin of the work of art and particularly about the manner in which art comes-to-presence and abides. A few sections contained in this book appeared on a slightly different form in two of my other publications on Heidegger. Thus I wish to thank the publishers for their kind permission to make use of parts of the following sections of these books: "On the Essence of Truth", from On the Truth of Being. Reflections on Heidegger's Later Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 6-15; "Destructive Retrieve and Hermeneutic Phenomenology", from Heidegger and Science. Toward a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of the Sciences (Washington D.C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1985), section 6. The Pennsylvania State University

Joseph J. Kockelmans

PARTI Some Observations on the History of Aesthetics and on the Manner in Which Heidegger Has Tried to Retrieve Some of its Essential Moments

3

,§ 1. Introduction. Aesthetics: The Discipline and the Name

Heidegger explains in a brief essay, "Six Basic Developments in the History of Aesthetics" (1936),' that the term "aesthetics" is formed in the same way as the terms "logic" and "ethics". To understand these terms one must always add the word epistimi, knowledge. Thus logiki epistimi means the knowledge of logos, the doctrine of judgment as the basic form of thought, the doctrine of the form and rules of thought. Ethiki epistimi means knowledge of ethos, the doctrine of the inner character of man and of the way in which it determines his actions. Thus both logic and ethics refer to man's behavior and its lawfulness. Aisthitiki epistimi, correspondingly, means the doctrine of human behavior with respect to sensations and feelings and the knowledge of how these are to be determined.2 Yet this term is of much later origin. Since time immemorial it has been said in the West that thinking is "determined" by the truth, whereas the character and the behavior of man are "determined" by the. good. On the other hand, it was assumed that man's feelings are "determined" by the beautiful. Thus the true, the good, and the beautiful constitute the objects of logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Aesthetics is the study of man's state of feeling in regard to the beautiful and it is the consideration of the beautiful insofar as this is.related to man's state of feeling. By the beautiful one means here nothing other than that which, by showing itself, brings forth this state, Since the beautiful pertains either to nature or to art, aesthetics must concern itself with both the beautiful in nature and the beautiful brought forth by the fine arts. Yet usually aesthetics is taken to be that kind of consideration of the fine arts in which man's affinity to the beautiful presented by the arts sets the standard for all definitions and explanations concerning the beautiful. In these considerations man's state of feeling is both the point of departure and the telos of the investigation. Art works flow from certain feelings and are supposed to evoke feelings. Since in aesthetics the art work is defined as the beautiful that has been brought forth in the fine arts, the work is presented there as the bearer of the beautiful as well as that which provokes the beautiful with relation to the state of feeling on the part of the maker and the observe>*But in both cases the art work is posited as an "object" for a "subject". Thus the subject-object relation

4

is constitutive for all aesthetic considerations; and in this case this relation is one of feeling. The work becomes an object in regard to that dimension which is accessible to man's "lived experiences".3 Just as the term "logical" refers to that form of behavior which satisfies the laws of thought, in the same way the term "aesthetics" refers to what is determined by the state of feeling as aroused by the beautiful. Thus here, too, a designation which originally was meant to refer to some kind of examination and investigation with respect to our feelings, is now applied to this kind of behavior itself.4 The name "aesthetics" used to refer to meditations on art and the beautiful, is of recent origin; it was used for the first time in the 18th century. Yet although the name is of recent origin, the matter which it names is as old as meditations on the beautiful and on art in Western thinking. Philosophical meditations on the essence of the beautiful and the arts even began as aesthetics. Today many people believe that all the aesthetic considerations and all the investigations into art and the beautiful have really achieved nothing insofar as they have contributed virtually nothing to artistic creativity and have helped virtually nobody to gain access to art and to appreciate it. According to Heidegger it may be the case that this is indeed true for most contemporary investigations concerning art and the beautiful; yet, in his view, one cannot generalize this and apply it to all considerations of this kind. For whether and how an epoch adopts a stance toward art of an aesthetic nature, and in so doing is committed to an aesthetics, is decisive for the way art shapes the history of that epoch.5 In order to characterize the essence of aesthetics, its role and function in Western thought, and its relation to the entire history of the West in greater detail, it is perhaps important to describe briefly the most significant basic developments in the history of aesthetics.

CHAPTER I. THE CLASSICAL CONCEPTION OF BEAUTY A N D ART

The Greeks had magnificent works of art, but they never developed an aesthetics in the modern sense. In Heidegger's view, this does not mean that the Greeks just wallowed in a murky brew of "lived experiences" which were supported neither by knowledge nor by concepts. "On the contrary, they had such an originally mature and luminous knowledge, such a passion for knowledge, that in their luminous state of knowing they had no need of 'aesthetics' ".6 It is of some importance to note here that Heidegger does not mention the Pythagoreans at all. Yet since antiquity many ideas about beauty and the arts have been attributed to Pythagoras and his school. As is well known, and this very fact may well have been one of the reasons why Heidegger did not mention them, the Pythagoreans had a great interest in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and "music". It has been said many times that they learned to conceive of the essence of things in terms of proportions. From this they were led to speculations about the relationship between beauty and harmony, and about the function of proper proportions in art works. Yet according to both philosophers and science historians, very little is known with certainty about these doctrines of the Pythagoreans. Furthermore, we have no direct, textual evidence of their conceptions about beauty and art. Yet it is nonetheless the case that many ideas about the relationship between beauty, harmony, and proportion were somehow influenced by Pythagorean ideas;7

§ 2. Plato's Conception of Beauty and Art According to Heidegger, aesthetics, in the sense of the critical and systematic reflection on beauty and art, began in Greece at that moment when their great art and the great philosophy thatflourishedat the same time, came to an end. During the age of Plato and Aristotle, in connection with the organization of philosophy for educational purposes, those basic concepts were developed which set the boundaries for all future inquiry into art. One of these basic notions is the conceptual pair of matter and form, huli and morphi, even though these notions were at first not yet used in reflections on art, as we shall

6 see later. Be this as it may, this distinction has its origin in Plato's conception according to which beings are to be conceived of with respect to their outer appearance (eidos, idea). When beings are comprehended as beings and, thus, distinguished from all other beings with regard to their outer appearance, the articulation and demarcation of beings in terms of outer and inner limits becomes important. Now for Plato, what limits is form, and what is limited is matter. When a work of art is experienced and shows itself (phainesthai) according to its eidos, it too can then be articulated with the help of these basic concepts. The beautiful is for Plato the ekphanestaton, that which shows itself properly as the most radiant of all. By way of the idea, the work of art appears here thus under the name of the beautiful, taken as the ekphanestaton.9 In addition to the concepts of matter and form Plato also uses the term techni to speak about art. This term is for us today very difficult to understand. First of all, the Greeks used the term to refer to art as well as to handicraft. Secondly, we tend to understand the word to refer to a mode of production. Finally, we project into the idea all kinds of notions which have their origin in modern technicity. For the Greeks techni is to be understood from phusis which is the concept that properly counters it. Phusis is the first Greek name for the beings themselves and for the beings taken as a whole. The being is that which flourishes on its own without in any sense being compelled; it is that which rises and comes forward, and goes back again into itself, and passes away. Now if man tries to gain a foothold among beings (phusis) and proceeds to master them in one way or another, then his advance against them is guided by a knowledge of them which is called techni. Originally the word did not have the connotation of making something or producing something; rather it designated that kind of knowledge which supports every human concern in the midst of beings. Techni therefore often just meant human knowledge without any further qualification. Yet techni also was used for the kind of knowledge that guides humans when they produce something, utensils as well as works of art. But even in that case the word techni did not mean the making or the producing as such; it meant then, too, the knowledge which guides man in so doing. And since the making of utensils and the production of art works, each in its own way, was an inherent element of the immediate, everyday life, techni eventually came to mean the knowledge which guides these procedures in a privileged way. Then the artist, too, is called a technites, not because he is a handworker, but "because the bringing-forth of art works as well as utensils is an irruption by the man who knows and who goes forward in the midst of phusis and upon its basis".9 In Aristotle the word received already a more specific meaning; yet here too it is still primarily a way of knowing.10 It is not impossible to take the term "art" in the same broad sense in which the Greeks originally understood the word "techni". Usually, however, we reserve the word today for the production of beautiful things. Furthermore, reflections and meditations on art usually diverted via the beautiful into the realm of aesthetics. Heidegger concludes these reflections by saying that these remarks obviously

7 do not do justice to the rich themes touched upon here. In particular, it is impossible to show here how the distinction of matter and form which originated in the discussion about the manufacturing of tools and utensils, was later transferred and applied to the realm of the fine arts." Yet before moving on to a third period in the history of art we must dwell for a moment on an important aspect of Plato's conception of art. Heidegger tells us here first that for Plato art is mimesis. In the Republic Plato describes mimisis as copying, i.e., as producing or presenting something in a manner which is characteristic of something else. In his effort to explain what he means by mimisis Plato refers to a multiplicity of the "same" utensils, all made on the basis of one basic idea (eidos, idea). There may be many tables which are all made according to one and the same basic idea. If we are confronted with this multiplicity we "are accustomed to posing to ourselves [letting lie before us] one eidos, only one of such kind for each case, in relation to the cluster of those many things to which we ascribe the same name".12 In Heidegger's view, eidos does not mean here concept, but merely the outward appearance of something. In its outward appearance, each concrete thing does not come into presence in its individuality and particularity, but rather as that which it is. By means of its outward appearance a thing is apprehended in its Being. Thus in the case of many things of the same kind there is only one outward appearance {eidos), and this is one, not only according to number, but above all it is literally one and the same. It is the one that continues to be one in spite of all changes in the individual "copies". This implies that for Plato, Being includes permanence, whereas all that becomes and suffers alteration, taken as such, has no Being. Being stands here in opposition to becoming and to change." The multiplicity of things which are copies of the same eidos is produced in the case of utensils and tools by the dimiourgos, the person who makes things for the sake of the demos, the people. Yet whatever the craftsman may produce, he never produces the idea or eidos. Each craftsman looks to the idea of what as craftsman he is supposed to make: tables, chairs, shoes; and each is proficient to the extent that he limits himself purely to his own field. But could there perhaps also be a man who produces everything that every single other craftsman is able to make? In Plato's view there is such a man who produces everything and anything. And he does not only produce utensils and tools, but also what comes forth from the earth, plants and animals, and everything else, and indeed himself too, and besides that also the earth and the heaven, even the gods, and everything in the heaven and in the underworld. There is such a dimiourgos who as a producer stands above all beings and even above the gods, and he is nothing unusual because each of us is capable of achieving such production as phainomena, ou mentoi onta ge pou tei alitheiai, "as something that only looks like, but all the same is not, something present in unconcealment".'4 Plato explains that each of us can produce all these things by just taking a mirror and pointing it around in all directions. The mirror then accomplishes

8 the production of the outward appearances of all things and allows all beings to become present just as they outwardly appear.15 The mirroring thus "produces" the being as something that shows itself, and yet not as the being which as nondistorted is in non-concealment. Plato juxtaposes here being as self-showing and being as undistorted. This is not the opposition between semblance and Being-in-truth. In Plato's theory of mirroring, in each case it is a matter of a being that is present, but it is present in different ways of coming-to-presence. What becomes present in each case is the same; yet its manner of coming-to-presence is different. In the one case this house here is present by showing itself by means of the shiny surface of the mirror, in the other case it is present by showing itself in stone and wood. It is the self-same thing which shows itself in two different ways. Plato is concerned here with discovering the way in which the being shows itself most purely, so that it does not present itself by means of something else, but rather presents itself in such a way that its outward appearance constitutes its true Being. Such self-showing is the eidos as idea.16 The same house taken as idea shows itself in the mirror and in stone and wood. Thus there are two kinds of presence involved and also two kinds of production and two kinds of producers. Plato then states that the artist belongs to the producers who produce things by means of mirroring and, thus, is a special kind of dimiourgos. He does not bring forth what he produces as unconcealed; yet the painter, too, produces a bedframe in a certain way at least.17 Thus there are different tropoi according to which things can cometo-presence: the tropos is in one case the mirror, in another the painted surface, in still another the wood; and in all of them a bed can come-to-presence. It is not correct to state that according to Plato some of these tropoi produce "apparent" things, and others "real" things. One should realize that none of these tropoi brings forward "the bed itself, for no human being produces the pure outward appearance of the bed in itself. Ou to eidos poiei, he does not produce its whatit-is as such, its essence, or quiddity. But if the human craftsman does not produce the eidos of the thing, but merely looks at it in each case as something that is already brought about and given to him, and if in addition the eidos is that which is properly in being among beings, then no craftsman produces the Being of beings.18 Plato is thus led to admit that one should distinguish between three different kinds of beds or tables: first there is the bed or table as idea, the pure one-andthe-same outward appearance (eidos), which is by nature and which as such is made by the god. Then there is the bed or the table made by the carpenter from bronze or wood. Finally, there is the bed or table brought forth by the painter. "Thus the painter, the framemaker, the god — these three are those who preside over the three types of the outward appearance of the bedframe"."The god lets the essence emerge (phusin phuei); he is the phutourgos, the one who takes care of the emergence of the pure outward appearance. The carpenter is the dimiourgos klinis, who produces the bed according to its essence, by letting it appear in wood. Finally, the painter is the copier (mimetes) of the things of

9 which the others are the producers for the public (demiourgoi).** The artist is thus engaged in the third way of bringing forth; in the hierarchy of bringingforth, the artist occupies the lowest place. Thus it is proper to, and characteristic of, art that there is a position of distance with respect to genuine Being, i.e., to the immediate, undistorted, and unconcealed outward appearance, to the idea. With respect to the opening up of Being and to the displaying of Being in unconcealedness (a-litheia), art is subordinate to techni. "So, then, art stands far removed from truth". Art does not produce the idea, nor the eidos in matter, but merely an eidolon, a little eidos, which is but the semblance of pure outward appearance.21 But this is not yet the last word about the relationship between truth and art. We shall understand this when we turn to Plato's conception of the beautiful. For Plato, every human soul, by nature, and as rising by itself, has already seen beings in their Being; otherwise it never would have entered into this form of life.22 But these beings could not show themselves to him as beings, if he did not always a priori and ahead of time have Being itself in view by means of theöria. Man's soul must have viewed Being, since Being cannot be grasped by the senses. However, since the view upon Being is exiled in the body, Being can now never be beheld purely in its unclouded radiance; we always encounter Being in the form of this concrete being; we just barely view beings as such, and only with effort.23 For most people Being is difficult to attain; in them the view on Being does not achieve its end. They divert themselves from the effort to gain a pure view upon Being; and in so turning away they are no longer nourished by Being; instead, they make use of the nourishment that comes to them thanks to doxa, i.e., what offers itself in some fleeting appearance which things just happen to have at any given moment.24 Thus the majority of men in the everyday world fall prey to mere appearances and the prevailing opinions concerning things; and the more comfortable they become with them, the more Being conceals itself. Only a few remain who have at their disposal the capacity to remember Being; but even they need help if Being is to come to the fore for them. Even these men must constantly try to recover Being again. Hence the need for whatever makes possible such recovery and preservation of the view upon Being, which is and remains natural to man. This has to be something which in the immediate and fleeting appearance of things encountered also brings Being, which is utterly remote, to the fore most readily. This is the beautiful. To beauty alone has the role been allotted in the essential order of Beings's self-manifestation to be the most radiant (ekpnanestaton), and also the most enchanting (erasmiötaton). The beautiful grants entry into the immediate, sensuous appearance, and yet at the same time it also draws man toward nonsensuous Being. The beautiful allows Being to shine; since the beautiful is attractive, it draws man through itself beyond itself to Being as such. The beautiful is that which makes possible the recovery and the preservation of the view upon Being. Beauty brings about the unveiling of Being. Thus for Plato truth and beauty are in essence related to

10 the selfsame, the coming-to-pass of Being itself. Truth and beauty belong together in the one thing that is truly decisive: to make Being become manifest and to keep it manifest. Yet in the very element in which they belong together, they must also diverge for man. For truth as the openedness of Being can only be a non-sensuous illumination, because Being itself is non-sensuous. For Plato the opening-up of Being must occur at that place where, estimated from the truth, the mi on or eidolon occurs, and this is the site of beauty. The beautiful elevates us beyond the sensuous and bears us back into what is true.26

In the section of the Nietzsche lectures on the will-to-power as art, entitled "Six Basic Developments in the History of Aesthetics", Heidegger turns immediately from reflections on Plato to a description of ideas developed in the era of modern metaphysics.27 Thus he does not mention the aesthetic ideas of Aristotle, the Stoa, Cicero, Plotinus, St. Augustine, the entire medieval tradition, the Renaissance, and the so-called classical period in the arts. There are several reasons why Heidegger must have decided to do so. First of all, he had no intention to write a complete "history" of aesthetics. Secondly, in his view, whatever happened in "aesthetics" between Plato and Baumgarten, it had no direct influence on Nietzsche's thought on the will-to-power as art. Finally, between Plato and Baumgarten very few truly original ideas about the arts were proposed. As I have mentioned already in the Preface to this book, in the sections to come, I shall follow Heidegger in principle, and focus mainly on Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Yet it seems to me of some importance at least to touch on a few ideas which Heidegger must have presupposed to have been known by his audience. For the periods in the history of "aesthetics" not covered by Heidegger himself, however, I shall limit myself to a few brief remarks which are meant here mainly as a reminder and which are to bridge somewhat the large gap between the basic developments discussed by Heidegger himself. My justification for doing so is, as I have said already, the fact that these remarks are not meant here as an introduction to Nietzsche's aesthetics, but to Heidegger's own efforts to retrieve the aesthetics of both Hegel and Nietzsche. I myself, however, will just "report" here the most important "facts".

§ 3. From Aristotle to the Middle Ages a) The Aesthetics of Aristotle28 The tradition attributes a number of treatises on the arts and on beauty to Aristotle (384-322). Yet today only the Poetics is still available, and this treatise is extant only in an incomplete form. The portion of this work which we still

11 have, contains only his theory of tragedy and some general observations on "aesthetics". Important remarks on art and beauty are found also in other treatises of Aristotle, particularly in his Rhetoric, Politics, Metaphysics, the Eudemian Ethics, and the_Nicomachean Ethics. In developing his ideas on art and beauty Aristotle employed ideas from the Pythagoreans, Democritus, Gorgias, and Plato. The thinker who influenced him most deeply, as far as these topics are concerned, was obviously his master, Plato, as we shall see shortly. When Aristotle speaks about the "fine arts" he usually has concrete works of art in mind: the poetry of Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides, the paintings of Polygnotus, and Zeuxis, the sculpture of Phidias and Polyclitus, as well as the music of his time. In other words, Aristotle focuses in his reflections on those art works which in his time were generally accepted as such. Whereas in Plato's "aesthetics" the concept of beauty occupies the privileged position, in Aristotle's theory priority is given to the concept of art. Yet as far as his conception of art is concerned, Aristotle accepted to a very high degree the ideas which Plato had already developed before him. He mainly tried to define and articulate these ideas more carefully and precisely. Speaking in general terms, one could perhaps say that Aristotle was the first to treat these subjects systematically. Aristotle defines art as a human activity which is concerned with a kind of knowledge which is not theoretical in character, and which pertains not so much to the domain of action as to that of "production". Art thus ultimately leads to a lasting product: a painting, a drama. As a form of production art implies knowledge of the relevant rules and also some practical know-how.29 A production which flows merely from "instinct" or from mere practice by trial and error is thus not to be called artistic. In a derived sense one can also call the ability to produce things, an art. Aristotle thus stresses in the concept of art the following characteristics: it is a form of knowledge that is oriented toward production; it also includes the use of rules and practice; it is a complex process that has both a "physical" and a "psychical" dimension; in each art some material is involved which is either altered in shape, or in size, or in disposition; finally, art is in some sense to be placed opposite to'nature.30 Although according to Aristotle art is not just a question of talent and skill, yet in his view efficiency and talent are certainly also required in the artist. Thus in addition to the knowledge of the rules, the artist also needs talent and practice. As a kind of knowledge, art is distinguishedfromscience (episteme) by the fact that the former is concerned with what comes-to-presence, whereas the latter deals with what is.31 In Aristotle's view all arts either complement nature or imitate nature. What he calls the "imitative arts" comes close to what we today call the fine arts. By imitative arts Aristotle understands painting, sculpture, poetry, and, to some degree at least, also music. In employing the concept of mimesis in this context, Aristotle appears to have been familiar with the conceptions of Pythagoras, Democritus, and Plato. For Pythagoras mimesis is to be understood in the sense

12 in which an actor is said to imitate when he plays his part; Democritus understood mimesis in the sense in which a student or disciple imitates his teacher or master; finally Plato usually understands mimisis in the sense of copying. Aristotle tried to combine all of these elements; yet he gave priority to the idea of the Pythagoreans. Art thus indeed "imitates" nature, but it does so in the sense that it is always a "free expression". It is thus no exaggeration to say that for Aristotle mimesis really means the entire process of artistic creation. Aristotle can therefore say that the artist may portray nature as it is, or as better or worse than it is, or even as it should be. Polygnotus and Zeuxis painted people as nobler than they really are, whereas Pauson painted them as less noble; finally Dionysius portrayed them true.to life. Sophocles describes people as they ought to be, whereas Euripides depicted them as they are in real life.32 Furthermore, art does not imitate nature in every respect. For it must present things which have a "universal" significance and possess some form of necessity, even though it is also true that "art is fond of luck".33 Finally, art must represent nature in the proper proportion and in the proper harmony. It should be noted here, that in Aristotle's view the concept of mimesis has a different shade of meaning in the different imitating arts. This can be explained further only by focusing on the individual arts, on what they try to portray, and on how they actually depict this.34 In his definition of tragedy Aristotle mentions the fact that tragedy has to effect the proper purgation (/catharsis) of the emotions of pity and fear. One has tried to derive from this that for Aristotle katharsis is the aim of all art. Yet Aristotle mentions this idea only in connection with tragedy and it is not totally clear precisely how this expression is to be understood. Thus it has led to a long discussion in which many commentators have participated. Today many scholars claim that Aristotle meant to state that art discharges these emotions; it does not ennoble or perfect them.35 Be this as it may, it seems reasonable to take the position that for Aristotle the aim of art should not be defined in terms of the intention of the artist, but rather in terms of the effect of his works. If one looks at the issue from this point of view, then for Aristotle each art has its own aim; yet all of them have in common that they contribute to the happiness of man. This aim may be katharsis in one case, the promotion of pleasure, or the promotion of moral good in others.36 Thus as far as this issue is concerned, Aristotle here, too, tried to combine ideas suggested by Pythagoras, the Sophists, and Plato. Yet pleasure should not be understood here in the sense of hedonistic pleasure, but rather in the sense otscholi (leisure) and diagöge (noble entertainment).37 According to Aristotle, the arts in general, and the imitating arts in particular, are autonomous and should not be reduced to philosophy, religion, or even the moral order. However, if the arts are autonomous then they must also have a "good" and a "truth" of their own. It is not impossible that Aristotle held the view that one must make a distinction between scientific and artistic truth.38 As for the idea of beauty, Aristotle remained here also very close to Plato, even though here, too, there are some elements which set his view apart from

13 that of Plato. In the Rhetoric he defines beauty as that for which one may aim for its own sake and"which at the same time gives us pleasure. In so doing Aristotle merely articulated a widely held view more sharply. It should be noted, though, that his definition of what is beautiful is not restricted to the artistically beautiful, but includes every form of beauty. It is important to note also that in his definition of beauty Aristotle makes no reference to the notion of truth.39 Aristotle carefully distinguishes what is beautiful from what is useful. The concept of beauty in his view implies order, proportion, harmony, and the proper size.40 He furthermore adds to this that in order to be beautiful things must be easily perceptible. For Aristotle all things are beautiful; this holds for God, man, the.social order, for animals and plants, for natural bodies, and for works of art. Beautiful in the strict sense are individual things more than complex wholes. But in all cases, beauty is not a "subjective quality"; rather it is an intrinsic property of things.41 Aristotle did not use special terms for what we call "artistic beauty", and "aesthetic experience". Yet what we call an aesthetic experience was specified by him by means of the following characteristics: a state of intense delight, which is passive in nature, has a strength appropriate to the artistic work in question, is proper to humans only, implies the use of the senses, and is such that the delight arises from our contact with these works and not from what we associate with our perception of them.42 b) The Stoics and the Eclectics on "Aesthetics"*3 The influence of the Stoic tradition on our Western world has been enormous; this was to a great extent due to the fact that Christianity adopted several ideas from the leading Stoic philosophers. This, is true also for the influence of the Stoa on aesthetics. Generally speaking one can say that the Stoics tried to subordinate art to the moral order and beauty to virtue. This is true particularly for the so-calledpanu stoikoi, the "radical" Stoics; Ariston and Poseidonius are exceptions.44 The Stoics made a distinction between moral and Bodily beauty; they did not deny the importance of the latter but subordinated it to the former. This implies that one had little respect and esteem for the artistically beautiful. There is nothing more beautiful than virtue (Seneca). As far as beauty is concerned, nature is the greatest artist, because it is ruled by order and proportion. The world is simply beautiful and it should be respected as such.43 The Stoics stressed the concept of symmetry in the conception of what is beautiful; beauty depends on measure and proportion. They also employed the concept of what is proper (to prepon, decorum) in this connection, and claimed that symmetry regulates the agreement of the parts among one another, whereas to prepon, what is suitable, regulates the adjustment of the parts to the whole. Both symmetry and decorum play important parts in what is beautiful; yet symmetry is primary in natural objects, whereas what is suitable is mostly

14 important in things made by man. It was said there also that symmetry is a question of thought and calculation, whereas toprepon, decorum, is a question of talent, feeling, and taste.44 Most Stoics held with Plato and Aristotle that beauty is something that is valuable in itself. We value beautiful things for their own sake, not for their usefulness. Yet aesthetic beauty occupies in their view only a low place on the scale of values. Thus beauty can never be an ultimate goal, and the arts can never be fully autonomous.47 The Stoics were the first to stress the function of the imagination in the production and the appreciation of art works. They also introduced the term "phantasia". According to Philostratus "the imagination is wiser an artist than imitation".48 The Stoics appear to have been more concerned with beauty than with the arts. The arts were for them no more than roads which were to lead to a certain goal; this goal was to be determined by morality. Thus they divided the arts in vulgäres and liberales and the latter again into recreational (ludricae) and educational {pueriles). Of the fine arts only music and poetry were listed among the educational free arts. But even music and poetry were called beautiful only to the degree that they increased the quality of the moral order. Poetry is beautiful in particular when it contains wise thoughts and leads to philosophy.49 Yet there were some Stoics who also stressed the sensuous element of beauty and art (Ariston, Diogenes). They developed the concept of suitability, described the function of the imagination, and defended the view that man is capable of immediately intuiting what is beautiful. Our relationship to the art work is sensuous; thus art is not a question of reason or even feeling, but of intuition.30 Under the direction of Panethius and Poseidonius the Stoic school began to seek closer affiliation with the Peripathetic and the Platonic schools. This led to some form of eclecticism which tried to combine ideas from Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoa. Quintilian and Cicero belonged to this new school which was guided by the principle: eligere ex omnibus optima (to select the best from every source).51 Cicero was one of the best educated men of his time who had both a Greek and a Roman education. He was an eloquent orator and a fine writer. He, too, defined beauty in terms of order, measure, and the suitable arrangement of parts (symmetria and decorum). Cicero agreed with Socrates and Plato that beauty depends on utility and purpose, so that the most useful things have the greatest dignity and pluchritudo. Beauty, furthermore, is a genuine and absolute quality of beautiful things and, thus, does not depend on the attitude of the beholder." With some Stoics Cicero divided the arts into the servile and the liberal arts and widened the concept of the liberal arts to such an extent that all fine arts could be covered by the term.53 Yet it is not the case that only the fine arts concern themselves with beauty; nature is the most beautiful of all, so that the arts cannot do more than try to imitate nature.54 From Aristotle, Cicero

15 accepted the idea that art is a question of the application of rules; yet he also stressed the free impulse which flows from talent, while leaving ample room for skill and practice. In his view, a good artist must have talent, he must have acquired the proper skill, and he must know and learn how to apply the rules of the arts. In all of this the artist is guided by reason, although he owes his greatness to "inspiration".55 Like Aristotle and the Stoics Cicero maintains that the fine arts are typically human abilities. Man and man only is capable of bringing about artistically beautiful things, and man and man only is capable of appreciating beautiful things. Man thus has a special sense of beauty and the beautiful works of art. This sense is innate so that all humans have it, even the vulgus communis imperitdrum.* One final note, Cicero places great stress on the element of fiction in poetry.57 c) Plotinus58 Plotinus (203-270) plays a very significant role in the history of aesthetics. His aesthetic conceptions are developed from the perspective of a rather personal interpretation of the philosophy of Plato which makes a sharp distinction between the world here and the world beyond. As for the concept of beauty, Plotinus definitely rejects the idea that beauty consists in or even implies symmetry. For if this were to be so, simple objects could not be beautiful. Furthermore, things which today may look beautiful, may not appear to be beautiful tomorrow, even though their proportions may not have changed. Finally, there is often harmony in things and events that are evil and ugly. Yet they cannot possibly be truly beautiful. Beauty, thus, cannot consist in a relation; it must be an absolute and permanent quality of the beautiful things. The source of this beauty must be found in the spiritual side of things. The sensible world can be called beautiful to the degree that it reveals the intellectual world; sensible things are beautiful because they are directly connected with their ideal archetypes. Things that are beautiful do indeed often show symmetry; but in that case the symmetry is merely the external manifestation of an inner and spiritual beauty.59 Only spiritual beings can perceive beauty. Thus in man only the soul can apprehend and enjoy beauty. Furthermore, the function of the arts is not to represent nature or anything else; art objects do not copy anything, either; they simply reach out toward the principles of nature which are portrayed by the ideas of the artist. Yet these ideas are not immutable and eternal; they are merely temporal ideas which only reflect and mirror the eternal ideas. The world of the arts, therefore, stands in between the eternal world and this world here. Thus the arts have an inherently religious character; art objects express the wisdom of the divine. They are to express beauty which in the final analysis belongs to what is divine.40 Plotinus did not make an explicit distinction between the liberal and the fine arts, and, thus, lists medicine, geometry, and politics among the arts. Yet he did

16 set the imitative arts apart from the mere crafts. Although different arts may have different aims, they all finally function in the return of everything which emanated from the One, to its origin.61 Plotinus' theory of art implies a definite program for the arts. This includes the idea that everything that appears to be imperfect to our senses must be avoided. Thus there should be no diminution of size in paintings, nor any fading of colors to suggest depth. And since the spirit is light, shadow and vagueness are to be avoided, also. It appears that the ideal which Plotinus describes here was in fact materialized in many paintings of his time. One tried to eliminate the perspective of the observer in order to be able to reveal all pertinent features of the object in its full clarity. Furthermore, it was accepted there that objects so depicted should not have any relationship to the earth; thus they should appear as suspended in the air. Each object is to be presented in full detail, meticulously and clearly. Since depth is avoided, real forms are usually replaced by schematic forms and their geometrical parallels. Plotinus was strongly opposed to Christianity. Although he tried to strengthen his own convictions against the Christian view, nevertheless his conception of painting had a great influence on early medieval painters.62 d) St. Augustine63 As far as aesthetics is concerned, St. Augustine (354-430) was educated in the eclectic theories of which Cicero is a representative. Later he read Plotinus' treatise On Beauty which immediately influenced him deeply because of the manner in which it relates "aesthetics" and "ultimate questions". In his mature view St. Augustine maintained that beauty is not "just in the beholder", but rather a stable and permanent quality of things; but he was also very much interested in the attitude which one has to adopt in regard to what is beautiful and in the pleasure which one derives from this. Yet he always maintained that beautiful things please us because they are inherently beautiful.64 Beauty is the splendor of order and truth; this expression, created by Albert the Great,65 describes St. Augustine's position very well.66 Following the Pythagoreans and Plato, St. Augustine also maintained that beauty implies harmony, order, and unity, and that measure and number ensure order so that beauty ultimately implies measure, form (species), and order. With respect to the notions of order and harmony he combined the ideas of the Pythagoreans (quantitative conception) with the Stoic, qualitative interpretation thereof.67 In his opinion, in beautiful things rhythm also plays a very important part; it is even the source of all beauty. He conceived of rhythm in a very broad sense so that it could be applied to visual, bodily, and spiritual phenomena. Furthermore, although equality is important in beautiful things, beauty also must show difference and contrast. St. Augustine distinguished the beautiful from what is appropriate (aptum, decorum), on the ground that the latter is merely a relative quality; something is appropriate in regard to something else. For the same reason, the beautiful should also be distinguished from what is pleasant.68

17 Although St. Augustine obviously never uses the expression "the aesthetic experience", he made nevertheless a number of observations which immediately pertain to this modern conception. To some extent one might argue that he wrote the first psychology or anthropology of the aesthetic experience. Although he continued to maintain that aesthetic beauty is an abiding quality of things, he nevertheless also maintained that an experience with a work of art will not occur if the beholder is not properly related to the "aesthetic object". He also felt that rhythm plays a vital part in the aesthetic experience, as it does in the things' inner beauty.69 St. Augustine firmly believed that the entire world is just one beautiful poem. In this conception he may have been influenced by Greek Church Fathers (St. Basil). Ugliness was for him a lack; what is ugly lacks order, harmony, splendor, and rhythm. In the final analysis, God is beauty and all the beauty in the world and in the things ultimately derives from the divine beauty. Thus in our admiration of the beauty of the world and of works of art, we should be led to admiration of God's beauty.70 Every finite being and work is only imperfectly beautiful. Thus works of art are only partly true; they are equally partly fake; truth and untruth go together in every work of art. These ideas may have influenced Hegel in his Lectures on Aesthetics.71 In his youth St. Augustine had contrasted love of beauty (philokalia) with the love of wisdom {philosophia) and thus he had defended the complete autonomy of the arts. Later he rejected these ideas, however. He then suggested that one is to develop a separate theory for each art; for each art has its own domain, aim, and character. In his opinion, music was the highest form of art. Later he began to doubt the importance of these convictions; he then also began to value the arts more negatively. He even began to treat poetry as false, because he thought it to be unnecessary and sometimes even immoral. He condemned the theatre because it arouses false emotions.72 In the theory of St. Augustine on beauty and the arts, the most important ideas of ancient aesthetics come together in a harmonious unity. One has called his theory the culmination of classical aesthetics. It certainly is the case that his theory of beauty and the arts exerted a very deep influence on our Western world, and that this influence was felt for more than one thousand years.73

§ 4. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance a) Medieval Aesthetics. Aquinas74 What we call medieval "aesthetics" covers a period of about one thousand years (400-1400). During this period, as in antiquity, aesthetics was not a separate discipline. Aesthetic ideas about beauty and art were discussed usually in the summaries of theology and philosophy, the so-called Summae, or in technical treatises on the individual arts. Medieval aesthetics was Christian

18 throughout, and it remained exceptionally consistent. The basic ideas were derived from the Pythagoreans, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Boethius, and St. Augustine. These ideas were usually passed on from generation to generation. Thus it is not too difficult to describe some basic ideas and assumptions that were quite commonly accepted then. As had been the case in classical antiquity, it was also in the Middle Ages common practice to divide reflections on beautiful things into two sets, one devoted to the concept of beauty, the other concerned with the arts. As far as beauty is concerned, it was quite generally accepted that those things are beautiful which please us. Aquinas refined this conception, as we shall see shortly. One calls those things beautiful which evoke a special kind of pleasure that directly results from the perception or contemplation of certain things. The term "beauty" was usually taken in a very broad sense; it included both bodily and spiritual beauty. Many authors, who were influenced in this by the Stoa, understood spiritual beauty in a moral sense; the Greek word kalon (the beautiful) was often translated with Cicero by honestum. But for most authors the notion of the beautiful also included supernatural things and especially God Himself. Where bodily beauty was defined independently from spiritual beauty it was often defined with Albert the Great as "in corporalibus pukhrum dicitur splendens in visu", in material things we call those things beautiful which shine brightly and have splendor when perceived. Yet speaking generally, one must say that the concept of beauty was then closely related to the concept of the good. It was commonly held that beauty can be found everywhere in the world. Everything "made by nature" is beautiful: pankalia. Yet most people understood this to mean that natural things are beautiful to the degree that they manifest order, harmony, proportion, and rhythm. Gradually the notion of beauty was added to the list of the transcendentals: being, something, one, true, good, and beautiful. Some authors, however, defended the view that the good and the beautiful are really the same. Beauty can be found both in nature and in art. Its essence consists in harmony and clarity. The term harmony was understood in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense, whereas the notion of clarity expressed the ideas that the beautiful things should be easily perceptible, as well as that they should have the character of splendor, brilliance, radiance, and effulgence. Beauty is a quality of things in regard to a human subject. Only humans can perceive the beauty of things. The perception of beauty arouses in man the state of pleasure which however does not serve any function beyond itself. Thus the experience of beauty implies a cognitive, emotional, and a bodily component; it involves contemplation, feeling, disinterestedness, and rhythm. The most beautiful being is God who is also at the root of all other beautiful things. With respect to the arts, one usually held the following theses: An art is a human ability to make things according to rules. The term was used in a very broad sense and included fine arts and crafts. Yet it was assumed

19 that every art, because of the recta ordinatio rationis involved, aspires to beauty. This may be one of the reasons why these authors did not treat the fine arts as a separate group. Yet the question obviously still is to be asked: precisely why did the ancient and medieval people not treat the so-called fine arts as an individual group among the arts. The reason must have been that they never learned to see them as being a separate group; at that time the fine arts just were not yet set apart. The question now is: why was this so? Tatarkiewicz suggests that the ancient and medieval artist did not yet conceive of himself as a special person with a very special destination and obligation; the concept of genius was' still alien to them. The artists then thought that they served God in bringing about things as well as they could make them. They wanted their churches and public buildings to be the most beautiful that they could produce. On other occasions, they may have meant to make a contribution to the moral education of future generations, to reveal the fundamental laws of being, or to symbolize the heavens. In the Middle Ages it was generally assumed that all arts are symbolic; in the final analysis, the works of art are signs and symbols of the beauty, splendor, and truth of God. Yet in the Middle Ages one does not find the idea that there is a special kind of truth, an artistic truth, to be distinguished from other kinds or forms of truth. One assumed that God created the world perfectly and that the aim of the arts was to present that beauty as splendidly as possible. Many authors continued to make a close connection between beauty and moral goodness, so that the arts and their products were usually evaluated from a moral point of view: beautiful are those things which promote goodness. In the aesthetic theory of Aquinas we also find ideas of Aristotle, the PseudoDionysius, Augustine, and Albert the Great.73 Albert had introduced Aristotle's concept of form into discussions about beautiful objects; Aquinas, too, makes ample use of this concept in his reflections on art works. From neoPlatonic sources Aquinas accepted the following ideas: 1) it is important to make a distinction between bodily and spiritual beauty; 2) there is imperfect and perfect beauty; the latter is found only in God; 3) the concept of the beautiful implies the splendor of form (eidos), order, and beauty (St. Augustine and Albert the Great); 4) imperfect beauty is the reflection of perfect beauty; 5) the beautiful differs conceptually from what is good, but the two are not different in re; all good things are beautiful and all beautiful things are good; thus to be beautiful is a transcendental characteristic of all things; 6) beauty also implies proportion and clarity.74 Aquinas gives two definitions of beauty: quae visa placenf and cujus ipsa apprehensio placet.n Beautiful are those things which give pleasure on being looked at. In these two definitions Aquinas uses visa and perceptio in an analogous sense; thus videre does not only refer to seeing with the eye. Furthermore, he meant to express that things are beautiful only in regard to human beings.79 These definitions, which are often quoted, however do not refer to transcendental beauty, but only to what is beautiful by nature or by art. Of beauty taken

20 in this sense one can say that it is the object of contemplation and not (as is the good) the object of desire (Kant's disinterestedness).80 The idea that aesthetic beauty is a quality of a thing in regard to a contemplating subject was not yet found in classical antiquity; yet it was not an original idea of Aquinas, either. It was suggested by Greek Church Fathers (St. Basil) and later defended by a number of Western theologians, such as William of Auvergne.81 The pleasure which artistic objects arouse in us has a character of its own. It is not connected with our needs, nor with the preservation of life. It is a privilege that only humans possess.82 Beauty has several characteristics: it implies proportion, clarity and integrity or perfection. The first idea was known by the Greeks and defended by almost all authors who have written on beauty. Aquinas uses the term in the broad sense as St. Augustine had done. The term clarity was used in the sense of both physical and spiritual radiance. Clarity refers to the fact that the essence of things taken as form shines through their outward appearances. Finally, no thing is truly beautiful if it lacks aspects or properties it ought to have; a beautiful object should be perfect.8* With respect to art, Aquinas revives the entire Greek conception of techni. Art is the recta ratio factibilium. It implies knowledge of the proper rules, but it also implies talent and practice. An art work is not beautiful because a great artist made it; it is a great work when a great artist made it great. Thus the objective qualities of the work determine its beauty in the final analysis. Art is to be distinguished carefully from theory and speculation on the one hand, and from moral praxis on the other. There are several kinds of arts; Aquinas uses here the common divisions; yet he does not use the term "fine arts". He uses the term "art" in a very broad sense which included most crafts.84 Although Aquinas defended the autonomy of the arts, he nonetheless also claimed that in the final analysis they have a moral and religious aim. Furthermore, the arts do not really create anything; they are not creative but representational and transformational.85 Aesthetics occupies little space in the work of Aquinas. Yet what he has to say is important in that it once more brought about a synthesis of the most important ideas which Greek antiquity and the Christian world had to offer in this regard. Furthermore, his ideas about beauty and the arts have remained influential in some quarters to this day.86 b) The Renaissance87 By the period of the Renaissance we mean here the period from 1400 to 1700. During this long period many new ideas began to manifest themselves in the different arts, from architecture to poetry. Yet the theoretical treatises on art and aesthetics remained remarkably traditional, even though it is the case that one sees a clearly defined and deliberate turn away from the Middle Ages in the direction of classical antiquity.

