Table Of ContentAnastasia Ladopoulou , Critical And Progressive Account of
Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art, Anastasia Ladopoulou (PhD
Essex) is a researcher in aesthetics and art history specializing in 20th
century theory and practice [email protected] )
Looking at the relation between the OWA1 and Being and Time, one is not
immediately taken by the differences. Karsten Harris argues2 that, in the OWA,
Heidegger presented art as the missing link between the undeveloped call for a “hero”
in Being &Time (Heidegger M., trans. Macquarie J. Robinson Ed.Οxford: Blackwell,
1962), and the presentation of art and artists as approximating that role. In this paper,
I will look in more detail at this sense of continuity between the central ideas of B&T
and the OWA. Whilst I am centrally interested in the progressive elements of the
essay with regard the overall development of Heidegger's thought, this is necessarily
tempered by the way Heidegger still thought about the main preoccupations of Βeing
and Time. Heidegger conceived Truth as a fundamental disclosure to human beings,
not something you accrue via enquiry. Dasein (an individual human being), has a
unique character that allows him/her to be open to other beings, and therefore open to
receive this disclosed Truth. A stone or a spider does not have this unique character,
he argues, because they are not open to receiving a thing as it is. Dasein is open to
other beings insofar as they can disclose to him/her in a way they cannot disclose to
the stone. Dasein is, by definition, the being that is open to the reception of truth as
‘unconcealment’ (aletheia). Dasein receives this Truth as either inauthentic (the
normal 'reality' that constitutes everyday existence) or authentic (the true reality that is
generally concealed by the everyday). The authentic is therefore the ‘real’ Truth that
discloses the true character of a thing. The inauthentic conceals this true character.
Our lives are governed by what our society and surrounds give us: our language, our
culture, our social values, our religion, our likes, our dislikes etc. These are like a
blanket laid over our reality. They are given to us and surround us, all the while
determining our existence in ways we can't even notice. This is the inauthentic
everyday condition that Heidegger refers to as the sumbsumption into ‘Das Man’.
Authentic truth is able to momentarily transcend this all-encompassing inauthentic
1 Heidegger M., ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ in Philosophies of Art and Beauty: Selected Readings
from Plato to Heidegger, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,: 1976) pp 650-708.
2 Harries, K. Art Matters (Yale University: Springer Int. Publ., 2009) pp 17-21
1
reality and, stripped of its power to conceal reality under the myriad haze of
everydayness, open a new kind of Truth which is simultaneously the most primordial:
the very ‘is-ness’ of the thing is unconcealed as it is in itself. This is best described
by Heidegger as a clearing in the woods that allows the light to flood in (lichtung). If
we merely characterise art as something that opens a field of ‘authentic truth,’ we can
immediately see a simplistic and pejorative binary division in operation such that
inauthentic = bad and authentic = good. For example, this would clearly setup a tacit
superimposition of traditional categories of high and low art. At the time of the OWA,
this might indeed have been the intent because Heidegger has permitted a discernible
transcendent element into his characterisation of Truth.3 Heidegger, no matter how far
he believed he had moved from the metaphysical positions of Hegel and Nietzsche,
had created a new (or old fashioned, depending on your perspective) ontological
metaphysics which on the one hand wants to allow for the fundamental primordial
truths of everyday reality and the same time allow for the opening to the new:
authenticity. But he can't help himself from affirming the authentic as superior, as that
which we ought to aspire towards if we are to live true and authentic lives. B&T could
not give this “ought” any sort of concrete dimension.
