BOSTON UNIVERSITY

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Dissertation

AFTER AESTHETICS:

MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND THE END OF ART

by

INGVILD TORSEN

Cand. Mag., University of Oslo, 1997

Cand. Philol., University of Oslo, 2001

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

2008
 UMI Number: 3279973

Copyright 2007 by
Torsen, Ingvild

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© Copyright by
INGVILD TORSEN
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 Approved by

First Reader A ^*v+-*^-^ c'. &*,<.&</-•&

Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Boston University

Second Reader
C. Allen Speight, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Boston University

Third Reader
Richard F. H. Polt, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Xavier University
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am particularly grateful to my first reader and advisor Daniel O. Dahlstrom, for the

knowledge, support, patience and wisdom he has offered while guiding the writing of this

dissertation. I want to thank my other readers, Greg Fried, Richard Polt, Allen Speight

and David Roochnik. In addition, I am indebted to Jacques Taminiaux and John Sallis for

their thoughtful lectures on Heidegger. The research for and writing of this dissertation

was made possible by support from Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, the

Earhart Foundation and the philosophy department and graduate school at Boston

University. For relentless support in matters personal and academic, I wish to thank

Franco Trivigno.

IV
 AFTER AESTHETICS:

MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND THE END OF ART

(Order No. )

INGVILD TORSEN

Boston University Graduate School of Art and Sciences, 2008

Major Professor: Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Professor of Philosophy

ABSTRACT

The dissertation offers an interpretation and defense of Heidegger's thinking on art, in

light of his endorsement of the "end of art" thesis; the thesis that art is over because it has

lost its traditional significance. The dissertation attempts to answer the question, "what

sort of philosophical treatment of art is consistent both with Heidegger's criticisms of

traditional philosophy and his version of the end of art thesis?" The dissertation argues

that, unlike Hegel's classic formulation and Arthur Danto's contemporary

reinterpretation, Heidegger's endorsement of the thesis entails not a philosophical

disenfranchisement of art, but rather a reassessment of philosophical aesthetics, so as to

allow art a future. Taking Heidegger's endorsement of the end of art seriously makes

clear that he cannot have a philosophy of art in the traditional sense, since such an

enterprise would be in conflict with his own recommendations for philosophy.

The starting point of my argument is the apparent contradiction in "The Origin of

the Work of Art" between the account of art as a "happening of truth" and Heidegger's

v
surprising acceptance of Hegel's end of art thesis in the afterword. Two central questions

emerge from this apparent conflict: first, does Heidegger have a general philosophical

account of art? And second, is traditional aesthetics legitimate? According to Heidegger,

the end of art derives not from art as such, but from philosophy's appropriation of art.

This makes Heidegger grow increasingly wary of philosophy's tendency to subordinate

art through aesthetics. Given this wariness, Heidegger's mature thinking on art aims, the

dissertation argues, at a philosophical encounter with art that is neither systematic nor

disenfranchising. Art can be a genuine resource for philosophical thought, though

philosophy cannot determine the nature of art in advance. The dissertation concludes by

surveying Heidegger's reflections on the modernist art of Cezanne, Klee and Chillida as

examples of genuinely philosophical encounters with art.

vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction THE PROBLEM OF ART IN HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT 1

Chapter 1 THE END OF ART AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM 11

1.1.1 Philosophy and the end of art 12
1.1.2 The role of modernism in the contemporary narrative 15
1.2.1 Erlebnis and end of art as consequences of aesthetics 27
1.2.2 Hegel's end of art 34

Chapter 2 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK OF ART 46

2.1.1 The turn to "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" 47
2.1.2 Art as setting-to-work of truth 57
2.1.3 Earth 64
2.2.1 Problems with the art-essay as philosophy of art 78
2.2.2 The use of van Gogh 84
2.2.3 Art for the sake of truth and philosophy 95

Chapter 3 THE METAPHYSICAL DISCIPLINE OF AESTHETICS 104

3.1.1 Metaphysics and the role of history 106
3.1.2 Aesthetics as an aspect of metaphysics Ill
3.2.1 The first philosophical consideration of art: Plato on mimesis 117
3.2.2 Aesthetics subjectivized: Kant on beauty and disinterestedness 132
3.2.3 Hegel, indebtedness and development 146

Chapter 4 ART AND PHILOSOPHY AFTER THE END OF ART 160

4.1.1 Art without artworks (1936-39) 161
4.1.2 Art in the age of technology (1953-56) 166
4.1.3 Heidegger on Greeks and contemporaries (1967) 175
4.2.1 Art without aesthetics 179
4.2.2 Painting after aesthetics. Cezanne and Klee 183
4.2.3 Sculpture and place. Chillida 190

Conclusion WHAT DO WE OWE A WORK OF ART? 195

BIBLIOGRAPHY 205

CURRICULUM VITAE 216

vn
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

D Denkerfahrungen. 1910-1976. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1983.

EM Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik, Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1998.

GA Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1978 -.

The number following 'GA' indicates the volume number. I here identify the
most frequently cited volumes:

GA 5 Holzwege, 7th ed., Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1994

GA 13 Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, 2" ed., Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann,
2002.

GA 65 Beitrdge zur Philosophic (Vom Ereignis), 2nd ed., Frankfurt am Main:

Klostermann, 1994.

GA 66 Besinnung, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1997.

N Nietzsche, vol. I and II, 6th ed., Stuttgart: Neske, 1998.

SvG Der Satz vom Grund. Stuttgart: Neske, 1997.

SZ Sein undZeit. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag 1986.

VA Vortrdge und Aufsdtze, Stuttgart: Neske, 2000.

vm
 1

Introduction THE PROBLEM OF ART IN HEIDEGGER'S THOUGHT

Martin Heidegger tries to capture the remarkable occurrence of the meaning of being -

tantamount to the fact that there is something instead of nothing - by means of the notion

of an event (Ereignis). An artwork is an exemplary instance of an event and offers a

unique occasion for grasping meaning as it comes into being. Hence, it should be no

surprise that Heidegger turns to art, given his perennial concern with "the question of

being."1

However, if Heidegger turns to art in order to address his overarching

philosophical concern, he seems to be guilty of the same charge that he raises against

traditional philosophical aesthetics, that is, of approaching art in a manner that is

predetermined by philosophical concerns that are extrinsic to art, resulting in what Arthur

Danto has aptly called "philosophical disenfranchisement of art." Moreover, intrinsic to

what it is to be an artwork is particularity; the artwork and the way it comes to have a

meaning are inseparable from its specific material, figure, place and historical context.

Hence, art seems to resist any attempt at a philosophy of art, allowing only for

descriptions of individual artworks instead.

Art is both important and problematic for Heidegger. This becomes clear in

different ways in Heidegger's oeuvre and causes tensions within his own thinking. This

1
The way that one question is asked changes quite a bit through Heidegger's thinking. Heidegger's
description of his own work as phenomenology and fundamental ontology is left behind by the 1930s. The
question of "why there is something instead of nothing," which opens Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, is
later, in Beitrdge, dubbed an Ubergangsfrage and not the ultimate way of asking the question of being (cf.
EM, 1,GA65, 509).
2
Arthur Danto, "The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art," in his The Philosophical
Disenfranchisement of Art, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, pp. 1-22.
 2

study takes as its starting point one such tension, which appears in Heidegger's main text

devoted to art, "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes." 3 The text seems to harbor a paradox:

Heidegger grants art the utmost importance but also declares it dead. On the one hand,

Heidegger seems to provide a description of the essence of art and what art is - art is a

privileged way truth happens; art is the setting-to-work of truth; art opens a world to a

historical people. On the other hand, in the afterword to the art-essay Heidegger claims

that until we have freed ourselves from the hold that aesthetics has on our thinking,

Hegel's claim about the end of art is valid, which means that art no longer holds the

significance for thought that it once did, it is not "true" and we cannot hope to come up

with an answer to "the riddle that art is." This apparent contradiction in the art-essay

brings out a problem that is central in my dissertation: a philosophical account of art

looks to be impossible for Heidegger, since the positive descriptions of art seem to be

undercut by the historical considerations in the afterword. At the core of the contradiction

is the end of art-thesis. It is from the perspective of this thesis that I will approach

Heidegger's philosophy. The end of art thesis is central for understanding the history of

the philosophy of art, its future, and the connection between the two.

I approach the problem of the status of art for philosophy by focusing on the

question of its decline and possible death. The end of art thesis is a fruitful way to

approach the status of art, since the announcement of the end of art is the culmination of

3
Martin Heidegger, "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes," in GA 5. Hereafter I will refer to this text as "the
art-essay" for brevity's sake. The essay was written in 1936, first published in 1950, and Heidegger made
several additions to it: the afterword (Nachwort) was added later than 1936 but before the 1950 publication;
the second addition (Zusatz) was added by Heidegger in 1956; and in his 1960 Reclam-edition of the essay,
Heidegger edits several passages. The Gesamtausgabe version also includes the marginalia Heidegger
entered in his Reclam-edition after 1960. The art-essay is in other words a text with several layers, which
continues to occupy Heidegger throughout his career.
 3

the aesthetic tradition according to Heidegger, and consequently the absolute

subordination of art by philosophy. Aesthetics for Heidegger includes any philosophical

reflection on art that approaches the work of art as an object of sensuous comprehension

- as in the Greek 'aisthesis' - and aesthetics is determined by philosophy rather than art.

As philosophical theories of perception change through history, so does the

understanding of the object of aesthetics. The traditions of aesthetics and of metaphysics

are intimately connected. According to Heidegger, the end of art, rather than being

primarily about art itself, is a philosophical thesis and a philosophical problem; as both

Hegel and Heidegger note, art itself continues to "live" even after the proclamation of the

end of art. By clarifying how Heidegger understands the end of art thesis, we can find out

how Heidegger understands the tradition of aesthetics, and only then is it possible to

understand how he imagines the status of art and the status of philosophy of art "after"

the end of art. Situating Heidegger within the debate about the end of art also allows us to

relate Heidegger's thinking to contemporary debates about art, in which the discussion of

the end of art is very much alive. Thus I discuss whether Heidegger can address issues of

our contemporary artworld, as well as to suggest ways contemporary philosophy can

learn from Heidegger.

I now want to briefly address some of what I omit in the dissertation. Most

striking is the absence of a discussion of poetry. Poetry is the art form that engages

Heidegger the most; in the art-essay it is presented as the paradigmatic kind of art, and
 4

writings on poetry clearly make up the largest part of Heidegger's writing devoted to art.4

There are a few reasons why I choose to leave out poetry. One reason is that what I find

particularly valuable, and which represents more of a challenge to philosophy, is the art

that is not already linguistic, that is, the plastic arts.5 The plastic arts resist the conceptual,

and as such resist the language of the philosophical. Hence it is harder to grasp the

meaning of this art in philosophical terms without seriously distorting it. This feature of

the plastic arts rule out the possibility that they could be a final expression of spirit on

Hegel's account. Towards the end of the dissertation I suggest that on Heidegger's

account, this refusal to speak the language of the conceptual might indeed explain why

art can be a "saving power." Another reason I limit the investigation to the non-linguistic

is that the contemporary debate over the end of art is primarily concerned with plastic

arts, in particular the development of painting in the 20th Century. Hence by focusing on

what Heidegger has to say about the status of painting and sculpture, it becomes possible

to bring Heidegger into conversation with the contemporary discourse in aesthetics.6

Another omission is the absence of any discussion of the political in Heidegger's

thought. Heidegger's turn to art coincides with his active political engagement of the

mid-thirties, and in the art-essay the description of the work of the artist is reminiscent of

his description of the political act. Otto Poggeler argues that the turn to art is motivated
4
Of course, this has also resulted in a wide array of secondary treatments already. For various treatments of
Heidegger and the poets see the works of, for example, Lacoue-Labarthe, Veronique Foti, Marc Froment-
Meurice, Gerald Brans.
I will in this dissertation use the term "plastic arts" in its wide sense, i.e. as referring to any visual art,
including painting, sculpture, and architecture.
6
This discourse of philosophical aesthetics is, at least in America, fairly independent and different from the
discourse of poetics and literary theory (which becomes the natural point of comparison for scholars
working on Heidegger's treatment of poetry). The latter is far more influenced by deconstruction and
developments in French post-structuralist thought. This is another reason why the focus on plastic arts is
valuable.
 5

by political concerns; Jacques Taminiaux argues that the development of the art-essay is

parallel to the development of Heidegger's political thinking.7 Since art is necessarily

deeply engrained in the ethos of its time and place, there is no way art could "avoid" the

political, and my omission is in this way problematic. I have two answers to such a

criticism, however. First, I do not think that anything I say about Heidegger's relation to

art is inconsistent with a more political understanding of art. Second, and more

importantly, several issues I do discuss, for example, the role of metaphysics or the

problems of making art or doing philosophy in the age of technology, are in fact political

issues. How we relate to the difficulties of modernism, both in art and in philosophy, and

how we understand the end of art, are also political questions. I hope that this dimension,

if rarely explicitly discussed by this author, will remain on my readers' horizon of

interpretation.

Some readers might also wonder about the way I make use of texts from most of

Heidegger's oeuvre without addressing the vast literature on Heidegger's Kehre. My

central aim is not to put forth a particular thesis about Heidegger's own development. I

do not concentrate on whether he changed his mind about art, or whether everything

Heidegger comes to say about art was all anticipated in earlier work. Instead I want to

pay attention to problems within texts, and show how some problems might be addressed

by other texts. I am less interested in whether Heidegger's development should be

understood as continuation or rejection. Instead, I think that, in the spirit of his

7
Otto Poggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, 4th ed., Stuttgart: Neske, 1994. See especially his
chapter "Der andere Anfang". Jacques Taminiaux, "The Origin o f The Origin of the Work of Art'," in
Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation and Judgment, Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.
 6

understanding of his own philosophy as ways (Wege), it is natural to assume that his

thinking develops and moves in many different directions and that this is in line with

Heidegger's own ambitions and self-understanding. Given Heidegger's understanding of

philosophy, too much worry about break or continuity is "unheideggerian," as it would

presuppose a standard that is inherited from the understanding of philosophy as a system,

a standard foreign to the spirit Heidegger's thinking.8

Heidegger's philosophical engagement with art has received quite a lot of

attention in the secondary literature. The main areas of interest have been the

aforementioned engagement with poetry and interpretation of the art-essay in isolation.

The only author who has approached Heidegger paying particular attention to the end of

art thesis is Giinther Seubold.9 Julian Young, drawing on Seubold's work, also brings in

this perspective.10 The main differences between my approach and Seubold's is that

Seubold takes the presence of the end of art thesis in the afterword to the art-essay as

reason to pay little attention to Heidegger's art-essay or to his understanding of the

history of aesthetics. Instead, Seubold puts forth a developmental view, picking out three

different stages of Heidegger's thought on art, and then emphasizes the status of art in the

"Ich interessiere mich offengestanden nicht fur meine Entwicklung, aber wenn sie zu Sprache kommt,
dann darf man sie nicht kurzatmig aus der Folge von Vorlesungen und dem hier lediglich Mitgeteilten
zusammensetzen. Diese kurzatmige Betrachtung vergiss nach ruckwarts und vorwarts die zentralen
Perspektiven und Antriebe." Heidegger writes this in a letter to Lowith from 1927, as quoted in F.-W. von
Herrmann, Heideggers Philosophie der Kimst, 2nd ed., Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994, p.
33.
9
Giinther Seubold, Kunst als Enteignis, Bonn: Bouvier, 1996. Seubold also makes use of some of this
material on Heidegger in his comparative study, Das Ende der Kunst und der Paradigmenwechsel in der
Asthetik. Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Adorno, Heidegger und Gehlen in systematischer Absicht. 3 r
ed., Bonn: DenkMal Verlag, 2005.
10
Julian Young, Heidegger's Philosophy of Art, Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2001. Eva
Geulen also has a chapter devoted to Heidegger in her The End of Art. Readings in a Rumor after Hegel,
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
 7

last stage. My approach is oriented by the most interesting reflections in Heidegger's

thinking on art, and I do not wish to contribute to discussion of when, where, or whether

one or more Kehre take place in Heidegger's thought.

Further I am indebted to Otto Poggeler's many critical studies of Heidegger; F.-

W. von Herrmann's detailed commentary on the art-essay has also proved very valuable

for my work; and Jacques Taminiaux' many articles on Heidegger, aesthetics and

German philosophy have been very illuminating. I should also acknowledge the

underlying influence of Robert Pippin's work on this dissertation. His thesis about

modernism as a philosophical problem has influenced my thinking about philosophy

since before this project took shape.11 Pippin's position is, briefly stated, that critical self-

reflection is required by philosophy at this point in history, for reasons that are historical,

but internal to philosophy. I basically agree with this view, and it has informed my

interest in Heidegger and the status of Heidegger's project in relation to Kant and his

post-Kantian German predecessors. I think some of the critical problems of philosophical

modernism are especially visible in philosophy's relationship to art, as art acquires the

most prominent place as "the other" that philosophy measures itself against in this time of

self-doubt.

My alignment with Pippin on this point of course also reveals an influence with a

Hegelian flair. The choice of the end of art as a topic already grants Hegel some

relevance. I believe, however, that independent of this interpretative influence, Hegel

This is most explicitly stated in Robert Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem. On the
Dissatisfactions of European High Culture, 2n ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. See
also his collections The Persistence of Subjectivity. On the Kantian Aftermath, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005, especially the introduction, and Idealism as Modernism. Hegelian Variations,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
 8

does loom large over Heidegger's work.12 This becomes apparent when Heidegger turns

to discuss art and history in the 1930s. Heidegger ties the problems of technology and

nihilism in the contemporary situation explicitly to the question of what and how art can

be in our time and this latter question is always raised in the context of Hegel's end of art

thesis. As such, even though Heidegger's work on the history of philosophy

conspicuously avoids Hegel - he turms far more frequently to the Greeks and Kant for

reflection and study - Hegel's influence on Heidegger's understanding of the present and

future possibilities for art and philosophy is unmistakable.