21 It has been said that this period constitutes an enormous gap in the history of aesthetics, in the sense that in this period great works of art were produced whereas there were no new ideas in aesthetic theory. Although this view is not without all ground, it is nonetheless not accurate either.8* For first of all, the turn away from the medieval tradition implied the explicit rejection of ideas which in the Middle Ages were cherished by many. The idea of an absolute beauty, as well as the reference to supernatural beauty begins to disappear gradually. Furthermore, the conception according to which everything is beautiful (pankalia) is rejected. In addition, the theory according to which all works of art are to be interpreted allegorically, is also universally given up. Finally, most artists and authors objected to the notion that art works are to be evaluated primarily from a religious, moral, or didactical point of view. Yet it is obviously also true that in theoretical treatises on the arts written in the era of the Renaissance many theses of medieval' aesthetics were still maintained. This is obvious from the fact that the Renaissance implies a deliberate effort to return to the ideals of classical antiquity, whereas the medieval aesthetics to a very large extent was just "built-up" from ideas first formulated in Greek antiquity. Most Renaissance authors still maintain that the arts "imitate" nature, even though they do so in a free and creative manner. The concept of form was thought to be an essential element in the theoretical discussion of the nature of art works. It was commonly accepted that art implies creativity and "inspiration", in addition to know-how and practice. Finally, it was commonly held that beauty is not an absolute quality of things; things are beautiful for humans. Thus although the development and evolution of the various forms of art in that era passed through a series of transformations, the underlying aesthetic theory remained stable and it itself developed only very gradually. Even toward the end of the 17th century it was still quite common to see beauty defined in terms of harmony, order, and splendor. It was then also still the case that most authors did not yet explicitly separate the fine arts from the crafts, even though many artists had suggested or even demanded that this be done.89 During the period of the Renaissance the development of the so-called classical style took place in the various arts, soon to be followed by the baroque. We speak of classical drama, classical music, classical sculpture, just as we also speak about baroque music and baroque paintings. During these three centuries in theoretical treatises a "classical aesthetics" was formulated from which for each art general principles and rules could be derived. Yet the actual development was such that in each art ever new forms and styles continued to develop. Thus one found himself in that era in the position of realizing that there were different arts and in each art different forms and styles, all of which were nevertheless then explained in terms of one basic "classical" theory. That this could indeed be the case without explicit contradiction and tension was due to the fact that the general classical theory was very flexible and open-ended. "For all its absolutist tendencies, and its strivings towards general rules and formulae, classical aesthetics contained within itself a considerable capacity for

22 adaptation, expansion, and developmment".90 Yet it must be admitted that there was also an important shift in the conceptual framework underlying modern aesthetics. Perhaps the following ideas should be mentioned here. In classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages reflections on aesthetics were divided into two sections: reflections on beauty and reflections on the arts. In the late Renaissance these two sections of aesthetics were brought much closer to one another. One was convinced that beauty is the objective of all arts, but particularly of painting and poetry. Thus even though it is obvious that there is also beauty in nature, one began nevertheless to limit himself to what is artistically beautiful. In the Middle Ages one had always assumed that beauty, because it consists in proportion and order, can be translated into rules and calculations. In the -Renaissance the idea that proportion can be taken in a strictly quantitative sense and, thus, can be subjected to rules was to some degree given up. Furthermore, for centuries it had been assumed that we are pleased by what is clear, transparent, and comprehensible. Yet it appeared now that obscure things can also be beautiful, particularly if one can penetrate their mysteries. Harmony is indeed pleasing, but so is tension and contrast. Throughout the Middle Ages one had assumed that things, in order to be beautiful, must be enduring and monumental. It appeared now that the lively and vital can also be pleasing. Most medieval authors had taken it for granted that in order to be pleasing things must be in harmony with reason. In the Renaissance it appeared that emotion, love, and imagination are also essential elements to be considered in beautiful things. Since classical antiquity it had been said time and again that nature is the model of beauty and that art, thus, had to imitate nature. In the Renaisance it was gradually accepted that art which goes beyond nature can also be beautiful. Thus one began to stress the elements of novelty, originality, individuality, and creativity. The idea of the "creative genius" who is like a second god began to arise. It had been generally accepted for many centuries that beauty is an absolute quality of the beautiful things. In the Renaissance it became clearer that sometimes things are attractive because of the manner in which they have been presented. They may even be presented such that they create an illusion; it is this illusion or this fiction that makes them appear as beautiful. At first, beauty and truth (taken in the sense of being in conformity with nature) were closely related. It became clear, however, in poetry and drama that poetic fiction in many instances can just not be brought into harmony with such a conception of the relationship between beauty and truth. If there is a close relationship between beauty and truth in the arts, truth must be understood in a different way. We can thus conclude that the classical theory of the arts appeared to be able to adapt itself gradually to what was actually taking place in the arts.91

CHAPTER II. MODERN AESTHETICS

§ 5. Baumgarten, Burke, and Herder1 The next development in the history of knowledge about the arts which Heidegger discusses in his "Six Basic Developments in the History of Aesthetics" coincides with the formation of modern aesthetics. This development again did not originate immediately from art and from reflections on art. Rather it involves our entire modern history and coincides with the beginning of the modern age. Man begins to conceive of himself as the center of the universe and the measure of all things. In his unconstrained knowledge man himself decides how beings are to be experienced, defined, and even shaped. Man posits how things should be, so that his "taste" becomes the ultimate court of judicature over beings. In metaphysics this is clear from the manner in which the certitude of all Being and truth is grounded in the self-consciousness of the individual ego. The cogito me cogitate, the finding myself before myself as the one who knows, provides also the first "object" that is secured in its Being; I myself and my "inner" states are the primary and true beings. Everything else that can be said to be is to be measured against the standard of this quite certain being. The various states in which I find myself play an essential part in defining how I find everything which I encounter to be. It is thus understandable that meditations on the beautiful in art begin to focus exclusively on the state of man's feeling in regard to the beautiful object, aisthisis. This also explains why aesthetics originated in this epoch, why the name only now came into use; aesthetics is to be in the domain of sensuousness and feeling what logic is in the realm of thinking. Aesthetics is the logic of sensuousness.2 Parallel to the development of aesthetics and to man's effort to clarify the aesthetic state, another important process unfolds here in the history of art. It is now believed and said that great works are great because they accomplish an important task: "Art and its works are necessary only as an itinerary and sojourn for man in which the truth of beings as a whole, i.e., the unconditioned, the absolute, opens itself up to him". Art thus is not great because of the high quality of its works, but rather because it is an "absolute need".

24 Yet concurrent with the development of aesthetics in modern times we see paradoxically also the decline of great art. This obviously does not mean that the "quality" of the work is suddenly poorer and the "style" less imposing; it is rather the case that art loses its essential meaning in that it loses its immediate relation to the basic task of presenting the absolute, of establishing the absolute definitively and as such in the realm of man's history. We shall see the implications of this much more clearly in the next phase of this development.3 But before turning to this phase we must first add a few words on the three main trends which began to develop in the modern era. Perhaps it is even good with Dilthey to distinguish three minor periods within the third phase distinguished here by Heidegger himself.4 For the main purpose of these historical reflections is, as was mentioned earlier, not to make Nietzsche's conception of art understandable, but rather to place Heidegger's own reflections on art in their historical context. Now in view of the fact that Heidegger's own position was certainly influenced by ideas of Kant, it seems worthwhile to dwell for a moment on Kant's position and on the ideas which led to this view. a) Rationalism. Baumgarten The first period of this third phase is that of the rationalist approach to the arts which understands what is beautiful as a manifestation of reason in the sensuous.5 Although Descartes himself never developed a systematic aesthetic theory,6 this rationalist approach to the arts is nonetheless often called the Cartesian conception. It is characteristic of the 17th century, but did not receive its first systematic formulation until the 18th century. Until the 17th century rules for the making of what later would be called "works of art" were usually supported by the authority of philosophers (Aristotle), theologians (Augustine), or by the models provided by classical authors. The Cartesian approach tried to give a rational justification for these rules by deducing them from some basic and self-evident principles. The most systematic account of this rationalist metaphysics of art is found in Baumgarten's works7 which rest largely on ideas taken from Leibniz, and in which the term "aesthetics" is used for the first time. In 1735 Baumgarten (1714-1762) suggested that it would be necessary to introduce a new discipline by the name of "aesthetics". (Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus.* In 1742 Baumgarten gave lectures on aesthetics in Frankfurt; from these lectures his Aesthetica originated, which was published in 1750.' The ideas of Baumgarten were rapidly promulgated by a work in two volumes which G.F. Meier published between 1754 and 1755 under the title Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaften.10 Meier added a number of personal ideas to those proposed by Baumgarten so that it often was difficult to keep Baumgarten's own ideas separated from those added by Meier. Yet the book contributed much to the propagation of modern aesthetics. Baeumler has called the origin of modern aesthetics an event of great

25 importance." In this new discipline a number of philosophers tried to develop a rational theory of the fine arts, built upon clear and distinct insights and ideas. Those who engaged in this kind of reflection were convinced that in the fine arts there is a form of truth to be found which lies outside the domain of classical philosophy. In this new discipline, philosophy found itself confronted with ideas which had originated earlier in France and in England. There the fine arts had tried to free themselves from the domination of "pure reason" and to achieve independence by separating themselves from the free and the mechanical arts with which they officially had been combined until that time. It was argued there that the fine arts are not bound by principles and laws as are the mechanical arts; the fine arts are not concerned with reason, but with emotion and the heart, and that they address themselves to a man's inner life and to his feelings.12 In the works of Baumgarten we find already somehow the idea that the work of art is the work of the creative genius (ingenium). It is clear that Baumgarten's ideas were under the influence of the conception of the individual subject as formulated by Descartes and many modern philosophers of that time.13 It was obviously one of Baumgarten's intentions to reconcile metaphysics and aesthetics by showing that the truth brought to light by the fine arts is not in contradiction to the truth discovered by reason. In so doing he used ideas of Bouhours, Boileau, König, Pope, Crousaz, Breitinger, and Bodmer.14 In his effort to reconcile poetry and philosophy Baumgarten claims that aesthetics is the science of sensuous knowledge; it constitutes a gnoseology of inferior order; it is a logic of an inferior kind; yet it does address truths which are not contradictory to those discovered by philosophy and, thus, these truths can be added to those brought to light by reason; it is possible to add our knowledge of the aisthita to our knowledge of the noiia.a In concerning himself with philosophical aesthetics Baumgarten thus hoped that he eventually would be able to develop an organon for our sensible knowledge which would run parallel to the organon of the sciences developed by Aristotle and the Stoa. In this way Baumgarten set limits to purely rational knowledge and he claimed that in and through the fine arts man is confronted with a type of knowledge which addresses itself immediately to the emotional side of man and which shows him truths which for his life as human are of great importance.16 One finds in the works of Baumgarten ideas which one will encounter later in a somewhat more sophisticated form in the philosophy of life. It is also clear that several important ideas which one later finds in Hegel's aesthetics are vaguely anticipated by Baumgarten. Yet it was never Baumgarten's idea that the arts were to be taken up in religion and finally "overcome" by philosophy. In his view, the human reality is so complex that in addition to religion and philosophy (together with the sciences), there is a genuine need for the arts, if humans are to remain human and humane. True, the arts are indeed in some sense subordinated to religion and philosophy. Yet these two approaches to the truth are to be complemented by the arts which show us a form of truth which cannot be discovered in any other way.17

26 Although Baumgarten often speaks about man's appreciation of what is beautiful without explicitly making a distinction between the beauty of natural things and the beauty of works of art, he nevertheless started with reflections on the artistically beautiful and seems to have envisaged also special sciences for the artistically beautiful distinct from the science concerned with our knowledge of the beautiful in nature.18 In Baumgarten's theory the concept of "form" plays a very important part. Man's aesthetic experience and feeling represent the world in the manner of "form". Once the "genius" has so represented the world, the aesthetic form can then evoke similar experiences and feelings in other human beings. Beautiful thus is that which can arouse experiences and feelings in a man's heart; beautiful is that which pleases. Yet Baumgarten explicitly expanded this conception in order to make room for our experience of whatever is beautiful in nature. Aesthetics then becomes simply the metaphysics of the beautiful. Among the characteristics of the beautiful Baumgarten includes perfection, harmony, and order; these characteristics are in his view no more than reflections of the infinite perfection, harmony, and order of God.14 These ideas first proposed by Baumgarten were then developed further by authors such as K. von Dalbert, J. Eschenburg, J. Eberhard, J. Sulzer, and others. Eventually they would evoke opposition from the side of those who were in the process of laying the foundation of what eventually would become art history. In this connection the work of K. Heydenreich, J. Winckelmann, Herder, Lessing, and many others is to be mentioned.20 In Dilthey's opinion, Baumgarten subordinated sense to logic and sacrificed the spontaneity of the emotional impulse to the will for perfect order. Furthermore, his aesthetics was basically normative, because it focused primarily on the ideals of a system of art at the expense of psychological and historical factors, and then attempted to give these ideals a metaphysical foundation which makes them appear as being absolute. In this aesthetics any real autonomy is denied to the imagination of the individual artist; even the freest expression of the imagination is regulated here by rules which are finally grounded in the rational order of the universe.21 b) Empiricism. Burke During the second period of the third phase, modern aesthetics was theoretical and explanatory in character. It was influenced then by British empiricism and tried to analyze the idea of beauty in terms of subjective impressions. Empiricist theories of aesthetics are mainly concerned with the psychology of the arts, i.e., the creative process of the artist and the effects of art works on the beholder. They give to the imagination a central role in the artistic creation and try to examine its mode of operation systematically; in so doing they make ample use of Hume's conception of the imagination in the association of ideas and his view on the need for a standard of taste. Although for Hume there is no objective standard by which one can resolve rationally differences in matters of

27 taste, it is nevertheless rational to seek for such a standard by which aesthetic preferences can be evaluated. The criteria for the judgments of taste are to be established by inductive inquiry into the aesthetic qualities which enable works of art to please a "qualified" beholder. The empiricist theories of aesthetics originated in part from Locke's philosophy which influenced Addison, Hutcheson, Kames, and Hume; but in part they were inspired also by ideas from Shaftesbury who had been inspired by neoPlatonism. The empiricist movement in aesthetics, thus created, led then to a number of important works on aesthetics. In addition to the philosophers just mentioned the following authors should be mentioned also: Alexander Gerard, Hugh Blair, Thomas Reid, Edmund Burke, and Richard Price. In -these treatises an attempt was made to explain aesthetic phenomena systematically by means of an appeal to the empiricist conception of association; in this way the authors of these treatises were able to specify the so-called aesthetic qualities in greater detail, develop a theory of the nature of "genius", and justify certain critical principles in terms of knowledge that can be derived from experience.22 Most of these authors had based their theories on a "psychology" of the individual. Burke is an exception in this regard insofar as he relates beauty to a social instinct of mankind. His theory is also more anti-rationalistic in as much as he tries to reduce the aesthetic process to "passion", which is quite independent of reason and the rational will. Beauty is for him a social quality that is intimately connected with a social instinct in man. There are different species of beauty which correspond to different species of thte social instinct. Burke distinguished in this regard three species of social instinct: sympathy, which explains our pleasure in tragedy; imitation, which is at the root of our pleasure in painting, sculpture, and poetry; and finally ambition or emulation which is related to the sublime.23 According to Dilthey, the atomistic nature of this approach makes it incapable of explaining all contextual aspects of aesthetic experiences; furthermore, many of the seemingly "natural" responses of feeling are historically conditioned. On the other hand, this kind of research has obviously its positive side, also. Empiricist aesthetics initiated a much needed analysis of human feeling; furthermore, psychological investigations concerning aesthetic experiences are important in that they provide us with numerous details of thte kind of experience, even though they cannot account for the unity of meaning which characterizes a work of art as such.24 c) Romanticism. Herder The third period of the third phase began with the historical approach which was prevalent particularly in Germany during the later part of the 18th century. The classical ideal of universal standards for aesthetic phenomena was challenged. The empiricist theories had already questioned the metaphysical foundation of the classical norms of art proposed during the first period, but they

28 had never denied the universality of these norms; they had limited themselves merely to replacing a rational justification of agreement in matters of taste by some form of empirical explanation. The Romantic movement, on the other hand, focused on the existence of fundamental, historically conditioned differences in taste which reflect differences in "national genius". According to the Romanticist historicists the classical rules for works of art can be broken, as long as the art works remain true to the world in which they originate and genuinely express the spirit of the particular epoch of the nation's development and, thus, as long as they truly grow from the soil of the nation. These works can be properly appreciated by people of other nations or other times once this peculiar context has been adequately described and explained. According to this view, the imagination of the artist is bound by the historical context in which he finds himself; he merely recreates what is already "unconsciously' ' present in the spirit of a people. Hegel made the creativity of the artist even more limited by interpreting art as the "product" of the absolute Spririt.25 Some of the basic doctrines of the Romanticists were anticipated by Hamann (1730-1788) and Herder (1744-1803). As a young man Herder had defended the view that it must be possible to come to a genuine philosophical aesthetics. To achieve such a "scientific" theory of what is beautiful it is necessary to make a clear distinction between the aesthetic event and the aesthetic recognition. Furthermore, philosophical aesthetics must be understood from the much broader perspective of a general philosophical anthropology in which man is to be conceived as an indivisible unity of body and soul, which unity itself in turn is to be understood as an essential "element" of a much larger whole, nature.26 To give to his "metaphysical" speculations about art and beauty a solid foundation Herder begins with empirical inquiries which focus on the concrete manner in which man encounters what is beautiful through sight, hearing, and touch. In this aesthetic phenomenology, which only was developed in rudimentary outline, Herder hoped to come to grips with the entire aesthetic sensibility. He also thought that in this way it would be possible to develop a universal standard of appreciation which would help us to appreciate beauty in such a way that we are no longer hindered by national or personal differences concerning matters of taste, regardless of temporal and spatial distance. However, in the discovery and justification of such a universal standard, philosophical anthropology has an essential task, also.27 In his aesthetic phenomenology Herder was not primarily concerned with the sensuous appearance as such, but rather with its symbolic character. Just as in his view nature is an expression of the divine Spirit, so in the same way is the work of art a preeminent expression of the spirit of the artist. This symbolic theory of the art work was justified by Herder by means of his metaphysical conception of nature, in which nature as a whole is interpreted as a process of evolution, as well as by his conception concerning the origin of language, according to which the speaker expresses his inner thoughts and feelings by means of his speech. In developing his views on the symbolic character of the art work Herder sometimes compared the aesthetic experience with the mystic

29 experience. This led him to the view that works of art show us the most inner thoughts of the artist, and through him, the thought of the peoples through the ages. But at the same time works of art also show us, albeit in an obscure and enigmatic manner, the traces of "God's walking through history".28 It is clear, here more than elsewhere in his work, that Herder tried to enrich his aesthetic sensualism by means of some form of aesthetic neo-Platonism.29

§ 6. Kant and Goethe Both Schelling and Hegel were convinced of the importance of Kant's reflections on aesthetics. Hegel even wrote that "Kant spoke the first rational words on aesthetics".30 Many English and some continental European authors, on the other hand, have claimed that in his aesthetics Kant owes nearly everything to English writers; he merely systematized the main ideas which had been developed in England and Scotland during the first three quarters of the 18th century.31 It is now generally accepted that Kant indeed did make a careful study of English (and German) works on aesthetics and that, indeed, he did borrow many ideas developed in these works. Yet is should be observed that Kant gave to these ideas a place within a systematic framework which was totally original on his part and which gave them a significance and meaning which they had never had before. Kant did not turn to a critical reflection upon our judgments of taste before he had first completed his critique of pure reason, his critique of practical reason, and the greater part of his metaphysica specialis, namely the metaphysics of morals and the metaphysical principles of the natural sciences. In the first introduction to the Critique of Judgment (1790) Kant tried to explain why the methods of earlier writers on taste seemed to be unsatisfactory. He criticized the rationalist approach of Baumgarten on the ground that he conceived of taste as a form of confused knowledge of perfection; in Kant's own opinion this approach to aesthetic phenomena has nothing to do with the basic concern of aesthetics, because confused knowledge is-not intrinsically related to pleasing forms, whereas perfection, too, is as such not necessarily related to what is beautiful; that a thing is complete does not make it beautiful, and that a thing fulfills its purpose does not make it beautiful either. On the other hand, the empirical approach of Burke, Kames, and Addison equally fails in that it cannot account for the typical universality and "necessity" of our judgments of taste. Judgments of taste are aesthetic judgments of reflection which as such do not say how people actually judge, but rather how they should judge. Psychology can deal with what people actually do, not with what they should do, because the latter necessarily implies some principle a priori.32 In the Introduction to his Critique of Judgment Kant mentioned the fact that in his philosophy as a whole there is need for some principle of connection, at least on the part of the human mind, between the world of natural necessity and

30 the world of freedom. The gulf between the domain of the concept of nature and that of the concept of freedom cannot be bridged by the theoretical use of reason. Thus there are indeed two separate worlds of which the one can have no influence on the other. Yet the world of freedom must have an influence on the world of nature, if the principles of practical reason are to be materialized in action. Thus it must be possible to think nature in such a way that it is compatible with the possibility of the attainment in nature of ends in accordance with the principal laws of freedom. Kant sees the connecting link between theoretical and practical philosophy in a critique of judgment which is a means to unite in one whole the two parts of his philosophy.33 In a table which is placed at the end of the Introduction Kant distinguishes three faculties of the mind together with their principles a priori and their products. From this table it becomes clear that feeling (Gefühl) must somehow mediate between cognition and desire (Begehrung) and, thus, that the power of judgment (Urteilskraft) must somehow mediate between pure understanding and practical reason, in the same way that the principle of purposiveness must mediate between the principle of the conformity of law and that of obligation, and art must somehow mediate between nature and morals.34 Kant calls a judgment that pronounces a thing to be beautiful the judgment of taste (GeschmacksurteU). The ground of this judgment is subjective. A representation is referred by the creative imagination to the subject, i.e., to his feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Thus the ground of our judgment that a thing is beautiful or ugly is the way in which our power of feeling and judgment is affected by the representation of the object. The aesthetic judgment expresses feeling, not conceptual knowledge. Yet even though beauty cannot be expressed in concepts, and even though beauty can thus not be regarded as an objective quality of an object without a relation to the subjective ground of the judgment that the object is beautiful, there is still room for an analytic of the beautiful, because our aesthetic judgment is not a statement about our private feelings, but about the beautiful thing. In his Critique of Judgment Kant thus takes his point of departure in the empiricist theories of art and beauty and focuses particularly on the question of how judgments of taste are possible at all. Before trying to answer this question Kant first explains the peculiar characteristics of our judgments of taste as far as their quantity, quality, relation, and modality are concerned. Judgments of taste, unlike theoretical judgments, do not subsume a representation under a concept, but merely state a relation between a representation and a special "disinterested" satisfaction which is independent of all desire and personal taste. Furthermore, although judgments of taste are always singular in form ("This painting is beautiful"), they nevertheless lay claim to universal acceptance; in this they differ thus from a report on mere sensuous pleasure ("I like this cake"). Yet they do not claim to be supportable by universally acceptable reasons. Moreover, aesthetic satisfaction is evoked by an object that is purposeful in its form, although it appears not to have any purpose beyond itself; it is purposiveness without purpose. Finally, the judgment of taste claims that the

31 beautiful has a necessary reference to aesthetic satisfaction; if I find myself being moved by a beautiful object, I cannot claim that all other human beings will be equally moved by this object, but I can legitimately claim that they ought to have the same satisfaction as I have. These four aspects of the judgment of taste inevitably give rise to the philosophical problem of how such judgments can lay claim to necessity and universality and how this claim can be justified.35 Heidegger has correctly observed that most people have misunderstood the third Critique in which Kant presents his aesthetics in a systematic fashion. This is true particularly for Schopenhauer who in The World as Will and Represen­ tation seems to affiliate himself with Kant, in order then to severely criticize the position of Hegel. Yet Schopenhauer thoroughly misunderstood Kant and this misunderstanding later, in turn, influenced a great number of other scholars, including Nietzsche.36 The basic misunderstanding of Kant's aesthetics involves his claims about the beautiful. In the Critique of Judgment" Kant states that the beautiful is what purely and simply pleases; it is the object of sheer delight. Pure delight, in which the beautiful shows itself to us as beautiful, is, as we have just seen, for Kant "disinterested". Our aesthetic behavior which is our comportment toward the beautiful, is thus "a delight devoid of all interest".3* Schopenhauer interpreted this to mean that the aesthetic state is one in which the will is put out of action, one in which all striving is brought to a standstill; it is pure rest, a state of simply wanting nothing more, sheer apathic drift. Nietzsche followed Schopenhauer in this interpretation and then objected to Kant's position by saying: "Since Kant, all talk about art, beauty, knowledge, and wisdom has been smudged and besmirched by the concept 'devoid of interest'"." According to Heidegger, neither Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche realized that for Kant "interest" means that which is important to man in light of something else. Thus the beautiful for Kant is that which never can be considered in function of something else (at least as long as it is taken as the beautiful). Thus our comportment toward the beautiful is for Kant unconstrained favoring. Such favoring is not at all the putting out of action of the will, but rather the supreme effort of our essence, and the liberation of our true selves for the release of that which has proper worth in itself. Thus the interpretation of Kant, promulgated by Schopenhauer, is wrong in at least two respects. First of all, Schopenhauer takes Kant's remark about disinterestedness, which Kant made in passing in a still preparatory reflection, to be the only and definitive statement about the beautiful.40 Secondly, the definition of the beautiful itself is misunderstood and not thought through in terms of the content that remains in each aesthetic behavior when "interest" in the object falls away. The misinterpretation of the term "interest" suggests erroneously that with the exclusion of all interest every essential relation to the object is also suppressed. For Kant just the opposite is the case. By suppressing all interests which place the beautiful object in function of something else, one can bring into play the essential relation to the object itself. When all such interest is suppressed, the object comes to the fore as pure object. Such coming forth into appearance is the beautiful. The word

32

"schön" (related to scheinen, to shine) means appearing in the radiance of such coming to the fore.41 Be this as it may, Kant's reflections on the beautiful in nature and in art thus rest on his conviction that our judgments of taste imply an a priori element which goes beyond a merely empirical universality. Thus in our aesthetic judgments a super-empirical norm appears to be operative. Although judgments of taste do not impart knowledge, the feeling of pleasure which is connected with these judgments is nevertheless not just simply a subjective reaction as is the reaction to what is pleasant to the senses. The judgment of taste is reflective and it implies the free play of imagination and understanding. Since for Kant there is no essential difference between a judgment of taste concerned with nature and that concerned with works of art, the Critique of Judgment cannot be called a philosophy of art.*1 Reflecting on the distinction between the beautiful in nature and in works of art, Kant makes a distinction between the ideal of beauty toward which every judgment of taste strives according to its very nature, and a normative idea of beauty. As an autonomous phenomenon, the art work does not present the ideals of nature, but rather constitutes the self-encounter of man in nature and in the human historical world. Thus art is for Kant the beautiful presentation of some form, and through it, the presentation of an aesthetic idea which lies beyond the realm of the concepts and the categories. Through this beautiful presentation of an aesthetic idea the artist infinitely expands a given concept and, thus, encourages the free play of our mental faculties. This implies that art really lies beyond the realm of reason and that the beautiful is conceptually incomprehensible. The irrationality of the artist who freely creates ever new models and refuses to adhere rigidly to rules, explains why it is impossible to lay hold of the meaning of the work of art except through the work itself and, thus, why the language of the arts can never be fully expressed by any other language.43 Every art necessarily presupposes rules by means of which a product, if it is to be artistic, is represented as possible. But in the case of the beautiful arts these rules cannot have a concept as their determining ground. The beautiful art cannot itself devise the rules according to which its products are to be produced. Now since a product can never be called artistic without some precedent rule, Nature gives the rule to art by means of a special disposition of the artist. The innate mental disposition through which Nature gives the rule of art is genius. Thus, the beautiful arts must necessarily be considered as arts of genius.44 To make certain that the art of genius continues to stand under the guiding rule of beauty, Kant subordinated the creativity of genius to the judgment of taste. In cases of conflict between creative freedom and taste, taste must prevail. Yet it remains the art of genius to make the free play of our mental faculties communicable through the aesthetic ideas which it invents, guided by good taste. Thus Kant can ultimately still say that works of art are works of genius.45 Whatever one thinks about the relationship between Goethe (1749-1832) and

33 German idealism, one will readily admit that he never denied the inscrutable sphere of what transcends us and nevertheless encompasses the sphere of our experience. In one of his essays on literature he once wrote: "I do not dare to speak about the Absolute in the theoretical sense; yet I maintain that he who has been able to recognize it in the appearances and keeps his eye constantly fixed on it, will derive a great benefit from it".46 Yet Goethe's own interest was not in what is beyond our experience. Whereas most German thinkers of his Urne tried to reach the beautiful from what is transcendent and invisible and thus had great difficulty in reaching the sensuous appearance of beauty, Goethe immediately concerned himself with the world as it appears. His main interest is with experience and with what is given in experience, not with a transcendental and critical analysis of this experience. The world of the immediately given phenomena is to be accepted gratefully and one takes possession of it by means of intuition (Anschauung). Contrary to the reflexive, intellectual intuition of Fichte and Schelling, Goethe's intuition faithfully submits itself to what is intuited. What Goethe analyzes are not just any experiences; rather they are his own experiences, those which he had as an artist. His aesthetic theory is to a large extent some form of self-explication which he has communicated only in a fragmentary manner by means of incidental remarks and observations. These observations seldom reflect passively his own creative experiences; nor are they concerned-with the detached analysis of the object that came to be in these experiences. These observations speak about his thoughtful reflection that accompanied his artistic creation and in some instances may even have advanced it. Thus these observations somehow reveal Goethe himself, engaged in the process of his own self-formation (Bildung). By means of this process of self-formation man learns to enter a world in which moral excellence, rationality, and the aesthetic activity grow together, in order so to constitute the domain of what is universally human.47 For Goethe there is no opposition or conflict between philosophy and art, nor is there any conflict between the creative and cognitive faculties in man. Goethe discovered at the very heart of his being an active impulse toward creative shaping (ein poetischer Bildungstrieb), which is neither an artistic nor just a theoretical faculty, but a combination of both these faculties; it is even more than this, insofar as it embraces the whole domain of his conduct as an artist and refers to all those human activities that elicit order out of chaos and discover form, law, relationship, and meaning.48 It is important to note here that the word "poetisch" is meant by Goethe in its original Greek meaning which is derived from the verb poiein, to make, to bring about, to create. Heidegger also uses this word usually in that meaning.49 The active impulse toward creative shaping, however, is at work not only in the fine arts; one can find it also in the domain of the sciences. Goethe himself followed this creative impulse where he devoted himself to scientific research in optics, anatomy, meteorology, etc. But this implies that Goethe was convinced that the artist, no less than the scientist, "is a student of nature intent upon

34 revealing truth that eludes the superficial observer" .* Yet the idea that both the artist and the scientist make a contribution to the truth, did not lead Goethe to the idea, often defended, that art is merely an anticipation of rational knowledge. Art is indeed, in his view, in some sense at least an anticipation of rational knowledge, and taken as such it may very well be overcome by science and philosophy. Yet if taken in its essence, a work of art anticipates something that eternally continues to elude all verification through experience. The artist cannot really change nature; and yet he is not bound by nature either. The genuinely creative process, thus, for Goethe "develops as a play of action and counter-action between nature and the artist".51

CHAPTER III. HEGEL

In a recent essay Taminiaux has shown that in his lectures on "The Origin of the Work of Art" Heidegger was certainly in several respects inspired by Hegel's treatise on aesthetics. Thus it seems advisable to dwell for a moment on this monumental work.1 Hegel delivered his lectures on aesthetics in Berlin in the 1820's. These lectures were published posthumously in 1835 by Hotho. The work contains more than 1200 pages.2 It is preceded by an introduction in which Hegel tries to justify his project, explains the method to be used, discusses recent works in the field, and provides an authoritative summary of the entire series of lectures. In the pages to come I shall make an effort to mention a few basic ideas which Hegel develops in this preface, because it seems to me, too, that these ideas, discussed at greater length in the lectures themselves, did indeed influence Heidegger's own conception concerning the origin of the work of art. Obviously, I shall limit myself here, too, to what appears directly relevant to the main goal of this book.

§ 7. Hegel's Aesthetics. Aesthetics and Art History Hegel begins his reflections on art by observing that his lectures will be concerned with "aesthetics", i.e., "the spacious realm of the beautiful". Thus the domain of the lectures is that of the fine arts. The label "aesthetics" is in Hegel's view not totally satisfactory, insofar as a treatise on the fine arts is not really concerned with the science of sensations and feelings (aisthisis). The term originated in the school of Wolff where people were trying to develop a philosophical discipline of the fine arts during a period in Germany when works of art were treated with regard to the feelings they were supposed to arouse. But although the name is thus questionable, it is still advisable to maintain it.1 Hegel then decides not to speak about Jhe beauty in nature, even though this has been included in most aesthetic treatises from the very beginning in antiquity. His reason for not including the beauty of nature is that in his view the beauty of art is higher than nature, because it is beauty "born of the spirit and

36

born again". The term "higher" refers here to the fact that the spirit alone is what-is-true, comprehending everything within itself, so that everything beautiful is truly beautiful only to the degree that it shares in the spirit and is generated by it.4 Hegel next turns to some objections one might raise against the idea of devoting a scientific treatise to the fine arts. For one thing it seems to be inappropriate and pedantic to treat with scientific seriousness a subject which is not itself serious in nature.5 Also, if one were to argue that the arts are means toward more lofty goals, then it still would be the case that art uses deception to achieve these aims. For the beautiful has its Being in pure appearance and semblance (Schein), as Plato, Kant, and Schiller already have observed. Finally the arts seem to flow from some kind of play; but play does not seem to deserve a serious treatment, either.6 Furthermore, there is a second set of reasons why the arts should not be treated scientifically. For beauty presents itself to sense, feeling, intuition, and imagination, not to reason. Also, art is the product of freedom, not the result of principle, law, or rule. The true source of art works is the free activity of the imagination which in its activities is more free than nature.7 Hegel mentions some other reasons why the fine arts should not be treated scientifically and then states that he prefers not to dwell any further on the reasons for this claim, because one can read them in virtually every older treatise, particularly in French ones.8 Instead he decides to focus briefly on a refutation of these "objections". Hegel does not deny that art can be used for purposes other than itself: play, pleasure, recreation, ornamentation, entertainment, decoration, etc. What he wants to consider, however, is art that is free both in end and means.".. .in this freedom alone is fine art truly art; and it only fulfills its supreme task when it has placed itself in the same sphere as religion and philosophy, and when it is simply one way of bringing to our minds and expressing the Divine, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit". For the nations have deposited their richest ideas and institutions in works of art; and art is often one, if not the, key to understand their religion and philosophy. "Art shares this vocation with religion and philosophy"; but it does so in a very special way, insofar as it and it alone displays the highest in a sensuous form. In this manner art displays the depth of a suprasensuous world which thought penetrates and first posits as something that is beyond, and in contrast with, immediate consciousness and actual feeling.9 Hegel then points out that for many people the word "Schein" has merely a negative meaning; yet in his view, Schein (taken in the sense of both appearance and semblance) is essential to essence. Truth would not be truth if it were not to show itself, i.e., if it were not the truth for someone, for itself, as well as for the spirit. In the fine arts there is not mere appearance, but a very special kind of appearance in which art gives actuality to what is inherently true. Furthermore, Hegel states, one should realize here that the so-called real world, the outer world of physical things and the inner world of feelings, are Schein in a sense

37 that is more negative than the one in which art works are Scheut, because they are even farther away from true reality, i.e., spirit. On the other hand, art "liberates the true content of the phenomena from the semblance (Schein) and deception of this bad, transitory world, and gives them a higher actuality, born of the spirit".10 Art works cannot even be called more deceptive than the presentations of historiography. For the subject of historiography is not the spirit, nor even immediate existence, but only the mere, spiritual appearance thereof with its -contingency and individuality. Yet compared with philosophy one could call art works deceptions; and the same is true if they are compared with religion and the moral order. But compared with the appearance of immediate actuality and of historiography the appearance of art has the advantage that it points beyond itself and hints at something that is spiritual of which it is to give us an idea, whereas immediate appearance does not even present itself as deception, but rather as that which is actual and true." The fine arts are indeed limited insofar as they neither in content nor in form constitute "the highest and absolute mode of bringing to our minds the true interests of the spirit". Because of its form, art is limited to a specific content which is such that it can be presented to the senses. For the gods of Greece this is still the case; but the Christian conception of God can no longer be presented by the fine arts. And this means also that the peculiar nature of art and art works no longer fulfills our highest need. For us works of art are no longer divine. "Thought and reflection have spread their wings above the fine arts".12 It is certainly true that today art "no longer affords that satisfaction of spiritual needs which earlier ages and nations sought in it", when art and religion were still very closely related. "The beautiful days of Greek art, like the golden age of the later Middle Ages, are gone".13 The conditions of our present time are not favorable to the fine arts. "In all these respects art, considered in its highest vocation, is and remains for us a thing of the past. Thereby it has lost for us genuine truth and life, and has rather been transferred into our ideas..." Works of art now arouse in us today not just immediate enjoyment, but also our judgment, insofar as we subject to our intellectual consideration the content of art, the works' means of presentation, and the degree of appropriateness of both to one another. "The philosophy of art is therefore a greater need in our day than it was in days when art by itself as art yielded full satisfaction".14 After briefly discussing a third objection against the attempt to make a scientific study of the fine arts,15 Hegel states that works of art can be treated scientifically in more than one way. In section four of the Introduction he briefly discusses two of these. First there is the history of art which concerns itself with actual works of art from the outside. This is the indispensable road for anyone who wants to become a scholar in the field of the fine arts. On the other hand, there is the philosophy of what is beautiful. As for the latter Hegel mentions a few classical treatises: those by Aristotle, Longinus, Horace, Lord Kames, Batteux, Ramler, Meyer, Hirt, Goethe, Mengs, and Winckelmann. He concludes these reflections with the remark that the mode of reflecting on

38 art, which is characteristic of these classical treatises on aesthetics, has now become out of date. Today, he continues, only the scholarship of art history still retains its abiding value.16 Via a brief examination of Plato's reflections on beauty Hegel is then led to ask the question concerning the concept of the beautiful in the fine arts.17 § 8. On Beauty and Art in Hegel In the fifth section of the Introduction Hegel turns to the question of how one is to approach the concept of the beautiful in a truly scientific treatise of the fine arts.18 In his view, in every science one must discuss two issues with respect to its subject matter: 1) that such a thing indeed is, and 2) what it is. As Hegel sees it, every philosophical science encounters great difficulties in regard to these two issues. And this is so particularly in the case of the fine arts, because the beautiful has often been regarded as not being absolutely necessary for our ideas, but rather as being purely subjective pleasure. Furthermore, each science must also prove the necessity of its subject matter. And anyone who wants to exhibit the necessity of the beauty of art, has to show that the artistically beautiful is a necessary result of an antecendent which, considered according to its true concept, is such as to lead us with scientific necessity to the concept of fine art. But since we begin here with art, we have to begin with an assumption, which remains outside our consideration and whose scientific treatment really belongs to another philosophical discipline. Thus the only thing we can do here is to take the concept of art lemmatically, i.e., under the assumption that it has already been demonstrated, and this is the case with all particular philosophical disciplines if they are treated one by one. For, in Hegel's view, it is only the whole of philosophy that is knowledge of the universe as being in itself that one organic totality, which develops itself out of its own concept and which, in its self-relating necessity, withdrawing into itself to form a totality, closes with itself so as to form one world of truth. In the little circle of this scientific necessity "each single part is on the one hand a circle returning into itself, while on the other hand it has at the same time a necessary connection with other parts". Each part has something that stands behind it and from which it is derived, and something to which it pushes forward. It is the task "of an encyclopaedic development of the whole of philosophy and its particular disciplines, to prove the idea of the beautiful with which we began". In other words, in the lectures on aesthetics the concept of the beautiful and that of art are presuppositions taken over from the system of philosophy, taken as a whole.'9 In the sixth section Hegel critically discusses three common conceptions about the arts: 1) the work of art is not a natural product, but brought about by human activities; 2) it is made in order that man can apprehend it by means of the senses; and 3) it has an end or aim in itself.20 As for the claim that works of art are products of human activities, Hegel

39 briefly discusses critically three aspects of this claim, before he turns to a brief reflection on the question of why human beings have a need for art works in the first place. In his view, the thesis that a work of art is just the outcome of the application of rules, is to be rejected on the ground that it is one-sided. Secondly, there is the claim that the work of art is just the outflow of talent, genius, and inspiration. If this is taken to mean, as the young Goethe and Schiller at first have suggested, that genius and inspiration mean to go against the application of rules, then this leads to nonsense. Genius and inspiration need practice and skill, as well as the application of some rules. This is the reason why the works which Goethe and Schiller produced as mature authors are so beautiful and important for the entire German nation: they reflect genius, inspiration, experience, thoughtfulness, practice, and skill, as well as a respect for certain "rules". Thirdly, there is the view that art works somehow are to be related to things "made by nature". One has also said here that works of art cannot possibly equal God's work in nature. Hegel rejects one of the underlying tacit assumptions of these theses; in his view it is not correct to assume that God works only without involving man. One should realize that God also works in and through the artist. What the artist then produces is "better" than what was produced naturally in nature. Hegel then finally turns to the question as to why human beings have a need for works of art. Why do artists produce works of art and why do others try to preserve them? Hegel states that he is unable to answer these questions at this time. Yet he makes a few brief observations on the issue. The need from which art flows has its origin in the fact that man is a thinking being, a thinking consciousness; man draws out of himself and "puts before himself what he is and whatever else is". Man is not only, like other beings, a part of nature; but he also duplicates himself and thus is for himself.21 It is in the strength of this active placing himself before himself that he is spirit. He acquires consciousness first theoretically and then practically. From this it follows that man wants to produce himself as self in that which he is not, but in which he then can recognize himself. "This aim he achieves by altering external things whereon he impresses the seal of his inner being... Man does this in order, as a free subject, to strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness and to enjoy in the shape of things only an external realization of himself \ Man can do this in many ways. Yet the universal need for art is "man's rational need to lift the inner and outer world into his spiritual consciousness as an object in which he recognizes again his own self'.22 Hegel now turns to the second major thesis, according to which art works are to be apprehended by the senses. Many authors have tried to articulate this thesis by appealing to feelings. Hegel rejects this approach because it leads really nowhere, insofar as "feeling is the indefinite dull region of the spirit", about which not much is known.23 Feeling as such is an entirely empty form of subjective affection. The entire approach does not get beyond vagueness. It never immerses itself "in the theme at issue, i.e., in the work of art, plumbing its depths ..."»