This is not to say that the notion of the work of art as portrayed by Heidegger in the
OWA is nothing more than a concrete explication of B&T. Whilst, on the one hand, it
is such in the sense that it attempts to give voice to an undeveloped dimension of the
heroic in B&T, on the other, it is not because more than 5 years had passed since the
publication of B&T and his thinking had moved on significantly in the interim.4 B&T
remained problematic for Heidegger throughout his career. He was acutely aware of
the subtle metaphysical implications of his position as set out therein. But short of
silence (the period of uncertainty leading up to the publication of B&T) or open
questioning (which philosopher would ever be so candid as to present their ideas
clouded in self-doubt?), where was Heidegger to turn? This tentativeness remains a
3 See for example, Taminiaux, J., ‘The Hegelian Legacy in Heidegger’s Overcoming of Aesthetics’ in
Poetics, Speculation and Judgement; The Shadow of the work of art from Kant to Phenomenology,
(New York: SUNY, 1993) pp 127-169
4 B&T was a work that was rushed into publication in an unfinished state. Heidegger had spent many
years trying to iron out the various dilemmas that his theory had evoked.
2
significant factor in academic work today and must be taken into account. Ideas take
time to develop, grow and mature.
We cannot simply assume that what we are reading in the OWA is a simple
continuation of B&T because Heidegger had a long time to develop and expand these
ideas. To this end, I want to reverse the common way of reading the OWA through
B&T, and examine the ideas from the period of B&T through the lens of the OWA.
The link between the OWA and B&T is crucial.
First, it is clear that the overall structure of resoluteness remains largely intact in the
OWA. Resoluteness is simply the term Heidegger uses to describe the manner in
which Dasein responds to authenticity. So, figuratively speaking, when Dasein is
presented with the opening of light in the clearing of the forest, he receives this
authentic light “resolutely”. But the OWA is not necessarily preoccupied with Dasein,
or human-being-there. Rather it is concerned with the being-there of the work of art,
and Dasein is presented as 'the other', who is receiving from the work of art. So
immediately human Dasein is at one-remove from the primary focus of the enquiry.
So how does Heidegger adapt the structure that embodies resolute authenticity to the
work of art?
Second, it is a mistake to view the work of art in the OWA as “replacing” human
Dasein from B&T. It is a further dimension, and importantly, a dimension that does
not possess the same existential baggage, making it both easier for Heidegger to
manipulate, and crucially for later commentators and readers to view in a more
neutral sense. Yes, the work of art lives, it changes, it opens, it gathers a time and
place (what Heidegger would call a Volk or historical people). But it does not
instigate its own creation, so there is always an anthropological element, that we
cannot ignore. The being of the artwork is indelibly tied to the being of the creator,
even if it takes on a world of its own. We must first take a step back look at the role of
Dasein in the being-there of the artwork. How does Dasein's resolute undertaking in
creating the artwork affect the being of the artwork itself? The answer is organized in
a structural manner in the essay.
3
We find three main layers present in the OWA, often interlaced in a somewhat
confused manner: 1) the authentic creation (artist), 2) the authentic artwork (the world
of the artwork), and 3) the authentic reception (the preservers). The later work would
see a unified approach to the question and try to do so without privileging the role of
any one in particular.
Following Heidegger's argument we are led to say that the Dasein who creates an
authentic artwork discloses authentic Truth through his/her creation. The artwork is
born as something other to the everydayness that constitutes the blanket of inauthentic
reality, yet simultaneously revealing something of the truth of that everydayness. The
artwork perdures independently from its creator, developing a world of its own that is
open in different ways to the spectator. In the OWA it is the revealing of the truth of
that everydayness that Heidegger is preoccupied with. This would seem on the surface
to contradict the true authentic character of the artwork. If it can reveal something
concrete about the life of the everyday, does that not tie it to the character of
everydayness? For instance, Heidegger claims that the earth of Van Gogh's shoes and
the world of the peasant woman are interrelated somehow – through Heidegger’s
idealized world of the peasants.