The dissertation has four chapters. In Chapter One, I analyze the end of art thesis

by picking out three distinguishing features that are part of any formulation of such a

philosophical thesis. These are (1) a certain definition of what art is, (2) a certain

conception of history or narrative, in which it makes sense to say that art comes to an

end, and (3) a certain relationship between art and philosophy that enables philosophy to

declare a terminal condition on art's behalf. I then move on to provide a context for the

philosophical declaration of the end of art, both in terms of its history (Hegel's original

formulation) and in terms of how it is understood in philosophy today (especially in the

work of Arthur Danto). The contemporary discussion is particularly concerned with the

meaning of modernist art, since that is understood to be more philosophical than any

previous movement in art, and as such invites reflections on the end and/or future of post-

modern art. Heidegger's endorsement of the end of art is both clarified by and helps to

clarify the different meanings of Hegel's and Danto's respective formulations.

12
Gadamer confirms that Hegel was a long-lasting challenge and fascination of Heidegger's in H.-G.
Gadamer, "The History of Philosophy," in his Heidegger's Ways, Albany: SUNY Press, 1994.
 9

In Chapter Two, I undertake a critical reading of "Der Ursprung des

Kunstwerkes" and attempt to make sense of this text in light of Heidegger's later

endorsement of the end of art. Since the endorsement makes it difficult to understand

Heidegger as having a general, ahistorical definition of art, I proceed to emphasize the

problems for any interpretation of Heidegger's art-essay as embodying a philosophy of

art in a traditional sense. Heidegger's text can only be understood in a consistent manner

if we assume that his ambition in the art-essay is less systematic and general. I discuss

Heidegger's problematic use of a painting by Van Gogh and the limitations of his text

that are brought out by this example. However, there are also interesting aspects of

Heidegger's account, especially the notion of earth, that can be valuable even if we

abandon Heidegger's "definition" of an artwork as grasping the essence of art.

The interpretational difficulties of the art-essay can be resolved, I argue, when one

reads the text in light of Heidegger's understanding of the history of aesthetics, and of his

self-understanding in relation to that history. In Chapter Three, I attempt to make sense of

this history and its meaning. It here becomes clear how Heidegger thinks metaphysics,

through aesthetics, informs the development, understanding and possibilities of art. The

result of this influence is that when metaphysics reaches completion with Hegel, art

comes to an end. The reason art comes to an end, however, is less positive than Hegel

thought - art is replaced not by freedom based in rationality, but by the nihilism of late

modernity, in which art is merely a source of individual Erlebnisse and without truth.

Chapter Four focuses on Heidegger's writing on art and philosophy after the end

of art in order to demonstrate that Heidegger himself thinks any traditional philosophy of
 10

art is impossible or at least misconceived in our time. He does see a positive future for art

after metaphysics and even signals that art can be a resource for philosophical reflection

on the technological age of late modernity. However, the nature of this future post-

aesthetic art cannot be determined by philosophy in advance. Heidegger's growing

interest in modernist art seems to be accompanied by a more explicit distancing from any

philosophical project that can have the name "Kunsttheorie." Judging from Heidegger's

own practice, it seems that art is still a topic for philosophy, but as a source of suggestion,

reflection and speculation for a philosophy without any pretence to a universal

determination of art.

Finally, a note on translation is in order. My quotations from Heidegger's texts

are my own translations. Where such exist, I have sometimes found it helpful to look at

other translations for reference. However, Heidegger's texts are translated by so many

different translators that it would be impossible to use the English versions, since

continuities between texts often gets lost when no standard line of vocabulary is adopted

by the different translations. In addition, any translation of Heidegger becomes an

interpretation due to Heidegger's unusual and difficult use of language. This is also true

of my own translations. I have chosen to stay as close as possible to the German's literal

meaning, which surely has led to sacrifice of style in many instances. Hopefully, this

trade-off is acceptable to my readers. Readers can also easily consult the German, as the

references are always to the pagination of Heidegger's original texts.

13
See especially the two translations of the art-essay by Julian Young and Albert Hofstadter in
(respectively) Off the Beaten Track, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, and Basic Writings,
London: Routledge, 1993.
 11

Chapter 1 THE END OF ART AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM

In the afterword to "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" Heidegger writes:

Lived experience [Erlebnis] is the source supplying standards not only for the
enjoyment of art, but also for the creation of art. Everything is lived experience.
But perhaps lived experience is the element in which art dies. The dying is
proceeding so slowly that it needs a few centuries. (GA 5, 66)

What does it mean when a philosopher, within the context of what looks like a

philosophy of art, suggests that art - the very topic of his thinking - might be dying? This

question provides the vantage point for the interpretation of Heidegger's thinking on art

that I intend to develop in the following study. The question is important because the art-

essay appears to present a definition or theory of great art: great art is a way truth

happens to a people, and it harbors the ongoing "ontological strife" between earth and

world. If Heidegger does think that art is dying, this could be an argument for interpreting

Heidegger's account of art and its essence in the art-essay as a description of something

bygone - a description that fits art in the respective worlds of the ancient Greeks, of the

medieval Christians, and perhaps even of the early modern European bourgeoisie, but not

the art of our world. Hence art as a way truth happens would be a thing of the past, and

Heidegger's essay primarily a nostalgic reflection on a lost artworld.

The thought that art might have reached an end is, of course, one that Heidegger

shares with several thinkers. Most important in this regard is Hegel's formulation of the

end of art thesis in his Berliner lectures on aesthetics, to which Heidegger refers
 12

explicitly.14 Over the last few decades, largely spurred on by the work of Arthur Danto,

talk of "the end of art" has also become commonplace in the contemporary philosophy of

art, and discussions of the end and afterlife of art proliferate within criticism and art

history.

Accordingly, as a means of setting the stage for closer consideration of what

Heidegger says about art's condition, I review the significance of philosophical

pronouncements of art's end more generally in section 1.1.1, and Danto's specific

contribution to the issue in 1.1.2. In 1.2.1, I examine the context in which Heidegger

raises the question of the end of art and propose a way of making sense of his treatment

of it. Since Heidegger seems willing to accept Hegel's thesis about the end of art, the

final part of this chapter, 1.2.2, is an attempt to specify this thesis. The aim of this

opening chapter is to lay the groundwork for reassessing Heidegger's philosophy of art

by demonstrating how, for him as for Hegel and Danto, the issue of art's demise entails

questions of what art is, what philosophy is - especially when it deals with art - and what

role history plays in addressing these questions.

1.1.1 Philosophy and the end of art

As with any expression that is in widespread use in various academic circles and over a

longer period of time, what lies behind the appeal to the end of art varies greatly, from

14
Hegel, G. F. W., Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, vol. 1-11, trans. T.M. Knox, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1975. At times the translation of Hegel will deviate from Knox.
 13

well-founded philosophical theses to desire to shock an audience.15 The obvious problem

facing any formulation of the end of art is that art seems to be very much alive. There is a

steady flow of young people wanting to become artists and of new artworks being made,

and a growing number of institutions are ready to receive them: galleries, art academies

and museums. Two of the new cultural institutions receiving the most attention in the

nineties, Bilbao's Guggenheim and London's Tate Modern, are dedicated to

contemporary art (widely construed to include modernism) and their popularity suggests

that more people go out of their way to experience art in museums than ever before, and

many of these people specifically want to see contemporary art. How could anyone still

maintain that art has reached an end?

Clearly, proclaiming the end of art cannot be a claim about the existence of art,

unless one denies that what is being made today and celebrated in these institutions is art.

This position is not one that I take into consideration in what follows.16 Hegel,

Heidegger, and Danto all recognize that artworks are still being made; the meaning of

art's end is more complex. Before delving into the details of these complexities, I want to

bring attention to certain issues emerging from discussions of the end of art. First, if one

claims that art has reached an end while at the same time recognizing the steady

emergence of artworks, clearly the meaning of art extends beyond the existence of works.

15
Interlocutors in the American discussion include Donald Kuspit, Arthur Danto, and Hal Foster. In the
discourse of literary theory parallel debates on the death of the novel resurface through the last half century,
and poststructuralist and deconstructive approaches radically question the meaning of 'art.'
16
My main reason for dismissing this position is that it is an approach that has already ruled out a huge
portion of what I am interested in: contemporary art. Also, I think such a position represents an illegitimate
arrogance on behalf of philosophy, as it claims that art is not what we usually think and mean art to be. It
would seem more appropriate for philosophy to adjust its definition to its subject-matter rather than to rule
out whatever does not fit its definition.
 14

In other words, the definition of art cannot depend exclusively on properties internal to

the artwork but must somehow also rely on the work's context. In most cases, that means

ascribing to art a specific role or status in society. Second, a notion of history is

indispensable for the end of art to make sense. Whether explicit or not, some underlying

history, narrative or structure must be assumed for it to be meaningful to talk of an end.

The expression "the end of art" presupposes that what art was before was somehow

importantly different from what it is now; to borrow from Hegel, if art is to have a

'before' and an 'after,' it must be inscribed in a history. It is in the light of such a history

that one can say that, in spite of contemporary art, art has come to an end. Third, the end

of art implicitly brings attention to the relationship between art and philosophy. It is after

all philosophers who proclaim the end of art, a fact that might suggest that philosophy

enjoys certain prerogatives over art. However, the legitimacy of the proclamations is

questionable. Here two sets of questions might be posed: first, is art truly at an end, and,

if so, under what understanding of 'art' and 'being at an end'? Second, is the end of art

suggested by art itself, or is it imposed on art from the outside?

These three issues, centered around the notion of art, the notion of history, and the

relation between art and philosophy, bring out different aspects of what "the end of art"

means philosophically. These issues need to be addressed in the case of each philosopher,

17
This would not be the case if the definition of art were a traditional mimetic one - then we could say that
art has reached an end because art has reached its completion (i.e. with photography). Then it would also
make sense to say that much of what is made today is not art, as it is not mimetic. A basic hermeneutic
point that Hegel, Heidegger and Danto all would agree to is that an intentional object like an artwork
cannot be clearly demarcated from its context and its external conditions. To imagine an artwork without
historical context and audience is not really possible. Hence such an understanding of the end of art is not
available to them.
 15

that is, Danto, Heidegger, and Hegel, in order to understand what is at stake when each in

his different way proclaims the end of art.

1.1.2 The role of modernism in the contemporary narrative

The debate about the end of art was rejuvenated in philosophical circles in 1984 when

Arthur Danto published an essay called "The End of Art."18 That essay builds on certain

reflections Danto had made already in 1964 after seeing Andy Warhol's Brillo Box at the

Stable Gallery in New York that year, and the mood the article expresses - a certain

disappointment in the prospects of art as an important "voice" in society - was one that

he shared with other critics, and which had been spreading since the mid-seventies.

The point that Warhol's visually indiscernible copies of commercially

manufactured soap spud containers in Brillo Box makes clear to Danto is that an artwork

cannot be discerned from other things by appeal to its aesthetic (perceptual) properties.

Instead, he claims that to "...see something as art requires something the eye cannot

decry - an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld."19

What is needed to separate Warhol's boxes from the Brillo boxes of the supermarket is

hence no physical, let alone aesthetic, property of the object, but rather the understanding

of the context of the artwork, what Danto calls its artworld. Danto is not here referring to

the institutional conditions of the artwork (although he has later had to demarcate himself

18
Arthur Danto, "The End of Art," first printed in 1984, and reprinted in Danto, The Philosophical
Disenfranchisement of Art, pp. 81-116.
19
Arthur Danto, "The Artworld," The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 61, no.19 (1964), pp. 571-584, p. 580.
 16

from institutionalist art theories such as Dickie's); he recognizes that "museums,

connoisseurs, and others are makeweights in the Artworld" who inform trends, but he

dismisses this as philosophically uninteresting, "a matter of purely sociological

interest."20 The artworld is rather shaped by "...an atmosphere of artistic theories and the

history of recent and remote paintings."

The artworld is also cumulative, meaning that it continues to grow with the

addition of new, groundbreaking artworks. When abstraction enters the artworld, that

world grows larger - now both being abstract and being representative are possibilities

for artworks. Prior to that point in history, the artworld did not seem able to offer

representation or not as options for the artwork (or rather, the artist). This addition also

affects older artworks, according to Danto; he calls this effect "retroactive enrichment,"

in which "[t]he greater the variety of artistically relevant predicates, the more complex

the individual members of the artworld become."22 The expansion of the artworld

enriches all its members; for example, with the advent of abstraction, there is actually

more to say about a typical representational work like Rembrandt's Nightwatch, since

now "is not abstract" becomes another predicate we can ascribe to the painting.

This insight into the indiscernability of artworks and non-artworks prompts Danto

to investigate the ontological problems of art - a task which seemed particularly pressing,
20
Danto, "The Artworld," p. 584. In Danto's eyes, a serious weakness of an institutional theory is that it
cannot account for the problem of indiscernability: "just as someone is a husband by virtue of satisfying
certain institutionally defined conditions, though he might outwardly appear no different form any other
man, so something is an artwork if it satisfies certain institutionally defined conditions, though outwardly it
may appear no different from an object that is not an artwork," in Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the
Commonplace. A Philosophy of Art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 28. This does not
explain, however, why a particular urinal becomes art when Duchamp's Fountain is displayed in a gallery.
Nor does it allow further questions like "Is it a deep or shallow artwork?"
21
Danto, "The Artworld," p. 579.
22
Danto, "The Artworld," p. 583.
 17

since traditional aesthetic theories were unable to come up with a definition of art capable

of incorporating what was happening in the artworld of the sixties and seventies. Danto

treats this problem at great length in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. His

definition can be summarized as follows: art is about something; an artwork has a

meaning, which it embodies. The artworld sets up certain limits for what something can

mean and for what kinds of interpretations are possible.23 Yet, whereas the work of

Transfiguration can be seen as "merely" philosophical analysis, dealing with something

that is a problem for philosophy and not necessarily for art (art is after all still going

strong after Warhol; it is philosophy that falls short when faced with the readymade), the

essay on the end of art makes clear the wider consequences of the indiscernability

problem. The fact that the definition of art has to include reference to an artworld makes

the artwork dependent on history, and on the basis of considering the conditions of art

history in the 1980s, Danto comes to formulate his version of the end of art thesis.24

Until the 20th Century, art history could be told as a history of progress, according

to Danto. This was possible because art was defined as mimetic representation, which

allowed the following story: art was about representation, and it was getting increasingly

better at it. However, a representational theory of art is not general enough to embrace the

artworks of modernism. Instead, these works seem to be increasingly about themselves,

23
This definition is universal, but aboutness and embodiment are historically dependent because of their
dependence on the artworld - cf. e.g. Danto's example of Duchamp's In Advance of the Broken Arm, which
is made up of a snow shovel. It is not possible that the shovel be an artwork, i.e. embody a meaning of its
own, at any point in history. Historically specific elements of Duchamp's artworld are necessary for this
artwork to be different from a regular snow shovel. Put differently, this universal definition of art denies
that a particular artwork is universal or immortal.
24
Note here that the history that is important for Danto's end of art thesis is art history. Danto admits being
influenced by Hegel's narrative of art, but explicitly wants to avoid committing himself to Hegel's account
of history. As will become clearer below, this avoidance of a general theory about history is an important
difference between him and both Hegel and Heidegger.
 18

about what they are and what they are not, as artworks. As we know, Danto thinks Brillo

Box expresses this most pointedly. The only historical implication of this art is that it

calls for philosophy of art, for theory: "virtually all there is at the end is theory, art having

finally become vaporized in a dazzle of pure thought about itself." The Hegelian

language is patent here. When art reaches this level of self-consciousness, it has no

further to go; it has reached its end. There is no appropriate history one can write about

this art.26 One need not be Hegelian to grasp this point; Danto illustrates the end of art by

pointing to art's history. There is no longer one direction for art to move in which will

unify art history into a coherent narrative. The lack of direction will also influence the

future making of art: "art-makers, living in what I will call the post-historical period of

art, will bring into existence works which lack the historical importance or meaning we

have for a very long time come to expect."27

If we connect the definition of art, the end of art, and the understanding of the

artworld, we can see how the three poles of the end of art thesis - art, philosophy and

history - are related in Danto's version of the thesis. Art is defined by philosophy, it has

an essentialist, universal definition, and in its instantiations it has a historical dimension,

the meaning of artworks and their appropriate interpretations depend on the artworld.

Art's history is, according to Danto, structured by a telos which turns out not to be

representation or expression (as it might have seemed in earlier moments of history), but

rather self-definition (made apparent in the moment of modernism). However, with the

25
Danto, "The End of Art," p. 111.
26
Of course, implicit in all this talk about history is that history is not just a sequence of facts, but a
narrative ordered around a standard.
27
Danto, "The End of Art," p. 111.
 19

end of modernism and the event of pop-art, history is made impossible, and art does not

come to full self-consciousness or realize its own definition; this is instead provided by

philosophy. Thus, art as we know it is at an end, art history is at an end, but philosophy is

doing just fine.

That philosophy declares these other two practices at an end should give us pause.