40 Others have therefore focused on a very particular feeling, namely the feeling of the beautiful which reflects itself, as sense of beauty, in good taste. These authors have tried to promote such a good taste by means of education. But this education likewise "got no further than what was rather vague". The talk about good taste, too, remains "silent when the thing at issue comes in question".25 Still others have turned to serious scholarship in art history. This is indeed important; yet it cannot be a substitute for a theory about the art work. Art history as such has "little notion of the true nature of the art work .. .',2* Hegel finally tries to formulate his own view on the issue and articulates it briefly from the perspective of the work, the artist, and the content of the work. In order to be a work of art, the art work must present itself to sensuous apprehension; it is there present to sensuous feeling and open to sensuous intuition. Yet at the same time it is there for spiritual apprehension. Now the sensuous can be related to the spirit in more than one way. There is the merely sensuous looking-at, there is the theoretical apprehension, and in between these two there is the artistic apprehension. In the first case, there is barely any activity of the spirit involved; in the second case, the sensuous is used merely as a means to proceed to the spiritual; in the latter case, the sensuous appears as the surface of the spiritual and thus really "as a pure appearance [Schein] of the sensuous".27 In other words, the artistic apprehension constitutes the middle between immediate sensuousness and ideal thought. In it sensuousness is spiritualized. Looked at from the perspective of the artist, we find here something similar. The production of the art work is different from purely mechanical work as well as from pure theory as we find it in science. Hegel appeals here to the doctrine of the creative imagination which is a gift and a talent, but at the same time is to be perfected by practice. Hegel here refers thus to the common doctrine of the creative genius. Finally, looked at from the perspective of the content, it should be clear that only such content can be selected which lends itself to such sensuous presentation.28 Hegel finally turns to the aim of art. He first discusses the imitation of nature as the aim of art.29 Then he considers the thesis according to which art is to bring to our senses, our feeling, and our inspiration everything that has a place in the human spirit; in this theory art has predominantly an educational aim. Hegel particularly dwells on the view that art is supposed to mitigate the ferocity of the human emotions, to purify the passions (/catharsis), and to contribute to our moral development. All these views, once held in the past by Plato, the Stoa, the empiricists, Kant, and others, are rejected. Hegel discusses his own view in a special section.30 Section seven of the Introduction is devoted to the historical deducation of the true concept of art. Here Hegel concentrates his efforts on a careful analysis of the conceptions of art which were current in his own era: the views of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schiller, Winckelmann, von Schlegel, etc., but he also dis-

41 cusses the ironic conceptions of Solger and Tieck which in the final analysis were derived from that of Fichte.31 On the one hand, this section is one of the most illuminating of the entire Introduction; on the other, it is also one that often is very difficult to understand, due to the fact that Hegel approaches the views of these authors constantlyfromhis own perspective, according to which art presents the Absolute in sensuous form. Since this section contains little that throws light on Heidegger's conception of art and art works, I shall proceed at once to section eight in which Hegel explains how he plans to divide the subject matter to be studied in his lectures on aesthetics. Hegel begins this section with the remark that after all these introductory reflections, it is now time to go on to the study of the subject itself. Yet since we are still in the introductory part of the lectures, he feels that he can do no more than just give a brief sketch of what is still to come.32 § 9. The Beauty of Art and its Particular Forms Since we have spoken of art as itself proceedingfromthe absolute Idea, and we have even pronounced its end to be the sensuous presentation of the Absolute itself, we must now proceed by showing in outline, how the particular parts of this subject matter emerge from this conception of artistic beauty as the sensuous presentation of the Absolute.33 The content of art is thus the Idea; and its form is the configuration of the sensuous material. Art therefore must harmonize these two sides and bring them to some totality. This means first that the content should be such that it indeed qualifies for such presentation. In other words the content must be such that it can be adapted to the sensuous form. The second requirement is that the content cannot be something totally abstract; it must be concrete, not in the sense of the sensuous, but in the sense in which spiritual and intellectual things are said to be (in part at least) concrete. Hegel derives from this that it was for this reason that the Jews could not present God, whereas the Christians could. The third requirement is that the content thus must be individual. Hegel illustrates this by pointing to the fact that in a work of art, as in each human being, body and spirit must constitute an individual totality; thus the elements out of which it developed must both be individual: this body and this spirit. Hegel concludes this part of his reflections with the following statement. "But since art has the task of presenting the Idea to immediate perception in a sensuous shape and not in the form of thinking and pure spirituality as such, and, since this presenting has its value and dignity in the correspondence and unity of both sides, i.e., this Idea and its outward shape, it follows that the loftiness and excellence of art in attaining a reality adequate to its concept will depend on the degree of inwardness and unity in which Idea and shape appear fused into one".34 Hegel then derives from the insights contained in this statement the division of the subject and, thus, of his entire lecture course.

42 First, there will be a universal part that is concerned with the universal Idea of artistic beauty as the Ideal insofar as this Ideal relates to nature on the one hand, and to the subjective, artistic production on the other. Then there will be a part on the three basic forms of artistic configuration as we find them historically over time. Finally, there will be a long part in which the individualization of artistic beauty into different arts from architecture to poetry will be considered.35 In part one Hegel first relates the arts to religion and scientific philosophy and thus describes their position in relation to the finite world. Then he explains what he means by the Idea, the concept of the beautiful as such, how beauty is found in nature, and what is to be said about the beauty of art as the Ideal. Toward the very end of this part he speaks about the artist: creative imagination, genius, inspiration, objectivity of presentation, manner, style, and originality. In part two Hegel speaks about three important art forms: the symbolic form of art. the classical form of art, and the romantic form of art. Finally in the last part Hegel is concerned with the individual arts, which he divides into architecture, sculpture, and the "romantic arts", painting, music, and poetry. As for Part I Hegel observes that the Idea, as the beauty of art, is not the Idea as such, in the manner in which metaphysical logic must try to grasp it as the Absolute, but the Idea made into reality and as having advanced to immediate unity and correspondence with this reality. The Idea as such is the absolute Truth as such, i.e., in its not yet objectified universality. On the other hand, the Idea as the beauty of art is the Idea which is individual reality as well as some individual configuration of reality which is destined essentially to embody and reveal this Idea. Hegel calls the Idea taken as reality which is shaped in accordance with the Concept of the Idea, the Ideal. He then continues that the problem of such correspondence might in the first instance be understood quite formally in the sense that any Idea at all might serve, if only the actual shape (no matter which) presented precisely this specific Idea. But in that case the demanded truth of the Ideal would be confused with the mere correctness which consists in the expression of some meaning or other in an appropriate way.36 For any content can be presented quite adequately, without being allowed to claim the artistic beauty of the Ideal. Furthermore, only "in the highest art are Idea and presentation truly in conformity with one another, in the sense that the shape given to the Idea is in itself the absolutely true shape, because the content of the Idea which that shape expresses, is itself the true and genuine content".37 Hegel gives as an example that the Christian imagination was able to present God himself in human form and its expression as spirit, simply because God himself is here completely known in Himself as spirit.38 As for Part II Hegel briefly tries to characterize the three basic art forms that developed over time. These different forms find their origin in the different ways of grasping the Idea as content.

43 In the symbolic form of art there is a disproportion between content, and form. There the Idea is still taken in its indeterminacy and obscurity, or even in its bad and untrue determinacy; this is then made the content of specific and concrete artistic shapes. But being indeterminate, the Idea does not yet possess in itself that individuality which the Ideal demands. Thus its outward shape is somewhat arbitrary and defective. The first form of art is more a search for portrayal than a capacity for true presentation. The Idea has not yet found the form even in itself. One takes shapes of natural things which one then relates to the Idea because of the fact that these objects have a quality by which they indeed can present a universal meaning. One paints a lion and claims that strength is meant. Since in this case the Idea has no natural reality to express itself, it launches out in various shapes, "seeks itself in them in their unrest and extravagance, but yet does not find them adequate to itself. So now the Idea exaggerates natural shapes . . . . it staggers round in them, it bubbles and ferments in them, does violence to them, distorts and stretches them unnaturally, and tries to elevate their phenomenal appearance to the Idea by the diffuseness, immensity, and splendor of the formations employed". The reason for this is that the Idea is still indeterminate whereas the chosen forms are thoroughly determinate in their shape. In this case, there is tension between content and form; the relation of Idea to objective world is a negative one. The content appears here as the sublime which really remains high above all this multiplicity of shapes which do not really correspond to the Idea. The meaning is raised here far above all mundane content. "These aspects constitute in general the character of the early artistic pantheism of the East, which on the one hand ascribes absolute meaning to even the most worthless objects, and, on the other, violently coerces the phenomenon to express its view of the world whereby it becomes bizarre, grotesque, and tasteless . . . " " In the classical form of art this double defect of the symbolic form is extinguished. As we have seen, the symbolic form is imperfect because 1) in it the Idea is presented as indeterminate or as only abstractly determined, and thus 2) the correspondence between meaning and shape is defective. The classical art form is the free and adequate embodiment of the Idea in its essential nature. There is now a complete harmony between Idea and sensuous shape. The classical art form is thefirstto produce the completed Ideal and to present it as actualized in fact. Classical art accomplishes this by choosing as its shape which the Idea as spiritual is to assume, the human form. "But the human body in its forms counts in classical art no longer as a merely sensuous being, but only as the existence and natural shape of the spirit; it must therefore be exempt from all the deficiency of the purely sensuous and from the contingent finitude of the phenomenal world". Thus first the shape is purified in order to be capable of expressing in itself a content adequate to itself; then, to guarantee the proper non-formal correspondence between content and shape, the content itself must

44 be of such a kind that it can express itself completely in the natural human form, without towering beyond and above this expression. Therefore the spirit is here at once determined as particular and human, i.e., not as absolute and eternal; for as absolute the spirit can express itself only as spirituality. This constitutes the imperfection and defect of classical art which will only be overcome in romantic art.40 The romantic artform cancels again the completed unification of the Idea and its reality; it differentiates and opposes the two again as was the case in symbolic art, where the opposition remained unconquered. Thus what is defective in classical art where the opposition was overcome in a harmonious unity, is art itself and the inner restrictedness of the sphere of art. This restrictedness lies in the fact that art takes as its subject matter the spirit (which is universal, infinite, and concrete in its very nature) in a form which is sensuously concrete; classical art presents the unification of the two as the perfect correspondence of the two. Yet here the spirit is obviously not presented in its true nature. For spirit is the infinite subjectivity of the Idea. Romantic art cancels the classical principle and with it the undivided unity of classical art. It does so because it has won a content which goes above and beyond the classical form of art in its mode of expression. This content "coincides with what Christianity asserts of God as a spirit, in distinction from the Greek religion which is the essential and most appropriate content for classical art".41 In classical art the concrete content is only implicitly the unity of the divine nature with the human; because this unity is immediate and still implicit, it can adequately be manifested in an immediate and sensuous way. The Greek god is and remains the object of naive intuition and sensuous imagination. Thus his shape indeed is the shape of man. The range of the god's being and power is finite, particular and individual. The god is a substance and power with which the individual human being's inner being is only implicitly at one without possessing this oneness as inward subjective knowledge. Now the knowledge of that implicit unity which is the content of the classical art form, and which as implicit can be presented perfectly in bodily shape, constitutes a higher state. In romantic art, that which was implicit in classical art, i.e., the unity of divine and human nature, is raised from an immediate to a known unity. The true element for the realization of this content is no longer the sensuous immediate existence of the spiritual in the bodily form of man, but rather the inwardness of self-consciousness. "Now Christianity brings God before our imagination as spirit, not as an individual and particular spirit, but as absolute in spirit and in truth. For this reason it retreats from the sensuousness of imagination into spiritual inwardness and makes this, not the body, the medium and the existence of the content of truth. Thus the unity of divine and human nature is a known unity, one to be realized only by spiritual knowing and in spirit*. The new content is not tied here to sensuous presentation, but is precisely freed from this immediate existence, which henceforth must be set down as negative and thus as to be overcome, i.e., as to be reflected into the spiritual unity. In this

45 way romantic art is the self-transcendence of art, but one that remains within its own sphere and remains in the form of art itself.42 At this third stage the subject matter of art is free, concrete spirituality, which is to be manifested as spirituality to the spiritually inward of the heart. Thus art can now no longer work for sensuous intuition; rather it must now work for the inwardness which coalesces with its object as if with itself; it must work for inner depth, for reflective emotion, for feeling which, as spiritual, strives for freedom in itself, and seeks and finds its reconciliation only in the inner spirit."This inner world constitutes the content of the romantic sphere and must therefore be represented as this inwardness and in the pure appearance of this depth of feeling".« Romantic art, too, needs an external medium for its expression. As in symbolic art, the sensuous externality of shape is presented here as something inessential and transient; and the same is true for the particularity of the finite spirit involved. "The aspect of external existence is consigned to contingency and abandoned to the adventures devised by an imagination whose caprice can mirror what is present to it, exactly as it is, just as readily as it can jumble the shapes of the external world and distort them grotesquely. For this external medium has its essence and meaning no longer, as in classical art, in itself and its own sphere, but in the heart which finds its manifestation in itself instead of in the external world ..."** Thus the separation of content and form, Idea and shape, their indifference and inadequacy, come to the fore again, as in symbolic art. Yet there is an essential difference: the Idea which in symbolic art itself was presented as indeterminate which, in turn, brought with it a deficiency of shape, has now to appear perfected in itself as spirit and heart. Because of this higher perfection, it is no longer susceptible to an adequate union with the external; this it can achieve only within itself. Formulated briefly, one could say that these three main forms of art consist in the striving, the attainment, and the overcoming of the Ideal as the true Idea of beauty.45 Finally, there is part HI, in which Hegel speaks about the system of the individual arts. But this, too, need not occupy us here further.

CHAPTER IV. THE CENTURY AFTER HEGEL

§ 10. Richard Wagner After these long digressions, we can now again return to Heidegger's own essay, "Six Basic Developments in the History of Aesthetics".1 In it Heidegger says that in the modern era art begins to lose its immediate relation to the basic task of presenting the absolute in the history of man. Thus concurrent with the foundation of aesthetics we see the decline of great art. At the moment that aesthetics achieves its greatest height, breadth, and rigor of form, great art comes to an end. The achievement of modern aesthetics derives its own greatness from the fact that it recognizes the end of great art as such and brings this into language; the greatest aesthetics in the Western tradition is that of Hegel which is contained in his famous Lectures on Aesthet­ ics. To illustrate the point Heidegger quotes the following passages in which, as we have just seen, Hegel's intention comes to light quite clearly:"... yet in this regard there is at least no absolute need at hand for it to be brought to representation by art".2 "In all these relations art is and remains for us with regard to its highest determination, something past".3 "The magniflcient days of Greek art, like the golden era of the later Middle Ages, are gone".4 One might be tempted, Heidegger continues, to object to Hegel's view and point to the fact that since 1830 great works have been produced. Hegel obviously had no intention of denying that in the future great works of art could be produced and that they also as such would be judged and esteemed. The fact that there are such individual works and that they are still enjoyed by a few sectors of the population, does not refute Hegel's thesis, but rather speaks for his opinion. It proves that art has lost its power to present the absolute and, thus, has lost its absolute power. It is clear then that the position of art and the kind of knowledge concerning it are to be redefined. We see efforts in this regard in the later part of the 19th century.5 In the 19th century some people realized the decline of art from its essence, and developed a conception of "collective art" to undo this development. This effort is related to the name Richard Wagner. It is no mere accident that Wagner attempted to produce something that legitimately could be called a

47 collective art work; he tried to give an account of such works in several treatises such as Art and Revolution (1849), The Artwork of the Future (IS50), Opera and Drama (1851), German Art and German Politics (1865).' Heidegger writes that it is impossible in the context of the present reflections to give an adequate explanation of the complicated and confused intellectual and historical milieu of the middle of the 19th century. This can be understood only from the century as a whole and the latter can be understood only from thr last third of the 18th and the first third of the 20th centuries. A few general remarks must suffice here. With reference to the historical position of art in this era, the effort to produce a so-called "collective.art work" is essential. The name means that the arts can no longer be realized independently from one another; they must all again be conjoined in one work. Furthermore, this one work should be the celebration of the national community; finally, it itself should be the religion. Theoretically, music was to be a means for achieving effective drama; yet in Wagner, music, in the form of opera, becomes the authentic art to which drama, architecture, painting, and sculpture are to be subordinated and related. What Wagner really wanted here was the complete domination of art as music and, thus, also the domination of the pure state of feeling. The "lived experience" becomes all-important. Theater and orchestra determine what art really is. Art is once again to become an "absolute need", but now the absolute is experienced "as sheer indeterminacy, total dissolution into sheer feeling, a hovering that gradually sinks into nothingness".7 Wagner was "inspired" here by the works and ideas of Schopenhauer, particularly his World as Will and Representation.* In Heidegger's view Wagner's attempt had to fail, not only because of the predominance of music with respect to all other arts, but particularly because of his "conception and estimation of art in terms of the unalloyed state of feeling and the growing barbarization of the very state to the point where it becomes the sheer bubbling and boiling of feeling abandoned to itself'.9 True, many people took such arousal of frenzied feeling as a rescue of life, in view of the growing impoverishment of life caused by industry, technology, and finance and in view of the depletion of all constructive forces of knowledge and tradition, to say nothing about the lack of all goals for human existence. "Rising on swells of feeling would have to substitute for a solidly grounded and articulated position in the midst of beings, the kind of thing that only great poetry and thought can create".10 Thus in the middle of the 19th century a new phase in the development of art was propagated. The essence of this phase consists in the fact that the answer for the question of whether and how art is still known and willed as the definitive formation and preservation of the beings as a whole, was thought to be the development of a collective art work. During the same period we find a growing incapacity for metaphysical knowledge; knowledge of the arts is transformed into art history. What in the age of Herder and Winckelmann still stood in the service of a magnificient self-meditation on man's historical exist-

48 ence is now changed into an academic discipline which is carried on for its own sake. The examination of literary works now becomes philology. Aesthetics becomes psychology and the latter proceeds in the manner of the natural sciences: states of feeling are now taken to be just facts that originate of themselves and may be subjected to observation, measurement, and experimentation.11 History of literature and the history of the fine arts in general become "genuine" sciences and both, science and art, are to be taken as cultural phenomena. Where the aesthetic does not become an object of scientific research and is taken rather as something that determines the character of man, the aesthetic state becomes immediately one among other possible states, such as the scientific or the political. It is assumed that there must be culture, because otherwise man no longer would progress. Progress in what direction? No one knows and no one is seriously asking any more. Furthermore, there still is Christianity and the Church, even though these, too, are already becoming more political than religious institutions.12 Thus the entire world is examined and evaluated on the basis of its capacity to bring about the aesthetic state. The aesthetic man, who really is a nineteenthcentury hybrid, believed himself to be justified and protected by the whole of his culture. Although there still is in all of this some ambition and labor, and sometimes even good taste and true challenge, nevertheless this is really the beginning of what Nietzsche calls nihilism. This brings us finally to Nietzsche's conception of art as will-to-power.,3

§ 11. Nietzsche's Concern with Aesthetics What Hegel claimed about art, Nietzsche asserts about the "highest" values, namely religion, morality, and philosophy. Whereas for Hegel it is art that fell victim to nihilism and thus became a thing of the past, for Nietzsche art becomes that which must be pursued as the counter-movement to nihilism. According to Heidegger, Nietzsche's position in regard to art is still somehow determined by Wagner's will to the collective art work. Whereas for Hegel art (as a thing of the past) became an object of the highest speculative knowledge and, correspondingly, aesthetics assumed the form of a metaphysics of the spirit, Nietzsche's meditations on art become a mere physiology of art: "... aesthetics is nothing eise than applied physiology",14 investigations of bodily states and processes.15 But to understand Nietzsche's position it is necessary that one gradually learns to see the genuine meaning of the conceptions which are employed here in his effort to combine a concern for art as a counter-movement to nihilism with the idea that knowledge of art is to be achieved through "physiology".16

49 a) Nietzsche's Metaphysics. Will-to-Power. The Basic Questions of Philosophy In a lecture course of 1936-1937 which was delivered shortly after Heidegger had completed his lecture on the origin of the work of art, Heidegger made an effort to explain in what sense for Nietzsche will-to-power is art. To achieve this goal Heidegger began the lecture course with a brief introduction to Nietzsche's metaphysics taken as a whole. In Heidegger's view, just as in every form of metaphysics, so too in Nietzsche's metaphysics we must distinguish five basic themes: 1) the beingness of the beings, i.e., that because of which a being is as such; 2) the whole of the beings, i.e., that which accounts for the fact that and how the beings are in the whole; 3) the mode of Being of the truth; 4) the history of the truth; and 5) the human community which has been placed in this truth to preserve it. In Nietzsche's metaphysics will-to-power is the expression for the Being of the beings taken as such, their essentia; nihilism is the expression for the history of the truth of the beings which are so determined; eternal return of the same signifies the manner in which the beings are in the whole, their existentia; superman indicates the relevant kind of humanity which is summoned by this whole; and finally, justice is the essence of the truth of the beings which are taken as will-to-power.17 In the lecture course, "The Will to Power as Art", Heidegger tried to articulate Nietzsche's metaphysics by focussing mainly on the relationship between art, will-to-power and truth; this was done concretely by means of reflections which explain in what sense for Nietzsche will-to-power as art is the expression for the Being of the beings (their essence) on the one hand, and by means of a brief essay on Nietzsche's conception of truth, on the other. As for the will-to-power, Heidegger stressed that for Nietzsche will-to-power is never the willing of a particular being. Will-to-power involves the essence, the Being of the beings. Will-to-power is the Being of the beings. Nietzsche speaks about will-to-power and not just about will, in order to stress the enhancement in the will; will-to-power is "creative" in the sense that the will implies an increase in power. But Heidegger immediately adds that what is decisive here "is not production in the sense of manufacturing but taking up and transforming, making something other than . . . . other in an essential way". For the same reason destruction also belongs to this kind of production. And since destruction implies the contrary, the ugly, and the evil, the latter are thus of necessity proper to this form of production and even to will-to-power, also. But this means that the contrary, the ugly, and the evil belong to Being itself. To the essence of Being, i.e., to the manner in which Being comes-to-presence and abides, nullity belongs as an all-overpowering "no".18 Heidegger adds to this that one perhaps could clarify Nietzsche's conception of will-to-power with the help of Aristotle's reflections on dunamis, energeia, and entelecheia, as the highest determinations of Being. But in that case, one obviously must make an effort to go beyond the common interpretation of Metaphysica IX."

50 As for Nietzsche's conception of truth, Heidegger states first once more that the chief question of Western metaphysics is the question concerning the beings as such. This chief question Heidegger calls the guiding question, even though it is only the penultimate question. The ultimate and in a sense also the first question is: what is Being itself? This is the grounding question of philosophy insofar as it inquires into the ground of beings as ground, inquiring at the same time into its own ground and into grounding itself. Modern philosophy tried to approach this latter question via epistemology, i.e., via a certain conception of consciousness. In this way, however, it is and remains on a path that leads us only to the anteroom of philosophy and, thus, prevents us from penetrating to the very core of philosophy. What we have called the grounding question is as foreign to Nietzsche as it had been for Plato and the great thinkers between Plato and Hegel. If we relate the guiding question properly to the grounding question we are led to the opening-up of the beings taken as a whole and to Being itself. The beings are to be brought into the open region of Being, and Being itself is to be brought into the open that arises in its own coming-to-presence (Wesen). The openness of the beings Heidegger calls their non-concealment, their a-litheia, their truth. The guiding and grounding questions, taken together, thus ask what the beings and what Being in truth are. By asking about the coming-to-presence of Being in this manner, nothing is left outside the question, not even nothing. Thus the question of what Being in truth is must at the same time ask what the truth, in which Being itself is to be cleared, really is. In other words, the questions concerning the beings and Being itself are intimately related to the question concerning the coming-to-pass of the truth. The question of Being and the question of truth, if they are properly developed, will show that Being and truth are united in essence, although they are also foreign to one another. The proper development of these questions, Heidegger says, will also show us in what domain Being and truth somehow belong together and what this domain really is. Heidegger admits that these questions deal with issues not examined by Nietzsche himself. Yet in his view, these questions must be asked if we are to bring his thought into the open and make it fruitful to our own thinking.20 b) Five Basic Theses on Art and their Implication After these preparatory reflections Heidegger turns to an attempt to give a first and provisional characterization of what Nietzsche understood to be the essence of art. He derives this first characterization from a brief reflection on five statements on art that one can derive from Nietzsche's The Will to Power: 1) Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of the will-to-power. 2) Art must be grasped in terms of the artist. 3) Art is the basic occurrence of all the beings; to the extent that they are, the beings are self-creating. 4) Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism. And 5) art is worth more than "the truth". Heidegger explains first that according to Nietzsche, in the artist we encoun-

51 ter the most perspicuous mode of the will-to-power. In his view, what is decisive in Nietzsche's conception of art, is the fact that he sees art in its essential entirety in terms of the artist. And Nietzsche does this consciously "and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who 'enjoy* and 'experience' it".21 The guiding principle of Nietzsche's teaching on art focuses on those who artistically produce art works and not on those who receive them. In The Will to Power Nietzsche state» that "our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman's aesthetics, insofar as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of 'what is beautiful'. In all philosophy to date the artist is missing . . . " What Nietzsche wishes to develop instead is a "masculine" aesthetics.22 This is an aesthetics in which the question of art primarily is the question of the artist, as the one who artistically produces the work; only his experience of what is beautiful can provide us with the standard. This implies for Nietzsche that all other configurations of the will-to-power (such as religion, morals, society, knowledge, science, and philosophy) are to be viewed from the perspective of what is essential to the artist as such. This, in turn, means that all the beings which the artist himself does not artistically produce, have a mode of Being that corresponds to the work of art that the artist does produce. In this way Nietzsche extends the concept of art to every ability to bring-forth, and the concept of the art work to everything that is broughfeforth. In so doing Nietzsche remains in harmony with what was common up until the last quarter of the 18th century. Up to that time craftsmen, statesmen, educators, etc., were called artists. Nature, too, was then called an artist. The meaning of the word "art" was then, as we have seen already many times, not yet reduced to that of "fine art". If we limit ourselves to the artist, taken in the narrow sense of the term in which it refers to the person who produces something artistically, then it is understandable why Nietzsche can call the artist only a preliminary stage, namely a stage from which we have to proceed to one that implies all things. Thus Nietzsche can then claim that art is the basic happening of all beings; to the degree that they are at all, beings are self-creating and created.23 Art taken in the broad sense is what is truly creative; it constitutes the basic character of the beings. And since for Nietzsche will-to-power is essentially creating he can then say that art is will-to-power. Art in the narrow sense of fine art is that activity in which creative production emerges for itself and becomes most perspicuous. Fine art is not just one configuration of the will-to-power among others, but the supreme configuration. Thus here the will-to-power becomes truly visible as art. Now will-to-power is the ground on which all future valuation depends; it is the principle of the new valuation that has to take the place of the valuation formerly promoted by religion, morality, and philosophy. Religion, morality, and philosophy are forms of decadence. To the degree that these three maintain that this sensuous world is worth nothing and that there must be a better world, they are inherently Platonism and, thus, nihilism in the true sense of the term. For Nietzsche art whose true element is the

52 sensuous, not the supersensuous world, is the only superior counterforce against every will that negates life; art is inherently anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, and anti-nihilist.24 This is the reason why Nietzsche can conclude that art is the distinctive counter-movement to nihilism. From this conception of the artist and art it follows at once that all activities and particularly the highest ones must be determined by the artistic activity. This is true also for man's philosophizing. Philosophy can no longer be defined as that which teaches a morality that posits a higher world in opposition to this, presumably worthless, sensuous one. Against the nihilistic philosopher we must pose the artist philosopher. Such a philosopher is an artist insofar as he gives form to the beings as a whole and insofar as he begins where they reveal themselves, namely with man. Speaking about art in the narrow sense, Nietzsche usually considers it as that which says "yes" to the sensuous world, to semblance, to what is not "the true world", to what is not "the truth". But this implies that in art a decision is made about truth; and this for Nietzsche always means about true beings. Now in view of the fact that for Nietzsche "the truth" always refers to the "true world" in the sense of Plato and Christianity, and in view of the fact that art is the distinctive countermovement to every form of nihilism (which is Platonism in whatever form one may find it), it becomes finally understandable why and in what sense Nietzsche can claim that art is worth more than "the truth". Art is the privileged configuration of the will-to-power and as such it is the greatest stimulant of life.23

§ 12. Nietzsche on the Essence of Art Thus far we have seen that for Nietzsche art is the privileged configuration of the will-to-power. Art, therefore, is that from which we must try to understand what Nietzsche means by will-to-power taken in its essence, and what he understands by the beings as such and taken as a whole. We must thus try to penetrate more deeply into Nietzsche's conception of art. But in so doing we shall soon run into the seeming contradiction which we have encountered already. On the one hand, Nietzsche calls art the countermovement to nihilism and the establishment of the new, supreme values which will set the standard and ground the laws for a historical mode of Being for man which can be full of "esprit"; yet on the other hand, Nietzsche claims that art can be properly understood only by means of physiology.26 Both these two claims seem to indicate that Nietzsche's position in regard to art is nonsensical and, thus, also nihilistic in the full sense of the term. For if art is just a matter of physiology, art, taken in its essence, dissolves into mere processes of the nerve cells. But taken as such, it obviously cannot be that which grounds and determines the new and decisive valuation. According to Heidegger, it will not be easy to resolve the seeming contradiction and to show that Nietzsche's claims mean something "altogether different" than they seem to

53 mean at first sight. This is due to the fact that there is indeed "a perpetual discordance prevailing in what he achieves, an instability, an oscillation between these opposite poles", — a state of affairs which is even aggravated by the fact that Nietzsche never completed his project, left us with some fragmentary observations, and even never formulated a provisional outline of his aesthetics as a whole. To be sure, in The Will to Power, there is a brief sketch which contains a list of seventeen "theses" about what was to develop into a physiology of art; but this sketch is just a list, and its items are listed in such a way that they do not seem to be ordered according to some definite principle or guideline. It just contains a multiplicity of different points of inquiry, without any blueprint, outline, or structure. It is true also that on two occasions we find in his work sets of short essays and observations that clarify the seventeen points mentioned. But these short essays and observations, too, just present possible points of inquiry, and they do not give us a clear indication of the context in which they were to find their place. Yet in Heidegger's opinion, it is possible to come to a better understanding of Nietzsche's position, provided one succeeds in bringing coherence to these materials with the help of two important clues: 1) all Nietzsche's claims must fit within his conception of the will-to-power taken as a whole; 2) in making the claims we find in his works Nietzsche was engaged in a dialogue with the major doctrines of classical aesthetics with which he was fully familiar.27 Thus in order to come to some understanding of Nietzsche's effort to develop a "physiology" of art systematically, which legitimately can claim to be a genuine countermovement to nihilism, Heidegger first focuses on what Nietzsche calls the phenomenon of artistic rapture (Rausch). In an effort to explain how rapture and art are to be related, Heidegger then briefly speaks about Kant's conception of the beautiful and about the misinterpretation of this conception by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Rapture can then finally be defined as the force that brings forth the form, but also as the fundamental condition for the enhancement of life. It should be noted here that Nietzsche defines the essence of the will-to-power in terms of enhancement and heightening. Finally, Heidegger then tries to show how for Nietzsche form constitutes the actuality of art in the "grand style"; in these reflections it becomes clear how the apparent contradiction between physiological investigations and the celebration of art as the countermovement to nihilism can be resolved. It appears here that Nietzsche's physiology is neither biologism nor positivism, and that Nietzsche carried the concept of aesthetics to its extreme, so that his aesthetics is no longer an aesthetics in the classical sense. Heidegger concludes these reflections with an attempt to answer the question of whether Nietzsche's five basic statements or theses on art can indeed, be defended. In Heidegger's opinion it may be possible to give a justification for Nietzsche's first two theses. The last theses cannot be accepted because they imply conceptions of Being and truth that show that Nietzsche really did not succeed in his effort to overcome classical metaphysics. These reflections finally lead Heidegger to examine the question of precisely why Nietzsche found himself in the state of "holy dread" before the raging discord

54 between truth and art.28 In the pages to come I shall not follow Heidegger in every step he takes, but limit myself only to a few brief remarks which appear to be essential to understand Heidegger's position in regard to Nietzsche's aesthetics, and to come to a better understanding of Heidegger's own conception of art and art works. a) On Rapture (Rausch) As far as Nietzsche's conception of rapture is concerned, Heidegger points out first that Nietzsche's inquiry into art remains within the aesthetic tradition. Thus it is understandable that in trying to comprehend the aesthetic state of the artist Nietzsche turns to that state of feeling in man that corresponds to the production and the enjoyment of the beautiful. Furthermore, when Nietzsche tries to understand this aesthetic state by means of physiology, he means indeed to stress that this state is a bodily state. But he obviously does not mean to exclude the "psychical" or even the "spiritual", and it is certainly not his intention to reduce the aesthetic or artistic state to chemical or biological processes in the nerve cells. Here. too. Nietzsche still tries to take distance from what he calls Platonism. and in which he thought to find the essence of man in his being a soul. The aesthetic state does not consist in having theoretical thoughts or ideas, but in finding oneself in a state or disposition which involves the entire human reality, so that it correctly can be called a "bodily state". With respect to the state of rapture Heidegger then tries to answer two basic questions: 1) In what does the essence of rapture really consist? And 2) in what sense is rapture indispensable if there is to be art?3* As for the first question, Nietzsche claims that what is essential to rapture is "the feeling of enhancement of force and plenitude".1" Heidegger explains this claim by observing that feeling means the way in which we find ourselves to be with ourselves, with others, and with all the other beings. Furthermore, such a feeling is inherently bodily. It is not correct to think that "there is a bodily state housed in the basement with feelings dwelling upstairs". "Feeling, as feeling oneself to be, is precisely the way we are bodily". To be bodily does not imply that there is a soul that also carries with it a hulk which one calls the body. In feeling oneself to be, the body is already implied inherently in the self in such a way that the body in and through its states permeates the entire self. Our body does not accompany the soul, nor do we really have a body; we are bodily. Feeling, in the sense of feeling oneself to be, belongs to the essence of a being that is bodily. And because feelings, as feeling oneself to be, implies a feeling for the beings taken as a whole, every bodily state implies some way in which things surrounding us and our fellow men do or do not lay claims on us. As "rational" and "free" beings we have some control over these feelings; one can try to suppress a bad mood, but we cannot directly awaken a countermood. A mood is something in which one "finds oneself to be". From what Heidegger says about moods and feelings it is clear that what is stated here about Nietzsche's conception of

55 rapture, in his view, is to be understood ontologically from the perspective of what was said in Being and Time about "Befindlichkeit", primordial mood, and not from the perspective of biology or even psychology, taken as natural sciences.31 Heidegger then explains that rapture is a very special feeling or mood. He mentions three characteristics stressed by Nietzsche: rapture is the feeling of enhancement of force; rapture is the feeling of plenitude; and rapture implies the reciprocal penetration of all forms of enhancement of every ability on the part of man to do, see, apprehend, address, communicate, and achieve release. In other words, rapture implies the capacity to extend beyond oneself to all beings m a relation in which these beings are experienced as being more fully in being than would have been the case without this feeling. And the feeling of plenitude is above all some form of attunement which is so disposed that nothing is foreign to it.32 Heidegger feels that we are not yet in a position to answer the second question raised earlier: In what sense is rapture indispensable if there is to be art? For such an answer presupposes that the following questions are to be answered first: What and how is art? Is art primarily in the production by the artist, or in the enjoyment of the beholder, or in the work-Being of the work itself, or perhaps in all three together? Precisely how and where is art? Is there something at all that one could legitimately call art itself, or is the word "art" merely a collective noun to which nothing corresponds? But as long as these questions remain unanswered, everything that we have said about rapture remains obscure and ambiguous. As far as rapture is concerned, we are thus left with a host of questions for which we still do not yet have proper answers.33 We have seen that in his reflections on the artist and on art Nietzsche remains within the general framework of classical aesthetics. There it was generally accepted that just as the true determines our behavior in knowledge, and just as the good determines our ethical behavior, so the beautiful determines the aesthetic state. We must therefore now raise the question of what Nietzsche says about the beautiful. According to Heidegger, in his conception of the beautiful, Nietzsche was deeply influenced by his criticism of Schopenhauer without realizing that Schopenhauer's own position is thwarted by the fact that it originated in a misconception of the position of Kant. Schopenhauer in his reflections on aesthetics tried to refute the aesthetics of Schelling and Hegel, and to show the greatness of Kant's conception of aesthetics. But in view of the fact that he thoroughly misunderstood Kant's position in regard to what is beautiful, Schopenhauer's own aesthetics is a complete failure. However, the issue need not occupy us here further, in view of the fact that what Nietzsche himself tried to say about the beautiful is not at all, as he thought under the influence of Schopenhauer, different from what Kant had already argued. If Nietzsche had studied Kant's third Critique, instead of just relying on Schopenhauer's criticism of this view, "he would have had to recognize that Kant alone grasped the essence of what Nietzsche in his own way wanted to comprehend concerning the decisive aspects of the beautiful".34 Let us there-