Methodologically speaking, the focus of the OWA being the work of art creates
overall structural problems for Heidegger's early work. If broadly speaking we can
say the following about Heidegger's career:
Period: B&T ---> OWA ---> Later Work
Focus: Dasein ---> Artwork ---> Unity of artwork with creator and
spectator
… then it follows that Heidegger's later focus sits somewhere between the overtly
anthropocentric focus on Dasein in B&T and, to put it crudely, the shift to the world
of the object in the OWA. If we view the later rejection of authenticity as enabling a
unitary position within and around “Dasein” and the work of art to occur, then it
follows that Heidegger moved too far in his attempt to redress the errors of OWA in
B&T. What was required was a step back to re-examine the methodological problems
centred on the steadfast acceptance of fundamental ontology, and not a further push
4
forward in its defence. The focus on the work of art as presented in the essay was a
failed attempt to locate the flawed notion of authenticity within the artwork, when it
failed to sit easily with Dasein alone as an undeveloped potentiality in B&T.
It becomes clear that there is an attempt to hold steadfast to the idea of authenticity
and that this is erroneous. If we are to claim that authenticity is determining the
manner and shape of the OWA, how are we to defend this claim? It is an important
claim, because as we will see, there are clear elements being developed in Heidegger's
thought that open a pathway to his later work, as for example the theme of ‘truth
setting itself in the firure’, and yet they are held back. The reason, I argue, is that
Heidegger is trying to fix the broken elements of the early work rather than being in a
position to turn his back on the theme of fundamental ontology.
Looking in a little more depth at authenticity, one of the key demands of the idea is
the need for a kind of self-transcendence. Whilst metaphysics demanded a higher
power as the measure to build upon and aim towards, since Heidegger was trying to
overcome this external element, and since he was still in the shadow of Nietzsche's
Overman, he replaced these external elements with the authentic raising of oneself, to
be one’s own measure. So Dasein has to be its own measure in order to raise itself
above the inauthentic: self-transcendence in place of metaphysics; a form of quasi-
mysticism in place of God. How does Dasein do this? If she is determined by the
inauthentic everyday life which governs her very thought through language, how can
they find a measure that enables them to realise authenticity? Heidegger attempted to
turn to the past as a way to allow for a measure, what he would refer to as a hero of
history, that would enlighten Dasein's choices. Out of what he called the Destiny of
the community, Dasein could find a hero to be the measure.
By the time of OWA however, Heidegger was looking back though his own choice of
hero (Hitler), his own massive failure of judgement, and viewing this reasoning
behind self-transcendence through the lens of Nazism. Self-transcendence through the
past was flawed, and extremely dangerous. It is in this context of the gradual collapse
of the notion of authenticity that Ηeidegger approached the OWA, and art not only his
own saviour, but of the savior of authenticity and fundamental ontology. I do not wish
5
though to further examine here the political controversies and the backlash that
Heidegger’s essay has caused.
The artwork taking the place of Dasein (OWA & Being and Time)
So what has been said above described in general Heidegger’s intentions to find a way
around the problem of fundamental ontology. Let us see in more detail certain themes
in the Origin that betray similarities and differences between these two texts, The
Origin and Being and Time.
Temporality
Existentials
Heidegger thought that he could explain temporality through the artwork this time as
he encountered problems with extracting a sense of temporality out of Dasein’s
existentials which are Dasein’s understanding of its everyday ontic understanding of
beings in the world.
Existentials are those qualities of Dasein that relate her to the everyday world, the
things in our lives that we all have to deal with. Heidegger refers to the existential
analysis of Dasein’s being in the world. The analyses of Dasein’s existentials offers
an alternative to the Nietzschean aesthetics (existentials versus the Overman) and to
the traditional metaphysical thinking about being. The Overman for Nietzche is giving
a transcendent element to how we relate to our world. Existentials link Dasein to the
world in a bodying-forth, attuned manner, replacing the affirmative qualities of the
Οverman with the more ontological in nature concerns with mood and the worldhood
of the world of Dasein. Rather than finding ways to overcome, Heidegger with his
analysis finds ways to all the more intertwine Dasein with its worldhood . In other
words, Heidegger, unlike Nietzche examines these qualities of Dasein that bring it all
the more ‘in’ its world, but not in a calculative manner, something that Nietzsche
already moved towards but nevertheless finds impossible to completely leave to the
world and instead overturns things by creating the Οverman in place of the death of
god. However, what seemed to him to be problematic in his analysis in the second
division of Being & Time, is the fact that extracting temporality from out of Dasein’s
worldhood is untenable. This is because analysing the structure of time on the
6
structure of Dasein only leads to repetition of the structure of metaphysics. Dasein
provides good grounding for thinking ec-static temporality as the structure of time.