Is Danto himself guilty of disenfranchising art - the accusation he has raised against

traditional aesthetic theories? It is clear already in the artworld-essay that philosophy

has a certain priority over art. We might think otherwise, since Danto emphasizes the

historicity of the various possibilities of art. However, although art's predicates have a

history, like "is abstract," what it is to be an artwork does not. In fact, the plurality of

predicates and their opposites - like "is representational" and "is abstract" - make it clear

that something must be an artwork before anything can be predicable of it.29 In other

words, Danto first supplies us with an essentialist definition of art, which then has a

historical component when applied to the particular artwork. In an attempt to stress that

he is not an anti-essentialist, Danto writes: "[t]he concept of art, as essentialist, is

timeless. But the extension of the term is historically indexed" - in other words that

something embodies a meaning is an essentialist feature; how a particular instance

embodies its meaning is historical.30 In a reply to critics Danto explains his view:

My aim has been essentialist - to find a definition of art everywhere and always
true. Essentialism and historicism are widely regarded as antithetical, whereas I

28
Cf. Danto's "The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art," where Danto argues that philosophy
traditionally has tried to expunge or neutralize art, its greatest rival, through aesthetics.
29
Danto, "The Artworld," p. 583.
Arthur Danto, After the End of Art. Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1997, p. 196.
 20

see them not only as compatible but coimplicated with one another, at least in the
case of art.31

A problem with Danto's view is that when he offers an essentialist philosophical

definition of art, he also declares art to be over - hence history is not really important to

art anymore, as our time is post-historical. Danto seems to recognize this, but perhaps not

as a problem: "After the End of Art is intended to separate art from philosophical

oppression, and leave the task of finding definitions to a practice designed to provide

them. That is as much as philosophy can do for art - to get it to realize its freedom."32

Modernism is the point of reference for Danto's ontological argument, that

artworks cannot be distinguished from other objects by pointing to their physical

properties, and for his historical argument that art has come to an end.33 The historical

period of modernism, perhaps the last great period in art's history, is central to the current

debate over the end of art, since whatever one takes art to be now is thought in relation to

modernism. How one understands this period in the arts influences what one takes the

supposition of an end to entail. Modernism as a period is of course very diverse, but it

seems that within the various arts and their various schools and movements one finds a

shared feature: a heightened sense of self-reflexivity. The period is characterized by

31
Arthur Danto, "The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense," in History and Theory, vol. 37, Theme Issue
37: Danto and His Critics: Art History, Historiography and After the End of Art, (1998), pp. 127-143.
32
Danto, "The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense," p. 135. This is a reply to Michael Kelly's questioning
of the legitimacy of Danto's attempt to dissolve the opposition of essentialism and historicism in both art
and philosophy in Michael Kelly, "Essentialism and Historicism in Danto's Philosophy of Art," in History
and Theory, vol. 37, Theme Issue 37: Danto and His Critics: Art History, Historiography and After the End
of Art, (1998), pp. 30-43. Kelly argues that Danto's strategy amounts to a philosophical disenfranchisement
of art. Jane Forsey also argues that the end of art thesis is at odds with Danto's critique of disenfranchising
theories in Jane Forsey, "Philosophical Disenfranchisement in Danto's "The End of Art"," in The Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 59 (2001), pp. 403-409.
33
'Modernism' here extends to Pop art, which then represents the end of art history.
 21

several manifestos, staking out a new course for art and excluding certain ways of artistic

practice as no longer being within the definition of art. This self-proclamation again

produces a steady stream of new avant gardes, where indeed "being avant garde" seems

to be assumed as an essential component of what true art is.

One particularly influential narrative about modernism is the story of Abstract

Expressionism, especially as articulated by its "house critic," Clement Greenberg.

Greenberg elevates a certain kind of abstract painting as the art form of modernism,

because he offers it a new aesthetics, or, one could say, a new philosophical definition of

art. In his essay "Modernist Painting" from 1960, Greenberg writes "The essence of

Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize

the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its

area of competence."34 This essence of modernism shows itself in painting, where art

starts to draw attention to itself as art. Instead of viewing the limitations of the medium as

a hindrance, the painters of Abstract Expressionism draw attention to them. By doing so,

painting frees itself from externally imposed constraints, objectives or standards. With

abstract expressionism, painting is dedicating itself to what is essentially its own:

flatness, stroke, color and shape. Painting acquires autonomy, freed from the dictates of

the world outside painting (dictates that made themselves felt when painting was

mimetic, or when it served a particular cultural function). The effect of such a critical

examination of its own medium is abstraction:

Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Painting" in The Collected Essays and Criticism, Vol. 4, ed. J. O'Brian,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 85. This is also the context in which Greenberg famously
writes that he views Kant as the first modernist.
 22

To achieve autonomy, painting has had above all to divest itself of everything it
might share with sculpture, and it is in order to do this, and not so much - I
repeat - to exclude the representational or literary, that painting has made itself
abstract.35

At the same time, Greenberg's stress on style makes it hard to imagine a continuation of

this story of painting - what could be more "painterly" than abstract expressionism? How

can any development be understood as anything but decline? With abstract

expressionism, it appears that painting has reached its consummation. Greenberg himself

recognizes the puzzle that his history of modernism poses for the future; at the end of his

1955 essay "American-Type Painting," he writes

The limits of the easel picture are in greater danger of being destroyed because
several generations of great artists have already worked to expand them. But if
they are destroyed this will not necessarily mean the extinction of pictorial art as
such. Painting may be on its way toward a new kind of genre (.. .) 36

Greenberg realizes the internal limitations of developing painting further. However, its

potential end also has consequences external to the medium. The freedom achieved with

Abstract Expressionism also meant a detachment from the discourse of the rest of society.

Art historian and critic Rosalind Krauss, herself a student of Greenberg, opposes

Greenberg's monolithic understanding of modernism. Inspired by structuralist and later

post-structuralist theory, she questions the possibility of stabilizing any meaning in art,

Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Painting," p. 88.

36
Clement Greenberg, " 'American-Type' Painting" in The Collected Essays and Criticism, Vol. 3, ed. J.
O'Brian, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1993, p. 235. Note also how Greenberg seems to recognize
the point which becomes so philosophically fruitful for Danto decades later: "And sometimes it seems - at
first glance - to be no more distance than that [of a hair' breadth] between a great work of art and one
which is not art at all. This is one of the points made by modern art," p. 235.
 23

but, still, she describes this other aspect of the autonomy achieved quite pointedly, here in

the context of discussing the prevalence of the grid in modernist painting:

The barrier it [the grid] has lowered between the arts of vision and those of
language has been almost totally successful in walling the visual arts into a realm
of exclusive visuality and defending them against the intrusion of speech. The
arts, of course, have paid dearly for this success, because the fortress they
constructed on the foundation of the grid has increasingly become a ghetto.
Fewer and fewer voices from the general critical establishment have been raised
in support, appreciation, or analysis of the contemporary plastic arts.37

Krauss, in other words, points to negative effects of this modernist "freedom through

self-criticism." Art erects a barrier between itself and the rest of society when it turns to

formalism. This isolation of art remains even after Abstract Expressionism. Even if

Krauss is skeptical both of Greenberg's singling out of one canon and one story of

modernism, as well as of Danto's emphasis on meaning in his definition and

interpretation of art, she recognizes the detachment from the rest of life and world which

characterizes the end of art. These three influential, but very different, theorists all

recognize some lack in the artworld post modernism, the period Danto deems post-

historical.

Today artists are free to take up any medium - including figurative painting - and

any goal, be it internal to art or art theory, or explicitly political or social, for example.

Together with the fact observed by Danto that anything can be art, in the sense that there

is no visible feature of the artwork that can separate it form any other thing, this extreme

freedom of art poses an enormous challenge to history writing as well as traditional

Rosalind Krauss, "Grids", in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths,
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985, p. 9.
 24

aesthetics. The framework for writing art history seems exploded, as we cannot isolate a
•jo

direction or telos that can order the story of art. Aesthetics is challenged because neither

the traditional mimetic function nor the expressive aesthetic theories of the early 20th

century (who were the first reactions to modernist art in the realm of philosophical art

criticism) nor Greenberg's style or form - three philosophical responses to art that all

thought themselves to make advances in capturing the essence of art - can comprehend

and unify all that is made in the artworld.

Reflected in discussions of the end of art today are different understandings of the

situation of art in the aftermath of modernism. To what extent is the pluralism of today a

sign that art has no purpose? And is a loss of direction really a loss for art? Is it perhaps

primarily art history and aesthetics that struggle in the absence of a greater coherence and

direction? Or is the end of art thesis an attack on art from philosophy, which, unable to

explain art, instead makes art dependent on theory, by declaring art a thing of the past? In

his criticism of Danto, Noel Carroll questions Danto's teleological understanding of

modernism, so central to Danto's end of art thesis. To rephrase his point, we can ask why

it is that self-definition has to be the last and highest goal of art history? Why cannot

some other project take over now?39

Hans Belting offers an interesting discussion of the challenges and tasks facing the discipline of art
history - a discipline that was born out of the historicist movement of the early 19th century - in his Art
History after Modernism, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003.
39
Noel Carroll, "The End of Art?" in in History and Theory, vol. 37, Theme Issue 37: Danto and His
Critics: Art History, Historiography and After the End of Art, (1998), pp. 17-29. This brings out an
important difference between Danto and Hegel (and, by extension, Heidegger): Danto does not want to
commit to a philosophy of history of Hegel's kind, but this in fact weakens his case when claiming the end
of art, as the history he bases his argument on is precisely art's history. Hegel's history is a story of
consciousness, and self-consciousness seems more like natural telos for consciousness than for art. As
Kelly points out, comparing Danto's Bildungsroman with Hegel's: "Danto has invented a strange subgenre,
one where the protagonist (here, art) searches for its identity by trying to attain self-understanding, but in
 25

I have stressed how modernism (and especially the experience of it as a bygone

era) is decisive for the meaning, and the popularity, of the contemporary discussion of

end of art. Heidegger, however, can be said to live in and with modernism. Even though

Heidegger is still alive when Danto experiences the Warhol boxes in New York in 1964,1

think it is safe to say that the then 75 year old Heidegger does not really have an

experience of modernism as an art movement coming to an end or of it being replaced by

what Danto deems "post-historical art."40 Clearly, the end of art cannot be motivated by a

discovery similar to Danto's, as the problem of indiscernibles or the locus of art history

after modernism are not on Heidegger's agenda. But still we will see important parallels:

when he asks if art is slowly dying, Heidegger too is motivated by shortcomings in art

history and in aesthetics' definition of art.

What was part of Heidegger's German artworld, however, was the attack on

modernist art in the first decades of the 20th century. Modernism, with its international

orientation and influence, was attacked as "un-German" already around the turn of the

century, primarily as part of an attempt to establish an alternative, genuine, German art.

In his book The Germans and their Art, the German art historian Hans Belting shows

how the debate over art in Germany was always part of a political debate over national

the end it is the antagonist (here, philosophy), who attains the understanding" Kelly, p. 35. This end to the
story does not seem to amount to freedom.
40
As this comment suggests, I understand Heidegger as a modernist thinker - which is not necessarily
irreconcilable with the anti-modern sentiments Heidegger seems to express at times - and, as will become
clearer in the course of this dissertation, as a thinker for whom modernist art was indeed of importance. For
an account of Heidegger's exposure and interest in contemporary art, cf. Heinrich Wiegand Petzet, Auf
einen Stern zugehen. Begegnungen mit Martin Heidegger 1929 bis 1976, Frankfurt: Societats-Verlag, 1983.
 26

identity.41 By the time the National Socialists were in power in the thirties, this debate

had been turned into propaganda, with so-called "degenerate art" {entartete Kunst) being

expelled from art museums.42 The painters Heidegger is interested in - Van Gogh,

Cezanne, Paul Klee - are all part of the modernist (and in most cases French) artworld

that the nationalist, conservative German art movement resisted. It is unlikely that

Heidegger did not reflect specifically on modernism, given the prominence of the debate

over art in society around him.

We now have a sense of how the discourse on the end of art, as initiated by the

work of Arthur Danto, concerns the relationship between art, philosophy, and history

(and this complicated triangular relationship includes art history, philosophy of art, and

history of philosophy). In the following we will start to get a sense of how these three

also structure Heidegger's questioning of the end of art, although in a somewhat different

manner. Working ourselves backwards, we will see how Heidegger takes up Hegel's

thesis about the end of art, but without directly taking over Hegel's conception of art,

Hans Belting, The Germans and their Art. A Troublesome Relationship, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1998. Belting stresses how important art has been for shaping German identity from the Romantics
and onward (in fact, he traces the discussion back to Durer in his relation to Italian art). This is important to
put both German philosophy of art, and the "aesthetics" of Nazi politics into perspective: "If we see the
prohibition and persecution of avant-garde as a phenomenon isolated to Nazi Germany, then we would be
ignoring the history of those relevant issues leading up to it. We would be ignoring the fact that all the
arguments for a 'timeless German artform' and against contemporary modern art had already been
formulated much earlier," p.69.
The effect of the attack on modernist art was paradoxical: Expressionism was banned as degenerate,
although with Expressionism, the Germans finally had an art movement with a particular German style,
precisely what the conservative side of the earlier debate had always wanted. Also paradoxical is of course
the enormous turnout prompted by the exhibition of the "cultural decline" represented by modernist art,
which was far greater than that of the parallel exhibition of Nazi-approved art.
43
For a survey of the wider political and intellectual climate surrounding Heidegger before the war, see
Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.
 27

history or philosophy. I will now return to Heidegger's way of raising the question of the

end of art.

1.2.1 Erlebnis and end of art as consequences of aesthetics

Heidegger raises the question of the end of art in the context of a description of

aesthetics. Heidegger states that aesthetics is a particular way of observing art.

Throughout the history of aesthetics, the artwork is approached as an object for sensuous

perception only. "Today one calls this perception 'the lived experience' [das ErlebenW

he writes (GA 5, 67). Erlebnis, which I translate "lived experience," is central for

Heidegger's take on the end of art thesis. Heidegger attributes the problems of

contemporary art to the discipline of aesthetics, which in his time takes the form of an

emphasis on individual experience. Heidegger continues:

The manner in which humans experience art should provide information about
the nature of art. Lived experience is the source supplying standards not only for
the enjoyment of art, but also for the creation of art. Everything is lived
experience. But perhaps lived experience is the element in which art dies. (GA 5,
67)

The end of art comes up in the context of a description of the contemporary manner of

relating to art. It is the aesthetic element in which art exists that might cause it to die.

Heidegger claims that lived experience provides the standard for both appreciation and

production of art, and suggests that this might have detrimental effects on art. Already

this reveals a similarity between Heidegger and Arthur Danto. Heidegger emphasizes the
 28

importance of what Danto calls the artworld. The meaning, or the vitality, of art is not

solely a property of the artwork in isolation, but is rather dependent on the aesthetic

framework in which it is made and encountered. This means that how we make art and

how we appreciate art, and consequently what counts as artworks, depend on how we

understand the appropriate aesthetic relation to the works of art. It is Heidegger's thesis

that the aesthetic relation between people and works changes through time, and the

current way of relating to art is that of Erlebnis, or lived experience.

Before moving on to analyzing the artworld dominated by Erlebnis, I want to note

some similarities between Heidegger and Danto's ruminations. Danto's artworld is made

up of the canon of artworks; the history or theory that accounts for why the things

included in the canon are artworks; and the institutions that produce and preserve

artworks. Like Danto, Heidegger stresses the way in which context - always a particular,

historical and social context - makes art possible and simultaneously restrains art.

Heidegger, however, puts a particular emphasis on aesthetics, suggesting that theory can

thoroughly determine our relationship to art and hence the meaning art can convey to us.

Heidegger's worry, that the result of the power aesthetics has over art is art's death,

seems to recognize the same disenfranchising tendency Danto accuses philosophy of

displaying in relation to art.44

Just as the charge of disenfranchisement has been directed against Danto, Heidegger also does not
automatically escape his own criticism. It is the further goal of this project to show that what Heidegger
says about the death of art can also be taken to undermine, or at least weaken, the view of art Heidegger
puts forth in the art-essay. On the similarities between Heidegger and American philosophers of the
artworld, cf. Daniel Dahlstrom, "Heidegger's Artworld" in ed. Karsten Harries and Christoph Jamme (ed.),
Martin Heidegger: Politics, Art, and Technology, New York: Holmes & Meier, 1994, pp. 130-138.
 29

Heidegger of course also has a more positive conception of the world of the

artwork; in "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes," the meaning of art is precisely revealed in

the world it opens up. This world, however, is a consequence of the happening of the

artwork, and I want to focus on the artworld that precedes the artwork. The problem the

afterword of the art-essay poses, by raising the question of the end of art, is precisely

whether the context of modern art, that is, philosophical aesthetics, makes it impossible

for art to open up a world in the positive sense described in the main body of the same

essay.45 Like Danto, Heidegger attributes the end of art to philosophy, but whereas Danto

sees art's dependence on philosophy as a fact, Heidegger clearly accuses philosophy, in

the form of modern aesthetics, of doing violence to art.

What does it mean for aesthetics to be characterized by lived experience? And

why is an aesthetics emphasizing life tied to art's death? The word Erlebnis is not neutral

for Heidegger; as we see from the tone in the paragraph quoted above, there is a certain

disdain towards the importance and pervasiveness of this kind of experience. The

German Erlebnis has a stronger emphasis on the individually lived aspect of experience

than the more neutral Erfahrung. Whereas experiences of the latter kind can take many

shapes, the former suggest a certain personal engagement; Erlebnisse are what you have

on vacation, in the theatre, or in adventure parks. In Beitrage, which Heidegger is also

working on in the late 1930s, Erlebnis is presented as the correlate to machination

(Machenschaft). The context for this discussion is the investigation of the oblivion of

45
To reiterate the point I made at the outset, this is what makes an interpretation of Heidegger's
understanding of the end of art so crucial. If Heidegger accepts the end of art thesis, this seems to seriously
undercut, or at least narrow the scope of, the "philosophy of art" put forth in the main body of the art-essay.
 30

being in Heidegger's time, which, he claims, avoids any serious self-reflection and

instead turns to "cheap 'contemporary critique' (Zeitkritik) and 'psychology'" (GA 65,

110). Machination is the mastery of production and the produced, which is the relation

that dominates how people understand beings and being in Heidegger's present. The

description of machination in Beitrdge anticipates the critique of a technological

approach to our surroundings put forth in the 1954 essay "Die Frage nach der Technik."46

With production and mastery as the paradigm for understanding Dasein's relations,

being, as something that withdraws from human manipulation and control, becomes ever

more concealed from us. Conversely, man becomes less prone to question or to think, and

believes himself to be unsurpassable in his self-certainty. In this age, we do not feel the

need to ask ourselves who we are or where we are going (GA 65, 125).47

The important point for the present consideration is the fact that machination goes

hand in hand with the celebration of lived experience. While on the surface lived

experience appears to be the opposite of the technological mindset, both are products of

the same understanding of being. On this understanding, being is only present as being-

for or being-subject-to - all beings are there for the subject, either for its enjoyment or

manipulation (GA 65, 131). In this way, the subject casts a shadow over the significance

of being; things are devalued inasmuch as they have meaning only with respect to their

usefulness for Dasein. Lived experience is the basic kind of imagination of machination.

Anything worth questioning is transformed into a lived experience; what has secrets is

46
Martin Heidegger, "Die Frage nach der Technik" in Vortrage und Aufsdtze, pp. 9-40.
47
The importance of this dominant mindset is discussed further in Chapter Four, where it is central to
understanding the status of modernist art and this art's ability to reveal truth.
 31

made public and vulgar. The flip-side of the utilitarian mindset of technology is trite

sentimentality; in this time, every undertaking and every event is "lived" (GA 65, 123).