56 fore return to how Nietzsche himself tries to determine what is beautiful. Nietzsche defines the beautiful as that which pleases. What pleases a human being is what corresponds to him and speaks to him. But this is somehow codetermined by, and depends on, who this human being is to whom that which pleases speaks and corresponds. Who this human being is, is determined by what he demands of himself. Thus we can call beautiful whatever is in correspondence with what we demand of ourselves, and this demanding, in turn, is measured by what we take ourselves to be, what in truth we are able to do, and what we dare as our extreme challenge.35 The beautiful for Nietzsche is thus what determines us, our behavior, our capabilities, to the degree that we can ascend beyond ourselves. "Such ascent beyond ourselves, to the full of our essential capability, occurs according to Nietzsche in rapture."36 Thus the beautiful is disclosed in rapture, and the beautiful itself is that which transports us into the feeling of rapture, which is not mere turbulence and ebullition, but rather an attunement in the sense of the supreme and most measured determinateness." b) Rapture and the Form-Creating Force Heidegger now proceeds to show how for Nietzsche rapture is a form-creating force. Once the aesthetic state is clarified by means of an explanation of what is beautiful, we can determine more carefully the domain over which this state ranges. This can be done by means of a careful study of the modes of behavior that are operative in the production by the artist and the reception by those who preserve works of art. For Nietzsche artistic production consists in the rapturous bringing-forth of what is beautiful in the work. The work of art is realized only in and through the artist's creation. But this implies that the mode of Being characteristic of artistic creation is dependent upon the mode of Being characteristic of the work of art. And this means that the creative process can be understood only from the Being of the work. Even though the artistic creation creates the work, it is nonetheless the case that the mode of Being of the work constitutes the origin of the mode of Being of the creative process. If we ask what Nietzsche has to say about the mode of Being characteristic of the work, we find no answer. Nietzsche never explicitly inquired into the work-Being of the work as such. That is the reason that we find virtually nothing here about the essence of creation either. There are a few brief statements in which Nietzsche speaks about the artistic creation in biological terms. According to Heidegger these statements show us only one side of the creative process. The other dimension comes to the fore only when we recall what was said about rapture and beauty. There we saw that rapture is a going beyond oneself. "By such ascent we come face to face with that which corresponds to what we take ourselves to be", and in this way we are led to the insight that creation implies decision, standard, and order. Creation is a process that to some degree brings about an idealization. Idealization does not mean here abstraction, but rather a focussing on what is essential; it consists in a

57 "sweeping emphasis upon the main features". In that sense creation is a seeing more simply and more strongly.38 As for the aesthetic state of the observer, we must say that Nietzsche tries to understand it from the perspective of the artist. The function of the art work is to re-awaken and evoke the aesthetic state of the artist in the observer:"... the effect of art works is arousal of the art-creating state, rapture".38 Thus the observation of art works is merely a derivative form of the artistic creation. To enjoy a work of art is to take part in the creative state of the artist.40 In Heidegger's opinion, Nietzsche's philosophy of art is defective in several respects here. Nietzsche does not unfold the mode of Being that is characteristic of the work of art. This is the reason why he fails to elucidate fully the mode of Being of the artistic creation. Nietzsche is also unable to distinguish artistic production from the bringing-forth of utensils through handicraft. Finally, artistic observation remains undefined. Yet all of this can be shown to be so only in an approach that begins from the art work. But Nietzsche virtually says nothing about the art work itself. Yet, Heidegger continues, this does not mean that there are not some very important insights present in Nietzsche's reflections. These will come to the fore when we turn once more to the state of rapture and in so doing focus mainly on what the mood of rapture defines in our attunement. Nietzsche tries to describe this by making use of the concept of "form", that was used universally in classical aesthetics. A fundamental characteristic of the artist in Nietzsche's view is that he "ascribes to no thing a value unless it knows how to become form".41 Nietzsche explains that by "becoming form" he means that the thing surrenders and abandons itself, while making itself manifestly public. In Heidegger's view, Nietzsche's definition of form, which at first sight is very strange, nonetheless remains in harmony with the original conception of form as it developed in ancient Greece. Without going into details Heidegger briefly indicates that morphe {forma, form) is the "enclosing limit and boundary", that brings a being into that which it is, so that it now can stand in and by itself. Whatever stands in this way is what each being shows itself to be; it is its outward appearance (eidos) through which and in which it emerges, places itself there as publicly present for everyone, and begins to radiate and to shine. The artist does not relate to form as to something that still has to express something else. Rather the comportment of the artist to form is nothing but love of form for its own sake, i.e., for what it is as such. Form is that which allows what we encounter to radiate and shine. As such form brings the mode of behavior which it determines, into a direct relation with the beings. Form displays this relation itself as the festive state in which the beings themselves in their essence are celebrated and, thus, for the first time are placed in the open. Form delineates for the first time the domain in which the state of the growing force and the plenitude of the beings come to fulfillment. In other words, form founds the domain in which rapture as such becomes possible. Wherever form holds sway effectively, there is rapture.42 From this description it should be clear that Nietzsche never opposes form to

58 content. For him what is called form here, is the only true content of a work.43 Here it is obvious again that Heidegger makes an explicit effort to show that for Nietzsche the essence of art can most certainly not be sought in a theory that must appeal to some idea concerning a surplus of meaning which the work never makes present but merely refers to. In other words, both the symbolic and the metaphorical or allegoric interpretations are rejected. As we shall see later this is essential also to understand Heidegger's conception of the art work.44 Heidegger now briefly summarizes what we have thus far discovered. We have taken rapture, the basic aesthetic state, as our point of departure; we then turned to beauty; from beauty we went back to artistic creation and reception; from those we finally advanced to the concept of form and to the pleasure that is derived from order as a fundamental condition of embodying life. But with this we have returned to where we started: for life is enhancement of life, and ascending life is rapture. One could say that the entire domain in which rapture and beauty, creation and form, form and life are related to one another, remains totally undefined in this way. According to Heidegger this is indeed true as long as one conceives of art in terms of its being no more than a collective noun. But for Nietzsche art is much more than that: it is a configuration of the will-to-power. The indeterminateness of the domain just mentioned can be removed by considering will-to-power, provided we carefully try to avoid the pitfalls implicit in any effort to speak about art and art works in terms of the subject-object-opposition. Rapture is nothing subjective and beauty is nothing objective. For Nietzsche beauty and rapture are reciprocally related: rapture is the basic mood and beauty does the attuning. There is no rapture without beauty and there is no beauty in itself. Heidegger admits that Nietzsche himself was never able to formulate all of this very clearly and distinctly; in his view even Kant remained trapped within the limits of the modern conception of the subject. Be this as it may, both "basic words of Nietzsche's aesthetics, rapture and beauty, designate with an identical breadth the entire aesthetic state, what is opened up in it and what pervades it".45 c) Art in the Grand Style Heidegger finally turns to another important issue before he brings this investigation to a conclusion by means of a critical reflection on the five statements about art with which he began his investigation of Nietzsche's aesthetics. In the section, entitled "The Grand Style" (der grosse Stil), Heidegger states that wherever Nietzsche speaks about that in which art comes to its own essence, he has in mind that entire domain in which art is actually at work. He calls this "the grand style". But here, too, we immediately encounter great difficulties. For one thing, Nietzsche really never explains what he means by "style". Everything that is named in the word "style" belongs to what is most obscure in Nietzsche's reflections. And yet what he says about the grand style throws an unexpected light on all we have said thus far about Nietzsche's aesthetics.

59 Nietzsche once wrote that "the 'masses' have never had a sense for three good things in art, for elegance, logic, and beauty...; to say nothing of an even better thing, the grand style. Farthest removed from the grand style is Wagner . . . " According to Heidegger by the "masses" Nietzsche here means the so-called educated people, those who created and sustained the Wagner cult. With respect to the question of what the grand style precisely is, Nietzsche himself says that it consists in contempt for the small and ephemeral beauty; it consists in a sense for what is rare and lasts long.'16 In The Will to Power he claims that one finds in the grand style a triumph over the plenitude of living things; measure becomes master there; we find there that peculiar tranquility which only lies at the base of a strong soul, a soul that is slow to be moved and resists what is too lively. In the grand style the rule is emphasized, the exception is thrust aside, and every nuance is obliterated.47 What Nietzsche calls the grand style has much in common with what we usually call the classical style.48 The grand style is the highest feeling of power. From this it is clear that when Nietzsche says that art is a configuration of the will-to-power, art is always meant in its highest and essential stature. Furthermore, if art is taken in the grand style it is capable of harboring incompatible elements. Thus a proper understanding of art in the grand style will help us resolve the seeming contradiction which we have encountered earlier, namely that for Nietzsche art is the object of a "physiological" aesthetics, and that art is a countermovement to nihilism. If we come to a proper understanding of art in the grand style we shall learn to see that these seemingly contradictory aspects of art include rather than exclude one another. Yet Heidegger does explicitly admit that Nietzsche often got entangled in conceptions and views which he really was trying to overcome, and that he often used a language which suggests that in his thought he was fatally diverted into purely physiological and naturalistic assertions about art. But all of this, Heidegger continues, does not change the fact that Nietzsche was on the way to overcoming the aesthetics of his time and that he was fully aware of the enormous difficulty of such a task.49 What Nietzsche calls grand style has many things in common with what we call the classical style, but it is not to be confused with what we generally call classicism. In contrast to classicism, the classical style implies the view that nothing can be immediately divined from a particular past period of art. As a matter of fact it makes no sense to try to return to what has been. The "classical" is rather a basic structure of Dasein, which itself first creates the conditions for such periods. But the fundamental condition is an equally original freedom in regard to the extreme opposites, namely chaos and law. What is typical for the classical is "not the mere subjection of chaos to a form, but that mastery which enables the primal wilderness of chaos and the primordiality of the law to advance under the same yoke, invariably bound to one another with equal necessity".50 It is obvious that such a conception of the classical sets Nietzsche's conception of art immediately in opposition to that proposed by Wagner. But insofar as Nietzsche believes that art is will-to-power, his conception of art is

60 also altogether different from that of Schopenhauer. For Nietzsche the artistic states are nothing else than will-to-power. Art is the great stimulant of life. And the word "stimulant" here means that which leads one into the sphere of command of the grand style. Art is not as Schopenhauer thought a sedative of life. The reversal of Schopenhauer's statement about art does not just consist in the fact that a sedative has been changed into a stimulant. The reversal rather constitutes a complete transformation of the essential definition of art. This kind of thinking about art is philosophical thought which sets the standards through which historical confrontation comes to be, and which prefigures what is to come.31 What Nietzsche says here makes us wonder whether his thinking about art still fits within the framework of classical aesthetics. Furthermore, where Wagner demands a complete dissolution of style; and the abolishment of rules and standards, and above all the elimination of all efforts to ground such laws, there Nietzsche demands rules, standards, and foundation. According to Nietzsche, art "is not only subject to rules, must not only obey laws, but is in itself legislation. Only as legislation is it truly art". Art that dissolves style in sheer ebullition of feelings misses the mark altogether.32 Yet even Nietzsche never fully overcame aesthetics. Such overcoming requires a still more basic change of our Dasein and of our thinking; Nietzsche's own reflections prepare for such a change only indirectly. At first sight, Nietzsche's thinking about art is aesthetical; yet according to its innermost will it is metaphysics insofar as it tries to define the true Being of beings. The historical fact that every form of aesthetics, including that of Kant, explodes itself shows clearly that even though aesthetics did not come about by accident, aesthetic inquiry is nevertheless not essential. We have seen that for Nietzsche art is the essential way in which the beings are created (geschaffen) to be beings. What matters in art first and foremost are its creative, legislative, and form-grounding aspects. Thus in each given historical instance we can aim at the essential definition of art by asking what the creative aspect of art was at that time. The issue here is not about the psychological motivations which may have propelled the artistic creativity at any given time, but rather the question concerning the creative aspect is meant to decide where, when, and in what way the basic conditions of art in the grand style indeed were present. Nor is Nietzsche concerned here with art history in the common sense of the term; one could say that Nietzsche here is concerned with the "history" of art taken in an essential sense in which the question is raised about the formation of the future history of Dasein.53 The question about what has become creative in art, leads immediately to many other questions: What is in each case the stimulant that properly stimulates? What possibilities are present in each case? How is the configuration of art determined on the basis of such possibilities? How is art the awakening of the beings as such and to what extent is it will-to-power? Nietzsche thinks about these questions where he tries to make a distinction between classical and romantic art.34 Here Heidegger decides to limit himself to the question of how Nietzsche, by

61 means of an original determination of the distinction between classical and romantic art, defines more precisely the essence of art in the grand style. This also helps him to clarify Nietzsche's statement that art is the stimulant of life. According to Nietzsche a romantic is an artist whose great dissatisfaction with himself makes him creative; he is more concerned with what has been than with what is.55 The source of the romantic's creativity is discontent and desire for something novel. A classical artist, on the other hand, is one who creates out of plenitude not out of a lack, full possession not a search, a dispensing not a craving, superabundance not hunger. It is not very helpful to define the difference between classical and romantic art by means of the distinctions between the active and the passive, because one should then also say that the classical artist is concerned with Being and the romantic artist, who wants change, with becoming. Yet it is quite clear that the longing after Being, the will to eternalize, may flow also from the possession of plenitude and from thankfulness for what is, just as the perduring and binding may also be erected as law and compulsion by the tyranny of a willing that wants to get rid of its inmost suffering. According to Nietzsche one finds the latter in Wagner's romantic pessimism. * It seems therefore as if for Nietzsche classical art and art in the grand style coincide with one another. It may very well be that Nietzsche never fully succeeded in clearly distinguishing these two "styles". That is the reason why our interpretation, Heidegger feels, must try to say what remained unsaid by Nietzsche. This is permissable in view of the fact that a great thinker is always a step ahead in his thinking over and above what he is able to say. In Heidegger's view, what Nietzsche meant to express is that the grand style always prevails wherever abundance restrains itself in simplicity.36 One could say that this is true also for the classical style; and that is correct. And even if one were to say that the greatness of the grand style consists in that superiority which compels everything strong to be teamed with its strongest antithesis under one yoke, that, too, would also apply to the classical style, as Nietzsche explicitly says.17 Yet a style which keeps its own antithesis merely beneath or outside it, as something that is to be overcome or negated, cannot be great in the grand style, because it lets itself be guided by what it rejects. Thusit remains reactive. In the grand style, on the other hand, the nascent law grows out of an original action which is itself the yoke just mentioned. "The grand style is the active will to Being, which takes up becoming into itself. Art in the grand style does not just hold its antithesis down and suppress it, but rather it assimilates its sharpest antithesis; in that case the antithesis does not disappear, but rather comes to its essential unfolding. What Nietzsche says about the classical style is meant to clarify what he is trying to say about art in the grand style. But we must still ask the question of how Nietzsche tries to define what is creative in art. Nietzsche tries to do this by showing how Being and becoming truly belong together and how the active and the reactive cannot be without each other. One sees this in the Greek definition of dunamis and energeia on the one hand and kinisis or metaboU on the other. Now if the essence of the grand

62 style is indeed determined by these basic and final metaphysical connections, then we must encounter them wherever Nietzsche makes an effort to comprehend the Being of the beings. We have seen already many times that Nietzsche interprets the Being of the beings in terms of will-to-power. Art is for him the supreme configuration of the will-to-power. For him the proper essence of art is exemplified in the grand style. Now if the grand style is to be a unity such that in it the active and the reactive, as well as Being and becoming grow together, and if all art is the supreme configuration of the will-to-power, then the unity referred to must be carried out in the will-to-power. But for Nietzsche will-to-power is an eternal recurrence in which Being and becoming, action and reaction grow together in an original unity. In this way we have reached a view on the metaphysical horizon upon which one is to project and think what Nietzsche means by the grand style and by art in general.58 The grand style is the highest feeling of power. Where romantic art springs from deficiency and dissatisfaction and thus is wanting to be away from oneself, art in the grand style is a wanting to be oneself, provided this is properly understood. This wanting to be oneself implies transcendence. Such a will is will-to-power, but power is not compulsion or violence. Will-to-power is properly there where power no longer needs whatever is characteristic of battle and strife. When we are able to understand what Nietzsche tries to think with regard to the grand style, we have reached the peak of Nietzsche's aesthetics. But then we shall also see that his philosophy of art has really gone beyond classical aesthetics.59 d) On Truth and Art Heidegger finally returns to the five basic statements on art with which he began his investigations about Nietzsche's conception of art. He explains that even though the first two statements perhaps could be justified, the last three cannot be given a proper ground. This is due to the fact that the fifth statement according to which art is worth more than truth cannot be grounded. But if the fifth statement is without sufficient ground, then the third and the fourth are equally groundless. For then it is difficult to see how one could possibly claim that art is the basic occurrence within the beings as such and taken as a whole and that art and art only is the counter-movement to nihilism.40 But be this as it may, it is nonetheless still of the greatest importance that in his reflections on art Nietzsche is led to the point where he has to establish a relationship between art and truth. But in Nietzsche's view, the issue must be raised of precisely what it is, in the essence of art, that calls forth the question concerning truth? In 1888 Nietzsche wrote the following statement: "Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously; and even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance".41 But how can Nietzsche claim that the relation between art and truth is one of discord, and why is it that discord arouses dread? To answer these questions we must try to

63 comprehend what Nietische understands by truth.62 The word "truth" is a basic word of thought, as is Being, history, freedom, beauty, and art. Such basic words are in need of a careful explanation because the essence of what is named in these words is concealed. Furthermore, one must always carefully pay attention to the manner in which such basic words vary in meaning. The basic, philosophical word "truth" is used in several meanings. We say that the assertion "Newton is the author of the Principia", is true. But we also say that the assertion 2 x 2 = 4 is true. Thus there are many truths of many kinds. Yet, on the other hand, one can also say the following: just as we call the essence of the just "justice", and the essence of what is beautiful "beauty", so we must call the essence of the true "truth". But truth taken in the sense of the essence of what is true, is solely one and unique; it makes no sense then to speak about many truths. According to a common conception of essence, which is neither the sole nor the original conception, one can say that the essence of a thing is that which may be attributed to anything that satisfies the essence of that thing. If one restricts himself to this conception of essence, one can say that what is true is a truth. Thus truth means the one essence and also the many which satisfy the essence. When we refer to something true, we always understand the essence of truth along with it. This explains why the name for the essence of a thing can glide unobtrusively into our naming such things that take part in such an essence. Such a way of doing is even aided by the fact that for the most part we let ourselves be determined by the beings, not by their mode of Being. Now the manner in which in philosophy one examines such basic words as truth, Being, and beauty, can lead along two different paths: the path of the essence and the path of that which takes part in it; the latter path leads away from the essence and yet is related to it. According to the classical conception of Western grammar and logic, the essence, that which makes a thing be what it is, because it is valid for many things, is what is universally valid. The truth as the essence of what is true, is the universal. This is correct; yet one should note that the fact that in certain realms (not in all) the essence of something holds for many particular things, is a consequence of the essence, but it does not characterize its essentiality as such. The equating of the essence with the character of the universal would not have been so fatal; had it not for centuries barred the way to a decisive question, namely the question concerning the Being of the truth. It is said first that the true is in each case something various, but that the essence, as the universal which is valid for many, is one. The expression "universally valid" is said later to mean that which is always and everywhere valid in itself, immutable, eternal, beyond time and history. Thus one proceeds from "being valid for many cases" to the immutability of the essence itself, in this case the essence of truth. The proposition may be correct logically; metaphysically it is not true. Essences are subject to change, even though that which changes over time is still a "one" which holds for "many", for the transformation need not disturb that relation-

64 ship. What is preserved in the metamorphosis is what is unchangeable in the essence. "The essentiality of essence, its inexhaustibility, is thereby affirmed, and also its genuine selfhood and selfsameness." But the latter must be carefully distinguished from the selfsameness of the universal. These few remarks must suffice here for our attempt to clarify Nietzsche's conception concerning the relationship between truth and art. Nietzsche never arrived at the proper question of the truth taken in the sense of the question about the essence of what is true. He presupposed that the essence of what is true is evident. "For Nietzsche truth is not the essence of the true, but the true itself, which satisfied the essence of truth". Nietzsche never poses the question of truth in the proper way, i.e., the question concerning the essence of truth and the truth of essence; he also never asked the question about the possibility of truth's essential transformation. Nietzsche does not even stake out the domain of this question. The fact that the question of the essence of the truth is missing in Nietzsche's philosophy, is an oversight, but an oversight that cannot be compared with any other; it pervades the entire history of Western philosophy since the time of Plato.63 Many philosophers have concerned themselves with the concept of truth; and many philosophers, such as Descartes, Kant, and Hegel have even said very important things about truth. Yet it is and remains true that none of them, and Nietzsche is no exception, has touched on the essence of the truth itself, on the manner in which truth comes-to-presence and abides. Obviously much more can and should be said about Nietzsche's conception of the relationship between art and truth. Precisely why does he think that art is worth more than the truth? Why does he experience the relationship between art and truth as one of discordance? These questions would lead us to questions about the relationship between truth and knowledge,64 about the manner in which Nietzsche in this regard tried to overcome Platonism, according to which all knowledge has to measure itself against the supersensuous.65 In the final analysis these questions would lead us to the point where Nietzsche's thought is to be retrieved. But this path would lead to the basic issues which Heidegger discusses in his own lectures on the origin of the work of art as we shall see later.66

§ 13. Neo-Kantianism and the Hermeneutic Tradition In the neo-Kantian philosophy art received the privileged position over judgment of taste and, thus, the concept of genius began to occupy the central position in reflections on art. Although Hegel had strongly objected to this move by claiming that art is not the art of genius, and that each work is to be understood as a manifestation of the truth, the neo-Kantians maintained the concept of genius and with it the idea of the creative. Their concern to give aesthetics an autonomous base freed from the criterion of the concept, and, thus, their decision not to raise the question of truth jn art, but to base the

65 aesthetic judgment on the subjective a priori of our feeling of life,, led them to the idea of giving the concept of Erlebnis the central part in reflections on art works.67 The term "Erlebnis" was used to refer to the immediate experience of something which is thought to be of lasting importance and is in need of interpretation and communication.68 Dilthey in particular has contributed much to giving this expression its precise meaning. Yet for Dilthey the concept of Erlebnis is still an epistemological notion: the primary function of an Erlebnis is to "give" meaning in a primordial way. As such it is also the ultimate to which one can go back. If something is presented in an Erlebnis, its meaning is presented as one significant whole; such an experience has a lasting meaning for the one who has it. The meaning which has been presented in this way can never be fully exhausted by what can be conceptually grasped as its content and by what one can thus say about it.69 It is thus understandable that in this conception there is a close affinity between the structure of the Erlebnis and the mode of being of the aesthetic experience, and why the concept of Erlebnis becomes a determining feature in the foundations of art. "The work of art is understood as the perfecting of the symbolic representation of life, towards which every experience tends."70 The aesthetic experience presents us with a work that is a world in and for itself, so that what aesthetically is experienced in an Erlebnis, is removed from all connections with the actual. The work of art takes the person experiencing it out of the context of life and yet somehow relates him back to the whole of his existence.71 In this theory it is thus assumed that the art work itself is an expression of an Erlebnis and that it is intended to lead to an aesthetic Erlebnis in the beholder: the art work is due to an Erlebnis of inspiration of the artist's genius who creates the work which then leads to an Erlebnis for those who are exposed to it. But if these assumptions are questionable and together with them the idea that art is some form of language, it is no longer adequate to define the art work in terms of the symbol-making activity of the human mind. One must then even ask the question of whether the concept of aesthetic consciousness itself is not doubtful and whether the aesthetic attitude in regard to the work is indeed the appropriate one. If the idea of aesthetic Erlebnis were to be essential, what then is one to say about those ages in the history of the Western world in which people surrounded themselves with human creations whose religious or secular meaning was immediately understood, without any concept of "art", and without any "aesthetic consciousness" in the modern sense of these terms being involved?72 Those who subscribe to the concept of aesthetic consciousness oppose art as appearance to reality, as Kant had done. In this theory art becomes a standpoint of its own and establishes its own autonomous claim to supremacy; where art rules reality has been transcended. It is this "kingdom" which is to be defended against all limitations, even against the moralistic guardianship of the state and society. The modern phenomenological movement has shown the

66 error in every attempt to conceive of the mode of aesthetic being in terms of our experiences of reality or a modification thereof. The theory of aesthetic consciousness implies that with respect to art one must speak of imitation, appearance, irreality, illusion, fiction, etc.; these expressions suggest that the aesthetic is to be related to something which it itself is not and never will be; this is the true reality. The phenomenological conception of the aesthetic experiences shows that one cannot think here in terms of such a relationship and that one must see actual truth in the experience which one has with a work of art. Once aesthetic consciousness had become independent, it no longer permitted any criterion outside itself. This implies that the connection between the work of art and the world in which it originates is to be dissolved: the aesthetic consciousness itself is the experiential center from which everything considered to be art is to be measured. By disregarding everything in which the art work is rooted, i.e., the world in which it originated and the religious and cultural function which gave it its original significance, the work itself becomes visible as a pure work of art. Thus it is the process of abstraction, which Gadamer calls "aesthetic differentiation", which shows us what a pure work of art really is and allows it to exist in its ownright.Once the work has lost its place in the world to which it belongs, through the aesthetic differentiation which is the work of aesthetic consciousness, the artist, too, loses his place in the world; commissioned art is to be discredited, because a true artist must create out of free inspiration. At the same time the artist begins to bear the burden of having a "vocation": he becomes the secular savior in a culture that has fallen away from its religious and moral tradition. In this manner this conception is a witness to the disintegration which in our modern world gradually began to take place.73 The concepts of aesthetic consciousness, aesthetic differentiation, and the aesthetic itself are not without serious difficulties. It can easily be shown that an abstractive process that would leave behind nothing but the purely aesthetic, given in the immediacy of an Erlebnis, leads to serious difficulties in that it implies the negation of the intrinsic historicity of man. If it is to do justice to art, aesthetics must go beyond the purity and immediacy of the aesthetic. Kant tried to achieve this by the transcendental function of the concept of genius. But if one rejects Kant's solution as a false form of romanticism, and thus no longer can say with Kant that a work of art by definition is a work of genius, how then is one to define the work of art? It makes no sense to transfer the function of genius to the observer: art is what one observes as the work of genius. A consistently developed theory of the aesthetic consciousness leaves us with no criterion on the basis of which one can distinguish a work of art from all other things made by man. One should realize that the aesthetic experience which one has with a work of art is a form of understanding in which something is understood a s . . . Furthermore, each work of art inherently belongs to a world; the work gives us a possibility of learning to understand ourselves through this world. Thus it is necessary to adopt an attitude toward art and works of art that does not just lay claim to immediacy, but respects the historical reality of the art work and of

67 man who is a Being-in-the-world. Finally, one should realize that the aesthetic experience legitimately lays claim to truth, even though this truth is not that of the sciences or that of perception, or even that of our moral knowledge. We cannot ask our experience with the work to tell us how it thinks of itself; but we may ask why it is in truth and what its truth is; we also may ask why it is that the experience which it induces in the beholder, changes him and how it changes him.74 The relationship between art work, world, truth, and the typical form of understanding which every encounter with the work implies, has been explained in a remarkable way by Heidegger in "The Origin of the Work of Art" in which he tries to show that art is an inherent element in the effort on the part of man to come to genuine self-understanding. The claim is made there that the origin (i.e., that which makes it possible for a thing to rise up as what it is) of both the art work and the artist is to be found in art. To answer the question of what art is, Heidegger turns to an examination of that being in which art holds sway and manifests itself, and this is the work of art. He then shows first that the classical determinations of what a thing is, are inadequate to determine what things really are, and that they certainly are inadequate to define what a work of art is. By using an example he finally shows that art works reveal to us what and how beings are. Thus in a work of art the truth of beings comes-to-pass.75 The art work is not an object, but something that stands in and by itself. It also belongs to a world; as standing in and by itself it is also that in and through which this world is present. Each art work opens its own world; standing in and by itself the work opens a world. The concept of genius is no longer necessary to account for the art work. In order to be able to understand the very Being of the work independently of the subjectivity of both the artist and the beholder, Heidegger turns to the tension between earth and world. A world opens itself, the earth shelters and closes; both are present in the art work. Furthermore, the work does not refer to something else as a sign or a symbol does, but it presents itself in its own Being and invites the beholder to dwell and while with it. It itself is present in such a way that it gives the earth (materials, color, sound, words) the chance to be present as what it really is. As long as the earth is used for something, it is not present as what it truly is. The earth is thus not primarily material and source of resources, but that out of which everything comes for man and into which everything eventually returns. Finally, the Being of the work is not to be found in the fact that it can become an experience; it is what it is in and through its own self-presentation. It is an event which overturns and upsets what is common and ordinary, and in which a world opens itself which without the work would not have been present. And yet this event (Ereignis) in which earth and world are in constant tension brings it about that the work can present something in an abiding manner.76 The truth which the work of art reveals in this way is a finite truth. In depicting some being or beings, the work reveals the truth of the whole of beings by opening up the world while reposing it in the earth. Although world and earth are complementary, in the art work they are nonetheless in continu-

68 ous contention. The earth permeates world, and world is grounded in earth, only insofar as truth, the primordial discord between clearing and concealment, comes-to-pass in the work. Thus the truth which comes-to-pass in the work does not consist in a meaning which lies in the open in an articulated form, but in a meaning which is fathomless and deep. In its essence it is the strife between world and earth, between rising and sheltering. That in the work truth is at work in a finite manner is due to the inventive effort on the part of the artist who produces the work as such. The artist stabilizes the basic contention between earth and world by making it manifest by means of the work's Gestalt. By setting the truth to work in the art work, the artist makes it possible for the work to bear witness to the fact that it is and surprises the beholder with the startling revelation of itself as the comingto-pass of finite truth. That in the work truth is at work also implies the conserver who is startled and whiles in the openness that pervades the art work. In other words, in order for truth to come-to-pass in a work of art, conservation is as essential as invention. The art work comes genuinely to pass when truth advancing in a project which comes from one direction is met by another project advancing from the opposite direction.77 That both the artist and the conserver or beholder can let truth come-to-pass is ultimately due to the fact that Being addresses itself to them in and through the world in which they stand. Now in view of the fact that Being as logos is language, there is thus a profound relationship between art and language. But Being as language "speaks" in and through the work only to those who come to meet it in a "poetizing" form of thought. The thinking of Being in which language first comes to its essence is the original way of poetizing; the thinking which tries to think all art as poetizing must maintain itself in the domain of the language of Being and is as such always still on the way to language.78 We must now turn to a more careful and systematic analysis of Heidegger's lecture on "The Origin of the Work of Art". This will be our task in the second part of this book.

PART II Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art

Introduction As I have indicated I would do in the Preface to this book, in the pages to follow I have limited myself as a rule to giving a free paraphrase of Heidegger's essay on the origin of the work of art. Wherever it appeared meaningful. I have added clarifying remarks, for which I often have made use of essays and books by commentators and critics. Furthermore. I have also frequently added ideas taken from other works by Heidegger himself: these I have given a place where they appeared to belong. In many instances these remarks are taken from Being and Time and other works of the same period. To structure the paraphrase and commentary as clearly as possible I have followed yon Herrmann by dividing Heidegger's text into a number of sections and by giving these sections an appropriate title. In selecting these titles I have often followed von Herrmann's suggestions, also. One final introductory remark is in order here. I hope that the reader will not give this paraphrase any other meaning than the one it manifestly is supposed to have. It is meant to be an elucidation of Heidegger's essay on the origin of the work of art. If my efforts have been successful, they must at a certain moment make this paraphrase superfluous and lead the reader back to Heidegger's own reflections. I hope that he or she at that point will have a very rewarding experience with this remarkable essay.

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY REFLECTIONS THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE LECTURES THEIR SUBJECT MATTER A N D METHOD

ART. I. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND THE CHARACTER OF THE LECTURES § 14. The Historical Context of the Holzwege Essay on Art a) From Being and Time to "The Origin of the Work of Art" According to Gadamer1 the period between the two World Wars was one of extraordinary spiritual fertility. The economic, social, and political disaster which, particularly in Germany, followed World War I completely destroyed the optimism and idealism prevailing in the liberal era that preceded the first World War. There were very few people in Germany who still believed that the future holds nothing but progress. During the same period the neo-Kantian philosophy which had become dominant in Germany during the last quarter of the 19th Century, suddenly began to appear to many as being no longer acceptable. Several authors spoke about a complete breakdown of German Idealism and some even felt that a general decline of Western civilization was imminent (Paul Ernst, Oswald Spengler). This criticism of neo-Kantianism was prepared by Nietzsche's attack on Platonism and historical Christianity as well as by Kierkegaard's criticism of absolute Idealism. The first traces of this critique, however, were not found in philosophy, but rather in the so-called dialectical theology. The main reasons why in philosophy many thinkers turned away from neoKantianism are the following. Gradually it began to become evident that neither life nor history can be said to be rational in the sense in which Idealism had defined the term "rational". Inspired by ideas formulated first by Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Bergson, it was claimed that life and history cannot possibly be fitted into a "rational" system of the kind neo-Kantianism was trying to develop. Furthermore, it is incorrect to try to reduce philosophy to some general methodology, or to defend the view that philosophy is identical with philosophy of science.2

74 Among the philosophers who began to adopt a critical attitude in regard to the neo-Kantian philosophy taught in most universities in Germany, Heidegger occupied a very important and prominent place. Those who openly protested the leading conceptions of the preceding era were then quite commonly grouped together under the label: Existenzphilosophie, philosophy of existence. Although Heidegger was also included among the existentialists, he himself did not really feel at home in this popular movement, and gradually made an effort to distance himself from their ideas. Yet in the beginning Heidegger certainly shared their critical attitude in regard to the educational ideals of the preceding generation, as well as in regard to the leading conception of our Western culture as a whole. Like many other philosophers of the new movement, Heidegger, too, rebelled against the fundamental positions of the commonly shared tradition, and particularly against all levelling tendencies of our modern technical society with its new means of communication. In the opinion of many, our modern industrialized society inevitably leads to inauthencity. This explains why in Heidegger's first great work, Being and Time, claims about the "they", "idle talk", ambiguity, curiosity, and empty gossip occupy an important place. Heidegger, therefore, posed an authentic Dasein opposite to the inauthentic mode of Being which our industrial society imposes on us, a Dasein which is fully aware of its finitude, temporality, and historicity, and resolutely accepts this radical finitude. This also explains why Heidegger systematically focused on man's death and concerned himself consistently with such issues as decision, choice, truth, freedom, and conscience.3 Yet the main goal which Heidegger tried to achieve in Being and Time was to be sought elsewhere. In Being and Time Heidegger began his philosophical reflections with a concerted effort to explain that philosophy's main concern is to be found in the question concerning the meaning of Being. This question must be dealt with in a general ontology; this ontology is to be prepared by a fundamental ontology which must take the form of an existential analytic of man's Being, a mode of Being which itself is to be understood as Being-in-theworld. It is particularly in this fundamental ontology that the hermeneutic, phenomenological method is to be employed.4 In Being and Time Heidegger makes it clear already at the very outset that what is to be understood by hermeneutic phenomenology is not identical with Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. He explicitly claims the right to develop the idea of phenomenology in his own way, beyond the stage to which it had been brought by Husserl himself. On the other hand, it is clear also that Heidegger sees the indispensable foundation for such a further development in Husserl's phenomenology. The reason why Heidegger was unable to follow Husserl more closely is to be found in Husserl's conception of the transcendental reduction, and in his idea that the ultimate source of all meaning consists in transcendental subjectivity which as such originally is world-less. This explains why Heidegger tries to conceive of man's Being as Being-in-the-world.5 As the title of the book suggests the concept of time occupies an important place in Being and Time. Already in the brief prefaoe to the book Heidegger

75

indicates how Being and time are to be related. "Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question concerning the meaning of Being . . . Our provisional aim is the interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being".6 In the first division of Part I Heidegger takes as his guiding clue the fact that the essence of man consists in his ek-sistence; that toward which man stands out is the world; thus one can also say that the essence of man is Being-in-theworld. The main task of this first division is to unveil the precise meaning of this compound expression; but in so doing the final goal remains the preparation of an answer for the question concerning the meaning of Being. Heidegger justifies this approach to the Being question by pointing out that man taken as Being-in-the-world is the only being who can make himself transparent in his own mode of Being. The very asking of this question is one of this being's modes of Being; and as such this being receives its essential character from what is inquired about, namely Being itself. "This entity which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being we shall denote by the term 'Dasein'".1 Thus the technical term "Dasein" which usually is left untranslated, refers to man precisely insofar as he essentially relates to Being. The preparatory analysis of Dasein's mode of Being can only serve to describe the essence of this being; it cannot interpret its meaning ontologically. The preparatory analysis merely tries to lay bare the horizon for the most primordial way of interpreting Being. Once this horizon has been reached, the preparatory analysis is to be replaced by a genuinely ontological interpretation. The horizon referred to here is temporality which thus determines the meaning of the Being of Dasein. This is the reason why all the structures of man's Being exhibited in the first division are to be re-interpreted in the second as modes of temporality. But in interpreting Dasein's Being as temporality, the question concerning the meaning of Being is not yet answered; only the ground is prepared here for later obtaining such an answer. Being and Time was thus meant to lay the foundations for any ontology (metaphysics) and with Kant to stress the finitude of man in any attempt to found metaphysics. In Being and Time Heidegger uses the phenomenological method.8 For him phenomenology (legein ta phainomena: to let what shows itself be seen from itself) is that method by means of which we let that which of its own accord manifests itself, reveal itself as it is. The "thing itself to be revealed in Being and Time is man taken as Dasein. Thus Being and Time attempts to let Dasein reveal itself in what and how it is, and the analysis shows concretely that the genuine self of Dasein consists in the process of finite transcendence whose ultimate meaning is time. Characteristic for Dasein is its comprehension of Being and this is the process by which Dasein transcends beings in the direction of Being and comprehends all beings, itself included, in their Being. This explains why the essence of Dasein can also be defined as transcendence.* It should be stressed here at once that the process of transcendence is inherently finite. For, first of all, Dasein is

76 not master over its own origin; it simply finds itself thrown among beings (thrownness).10 Secondly, thrown among beings, Dasein must concern itself with these beings, and, thus, has the tendency to lose itself among them (fallenness),11 and to forget its ontological "destination". Finally, transcendence is a process which inherently is unto Dasein's end, death.12 The ground of the negativity which manifests itself in these modalities is what Heidegger calls "guilt" which is here thus not to be understood in a moral sense.13 The basic structure of finite transcendence consists of comprehension (Ver­ stehen), i.e., the component in and through which Dasein projects the world,14 ontological disposition or mood (Befindlichkeit), i.e., the component through which Dasein's thrownness, fallenness, and the world's non-Being are disclosed,15 and logos (Rede), i.e., the component through which Dasein can unfold and articulate "in language" what comprehension and original mood disclose.16 These components constitute a unity insofar as transcendence essentially is care (Sorge): ahead of itself Being already in the world as Being alongside beings encountered within the world.17 When this unity is considered as a totality, Dasein is understood as coming to its end, i.e., to its death. Finally, that which gives Dasein to understand its transcendence as well as its finitude and "guilt" and, thus, calls it to achieve its own self is what Heidegger calls the voice of conscience.18 To achieve itself Dasein must let itself be called toward its genuine self, i.e., the process of finite transcendence. The act in and through which Dasein achieves authenticity is called resolve (Entschlossenheit).19 Heidegger finally shows how care itself is founded in time insofar as the basic components of care, namely ek-sistence, thrownness, and fallenness, inherently refer to the three ekstases of time: future, past, and present. By transcending beings toward Being Dasein comes to its true self (Zu-kunft, future), but this self is always already as having been thrown forth (past), and concerning itself with beings, thus making them manifest and present (present). Interpreted from the perspective of temporality, resolve manifests itself as retrieve (Wiederholung); it lets the process of finite transcendence become manifest as historical. By fetching itself back time and again, Dasein lets its own self be in terms of its authentic past; in addition, it also is as constantly coming toward its authentic self. It is thus in this complex process that Dasein hands over to itself its own heritage and thus "finds" its true self.20 In his later works (1935-1976), i.e. the period of the "turn" (Kehre), Heidegger continues to think the basic relationship between Being and man, but whereas in Being and Time he seems to give the privileged position in this relation to Dasein, the later works grant this to Being itself. Being, which originally was described in terms of world, is now shown primarily as the process of the coming-to-pass of the truth (a-litheia). Being is shown as sending itself towards Dasein; it sends itself in different epochs in different ways which consign Dasein to its privileged destiny which is to be the "shepherd of Being". In each individual epoch Being both reveals itself and conceals itself. As intrinsically finite. Being itself can reveal itself only by revealing beings; thus it can never be grasped by itself, in view of the fact that ititself is not a being; thus