Heidegger also spent a good part of Being and Time on resoluteness, the state of
decision for resolute Dasein. In replacing Dasein as the focus, the artwork of course
lacks that sense of existentials as analysed in Being and Time. The artwork does not
have moods or existentials, but the creator and the preservers of the artwork are its
‘existentials’ in a way. Creator and preservers serve in order to create the artwork and
they are the elements that link the artwork to its environment. Even ‘oblivion’ of the
artwork is considered to be preservation by Heidegger.
Ecstatic temporality --> historicity
The OWA provides the first step away from the consideration of ‘ecstatic
temporality’ as the condition for the moment of resolute Dasein. This is because it
makes historicity a more pertinent question. Ηistoricity in “Being & Time was
thought in terms of the constitution of being of the “occurrence” of Da-sein as such”
(BT 17), if Dasein is gone where are we left in terms of historicity? ‘Art grounds
history’ for the Heidegger of the Origin. Art is now providing a different horizon of
possibilities on which to think of history. Historicity provides the conditions for
Dasein to appear. Art is a unique horizon upon which to consider this appearance, as
it has a certain priviledge of bringing life in closer inspection and distance rather than
other domains of human endeavour (such as law, politics, economics) etc. If
historicity means the conditions, historicality is its understanding. The importance of
art lies in the fact that it provides insight into the way something is made rather than
the end-product.
Historicality is made possible as an inquiry into the prior question of art. Historicality
is also a communal horizon on which to think history and destiny, and the great
artwork provides assistance into the realization of the sense of this communal horizon.
How this is achieved differentiates the ‘Heideggerian Aesthetics’ from Nietzche’s
aesthetics.
7
Nietzsche's Aesthetics
In the ‘Origin of the Work of Art’ and in his volumes on Nietzsche, Heidegger clearly
gives precedence to the ‘work’ rather than any other element of the artwork.
Heidegger remarks how little Nietzsche treats the work of art. What the Heideggerian
interpretation extracted from Nietzsche's aesthetics was its character based on a
conception of ‘lived experience’. Heidegger saw a separation between the
Nietzschean conception of becoming and being. Heidegger finds the solution of the
conception of lived experience in the ‘work’ being of the artwork. Through this idea
he examines the possibility of the artwork relating in a more convincing way to its
world. Heidegger sees Nietzsche’s will-to-power as the last metaphysical position
and it becomes imperative then that he has to tackle this problem and find a different
way to approach the problem of the will. From the Heideggerian perspective, even for
Nietzsche, Being had been forgotten and concealed. Nietzsche’s principle of the will-
to-power is the principle out of which art and truth can be conceived. For Heidegger
this brings art and truth into a higher synthesis (Dasein’s resoluteness) and it is
precisely for this reason that Heidegger sees Nietzsche as the last metaphysical
thinker. It is in this sense that Nietzsche for Heidegger belongs to the tradition of the
forgetting of Being. This last transformation of the notion of truth Heidegger sees as
the last metaphysical position on the truth of Being. It remains to be seen whether
Heidegger is able to keep up with this claim and what this means for an account of his
views on art.
Nature of Art in OWA
In the ‘Origin of the Work of Art’ the artwork undertakes the role of revealing the
truth of Being. For Heidegger, it becomes more than just paint and canvas or stone
and shape. Great art for Heidegger takes on the added dimension of “revealing truth”.