In the essay "Overcoming of Metaphysics," lived experience is characterized as "the

unconditional lack of contemplation."48

The comments on machination and lived experience in Beitrdge do not constitute

merely criticism of contemporary culture; for Heidegger, the roots of the current

problems, as well as the proper response to them, point to underlying philosophical

problems. Heidegger's Kulturkritik is rooted in philosophical, historical analysis. In

Beitrdge, Heidegger appears still to be working out this project. The sections on Erlebnis

in Beitrdge have a certain unfinished character. In section 66, Heidegger seems to list

points for further investigation - one reads: "To what extent the experiencing [Erleben] is

an end (because it confirms machination unconditionally)" (GA 65, 131). In a footnote to

section 69, this task, to find out whether the domination of machination and lived

experience constitutes the end point (presumably of Western history and culture) is again

reiterated, seemingly as a reminder to the author. The task is never taken up, or developed

into a substantial argument. However, understood in the context of the list of signs of the

abandonment of being, the passages from Beitrdge might provide some guidance for

interpreting the comment on the end of art: "Art is subjugated to cultural utility and its

nature is misunderstood; the blindness of the core of its nature, the manner in which it

grounds truth" (GA 65, 117). This blindness is a symptom of the end of art. The current

Martin Heidegger, "Uberwindung der Metaphysik" in Vortrdge undAufsatze, pp. 67-96, (VA, 83).
 32

climate seems to leave no future for art. Through the course of the next two chapters, it

will be clear how we reached this end-point.

Heidegger's insistence on the pervasiveness of lived experience in his

contemporary culture is confirmed by the popularity of so-called philosophy of life at the

time, in Germany referred to as Lebensphilosophie or Erlebnisphilosophie. In the early

20th century, particularly in the decade after the first world war, this direction in

philosophy was especially popular outside academia, promoted by (quite unlike) figures

like Spengler and Scheler. Heidegger makes a point to distance himself from this

philosophy, and his caustic comments on lived experience are presumably also directed at

the more academic celebrations of Erlebnis.

When Heidegger in the afterword to the art-essay asks if lived experience is the

element in which art dies, this question relates to his wider philosophical critique of the

age. The question about the end of art is symptomatic of a certain intellectual atmosphere

that dominates at the time. The way art is perceived reveals a deeper problem: the

oblivion of the question of being. For Heidegger, the source of the end of art is to be

found in our attitude towards art, in what Heidegger calls the element in which art lives,

and not in the artwork itself. Of course these two - art's element and works of art -

cannot be clearly demarcated, as the manner in which we approach art influences what an

artwork is and can be, but the emphasis on lived experience as a threat to art points us

toward a wider aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical problem. The contemporary

49
Heidegger distances himself from the life-philosophy of Bergson and Dilthey at the very beginning of
Sein undZeit (SZ, 46). Note also how Husserl and Scheler are criticized in this context, for remaining
within the framework of a traditional anthropology even as they conduct their phenomenological "negative
interpretation of personality" (SZ, 47, 47n).
 33

aesthetic perception is lived experience, according to Heidegger. From the

characterizations of lived experience in Beitrage, we can then infer that he means that art

is enjoyed as something which generates personal experience - feeding people's

"Erlebnis-Trunkenboldigkeit" just like the mass entertainment of cinema and beach

vacations.50

In his own edition of the 1960 Reclam edition of the art-essay, Heidegger has

added two comments to his paragraph on lived experience and the end of art. In the first,

he raises two questions: "Does modern art escape from the custody of lived experience?

Or is what we experience just changing so freely that the lived experience is even more

subjective than before?" (GA 5, 67n). Heidegger's first question is presumably referring

to the development of modernism in the arts, which by 1960 seem quite different from

the art of the thirties. Especially in painting, the widespread use of abstraction suggests an

art that is less susceptible to be interpreted along the lines of lived experience. However,

Heidegger appears to undercut this possibility with his next question, implying that even

the freedom of modernist art can be understood along the lines of lived experience.

Without knowing what he has in mind, we can imagine that the many manifestos, avant

gardes, and transgressions can be understood as providing ever new highs for an art

audience still infatuated with lived experience. The second comment Heidegger makes is

directly concerned with the end of art. Here Heidegger stresses that when he questions

whether art is slowly dying, this should not be taken as saying that art is at an end

50
"... eben da, wo man wieder Ziele zu haben glaubt, wo man wieder "glucklich" ist, wo man dazu
tibergeht, die bisher den "Meisten" verschlossenen "Kulturguter" (Kinos und Seebadereisen) allem "Volke"
gleichmassig zuganglich zu machen, eben da, in dieser larmenden "Erlebnis"-Trunkenboldigkeit, ist der
grosste Nihilismus..." (GA 65, 139)
 34

schlechthin. "That would only be the case if lived experience remained the element of

art," he continues (GA 5, 67n). This comment is important to note, because it makes clear

that Heidegger does not mean that a proclamation of the end of art needs to be definite.

Only if there were no other way for art to be would that be the case.

Heidegger questions the contemporary jargon of the artworld, which describes art

as immortal and of eternal value. Heidegger challenges us to ask whether this talk

actually has any force, or whether these are just empty phrases, spoken "in a time when

great art and its essence has left human beings?" (GA 5, 68). The echo of Hegel's original

statement of the end of art thesis is obvious, and the rest of Heidegger's comments on the

end of art also explicitly address Hegel's thesis. The claim that lived experience is not

necessarily the only element possible for art and accordingly that death need not be the

fate of art is important for our interpretation of what the end of art means for Heidegger,

and what role this question plays within Heidegger's philosophical treatment of art. This

claim also marks a point where Heidegger seems to diverge from Hegel's original

formulation of the thesis. Since both Heidegger and Danto are informed by Hegel's

original formulation in their development of the end of art thesis, it is now time to turn to

Hegel.

1.2.2 Hegel's end of art

After having raised the question of the death of art, Heidegger turns to Hegel, calling his

lectures on aesthetics "the most extensive reflection on the essence of art we have in the
 35

West, because it is thought on the background of metaphysics" (GA 5, 68). Heidegger

then quotes three sentences from Hegel's introduction to the lectures: "For us, art is no

longer the highest manner, in which truth acquires existence"; "One can hope that art will

continue to advance and become even more complete, but its form has ceased to be the

highest need of Spirit"; "In all these respects art, considered in its highest vocation, is and

remains for us a thing of the past."51 These statements express Hegel's end of art thesis.

A verdict on the validity of Hegel's thesis has not yet been reached, according to

Heidegger (GA 5, 68).

Hegel is important for our purposes, not just because his is the first formulation of

the end of art thesis, but also because Hegel enjoys such a prominent position in

Heidegger's later reflection on his own work in the art-essay. Heidegger stresses that the

further production of artworks after Hegel's last lectures on fine art in 1829 is no

argument against Hegel's thesis - again, the question is not about the existence of

artworks. Instead, the question remains, according to Heidegger: "Is art still an essential

and necessary manner in which decisive truth happens for our historical Dasein, or is art

not this anymore?" (GA 5, 68). Heidegger's way of phrasing Hegel's question is

interesting, because of its ambiguity - is it Heidegger's gloss of Hegel, using the

vocabulary Heidegger has himself developed in the art-essay, or is it an

acknowledgement that this question can make sense within Heidegger's own art-essay?

In any case, by using his own language, Heidegger draws a parallel between his own

"definition" of art from the art-essay ("art is a way truth happens for a people") and that

51
Hegel, Aesthetics, pp. 103, 11.
 36

of Hegel's aesthetics, at least in the sense that the question of the end of art can be

translated into Heidegger's own vocabulary. Heidegger's understanding of Hegel is

hence an important interpretative tool for finding out how Heidegger assesses his own

philosophical work on art. This task also takes on a larger significance because Heidegger

claims that Hegel's thesis is a result of Western thinking since the Greeks. Hence the end

of art thesis expresses a certain way of thinking about the truth of beings. If and when we

pass a verdict on Hegel's thesis, it will also be a verdict on this way of thinking. This

shows us that the question of the end of art takes on enormous importance for Heidegger:

it is indeed a question about Western philosophy as such. Art plays an important

diagnostic role, inasmuch as it reveals the condition of philosophy. Heidegger further

claims that until we have passed our own verdict on Hegel's thesis, it remains true. This

amounts to saying that until we are able to make a decision about the end of art, which is

also a decision about our relation to the tradition of Western thinking, we live in the

shadow of Hegel.

Hegel announces the end of art in the popular lectures on aesthetics, which he

gave in Berlin in the 1820s.52 As with Danto and Heidegger's theses, there are three

aspects to Hegel's announcement: it depends on a certain definition of art, it gives

expression to Hegel's conception of history, and it thematizes the relationship between

52
Cf. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Einfiihrung in Hegels Asthetik, Munchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2005.
Gethmann-Siefert here gives an overview of the available source material and the rather extensive editorial
work that lies behind the text(s) that we today read as Hegel's aesthetics. Since Hegel never wrote a
manuscript for publication (which he expressed interest in doing), and also never finished reworking or
adding to his aesthetics in his lifetime, Gethmann-Siefert suggests thinking of the aesthetics as a "work in
progress," p. 18. The text published after Hegel's death gives a false impression of a closed, thoroughly
worked through system where there is no place for revision, which she suggests might be the result of
Hegel's publishers and editor wanting to "secure" Hegel's complete philosophy for posterity. According to
Gethmann-Siefert, Hotho admits that the systematicity of the work has its source in his editing process, not
in Hegel's own presentation of the material.
 37

art and philosophy. I will start by looking at the second aspect, since the narrative that

allows Hegel to proclaim an end cannot be understood without some understanding of

what history is for Hegel. Hegel's conception of history reflects the growing interest in

history in the Enlightenment, but his interest in history is not reducible to mere curiosity

about past events or to a historicist view.53 History is to be understood as structured by

one "moving force" according to Hegel: the development of spirit, or the historical

human intellectual activity as a whole. Spirit is reason as historically effective. The

various periods in human history can be understood as stages in Spirit's development;

history is reason's progress towards its full realization. This means that we can only

understand a certain period or event in light of its historical situatedness, but it also

means that the course of events take on meaning and form a coherent narrative through

the principle that unites them. Hegel's dialectic, which can be understood formally (logic)

but also quite concretely (phenomenology), is the structure of the historical narrative, the

narrative of thought's development from potentiality to actuality, that is, the history of

spirit's struggle towards self-consciousness and freedom. One can say that history is

philosophy for Hegel, since the "main character" in history is thinking, just like thinking

is the subject of philosophy.54 The science of logic is parallel to the science of history in

that they are both examples of reason trying to think itself, and achieve full self-

consciousness and freedom.

The historicist view would stress the importance of historical context - cultural, religious and political -
for understanding past events in human history, and was careful to avoid the essentialism or anachronism of
earlier enlightenment history writing. Hegel's view is clearly indebted to this flourishing of the discipline
of history, but he is philosophically even more radical.
54
This is an important difference between the teleological narratives of Hegel and Danto.
 38

Art has its role and definition within this larger narrative. Art is present in every

stage of history, but its role changes relative to spirit's search for freedom. Its task,

however, is always the same: to present spirit to itself, in order to bring to our minds and

express "the divine, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths

of the spirit."55 In the Phenomenology, art plays an important role in the chapter on

religion, where it is part of various "mythologies," that is, the different religions'

accounts of the world as a whole. In the case of Greek antiquity, the artwork is religion,

in the sense that the gods of the Greeks are present in the sculptures in the temple, and in

the words of the epic. Art is not just an illustration of an already present, independent

religion; art and religion are one. Art's role is also practical here: it is "universal Spirit

individualized and set before us."56 This early view of art is paralleled in the systematic

account of art that Hegel offers later in the Encyclopedia, which he edits for the last time

in 1830.57 In the Encyclopedia, art is described as manifestation of the abstract idea of

spirit in reality as an ideal. Art is, in other words, a sensuous form of spirit. In the system,

art is the first, and lowest, form of absolute spirit, which is then surpassed by the higher

forms of religion and philosophy. Art is a way the idea, or truth, is present in the world -

as an Ideal. This definition might sound abstract, but it is in fact a definition of art that

emphasizes art's practical function. Art is given meaning through its practical effect in

the community, since artworks enable reflection and a shared spirit for individuals in a

Hegel, Aesthetics, p.7.

56
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A.V. Miller, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 427.
G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopadie derphilosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830), vol. I-III, in
Hegel, Werke, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999.
 39

community. Art is a middle term between nature and thought, between finitude and

freedom. This systematic account of art is visible as structuring the lectures on aesthetics.

In the Aesthetics, we see both the formal and the historical-phenomenological

aspect of the definition of art at work. It offers us both the historical development of art

and the formal definition of art as the ideal, recognizable at each historical moment. We

have a metaphysical foundation coupled with a speculative art history. Since Spirit

provides art with content, art will change substantially through the history of spirit. Hegel

identifies three forms of art, based on the relationship between content and expression, or

idea and shape: the symbolic, classical, and romantic. The particular kinds of art - like

architecture, sculpture and poetry - are also differently suited to express different content,

so that at different stages of history different kinds of art are more dominant as

expressing spirit.

In symbolic art, art is the concretization of an idea that is still not clearly

formulated. The physical shape is external to the idea, as the abstract and the concrete are

not yet unified. Hence art is symbolic, in that the relationship between the physical shape

and the idea of the work is arbitrary. The paradigmatic kind of symbolic art is

architecture, as seen, for example, in the metaphorical presence of divinity in religious

buildings. The material of an architectural artwork is external to the idea of the artwork.

The classical art-form, however, unites meaning and shape, as the spiritual inner life

makes itself at home in the external material.58 Hegel's favorite example of classical art is

the Greek sculpture, in which the human form is not just a symbol of spiritual existence;

Hegel, Aesthetics, p.85.

 40

rather, the human form and the spiritual existence are one in the Greek worldview. Spirit

is determined as particular and human. However, as spirit moves towards self-

consciousness - as it becomes absolute spirit - it can only adequately exist as spirituality

and inwardness. In the romantic form that replaces the classical, there is again distance

between idea and its reality, since there is no appropriate physical representation of spirit

at this stage. Poetry is the paradigmatic form of romantic art, because it gives room for

inner thought and feeling, and is not restricted by sensuous material.

But even poetry is surpassed, Hegel claims; "at this highest stage [of poetry], art

now transcends itself, in that is forsakes the element of a reconciled embodiment of the

spirit in sensuous form and passes over from the poetry of the imagination to the prose of

thought."60 It is when this happens, when spirit goes beyond even the romantic art-form,

that Hegel's thesis about the end of art is shaped. Just like there is a 'before' art, there is

an 'after', according to Hegel; "the 'after' of art consists in the fact that there dwells in

the spirit a need to satisfy itself solely in its own inner self as the true form for truth to

take."61 Art is no longer sufficient, because art cannot express the abstract thought that

characterizes the spirit of high modernity. The form of art limits what content it can

express. Art will always be external to our mind - even in the case of poetry - and only

thinking can allow us the unity that is necessary for self-consciousness. At the time when

59
That poetry is not restricted by its material is clearly a controversial point, since Hegel here seems to
deny that there is any physical nature to poetry (or language in general), i.e. that the sounds, as perceived in
ones ear or on ones tongue, or the writing on the page have any role to play in the artwork. To claim
something like this seems especially problematic in light of the development of poetry in modernism, of
which Hegel was of course unaware. The claim also sets him off from Heidegger, who would claim there is
alterity or what will be discussed in Chapter Two as "earth" also in language.
60
Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 89.
61
Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 103.
 41

Hegel is giving his lectures, religion has freed itself from its dependence on its physical

representation in artworks, and in fact even religion has been surpassed as the highest

mode of self-reflection for Spirit. Religion is replaced by science, that is, Hegel's own

philosophy - a logic independent of the need for a synthesis with something material or

representational outside of itself. In the future, people will find their spirit expressed in

this science, and art - from the perspective of the grand narrative of spirit - has reached

its end. Artworks at this stage arouse a need for something higher, and "the impression

they make is of a more reflective kind."62 This is the context of the passages Heidegger

quotes from Hegel.

The proclamation of the end of art could be taken to mean that Hegel's expansive

aesthetics undercuts the importance of its very topic. We appear to be faced with an

extreme example of what Arthur Danto has referred to as philosophy's

disenfranchisement of art. Through a systematic analysis of art's definition (given to art

by philosophy), philosophy supplies art with a certain historical meaning and role which

leads to art's end, when its purpose - expressing truth - is better achieved by philosophy.

Of course, the outcome of this narrative could be known even before Hegel presented his

history of art, as he defined art as incomplete with respect to philosophy at the outset. It is

precisely the end of art that calls for a philosophy of art: Hegel's aesthetics is necessary

because art "has lost for us its genuine truth and life"; it has been "transferred to our

ideas," and from there it "invites us to intellectual consideration, and that not for the

Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 10.

 42

purpose of creating art again, but for knowing philosophically what art is." At the end

of art, art is replaced by theory - much like Arthur Danto claims more the 150 years later.

Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert claims that the end of art thesis is one of the

greatest hindrances for Hegel's philosophy of art to be understood as relevant for today's

discourse on art.64 One the surface, it seems like a theory that declared art as at least

intellectually passe almost two centuries ago will have little to contribute to anyone

interested in contemporary art. However, Gethmann-Siefert stresses the cultural function

of art as Hegel's main concern, and claims that this is what changes with the end of art

thesis: art no longer grounds our whole culture in the way it did for the Greeks; however,

it stills communicates a historical consciousness which is not complete, but rather calls

for critical reflection.65 The historical function of art in modernity is still "formal

education" of its audience, but not complete identification, as in the case of the beautiful

artwork of classicism for example.66 Gethmann-Siefert in this way downplays the

importance of the end of art thesis, claiming that it must be understood relative to Hegel's

understanding of the present. At the same time, she seems to be operating with a notion

63
Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 11.
64
The other hindrance Gethmann-Siefert notes is classicism, or what she calls a platonic aesthetics, where
art merely serves to give a physical manifestation of an idea, which does not need art, and in the end is
better conveyed without art (i.e. by philosophy or thought). On this definition, beauty is a successful
physical representation of an idea. Cf. Gethmann-Siefert, Einjuhrung in Hegels Asthetik, p. 30.
5
Gethmann-Siefert, Einjuhrung in Hegels Asthetik,, p. 351. Cultural function is for Gethmann-Siefert
primarily the guidance of action; hence she focuses almost exclusively on drama and narrative arts. It
appears to me that Gethmann-Siefert's case would be far harder to make if one took into account the
development of painting or music.
66
Gethmann-Siefert, Einjuhrung in Hegels Asthetik, p. 352.
 43

of art that is either too narrow, focusing only on the educational aspect of artworks, or too

general, if she means that all contemporary art can serve this role.67

Robert Pippin shares Gethmann-Siefert's view that not being "the highest manner

in which truth acquires existence for us" could still mean that art ranks pretty high.68

Pippin not only downplays the negative aspect of the end of art thesis, but shows how it

can play a positive role in a Hegelian history of art, allowing for the development of

modernist art into abstraction. Since art is free after the end of art, in the sense that it does

not have to fulfill a particular need, like presenting spirit, it can develop along with spirit,

so to speak. Like thought, art achieves "greater abstraction in means of representation"

and "greater reflexivity in aesthetic themes."69 The way art matters has changed, but it is

still part of the ongoing development of spirit. As already suggested, the narrative of

modernism can make sense in such a story, but the problem remains: how do we account

for post-modern art? Pippin mentions great modernists as examples - amongst painters

Cezanne, Pollock and deKooning - but no contemporary artists. Perhaps this is because

Pippin's narrative cannot move beyond modernism? His alignment with Michael Fried

seems to suggest that the extended Hegelian narrative Pippin creates still has to end up in

an eternal modernism: "I agree with what I take to be Fried's attitude: there was no

failure of modernism, no exhaustion by the end of abstract expressionism ... The

67
Gethmann-Siefert seems primarily interested in literary arts, which lend themselves more easily to a
notion of art as tool for reflection, and hence she has what I call a "narrow" notion of art. Alternatively, if
she thinks all art can be understood as tools for reflection, this seems to be almost empty - is reflecting
upon who we are an interesting way of approaching e.g. a sculpture by Donald Judd? Or a Yves Klein
monochrome? Does not such an approach to art overlook most of the things that are interesting about these
artworks?
68
Robert Pippin, "What was Abstract Art? (From the Point of View of Hegel)", Critical Inquiry, 29 (2002),
pp. 1-24.
69
Pippin, "What was Abstract Art?" p. 3.
 44

aftermath ... can better be understood as evasions and regressions rather than

alternatives."70

There is nothing indicating that Heidegger has such a sophisticated interpretation

of Hegel's end of art thesis as those suggested by Gethmann-Siefert or Pippin. Instead,

since he himself asks if art is dying, he seems to interpret Hegel's thesis in the strongest,

and most literal, sense. However, to understand what question Heidegger is actually

asking when he asks this, we need to untangle Heidegger's different take on the elements

that make up the end of art thesis. As stated above, the end of art is a question that has to

do with the definition of art, with the role of history, and with philosophy as such. Hence

these three aspects of the end of art thesis structure the following three chapters of the

dissertation. Chapter Two concerns Heidegger's attempt at raising the question of what

art is. As I have suggested, Heidegger's taking up of the end of art thesis seems to

undercut his treatment of art in the art-essay. I investigate the view Heidegger presents in

the art-essay of 1936, and whether Heidegger's later writing on art makes it possible to

attribute one coherent philosophy of art to Heidegger. Chapter Three addresses the

history of art and aesthetics. I focus on the role history plays in Heidegger's

understanding of the present malaise of art. Finally, Chapter Four addresses the

relationship between art and philosophy, insofar as they shape each other in the present. I

conclude by returning to the question of the legitimacy of Heidegger's philosophy of art,

Pippin, "What was Abstract Art?" p. 20n. Pippin hence seems to end up in a position similar to that of
Greenberg anno 1960s (although Pippin makes clear that he differs from Greenberg with respect to what
aspects we should emphasize in abstraction): the aesthetic theory defines most contemporary art away as
distractions or diversions. Much of Michael Fried's criticism is collected in his Art and Objecthood: Essays
and Reviews, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
 45

discussing whether Heidegger is guilty of philosophical disenfranchisement of art, and if

so, whether this really is a problem for a philosophical treatment of art.

 46

Chapter 2 THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK OF ART

This chapter is meant to address the first of the three aspects of the end of art thesis that

need to be analyzed in order to unpack the meaning of Heidegger's endorsement of the

thesis, that is, the definition of an artwork.71 Since we already know that Heidegger

claims art has reached an end while at the same time recognizing that art is still being

made, we can infer that the meaning of art cannot depend exclusively on properties

internal to the artwork but must somehow also rely on the work's context. In this chapter,

I clarify how Heidegger "defines" a work of art, in terms of a "happening of truth."72 The

most central text for understanding Heidegger's thinking about art is his essay "Der

Ursprung des Kunstwerkes." Even though I want to argue that an interpretation of this

essay should not form the whole basis for understanding Heidegger's view of art, this

essay still plays a crucial role for my thesis. It is in this text that Heidegger offers what

most looks like a definition of art.

This chapter has two main parts: the first offers a brief presentation of the art-

essay and its most important claims and innovations. Here I focus on two aspects of the

essay: the determination of artwork as a "setting-to-work of truth" and the meaning of the

new concept of 'earth.' The second part of the chapter focuses on problems that the essay

presents to interpretation. These come in two groups: the first concerns problems with the

71
Cf. the end of section 1.1.1 above; the three aspects are the notion of art, the notion of history, and the
relation between art and philosophy.
72
1 put 'define' in scare quotes here, as it is questionable whether Heidegger actually provides a definition
of art in the art-essay. When I still use 'define' in the following, the reader should keep in mind that
'definition' is here thought in a loose sense, as a way of expressing what art is without the pretense of
satisfying criteria of necessity or sufficiency, or identifying or demarcating it within a broader genus, such
as philosophical definition in the classical sense is supposed to do.
 47

text as a philosophy of art, that is, the aspects of the text that make it seem unsatisfactory

if understood as providing a general theory of art; the second group of problems concern

the status of the text, that is, whether Heidegger's later comments on the essay are meant

to revise, reject or clarify his earlier position. Interpreting the 1936 version of the text is

in itself difficult, but the meaning of the original is explicitly brought into question by

Heidegger's several additions and commentaries on the essay (spanning several decades),

by the wider development of Heidegger's thinking in general and by other texts where he

addresses art and aesthetics in particular.

2.1.1 The turn to "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes"

Heidegger took his audience by surprise when in 1935 he gave a lecture on the topic of

art.73 Art had never before received much attention from Heidegger; in fact, it is a

dimension that is conspicuously absent from the big workshop of a world described in

Sein und Zeit. However, according to Gadamer, the true sensation was the new

conceptual vocabulary that this theme brought forth.74 Today we know that the turn

towards art occurred while Heidegger was starting to shape his Beitrdge zur Philosophie,

his attempt at a "second beginning" for thinking. Two main interests have accordingly

guided the reception of the art-essay in the secondary literature: it has either been

approached as a contribution to philosophy of art, or as a key text for understanding the

73
As reported by Gadamer in "Zur Einfuhrung," his introduction to the 1960 Reclam edition of the art-
essay. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Zur Einfuhrung," in Martin Heidegger: Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,
Stuttgart: Reclam, 1960, pp. 93-114.
74
Gadamer, "Zur Einfuhrung," p. 98.
 48

so-called turn (Kehre) in Heidegger's thinking. Two of the most influential commentators

on Heidegger's oeuvre in general and the art-essay in particular are Friedrich-Wilhelm

von Herrmann and Otto Poggeler, and their respective approaches to the art-essay reflect

these two interests. Von Herrmann insists that the art-essay represents a philosophy of

art, if not a Lehre in the traditional sense, and that Heidegger stands by the philosophy of

art presented here throughout his career.75 Von Herrmann aligns the project of the art-

essay with the phenomenological project of Sein und Zeit, and reads the text as a

hermeneutic phenomenology of art. By contrast, Poggeler thinks that in the mid-thirties

art is primarily a way for Heidegger to address truth and being and hence that the art-

essay cannot be called a philosophy of art since art is not the essay's central concern or

topic. Poggeler's most concrete evidence against von Herrmann comes from

Heidegger's own assertion in the Zusatz to the essay that no answer is given to the

question of art in the text, which Poggeler thinks rules out the possibility of interpreting

the art-essay as putting forth a philosophy of art.77 This dissertation intends to consider

both these aspects of the art-essay as in a reciprocal relationship, since I think both

aspects are essentially linked. My main thesis is that there is a development in

Heidegger's thinking about art and hence that the art-essay is best understood in

conjunction with later writings; but at the same time it seems forced to dismiss the art-

essay as not motivated by any genuine interest in art on Heidegger's behalf- there are

75
F.-W. von Herrmann, Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst.
76
Poggeler does think that Heidegger has interesting, but different, things to say about art in his later
writing. Compare Heideggers Denkweg with his later Bild und Technik. Heidegger, Klee und die moderne
Kunst, Bonn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002, and the section "Kunst - Mythos - Sprache" in his Neue Wege
mit Heidegger, Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 1992.
77
Poggeler, Neue Wege, p. 172
 49

aspects of the art-essay that are quite interesting even for readers without any interest in
•JO

Heidegger's development of "being-historical thinking" [Seinsgeschichtliches Denken].

I would contend that the art-essay is a philosophical work on art although not adhering to

the standards of a philosophy of art. I agree with Poggeler that the art-essay provides an

occasion for Heidegger to make headway in his thinking in general, but I want to show

that art is itself inherently important for Heidegger, and not merely a prop for ontological

considerations.

Heidegger gave lectures under the title "Vom Ursprungs des Kunstwerks" in

Freiburg in November 1935, in Zurich in January of the following year, and then in

Frankfurt at the end of 1936. There are three known written versions of the text from the

1930s, but the essay was only officially in print with the publication of Holzwege in

1950. By that time, Heidegger's turn towards art was already widely known.79 The first

version of the art-essay was published in Heidegger Studies in 1989, and is the
on
transcription of a hand-written manuscript believed to date from 1934. The lecture

This is Heidegger's own name for his historically oriented way of thinking that takes shape in the late
thirties. I return to this in the next chapter, where I relate the art-essay to the stated task of Beitrage. See
3.1.1 below.
79
Again, according to Gadamer, "Zur Einfuhrung," p. 98.
80
Cf. the introduction to von Herrmann's Heideggers Philosophic der Kunst. The editors of Heidegger's
papers have created some confusion about the origin of the text. In Heidegger Studies, vol. 6, F.-W. von
Hermann claims that the first draft is probably from 1931 or 1932. In this volume of Heidegger Studies
some of Heidegger's notes on art are published; notes which are assumed to precede even this first version,
and which are said to show that Heidegger had an interest in art dating back to the time of the composition
of "Vom Wesen des Grundes" (late 1928). However, Heidegger himself dates most of these notes to 1934,
and the "first elaboration" of the essay seems to be based on these notes, so I will assume that it is correct to
date the first version to 1934.1 am indebted to Theodore Kisiel, who in June 2001 looked into much of the
material filed under the heading "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" in Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach,
where Heidegger's papers are kept. This file includes several loose, hand-written manuscript sheets, and
pieces of scrap paper recycled into note paper upon which Heidegger had written a few random thoughts
and then collected in bundles. This and similar files provide a rough picture of how the text was developed
and given shape by Heidegger. By comparing the vocabulary with other dated manuscripts, Kisiel
attempted to date most of this material (sometimes Heidegger had jotted this notes on the back of old
 50

presented in 1935 is believed to be equivalent to the written second version, which

circulated in France as an unauthorized copy of Heidegger's manuscript and was finally

published in 1987.81 Heidegger finished writing the third version in 1936, and this is the

one printed in the Holzwege. However, the text we read today has undergone some

changes - the "Nachwort" is added later than 1936 but before the 1950 publication; the

"Zusatz" was added by Heidegger in 1956; and, in the 1960 Reclam-edition of the essay,

Heidegger edits several passages.

Although I keep mainly to the final version of "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes"

in the following discussion, there are two important points that become clear when one

compares the final version with the first: the first version of the essay deals exclusively

with Greek works of art (Holderlin is mentioned, but only in passing).82 In the final

version, however, other works of art especially seem to provide material for Heidegger's

phenomenological reflection: Heidegger explicitly addresses a painting by Vincent Van

university registration forms that students attending his classes had filled out and dated, for example, which
has made it possible to decide the earliest date of some of his notes). Kisiel wrote an informal report
verifying that there seems to be no reason to assume Heidegger wrote about art in any depth or detail before
1934. Even if I make use of Kisiel's research, the responsibility for any erroneous inferences made is
entirely my own. Now why does the dating of these materials matter at all? What difference does it make if
Heidegger wrote on art for the first time in 1929 or 1934? Why anyone would want to show that
Heidegger's interest in art dates further back, one can only speculate. One motivation might be a wish to
"save" "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" from being subjected to the ongoing debate about the
philosophical implications of Heidegger's nazism. Heidegger's involvement with the NSDAP has been an
embarrassment to many scholars, and the years 1933-35 seem to be the time when Heidegger writes his
most political, and hence also supposedly the most problematic, texts.
81
Martin Heidegger, "De l'origine de Fceuvre d'art", tr. E. Martineau, Paris: Authentica 1987.1 will in the
following not make use of this version.
82
Heidegger claims that Holderlin's poetry has a more real standing in "our people's language" than any
other institution of words and letters, preparing an earth and a world for the German people, in Heidegger,
"Vom Ursprungs des Kunstwerks. Erste Ausarbeitung," Heidegger Studies, vol. 5, Berlin: Dunker &
Humblot 1989, p. 15. The claim is not really explained or argued for, but is similar to the point made in
Heidegger's first lectures on Holderlin from 1934, in which Holderlin's river poems are analyzed as
providing ground and opening up a future for the contemporary historical people of Germany. Cf.
Hoderlins Hymnen "Germanien " und "Der Rhein, " (GA 39), Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989.
 51

Gogh, he reproduces and briefly comments on the poem Der romische Brunnen by C.F.

Meyer, and he refers to the etchings of Albrecht Durer. The reflection on what it is to be a

tool, important for distinguishing the artwork from mere things and tools ready to hand,

appears to be a result of Heidegger's meditation on a painting by Van Gogh, and the

concept of the rift (Riss), an important term for explaining how truth is made manifest in

artworks more concretely, appears to be inspired by Durer's etchings. The absence of

these artists, Northern European renaissance and modern painters, in the original version

brings forth two points. First, it seems as if Heidegger initially was interested only in

Greek artworks, i.e. artworks stemming from the very beginning of the Western tradition.

The description of a Zeus temple is the only positive example in the first version of the

art-essay; other cited artworks - including the Bamberger Dom, a Gothic sculpture by

Nicolaus van Leyden, Greek collections in Germany and again a Greek temple (the

temple in Paestum, which Heidegger actually visited himself) - are only mentioned as

examples of works that are praised in the current artworld but have actually suffered from

world-withdrawal and decline. Heidegger's inclusion of Durer and van Gogh in the

final version suggests that he wanted to make clear a certain generality of his treatment of

art and not restrict its scope only to Greek art.

A second point to note is that many of Heidegger's main concepts - like world,

earth, strife and rift - are already in place in the first version of the essay. It thus appears

83
Meyer's poem is just briefly brought up in a quick dismissal of representational theories, which seems
somewhat odd, considering that Heidegger takes time to reproduce the whole poem. In the recently edited
lectures on Schiller from WS 36/37, Heidegger also uses Meyer's poem, and provides us with more
information about how he understands this poem. For more on this example, see the discussion of
Heidegger's treatment of Kant in Chapter Three.
84
For more on the distinction between contemporary artworld and the world of the work, see below.
 52

that the specific structure of the final version and its reflection on the works by Diirer and

Van Gogh are not necessary for the conclusions Heidegger reaches. In other words, there

is no textual basis for thinking that Heidegger's ideas stem from consideration of any

particular artwork except the Greek temple.85 The first version does not substantially

conflict with the final essay, which is a richer, rhetorically more polished text, with more

detailed argumentation and description.86 In the following, I will keep primarily to the

final version and only quote the first version when it is more explicit or clarifies

something from the later version.