77 it must also somehow conceal itself in the beings which it makes manifest. The finitude of Being also explains why Being must send itself in each epoch in a different way and why no single sending can ever exhaust the power of Being to reveal itself. The totality of these different ways in which Being sends itself and to which different epochs of thinking correspond, is what we call "history". The function of thought consists in this that it must bring the relation between Being and man to fulfillment; in so doing thought brings Being to language and Dasein to its proper and authentic self. Heidegger tries particularly to explain precisely how in the relation between Being and man, in each epoch the ontological difference between being and Being, thing and world, comes to pass and how it is brought into language. This explains his constant concern with the great thinkers of the past from Parmenides and Heraclitus to Hegel and Nietzsche. It also explains why he is led time and again to meditate on our current condition, the era of technicity and the atomic age. It should be evident that a thinking which tries to do just this, and thus has the character of a meditative recollection, has nothing in common with the calculating way of thinking we encounter in modern science and technology. Rather it is intrinsically poetizing in its docile response to the language of Being.21 - But let us now return to Heidegger's reflections on art. In 1935 Heidegger delivered a lecture on the origin of the work of art which from the very start was very well received. He expanded the original lecture and eventually developed it into three lectures which he presented on various occasions with great success.23 According to Gadamer, these lectures caused a real sensation, not only because they made the claim that art is an inherent element in the effort on the part of man to come to genuine self-understanding and the claim that the "poetic" form of thought is often at the root of the foundation of the historical world of a people, but also because of the entirely new "terminology" employed in the essay.23 The essay does not speak about art works in terms of matter and content; it does not mention the concept of genius; the term "aesthetic experience" is never used; the term "emotion" is avoided; there is no theory about judgment and taste. Instead, the lectures articulate a conception of the origin of art works in terms of the concepts "world" and "earth" and the "battle" that in the work is waged between them, when the "truth" sets itself into the art work.24 Gadamer correctly observes that in 1935 the concept of "world" was well understood. Heidegger had explained his conception of world in Being and Time15 and later in Vom Wesen des Grundes he had made an effort to compare his ontological conception of world with other conceptions of world.26 Heidegger explained there that for him "world" means the totality of all beings. "As a totality, world 'is' no particular being but rather that by means of, and in terms of which Dasein gives itself to understand what beings it can behave towards and how it can behave towards them. That Dasein gives 'itself to understand in terms of 'its' world means, then, that in approaching beings through the world, Dasein temporalizes itself as a self, i.e., as a being which is free to be. For the

78 Being of Dasein lies in its Being-able-to-be".27 Heidegger goes on to say there that in some sense Dasein, whose Being is such that its Being-able-to-be is an issue, exists for the sake of the world, whereas it obviously also exists for itself. We must thus conclude that world belongs to selfhood; world is essentially related to Dasein. World is the totality of what exists for the sake of Dasein at any given time. Dasein projects and throws the projected world over beings so that the beings can manifest themselves as what they in truth are. Dasein thus in some sense constitutes and forms world, in the sense that it lets world happen and through the world provides itself with an original view which, although not explicitly grasped itself, nevertheless serves as a pre-view for all manifest beings, Dasein itself included.2" Thus there is no way that the beings, i.e., nature in the widest sense, might become manifest if they could not find the opportunity to enter a world.24 It should be noted that, as we mentioned before, Heidegger here gives the primacy to Dasein in the projection of world, whereas in his later works the priority in this process is given to Being. Suffice it to observe that for Heidegger "world" does not mean the ontic totality of all ontic, natural things, but rather the totality of all possible meaning in regard to all ontic things, insofar as this totality is the concrete historical structure in which Being itself shows and hides itself at the same time. —We shall return to this in § 23. Whereas in 1935 "world" was a well-known concept whose precise ontological meaning Heidegger had already discussed on different occasions, the concept of "earth" was totally new, not only within Heidegger's philosophy, but even in our entire philosophical tradition. The term "earth" has a mystic and even gnostic ring to it and seems to belong in theology and poetry rather than in philosophy. Heidegger must have discovered the importance of this concept for his own thinking in his meditations on Hölderlin's poems in which he was deeply engaged during that period. Heidegger describes the earth as in conflict with world. At first many philosophers found it difficult to understand how Dasein, taken as Being-in-the-world, which as such is the new radical starting point for all genuinely transcendental questioning,30 can be brought into an ontological relationship with something like earth. It is equally difficult to see what earth has to do with the basic ek-sistentials which Heidegger had unfolded in Being and Time.3' These and other difficulties can be understood only when one reads Heidegger's essay on the origin of the work of art in light of our entire Western, "aesthetic" tradition and tries to understand it as an attempt to retrieve the metaphysical aesthetics of Hegel. - But let us turn now to the Epilogue and its implications.32 b) The Epilogue and its Implications In 1935, the year in which Heidegger delivered the lecture course, An Introduc­ tion to Metaphysics, he presented a lecture in Freiburg on the work of art which, as we have seen already, he later developed into three lectures; it finally

79 appeared in the latter form in Holzwege in 1950.33 As far as we know, this is the first time that Heidegger focused systematically on art works as such. The reflections on the history of aesthetics which we discussed in the preceding part were part of a lecture course delivered in 19361937. In 1935 Heidegger also delivered a lecture in Rome on "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry" which later (with other essays on poems by Hölderlin) would appear in Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung (1936).34 The essence of poetry is also discussed in several other later works of Heidegger, notably in On the Way to Language (1959).M In these latter essays and lectures the stress is not directly on the Being of the work of art, but rather on the essence of poetizing. I plan to include some of the ideas developed in these later lectures in Chapter V. Thus I shall limit myself here mainly to some reflections on the origin of the work of art. The essay, "The Origin of the Work of Art", contains in its present form a brief introduction in which Heidegger explains in what sense art is the origin of both the artist and the work of art, three major sections, entitled "Thing and Work", "The Work and Truth", and "Truth and Art", respectively, a brief Epilogue in which Heidegger relates his own thoughts to modern aesthetics, and finally an Addendum of 1956 in which he adds important clarifications, tries to prevent misconceptions from occurring, and corrects certain errors made in the first version of the essay. In this section I shall begin with the ideas developed in the Epilogue; then I shall turn to the content of the three lectures, starting with the introduction; the observation made in the Addendum will be incorporated in the sections of the lectures to which they pertain.36 In the Epilogue, about which Heidegger only writes that in part it was written later than 1936," he first states that these reflections on art are concerned with theriddlethat art itself is; it does not solve theriddle;it merely makes an effort to begin to see the riddle. The riddle consists in this that it is not at all clear precisely how art today comes-to-pass and abides among us (wie die Kunst west). There was a time in which this was quite clear, namely in Greek antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Be this as it may, it is not Heidegger's intention in these lectures to solve the riddle; he merely wants to explain in what thisriddleprecisely consists in the era of technicity, i.e., the era of the Ge-stell, the era of the com-positing. In Heidegger's view, this is a first, but necessary step in any effort to cope with this riddle.38 Specialized and systematic thinking about art and artist, Heidegger continues, is of relatively late origin and so is the name for this kind of thinking, namely aesthetics. Aesthetics treats the art work as an object, as the object of aesthesis, of sensuous apprehension in the wide sense. Most people call this apprehension experience today, Heidegger says. Aesthetics claims that the manner in which man experiences art gives us information about the essence of art. Experience is understood here as the source and the standard, not only for the appreciation of art, but also for the making of art. Heidegger disagrees with

80 this view and suggests that it perhaps very well may be the case that experience understood in this sense is the element in which art really dies. The dying of art occurred so slowly that it has taken a few centuries and very few people have noticed it. To be sure, people often speak today about important art works, and most are convinced that art is of eternal value. Yet these claims are very vague and suggest that today people are afraid of thinking. These half-baked cliches about immortal works and eternal value belong in Heidegger's view to an age in which great art, together with its essence, has departed from among us.39 Heidegger then quotes a few passages from Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics in which it is stated that art no longer counts for us as the highest manner in which truth obtains actuality for itself, that the form of art has ceased to be the highest need of the spirit even though art may very well continue to perfect itself, and that with respect to its highest vocation art is something past.40 We have already met one of these statements in Heidegger's reflections on art history and, as he did there, he observes here again that Hegel does not claim that there will be no great works of art and no great movements in art; rather he claims that from now on art no longer is a necessary and essential way in which that truth which is decisive for our historical Being, comes-to-pass. It is this claim that the present series of lectures wishes to discuss. But, Heidegger continues, this issue can be treated only after we have first considered the essence of art. We shall attempt a few steps in that direction by asking the question concerning the origin of the work of art. In so doing it is essential that we stress the work-character of the work. What is meant here by origin will be unfolded by way of the essence of truth.41 The truth referred to here does not coincide with what is generally recognized under this name. Usually the true refers to knowledge and science in order to distinguish it from the beautiful and the good which are the names for the correlates of our non-theoretical activities.42 Truth is the non-concealment of that which is, taken as such. Above all truth is the truth of Being. Beauty is not found alongside and apart from this truth. When truth is at work in the work, it appears; appearance taken as the Being of truth in the work, is beauty. The beautiful belongs to the coming-to-pass of the truth. Thus beauty is not merely relative to pleasure; it certainly is not purely as its object. It is not incorrect to say that the beautiful lies in form, but then one should realize that forma once took its light from Being as the "isness" of what is. In other words, one should realize then that Being first came to be as eidos; then idea fitted itself into morphe; then the unitary whole of W e and morphe, i.e., the ergon, began to be as energeia. Energeia then became the actualitas of the ens actu (Aquinas). Then actualitas became realitas, reality (Suarez), and reality objectivity (Descartes). Finally, objectivity became experience (Kant). In the manner in which in the Western world being is related to what is real, there is concealed a peculiar connection between beauty and truth: the history of Western art corresponds to a change in the conception of the essence of truth. But this means that art cannot really be understood in terms of either beauty or experience.43

81 Some of the ideas suggested here are difficult to understand. Heidegger is fully aware of this; and, as we shall see, he will return to some of them in the reflections to follow where he will make a special effort to develop these ideas in a more systematic manner. § IS. How is Heidegger's Essay on the Art Work to Be Interpreted? In his book, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, Otto Pöggeler writes that Heidegger's essay, "Hie Origin of the Work of Art", does not contain a philosophy of art. Pöggeler tries to justify this claim with the help of a reference to a passage in the Addendum which in 1960 was added to the Reclam edition. Heidegger says there that the lecture on the art work left several issues unresolved, one of these is the problem of the meaning of Being as well as that of the ontological difference. One should realize, Heidegger continues, that the entire essay on the art work moves "deliberately but tacitly" on the path of the question of precisely how Being comes-to-presence and abides. Thus the determination of what art itself is, is thought there only from the perspective of the question concerning the truth of Being. Art is thus not considered here as a domain of cultural achievement, nor as an appearance of the spirit; rather it is shown to belong to the event of appropriation, from the perspective of which the meaning of Being only can be defined. What art itself is, is one of the questions to which no answer is given in the essay.44 Later in his book Philosophie und Politik bei Heidegger Pöggeler returns to Heidegger's essay on the art work in a brief discussion of Schwan's book on Heidegger's political philosophy. There he says again that it is impossible to defend the view that the Holzwege essay on the art work gives us the outline of Heidegger's philosophy of art. In Pöggeler's view the essay belongs to a "romantic" position which Heidegger later abandoned. Furthermore, Heidegger later had plans to write a new essay in order to show how art is still possible in a technical world. According to Pöggeler, Heidegger turned to reflections on art after his painful experiences in the area of politics; thus his concern with language and art in that period constitutes really a flight from the political reality.45 von Herrmann has discussed these views of Pöggeler critically in great detail in the introduction to his book, Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst.46 von Herrmann rejects Pöggeler's position altogether and maintains that the Holzwege lecture indeed contains an outline of Heidegger's philosophy of art. In this opinion he finds himself in the company of several other commentators on Heidegger's philosophy and notably that of Walter Biemel.47 To substantiate his own position von Herrmann re-interprets the passage from the Addendum quoted by Pöggeler and shows that by asking the question of what art is in the perspective of the question concerning the truth of Being, Heidegger meant to indicate that he intended to develop the outline for a philosophy of art which is to be distinguished from similar efforts on the part of rationalists, empiricists,

82 Kant, and notably Hegel. In other words, if it is the case that the question concerning the truth of Being is the central question for philosophy, then it follows that the question concerning the meaning of art is to be asked from that overall perspective.48 von Herrmann also explains that he had the opportunity to discuss the art lecture with Heidegger himself in weekly sessions over a period of four years (1971-1975). In these discussions it was obvious to him that Heidegger at that time still subscribed to the basic ideas contained in the essay, and that he even completely identified himself with it until the last day of his life.49 Finally, if one makes a careful study of Heidegger's manuscripts one will see that Heidegger did not conceive of the Holzwege essay as something with whose ideas he no longer could identify. To the contrary, the essay was and remained one of Heidegger's favorites.30 I tend to agree with Biemel and von Herrmann and am thus convinced that the Holzwege essay on the work of art is an important essay in Heidegger's oeuvre as a whole, that this essay contains an outline of Heidegger's philosophy of art. and that Heidegger never retracted the basic theses developed there. von Herrmann discusses several other objections which one might wish to raise against Heidegger's approach to the "essence" of art. Some people have pointed to the fact that Heidegger really never gets to the question concerning the place of art in our technical world, von Herrmann does not agree with this opinion either. In his view, it is indeed true that Heidegger does not explicitly speak about the place of art in our contemporary world; yet it is equally true that in his analysis Heidegger nevertheless is able to bring to light characteristics that because of their formally general character will recur in an appropriate manner in each epoch, von Herrmann suggests that it is a task for an original thinker to bring to completion what Heidegger has started here. It seems to me that one perhaps could say that even though Heidegger does not explicitly discuss the place and function of the arts in our contemporary world, he nevertheless puts us on the proper way to ask the pertinent questions and deal with them effectively.51 It has also been said many times that Heidegger selects his examples onesidedly from architecture, painting, and poetry. It is really amazing that music is never mentioned, von Herrmann accepts the facts pointed to here; yet he feels that one cannot legitimately expect to find in Heidegger's essay of about SO pages all the ideas one can find in Hegel's aesthetics which is more than 1200 pages long. Furthermore, anyone who selects examples, takes them from the domain that is clearest. Now it is well-known that it is extremely difficult to meaningfully speak about musical works of art. Thus it is not amazing that Heidegger selects examples from architecture, painting, and poetry. Yet von Herrmann suggests that here, too, there is a task waiting for a creative thinker. As far as Heidegger himself is concerned, he was of the opinion that the formal claims made in the essay indeed hold for all forms of art. Furthermore, Heidegger must one day have answered a person who explicitly asked him why he had never written on music, that he thought this to be too difficult. Be this as it may, it seems to me that Heidegger's essay indeed leaves a number of

83 questions unanswered and a great number of issues untouched; but this was to be expected from the character and the size of the essay. Yet I agree with von Herrmann that this essay certainly is on the way to the manner in which the arts come-to-presence and abide historically, "unterwegs zum Wesen der Kunst".52 It seems to me that one of the most thoughtful forms of questioning Heidegger's approach to the essence of art is found in Taminiaux's publications, particularly in his essay, "Heidegger's Overcoming of Aesthetics and Hegel's Heritage".53 In this essay Taminiaux begins with a critical reflection on the first sentences of the Epilogue. There Heidegger says, as we have seen, that the essay is concerned with theriddlethat art itself is, although no effort is made to solve theriddle;the genuine task here is to learn to see the riddle. It is difficult to bring this claim into harmony with Heidegger's effort in the essay to make a positive contribution to our understanding of the essence of art. Yet that Heidegger wishes his claim about the riddle that art is to be taken seriously is clear from the Addendum where he writes that what art is, is one of the questions to which no answer has been given in the essay; what gives us the impression of such an answer are just directions for further questioning.54 Heidegger thus invites us in our reading of the essay to constantly keep an eye on the ambiguity implied in the claims that 1) an attempt is made to approach theriddleand 2) an effort is made to render a contribution to our understanding of the essence of art. But how is one to do this concretely? Heidegger himself gives us two hints that are of importance. The first has to do with the origin of modern aesthetics, whereas the second is concerned with the destiny of Western art.55 As for'the first point, Heidegger reminds us that aesthetics is a very young philosophical discipline which takes the work of art as an object, namely as the object of aisthesis, of sensuous apprehension in the broad sense. It is claimed there that the way in which humans experience (erleben) art is supposed to give us information on the essence of art. Experience (Erlebnis) is thus the source and measure not only for our appreciation of art but also for its artistic production.56 In Heidegger's view, on the other hand, experience is the element in which art slowly dies. For aesthetics threatens to resolve theriddlethat art is. Aesthetics speaks about experiences; it does not show at all how a work works. Yet the true riddle and enigma that art is, is precisely the question of how the work of art works. One should note here that when Heidegger reflects on world, thing, space, time, language (Sprache), the genuineriddlealways is how the world governs as world (weiten), how the things beg (dingen), how space makes room for (räumen), how time temporalizes (zeitigen), how language speaks (sprechen), how Being comes-to-presence and abides (wesen). In all of these cases Heidegger tries to show how world, thing, space, time, language, Being, and the art work come-to-presence and abide. Now aesthetics resolves the riddle that art is, by dissolving the enigmatic consistency of the art work's identity and difference and by melting the work away in experiences which consist in pleasure, joy, emotion, or vital excitation. In this way modern aesthetics, by merely focusing on the subject that broadens its domain and

84 increases its self-assurance, immediately raises the question of the aim of art. But by raising the question about the aim and the destiny of art one is immediately led to Hegel's claim that for us art is, on the side of its highest vocation, something past.57 Anyone who is confronted with this thesis and thinks about works of art merely in terms of experiences which humans have, must admit that Hegel's claim is unavoidable. For if it indeed is true that in aesthetics the experience, taken as "Erlebnis", reigns, and if it is true also that in this experience the enigma is resolved, then indeed it follows that for us art is something past.58 According to Taminiaux, in this claim the ambiguity that was mentioned earlier begins.to become more articulated. We have seen on the one hand that to recognize the riddle that art is, is tantamount to attempting to overcome aesthetics as a form of modern metaphysics. Yet on the other hand, it is clear that Heidegger has a very positive opinion about Hegel's Lectures on Aesthet­ ics. He calls it the most comprehensive reflection on the essence (Wesen) of art, i.e., on the manner in which art comes-to-presence and abides, that the West possesses. To recognize that the governance of the subjectivity over art is not an invention of aesthetics, but merely its expression of the principle that reigns over our entire modern era, is to confirm Hegel's aesthetics, which is aesthetics in its most metaphysical form.59 Thus we are led to a very difficult question: how can Heidegger still escape from Hegel's conclusion and thus from Hegel's entire position? Heidegger fully realizes these implications: "And yet the question remains: is art still an essential and necessary manner in which the truth happens that is essential and decisive for our historical existence? Or is art no longer this manner?"60 In Heidegger's own view, the truth of Hegel's judgment has not yet been decided; for our entire Western thinking since the Greeks stands behind this statement, and this thinking corresponds to the truth of the beings that has already cometo-pass. In his opinion, a decision on Hegel's judgment will be made (if it is ever going to be made), from the truth of the beings, and it will be a decision about this truth. Until that time Hegel's judgment stands and remains in force. The question, however, is one of whether the truth which Hegel's statement articulates is definitive and final, and of what will happen if it is. These questions can be answered only after the question of the "essence" of art has been asked. The lectures on the art work take a few steps in that direction by bringing to light the work-Being of the work.61 To fully realize Heidegger's position in regard to Hegel it is important that one notice the essential difference between truth taken as non-concealment (a-letheia) and truth as absolute certainty of self, between history as the advent of the absoluteness of the spirit and the history of Being. The problem thus is how Heidegger in the lectures on the art work can relate to Hegel in such a manner that he succeeds in thinking about art in a non-metaphysical and nonaesthetical manner, while at the same time maintaining the (provisional) validity of Hegel's metaphysical position. That Heidegger has no intention of repeating Hegel's position is obvious from the concluding lines of the Epilogue.

83 In the manner in which for the Western world the beings constitute what is actually real (Wirklich), there is concealed a special coming-together of beauty and truth. The history of the coming-to-presence and the abiding of art corresponds to the change in which the truth comes-to-presence and abides. Art can no more be understood in terms of beauty taken by itself, than it can be understood in terms of Erlebnisse, assuming for the moment that the metaphysical conception of art indeed does capture something of the manner in which art comes-to-presence and abides.62 From this it seems to follow according to Taminiaux that the truth that has come to be for modern man, is effectiveness, actuality in the sense of Wirklichkeit. Wirklichkeit is to be taken here in the strict sense and thus means that which has been worked, made, produced. Hegel had taken it in this sense, also. For Hegel, everything that has been brought forth by the Spirit is wirklich. For him that is completely wirklich, which is completely effective, that in which the Spirit finds nothing that opposes its influence, that in which the Spirit finds nothing but itself; it is that in which the worker, the worked, and the actual working have become completely identical. Thus Heidegger pronounces a typically Hegelian statement when he claims that for the modern world the beings manifest their Being only insofar as they are actually effective.63 It is clear then also why Heidegger can say that this preoccupation with the effective implies a confluence of truth and beauty. This was so for Hegel, also, insofar as for him this confluence can be taken as evidence of the maturity of the effectiveness which the West had reached in his time. At the beginning of the history of the West we find the Greek world. There, too. Being was understood as effectiveness, but in a manner that is quite different from that found in the 19th century. The Greeks, too, understood the beings as the work of "the Spirit"; for Hegel this is clear from the fact that they livedin an artistic world, so that they could understand the Being of the beings in terms of a work of art. For Hegel, the Spirit understood its own working in the Greek era in the form of art and art works. In his view, this at once shows the deficiency of the Greek world; for effectiveness is seen there in terms of phusis, nature, immediacy, sensuousness. Furthermore, for the Greeks, too, the genuine truth of the effectiveness is the identity of the worker, the worked, and the actual working. But in the Greek world this identity had not yet been achieved: the Greeks were unable to overcome all the differences with which they were confronted. The Greek world is for Hegel abundant in beauty, but still poor as far as truth is concerned. In the Greek world beauty and truth have not yet come together. For the Greeks beauty is the veil that hides the truth. Hegel finds the same state of affairs elsewhere in Greek philosophy, particularly in Aristotle's conception of Wirklichkeit as energeia and enteUcheia, in itself goal and realization of the goal. In his view of energeia Artistotle understands in his own way the speculative identity of the effectiveness as "pure Wirklichkeit which has its source in itself, as pure negativity merely relating to itself.64 But since Aristotle remained caught in a philosophy of nature which was only positive, his conception of Wirklichkeit remained inadequate insofar as it

86 lacks negativity and mediation. Aristotle's thought constitutes only the first step in the self-movement of the Spirit.65 In Hegel's view, once this first step was overcome together with its immediacy and its inherent sensuousness, a process of development began, at the end of which Wirklichkeit, now taken in its modern form, accomplished its truth, i.e., the self-certainty of the Spirit's self-realization. From truth taken in the sense of agreement with nature-that-is-given, one has now moved to truth as absolute certainty of self. At the end one finds there, too, the complete confluence of truth and beauty. But the modern world is particularlyrichas far as truth is concerned, so that beauty can now move into the background. Beauty is now no more than an elementary modality of the certitude of self. According to Hegel one can see this in all modern forms of art.66 Seen from this perspective, Heidegger can thus state that the history of art in the West corresponds to the history of the truth. Yet he says also that one should realize that neither beauty as an abstract concept, nor the effects which the works transfer into the lived experiences of the individuals, constitute the true essence of art.67 But it still remains very difficult to bring the seemingly conflicting tendencies in Heidegger's essay on art into harmony with one another. How is one to combine the claim about the enigma that art is with a theory concerning the essence of art? How is one to unite the overcoming of aesthetics with the coming-to-completion of metaphysics in Hegel's speculative dialectic? How is one to relate Heidegger's history of Being with Hegel's history of the Spirit? As far as the essence of art is concerned, what constitutes the link between Heidegger's setting-into-the-work (energeia) of the truth as a-letheia and the setting-to-work of Hegel's absolute Spirit?68 There cannot be any doubt that in writing his lectures on the essence of art Heidegger was inspired by Hegel, not by Aristotle or Kant; Heidegger seriously tried there to retrieve Hegel. According to Taminiaux, it is important to ask here the question of in how far Heidegger succeeded in his effort. To what extent did this Hegelian approach to art negatively affect Heidegger's own conception of the essence of art? In Taminiaux's view, the question must be asked in view of the fact that the similarity of the approaches of Heidegger and Hegel is not limited to the few essential themes mentioned above; there are also many other, more formal, parallels. Both Hegel and Heidegger begin their investigations with reflections on the circle that methodologically any effort to say something about the essence of art appears to imply. Furthermore, both Hegel and Heidegger explicitly limit their reflections to "great art", i.e., to Greek and Medieval art; a piece of sculpture from Aegina, the Antigone of Sophocles, the temple of Poseidon in Paestum, and the cathedral of Bamberg are mentioned. Both authors explicitly state that great art "has been". With Hegel, Heidegger claims that their world has withdrawn from these works and that this world-withdrawal can never be undone. "The works are no longer the same as they once were". We obviously still encounter these works themselves; and yet they

87 themselves have gone by. They now merely stand over against us in the realm of tradition and conservation. From now on they are merely permanent entities that stand opposite to us Gegenstände. "Their standing before us is still indeed a consequence of, but no longer the same as, their former self-subsistence. This self-subsistence has fled from them".69 Obviously, one should not exaggerate the similarities and parallels; for there are also important and even essential differences between the views of Hegel and Heidegger. What Heidegger states about earth and phusis, about the relationship between earth and world, and about the relationship between the battle between earth and world on the one hand and the battle between the untrue and the true in non-concealment (a-litheia) on the other, -all of this has no place in Hegel's aesthetics. Furthermore, the example of van Gogh's shoes does not fit the Hegelian framework of great art at all. How is one to relate such a painting to a people and its destiny? Also, the insights which Heidegger derives from the analysis of the temple are not in harmony with Hegel's ideas, either. But, even more importantly, it should be noted that there is no way in which one could ever bring Hegel's conception of truth into harmony with Heidegger's conception of truth as non-concealment, even though they may not be totally unrelated either. We are also far away from the Hegelian conception of art and truth, where Heidegger speaks about the having-been-made of the art work, the simple/actam est, and about the Eigenständigkeit of the work that has been "fixed in the Gestalt". Finally, Taminiaux thinks that one finds the same tension^in the manner in which Heidegger tries to determine the threefold meaning of poetizing and the manner in which Hegel stipulates the three conditions of art in his speculative theory. In the concluding section of his essay Taminiaux writes that in his view the shadow of Hegel's asthetics weighs heavily on Heidegger's analysis of the origin of the art work. There are two other texts of Heidegger's in which this becomes evident, also. Both in his lecture presented in Athens in 1967 and in the interview with Der Spiegel Heidegger claims that art today is held within the spell of modern technicity, by the Ge-stell which is said to be determined by modern metaphysics. Yet in the lecture on technicity it is also claimed that art may have a very important place in the overcoming of the Ge-stell that results from modern metaphysics. It is not at all clear how these seemingly contradictory statements can be brought into harmony with one another. At any rate, in Taminiaux's view, Heidegger certainly evaluates contemporary art much too negatively.70 Finally, Heidegger's criticism of modern aesthetics, too, is much too negative. Taminiaux is of the opinion that there is much more in Kant's aesthetics than Heidegger is willing to leave room for. It is just not true that when art comes into the purview of aesthetics, art begins to decline because it can no longer live up to its true essence, which is the setting of the truth into the work. In order to be fair to Heidegger, Taminiaux does mention the fact that in the Nietzsche lectures Heidegger states that Kant's aesthetics escapes from the

88 verdict just passed.71 Yet Taminiaux continues to wonder why Heidegger never tried to incorporate this "deep" reading of Kant into his own conception of the art work. It is Hegel and Hegel only whom he takes as his guide here. In Taminiaux's view a careful retrieve of Kant's third Critique might have opened up new avenues toward a resolution of the riddle that art is.72 Although I have high esteem for Taminiaux's essays on aesthetics, I nevertheless tend to disagree with him on this last issue. Heidegger explains in detail why he believes that any effort to understand the essence of art in terms of a theory of beauty and a theory of the arts is inadequate. Also, it is impossible to conceive of beauty-for-itself; it is to be related to what is and to truth. Furthermore, it is equally impossible to understand the essence of art in terms of experiences, and thus also in terms of a transcendental theory of our judgments of taste in which, according to Kant, these experiences come to their fulfillment. I think that Heidegger was firmly convinced that in his reflections on art Kant remained locked up in the empiricist tradition with which he started his research, without realizing that in art works the truth is at work. Once Heidegger opted for the latter view, it was understandable why he felt drawn to Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics where this view, alluded to before, for the first time finds a clear expression. Heidegger does not repeat Hegel; he tries to retrieve his great ideas; in so doing he could also make use of a number of ideas first proposed by Kant, but these ideas now appear in a completely new context. - 1 plan to return to some of the issues raised by Taminiaux in the sections to follow.

ART. II. THE SUBJECT MATTER AND THE METHOD OF THE LECTURES § 16. Origin and Coming-to-Presence. Hermeneutic Phenomenology a) Origin and Coming-to-Presence. - The Question of Method The lecture series itself begins with a brief section in which Heidegger explains that both the work of art and the artist have their origin in art. To show this he takes his point of departure in a brief reflection on the relationship between the meaning of "Ursprung" (leap from, origin) and " Wesen" (essence and comingto-presence). Origin, Heidegger explains, means here the source from which something springs; it is that which makes it possible for a thing to rise up as what it is and how it is. It is that by and through which something is what it is and as it is. That which something is, taken in the way it is, we call its essence. Thus the origin of something is the source from which its essence originally springs. The question concerning the origin of the work of art therefore asks how its essence springs forth; thus it asks about the source of its coming-to-presence.

89 But whence is it that the work of art springs forth? One is inclined to say that it arises from and by means of the activity of the artist. Yet the artist himself is an artist only by virtue of the work of art that he has produced. Artists are those who bring forth works of art. But this means that in a sense the work is as much the origin of the artist as such, as the artist is the origin of the work. Both appear to spring from a source that is more primary than both and this source is art itself. But what then is art itself? Can art be the origin of anything at all? Where and how is art? Could it be that "art" is just a word to which today nothing actual corresponds any more? Could it be that the word "art" just refers to a collective idea in which we bring together that which alone is truly real in the domain of the arts: art works and artists? What is art itself, taken as something that is distinct from the work in which it is found and from the human being who produces it? Can one meaningfully speak about "art as such" at all? It appears that as long as it must remain an open question as to whether and how art comes-to-presence, the only way to find the essence of art is to examine that being in which art undoubtedly holds sway; and this is the work of art.71 Heidegger thus begins the introduction to the lecture series with an elucidation of the title of the lecture series; this elucidation explains the ti.tle only with respect to its formal aspects. To fully understand Heidegger's claims it is important that one realizes that the German word Ursprung means origin, source, inception, beginning, cause, etc. It comes from the verb erspringen, to spring forth from; er- and ur- often mean from; ur-, in the sense of aboriginal, primitive, original, is of later date. Someone who today looks at the German word understands that its "original" meaning is that from which something originally springs forth. Heidegger will later use the word Ursprung also in the sense of "original leap".74 A r for the German word "Wesen", Heidegger uses it in two different but related senses. Often he uses it as a "technical" term in the sense of essence. Yet the word is used in many instances in a verbal sense. The German verb wesen means to stay, dwell, to last, endure, happen, come-to-pass. Thus the word expresses two seemingly contradictory ideas: to happen as well as to abide. I usually translate Wesen by coming-to-presence: it refers to something whose mode of Being is a continuous coming-to-presence. In other words, the word then combines the meaning of issuance and abidance. Heidegger sometimes uses the verb währen (to endure, last) to explain the meaning of wesen. Heidegger briefly dwells on the common conception concerning the origin of art works. One usually says that art works originate from and through the activity of the artist. This conception originated in and was promoted by modern aesthetics. It finds its crowning point in the history of aesthetics in the works of Kant and Schopenhauer, and from there it finds its way into most modern and contemporary philosophies of art. An art work is that which flows from the creative activity of the genius. In Heidegger's view this conception of the origin of the art work rests on a subjectivist interpretation of all artistic creativity that became dominant in modern philosophy, which gives the subjec-

90 tivity of the human subject the privileged position in metaphysics. In order to be able to explain that this conception, which today seems so obvious and self-evident, is really questionable, Heidegger shows that the question concerning the origin may be asked also for the artist. Now if one asks what makes the artist an artist, it appears that the work does; for only the work lets the artist appear as the master of his art. The artist is the origin of the work and the work is the origin of the artist. The one can never be without the other. The work and the artist are in themselves and in their mutual relationship thanks to a "third" that actually is first. That from which both artist and art work obtain their name is art. Heidegger is provisionally led to the following conclusions: 1) the artist lets the work spring forth, 2) the work lets the artist spring forth, and 3) art is that from which both the artist and the art work spring forth. The lecture series will thus have to focus on art, on the manner in which art comes-to-presence and abides. Yet in order to be able to speak in a meaningful manner about art, Heidegger feels he nevertheless has to take his point of departure in a reflection on the art work, because it is in the art work that art resides. What then is and how is a work of art?75 Neither in the introductory section of the essay, nor in the essay as a whole does Heidegger make an explicit statement about the method he is using here in his reflections on art and art works. Yet from the manner in which he proceeds and from the very few indirect remarks which he makes in the introductory section as well as in the first and the third parts of the essay, it is clear that as far as method is concerned he still subscribes to the views developed in Being and Time and in lecture courses of the same period. In his book Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst von Herrmann stresses on several occasions the hermeneutico-phenomenological character of the method used in the Holzwege essay.76 It thus seems desirable to say a few words about Heidegger's conception of hermeneutic phenomenology. Reflections on method occupy a very important place in Heidegger's earlier works. Heidegger defends the view that ontology which must concern itself with the question concerning the meaning or the truth of Being, must make use of the phenomenological method, whereas in fundamental ontology which deals with the mode of Being of Dasein, one is to employ a hermeneuticophenomenological method. As for phenomenology proper, Heidegger usually claims that it implies first a turn from the beings to Being (phenomenological reduction). Secondly this method involves the procedure through which Being as a free projection becomes brought to the fore; Heidegger calls the projection of the pregiven beings upon their Being and its intrinsic structures the phenomenological construction. Finally, phenomenology also implies destruction, i.e., the destructive retrieve of the insights concerning Being which are with necessity always already implied in any pre-ontological understanding of Being.77 In Being and Time itself, immediately after explaining that ontology is concerned with the Being question and is to be prepared by a fundamental

91 ontology which takes the concrete form of an analytic of Dasein's Being, Heidegger turns next to the question concerning "therightway of access" to the primary subject of investigation, namely Dasein. He stresses the point that this issue is a very difficult one, because Dasein is to be taken as something already accessible to itself and as something yet to be understood. We must thus be able to explain how and why Dasein itself can be grasped immediately, although the kind of Being which it possesses is not to be presented just as immediately, but as tobe mediated by explanation and interpretation.18 Dasein is in such a way that it is capable of understanding its own Being; yet it has the tendency to do so in terms of those beings toward which it comports itself proximally. And this means that its "categorial structure" remains to some degree concealed. Thus the philosophical interpretation of Dasein's Being is confronted with very peculiar difficulties. Furthermore, Dasein has been made the subject of both philosophical and scientific investigations. Thus there are already many ways in which Dasein has been interpreted. It is not clear how all of these interpretations can go together. This complexity makes the problem of securing therightaccess which will lead to Dasein's Being even a more burning one. We have norightto resort dogmatically to constructions and to apply just any idea of Being to Dasein, however self-evident such an idea may be, nor may any of the "categories" which such an idea prescribes, be forced upon Dasein without proper ontological consideration.19 b) Destructive Retrieve In Heidegger's view temporality constitutes the meaning of Dasein's Being.80 Temporality is also the condition which makes historicity possible as a temporal mode of Being which Dasein itself possesses. Historicity stands here for the state of Being which is constitutive for Dasein's coming-to-pass as such. Dasein is as it already was and it is what it already was. Dasein is its past, not only in the sense that it possesses its own past as a kind of property which is still presentat-hand; Dasein is its past particularly in the way of its own Being which comesto-pass out of its future on each occasion. Regardless of how Dasein is at a given " time or how it may conceive of Being, it has grown up both into and in a traditional way of interpreting itself; in terms of this tradition it understands itself proximally and, to some degree at least, constantly. Its own past, which includes The past of its generation, is thus not something which just follows along after Dasein, but something which already goes ahead of it.81 But if Dasein itself as well as its own understanding are intrinsically historical, then the inquiry into the meaning of Being (= philosophy) is to be characterized by historicity as well. The ownmost meaning of Being which belongs to the inquiry into Being as an historical inquiry, points to the necessity of inquiring into the history of that inquiry itself. Thus in working out the question concerning the meaning of Being one must take heed of this pointing, so that by positively making the past his own, he may bring himself into full possession of the very possibility of such inquiry.