The essay has an extraordinary structure which leads from the ordinary way we
encounter things, in our everyday way of understanding, to things as seen when a
‘world’ is opened up by the artwork. But in opening up a ‘world’ Heidegger says that
the artwork also sets forth the ‘earth’. He uses these two ontological concepts in order
to describe the structure of artistic production as an instant where truth as
unconcealment, truth as disclosure comes-to-pass, that is comes to presence. We
8
notice that truth as un-concealment for Heidegger is the condition for propositional
truth. It is not truth as correctness or propriety rather it is the fundamental condition of
these. It is more an ontological model than a system. It is also a non-static process
which exudes fluidity, the fluidity of a happening. This happening of truth involves
what Heidegger calls the ‘opening up of a world’ and the ‘setting forth of the earth’.
The world opened up by the artwork is the showing of relations that usually remain
unnoticed and in the background. The earth is the ever unilluminated ground on
which different worlds take place.
The artwork for Heidegger is an original happening which, while it belongs to the
past, its being has a distinctive openness—what could be described as a thrust—
towards the future. While the artwork opens the present, it also shapes the future in
that it brings a historical people into their destiny and historical endowment.
Heidegger brings the example of the Greek temple. ‘It gives to things their look and to
the people the outlook on themselves’ as he writes in the Origin. As such the work is
seen to entail a certain force, a certain power. This power has previously been
described as the power of the artwork to show the present as the site of the
unintelligible and as such to sketch the future of a historical community. The artwork
serves at once as the rendering visible of the limits of historical knowledge, and at the
same time becomes the instigator of new meaning. The preservers of an artwork i.e.
critics, spectators, art historians philosophers, artists, play an important role in the
historical reception of an artwork. Even if the artwork falls into oblivion that is still a
way of preserving it according to Heidegger.
Heidegger wants to give emphasis on the happening fact taking place with the
artwork, and in its entirety—moment of inception, creation and preservation—and
establish that this entire process consists of the production of the artwork. What is
being considered as an artwork is then not the end-product (the commodity in
Marxian terms), but rather the entire process of the artwork’s ‘coming into B/being’.
As we read through the Origin, Heidegger also displaces the question from how the
artwork is to what it brings forward: ‘the advent of creation itself’. Heidegger says
that what happens during the process of creation can be described in more precise
phenomenological terms as the aspiration on the part of the preservers to get to know
this ‘power’ of the artwork. Heidegger describes the degree of this knowledge
9
schematically in his discussion of ‘world’ and ‘earth’. The artwork affects a historical
community on an ontic as much as an ontological level. On an ontic level the artwork
creates a world by re-arranging and re-organizing previously established relations.
Consider for example how the artwork i.e. Beethoven’s quartets if not used lies like
‘potatoes in the cellar’.
This is achieved through an understanding of the medium of the artwork—Heidegger
could not stress the importance of the medium more than he does in the Origin:
‘”There is something stony in a work of architecture, wooden in a carving, coloured in
a painting, spoken in a linguistic work, sonorous in a musical composition. The
thingly element is so irremovably present in the artwork that we are compelled to say
conversely that the architectural work is in stone, the carving is in wood, the painting
in color, the linguistic work in speech, the musical composition in sound”5. While on
an ontological level it shows how earth (the unintelligible side of things) may be part
of what constitutes the everyday being of the community. Earth serves here in order to
give the scale of the degree of the objectification of the will of the community to
know the ‘willing’ of the artwork. Considering the affect of the artwork then we
might say that by knowing the ‘willing’ of the artwork, this power, the thrust of the
artwork encapsulated in the configuration of the artwork, the preservers realize
precisely this: the un-concealedness of the work, which brings me to my next point of
consideration.
Art now helps to see the issue of ec-static temporality from a different standpoint. So
by the stage of the Origin, the issue of ecstatic temporality is not yet overcome, but
rather displaced. Heidegger has made though considerable steps towards his final
decisive move to abandon it completely. One of my tasks in this article is to help the
reader map his way through Heidegger’s move to abandon it completely.
Fixing of Truth in the Figure
5 OWA p 18
10
Description:Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art, Anastasia Ladopoulou (PhD. Essex) is a researcher in aesthetics and art history specializing in 20th century theory