In the first version of the art-essay, Heidegger sets out by stating the goal of the

text: it is a matter of "contributing to prepare a change in our Dasein's basic attitude

towards art."87 This goal is not made explicit in the final version of the text, but, as will

become clear when we turn to Heidegger's understanding of aesthetics and the end of art,

it is a motivating factor in his interest in art. Exactly why it is important to change our
QO

attitude to art is not made explicit. The art-essay begins by asking for the origin of art,

or more specifically, the origin of the essence (Wesen) of art, since 'origin' means "from
This is particularly interesting to note because of Heidegger's much discussed use of van Gogh in the
final version of the art-essay. I discuss this below in section 2.2.2. Of course, the fact that Heidegger's text
is not based on discussion of particular artworks does not show that reflection on artworks was not
formative for Heidegger's ideas. However, I note this aspect because lack of sensitivity to the particularity
of art is a criticism of Heidegger's account of art that will surface later in the dissertation.
86
A closer analysis will also bring out more subtle changes between the first and the final versions. Below,
I will focus on how one dimension of earth, as material alterity, is developed in the third version. See also
Jacques Taminiaux, "The Origin of Heidegger's 'The Origin of the Work of Art'" for a detailed analysis of
the development of the manuscript, in Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation and Judgment, Albany: SUNY
Press, 1993.
87
"Allein, uber all dieses hinweg soil es doch nur auf das Eine ankommen, nahmlich: bei aller Wurdigung
dessen, was zur Wesensbestimmung der Kunst langst gedacht und gesagt ist, eine gewandelte
Grundstellung unseres Daseins zur Kunst mit vorzubereiten," "Vom Ursprung des Kunstwerks," p. 5.
88
Poggeler thinks the motivation is independent of the fate of art, and rather political or "being-historical."
However, as we shall see in Chapter Three, such a change in attitude also seems to be for the sake of art.
This theme is more explicitly addressed by Heidegger in the discussion of aesthetics in Nietzsche I; in
Beitrdge and in "Die Frage nach der Technik," in Vortrdge und Aufsdtze.
 53

where and through what a matter is what it is and how it is," and "[t]hat which something

is, how it is, we call its way of being" (GA 5, 1). Heidegger's search for origin and

essence is better understood as in inquiry into the originary, meaning-bestowing event,

rather than into the sufficient and necessary features. It should be noted that appealing to

the Wesen of art need not commit Heidegger to a metaphysically essentialist position

about art; in the first part of the essay, Heidegger exposes traditional metaphysical

schemata like essence/accident and substance/form/matter as inadequate to describe art,

thereby rejecting traditional uses of 'essence.' Wesen, which I have here translated "way

of being," could be understood in a less metaphysically robust sense: it is just the way

something is, its manner of being, or, if taken in a pragmatic sense, its nature. Likewise, it

is not clear whether the origin we are seeking, the origin of the way of being of art,

should be understood as a historical cause or a structural precondition of the essence of

artworks. ° The question of Wesen resurfaces when we try to assess what kind of answer

Heidegger gives us when he writes that the origin of the artwork is the "setting-to-work

of truth." Is this a necessary and universal definition of artworks, or a description of the

origin of art at a certain historical stage?91

In the course of the opening pages, Heidegger establishes that artwork and artist

are mutually dependent; each is the origin of the other - before someone makes an

89
".. .von woher and wodurch eine Sache ist, was sie ist und wie sie ist. Das, was etwas ist, wie es ist,
nennen wir sein Wesen."
90
The answer to this question can be anticipated, however, given the following quote from an addendum to
Beitrage: "The question of the origin of art is not aiming at a timeless, valid definition of the nature of art,
which could simultaneously serve as a guide serving a historically retrospective explanation of the history
of art" (GA 65, 503). In spite of this statement, both Heidegger scholars and other people working in
aesthetics often treat Heidegger's position on art as having the function of a general aesthetic theory.
91
1 put the question as if we have to choose between these two alternatives here. As will become
increasingly clear as we proceed, however, none of these quite capture what Heidegger is aiming at.
 54

artwork there is no artist, and an artwork only comes to be through an artist - and neither

can be explained without the other. Heidegger says that perhaps a third term, 'art,' is

what makes artists and artworks what they are, but he immediately challenges his own

suggestion: "Art, that is just a word that no longer expresses anything real" (GA 5, 2).

This reservation is of course particularly interesting in light of the end of art thesis, since

we know that Heidegger will later question the vitality of art in his age. Heidegger's

subsequent remarks suggest further possible ways we can understand the questioning of

art: first, Heidegger suggests that 'art' can function as a concept uniting the realities of

art, that is, artworks and artists. If 'art' is just an "umbrella concept," then he seems to

have given up any search for an essence of art in the traditional, definitional way, and the

approach here is rather quite pragmatic. But then Heidegger performs one of his typical

rhetorical shifts, asking: "Or is it the other way around? Are there artworks and artist only

insofar as there is art, and even only insofar as art is their origin?" (GA 5, 2). It is, in

other words, still left open that there could be something like art, which is not reducible

to its instantiations but is what makes some objects artworks and some persons artists.

Since for Heidegger it is an open question whether art in general (Kunst iiberhaupi)

exists, he recommends looking for the essence of art where art undoubtedly is: in the

artwork.92

These opening remarks form a rather non-committal or agnostic starting point for

the further investigation, which seems to make it quite clear that Heidegger is not initially

92
This non-committal point of departure for inquiry into art does of course also leave open the possibility
that art has reached its end - it could be that the result would be that there is no art, even though there are
artworks and artists. Heidegger later speaks of the culture of his age as kunstlos, in spite of the many artist,
museums and artworks it displays.
 55

committing himself to any theoretical conviction about art. This initial ambivalence is not

often noted, however, perhaps because what is to come seems so strongly to suggest a

positive description of artworks, artists and art as such. Yet, in light of Heidegger's later

reflections on the end of art thesis, this starting point is very interesting. The possibility is

left open that artworks could exist, without there being something that art essentially is,

except as instantiated in works by artists and audience. The indecision also allows for an

interpretation of the art-essay as primarily being about the possibility of art. If the essay is

about the conditions of the possibility of art, and possibility is understood in a historical

rather than a transcendental sense, the central thesis of the essay could be compatible

with the end of art thesis: perhaps there was art like that described in the essay, which has

now reached its end. Perhaps certain conditions were in place for art to happen, but under

the current historical conditions such events cannot be expected. We will return to these

questions later.

If we do not assume that we have any grasp of what 'art' is, Heidegger says that

all we can do is to investigate artworks. He notes that the procedure of his essay will be

circular, and that if he were to gather defining characteristics or deduce basic principles

of art from the works in art collections, he would of course be guilty of some

unwarranted bootstrapping. However, as we have no way of describing artwork, artist

and art except by referring them to each other, our only option is to carefully think our

way through each step of this circle. If Heidegger's philosophical aim is not to offer any
 56

general theory about what art essentially is, this procedure seems warranted, although we

would eventually need to scrutinize our own prejudices.

The circular relationship between artwork, artist and art is what gives structure to

Heidegger's essay. He starts out with artworks, since "everyone knows those" (GA 5, 3),

and takes as a common starting point the definition of an artwork as "thing + y" - an

artwork is a thing with some additional significant characteristic making it into an

artwork. This leads Heidegger to the first section of the essay, "Thing and Work," which

tries to draw a distinction between mere things and works. Heidegger goes through

traditional conceptions of thing and work, but takes a detour in order also to define a tool

(Zeug). In the course of the investigation of what it is to be a tool, Heidegger famously

reflects on a painting of shoes by Van Gogh. In the end of the section, however,

Heidegger concludes that the concept of thing that is available to us at the present is

insufficient for grasping thingliness {Dinglichkeit) of an artwork, and this manner of

defining the artwork - by distinguishing it from tools and mere things - is abandoned.

The first section of the essay is in other words devoted to a path of inquiry that is

dismissed as unsuccessful.

The second section of the essay, "Work and Truth," does not analyze the artwork

into different parts, as a thingly substructure with some still unknown superstructure, but

instead approaches the work in its "pure self-standing" {reine Insichstehen) (GA 5, 25).

This leads Heidegger to analyze the artwork in its world, which, primarily through his

93
It is precisely Heidegger's choice of certain works as exemplars and his analysis of these that has come
under heavy criticism. This question will return in the discussion of van Gogh later in this chapter and then
in the final discussion of the conclusion.
 57

example of a Greek temple, is an occasion for him to unfold most of the core concepts of

the essay: 'world,' 'earth,' 'strife,' 'beauty,' and 'truth.' The essence of the artwork is

described as a "happening of truth."

The aim of the last section of the art-essay, "Art and Truth," is then to tie the

description of the artwork to the creation of a work, which amounts to asking how truth

happens as art. This happening needs both creators and preservers in order "to work."

Eventually, Heidegger defines all art as poetry (Dichtung), meaning that, in art, truth

happens out of nothing. The essay ends on an ambiguous note, however, asking whether

art is an origin for our historical Dasein and what the conditions are for art to be such an

origin; or whether art is just a part of our culture that has become customary and our

relation to art just one of pictorial familiarity with the past (GA 5, 66). In other words, the

opening question remains unanswered at the end of the essay.

2.1.2 Art as setting-to-work of truth

In this section, I give a brief analysis of the central idea of the artwork as a "setting-to-

work of truth."94 This setting-to-work occurs as an event or happening, which is

described as the opening up of world and the setting forth of earth. Heidegger says the

essence of art is the setting-itself-to-work of truth and that truth happens in and with the

I will not present a full commentary on the essay - that would be a whole book in itself- but stick to the
parts of the text that are important to the question of what it means when Heidegger suggests the end of art.
The most complete and detailed commentary on the art-essay is von Herrmann's Heideggers Philosophic
der Kunst.
 58

artwork; in other words, truth is an event that at times "happens as art" (GA 5, 25).

Heidegger claims that we can only see how truth happens in an artwork when we

understand that art, as a site for truth to happen, captures the ongoing Streit - strife or

struggle - between earth and world. This strife shows itself, or becomes material, as the

rift (Riss) of the work, out of which the form (Gestalt) is made present. Truth is the

unifying notion of the art-essay, which ties its different components together. As we will

see, the notion of the artwork as a setting-to-work of truth markedly differs from the

definitions of Hegel and Danto, and also bears on the meaning of Heidegger's end of art

thesis.

Heidegger's idiosyncratic understanding of truth as aletheia, that is as un-

concealment, is well-known from Sein und Zeit, where truth is the opening up of being

into a world. The primordial truth described in the art-essay is similar, but importantly

different: 1) the world opened up by the happening of truth is described as shared in

space and time by a people; and 2) the truth is brought about by the artwork. In Sein und

Zeit, the happening of truth had its locus in the transcending, individual Dasein and its

being-in-the-world.

Heidegger's idiosyncratic notion of truth is not meant to necessarily replace more traditional notions of
truth, but rather point to the precondition of these notions. If for example we think of truth as a relation
between statements and facts, the truth Heidegger is pointing to is the event that precedes such a relation.
Truth is then the movement or opening up of the realm in which a traditional true relation exists (the same
would hold for e.g. a coherence model - again Heidegger is describing the event that precedes a holistic
system of interconnected truths). By the time of the art-essay, the transcendental-phenomenological
description of Sein und Zeit has been developed into a more historical position, cf. "Vom Wesen der
Wahrheit" in Wegmarken. There is much literature and discussion of Heidegger's truth and the
development of this concept from Sein und Zeit to later texts. For the most thorough treatment of
Heidegger's initial use of truth, see Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Heidegger's Concept of Truth, Cambridge-
Cambridge University Press, 2001. The last sections of this book makes clear why the discussion created
by Tugendhat's criticism poses no serious obstacle for, but is rather a misunderstanding of, Heidegger's use
of the word 'truth.'
 59

Heidegger's central example in the art-essay is a Greek temple. When introducing

this example, Heidegger stresses that he has purposefully chosen a non-representational

artwork; the temple is not depicting anything, and hence the truth of an artwork is not

dependent on any notion of representation or mimesis (GA 5, 27). Heidegger is in other

words explicitly avoiding a representational theory. However, Heidegger's opposition to

representation does not imply a turn to subjectivism or that the artwork is cut off from its

surroundings.

Truth happens with the temple inasmuch as it opens up a world and sets forth an

earth. I will use the example of the temple to illustrate the the truth that happens with art

and the new sense of world that is brought out by Heidegger's turn towards art. In the

next section, I examine world's counterpart, earth. Heidegger describes the world opened

up by the temple in this way:

The temple first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity
of every path and relation, in which birth and death, misfortune and blessings,
victory and shame, perseverance and decline achieve the figure of destiny for
human beings. The reigning expanse of these open relations is the world of this
historical people. (GA 5, 27)

Heidegger describes how it is in relation to the temple, as a standard and source of order,

that everything else gets its shape, place, size and meaning. When the columns of the

work are erected, the violence of the storm, the light of the sun and the air of the open

become visible (GA 5, 28). With the event of the artwork, all the physical beings and

historical events of the Greek world are tied together in a network of meaning. The

artwork is what makes it possible for all beings to form a world both in the spatial and
 60

temporal sense both as natural surroundings and as a historical era. We can imagine how

the temple, as a building housing the gods, becomes a standard in the ancient Greek

world: through the work that rises up on the top of the hill, the heavenly gods are present

on the earth, and with this making present or "presencing" that happens through the work,

the mythological world of Greek Dasein is established.96 What is of course rather striking

about these first passages on the Greek temple is that they sound much like a

metaphysical account of the artwork. In particular, they sound very close to a Hegelian

account. This is surprising, as Heidegger rejects traditional aesthetics in general, and

picks out Hegel's aesthetics in particular as the completion of this tradition.97 As I will

suggest later, this paradox within Heidegger's text cannot be solved unless we allow for

historical interpretation of the "definition" of the artwork and for differentiation among

artworks. The account of the artwork as given in the case of the temple might be

appropriate for the happening of art in the Greek world, but be without validity today.98

We can think of the artwork as something that makes the world present as world.

By this I mean that, in the example of the temple, the artwork makes who the Greeks are

Does this mean that an artwork "makes" a world, and then human beings take it over from there? This
sounds implausible if we are to take it literally - surely the Greeks experienced their surroundings as
making sense in some way before they built a temple. Secondly, a literal interpretation is problematic
because it makes the people sound passive, as if they would have a self-understanding handed down to
them from the mountain, so to speak. This is also a reason why Heidegger's description of the world of the
artwork has been interpreted as "promethean" - meaning that if the people passively receive the world of
the work, the creator of this work seems incredibly powerful. 1 will suggest a more plausible way of
making sense of the world-making power of the artwork. For in depth analyses and discussions of this
promethean theme, cf. Jacques Taminiaiux, "The Origin," and Gregory Fried, Heidegger's Polemos, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
97
The criticism can be recognized in the dismissal of any traditional approach to analyzing art in the
opening of the art-essay, and takes on a more explicit and systematic form in the first part of Heidegger's
Nietzsche. Heidegger's history and critique of aesthetics is the topic of my next chapter.
98
1 return to the historical understanding of art and aesthetics, and the contrasts between Heidegger's and
Hegel's accounts, in the next chapter. The difference between Heidegger and Hegel comes to the fore in
their different understanding of the relation between form and material, cf. Heidegger's critique of the
form-matter schema below.
 61

present to them. The temple is a manifestation and expression of how the Greek world

makes sense - "[t]he temple in its standing-there is what for the first time gives the things

their look [Gesicht] and people the view [Aussicht] of themselves" (GA 5, 29). The

priority of the artwork is more conceptual than temporal." The artwork puts forth the

first expression of the world, but it has to be a world that is recognizable to the audience.

When this expression is put forth, it is also the beginning of time, in the authentic sense

of history for the artwork's audience. If we understand the world-opening truth of the

artwork in this manner, we would also downplay the world-making power of the artist, as

he or she would have to be understood as articulating something already latent. Again, on

such a reading, Heidegger seems to be very close to Hegel, who describes artworks as

expressions of spirit, which make it possible for a people to experience "who they are."

Because a world is always the world of someone, in this case a historical people,

an artwork needs an audience if it is to "work." Heidegger calls the people who recognize

the world of the artwork its preservers. The preservers of an artwork are the ones who

take up the world expressed by the artwork: "preserving a work means: to stand within

the opening of being that happens with the artwork" (GA 5, 54). There is an

interdependence between world and humans; the world of the artwork depends on its

people, and the people are also formed by this world when they affirm it. This reciprocity

implies that an artwork is not working if no one is recognizing the world it opens up. An

artwork can even lose its world, according to Heidegger. This is the case with the Greek

Here 'temporal' is meant to refer to the ontic, "clock-time" sense of temporality.

 62

temple today; it has become worldless. The world of that artwork, and the people living

in that world, no longer exist.

Even when we make the effort to suspend and avoid such displacement, for
example, when we visit the temple in Paestum on its site and the Bamberger
cathedral in its square, the world of the works present to us has fallen into decay.
World withdrawal and world decay can never be reversed. (GA 5, 26)

When an artwork is put in a museum, it has most likely already lost its power to reveal

anything. Museum curators are not the preservers of the artwork, because they do not live

in the world the artwork opened up. They are more like workers in a morgue, tending to

dead artifacts.100

Here we can note that Heidegger's notion of the world of the artwork is very

different from the way the expression 'artworld' is used in the contemporary American

discourse on aesthetics. This difference throws light on the different nature of the

definition or description of art in Heidegger. In contemporary American discourse,

'artworld' is usually taken to refer to the part of our society that is concerned with art -

including the institutions and individuals that display and criticize art (the three c's:

curators, collectors, and critics) in addition to actual artworks and artists - or, as more

narrowly defined by Arthur Danto, "an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the

Heidegger here seriously limits the importance of the work done by art historians and philologists, as
these are by necessity working with works whose worlds have withdrawn. There are ways to moderate this
dismissal of the work traditionally done in the humanities, as having a different focus than Heidegger's.
However, a more serious problem hides in this en passant dismissal: Heidegger's emphasis on the truth of
the artwork as something that one "lives," in the sense that taking up the truth of a work is to live in the
world it opens up, seems to leave little room for any critical attitude towards the artwork on behalf of the
audience. The omission of art-criticism is not a matter of emphasis, but revealing of a deeper problem in
Heidegger's philosophy. I will suggest that only through a development of the historical dimension can we
rescue criticism in Heidegger (that is, as I will suggest in Chapter Four, by understanding the world of our
historical period as necessary bound up with self-criticism. Heidegger's own practice seems to be in line
with such an interpretation).
 63

history of art."101 The point in both these cases is that the world of artworks is thought to

be a subset of the world as such, limited to include the parts of the world that relate to

artworks in a social, or more narrowly theoretical, manner. Heidegger's "artworld" on the

other hand, is the whole, wide world - albeit historically and geographically limited -

where everything and everyone in it acquires significance in relation to the artwork.102 As

such, we can say that Heidegger turns the institutional theory of art on its head - it is not

the institution or social practice that is the source of certain things being artworks, but

rather artworks are the source of institutions and practices. When an artwork is put in a

museum, or even when we today go to Athens and visit the ancient temples, those

artworks have been taken out of their natural space \Wesensraum\ The artwork belongs

in the realm that it has itself opened, and we cannot provide it with a world, not even if

we put it in a museum and line up to see it. The striking difference in the understanding

of world is due to the significance Heidegger attaches to the artwork's ability to shape the

world. The importance of art is not limited to a specific realm; it extends and shapes all

aspects of the world. Conversely, an institutional approach will have a definition of the

artwork that is almost empty, merely delimited by external features. Heidegger's focus on

the work is in opposition to such structural or sociological determinations of art. This

becomes particularly striking when we turn to the non-worldly aspect of the work, that is,

to earth.