92 When a philosopher turns to philosophy's own history he must realize that this tradition constitutes that from which he thinks as well as that from which he, to some degree at least, must try to move away. Yet Dasein is inclined to fall prey to its tradition. This tradition often keeps Dasein from providing its own guidance whether in inquiring or in choosing. When a tradition overpowers one's own thinking it often conceals what it really tried to transmit. Dasein has the tendency to take what the tradition hands down to it as being self-evident. This blocks the access to those primordial sources from which the categories, concepts, and views handed down have been drawn. Dasein is in fact so caught in its own tradition that in philosophy it often confines its interest to the multiformity of the available standpoints of philosophical inquiry; but by this interest it seeks to hide the fact that it has no ground of its own to stand on. The state in which philosophy's concern about the Being question finds itself today, is the clearest evidence of this tendency. Thus in the inquiry of the question concerning the meaning of Being one has to have a ground of his own and yet one's thought must carefully heed its own philosophical tradition. Both these demands are met in the "destructive retrieve". One must "destroy" in the tradition what is philosophically unjustifiable and maintain those primordial experiences from which any genuine philosophical insights ultimately flow. The meaning of the retrieve is not to shake off the philosophical tradition, but to stake out the positive possibilities of a tradition and keep it within its proper limits.82 "By the re-trieving of a fundamental problem we understand the disclosure of its original potentialities that long have lain hidden. By the elaboration of the potentialities, the problem is transformed and thus for the first time conserved in its intrinsic content. To conserve a problem, however, means to retain free and awake all those inner forces that render this problem in its fundamental essence possible".83 It is obvious that in these reflections Heidegger takes a critical stance with respect to Descartes, Kant, and Husserl whose positions in regard to the philosophical tradition are too negative. In this regard Heidegger's position is closer to that adopted by Hegel. The only point in which he does not follow Hegel in this respect consists in the fact that Hegel saw the various philosophical perspectives developed in the past as elements of an organic unity or system and that, thus, some form of necessity is constitutive for "the life of the Whole". In Heidegger's view, philosophy's history does not bind the philosopher who lives today with the necessity of the unbreakable laws of the Hegelian dialectic; rather, the philosophical tradition, like every other form of tradition, delivers and liberates man. The answer to a philosophically relevant question consists in man's authentic response to what in philosophy's history is already on the way to him. Such a response implies, at the same time, his willingness to listen to what is already said and the courage to take distance from what one has heard. This makes a certain criticism of the past necessary in philosophy. Yet such a criticism should not be understood as a break with the past, nor as a repudiation of philosophy's history, but as its adoption in the form of a transformation and adaptation to the requirements of the world in which weiive and of what in this

93 world has been handed down to us. Heidegger, thus, does hot deny the necessity to re-think every "experience", to mediate it, and transcend it. Yet he does deny that this should be done from the perspective of the absolute knowledge of the Absolute. In his opinion, each "experience" is to be mediated from the perspective of Being. It is in this/wire perspective that man understands his own Being in its full potentialities so that he can compare each mode of Being, present in each "experience", with the whole of possibilities and thus understand its genuine, limited meaning. Furthermore, it is within this finite perspective that one can "let things be seen from themselves and in themselves", because within this perspective, one can show them in their full potentialities so that the concrete mode of givenness as found in a given "experience" can appear in its true and limited sense.84 Heidegger obviously maintains that the philosophical reflection should be methodical and critical. Although he rejects presuppositionlessness (Husserl) and absoluteness (Hegel), he does not reject method and rigor. Thus he recommends that the first, last, and constant task of our philosophical reflection is never to allow our pre-judgments to be dominated by merely arbitrary conceptions, but rather to make the relevant themes secure scientifically by working out our anticipatory conceptions in terms of "the things themselves".85 In other words, the destructive retrieve is guided by a hermeneutic phenomenology which in each case allows for a careful comparison of the claims made by thinkers of the past with the "things" to be reflected upon.86 I shall return to the relationship between retrieve and phenomenology in section c, 3. * c) Phenomenology: The Method of Ontology In Heidegger's view the question of the "right approach" to ontology is a very important one.87 Ontology must deal with its subject matter by employing the phenomenological method. The concept "phenomenology" is, however, no more than a methodological concept; it thus does not characterize the subject matter of ontology, which is the meaning or truth of Being. What is meant by phenomenology can be explained by means of a reference to the maxim: Zu den Sachen selbst. In Heidegger's interpretation, Husserl's maxim: To the things themselves, implies that ontology avoids all free-floating constructions, all artificial and accidental findings, all seemingly justified conceptions, and all adherence to pseudo-problems. Heidegger admits that this first characterization of the phenomenological method is almost trivial and that perhaps it can be applied to any concrete method to be employed in any type of scientific research. It appears that Heidegger deliberately tried to keep his remarks on phenomenology as formal as possible, in order to avoid giving the impression that the term "phenomenology" is to be taken here to refer to a historical position in philosophy.88 This must also have been the reason why Heidegger decided to explain the meaning of the method of ontology with the help of some very brief comments on the expressions phenomenon and logos of which the

94 compound expression appears to consist: phenomenology is the science of the phenomena. But is it really? To answer this question we must try to characterize what phainomenon and logos meant originally. 1. Phenomenon. Heidegger begins his explanation of what is to be understood by phenomenology with a brief reflection on the meaning of the term "phenomenon". The concept of phenomenon is first determined purely formally as "that which shows itself, the manifest. Now a being can show itself in many ways, depending in each case on the kind of access one has to it. Furthermore, a being can show itself as something which in itself it is not. Then it looks like something else; but it is not this being. This kind of showing-itself is called semblance. It is important to observe that when phenomenon signifies "semblance", the primordial signification of the term (namely phenomenon as the manifest) is already included as that upon which the second signification is founded.89 Both phenomenon and semblance must be distinguished from what is called appearance. When we speak about an "appearance" we are not speaking about something which shows itself, but about something which announces itself in something else which shows itself, although that which so appears does not show itself. Examples of appearances are for instance: symptoms, signs, symbols, etc. In this case, too, that which announces itself is never a phenomenon, although its appearing is possible only by reason of the showing itself of something else and, thus, by reason of a phenomenon in the proper sense of the term.90 Until now we have limited ourselves merely to defining the purely formal meaning of the term phenomenon and distinguishing phenomenon from semblance and appearance. We have not yet specified which entities we consider to be phenomena and have left open the question of whether what shows itself is a being or rather some characteristic which a being has as far as its Being is concerned. In order to be able to answer this question, Heidegger makes a distinction between the ordinary and the phenomenological conception of phenomenon, both of which are then defined with an explicit reference to Kant. Phenomenon in the ordinary sense is any being which is accessible to us through the "empirical intuition". Formulated again within the perspective of the Kantian framework the phenomenon in the phenomenological sense is that which already shows itself in the appearance as prior to the phenomenon in the ordinary sense and as accompanying it in every case. Even though it shows itself unthematically, it can nonetheless be brought to show itself thematically. Thus the phenomena of phenomenology are those beings which show themselves in themselves, Kant's forms of intuition. In other words, the phenomena in the phenomenological sense refer to the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience.91 In section c, 3 to come I plan to clarify these references to Kant from Heidegger's own perspective.

95 2. Apophantic Logos and Truth. In the introduction to the section on method Heidegger stresses the point that the element "-logy" in the expression "phenomenology" refers to the scientific character of-the investigation concerning phenomena. In an essay on method, therefore, the scientificity of phenomenology is to be made thematic. One may thus say that phenomenology does not merely indicate the approach to, but also the clarifying mode of determination of, the subject matter of ontology. In other words, two elements are contained in the concept of phenomenology: one dealing with the question of how the things are to be discovered and another concerned with the question of when such discovery may be taken to be adequate, i.e., when a discovery may be taken to be true. Thus we may expect that Heidegger's reflection on method contains a provisional analysis of die concept of truth. To this end Heidegger turns toward Aristotle who in his opinion originally conceived of truth as the non-concealment of what is present, its unveiling, its manifesting-itself.92 The analysis shows that the phenomenological conception of phenomenon implies a conception of truth which is notably different from the one found in Kant as well as from that developed by Husserl. Heidegger contends that the classical definition of truth as agreement is concerned with the derivative conception of truth, whereas Husserl's thesis that truth is to be defined in terms of perfect, i.e., apodictic and adequate evidence,91 is unacceptable.94 Section 7B of Being and Time begins with a reference to the fact that for Plato and Aristotle the concept "logos" had many, competing significations, none of which at first sight seems to be primordial. And yet the term appears to have a basic meaning in light of which all other, derivative meanings can be understood. One could perhaps say that the basic signification of logos consists in articulating discourse (Rede). But such a translation remains unjustified as long as one is unable to determine precisely what is meant by this expression and indicate how from this basic meaning all other significations of the term can be derived.95 Logos is related to legein which means to make manifest what one is talking about. As such it has the same meaning as apophainesthai. Logos lets something be seen, namely what the talk is about; and it does so for those who are somehow involved in the discourse. Logos furthermore lets something be seen from the very thing the talk is about. In logos as discourse (apophansis) what is said is drawn from what the talk is about, so that discursive communication, in what it says, makes manifest what the talk is about and makes it accessible to others. When in this context logos becomes fully concrete, then discoursing, as letting something be seen, has the character of speaking.96 Furthermore, because logos is a letting something be seen, it can therefore be true or false. But it is of the greatest importance to realize that truth cannot be understood here in the sense of an agreement between what is and what is said. Such a conception of truth is by no means the primary one. The Greek word for truth is alitheia and this means non-concealment. The being-true of the logos as alitheuein means that the beings about which one is talking must be taken out of their original hiddenness: one must let them be seen as something unhidden

96 (a-lethes); this means, the beings must be discovered. And only because the function of the logos as apophansis lies in letting something be seen by pointing it out, can it have the structural form of a synthesis. Here "synthesis" does not mean a binding together of representations or the manipulation of psychical occurrences from which the pseudo-problem arises of how these bindings, as something inside, agree with something physical outside. Synthesis here means letting something be seen in its togetherness with something, letting it be seen as something. When something no longer takes the form of just letting something be seen, but always harks back to something else to which it points, so that it lets something be seen as something, it thus acquires a synthesis-structure. And with this it also takes over the possibility of covering up. Being-false amounts to deceiving in the sense of covering-up: putting something in front of something else in such a way as to let the former be seen, thereby passing the latter off as something which it is not.97 Seen from the perspective of the enormous task in regard to the tradition, particularly in regard to Aristotle, Kant, and Husserl, which Heidegger appears to have set for himself here, section 7B seems to be disappointing.98 Yet one should realize once more that section 7 contains merely the provisional conception of phenomenology, which later is to be developed further, once the analytic of Dasein has reached its conclusion. Secondly, what Heidegger suggests in section 7B is to be understood from the perspective of what will be said later in Being and Time about the precise function of theoretical knowledge,99 about 'reality',100 and particularly about disclosedness and truth.101 Finally Heidegger explicitly indicates that the reflections contained in section 7B were inspired by a careful study of Aristotle.102 When all of this information is taken together it becomes clear that the real meaning of section 7B consists in the following: a being, whose ontological conception becomes manifest to Dasein (alithes), is, as far as its mode of becoming manifest (logos apophantikos) is concerned, dependent upon Dasein's disclosure. The identity expressed in the apophantic logos rests on the synthesis a priori (the truth of Being) and at the same time presupposes a difference with which Dasein's disclosure is concerned and which accounts for the fact that all finite letting something be seen really is a letting something be seen as.103 3. The Preliminary Conception of Phenomenology. From the interpretation of the words "phenomenon" and "logos" it becomes clear that there is an inner relationship between the things meant by these words. Taken as legein (= apophainesthai) ta phainomena, the expression "phenomenology" means: to let that which shows itself be seen from itself the very way it shows itself. This is the formal meaning of the term "phenomenology" which expresses the same thing as the maxim formulated earlier: to the things themselves.104 But what is it that phenomenology is to "let us see"? We have seen already that this question must be answered if we are ever to be able to go from the common conception of phenomenon to the phenomenological conception.

97 What is it, therefore, that by its very Being must be called a "phenomenon" in a distinctive sense? What is it that is necessarily the theme whenever we try to exhibit something explicitly? Obviously, it is something that proximally and for the most part does not show itself; it is something that lies hidden in contrast to that which proximally and for the most part does show itself. Yet at the same time it must be something that belongs to what thus shows itself, and it must belong to it so essentially as to constitute its very meaning and ground. History of philosophy shows us that that which remains hidden in a specific sense, which relapses and gets covered up time and again, is not this or that being, nor this or that kind of beings, but rather the Being of these beings. Being can even be covered up so extensively that it becomes forgotten and there no longer is any question which arises about it and its ultimate meaning. In other words, that which demands that it become a phenomenon, and which demands this in a distinctive sense and in terms of its ownmost content as a thing, is precisely that which phenomenological philosophy wants to make the very subject matter and theme of its own investigations. But if phenomenology is Dasein's way of access to what is to be the theme of ontology, it is clear that the phenomenological conception of phenomenon as that which shows itself must refer to the Being of the beings, to its meaning, its modification, and its derivatives.105 For phenomenology to be possible and necessary, something must be manifest and something else, inherently connected with the manifest, must still be hidden. That which is manifest essentially implies both truth as non-concealment and immediacy. Thus a being, taken as phenomenon, means that being taken in immediate non-concealment. In view of the fact that each being can show itself in different ways, depending upon Dasein's manner of approach,106 the showing-itself always and necessarily implies some form of mediation in that the manner of approach to the things appears to be constitutive of what will show itself as the manifest. Therefore, phenomenology means the methodical mediation of the immediacy of the truth of the phenomena. Here Heidegger takes his point of departure in the conviction that before things appear to us, they obviously "are" already. The basic question is not whether there are "real" things; there obviously are "real" things, because otherwise nothing at all would appear to us. The fundamental question is connected rather with the necessary conditions which must be fulfilled in order that things can appear to us the way they do, so that it will be possible to ask the question of what their appearance precisely means. When beings appear to us, they always appear as either this or that. They can appear to us in many ways; how they in fact will appear to us depends upon the kind of access we have to them in each case. In the final analysis, the question of how a being will appear to us, depends upon the a priori synthesis from which this being is taken in each case; all letting be seen as presupposes some synthesis a priori.'"' When a being appears to us in its "genuine" mode of Being, when it appears to us "the way it really is", it appears to us from the perspective of the transcendental synthesis a priori, which consists in the meaning or the truth of Being. Thus the expression

98 "to show itself can be applied meaningfully in ontology to both a being and to its Being. Thus we can now determine the concept of phenomenon more adequately: phenomenon in the ordinary sense of the term is not a being, but the showing-itself of a being; phenomenon in the phenomenological sense of the term is not the Being of a being, but the showing-itself of this Being in light of the truth of Being. The immediacy of Dasein's relation to a being is to be mediated by the truth of Being; for a being to show itself to Dasein, there must be a transcendental, a priori horizon which consists in the truth of Being. In other words, the showing-itself of the beings is conditioned by the truth of Being. There is a showing-itself of a being (phenomenon in the ordinary sense) if and only if there is an a priori horizon within which this being can show itself as that which it really is. This showing-itself of beings is precisely the immediacy which every methodical mediation must presuppose; that which is mediated by the method is the phenomenon in the phenomenological sense of the term. Yet there can be an explanation of phenomena (phenomenology) only if there is a transcendental ontological synthesis, i.e., the truth of Being. Thus it is clear that phenomenology is possible only as ontology.108 d) Hermeneutic Phenomenology The ontological problematic which is concerned with the conditions of the possibility of the being's showing-itself, i.e., with the truth of Being, requires that the reflection on method not limit itself to determining the way in which the meaning of Being can be investigated (ontology); it must explain also how Dasein is to be examined in its relation to the things in the world. Thus a treatise on the method of ontology demands on transcendental grounds that an introductory analytic of Dasein be developed. "Because phenomena, as understood phenomenologically, are never anything but what goes to make up Being, while Being is in every case the Being of some being, we must first bring forward the beings themselves if it is our aim that Being should be laid bare; and we must do this in the right way".109 With respect to the subject matter of phenomenology one could say indeed that phenomenology is the science of the Being of beings; it is in this sense that phenomenology may be called ontology. Yet in explaining the task of ontology we have already referred to the necessity of a fundamental ontology which has to take the form of an ek-sistential analytic of Dasein. Fundamental ontology must prepare our investigation of the question concerning the meaning of Being. Thus that which phenomenology is concerned with first is the Being of Dasein. This Being which is now concealed, was once revealed; it has slipped back into oblivion; it is revealed now again, but in a distorted fashion so that man's Dasein now seems to be what in fact it is not. It is precisely inasmuch as Being is not seen that phenomenology is necessary. For Dasein to reveal itself of its own accord as that which it is and how it is, it must be submitted to phenomenological analyses in which one must make an effort to lay the Being of Dasein out in full view. Such a laying-out necessarily takes the form of an

99 interpretation; this is the reason why phenomenology is essentially hermeneutical.no The term "hermeneutic" seems to have its historical origin in biblical exegesis. Later it was applied to the interpretation of the meaning of historical documents and works of art. As the expression is used by Heidegger in Being and Time it no longer refers to documents and results of man's artistic activities, but to man's own Being. But what does it mean to interpret a non-symbolic fact such as man's Being? Interpretation focusses on the meaning of things; it presupposes that what is to be interpreted has meaning and that this meaning is not immediately obvious. Dasein obviously has meaning and this meaning allows for interpretation. For as ek-sistence Dasein is essentially related to its own Being as that which continuously is at stake for it. In view of the fact that Dasein as ek-sistence is oriented toward possibilities which reach beyond itself, Dasein is capable of interpretation. But Dasein's Being also requires interpretation. For just as Being has the tendency to fall into oblivion, so man's Being has the tendency to degenerate. The phenomenology of Dasein is even hermeneutic in three different senses. It is hermeneutical first because (as we have just seen) in this particular case, in which one looks at Dasein exclusively from the perspective of Being itself, the phenomenological description has the character of being an Auslegung, an unfolding and an explaining interpretation which looks at Dasein from this particular perspective. This phenomenology is also "transcendental" in the sense of Kant, insofar as it concerns itself with the conditions of the possibility of our ontological knowledge as such. Thus it is hermeneutic in the sense that in it the conditions on which the possibility of any ontological investigation depends, become worked out. Finally, this hermeneutic phenomenology has also the character of an analytic in the sense of Kant. As the interpretation of Dasein's Being from the perspective of the truth of Being, hermeneutic phenomenology has the specific meaning of being an analytic of the ek-sistentiality of Dasein's ek-sistence, of Dasein's standing out toward the world. Thus fundamental ontology is a transcendental analytic which methodically is phenomenological and hermeneutical in character.1" From a purely methodical point of view we can say the same for Heidegger's reflections on the origin of the work of art. In the art lectures Heidegger consistently uses the hermeneutico-phenomenological method in an effort to interpret the essence of the art work from the perspective of the coming-to-pass of the truth of Being, which, as we shall see later, appears in these lectures under the guise of "the open". In so doing, Heidegger tries to retrieve basic ideas first developed by Hegel; yet in many instances Heidegger also tries to retrieve ideas from other thinkers, notably from Plato and Nietzsche.

100 § 17. The Hermeneutic Circle a) From Work to Art and from Art to Work. The Circle What art is, Heidegger says, can be derived from the art work. On the other hand, what the work is can be learned only from the essence of art. The attentive reader will have observed that we are obviously now moving in a circle, for it is said here that we come to know what the art work is from the essence of art, and that what art is should be inferred from the work. One may wish to demand that such a circle be avoided because it appears to violate the laws of logic. Yet it is not difficult to show that the circle cannot be avoided here. For it is the case that in order to be able to distinguish works of art from other things, one must know what art is, whereas what art is can be gathered only from a comparative consideration of available art works. How can one be certain that to start such a consideration he does indeed take up genuine works of art, unless he already knows what art is? If it were to be impossible to get to art's essence through the available art works, it would be equally impossible to derive the essence of art from some higher concept; for such a derivation would have to presuppose that one knows precisely those characteristics he needs to see in advance, the moment he is to decide what we are to accept as works of art. Thus it appears that we have to enter the circle and to carry it out. This is neither a make-shift nor a lack or deficiency. To enter this road is the strength of thought and to remain on it is truly the feast of thought. As we shall see, it is not only the step from work to art and from art to work that is circular; even every single step we take here revolves in this circle.112 We have seen already that in his Lectures on Aesthetics Hegel, too, mentions a circle in the introductory sections of his lectures.113 It is not impossible that Heidegger was in part influenced by this passage when he raised the issue of the circle in the introductory section of his own lectures on the art work. Yet in Heidegger's view, the circle which we encounter here in the lectures on the origin of the work of art, is really rooted in the circular character of all human understanding, as we shall see shortly. As for the concept of the hermeneutic circle, Schleiermacher credits Friedrich Ast (1779-1841) with formulating the basic principle of the circle. In Ast's view, if in the historical sciences, one tries to understand the spirit of an epoch, one must keep in mind that the mark of the spirit as a whole is found in the individual parts and, thus, that the parts are to be understood from the whole, and the whole from the inner harmony of the parts. The hermeneutic circle then became an integral part of the 19th century treatises on hermeneutics. Heidegger was familiar with classical hermeneutics through his study of history and theology. Inspired by this tradition he was led to develop an ontological conception of the hermeneutic circle. Gadamer has corretly observed that Heidegger went into this basic issue of historical hermeneutics and criticism only "in order to develop from it, for the purposes of ontology, the fore-structure of understanding"."4

101 In view of the fact that a proper understanding of Heidegger's conception of understanding and of the hermeneutic circle is important for our efforts to come to grips with his lecture on the origin of the work of art, it seems to be desirable to say a few words about the manner in which Heidegger developed his ideas in this regard in Being and Time. b) Understanding, Interpretation, and the Hermeneutic "As" According to Heidegger the relationship between man and the world which manifests itself in man's concernful dealing with things, implies a kind of knowledge, but this knowledge, originally at least, is not yet theoretical knowledge. In trying to explain man's primordial way of knowing, namely that which is inherent in Daseiris concern, Heidegger describes man's Being as a structural unity which implies three different elements: mood (Befindlichkeit), understanding (Verstehen), and logos. We must now turn to a brief reflection on two of these "ek-sistentials" which constitute Dasein's "There". It is not easy to say what the ontological structure of "original mood" precisely is because our thematic knowledge of all that is connected with man's "emotional life" is rather vague. Undoubtedly, mood communicates to us something about our own mode of Being in relationship to the world. But it is difficult in each case to determine why one is disposed or "tuned" in a determinate way, and what this disposition tells us about ourselves and about the world. Original mood informs man about his position in the midst of things in the world. Different elements which can be distinguished are contained in this "insight".«First of all, in his mood man is aware of his own being. Without wanting it, and without freely having chosen it, man is. His being appears to him as a being-thrown; he appears to himself as thrown among things. In mood, man not only becomes aware of the fact that he is, but also of the fact that he "has to be", that his being is to be realized by himself as a task. Secondly, the determinate mood a man is in depends on the modalities of the involvement which he always has with things in the world. Thus mood is an implicit, but continuous "judgment" regarding his own self-realization. Hence " man can be disclosed to himself in a more primordial way through mood than through theoretical reflection. However, if it is true that man ek-sists and is as Being-in-the-world, then mood must also disclose to him his relationships with other merP&nd with things. And as far as the latter are concerned, this is true particularly for works of art. Thirdly, in his everyday concern man encounters intramundane things as emerging from the horizon of the world, taken as a referential totality. But this is possible only if the world has already been disclosed as such beforehand. It is precisely because the world is given to man beforehand, that it is possible for him to encounter intramundane things as such. This prior disclosedness of the world is constituted by one's mood; that man is openness in the direction of the "other" in the world is given to him in the most original way through that fundamental feeling of his "Being there".113

102 Man not only possesses an existential possibility of being always in a mood, his mode of Being is determined equiprimordially by his understanding {Ver­ stehen). Understanding is not to be conceived of here as a concrete mode of knowing, but precisely as that which makes all concrete modes of knowing possible. On the level of our everyday life this primordial understanding is always present in mood, and all understanding in its turn is connected with mood. Thus, original understanding has not so much reference to this or that concrete thing or situation as to the mode of Being which is typical for man as Being-in-the-world. In original understanding the mode of Being characteristic of man manifests itself as "Being-able-to . . . " However, man is not something present-at-hand that possesses its Being-able-to . . . by way of an extra; he himself is primarily a Being-able-to-be. This Being-able-to-be, which is essential for man, has reference to all the various ways of his being concerned for others and with things, and of his concern for the world. But, in all this, man always realizes in one way or another his Being-able-to-be in regard to himself and for the sake of himself. Original understanding thus always pertains to man's Being-in-the-world as a whole. That is why man's moodful understanding brings to light not only man himself as Being-able-to-be, but also the world as a referential totality. By revealing the world to man, his primordial understanding also gives him the possibility of encountering intramundane things in their own possibilities. Accordingly, primordial understanding always moves in a range of possibilities; it continuously endeavors to discover possibilities, because it possesses in itself the existential structure of a "project". In his primordial understanding man projects himself onto his ultimate "for the sake of which"; but this self-projection necessarily implies at the same time - and equally primordially a world-projection. In his original understanding man thus opens himself in the direction of his own Being but, at the same time, also in the direction of the world. For this reason primordial understanding implies essentially an antecedent view, an anticipating "sighting" of things, of fellow-men, of the world as a whole, and obviously also of his own mode of Being. To the extent that man's view is concerned with equipment, things, works, fellow-men, himself, or the world as a whole, this antecedent and anticipating "sight" can appear in different modalities. The important point here is to note that for Heidegger Verstehen implies first of all that the one who understands, grasps by anticipation the structure of a being still to be encountered and, secondly, that during the encounter the grasp which was anticipated is explicitly achieved according to the predetermined plan as dictated by the primordial constitution of Dasein itself."* Primordial understanding, which is inseparably connected with mood, always has the character of an anticipating, interpretative conception in which man discloses himself as Being-able-to-be in the different modalities that are possible for him, modalities to which different possibilities correspond with

103 respect to his equipment, things, works, fellow-men, or the world. But this interpretative conception is as such not yet explicitly articulated in understanding. However, it can develop in that direction by means of Auslegung, a term which means explanation as well as interpretation. In and through interpretative explanation man's understanding appropriates comprehendingly that which is already understood by it. Interpretative explanation is the development of the possibilities that in anticipation were projected in understanding itself.»7 What is meant here can perhaps be explained best by taking one's point of departure in man's everyday concernful dealing with things. Suppose we enter the workshop of a carpenter who is in the process of making a table. In his work, i.e., his concernful dealing with the intramundane things found in his workshop, the carpenter is guided by a certain kind of understanding to which Heidegger refers with the term "circumspection". His circumspection discovers the intramundane things in the shop by setting them apart and interpreting them. What originally was ready-to-hand circumspectively in its serviceability, i.e., in its "in order to", is to be set apart and to be taken as this or that. That which has been set apart in this way in regard to its "in-order-to", thereby receives the structure of "something taken as something". To the circumspective question as to what this particular ready-to-hand thing may be, the circumspectively interpretative answer is that it serves such and such purpose. By explicitly pointing to what a thing is for, we do not simply designate that thing; what is so designated is understood as that as which we are to take that particular thing. This hermeneutic as constitutes the structure of the explicitriess of each thing that is circumspectively understood. In other words, the hermeneutic as is the constitutive element of what Heidegger calls interpretative explanation. If in dealing with what is environmentally ready-to-hand we interpret it circumspectively, we take it, we "see" it as a hammer, the top of the table, the drawer. However, what is thus interpreted need not necessarily be taken apart in an explicit enunciation (Aussage). Any mere prepredicative using and thus "seeing" of what is ready-to-hand is in itself already something that understands interpretatively. The articulation of what is understood in the interpretation of each intramundane thing with the help of the clue "something as something" is there before any explicit statement is made about it. Thus the hermeneutic as does not emerge for the first time in the explicit statements we make about things, the as gets merely expressed and enunciated in them.11* If we never perceive intramundane things which are ready-to-hand without already understanding and interpreting them, and if all perception lets us circumspectively encounter something as something, does this not mean that at first something purely present-at-hand is experienced and is later interpreted as a hammer, a top, a table? Evidently this is not the case. Man's interpretation does not throw meaning over some naked thing that is merely present-at-hand, nor does it place a value on it. The intramundane thing that is encountered as this or as that, in our original understanding which is characteristic of our concernful dealing with things, already possesses a reference that is implicitly

104 contained in our co-understanding of the world; that is why we can articulate and interpret it as this or as that. In our original understanding what is readyto-hand is always already understood from a totality of references which we call our "world"; but this relationship between what is ready-to-hand and the world need not be grasped explicitly in a thematic interpretation and explanation, although such an interpretative explanation is evidently, in principle, always possible. If such a thematic interpretation occurs, it is always on the basis of our original understanding. Thus we may say that the fact that we "have" intramundane things, that we take and "see" them in this way or in another, and "conceive" of them on the basis of our interpretation of them, must be founded in an earlier "having", an earlier "seeing", and an earlier "conception" which are constitutive for our original understanding. Heidegger refers to this fact with the expression: our hermeneuticsituation. Since the hermeneutic situation plays an important role in his conception of the hermeneutic circle, I shall return to it in 17C."9 Suffice it to note that what has been said here about a piece of equipment is mutatis mutandis true also for works of art, as we shall see later. We have seen that in the pro-ject (Ent-wurf) characteristic of our original understanding, a thing becomes disclosed in its possibilities. The character of these possibilities corresponds in each case to the mode of Being of the thing which is so understood. Intramundane things are necessarily projected upon the world, i.e., upon a whole context of meaning, a totality of references to which man's concern as Being-in-the-world has been tied in advance. When an intramundane thing is discovered and comes to be understood, we say that it has meaning. But what is understood is, strictly speaking, not the meaning but the thing itself. Meaning is that in which the intelligibility of something maintains itself. Thus, meaning is that which can be articulated in the disclosure of man's understanding. The concept of meaning contains the formal framework of what necessarily belongs to that which can be articulated by our interpretative understanding. Meaning is a project's "upon-which", that can be structured by our understanding and from which each thing as this or that can be understood. Meaning is therefore the intentional correlate of the disclosedness which necessarily belongs to our original understanding. Thus, strictly speaking, only the mode of Being characteristic of man "has" meaning, insofar as the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world can be "filled" by the things which are discoverable in that disclosedness. In other words, there can be a question of meaning only within the dialogue between man and the things in the world. This is also why in each understanding of the world man's ek-sistence is co-understood and vice versa.00 All interpretative explanation is rooted in the original understanding characteristic of man's concern. That which is articulated in interpretative explanation and thus was already predelineated in the original understanding as something that can be articulated, is what Heidegger calls "meaning". Insofar as enunciation as a derivative mode of interpretative explanation is also grounded in our primordial understanding, it too has meaning. Concluding these reflections we may say that in «Heidegger's opinion all

105 understanding (Verstehen) is interpretation. The interpretation may be implicit as in our concernful dealing with things, or explicit as in our interpretative explanation and enunciation. The deepest root of the hermeneutic character of all human understanding is to be found in the fact that all understanding necessarily takes place in the hermeneutic situation. For man understanding is impossible except on the basis of a fore-having, a fore-sight, and a foreconception because of the fact that his transcendence is inherently finite and temporal. Furthermore, Heidegger argues, anyone who wishes to give a justification for his interpretation must do so by clarifying the "presuppositions" which are inherent in the hermeneutic situation, both in a basic experience of the thing to be disclosed, and in terms of such an experience.121 c) The Hermeneutic Circle in "Being and Time" Most logicians adopt a negative attitude in regard to the circle as a mode of thought. Their attitude is completely justified as long as one limits himself to a circle occurring in a formal argument or to the circle in our defining of concepts. Those who adopt a more positive attitude in regard to the circle usually limit its use to cases in which a study is to be made of phenomena which appear to imply antinomic oppositions. If opposites are to be overcome and, thus, some identification is to be accomplished, the combination of the antinomic elements can generally be attempted from the viewpoint of one member as well as from that of the other; then circular propositions often emerge. In Heidegger's case the circle becomes a structural element of each human act of understanding as such. The henneneutic circle is an inherent element of any attempt to interpretatively understand human phenomena. For the interpretative explanation of such phenomena is possible only insofar as the one who understands brings with him from his own point of view a certain preunderstanding of this phenomenon and of the context in which it manifests itself. By interpreting the new phenomenon from this perspective an understanding of this phenomenon can be achieved which in turn will change and deepen the original perspective from which the interpretation was made. Here Heidegger applies insights which Schleiermacher had suggested in connection with the question concerning the conditions of text interpretation, to the act of human understanding as such and to our philosophic understanding in particular.122 Already on the very first pages of Being and Time Heidegger brings up the hermeneutic circle as an essential element of philosophical discourse. There he states that he wishes to work out the question concerning the meaning of Being, but that this can be done only by first giving a proper explanation of a being, namely Dasein, with regard to its mode of Being. After making this statement he continues: "Is there not, however, a manifest circularity in such an undertaking? If we must first define a thing in its Being, and if we want to formulate the question of Being only on this basis, what is this but going in a circle?"123 Heidegger points out first that there is no circle at all in formulating his basic concern as he has described it. For one can determine the mode of Being

106 characteristic of a thing without having an explicit concept of the meaning of Being at one's disposal. For if this were not the case, no ontological knowledge would ever have been possible. But the fact that there has been such knowledge cannot be denied. In all ontology "Being" has obviously been presupposed, but not as a concept at one's disposal. "The presupposing of Being has the character of taking a look at it beforehand, so that in the light of it the things presented to us get provisionally articulated in their Being. This guiding activity of taking a (provisional) look at Being arises from the average understanding of Being in which we always operate and which in the end belongs to the essential constitution of Dasein itself'.124 On several occasions throughout Being and Time Heidegger returns to the problem which the hermeneutic circle seems to cause. We have already pointed to the fact that in Heidegger's view any genuine act of understanding implies interpretation and that interpretation is impossible except on the basis of certain 'presuppositions'. These presuppositions which constitute the her­ meneutic situation, are characterized by the technical terms "fore-having", "fore-sight", and "fore-conception". Anyone who tries to understand a human phenomenon, necessarily presupposes a totality of meaning or "world" within which in his view this phenomenon can appear as meaningful (fore-having). Secondly, he assumes a certain point of view which fixes that with regard to which what is to be understood is to be viewed and interpreted (fore-sight). Finally, one tries to articulate one's understanding of that phenomenon with the help of concepts which are either drawn from the phenomenon itself, or are forced upon it as it were from the outside. In either case, the interpretative understanding has already decided for a definite way of conceiving of it (foreconception).125 The important point, in Heidegger's view, is that an interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending of something presented to us. Our interpretation does not "constitute" the meaning which things and phenomena have for us; but the meaning of things receives its structure and articulation from our fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception.126 One of the basic characteristics of philosophical discourse is that, although it itself, too, is subject to the hermeneutic situation, it conceives of its task as to clarify and give a foundation to the totality of the presuppositions which constitute our hermeneutic situation in each case. But if this is indeed so, then it is obvious that philosophy itself will again encounter the circle. As Heidegger sees it, if the problematic of ontology is to have its hermeneutic situation clarified, one has to ask the question of whether its method implies a circular argument. One could argue that using a type of circular interpretation implies that one presupposes the idea of Being and that Dasein's Being gets interpreted accordingly so that then the idea of Being may be obtained from it. Heidegger does not deny that in his analysis he presupposed some understanding of Dasein's Being and Being itself, but he denies that this process implies positing one or more propositions from which further propositions about Dasein's Being and Being itself are to be deduced. On the contrary, "this pre-supposing has the character of an understanding projection", and this projection makes possible

107 an interpretation which lets "that which is to be interpreted put itself into words for the very first time, so that it may decide of its own accord whether as the being which it is, it has the state of Being as which it has been disclosed in the projection as far as its formal aspects are concerned". In other words, in an existential analytic one cannot but avoid the logical circle and a circular proof for the simple reason that such an analysis does not do any proving at all by the rules of logic. Furthermore, Dasein is primordially constituted by care; but as such it is already ahead of itself. It has in every case already projected itself upon definite possibilities; and in such existential projections it has, in a pre-ontological manner, also projected its own mode of Being and Being itself. And yet, Heidegger continues, we object to the circle not only on logical grounds; we also object to it in that it seems contrary to our common sense conception of what it means to "understand something". But, he continues, "when one speaks about the 'circle' in understanding, one expresses the failure to recognize two things: 1) that understanding as such makes up a basic kind of Dasein's Being, and 2) that this Being is constituted as care. To deny the circle... means finally to reinforce this failure. We must rather endeavor to leap into the 'circle', primordially and wholly, so that even at the start of the analysis of Dasein we make sure that we have a full view of Dasein's circular Being. If, in the ontology of Dasein we take our departure, from a worldless T in order to provide this T with an object and an ontologically baseless relation to that object, then we have presupposed not too much, but too little [Husserl]. If we make a problem of 'life* and then just occasionally we have regard to death, too, our view is too short-sighted [Dilthey]. The object we have taken as our theme here is artificially and dogmatically curtailed if 'in the first instance* we restrict ourselves to a 'theoretical subject', in order that we may then round it out 'on the practical side* by tacking on an 'ethic*. This may suffice to clarify the existential meaning of the hermeneutic situation of a primordial analysis of Dasein .. ."U7 It seems to me that in these passages Heidegger has convincingly shown not only that the hermeneutic circle is essential to all ontological inquiry, but also that the circle does not have to lead to relativism in that ontology makes it its task to clarify and give a radical foundation to the totality of presuppositions which constitute our hermeneutic situation in each case. d) The Circle in Hegel and Heidegger We have already observed several times that in his Lectures on Aesthetics Hegel, too, mentions a circle. He writes there that it is only the whole of philosophy which is knowledge of the universe as being in itself that one organic totality, which develops itself out of its own concept and which, withdrawing into itself to form a whole, closes with itself to form one world of truth. "In the circlet of this scientific necessity each single part is on the one hand a circle returning into itself, while on the other hand it has at the same time a necessary

108 connection with other parts".128 Hegel thus uses the circle to explain why and in what sense his Lectures on Aesthetics are not strictly philosophical in character, not truly "scientific". In a genuine science one never does what one does in ordinary life. In the latter it is quite common to begin with a reference to concrete things at hand in order then to proceed toward an effort to uncover their essence. But the encyclopedia of all philosophical sciences cannot begin by taking concrete and contingent facts as unquestioned "absolutes". The philosopher must somehow give a proof as to why there must be works of art. But such a proof must flow from the concept of art and in the final analysis from the Spirit itself, certainly not from contingent facts. The lectures of aesthetics would become truly scientific if and only if one were able to show that art in all its forms flows with necessity from the selfdevelopment of the Spirit.129 Hegel uses the circle also in another context. In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel claims that finite consciousness seems to be unable to determine the purpose of its own actions before its actions have taken place. Yet before the action occurs consciousness must have the act in front of itself as entirely its own, i.e., as its purpose. "The individual, therefore, who is going to act seems to find himself in a circle, where each moment already presupposes the others, and hence seems unable to find a beginning .. ."m It seems to me that Heidegger tries to retrieve both of these ideas in his lectures on the origin of the work of art and to incorporate them in his ontological interpretation of the hermeneutic circle. For like Hegel, Heidegger, too, maintains that what is actually happening in his treatise on art, is not yet the genuine philosophical task. Like Hegel, Heidegger, too, will begin with common conceptions, i.e., with common conceptions of works of art, taken as things, made by artists. Like Hegel, Heidegger, also, accepts that a careful, critical reflection on these common conceptions leads to a rejection of both the empiricist and the rationalist conceptions of art. The empiricist gets entangled in "psychology" and, thus, never gets to the "essence" of art, whereas the abstract idea of Beauty as such is not relatable to beautiful works of art.131 And perhaps there are even other parallels between Hegel's and Heidegger's conceptions of the circle. Yet one must also admit that the circles referred to here are completely different from one another, and that it is completely impossible to identify Hegel's "speculative circle" with what Heidegger calls the hermeneutic circle. I am convinced that Taminiaux is correct where he states that Hegel's speculative circle has at least three characteristics which Heidegger's conception of the hermeneutic circle precisely excludes. First of all, Hegel's circle implies that the present has a privileged position. Thus for Hegel there is no room for what Heidegger calls a "destructive retrieve". In Hegel there is no Wieder-holung, no fetching back or retrieve, but only Er-innerung or interiorizing remembrance. In Hegel's philosophy there is always a determined order of time in which the present is privileged in the process of progress; the present is for Hegel always "better" than what has been. Furthermore, the circle for Hegel

109 implies the idea of totalization, i.e., the idea that the truth is the whole of this becoming, as well as the idea of the totalization of the entire historical process with its institutions. Finally, Hegel's circle implies the possibility of complete fulfillment, saturation, and identity; for Hegel difference is not an ultimate.132 Be this as it may, we must now return to the text of Heidegger's lectures on the origin of the work of art, where he focuses on the thingly nature that we discover in every work of art.

CHAPTER II. THE THING AND THE WORK

ART. I. THE ONTOLOGICAL QUESTION CONCERNING THE THING-BEING OF THE THING § 18. The Art Work Does Have a Thingly Character a) Art Works Are Things In § 17 we have seen that Heidegger had reached the point where it became clear that the question concerning the essence of art is to be approached by means of a careful study of the work of art. One of the first things which everyone immediately notices when confronted with works of art is, in Heidegger's view, that they are things, things not made by nature but by man. Yet most aesthetic theories pass by this aspect of the work of art in silence. One is convinced that even though it is indeed true that art works are things made by man, nonetheless it is true also that what makes them be the beautiful works they are, consists in something else. In other words, most aesthetic theories give some kind of symbolic interpretation of art works and claim that in each work of art there is something else over and above the thingly feature of the art work. It is thus understandable that in these theories one will make a distinction between some material substrate and a form, some material element and some formal element, between sensuous material and some "idea", or between form and content. Heidegger mentions these conceptions only to take distance from them "And yet - this well-known path of all aesthetic theories we prefer not to follow in this essay on the origin of the work of art".1 Instead, Heidegger will try to bring the immediate and full Being of the art work itself to light first. But this does indeed imply that one must begin by paying attention to the thingly character of the work.2 With these observations in mind, let us now return to Heidegger's own text in order to see how he himself states his case. Heidegger begins his reflections on the thingly character of the work by observing that everybody is familiar with at least some works of art. We find

Ill many works of art in public places; many cities and towns have beautiful churches, palaces, and public or private buildings; in many churches, palaces, and private homes we find beautiful pieces of sculpture or paintings. Works of art of different ages are often displayed in collections and exhibitions. Anyone who takes these works as they immediately present themselves will admit that works of art are as naturally present as all other things. The picture hangs on the wall like a cap or a rifle. Paintings, such as the one by van Gogh that shows a pair of farmer's shoes, are shipped from one exhibition to another. Works of art are often transported like coal from the Ruhr district or trees from the Black Forest. During World War I soldiers often packed Holderlin's poems in their bags together with cleaning equipment. Works by Beethoven and Goethe lie in the storerooms of publishing companies like potatoes in the cellar. All works do indeed have a thingly dimension. What would they be without their thingly characteristics? Perhaps one finds it objectionable to approach works of art in such a crude and superficial manner. Such ideas about art works may perhaps be found among workers in a warehouse or among people who clean in a museum. Philosophers should take the works as they are encountered by those who experience and enjoy them. But even those who appeal to aesthetic experiences (Erlebnisse) cannot deny the thingly character of art works. There is stone in a work of architecture. There is wood in a sculpture, and color in paintings. In literary works there are sounds, and there are tones in a musical composition. The thingly character is so irremovably found in the work of art that we perhaps should say conversely that architectural works are in stone, carvings in wood, paintings in colour, poems in sound, and compositions in tone. Perhaps one will say now that all of this is obvious and, thus, need not be mentioned here explicitly. This is true; but the question still is in what the thingly character of the thing precisely consists. One might argue, Heidegger continues, that it is superfluous and even confusing to inquire into this aspect of the art work, in view of the fact that the work of art as such is obviously something else over and above its thingly character. This something else makes it into a work of art. It is indeed true that a work of art is a thing that has been made; yet as a work of art it says something more, something other than the mere thing itself is (allo agoreuei, in public to say something other). The thing makes public something that is other than itself; it makes something else manifest; it is an allegory. In other words, in the work of art something else is brought together with the thing made. In Greek to bring together means sumballein; the art work is a symbol. Allegory and symbol are the concepts which one has used for a long time to describe what is essential to a work of art as such. Yet it still is the case that in the work of art the one element to which then another element is to be added, is and remains the thingly character of the work. One might be inclined to say that the thingly character of the work constitutes the substructure or foundation upon which that which is truly characteristic of the work is built. And is it not this thingly character or feature that the artist really makes in exercising his craft?

112 Heidegger concludes these provisional reflections on the thingly character of the work by observing that we wish to arrive here at the immediate and full reality of the work of art; for only in this way can we discover in it the real art. In order to achieve this it is necessary that we first make an effort to find out with sufficient clarity what a thing really is. For then and only then can it be decided whether the art work is indeed a thing, albeit a thing to which something else still belongs, or whether perhaps the work of art as such in the final analysis appears to be something else and not a thing at all.3 b) Traditional Interpretations of the Thing-Being of the Thing As Heidegger sees it, in our effort to determine the thing-character of the work we must first turn to the ontological question concerning the thing-Being of the thing. What is truly a thing, taken insofar as it is a thing? What is the way of Being characteristic of the thing? What constitutes the thingness of the thing? In order to come to know the thingness of the thing, we must first familiarize ourselves with the domain to which all those beings belong which we call things. Heidegger makes a list: stones, lumps of earth, furrows in the soil, wells, jugs, water or milk, clouds, thistles, hawks. All these beings must indeed be called things, if the word is even applied to that which, contrary to the beings just mentioned, does not show itself, i.e., does not appear. For Kant the totality of the world and even God Himself are things of this kind, things that do not themselves appear, things-in-themselves. Thus in the language of modern philosophy both the things-in-themselves and the things-that-appear (phenomena, appearances), i.e., all beings that in any way are, are called things. But if the word "thing" can be used for all these beings, even including the planes and the radios and all other things made by man, as well as even the so-called "ultimate things", i.e., death and judgment, then the word "thing" appears to designate everything that is not simply nothing. But taken in that sense it is of no use to us anymore here where we are making an effort to understand the difference between thing and art work. Furthermore, Heidegger continues, it is not proper to call God a thing; it does not even seem correct to call humans things. Many will even hesitate to call a deer a thing, or the beetle in the grass, or even the blade of grass itself. We feel less uncomfortable when we call a hammer, a shoe, an axe, or a clock, etc., a thing. But even these are not just mere things. As mere things we only accept the stone, the lump of earth, the piece of wood. Yet if we limit ourselves to common usage we may perhaps say that by things we mean the non-living beings of nature and all objects of use. Thus "natural things and utensils are the things commonly so called". In this way we return from the wider scope in which everything can be called a thing (thing = res = ens = being), including even the highest and the last things, to the narrow domain of the mere things. The word "mere" means here first: the pure thing that is simply a thing and nothing more; secondly, it also means that which is only a thing taken in an almost pejorative sense. In that case only

113 mere things, excluding even objects of use, count as things in the strictest sense of the term. We must now ask the question of what the thingly character of these things precisely consists in. The answer to this question will help us to characterize the almost palpable reality of works of art, in which however something else still resides.4 Heidegger makes here thus a distinction between "thing" taken in a very broad sense (including all beings taken as phenomena as well as beingsin-themselves), and "things" taken in a rather narrow sense. To introduce this distinction he mentions things that belong to different types: inanimate natural things (this stone), inanimate man-made things (this cup), inanimate things which are not of a solid or permanent nature (water, milk, cloud), animate things (deer, grass, a blade of grass), Kant's "thing-in-itself", i.e., something that never shows itself (such as the whole of the world and God), all beings, regardless of whether they show themselves as such or not, and finally the "last things" (death, final judgment). Heidegger then reduces these types to two: the inanimate things of nature and the inanimate man-made things. By things in the strict sense of the term we mean only the former, the inanimate things of nature. Art works are obviously things in the sense of inanimate things made by man, but they "contain" things in the strict sense of the term as the "material" out of which they have been made.5 Heidegger now turns to the three leading interpretations of the thingness of things which have been given in our tradition. The question concerning the thingness of things has been raised since antiquity; this was due to the fact that from the very beginning it was assumed that among all beings, the things occupy a privileged position, so that when people began to wonder about the Being of beings, they really began to inquire into the question concerning the thingness of things. In its long history philosophy has given different answers to the question of what constitutes the essence of things; these can be reduced to the following: for some a thing is the composition of substance and accidents; for others, it is the unity of a manifold of sensible properties; for still others, it is a unity of matter and form.6 Heidegger then describes how in Greek philosophy a distinction was made between hupokeimenon and sumbebekota, a distinction which later in Latin was translated into substantia and accidentia, substance and accidents. He exemplifies the distinction with the help of a piece of rock, a thing that is hard, heavy, extended, bulky, of irregular shape, rough, grey, partly dull and partly shiny. These characteristics refer to something that is proper to the stone itself. They are its properties. The thing itself is not just the aggregate or the sum of these properties. The thing itself is, as everyone thinks he knows, that around which the properties have gathered. One could speak about the core of things. One often claims that the Greeks called this core the hupokeimenon. For them this core of the thing was something lying on the ground, something that is always already present. On the other hand, they called the characteristics the sumbebekota, that which always turns up along with the core as soon as the latter appears; it is that which occurs together with the core.

114 In Heidegger's view these terms are not just arbitrary names. The basic Greek experience of the Being of beings as such still speaks in them; but this, Heidegger feels, is something that cannot be discussed here further. It is in and by these determinations, however, that the interpretation of the thing-Being of the thing became established which from then on would become dominant, and the Western interpretation of the Being of beings became fixed. In Heidegger's view, this process began when the Greek terms were translated into Latin and thus appropriated by Roman thought. Hupokeimenon became subjection, hupostasis became substantia, and sumbebikota became accidentia. Heidegger immediately adds here that this translation of Greek names into Latin was by no means as harmless a process as one has considered it to be until this day. This seemingly literal and faithful translation nevertheless covers up a transposition of the Greek experience into an alien mode of thinking. Roman thought takes over the Greek words without being able to take over the corresponding, authentic experience of what they say; thus they took over the words (Wörter) but they were unable to take over what they say (Worte). As Heidegger sees it, the rootlessness of Western thought has its origin in this translation. In describing these views of the tradition it is clear that Heidegger does not agree with the common interpretation of the issue he is concerned with. What Heidegger describes here is the opinion held for a very long time in our Western tradition. This opinion is based on Aristotle's Categories and his Metaphysics, if not on Plato's Sophistes and Theaetetus. What Aristotle (or Plato) claimed in these treatises is usually interpreted in the manner typical of the leading Greek, Arabic, and Latin commentaries. It is the latter interpretation, particularly that of Aquinas and Scotus, which has become dominant in the West ever since. In Heidegger's view, in this interpretation the basic Greek experience of the Being of beings as such (phusis, logos, alitheia) that once still spoke in them, is lost. In order not to interrupt the train of thought which is oriented toward an explanation of the origin of the work of art, Heidegger, however, decides not to dwell on this subject here.7 Instead, he focuses the attention of the reader on the fact that according to the common opinion, this determination of the thingness of the thing as the substance with its accidents seems to correspond to our natural view of things. It is not surprising then that in our attitude toward things, and in our speaking about them, we have learned to adapt ourselves to this common view. We say accordingly that a simple proposition consists of the subject and the predicate; subject is here the Latin translation and, thus, also already a re-interpretation, of the Greek hupokeimenon; a predicate is taken to be that in which a characteristic of the thing is stated. Who would dare to deny the thesis that there is a close relationship between the structure of the thing and the structure of the simple proposition? Yet, Heidegger continues, we must nonetheless ask the question of whether the structure of the simple proposition (the combination of subject and predicate) is indeed just the mirror image of the structure of the thing (the union of substance and accidents). Could it.perhaps be the case that

115 the structure of the thing is a reflection or projection of the structure of the sentence? Many will be inclined toprefer the latter alternative over the former; for what is more obvious than that one transposes the propositibnal<way of understanding things into the structure of the thing itself. Heidegger rejects this view which.is only seemingly critical; actually it is premature and ill-considered; for it would have to explain first how such a transposition of the structure of the sentence into that of the thing is supposed to be possible without the thing having already become visible: One must not forget here that the structure öf the thing becomes visible in our speech. . The question as to whether the sentence structure or the thing structure comes first'here, remains undecided to this day« In Heidegger's own opinion it is very doubtful whether the question, as long as it is formulated in this form, is even decidable. He himself is convinced that neither one of the two is primary, neither one of the two can be taken as the standard. Both the structure of the sentence and that of the thing derive, in their typical form and their possible mutual relationship, from a more original source which they both have in common.8 Heidegger again refrains from going deeper into this important issue. He concludes his reflections with the remark that it is in any case clear by now that the first interpretation of the thingness of things, according to whichthe thing as substance is the bearer of its characteristic traits, it not as natural as it appears to be, even though it is indeed a very common one. "What seems natural to us is probably just something familiar to a long tradition that has forgotten the unfamiliar source from which it arose. And yet this unfamiliar [source] once struck man as strange and provoked him to think and to wonder''.9 Finally, Heidegger turns to some critical reflections on this conception of the thingness of the thing. First of all, our confidence in this common interpretation of the thing is only seemingly well-founded. Secondly, this conception of the thing holds not only for mere things in the strict sense, but also for any being whatsoever. Thus it can never be used to distinguish between beings that have a thingly character and those which do not. Yet apart from all other objections, if one carefully looks at the entire matter it becomes clear soon that this conception does not faithfully capture the thingly character of things, its independence and its self-contained character. Heidegger continues his reflections by observing that one sometimes has the feeling that for a long time violence has been done to the thingness of the thing and that thought has played an important part in this. Some people have for this reason disavowed thought instead of making an effort to render it more thoughtful. One might perhaps think that feeling has no place here and that thought alone has therightto speak in these matters. Yet, Heidegger continues, could it not be that what we call feeling here or mood is more reasonable and more intelligently perceptive (because more open to Being) than that form of reason that meanwhile has become ratio, the logical, calculative way of thinking? One might object that this remark implies a preference for irrationalism. Heidegger obviously rejects this implication, but does not discuss this matter further.10

116 Be this as it may. in Heidegger's view it certainly is the case that this first conception of the thing-Being of the thing can indeed be applied to all things, even though it does not grasp the things' genuine mode of Being." Before we move on to the second conception of the thingness of things, I should like to make two comments. First, Heidegger indicates in his discussion of the first conception of the thing's thingness that eventually it will be necessary to move on to a completely new conception of the thing-Being of the thing. As we shall see later, the concept of earth plays an important part here. It will become clear there also that things have as peculiar characteristics that they "grow of themselves", they are eigenwüchsig; in addition they fully rest in themselves. Secondly, Heidegger's remark that Befindlichkeit (mood) and understanding are interwoven, and the observation that concern has priority over theoretical knowledge obviously refer to Being and Time where these themes are developed in great detail. Later it will become clear that both these remarks are important the moment one wishes to approach the immediate and full Being of the work of art.13 Heidegger now turns to the second conception of the thing which suggests that the thingness of the thing consists in the unity of the manifold of what is given in the senses. Some authors have conceived of this unity as sum, others as totality, and again others as form. The manner in which one conceives of this unity, however, does not change the characteristic trait of this conception of things. In Heidegger's opinion, this conception of the thingness of the thing is as correct and as provable in every respect as the first one. This should already be sufficient to make us suspicious of its truth. Furthermore, this conception, too, leaves us again helpless, if we focus on what we are really searching for here: the thing-Being of the thing. Contrary to what Hume and others have suggested, we never really first perceive a number of sensations, as this conception of the thing claims we should. One does not see patches of blue, nor does one hear tones or noises; rather "we hear the storm whistling in the chimney, the threeengine plane, we hear the Mercedes in immediate distinction from the Volkswagen".13 The things themselves are much closer to us than any mere sensations. Anyone who is willing to analyze the phenomena as they themselves immediately give themselves and, in so doing, is willing to abide by the basic principles of the phenomenological movement, will soon see that it is impossible to conceive of sense impressions as primary and primarily given data.14 Heidegger again concludes these reflections on the second thing conception with a remark on the source of the inadequacy of this conception. It is not so much an assault upon the thing (an assault which we discovered in the first conception), as rather an inordinate effort to bring it into the greatest possible proximity. Whereas the first interpretation kept the thing much too far from us, the second tries to bring it much too close. In both instances the thing itself disappears. We must thus try to avoid the exaggerations of both these efforts. We must learn to accept the thing itself in its self-containment and its constancy.

117 In Heidegger's opinion, this is what the third interpretation, which is just as old as the first, tries to do.15 That which gives things their constancy and core, but at the same, time is also the source of their sensuous pressure is the material element in things. The moment we think things in terms of matter (huli) we posit form (morphi) at the same time. What is constant in the thing and what gives it its peculiar consistency lies in the fact that matter stands together with a form. The thing is formed matter. This interpretation invokes the immediate view (Anblick) with which the thing confronts us in its own outlook (eidos). In this synthesis of matter and form we find a conception of the thing which applies equally to things of nature and to things of use. As Heidegger sees it, this conception also enables us to answer the question concerning the thingly character of the work of art. The work's thingly character obviously is to be found in the matter of which it consists. Matter appears to be the substrate and the domain for the formation by the artist. One might ask here why this familiar and convincing conception of the thingly character of the thing was not mentioned at the outset? The reason for this, Heidegger says, is that this conception of the thing's Being cannot be accepted either. One will object that the concepts of matter and form are usually employed in the domain which we have set out here to explain. Heidegger does not deny that this pair of concepts, used in a variety of ways, is indeed the primary conceptual schema in all modern theories about the arts and particularly in aesthetics. Yet, in his view, this fact still does not prove that this pair of concepts rests on adequate grounds; nor does it prove that the distinction between matter and form beldhgs originally to the domain of the arts. Furthermore, Heidegger continues, this pair of concepts has for a very long time been applied far beyond the realm of the arts. Matter and form are concepts under which everything can be subsumed. Finally, if form is identified with the rational and the logical, and matter with the irrational and illogical, and if in addition the subject-object relation is conjoined with the concepts of matter and form, then one has at one's command a conceptual machinery that nothing can withstand. But if all of this is the case, how is one then to employ this pair of concepts to get access to the mode of Being characteristic of mere things by contrast to all other beings? One could try to avoid the difficulty hinted at here by using the two concepts in their strict sense. But this would presuppose that we know in what domain of beings they truly fulfill their defining power. That this domain is the domain of mere things is just an assumption. Does the frequent use of the concepts of matter and form in aesthetics not suggest that these concepts were used in their primary sense to characterize the mode of Being of works of art? Be this as it may, Heidegger concludes, it appears that it is not at all clear where the matter-form structure has its true origin.16

118 § 19. Toward the Genuine Origin of the Hylemorphic Structure. — Retrospect a) Equipment between Thing and Work In this section Heidegger tries to show that the matter-form structure was developed originally not to give an account of the thingly character of the art work, and even less of the essence of the work of art; it was not even developed to account for the thingness of things; it was introduced rather to describe the typical mode of Being that is characteristic of tools or pieces of equipment, where the form always determines the kind of matter that will be used, whereas at the same time the form itself is determined by the purpose which the piece of equipment is to serve. In developing his conception of the mode of Being of equipment, Heidegger presupposes the phenomenological analysis of the mode of Being of equipment worked out in Being and Time.11 He maintains the results of this analysis here but adds an element, not mentioned in Being and Time. In view of the fact that this new element, namely the equipment's reliability, plays an important part in the discussion to follow, I think that it is of some importance to return to Heidegger's original description of the mode of Being of equipment developed in Being and Time in order then to place the new element added here in its proper context. In Being and Time the analysis and description of the essence of equipment is meant to prepare the ontological-existential conception of world. In other words, to explain what is meant by "world" Heidegger turns to an analysis which is meant to answer the following question: what is characteristic of equipment as such, what makes equipment equipment?"1 Heidegger first observes that one should realize that there is no such thing as an isolated piece of equipment. To the mode of Being characteristic of any piece of equipment there always corresponds an equipmental totality in which this particular piece of equipment can be what it is. For equipment is essentially something that is to be characterized by its in-order-to. A piece of equipment is what it is because of its belonging to other pieces of equipment with which it constitutes a totality. Wood, screws, nails, glue, hammer, screwdriver, saw, etc., these things never show themselves proximally as they are "in themselves", so that they then later can be added up to a sum of real things and form a carpenter's workshop. What we encounter as closest to us, although not necessarily as something that is explicitly taken as a theme, is the workshop. Thus before a piece of equipment can show itself as that which it is, a totality of equipment must already have been discovered in advance.19 Furthermore, in our practical dealing with a piece of equipment such as a hammer, for instance, the equipment is not grasped thematically as something that is objectively present at hand. In addition, using the hammer I do not increase my theoretical knowledge of the'hammer's physical characteristics, but I certainly appropriate it in a way which could not'possibly be more suitable

119 to a-given task at hand. In using the hammer, I subordinate my concern to the in-orderrto which is constitutive for the tool; The more I employ the hammer properly, the more I discover its manipulability (Handlichkeit); this term clearly indicates the hammer's relation to the hand. A piece of equipment is a thing that is ready-to-hand. Heidegger suggests that we call the mode of Being characteristic of the equipment as such its readiness-to-hand. • If we look at things in a merely theoretical manner, we can do quite well without understanding their readiness-to-hand. But when we deal with them by manipulating them, our manipulation possesses its own kind of "seeing" which shows us the piece of equipment in its readiness-to-hand and which immediately discovers the fundamental assignment of each piece of equipment, its peculiar reference to its in-order-to. It is this kind of seeing that Heidegger calls circumspection, in contradistinction to the seeing that is characteristic of our merely theoretical knowledge.20 However, the readiness-to-hand of a piece of equipment is not explicitly evident in our concernful dealing with it. For in his concern man is not primarily occupied with his equipment as such, but with the work to be done. That with which man- concerns himself primarily is the work to be done, and this is somehow ready-to-hand, too. It is the work to be done which carries with it the referential totality within which the equipment is encountered as such. The work to be done, as the toward-which of the piece of equipment employed in its production, also has the mode of Being characteristic of equipment; it too, is meant for something and serves some purpose-. But in the work to be done we do not only discover a constitutive reference to its towardwhich, ifs usability, but also a reference to the materials which man uses* thus a reference to its where-of. Furthermore, in the work to be done we find in addition to the toward-which of its usability and the where-of of the materials of which it consists, a reference to the person who is to use or to wear it. Thus side* by-side with the work to be done, we encounter not only things which are readyto-hand, but also beings which have the mode of Being proper to man himself, beings for which, in their own concern, the product becomes'ready-to-hand. And in company with these beings we encounter the world in which wearers and users live.*1 The structure of the Being of what is ready-to-hand as equipment is determined by references and assignments; this is the general conclusion of the preceding descriptive analysis. For the most part, however, we are not explicitly aware of all these references and assignments in our everyday- concern. The reference-structure of a piece of equipment comes to the fore explicitly under special .circumstances. This is the case when a certain piece of equipment appears to be unusable or not properly adapted for the task on hand. The tool may turn out to be damaged or the materialinappropriate. We realize this not by means of theoretical reflection, but by means of our practical circumspection. At' any rate, when its unusability is discovered, equipment becomes immediately conspicuous as such.22 In our concernful dealings with things, however, we encounter not only

120 unusable things; sometimes we discover that certain things are missing. In that case we may be unable to accomplish our task. Then all other pieces of equipment and the materials that are available, immediately begin to appear in the mode of obtrusiveness. Finally, sometimes it happens that things that are available just stand in the way. Then they appear as things to which our concern refuses to turn, as that for which we now have no time, as something that disturbs us, and lets us see the obstinacy of what we must concern ourselves with at this particular moment.23 The conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy which make themselves felt when equipment for some reason cannot be used at a certain moment, imply that the constitutive assignment of the in-order-to to a certain towardswhich has been disturbed. In our everyday concern these assignments are not observed explicitly; but when an assignment has been disturbed, it becomes immediately explicit. When an assignment to some particular towards-which has thus been circumspectively aroused, we catch sight of this towards-which itself, and along with it of everything connected with the work to be done, and of the whole workshop as that wherein concern always dwells. Thus the equipment context is illuminated, not as something never seen before, but as a totality constantly sighted beforehand in circumspection. When something ready-to-hand is found to be missing, though its everyday presence has been so obvious that we have never really noticed it, this makes a break in the referential contexts which circumspection in each case discovers. Our circumspection encounters then emptiness, and now sees for the first time what the missing artifact was ready-to-hand with and what it was ready-to-hand for. The environmental world proclaims itself anew.24 In Being and Time Heidegger obviously has much more to say about equipment and world. Yet the preceding survey seems adequate for our present purposes. Let us therefore now return to Heidegger's lectures on art. As we mentioned before, Heidegger is trying to show here that the matterform structure was developed originally to give an account of the mode of Being of a piece of equipment. To that aim, he takes his point of departure in a description of a piece of rock. This rock is something material and it has an irregular form. Form means here shape, the distribution and the arrangement of its parts in different locations, which yields its particular outline. Yet a cup, an axe, and a shoe are equally "formed matter". In this case the form, taken in the sense of shape, is not the consequence of a prior distribution of the relevant material; rather, in this case, the form determines the arrangement of the material parts. It even prescribes in each case the kind of matter to be used. For a cup one needs something that is impermeable, for an axe something that is very hard, and for a shoe something that is firm and yet very flexible. The intertwining of form and matter is in each case furthermore prescribed by the purpose which the equipment is to serve. Thus this usefulness is never added on afterwards to a being of equipment. Yet it is neither something that somehow hovers over it.25 Usefulness or serviceability is that fundamental feature through which every

121 such being faces us and presents itself to us as this being. It is this serviceability which in each case determines the form or shape, the material to be used, and the manner in which the material and the form are to be intertwined. A being that has the character of equipment is always the result of some form of production and as a piece of equipment it is always made for some particular purpose. The matter and form structure has its proper place in the description of the manner in which equipment comes-to-presence and abides (im Wesen des Zeuges).16 Once a piece of equipment is finished it obviously is also something that from now on is self-contained like a mere thing; yet it does not have the character of having taken shape by itself (eigenwikhsig) like the piece of rock. On the other hand, a piece of equipment also shows an affinity with the work of art, insofar as both are made by man. However, as far as its self-sufficiency is concerned, the work of art is more similar to a mere thing. And yet, we do not count art works as mere things. As a rule we take things that are useful to be the nearest things, the most proper things. Thus the piece of equipment stands halfway in between the mere thing and the art work; it has definitely a thingly character and yet it is something more; it has much in common with a work of art and yet it is less, because it lacks the independence and self-sufficiency of the art work.27 Yet although the matter-form structure was first developed to give an account of the mode of Being of equipment, it can nonetheless easily be applied to our understanding of all kinds of other beings, because man can now employ his conception of the beings in whose coming into being he was able to participate, in his effort to understand the manner in which other things come-to-presence. Furthermore, in view of the fact that equipment has a position intermediate between thing and work, one feels inclined to comprehend non-equipmental beings (mere things, works of art, and ultimately everything that is) with the help of the matter and form structure which determines the mode of Being of equipment.28 The inclination to apply the hylemorphic structure to our effort to understand the Being of all beings received an additional impulse from the biblical faith which presents the totality of all beings in advance as something that is created, made by God. The philosophy of this faith obviously assures us that God's creative act cannot really be compared with the productive activity of the human craftsman. However, if this philosophy, as is the case in Thomistic philosophy, tries to understand the ens creatum in terms of the hylemorphic structure, matter and form, then this faith is illuminated with the help of a philosophy whose truth lies in a non-concealment of beings which is different in kind from that found in the world of the believer.29 When in the Renaissance and in the modern era the idea of creation, which originally arose from faith, lost its power for guiding our knowledge about the beings as such and taken as a whole, the conception which views the world in terms of matter and form remained in force. Modern metaphysics still rests on the hylemorphic structure as this was understood in the Middle Ages. And although the matter-form structure was introduced in Greek philosophy, both

122 medieval and modern philosophy were unable to do more than just recall in words what the Greeks once thought originally when they spoke of hule and eidos.x Kant later gave a transcendental interpretation of the matter-form structure in his Critique of Pure Reason. Today the interpretation of the thing in terms of matter and form, whether it is taken in its original or in its Kantian interpretation, has become current and is taken to be self-evident. Yet nevertheless it is the case that it is and remains an encroachment upon the thing-Being of the thing, no less than the other interpretations of the thingness of the thing which we mentioned earlier. The true state of affairs becomes clear as soon as we begin to speak of things in the strict sense of the term as "mere things". The adjective "mere" is supposed to remove the usefulness as well as the being-made. The mere thing is a piece of equipment that is deprived of its equipment-Being. Its thingness merely consists in what is left over. Yet what is so left over is in this way not actually defined in its ontological status. It is doubtful whether one finds the thingly character of the thing by stripping away everything that is characteristic of a piece of equipment. This is the reason why the effort to define the thingly character of the thing by means of the hylemorphic structure turns out to be another assault upon the thing.31 b) Retrospect on the Critical Reflections on the Three Thing-Conceptions As we have seen, in the first part of his essay Heidegger tries to give an account of the work-Being of the work of art. In view of the fact that works of art manifest themselves as things, things of a particular kind, Heidegger first tried to explain the typical thing-Being of the thing. This led him to a critical reflection on the three leading conceptions of the thingly character of the thing that have been proposed in our tradition. After discussing the three conceptions in detail, Heidegger looks back once more on the path covered thus far, before proceeding to the next issue to be discussed: the path from equipment to work. The three conceptions of the thing's Being define the thing as a bearer of characteristic properties, as the unity of a manifold of sensations, and as formed matter. In the course of the history of the truth about the beings as such and taken as a whole, these interpretations have sometimes entered into combinations. As a matter of fact in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason one can find all three of them: the thing as the unity of matter (sensuous impressions) and form (space and time), the object of experience as the unity of the multiplicity of sense impressions, and the concept of subsistence.32 It was particularly in this combined form that they gave rise to a mode of thought by which one has tried to explain the mode of Being of things, equipment, works of art, and eventually even all beings in general. This long-familiar way of thinking now universally functions as a fore-conception that precedes every immediate experience of beings. This fore-conception even bars for us all access'to the mode of Being of

123 any given being. In this way the prevailing conceptions of the thing's Being really make it impossible for us to genuinely think the thing-Being of the thing, the equipmental character of equipment, and above all the work-Being of the work of art. Although our reflections on these three conceptions did not directly lead to the goal we try to reach here, nonetheless this "destruction" of these classical views on the thing's Being is an integral part of the phenomenological method employed here. It .is necessary to know these conceptions,'their origin, their limitless presumptions, and their semblance of self-evidence, if one -is ever going to bring to light the thingness of the things, the equipmental character of equipment, and the work-Being of the work.- If one wishes to be successful in ' these efforts, he will have to learn to take distance from all these-preconceptions and exaggerations of the modes of thought discussed above, and to let the thing itself rest in its own thing-Being. One may be inclined to think that it is easy, to let a being be just the being that it is. Actually, this turns out to be the most difficult task of all. This is so particularism light of the fact that this effort to let the beings be as they are, appears to constitute the-opposite of the indifference which simply turns its back upon the 4>eings themselves in favor of the unexamined conceptions of being. "We must turn toward the being, think about it in regard to its'Being, and in so doing we must make an. effort to let it rest upon itself in its very own Being".33 This effort of thought encounters its greatest resistance- where one tries to define the thingness of the thing. For how can one otherwise explain the failure of the three conceptions discussed.above. The "unpretentious" thing keeps evading-thought most stubbornly. Or could perhaps this holding-back and this, self-refusal of the. mere thing, this self-contained independence,,belong to the very mode of Being of the. thing? If this were to be the case, we shall never reach the-Being of the- thing: by forcing our way toward its thingness. . That the thingness of the thing is very difficult to articulate is clearly documented by the history of its interpretation alluded to above. This history coincides with the destiny in accordance with which in the West thought has tried to think the Being of beings. While we establish this point, we discover at the same time in this history an important hint. Is it just an accident that in the interpretation of the thingness of the thing the matter-form structure acquired dominance? For this particular interpretation in the final analysis is xooted.in the interpretation of the equipment-Being of equipment. Nowsince pieces of equipment are made by human beings, it is understandable that they are very familiar to our thinking. At thesame time equipment has, as we have seen also, a typical intermediate position between thing and art work: We must now follow this clue and, thus, look first at what is essential for a piece of equipment as such. Once we have discovered this with greater clarity and precision, we may be able to discover something about the thingly character oftilingsand the work-Being of the work of art. In so doing, however, we must avoid making thing and work a subspecies of the species "equipment". We disregard here the possibility that in the manner in which equipment is as such, different distinc-

124 tions are to be made which are intimately connected with the manner in which the Being of equipment historically has come-to-presence. The first question we must ask now is which path will lead us to what is essential for equipment as such? How are we to discover what a piece of equipment truly is as such? The phenomenological method which we are employing here makes it impossible for us to introduce again uncritically the encroachments of the common interpretations. The phenomenological method suggests that we are best protected against this danger if we just limit ourselves to a simple description of some piece of equipment without any philosophical theory.34 It is important to note here that even though Heidegger himself does not explicitly state this in this essay, he certainly is still subscribing to and also applying the hermeneutico-phenomenological method which he had described provisionally, but very carefully in Being and Time and The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. The careful reader will have realized that Heidegger explicitly makes use of the distinction, introduced explicitly in 77«* Basic Problems of Phenomenology between the phenomenological reduction, destruction, and construction.33 Furthermore, Heidegger explicitly makes use also of the idea that in any effort to interpret the mode of Being of something one finds himself in a hermeneutic situation in the sense that there always already are some interpretations available, each having its typical fore-structure which implies fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception.36 Thus in every truly philosophical interpretation of the Being of a thing one will have to bring to light these fore-structures and examine them critically.37 One could say that all of this is just superimposed on Heidegger's text and that in the text itself there is no explicit evidence for this claim. Yet if one takes the German text one will see a number of typical expressions, used in Being and Time and The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, which indeed justify our claim. In the Holzwege essay Heidegger uses the following expressions: "die unmittelbare Erfahrung des Seienden", "der Vorgriff', "versperren", "Schein", "im Blick und zum Wort bringen", "das Seiende Sein lassen so wie es ist", "das Vorhaben", "es in seinem Wesen auf sich beruhen lassen", "das unscheinbare Ding entzieht sich", "das Sichzurückhalten des Dinges", "das Verschlossene im Wesen des Dinges", etc.38 From these expressions it is clear that in this passage Heidegger is concerned with the way which is to lead to the revealment of something that originally was still concealed, even though there were already in our Western tradition several interpretations of the "things" under consideration. From these expressions it is clear also that Heidegger conceives of truth in terms of non-concealment, a-litheia, although the common conception of truth as correspondence is obviously not excluded. Finally, it is important to note that when he uses the term "Vorstellen" Heidegger does not mean re-presentation, but rather any form of human conception which does not let a being be what it is "in truth".39

125 ART. II. FROM EQUIPMENT TO WORK OF ART § 20. Elucidation of the Equipment-Being of Equipment by Means of a Work of Art a) A Pair of Farmer's Shoes as an Example of a Piece of Equipment We come now to a number of passages in Heidegger's essay which often have been misunderstood. This misunderstanding, it seems to me, was due to the fact that the commentators or the critics did not pay careful attention to the manner in which Heidegger proceeds here. Let us thus try to follow his text as carefully as possible. We have just seen that following the guidelines of the phenomenological method Heidegger tries here to give a "simple description" of some particular piece of equipment in which he will make an effort to stay away as far as possible from any philosophical theory about pieces of equipment.40 Thus, he says, an effort must be made now to experience what a piece of equipment is in truth. It is not Heidegger's intention to give a "definition" of the "essence" of equipment; he does not want tofindout either how equipment strictly speaking is; what he wishes to find out is rather how a piece of equipment originally becomes non-concealed, how originally it becomes manifest in its equipmentBeing. To achieve this one must describe the thing as it "gives itself immediately", while avoiding the uncritical acceptance of the conceptions of equipment suggested by the tradition. But equipment can be so given in many ways. What way should one choose?41 "We choose as example an ordinary piece of equipment - a pair of farmer's shoes". In order to describe them one does not need to display actual pieces of this sort, because everyone is already fully acquainted with them. Yet since we are concerned here with an immediate description in the sense of phenomenology, it may be good to facilitate our effort to make the shoes come to light as such. A picture of shoes suffices for this purpose. "For this purpose we shall choose a well-known painting by van Gogh Who painted such shoes several times". But what is there to be seen? "Everyone knows what belongs to a shoe as such". If they are not made of wood or bark, they will have leather soles and uppers, joined together by thread and nails. Shoes serve to protect one's feet. Their matter and form will differ, depending on the use to which the shoes are to be put; matter and form thus depend on the shoes' serviceability. These statements, which undoubtedly are correct, merely make explicit what everyone already knows about shoes. The equipment-Being of equipment consists in its usefulness, its serviceability. Precisely what is meant here by usefulness or serviceability? And is it indeed true that in conceiving of this serviceability, we shall conceive the equipment-Being of equipment together with it? To make certain that we indeed will succeed in doing so, Heidegger continues, must we not directly approach the useful and serviceable equipment

126 in its actual use? The farmer's wife wears her shoes in the field; only in the field are they what they really are. And there they are all the more so, the less the farmer's wife thinks about them, while she is engaged in her work, or even when she looks at them. She walks and works in them; that is the way shoes are actually used; that is the way they actually serve her. It is therefore in this very process of the use of equipment that we must try to discover the equipmentBeing of equipment.42 It is important to note here that Heidegger is engaged in an effort to give a description of a piece of equipment. He chooses a pah* of farmer's shoes and later specifies that he has in mind the shoes a farmer's wife wears while she is at work in the field. To understand his claim, it is good to note that he is thinking of work-shoes, not of the kind of shoes such women wear on Sunday, when they go to church. Furthermore, wooden shoes of the kind Dutch farmers and their wives sometimes use, are also explicitly excluded from consideration here. Heidegger wants to understand the equipment-Being of equipment with the help of a description of a pair of shoes of the type women wear (in Southern Germany), when they go to work in the field. He wants to facilitate the description by making use of a picture of shoes. Van Gogh painted such shoes many times, i.e., shoes which workmen, men or women, wear when they work in the field, or even shoes which he himself would have worn at work, where he could not use wooden shoes. But what is being described is not the painting by van Gogh, but rather the farmer's wife's shoes in their actual use, i.e., the shoes which Heidegger originally has taken as his example. From the viewpoint of the describing phenomenologist it is important to make a distinction between a description of shoes immediately seen here and now in their "bodily reality", from a description of shoes we are already familiar with, have seen many times, and now describe on the basis of memory, recollection, etc. It is also important to note the distinction between a description of shoes immediately seen in their "bodily reality", and a description of shoes concretely "seen" here and now by means of a photo or a painting. Finally, phenomenologically there is a distinction between a description of shoes, the presentation of which has been facilitated by means of a photo and the description of shoes facilitated by means of a work of art. Yet as far as the actual description itself is concerned the equipment-Being of equipment will never come to the fore without the process of "free variation". In other words, the shoes which Heidegger takes as an example, (real shoes, "imagined" shoes, shoes presented by means of a photo or picture) are never more than the starting point of the description which, as phenomenological description, has to reach far beyond the actual starting point, which itself merely prepares a "categorial intuition".43 Finally, in a /temteneutico-phenomenological description the phenomenon is to be interpreted by projecting it upon its proper horizon of meaning, its proper world.