1
Arthur Danto, "The Artworld," p. 580.
Daniel O. Dahlstrom treats this topic with more care and elegance in his article "Heidegger's Artworld."
 64

2.1.3 Earth

The opening up of world is only half of the description of the artwork. The truth of the

artwork also consists in the setting forth of earth. In his introduction to the art-essay,

Gadamer says the new vocabulary was the most remarkable feature of Heidegger's art-

essay, and singles out the introduction of "earth" as the most surprising addition - "the

concept of earth sounded like a mythical and gnostic primal sound (Urlaut), which at

most had a right to belong in poetry."103 The concept has its origin in Heidegger's reading

of Holderlin and plays an important role in Heidegger's reading of the poem

"Germanien," but in the art-essay Heidegger uses the word it in a context independent of

Holderlin.104 Gadamer's surprise is two-fold - he asks both how Heidegger can justify

taking over a poetic expression or metaphor from Holderlin, and how Dasein, described

by Heidegger as being-in-the-world in Being and Time, can relate to such a radical

concept.105 In the following, I show how earth contributes to the Heideggerian notion of

truth, and how, as a result, earth complicates the description of the artwork as a

happening of truth. What becomes clear is that earth represents an irreducible otherness

inherent in the artwork and that we cannot gloss the happening of truth as only an event

that opens a world and creates meaning.

'Earth' is a term that Heidegger introduces in an everyday manner both when he

discusses the painting by Van Gogh in the essay's first section and then again when

describing the Greek temple in the next section. As typical for the art-essay, Heidegger
103
Gadamer, "Zur Einfuhrung," p. 99.
104
Heidegger devotes a lecture course to Holderlin for the first time in WS 1934/35. He reads the poems
"Germanien" and "Der Rhein" in which 'earth' is an important part of the poet's imagery, cf. GA 39. Only
with the art-essay is the concept fully appropriated as a philosophical term, however.
105
Gadamer, "Zur Einfuhrung," p. 99.
 65

begins with everyday observations - earth is what shoes walk on and a temple rests on -

but then, through questioning, he moves towards what sounds more like an ontological

description, in which 'earth' acquires a kind of systematic status. In the description of

Van Gogh's shoes, 'earth' does not come to the forefront as signifying anything but the

soil in the field where the farmer works. The description of this picture is also primarily

an illustration of a point about tools, not artworks.106 However, in the next section of the

art-essay ("The Work and the Truth") when Heidegger describes how truth is set to work

with the Greek temple, 'earth' seems to take on a more important, philosophical role.

Below, I try to flesh out this new concept, which should it make clear that Gadamer's

initial worry - that Heidegger takes over a term with merely poetic significance - is

unfounded. In the course of describing what is intended with earth, it will also become

clear that Gadamer's second question - how can Dasein relate to something as radical as

earth? - is harder to answer. It appears that Dasein is in a certain sense given over to

earth, and can only become aware of it through the artwork. But even then it is unclear

whether 'earth' can be experienced in a way that allows for positive understanding or

description. In any case, it is clear that 'earth' falls outside the limits of description of

Sein und Zeit.

In the description of the temple, the opening up of world that happens with the

artwork is accompanied by a retaining movement.1 7

This movement is what develops

This point is controversial and overstated here; for a more detailed treatment of the use of van Gogh, see
2.2.2 below.
107
'Earth' is difficult to capture or classify; but I use the term 'movement' to describe 'earth' for the time
being. I think 'movement' is preferable to referring to earth as 'force' or 'element,' as both these latter
words connote stable, metaphysical entities. As such, 'movement' is more fitting, as it captures the fact the
 66

into Heidegger's concept of earth. This is how Heidegger begins to unfold the

philosophical meaning of'earth':

Standing there, the building is resting on the rocky ground. This resting of the
work pulls out of the stone the darkness of its unstructured and yet unforced
support... The secured towering makes the invisible space of the air visible. The
work, unshaken, stands out against the waves of the ocean and, out of its repose,
the sea's rampage appears. (GA 5, 28)

What we have here is a description of the event of the temple, where the opening,

clearing and rising up that happens with the construction of the temple is countered by

resting, invisibility and carrying. Heidegger claims that the emerging and coming forth of

the event lights up that on and in which humans ground their lives - the earth. In the

happening of truth, the earth holds sway as the preserving (Bergende) (GA 5, 28).

Michel Haar suggests a catalogue of the meanings of 'earth' in Heidegger in his

monograph The Song of the Earth.xm He breaks down the meaning of 'earth' into four

different senses, and his analysis is useful in order to bring out the richness of this

concept, whose sense seems to shift during the course of the art-essay. Haar's first sense

is tied to truth. Earth brings out the part of aletheia that remained unthought by the

Greeks, that is, the concealing precondition of unconcealment. The second sense of earth

is nature. Thirdly, earth is the material. The fourth sense Haar lists is earth's terrestrial

meaning - according to which earth is the heimatlicher Grund. It seems that none of the

four alone captures the sense of earth, but they do reveal different aspects of this new

truth is an event, something that happens, and hence both aspects of the event - world and earth - should
not be thought of as static.
108
Michel Haar. The Song of the Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 57-64.
 67

concept. I propose that at the core of these different aspects of earth is a notion of alterity

- something radically other. In the following, I will look in particular at what these

different senses of earth reveal about Heidegger's understanding of the artwork, and

show how taking 'earth' seriously has consequences for a philosophical treatment of art

that are rarely thematized or pursued. To anticipate, earth forces a philosophical treatment

of art to be specific and particular, since it challenges our conceptual apparatus; earth

relates the artwork to nature, and thus the artwork does not rid itself completely of a

mimetic function; and earth also poses a challenge to formalism. Heidegger does not

explicitly state these consequences of introducing earth, and at times he even makes

statements that seem to contradict them.

The first sense of earth suggested by Haar can be understood on the basis of

Heidegger's definition of the artwork as a setting to work of truth. It is important for

Heidegger in the example of the temple to show that the temple is not only world-

clearing, and this is important also because it addresses what truth is. In Heidegger's

restitution of the Greek aletheia, that is, truth understood as unconcealment, concealment

and withdrawal are preconditions for and parts of truth. Earth and world are related to the

two dimensions of truth - concealment and unconcealment - but do not map onto them

directly. It is important to note that the relationship between earth and world is not simply

earth as the concealing and world as the clearing. Heidegger stresses: "but the world in

not merely the open, that which corresponds to the illumination; the earth is not merely

the closed off, what corresponds to the harboring" (GA 5, 42). Earth is what emerges as

closed off and hence should not be thought of as invisible, but, following Haar, rather as
 68

an opacity that must manifest itself.109 In the case of the temple then, this concealed,

harboring dimension of truth is made manifest with the event of the artwork.

The earth that becomes visible with the temple extends beyond the temple, both in

a spatial and temporal sense: "Upon the earth and in it, historical human being grounds its

living in the world" (GA 5, 32). In this sense, earth enables history as non-historical

ground. But even this ground is dependent on the artwork, in the sense that the work "...

pulls and holds the earth itself in the open of a world. The work lets the earth be an earth"

(GA 5, 32). This first sense of earth also changes the concept of world. Compared to the

transcendental picture drawn in Sein und Zeit, world is now grounded, meaning that it is

not "hanging in the air," like a general, metaphysical structure. Instead, because earth and

world are always struggling, it becomes clear that worlds come out of something, and

worlds can come and go. A world is a particular, limited event that is wrought out of this

self-secluding other, earth. The most radical change in the resulting conception of world

is then that a world is historical; it is not a transcendental structure. What it is to be is

now described as eras (and areas) that are not permanent but that come into history and

pass away.

The second sense Haar attributes to earth denotes nature. This sense offers itself

easily, since nature is typically thought in opposition to culture, and earth is the

counterpart to world. However, the relationship between earth and nature cannot be one

of identity: since natural beings are also part of a world, what falls in under earth as

nature has to be something more radically "un-worldly" than natural beings like trees and

Haar, The Song of the Earth, p. 57.

 69

stones; by nature here is meant, as Haar puts it, "essential difference."110 Haar points out

that trees and stones are not merely derived form the world, but that there is an aspect of

all natural beings that point beyond the world. In the following quotation from the art-

essay, earth could be interpreted as denoting nature in the sense of some shared core of

natural beings, which is outside historical time and space, and hence un-worldly:

All things of the earth, and she itself as a whole, flow together in an reciprocal
accord. But this flowing together is no obliteration. Here flows that which
excludes, that which delimits every present being in its presencing. So in all self-
concealing thing is the same not-knowing-one-another. (GA 5, 33)

Earth is hence something radically other that delimits what is present to us, and in its

independence it points to a realist ontology in the art-essay. Since earth is present in the

artwork, this sense would then suggest that the artwork is part nature and part culture.

This dual character of the artwork is brought out more concretely in Haar's third sense of

earth, earth as material.111 This sense relates to a topic that Heidegger addresses explicitly

in the art-essay, that is the relation between form and matter in a work.

An artwork is made up of something; it is hergestellt. The production of

something, or to use a more literal rendering of the German, the setting forth, is an

essential feature of what it is to be a work, according to Heidegger. Like any manmade

110
Haar, The Song of the Earth, p. 59.
' " i leave aside the fourth sense listed by Haar, earth as terrestrial, or as heimatlicher Grund, a native soil
(Boden), a specific historical-geographical ground for the people of the corresponding world. This aspect,
however, is not explicitly addressed in the art-essay, but is more present in the reading of Holderlin. There
it is clear that any world is anchored in a specific landscape and ground that is only brought to our attention
through the artwork. In the context of the art-essay the "heimatliche Grund" is only hinted at in the stone of
the mountain that is made present in its absence when carrying the temple. The particular geographical or
national aspect, which comes to the forefront in Heidegger's reading of the river poems, is not brought out
in his reflections on any of the examples of artworks in the art-essay, cf. GA 39. In this text the importance
of earth as providing a ground for a people's historical home is explicitly related to Holderlin's poetry.
 70

thing in the world, an artwork is produced out of a material (Werkstoff). However, the

artwork relates to its material in a manner different from the way the tool does: whereas

the material of the hammer or the axe disappears when the tool through its usefulness is

incorporated into Dasein 's busy care for itself - the material is completely absorbed and

consumed when the tool does its job as a piece of equipment ready to hand - the artwork

makes the material present in the world:

...as it sets up a world the temple-work does not let the material disappear but
rather for the very first time come forth, and precisely in the open space of the
world of the work: the stone comes to carry and rest and as such becomes stone
for the first time; the metals comes to glitter and shine, the colors come to light,
the tones ring, the words speak. (GA 5, 32)

Earth is in the artwork, as its materiality. But earth also extends beyond the limit of the

work. Heidegger writes of the temple: "The temple standing there opens a world and at

the same time sets this back on the earth" (GA 5, 28). The temple lights up that which

grounds the world, that is, earth. The concept of earth encompasses the cliff in which the

temple rests as well as the stone in the temple's walls and columns. But Heidegger

stresses that 'earth' has nothing to do with the conception of a sedimented mass, or that

of a planet. 'Earth' draws on, but defies our common use of the word; it is material, but

not in the sense of any general "stuff or matter.

Heidegger uses a stone as an example: It does not equal earth, but has an 'earthy'

element. A stone has a heaviness, thickness and impenetrability that are essentially

concealed - these features are the earth of the stone. We can weigh the stone or break it

in two, but we will not get at its earthy character by doing this. The surface of the stone is
 71

still all we have access to, and the number shown on the scale does not betray the

burdening that belongs to a heavy rock. Earth cannot be opened or disclosed; the earthy

character of the stone is apparent, but only as something not present. Earth has the

remarkable character of being both in the open and concealed at the same time. The earth

is self-sufficient, enduring, and undisclosable; it is that which delimits everything

present; and it resists becoming present except as concealed. In the artwork, "the self-

seclusion of earth ... unfolds itself in an inexhaustible variety of simple modes and

shapes" - for example, in the impenetrability of stone or color (GA 5, 34).

Understanding earth as an impenetrable materiality is important in order to see the

force of Heidegger's emphasis on the artwork. If the material aspect of the work is

present in its resisting absence, as passages from the art-essay suggest, there is a certain

particularity and irreducibility to the artwork. If the material aspect of a work is

constitutive of its meaning, if it is the counterpart to world, it seems that the sensuous

aspect of the work and its specific material cannot be reduced or eliminated in favor of

form, concept or meaning. Therefore, Heidegger's concern must be with artworks and

not just art as such. This claim needs some further unpacking, however, and in the

remainder of this section I attempt to show the positive consequences of the introduction

of earth for the philosophical account of art. As will become clear, I think there is more

potential in the notion of earth, and more radical consequences for the philosophical
m
account of art, than Heidegger himself seems to acknowledge in the art-essay.

112
There is much more to be said in Heidegger's interpretation of nature, which seems to also undergo a
development in the period after Sein und Zeit. However, there is little in the art-essay that explicitly brings
out this sense of earth - except of course the very ordinary sense of earth.
 72

According to Heidegger, the two different features of the artwork, the setting up

of world and the setting forth of earth, are essential to what it is to be an artwork. A great

work of art has this double character of both offering a wealth of meaning and providing

a ground to its interpreters. The work is a unity of seclusion and opening, of earth and

world - but these are not opposites creating balance - earth and world are better

described as opposing forces or movements forming a unity in the work as a happening

or event. The offering and providing that characterizes the event of the artwork is the

result of a struggle or strife; in the work, meaning is wrestled from nothing, as the open

space is brought to stand in the "still nothing" (Noch-nichi) of concealedness (GA 5, 48).

Heidegger stresses that the unity of earth and world is not a static one:

World and earth are essentially different from each other and yet never separated.
The world grounds itself in earth and earth juts through the world. And yet the
relation between earth and world never withers into the empty unity of opposites
that do not matter to each other. World resting on the earth strives to ignore it. As
the self-opening it cannot tolerate anything secluded. Earth on the other hand, as
the harboring, is inclined to enclose and contain the world in itself. The
opposition of world and earth is strife. (GA 5, 35)

Earth and world are in opposition, yet essentially intertwined. The one always works

against the other. This struggle between making present and withdrawing becomes

concrete in the rift that is the Gestalt or figure in the artwork. Only in the artwork is the

struggle between earth and world visible.

These somewhat lofty sounding passages bring us to a more concrete

understanding of the positive role earth, in terms of its materiality, plays in an artwork.

The struggle described above by Heidegger is a way to account for figure in art. This is in
 73

other words an attempt to articulate the origin of the artwork in the sense of the coming to

be of its figure. The rift is the marking out of a difference or contrast in the material, and

it is this that makes up a work; it rips up; it outlines; it makes the basic design and the

sketch (GA 5, 51). The earthy element of the work is what fixes the struggle of opening

and seclusion as a figure; the material is in other words what contains and secures the

artwork.

The rift must set itself back in the carrying heaviness of the stone, in the mute
hardness of the wood, in the dark glow of the colors ... the struggle that is
brought into the rift and thus set back into the earth and fixed is the figure
(Gestalt). The work's createdness means: the fixing of truth in the figure. (GA 5,
51)

Again we see that the particular material of the work is what contains and makes possible

the happening of truth as artwork. Perhaps the most intuitive example of an artwork

where we can see the rift as the figure of the work is an engraving. On Heidegger's

reading, with its emphasis on earth, we cannot think of the engraving as only line or pure

shape - which is seen on paper when printed - but rather as a "collection of rifts," which

are both expressive and open up meaning, but at the same time set back in something

other that is closed off, that is, the material thickness that opposes and carries the form.

The sense of earth as materiality is related to its sense as nature and this aspect of

earthiness complicates Heidegger's position with respect to representation and mimesis.

The work and its createdness are indebted to nature and "the things of the earth," and the

rift is precisely what ties the man-made creation of the work - clearly a thing of the world

- to earth (GA 5, 58). Heidegger invokes the words of Dtirer, the master printmaker, to
 74

illustrate this point: "For truly, art is in nature, and whoever can tear [reissen] it out from

nature has it." Heidegger claims that 'tear' in Durer's statement means "the drawing out

of the rift and seizing the rift with the drawing feather on the drawing board," tying

together Durer's concrete activity as a draftsman, his description of what art is, and

Heidegger's own definition of what is happening in the artwork (GA 5, 58).113 Heidegger

addresses the relation between artwork and nature, and stresses the importance of nature,

as well as stating how the work is taken as primary: "Certainly there is in nature a rift,

measure and limit, and the possibility to create - art - is constrained by this. But still it is

certain that this art in nature becomes apparent only because it is originally put in work"

(GA 5, 58). Heidegger claims art is in nature, in the sense that the bringing-forth and the

limits of the artistic possibilities are in nature. At the same time, this relationship between

art and nature can only come forth in artworks. It is precisely through working on the

material that the artwork brings the otherwise invisible aspect of what is "present as

absent."

By now it should also be clear that to think of the relationship between earth and

world in the artwork as parallel to the more familiar relationship between form and

matter, however tempting, is deceiving. The latter is a typical way to carve up what an

artwork is in aesthetic theory, but it is ill-suited to understand Heidegger's concepts, and

is in fact contrary to his explicit wish to break with previous aesthetic theory. Still, I will

use it as a contrast to bring out the novel relationship between earth and world. If we

113
The etymological kinship between Durer's work and Heidegger's definition of the figure as rift is
stronger and more striking in German: "Reissen heisst hier Herausholen des Risses und den Riss reissen
mit der Reissfeder auf dem Reissbrett" (GA 5, 58).
 75

were to interpret Heidegger's concepts as parallel to form and matter, we could think of

earth as providing the material or matter for shaping a world, which is a meaningful form.

In this sense, Heidegger's concept pair would provide categories helpful for analyzing the

artwork, and we could interpret his emphasis on the importance of earth for grounding

world as an attempt to supplement or correct traditional aesthetics, which emphasizes

form over content. The most influential example here is Kant, for whom the essence of

the aesthetic - that is the experience of harmonious play - is based on, but removed from,

the sensuous. The material object, which the artwork is, is an occasion for such mental

activity, but even if the aesthetic idea is not fully conceptual, it is still a form (Gestalt)

present to the mind of a subject and separable from the material work.114

However, Heidegger dismisses understanding an artwork as a composite of form

and matter, arguing that the form/matter distinction derives from analyzing the

production of equipment or tools, which are importantly different from works. A tool is

matter formed with a view to usefulness; the manufacturer's idea of what the hammer

should be is the source of the form that he gives to the material. We could think that the

same considerations apply to artworks as well: an artist has a plan, a formal idea, which

he organizes matter in order to express. The artist takes up material with a view to

realizing some subjective aim that determines the form that he gives the material. If this

were the case, however, we should worry that the world of the work is really just the

artist's world, which he or she is now making us take up. On this account, the artwork

would be like a tool, useful for the artist to reach some end. However, according to

114
1 will treat Heidegger's understanding of aesthetics in general and of Kant with much more care in
Chapter Three.
 76

Heidegger, this paradigm taken from tools proves itself insufficient when it comes to

explaining art (GA 5, 15). It is the emphasis on earth, as something different from "mere"

matter, that saves Heidegger's account from lending itself to a promethean interpretation,

where world is the result of geniuses.