127 ' b) The Illumination of the Equipment-Being of Equipment with the'Helpbf an Immediate Experience with a-Work of Art': van Gdghl ScHapiro, Derrida Heidegger gives three different descriptions of the shoesof a farmer's wife: In the first -description he focuses on a pair of shoes which he freely selects as an example.' He describes the kind of shoes the wives of farmers wear when they work in the field.' He mentions their purpose as well as their matter and form'. He then briefly describes the same shoes in their actual use' by a farmer's wife working in the field; he describes how the'wife 'actually concerns herself with such shoes' in a larger equipmental context. ' Yet in his view, both these descriptions are still iriadequate^they do ndtyet explicitly show what the equipment-Being of equipment in truth is. Thus a third description is necessary-which is introduced'with'the words: "Andyet :■: :'**• In die third description Heidegger explicitly refers to the painting by van Gogh which he takes as a point of departure for his hermeneuticö-phenomenölogical description. One should keep in mind that all of this is done with the intention of ultimately finding out something about the work-Being of ä work of'art. The strange paradox here is that Heidegger, in order to explain the "essence" of ä work of art, chooses a work of art, a painting by van Gogh. This paradox will gradually disappear after the third description has been given arid discussed; as we shall see.45 But let us now again return to the text: . •' As long as we merely try to present to ourselves a pair of shoes in a general way, or as long as we merely look at the empty and unused shoes as they stand there in the picture, we shall never truly experience the equipment-Being of equipmenulf we look at van Gogh's painting (Heidegger has now a particular painting in mind), one cannot even tell precisely whefe these shoes stand, because there is no indication in the picture itself of the surroundings to which they might belong; they are surrounded just by an undefined space. There is not even some mud stuck to them which would at feast give us some hint of their use. A pair of farmer's shoes; nothing morel And y e t . . . Heidegger begins now his third description of the farmer's wife's shoes that he has selected as his example and in the description of which he has decided to use one or more paintings or drawings by van Gogh as'a means to facilitate the description. This interpretative description runs as follows. The toil of the worker's tread stares forth from the dark' opening of the worn insides of the shoes. In the rough, stiff, and rugged weight of the shoes has accumulated the tenacity of her slow and weary walk through the- far-spreading and always uniform furrows of the field, swept by a cold wind. The dampness and richness of the soil still lie on the leather: The loneliness of the field-path slides under the soles as evening falls. The silent call of the earth vibrates in the shoes äs does its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained' withdrawal' in' the bleak fallowness of the field m the winter. This equipment is full of the uncomplaining worry about how to secure the daily bread, the Wordless joy of having once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending child birth, and the shivering at death which threatens everywhere. This equipment belongs to the

128 earth and it is safely protected in the world of the farmer's wife. And the equipment itself rises to its resting-in-itself from out of this protected belonging.46 ' From the preceding paragraph it is obvious that all of this cannot be seen in the picture, because Heidegger has just stated that the shoes are painted in such a way that they are surrounded by an indefinite space, and that there is absolutely nothing that would hint at their use. One does not arrive at Heidegger's description via a "free variation" in the sense of Husserl, either. Yet it is by the farmer's shoes selected by Heidegger as an example, access to which has been facilitated by looking at one or more paintings by van Gogh, that this interpretative description has been prompted, just as the essay written by a student is prompted by the thing, event, or task indicated in the teacher's creative writing assignment. In other words, what is being "described" here is not an actual pair of farmer's shoes, nor the shoes painted by van Gogh, but some pair of shoes that have been "evoked" by the chosen example and by the painting(s) that are employed to facilitate the "description". In an essay entitled "The Still Life as a Personal Object - A Note on Heidegger and van Gogh", Meyer Schapiro has severely criticized Heidegger's use of the work by van Gogh. He blames Heidegger for not explicitly identifying the one particular painting he had in mind, even though he knew quite well, as he furthermore explicitly states, that van Gogh painted such shoes many times. A reader who would like to compare the description Heidegger gives of them with the original picture or a reproduction of them will have some difficulty in deciding which one to select. De la Faille recorded eight paintings of shoes by van Gogh in the catalogue of all the paintings by van Gogh that had been exhibited at the time Heidegger wrote his essay. Of these eight only three show the dark opening of the worn insides, namely, nos. 255,332, and 333; but these shoes are "clearly pictures of the artist's own shoes", not the shoes of a peasant or a farmer's wife. They were painted in Paris in 1886-1887. He also painted such shoes in Aries in 1888. Schapiro wrote to Heidegger to inquire about the painting. Heidegger answered in a letter of May 6,1965 that the picture to which he referred was one he saw in Amsterdam in March of 1930. This is clearly de la Faille's no. 255. Since at the same time there was also exhibited a painting with three pair of shoes (de la Faille, no. 250), it is not impossible according to Schapiro, "that the exposed sole of a shoe in this picture inspired the reference to the sole in the philosopher's account. But from neither of these pictures, nor from any of the other, could one properly say that a painting of shoes by van Gogh expresses the being or essence of a peasant women's shoes and her relation to nature and work. They are the shoes of the artist, by that time a man of the town and city".47 Even though Heidegger himself wrote about his own description that it would be the worst self-deception, if in this description everything were first imagined and then just projected into the picture, Schapiro is convinced that he nevertheless did just that. "Alas for him, the philosopher has indeed deceived himself. He has retained from his encounter with van Gogh's canvas a moving

129 set of associations with peasants and the soil, which are not sustained by the picture itself, but are grounded rather in his own social outlook with its heavy pathos of the primordial and earthy. He has indeed 'imagined everything and projected it into the painting'. He has experienced both too little and too much in his contact with the work".48 Furthermore, Schapiro continues, "there is nothing in Heidegger's description that could not have been imagined in looking at a real pair of peasant's shoes. Yet instead he credits to art the power of giving to a represented pair of shoes that explicit appearance in which their Being is disclosed, indeed the universal essence of things".49 Finally, in Schapiro's view, Heidegger also overlooked the artist's own presence in his work.50 What are we to say about these objections? It seems to me that several important questions are to be raised and answered. First of all, precisely what painting by van Gogh is at issue here? Schapiro claims that it is the pair of leather shoes, listed by de la Faille as no. 255 (i.e., Hulsker, 1124). He bases his case on Heidegger's description as well as on the letter which Heidegger sent him in reply to his letter of inquiry. Although it is indeed likely that Heidegger had this picture in mind, there are at least two other possible candidates, namely a pair of old shoes and a pair of leather clogs.51 But even if it were to be the case that, as Schapiro claims, there is certainty about the painting that is at issue here, this would still mean very little in view of the fact that Schapiro is completely mistaken where he claims that in the essay on the art work, Heidegger gives a description of this pair of shoes, as we have seen already. The second question we must ask is one of whether Schapiro's criticism is indeed directly relevant to Heidegger's main concern in the essay on art. For first of all, it should be noted that Schapiro attributes to Heidegger intentions which the latter never had and claims which Heidegger never made. One can formulate this perhaps also as follows. Schapiro isolates the passage on the painting by van Gogh from the context in which it appears in the essay on the origin of the work of art. Thus while he himself demands that Heidegger interprets the meaning of the shoes from the perspective of the inner and outer context of van Gogh's painting, Schapiro himself objects to Heidegger's interpretation by looking at it from a perspective that Heidegger precisely is in the process of overcoming.52 Schapiro should have known that Heidegger precisely wished to go beyond the conception of art, from which Schapiro tried to formulate his criticism. Schapiro thinks from the perspective of art history and philosophical aesthetics.53 These remarks obviously do not imply that in Heidegger's own position there could not be any unexamined and unacceptable presuppositions, but they are certainly not those to which Schapiro is referring.54 Schapiro certainly oversimplifies Heidegger's approach in several important respects. For he claims that Heidegger in his essay describes van Gogh's painting. As I have indicated already in my paraphrase of the text, Heidegger cannot possibly have tried to describe the painting which Schapiro has so skillfully identified, if the expression "to describe" is taken in its literal sense.

130 Heidegger says that the painting he has in mind says nothing about the world to which the shoes belong; and the same is true about their possible owner. "From van Gogh's painting we cannot even tell where these shoes stand. There is nothing surrounding this pair of peasant shoes in or to which they might belong - only an undefined space".55 Yet Heidegger explicitly mentions a great number of details about the owner of the shoes and her world in what Schapiro calls his "description" of the painting. It is indeed true that Heidegger claims that the painting as a work of art is capable of bringing something to light which cannot be brought to light by a simple description and explanation of shoes actually present, nor by a report on how shoes are made or a report on their actual use. But this "something" does not consist in information on the farmer's wife, nor on her world, for the painting selected does not in any sense contain that kind of information. Thus that which Schapiro calls Heidegger's "description" of van Gogh's painting is to be understood in a different way. Schapiro also claims that Heidegger interprets the painting in order to illustrate the nature of art as the setting itself into the work of the truth which in this concrete case shows, us what a given piece of equipment is in truth. Yet Heidegger explicitly states that "the work did not, as it might seem at first, serve merely for a better visualizing of what a piece of equipment is". Heidegger instead defends a quite different and even much stronger thesis. He states explicitly that the discussion of the shoes painted by van Gogh tries to show that "the equipment-Being of equipment first genuinely comes to the fore through the work and only in the work".56 What Schapiro thus .does not stress sufficiently is that Heidegger begins to explain his view on the equipment-Being of equipment by taking a pair of farmer's shoes as an example.57 In addition, in the entire discussion about the painting by van Gogh the stress is not on the shoes insofar as they belong to the wife of a farmer, but rather on equipment, or perhaps more adequately, on the shoes as pieces of equipment. For it is in the shoes, taken as equipment, that its equipment-Being becomes manifest in and through the painting. Schapiro also claims that Heidegger is trying to distinguish between three modes of Being of the thing. This, too, is a simplification, insofar as Heidegger is making an effort to critically analyze the .entire system of determinations which in the tradition one has superimposed on the thing. These three determinations are related to one another by means of some conceptual mechanics {Begriffsmechanik) that nothing is capable of withstanding.58 These three modes of defining the thingness of the thing have often appeared in combination; in such a combination their domain of application could be expanded in such a way that this complex scheme of interpretation could then be applied to things, equipment, and even works of art. This long familiar mode of thought forces a certain preconception on all immediate experiences of beings which makes any serious reflection on the Being of beings impossible. Thus the prevailing conception of the thingness of things obstructs the way to the true thingness of things, to the equipment-Being of equipment, and finally to the work-Being of the work. In Heidegger's view, this conception of the thingness

131 of things still dqminates every theory of art and all aesthetics today.59 A careful re-reading of the passage of the essay in which Heidegger discusses the painting by van Gogh will show that Schapiro indeed makes things much more simple than they really are in Heidegger's own exposition of the issue.60 But precisely what is it then that Heidegger tries to "describe"? According to Schapiro it is no more than a moving set of associations with peasants and the soil, which are grounded in Heidegger's own social outlook "with' its heavy pathos of the primordial and earthy". What is "described" here by Heidegger, by means of a hermeneutico-phenomenological analysis, however, is not at all the world of a farmer's wife, but, as we have just seen, the equipment-Being of equipment. In' this interpretation Heidegger begins by taking his point of departure from the immediate experience with a work pf art which itself is to bring him to the point where a genuine experience with a concrete piece of equipment, a pair of farmer's shoes, becomes possible. In other words, in this case the hermeneutico-phenomenological "description" goes from the thing as it appears first to the Being of the thing, i.e., from the concrete being to the condition of its possibility. This is achieved in the case of the piece of equipment in question by describing how it.is effectively employed by the wife of a farmer, and how this concernful preoccupation leads to a world in which the field has a prominent place. It is here where the earth manifests itself. "In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth . . . and its unexplained self-refusal in the,fallow desolation of the wintry field".61 The call is said to be silent because the earth manifests itself only indirectly, and above all because the earth (as will become clearer later) appears as the one that hides itself and »is self-secluding (sich verschliessend). But the earth shows itself indirectly also as that which gives or refuses growth.62 As for Schapiro's remark about a "false pathos", two .observations are in orders First of all we must point out that in Heidegger's description, there appears to be a very close relationship between equipment and primordial moodness (Befindlichkeit) in and through which the piece of equipment manifests itself to us in our experience with it. In other words, the experience with the piece of equipment, an experience that was mediated by the painting, is not a purely theoretical experience, but one in which understanding and moodness are still intimately interwoven. Heidegger thus tries to suggest that the equipment becomes manifest to the farmer's wife not through theoretical reflection, but through an effective use which is guided by a form of understanding that is still one with primordial mood. All of this is to be understood in light of what was said in Being and Time about the relationship between Befindlichkeit and Verstehen.0 ■ Secondly, it is important to recall that it is primarily through primordial moodness that in each case the relevant "whole" is made present to Dasein. Thus when Heidegger in the lecture on the art work speaks about "world", it is primarily through Befindlichkeit that world as such is made manifest as a whole. The other relevant "whole" which is made present here obviously is the entire human ek-sistence as it stretches from birth to death.64

132 Finally, we must note that the concept of world described here in the art work is more encompassing than it was in Being and Time. In Being and Time world was described first merely as the totality of all possible relationships to which a given piece of equipment belongs. In the explanation given there, "nature" appears once in a while in a more indirect manner; but it is never discussed there systematically what one is to think about the relationship between world and "nature". Here on the other hand, the intimate relationship between world and earth and, therefore, also the relationship between world and nature is explicitly stressed. As we shall see later, Heidegger describes world and earth here as being opposed to one another and as in strife with each other. Compared with what was said in Being and Time, these important ideas are new. On the other, it is clear also that Heidegger does not yet understand by earth what he later will say about the earth taken as one of the four domains of the fourfold, where the earth is opposed not to world, but as part of the world, is opposed to the heaven.*5 Finally, in Being and Time it is often suggested that the world described in the sections 14-20 consists of man-made things only. Here in the essay on the art work it is obvious that the world of the farmer's wife includes natural beings as well as man-made things.66

§ 21. The Truth Establishes Itself in the Work a) Reliability and the Hylemorphic Structure After completing his description of the shoes of the farmer's wife Heidegger asks himself whether perhaps it is only in the painting that one notices all of this about the shoes, the world, and the earth. The farmer's wife simply wears them. But is it really all that simple? When the woman takes off her shoes at night, "in deep but healthy fatigue", she, too, knows all of this, but without explicitly reflecting on it, or thinking about it. She, too, knows that the equipment-Being of the equipment consists in its usefulness; she knows this when she takes them off, when she puts them on, and when she just passes them by on a day of rest. This usefulness itself rests on the "fullness of something that is essential to the Being of the equipment". As we have seen already, Heidegger calls this its reliability. Thanks to the reliability of the shoes the woman can respond to the silent call of the earth and be certain of her world. For her and for those who are with her the world and the earth are there only in the equipment. Without his equipment the farmer can no longer relate to the earth, and without his equipment he no longer has his world. It is the reliability of the equipment which first gives to the world its security and assures to the earth the freedom of its steady pressure. As the equipment-Being of equipment, reliability gathers together within itself all things, each according to its own manner and scope. Thus the usefulness or serviceability is only the essential consequence of the equipment's reliability.

133 The former vibrates in the latter; and without it, it would be nothing. Individual pieces of equipment can be worn out and used up; but at the same time the use itself has its wear, wears away, and thus becomes usual. In this case the equipment-Being itself wastes away, and it itself becomes degraded into being mere equipment. But this latter wasting away to which things of use c— their boringly obtrusive usualness, attests once more the original manner in which equipment comes-to-presence as such. Then it seems as if the worn-out usualness of the equipment constitutes the true mode of Being of equipment, insofar as then the blank serviceability and usefulness are the only qualities that are still visible. It furthermore gives the impression that the origin of equipment lies in the mere production that impresses a form upon some matter. And yet as we have seen, in its true equipment-Being equipment stems from a more distant source. And matter and form themselves, too, have a deeper origin. The repose of the equipment that rests in itself, consists in its reliability. What equipment is in truth can be discerned only in this reliability. Yet all of this still tells us very little about what we have been seeking all along, namely the thing-Being of the thing; and all of this tells us even less about what we are really trying to discover, i.e., the work-Being of the work of art. Or have we perhaps without noticing it learned something in passing about the work-Being of the work?67 If we compare this description of the equipment-Being of equipment with that given in Being and Time we see that Heidegger has introduced a new element in the description, namely the reliability (Verlässlichkeit) of equipment. The term "Verlässlichkeit" does not even occur in Being and Time at all. It is said here in the lectures on the art work that it is not the usefulness or the serviceability mentioned in Being and Time, but rather the reliability of the shoes which gives the fanner's wife the assurance she needs to do her work well, both in light of the conditions of the earth and of her task in her world. Thus in the final'analysis it is not the serviceability, but rather the reliability which makes it possible for the woman to relate to both world and earth. It is precisely because her shoes are reliable that the woman can respond to the call of the earth and be certain of her world.68 Now if it is the case that the Being of the equipment as such indeed consists in its reliability, then we must ask the question of how the hylemorphic structure to which the tradition always appealed in its effort to explain the Being of equipment, is to be related to the equipment's reliability. Heidegger tells us that because of its relation to both world and earth, reliability keeps gathered together all beings within itself, i.e., all man-made things as well as the things "by nature", insofar as the latter belong to the earth. That equipment originates when it is fabricated by means of a process that impresses some form on some matter, is a conception which arises only after the equipmentality of the equipment itself has worn away, and equipment is taken merely in its blank usefulness and, thus, after its reliability has vanished. I think that the process alluded to here by Heidegger, indeed is to be related to what in Being and Time was called fallenness,** as von Herrmann suggests.70

134 For in the state of fallenness man is preoccupied with the things and their use so that there is no room for his concern with their genuine mode of Being. b) The First Characterization of the Work-Being of the Work: In It the Truth Establishes Itself On the Essence of Art and die Artistically Beautiful The equipment-Being of equipment was discovered by bringing ourselves close to a painting of shoes by van Gogh, and not by describing some actually present pair of shoes. This painting has spoken so that, close to the work, we found ourselves suddenly far away from where we usually are, when we concern ourselves with pieces of equipment and just use them. But what then happens in the work and what is at work in the work? According to Heidegger, the painting by van Gogh appears to be the disclosure of what this piece of equipment, this pair of shoes, is in truth. The painting lets this being emerge into the nonconcealment of its Being. The Greeks called non-concealment: a-Utheia, and we speak of truth, even though we no longer think much when we use the word. If a work of art reveals a being and discloses what and how it is, then a happening of the truth is at work here. In the work of art the truth of the being has established itself. In the work of art a pair of shoes came to stand in the light of its Being. The Being of the being comes in the steadiness of its shining (ekphanestaton). But if this is so, then the essence of art would be this: the setting itself into the work of the truth of the beings. But how could this be? Has not everyone until now claimed that art has to do with what is beautiful and with beauty itself, not with truth? This is the reason why we call the arts which produce such works the fine arts to distinguish them from the crafts that just manufacture equipment. In the fine arts, it is not art itself that is beautiful; they are called so because they produce the beautiful. Truth is always reserved for logic and beauty for aesthetics. One could perhaps think that the claim according to which art is the setting itself into the work of the truth is the result of an effort to revive the fortunately obsolete view that art is the imitation of nature, of what is. Now in view of the fact that the reproduction of what is, is in agreement with what is so reproduced, and agreement (adaequatio, homoiösis) has long been taken to be the essence of truth, one could then draw the conclusion from all of this that it is Heidegger's intention to claim that the painting by van Gogh is a work of art, because it depicts a pair of shoes as they actually are "in reality". But this is obviously by no means Heidegger's intention. In his view the work is not the reproduction of some particular being that happens to be present at hand at any given time; rather it is the reproduction of the general way in which such beings come-to-presence. One will obviously object to this and say that all of this cannot possibly be true, because there is nothing with which the reproduction of such a general way of coming-to-presence could be in agreement; and yet such agreement is constitutive for the truth of the work. With what way-to-be of what thing is a Greek temple to

135 agree? A similar question catr be asked for a poem, a hymn by Hölderlin, or the poem ."Roman Fountain" by C.F. Meyer which Heidegger quotes here. Finally, one will say, how could truth establish itself in the work, if truth is to be something timeless and supratemporal?7! To prevent misunderstanding it is necessary to make at least a few remarks. It is clear'that in this passage Heidegger is making an effort to transcend'the classical conception of the art work as developed in "classical" aesthetics, by retrieving certain ideas from Hegel's Lectures on, Aesthetics. In so doing he uses the classical conception of aesthetics as an objection to the view he is trying to develop. The manner in which he answers these objections will be discussed in detail in the pages to come; yet it is clear that he wants to defend the view that in a work of art the truth of the beings becomes established. In the course of this discussion Heidegger makes the remark that the equipment-teeing of equipment first genuinely arrives in its appearance through the work of art and only through the work. This claim does not mean that the "essence" of equipment can be understood only through a work of art. Rather the expression "eigens zu seinem Vorschein kommen" refers to the fact that in the art work the manner in which a being comes-to-presence, comes to light in a privileged manner in such a way that it there shines and radiates in its steadiness. This was the reason that in my paraphrase I referred explicitly to Plato's ekphanestaton that Heidegger in my view is trying to retrieve here, also. Thus Heidegger can indeed conclude that the "essence" of art consists in the "setting itself into the work" of the truth of the beings. The artistically beautiful is defined correspondingly as the shining of the Being of the beings; as such it is conceived from the perspective of the non-concealment of the beings and their Being. But then it follows that the artistically beautiful also is a privileged mode of the happening of the truth.72 One more point should be raised here. Is the expression, "art is the setting 'itself into the work of the truth" not extremely ambiguous? In 19S6, in the Addendum, Heidegger himself points out that in the lectures on the art work themselves it was expressly admitted and stated on two occasions that there is indeed such an ambiguity. This "essential" ambiguity is connected with the fact that truth is here at once both subject and object« whereas both these expressions really are unsuitable. If truth is taken to be'the "subject" of the expression, then the expression means truth's own setting itself into the work; art is then conceived in terms of a disclosing appropriation; yet Being is a call to man and it never "is" without man. If one were to take art as the "object*' in the expression, then art would not be more than the result of the human activities of producing and preserving. It is only when the relation between man and Being is properly understood that it -will be feasible to reformulate this and similar claims in a more appropriate language.73 c) Summary and Prospect Heidegger now briefly summarizes the main issues discussed in the first major part of the essay. We are seeking here, he says, the manner in which the work of

136 art works (die Wirklichkeit des Kunstwerkes), because it appears that art itself can be found there. Among the workly aspects of the work that manifest themselves the thingly substructure appears to be the most immediate one. The traditional conceptions of the thing-Being of the thing, however, appear to be inadequate, because they fail to grasp the Being of the thing. Furthermore, the conception of the thing that today is prominent, and according to which the thing is formed matter, is not even derived from the essence of the thing, but from the mode of Being of equipment. Then we have also discovered that the mode of Being characteristic of equipment has long since enjoyed a peculiar priority in the interpretation of the beings. It was this priority which suggested that we pose the question concerning the Being of equipment anew, and that in so doing we try to avoid the current interpretations. In order to find out what equipment really is we turned to a work of art. In doing this we discovered, almost incidentally, what is at work in a work: the opening-up and disclosure of the being in its Being, i.e., the happening of the truth. But if now the manner in which the work is at work can be defined only by means of what is at work in the work, what does this mean for our intention to discover the real art work in the manner in which it works as such? It is clear by now that as long as we assumed that the work-Being of the work was to be found primarily in its thing-Being, we were on the wrong track. In our reflections we have thus come to a remarkable result which can be expressed in two points: 1) the dominant conceptions of the thing are inadequate to grasp the thing-Being of the thing; and 2) what we tried to grasp as the immediate workBeing (Wirklichkeit) of the work, namely its thing-Being, does not at all belong to the work in that way. If one searches for the thing-Being and the thingly substructure in the work, one takes inadvertently the work as a piece of equipment; it is then understandable why we also attempt to attribute a superstructure to it which is supposed to contain its artistic quality. But the work of art is not a piece of equipment that in addition is equipped with some aesthetic value. The work is just as little a piece of equipment as the mere thing is; it makes no sense to say that a work of art is a piece of equipment to which some value is added, whereas a mere thing is a piece of equipment from which the usefulness has been taken away. Our formulation of the question about the art work seems to have brought us to a dead end, because we have not concerned ourselves with the work, but rather partly with the thing and partly with equipment. Yet one should realize, Heidegger says, that we were not the first one to develop this line of questioning; it is the common way in which aesthetics asks about the art work. The manner in which aesthetics views the art work is from the outset dominated by the traditional interpretation of all beings. Yet the essential point here is not to criticize aesthetics. What matters here rather is that we learn to understand that what is workly in the work, equipmental in equipment, and thingly in the thing comes nearer to us only if we learn first to think the Being of the beings. But to this end it is necessary that we first overcome our preconceptions and set aside some sweeping pseudo-conceptions. This is the reason why this detour via thing

137 and equipment was necessary. Furthermore, this approach has also directly brought us to a road that could very well lead us to a more careful determination of the thing-Being of the thing. For it is impossible to deny the thingly character of the work; yet insofar as the thingly character indeed does belong to the work it must be understood from the perspective of that which is workly in the work. Thus the road we have to take does not lead from thing to work, but rather from work to thing, as the painting by van Gogh has shown us already. We can thus conclude now that the art work in its own way opens up the Being of beings. This opening-up, this revealment, i.e., the truth of the beings, comes-to-pass in the work. In the art work, the truth of what is, has set itself into the work. Art is the truth setting itself into the work. We must now ask the question of what truth then is that sometimes it comes-to-pass as art. And what is this setting-itself-into-the-work?74

CHAPTER III. ART WORK A N D TRUTH

ART. I. SOME ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ART WORKS § 22. How to Unfold the Essential Characteristics of Works of Art? a)The Art Work Stands on Its Own (Eigenständigkeit) We have seen that for Heidegger the origin of the work of art is to be found in art. On the other hand, art is actually at work in the work of art. According to Heidegger, we must now ask the question of in what the Being-at-work of the work really consists. We have seen also that works of art without exception show a thingly character, albeit that in each case they show it in a different wayj We have seen finally that the attempt to explain the thingly character of the work with the help of the common thing conceptions fails. And this is so not only because of the fact that these conceptions do not really grasp the thingBeing of the thing, but above all because, by asking for the thingly substructure we prejudge the work's genuine, ontological status and, thus, bar for ourselves access to its own work-Being. Therefore, we cannot really discover anything about the thingly character of the work as long as the self-subsistence (Insichstehen, the standing-on-itself, the insistence) of the work has not yet clearly manifested itself. But, Heidegger asks, is the work ever in itself accessible to us? To gain access to the work in this way, it would be necessary to separate the work from all relations of the work to what it is not, in order so to let it rest in itself alone. But does not the artist's own intention already aim in this direction? Does he not release the work in such a way that it can stand on its own pure self-subsistence? In Heidegger's view, it is precisely in great art - and only great art will be considered here -Ohat the artist is and remains unimportant as compared with the art work itseff. The artist can perhaps be compared with a road that makes* itself superfluous in the artistic production, in order that the work itself may emerge. After they have been produced, the works of great art stand and ha'ng in

139 museums and exhibitions. But, Heidegger asks, are they here in themselves AS the works of art that they themselves are, or are they here perhaps rather as mere objects of the art industry? Works of art are made available so that people can appreciate and enjoy them. Official institutions and agencies are responsible for the custody and maintenance of the works. Connoisseurs and critics occupy themselves with them and art dealers buy and sell them. Art historians make these works of art the objects of their scientific research. Yet we must ask the question here of whether in this manifold business we indeed encounter the works themselves as such? Greek sculpture and a drama by Sophocles taken in the best critical edition are, as the works that they are, separated from the domain in which they once came-to-presence and endured. However high their quality, however great their power of impression; however excellent their state of preservation, however certain their interpretation, by putting them in a collection we separate them from their own world. But even if one were to make an effort to avoid such displacement of the works, if one were to go to Paestum to visit the temple of Poseidon at its own site, or the cathedral of Bamberg on its own square, the world of these works has still fallen into ruin.' According to Heidegger, the withdrawal of world as well as the decay of world can never be undone These works, too, are no longer the works they once were, We obviously still encounter these works themselves there; and yet they stand as works that have been. As the works that have been they stand over against us in the domain of tradition and conservation. From now on they remain merely as such objects. Their standing before us is obviously still a consequence of their former standing in and by themselves, but this standing before us is no longer the same as their former self-subsistence. For the selfsubsistence has now fled from them. The entire art industry, even if one were to take it in its optimal form, is concerned only with the object-Being of the work. But this object-Being manifestly does not constitute their work-Being. Could one say, Heidegger now asks, that a work of art is still a work if it is severed from all relations? Is it not essential for a work of art that it stands in relations? Exactly; but the question precisely is, in what relations the work stands. It is Heidegger's view that, taken as a work of art, the work belongs uniquely within the domain that it itself has opened up. For the work-Being of the work is present only in this very opening-up. As we said before, in the work, a coming-to-pass of the truth is at work. Our reference to the painting by van Gogh tried to name this happening. From these reflections we were led to the question of what truth then might be and how truth can come-to-pass. We must now ask the question of truth in regard to the work. And in order to familiarize ourselves with what really is at stake in this question, it is necessary once more to make visible the coming-to-pass of the truth in the workVith the help of an example. In this case, Heidegger says, we shall purposely select a work of art that cannot possibly be ranked under representational art.2 It seems to me that in these reflections there is an important issue that is often misunderstood. Heidegger decides to limit himself, as Hegel had done also; to

140 what he calls "great art", grosse Kunst. To understand this expression we must briefly recall Heidegger's main intention. He wants to know what art is, what the basic modejpf Being is according to which art comes-to-presence and flbjjdes among us humans. In order to discover this, he wants to examine works of art, because only works of art concretely contain what constitutes art as such. But in order to be able to identify works of art as such, and to distinguish them from pieces of equipment and all other things, one must already somehow know what art is} Thus we find ourselves here in a hermeneutic circle: to know what art is one must examine works of art, but in order to be able to identify works of art as such one must already somehow know what art i s . _ Heidegger decides to enter the circle from the perspective of the works of art. Thus he asks the question concerning the origin of works of art. After the preliminary reflections discussed in the preceding chapter, Heidegger is faced with the question of how to select certain works of art in such a manner that the selection of these works (which is necessary to have a solid starting point for our reflections on the question of what art is) presupposes no conception of art except one that is beyond any reasonable doubt. Heidegger, following Hegel, feels that by limiting the discussion to "great art" he has found such a solid starting point. "Great art" refers to those works that were produced in Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages, and which are such that there is today common agreement on their artistic status. Great art implies the totality of all art works, made before the time in which the fine arts came to the fore as such, before the time in which artists began to claim to have a special "vocation" not to be shared with the mere craftsmen, and before works were preserved, exhibited in museums and exhibitions, dramas and musical works reproduced time and again in special auditoriums, etc. During these epochs of history, a number of works were made of which one later unequivocally would say that they are undoubtedly great works of art: certain temples, certain cathedrals, certain castles, certain public buildings, certain pieces of sculpture, certain paintings, certain works of music, and certain literary works of art. One can be even more specific: the dramas of Sophocles that are still preserved, the Doric temple of Paestum, the cathedral of Bamberg, etc. Hegel and Heidegger do not turn to these works of art because they were made during a time in which everyone still knew what art is. Rather the opposite is the case; these works were made during a period in which the questions of what art is, what the "vocation" of the artist is, and what art works are supposed to "do", were not yet raised, because art works and art had not yet come-to-presence as such and had not yet become problematic.3 As we shall see later, Heidegger also accepts from Hegel that "great art" is art that has an essential function in the life of a people. In Hegel's terminology, 'art is for that people the manifestation of the Absolute in sensuous form, a manifestation which, given a certain historical people in its historical development, is stilt essential for that people. In Hegel's opinion, we now no longer need the arts because the Absolute no longer needs to manifest itself in sensuous form, because the Absolute can now be presented in the concept.

141 Thus today art, in the sense of great art, is and remains something past; in the light of the "science" that has developed, art has ceased to be the highest need of the spirit; art no longer is the highest manner in which the truth becomes actual for itself today.4 Heidegger does not subscribe to Hegel's conception of the Absolute and the Absolute's function in Hegel's "science". Yet for him, too, "great art" is and remains something past in the sense that according to the spirit of the modern era, art' is.jio longer essential to understand the life of a people. Today we understand .Western man from the perspective of science and technology, whichas such are totally alien to art. Thus before we can ever fully understand how art today comes-to-presence, abides, and governs (west), we must once more carefully see how art once came-to-presence, abided, and governed, for instance in the Greek era or in the Middle Ages (temple of Paestum, cathedral of Bamberg). One final note, in "great art" there always was a close relationship between the various forms of art: architecture, sculpture, painting, drama, music. What Wagner later would call "collective art" was still in some sense a reality in the Greek world and in the Middle Ages. - But let us return to Heidegger's lectures. b) The Coming-to-Pass of the Truth of Beings in a Greek Temple Heidegger now wishes to show how the truth comes-to-pass in a work of art. In order to prevent that one were to thjnk of truth in terms of conformity or correspondence, and correspondence, in turn, in the sense of imitation (namely of "reality")\ Heidegger selects a Greek temple to illustrate his intention. He selects a temple because a temple portrays nothing and, thus, most certainly cgnnot be said to imitate something as it is in "reality". He selects a Greek temple in order to make certain that the discussion will remain limited to the domain of "great art". He obviously could also have chosen a cathedral, but that might have made it difficult to keep the interpretation away from dogmatical disputes between the various religious denominations. Precisely how is God present for Jews or Christians in His dwelling place? As for the Greeks, we *know how they conceived of the presence of their god in his temple. Be this as it may, Heidegger takes the temple of Neptune (Poseidon) in Paestum as his example. Paestum, originally Poseidonia, was an ancient Greek city in Lucania, Italy, about 20 miles south-east of Salerno and about 30 miles south of Naples. It is located a few miles south of the mouth of theriverSilarus (today Sele). The city must have been founded about 600 B.C. by colonists from Sybaris in Acadia. When the Lucanians conquered it, it received the name of Paestum. Much later it came under Roman rule and was then often mentioned because of its twice-blooming roses. In the city there is a large sacred area, divided by the forum, which contains three Doric temples in a remarkable state of preservation. The northern temple is dedicated to Ceres, the sister of Jupiter and the goddess of agriculture. Originally, when the temple was built by

142 the Greek colonists, about 600 B.C., it had been dedicated to Athena. In the south there is a temple of Hera. Finally, there is a third temple dedicated to Neptune, the god of the sea. This last temple, which originally also seems to have been dedicated to Hera, is the best preserved of all, whereas the first two are said to be without parallel in the entire Doric architecture of that time.5 The temple portrays nothing, Heidegger writes. It just stands there in the middle of the valley that is filled with rocks. The temple enshrines the statue of the god Poseidon; thus concealing the god, the temple nevertheless lets this statue also stand out into the holy domain through the open portico. The god comes-to-pifiiejce in the temple by means of the temple, and his comingto-presence is at the same time both the extension and the delimitation of the open domain surrounding the temple as a holy precinct. For the temple and its holy domain do not extend indefinitely. On the contrary, as a work, the temple first orders and gathers around itself the unity of all the paths and relations "in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the form of destiny for humankind". The all-governing range of this open set of relations constitutes the world of this historical people, namely the Greeks who founded Poseidonia. Only from and in such a world does a people come back to itself, so that it can bring its destiny to completion.6 Note that Heidegger here, after having mentioned the earth (the rocky valley), turns to the god, the domain of the holy which radiates from the statue of the god, and the people, and then claims that the open opened up by the temple constitutes for this people the world. Thus the concrete historical world of the Greek colonists is gathered by and through the temple insofar as the temple lets the god become manifest. This world must thus be disclosed to the members of this people before they can relate meaningfully to the beings and the events that are to appear in it.7 Heidegger now turns to the relationship between world and earth and unfolds this in detail. The temple, this work of art, stands there and rests upon the rocky ground. This resting of the work on the rock draws up out of the rock the dark mystery (das Dunkle) of its massive and yet almost imperceptible support. Thus standing there, the temple can easily hold its ground against the storm that rages over it; in this way the temple makes the storm first become manifest in its violence. In the same manner, the brightness and radiance of the rocks, which themselves only shine by the grace of the sun, make first come to the fore the light of the day, the width of the heaven, and the darkness of the night. And the temple's steady towering-up into the sky makes visible the invisible air. The unshaken steadfastness of the work stands in sharp contrast with the surge of the surf, just as its repose lets the raging of the sea appear. The trees and the grass, the eagle and the bull, the snake and the cricket, too, first appear in this way also, as what they are. In the early days, the Greeks called this emerging and rising itself and within the whole: phusis. Phusis also clears that on which and in which man grounds.. his dwelling. We call this the earth. This word is not meant here in the sense of a mass of matter deposited somewhere, or in the scientific sense of a planet.

143 Earth is that to which phusis brings back and shelters everything that emerges. In the emerging of phusis the earth comes-to-presence and abides (west) as that which shelters.8 Standing there on the rocky ground, the temple, taken as a work, opens up a world and at the same time sets this world again back on the earth; in this way the earth itself begins to emerge as native ground. Usually one begins by assuming that first there were men and animals« plants and things, and that these "unchangeable and stable objects" incidentally also happened to constitute a fitting environment for the temple which at a certain moment in time was just added to what was already there. In Heidegger's view, one comes close to what is in truth only if one tries to think all of this in the reverse order,'and realizes how differently everything faces us then. Standing there on the rocky ground, the temple, as a work, gives first to things their physiognomy and to humans the outlook on themselves. And this vifw or look remains open as long as the work is a work, i.e., as long as the god has not fled from it. And the same is true for the statue of the god that the temple enshrines. It is not just a copy whose purpose is to make it easier for mortals to find out what the god looks like; rather it lets the god cometo-presence and abide; it thus is the god. In Heidegger's view the same holds true also for linguistic works of art. As he sees it, in Sophocles' tragedies nothing is just staged; rather in these dramas the battle between the old gods and the new gods is being fought. The literary works which once originated in the language of the Greek people, do not explicitly mention this battle; they transform the people's mythic speech, so that in the tragedies now every living word fights this battle and puts up for decision what is holy and what is unholy, what is great and what is small, what is brave and what is cowardly, what is noble and what is trivial, what is master and what is slave. Heidegger refers here to fragment B S3 of Heraclitus: "War is the father and king of all; and soirie he has shown to be gods and others tq be men; some he has made slaves, and others free".» With the temple example Heidegger thus tries to show that awork of art makes present a world as well as the earth; furthermore, he tries to show that in "eich world dimensions can be distinguished to which he refers with the help of expressions such as the god, and the humans, but also with the help of all the events that may occur in the life of a historical people that has this world. On the other hand, the earth is shown as that which shelters; it is also shown as the people's native ground. It seems to me that one could argue that all of this indeed is the case because Heidegger selected a temple as his example. What would have happened if he had taken a landscape or a still-life? I think that Heidegger's answer to the objections that are. implicit in this remark, would have been the following: 1) The discussion was limited to "great art"; now in "great art" every individual art work is closely related to all other art works of the same people; thus no art work can here be taken in the strict isolation, in which we often have to take them when we encounter them in a museum. 2) In "great art" the art work always, in the final analysis at least, presents the entire

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world to the people, and this world relates directly to the life which these people actually live. In Greek antiquity, as well as in the Middle Ages, such a world always included the temple and the god, and the god was indeed the actual center of such a world; one may thus assume that the temple of Poseidon was indeed taken to be the "center" of Poseidonia. Thus if we limit ourselves to "great art" it would not have been possible to select a landscape or» a still-life. 3) Finally, the world which a work of art presents need not be explicitly structured in an ideal or a complete manner. In other words, there may be works of art that suggest a world from which the gods have actually fled. Yet such a world still would contain traces of the gods that have fled, and these traces suggest that something that somehow should have been there, is lacking in this world. One could perhaps still argue that what Heidegger says is indeed the case, not because he took an art work as his example, but because he took a temple as the point of departure for his description. I assume that Heidegger would have responded to this remark by pointing out that in the Greek era there could not have been a temple that would not have been a work. It should be noted here that the entire way of speaking is an anachronism. The Greeks did not yet use the expression "the fine arts", nor did they make a distinction between fine arts and crafts. This is the reason why Heidegger just calls it a work, the templework. Yet it still is the case that the temple of Poseidon in Paestum is now universally considered to be one of the greatest art works of that period that are still preserved.

§ 23. The Setting-Up and the Opening-Up of a World Heidegger continues that we must now ask the question of in what does the work-Being of a work of art consist. In light of the remarks made in the preceding section, it may suffice here to mention only two essential characteristics of the work. In developing them in some detail Heidegger proceeds from the perspective of the thing-Being of the thing which has such an important place in our usual, everyday attitude toward the work.1" In his effort to explain the two characteristics Heidegger invites us to think first of what happens with a work of art, when it is exhibited in a museum. When a work of art is made part of a collection so that it can be exhibited, we say that it has been set-up. Heidegger uses here the German verb aufstellen, a verb that can have many meanings; it can mean: to set up, to erect or install; to advance (an opinion), make (an assertion), set (a trap), expose (goods in a store), post (the guard), park (the car), bring forward (an instance), establish (a record), lay down (a principle), nominate (a candidate), etc. It can also mean to place something or even oneself in a certain position. Heidegger uses this verb here with reference to a work of art and he appears to use it in both an ontic and an ontological sense. Taken in the ontic sense the verb means to exhibit a work of art (for instance in a museum); taken in its ontological sense it means to erect a world. If the word is used in its ontic sense it still has two different meanings,

145 where in the essay on the art work it is used in direct connection with works of art. It can mean the setting-up and exhibiting of paintings in a museum; but it can also mean the erecting of a cathedral, the raising of a statue, or the presenting of a drama or symphony." Thus Heidegger can indeed say here that the setting-up of a work in a museum differs essentially from the erecting of a building, the raising of a statue, and the presenting of a tragedy during a holy festival. For in the latter case "to set-up" means to "erect" (errichten), in such a way that the erecting simultaneously implies dedication and praise. In Heidegger's view, in that case to set-up most certainly does not merely mean to place. And thus Heidegger goes on to say that to dedicate in this case means to sanctify and to make holy. The setting-up of the work implies here that now the domain of the holy is opened up, and that the god is invoked to enter into the openness of his own coming-to-presence and abidance. To the sanctification praise also belongs, insofar as praise implies giving honor to the dignity and the splendor of the god. f>ignity and splendor, however, must not be understood here as two properties behind which the god stands and, thus, as something that is really distinct from the god. Rather it is the case that the god comes-to-presence and abides precisely in dignity and splendor. In the reflected glory of this splendor, there radiates and illuminates itself what we have called the world.12 The, German verb "errichten" which Heidegger uses in this context means literally to make something completely straight, to set something up straight, or also just to set something up; yet the verb can also mean to makeright.13It is thus understandable why Heidegger can claim that to e-rect also means to open what, isright;and since what isrightis the foundation of what is just, to e-rect also means to open what is just. Thus to e-rect (er-richten) also means to provide the guiding measure, which points along in the right direction and in which Being, as coming-to-presence and as abidance, gives guidance. But why is the setting up of a world also an e-recting that sanctifies and praises? The answer to this question is in Heidegger's view the fact that the work, in its workBeing, demands this in that it, taken as such, precisely is something that sets up a world. "Towering-up within itself, the work opens up a world and lets it abide and endure".14 CTo be a work of art simply means to set up a wor)