Artworks have a self-sufficiency that resists any exhaustive interpretation. Even

when we think we have come up with a good interpretation of an artwork, there is

something more to art than its interpretation. At the other end of the spectrum, there is

also something more to the artwork than what the artist intends it to be or do. Even when

we come up with a description of the artist's purpose, something is left over, Heidegger

claims. In an artwork ".. .the earth itself must be set forth and put to use as self-secluding.

Such use, however, does not use up or misuse the earth as matter, but rather releases it to

be itself (GA 5, 52). Utility is not an exhaustive explanation of what the artwork is, as in

the case of tools. The fact that a tool is made disappears into its usefulness; a hammer

exists in-order-to fill some purpose, and it is obvious why it is made (GA 5, 53). With an

artwork on the other hand, that it is made demands our attention: "The more essentially

the work opens itself, the more apparent becomes the uniqueness of the fact that it is

rather than not," Heidegger writes (GA 5, 53). Another way to put this point is that it is

far easier to answer the question "why are there hammers?" than "why is there art?"

Artworks are made and it is not obvious what for, and hence the mere existence of

artworks is for Heidegger a puzzle. There is a certain "obstinacy" in an artwork that

'earth' captures, which is precisely overlooked in formalist aesthetics that usually focus

on form and either the creation of it through genius or the experience of it in the
 77

spectator. Both the so-called intentional fallacy and the focus on aesthetic experience (the

affective fallacy) so prevalent in traditional aesthetics, are results of supposing the

sufficiency of a form-matter structure for understanding artworks and, in the process,

locating the distinctively aesthetic character of the artwork in its form, the counterpart to
115
the subjectivity of the artist or the audience. Regrettably, however, the form/matter

distinction is so widespread in the history of Western metaphysics that the independence

of 'earth,' which is present-in-its-absence in the artwork, is lost out of sight, and the

material aspect of an artwork disappears in favor of form, like matter does in the case of

tools. When we approach all things we encounter as if they were equipment, the result is

an understanding of beings as objects for our manipulation, which is to misunderstand the

artwork. It is precisely the independence and self-repose that Heidegger is trying to get at

with his new concept. Emphasizing earth is hence a way for Heidegger to resist the

subjectivist tendency of aesthetics.

It is clear that Heidegger's introduction of earth signals his break from the

aesthetic tradition. Unlike concepts like matter or material, earth cannot be incorporated

into an aesthetic framework. Aesthetics for Heidegger is a theoretical engagement with

art that is always centered on the subject, perceiving the art object in creation or

reception. The radical alterity of earth, however, refers to something that the subject does

not perceive, which is merely present in its absence, and which in this respect points to a

self-sufficiency and independence of the work. The artwork is only partly accessible to

115
For the original formulation of these fallacies, see Beardsley, Monroe and William K. Wimsatt. "The
Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy," both in H. Adams (ed.), Critical Theory since Plato. Fort
Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992, pp. 945-951 and pp. 952-959.
 78

the subject, and to aesthetics, and it is even able to make us aware of this fact. Put in

other terms, we could say that, on Heidegger's account, the way that the artwork

incorporates the earth enables it to sustain its own autonomy.

2.2.1 Problems with the art-essay as philosophy of art

There are several problems and shortcomings with Heidegger's art-essay if we think of it

as putting forth a "philosophy of art." It has several obvious omissions, and I will go

through some of them. If we do grant that the art-essay only addresses certain aspects of

art, and in no way attempts to put forth any exhaustive theory, the essay remains

problematic in many respects. Consequently, even if we assume that the art-essay does

not present a theory about art in general, it remains questionable whether it helps our

understanding or interpretation of artworks. The problems in Heidegger's text invite us to

wonder what the "purpose" of Heidegger's text is - a question that underlies the

investigation undertaken in this dissertation.

Heidegger's description of the artwork as a happening of truth is, as we have seen,

a description of art that is social and historical in nature. Art is granted an extremely

important role - it is world-transforming - but art's importance comes at a price: hardly

any artwork can be said to live up to this description. Heidegger's text is unsatisfying if

read as a theory of art, since it is not offering any general definition of art nor attempting

to provide a description that fits art in general. As a theory, it pertains to very little of

what we refer to as art. However, a theory could have virtues even if its scope is not
 79

universal and does not solve problems concerning the ontology of art. Heidegger

explicitly limits his discussion to "great art" and can hence defend himself against

counterexamples by denying that they are great works. That there are lots of artworks that

do not open worlds is not in itself a challenge to his description.

Nonetheless, even if the scope of Heidegger's text is restricted to great artworks,

we are still faced with serious shortcomings if we try to interpret it as a general theory.

For is the happening of truth, that is, the opening up of world and the setting forth of

earth for a people, a good description of what we think of as great art today? Certainly, it

does not seem like any artwork in the last century has worked in a manner similar to the

description of the Greek temple. Let us imagine what it would mean if Heidegger were

right in his description of greatness in art, and let us take some of the works from the last

century as examples of artworks we generally hold as great - e.g. a watercolor by Klee,

"Heilige, aus einem Fenster" that Heidegger liked so much, which represents the early

break with the representational painting of the tradition; Pollock's "One" as an example

of Abstract Expressionism; Joseph Beuys' "Felt suit" as an example of the break with

traditional artistic genres; and "Lips of Thomas" by Marina Abramovic as a

representative of the often violent performance art of the seventies. Do any of these

works have the power to open a shared world and let us see who we are as a community?

And what would this community be - Europe, the US, post-war Germany, the West, or

perhaps the artworld? I take as evident that this kind of application of Heidegger's

"definition" would seem far-fetched. Even if these works can all say something

interesting about who we are to some of us, they do not have this unifying character that
 80

seems implicit in the description of the happening of truth. If the art-works do not fit

Heidegger's description, this could mean that the 20th Century was a century without

great art on Heidegger's view.

Heidegger himself complicates the matter when he says with respect to Holderlin

that an artwork could be great but somehow not be "working properly" because its time

has not come yet. In other words, there could be potentially great art around us that we

just have not responded to in the proper manner. Heidegger gives us no criterion for

greatness that we can use when interpreting artworks; still, the greatness of the work

depends on our response to it. If greatness could be waiting, as in the case of Holderlin,

for a right response from its preservers, then it does seem that greatness is dependent on a

certain reception. Certain ways of relating to artworks are preconditions for the works to

work in Heidegger's favored sense. However, the question of whether a work is working

as a great work of art can only be determined retrospectively, if at all.

In the case of the works from the last century mentioned above, it could be that

these are great works of art, and that the absence of a happening of truth as described by

Heidegger with or around these works is due to the works not being properly understood

and preserved by their audiences. Like Holderlin's poems, these works might not yet

have found their people, so to speak. Perhaps there is some way of interpreting these

works, which also makes it possible to attribute grandiose world historical power to these

works, tying people together by presenting their communal identities. However, it is

tempting to think the meaning of these artworks, captured in appropriate interpretations,

would exclude such description. The Greek paradigm, in which the Greek people relate to
 81

their artworks as expressing aspects of religion, character, fate and destiny, seems able to

show who the Greeks are in a much more concrete and unifying way than any

interpretation of these 20th century works possibly could. Indeed, is it not tempting to say

that some of these more contemporary artworks just are not about who "we" are at all,

and that any good interpretation of them would make it impossible to describe these

works as world-openers and earth-setters? Is not the socio-historical implication of the

truth of a great artwork, that it gives its people a shared identity, misplaced in most of

these cases?116

These examples seem to suggest that Heidegger's theory either will have to

dismiss these works as not great, or it will have to recommend interpretations of these

works that seem far-fetched and misplaced, or its theoretical aim must somehow be

thought completely separately from questions of interpretation of individual works. The

first option, to dismiss these works, is problematic because Heidegger's "theory" then

seems unable to address art of our time and thus brings its own legitimacy into question.

It should make us suspicious that Heidegger's standard for "greatness" might indeed not

come from considering art, but from external concerns (enabling socio-historical change),

or alternatively from interpreting certain artworks "at the origin", i.e. by taking the art of

Greek antiquity as the standard for art. The second option is at least as problematic

' 16 1 will not present any alternative interpretations of these examples, but just suggest that awakening of
unfamiliarity, expression of spontaneity, individual uniqueness, questioning of identity, criticism of culture,
and commentary on art history - all possible topics raised in these works - are features of art that are alien
to the features Heidegger describes as belonging to the nature of art. Paying attention to such features,
however, might produce far richer and more appropriate interpretations of these works than Heidegger's
world-historical ontological revelation might allow for. What could be said to be present in these works
though, is a happening of strife. From the felt of Beuys suit, via Abramovic's body to the painterliness of
both Pollok and Klee - these are all opaque and self-sufficient "materials" from which meaning is wrested.
 82

because it makes Heidegger's theory look like bad philosophy of art, producing

incongruous interpretations. The third option, that interpretation of particular artworks is

not at all within the scope of Heidegger's text, raises the question about what the aim of

Heidegger's text then is. The third option pushes to the forefront the question that I raise

in the Chapter Four: does Heidegger have anything interesting to say for people who are

interested in art and the philosophy of art in our time?117

To sum up, taken as presenting Heidegger's philosophy of art, the art-essay can

be charged with being exclusive to the point of being irrelevant, since hardly any artwork

fits the description therein; furthermore, it is questionable whether it addresses what we

do find important and interesting about artworks at all. These observations do not mean

that Heidegger's text is uninteresting with respect to art, but it does mean that thinking of

Heidegger's essay as offering a complete and general theory of (great) art - what we

usually expect from a philosophy of art - is difficult and in the end must be unsatisfactory

if one is genuinely interested in both philosophy and art. There is a tension in

Heidegger's text, between the great importance ascribed to art on the one hand, and the

apparent impossibility of satisfying the criteria of this importance, on the other. There is a

117
As we will see in Chapter Four, truth can happen in 20th Century art, but 'greatness' seems to be a
feature of art that Heidegger abandons when he moves beyond the Greek examples (and as he frees himself
from his particular interpretation of Holderlin). As will become clear in the following, the emphasis on
greatness seems to align Heidegger with a Hegelian (and hence aesthetic) position that he is explicitly
working to overcome, and which in any case is irrelevant for the situation of both art and preservers in late
modernity. Regarding this point I am completely at odds with Robert Bernasconi, who in his article "The
Greatness of the Work of Art" sees the absence of greatness in the post-war writings as a return to a more
aesthetic position. Bernasconi thinks that with the abandonment of 'greatness' goes history and a concern
for the historical situation of the community, which I think is a completely unfounded worry. As will
become clear, it is precisely the specific historical situation of modernism that is the reason why greatness
in art is not merely impossible, but also inappropriate. What we as preservers need today is something quite
different. Cf. Robert Bernasconi, "The Greatness of the Work of Art," in his Heidegger in Question: The
Art of Existing, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993, pp. 99-116.
 83

potential purpose to art, in that it has the power to shape our outlook on our world and

thereby make our possibilities in the world and our indebtedness to the earth manifest to

us. However, this potential seems also to have the paradoxical consequence of deeming

most artworks insignificant. Since our time is one of crisis according to Heidegger - we

live in the age of technology, the consequence of nihilistic metaphysics - it seems that we

need art more than ever. However, can we even imagine an artwork which could be said

to set truth to work in our time? Heidegger leaves this question open in the art-essay, but

it is a recurring concern in his later writings. The Greek paradigm seems to leave us with

either an unhelpful nostalgia, or even worse, the recommendation of some totalitarian

Gesamtkunstwerk. Both these options are unattractive, to say the least. As we shall see,

Heidegger also explicitly rejects them.

I will now move on to Heidegger's use of van Gogh in the art-essay. I choose to

spend some time on this example, because it has been much discussed, and also because I

think it brings out some of the larger problems with the text and hence can help illustrate

various criticisms of the art-essay. The debate over Heidegger's use of this picture has

primarily been used as criticism against Heidegger as a philosopher of art. I will go

through some of these objections, but also by the end see if we can learn some lessons

about how we might read Heidegger in a more productive way.

 84

2.2.2 The use of van Gogh

The difficulty in determining the aim of Heidegger's art-essay becomes very apparent

when one tries to understand and assess his use of a painting by van Gogh. It is unclear

whether he is offering an interpretation or applying his more general definition of what

art is in this case, and subsequently whether his treatment of the painting is justifiable. In

the first section of his essay, "Thing and Work," Heidegger makes use of a painting by

the Dutch artist as an example. The context of the example is Heidegger's attempt to

bring out the difference between tools (Zeuge), works and "mere things." The painting is

introduced as a pictorial representation, in a somewhat imprecise manner - "a pictorial

representation will do. We choose a famous painting by van Gogh, who painted such

shoes on several occasions" - and the painting is meant to help our investigation of a

familiar tool, a pair of farmer's shoes. It is important to note that the subject of

Heidegger's discussion at this point in the essay is tools (not artworks) and that he has

already chosen his example, a pair of farmer's shoes, before he turns to van Gogh's

painting. This context complicates the status of Heidegger's reading of the artwork.

Heidegger's use of this painting has received much attention because of a piece

the art historian Meyer Schapiro wrote on it in 1968, "The Still Life as a personal object -
1 1 R

A note on Heidegger and van Gogh." Schapiro criticizes Heidegger's use of van Gogh

on several points. Heidegger never responds explicitly to Schapiro, but Derrida writes the

"polylogue" "Restitutions" as a response to the disagreement between the two thinkers,

Schapiro, Meyer. "The Still Life as a Personal Object - A Note on Heidegger and van Gogh," in M.
Schapiro. Theory and Philosophy in Art: Style Artist, and Society, New York: George Braziller, 1994.
 85

and Shapiro adds another rejoinder in 1994.119 I shall briefly go through Schapiro's

criticism and then look at some of the issues that the debate between the two thinkers

brings forth.

Schapiro criticizes Heidegger on three fronts: first, he claims Heidegger overlooks

the particularity of the artwork. After inquiring about what painting Heidegger is

referring to, Schapiro shows how Heidegger either has confused several of van Gogh's

paintings of shoes, or at best is working from some imprecise impression of these.1 °

Secondly, by appealing to biographical material, Schapiro questions Heidegger's

assertion that the boots are farmer's boots. Instead of belonging to a peasant woman, as

Heidegger suggests, Schapiro attributes ownership of the shoes to the painter himself, at

the time living in cosmopolitan Paris.121 Thirdly, Schapiro claims that everything

Heidegger presents as flowing from observing the artwork is not from the painting at all,

but are rather reflections Heidegger might as well have had from merely looking at a pair

of shoes. To sum up, whereas the fact that the painting is a subject's representation of

shoes makes Schapiro interpret them in a psychological manner, expressing something of

the subject who painted it, Heidegger's interpretation makes no reference to the act of the

subject who creates the painting. Schapiro thinks this shows an important weakness of

119
Meyer Schapiro, "Further Notes on Heidegger and van Gogh," in M. Schapiro, Theory and Philosophy
in Art: Style Artist, and Society. New York: George Braziller 1994; Jacques Derrida, "Restitutions," in
Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1987.
120
Heidegger in his correspondence with Schapiro says the painting is one he saw in Amsterdam in 1930,
which Schapiro determines to be a painting from 1886, cf. Schapiro, "The Still Life as a Personal Object,"
p. 136.
21
The arguments for Schapiro's alternative interpretation of the shoes are based on the fact that van Gogh
lived in Paris at the time; that van Gogh's friend Gauguin comments on a painting of shoes in his diary and
according to Schapiro Gauguin there senses "a personal history behind the friends painting of a pair of
shoes"; and on the "personal" way the shoes are depicted, both in the way they face the viewer and in the
stroke.
 86

Heidegger's interpretation; in Schapiro's words, Heidegger overlooks "the artist's

presence in the work."122

There are some obvious ways we can object to Schapiro's criticism. Though

sensitive to historical-biographical context, Schapiro himself completely ignores the

context in which Heidegger's use of the painting occurs. In Heidegger's defense, we can

point out that Heidegger never claims to present an interpretation of the artwork, let alone

a complete and balanced one. Also, Schapiro's eagerness to attribute the shoes to Van

Gogh can be said to suffer from the same mistake that Heidegger's reading does: there is

certainly nothing in the painting suggesting subjectivity or urban life, which according to

Schapiro is the correct context of the painting, just as there is nothing tying them to the

countryside. As Derrida points out, both the philosopher and the art historian are overly

eager to restitute the shoes, and return them to their proper owner so to speak.123

Schapiro's swift move from some thoughtful scholarly observations to a full-fledged

psychological interpretation based on the artist's biography is problematic. The debate

between the two then in the end appears to represent two quite typical modernist

positions: the anti-modern return to rural life, opposed by the cosmopolitan celebration of

the individual inspired by modern psychology.124

Schapiro, "The Still Life as a Personal Object," p. 139. Schapiro instead thinks we come closer to "van
Gogh's feeling for these shoes" by associating it with a description of shoes in Knut Hamsun's Hunger.
This association is supposed to be more legitimate because Hamsun's novel is closer in time with van
Gogh's work, and because the first person narrator in that novel is a struggling young man living in the
city; presumably similar to how Schapiro imagines van Gogh.
123
Derrida, The Truth in Painting, p. 257.
124
Of course the political oppositions are apparent too: The Jewish Marxist Schapiro is writing his essay, in
New York City, in honor of the psychiatrist and fellow exile Kurt Goldstein, whereas Heidegger is writing,
in the German country-side, at the time when he decides to join the NSDAP, with its nationalist "Blut und
Boden" ideology. The Heidegger-Schapiro debate's problematic entanglement in a wider ideologically
charged discourse about modernism is further brought out in Schapiro's use of the Norwegian writer Knut
 87

But let us look at what Heidegger actually does with van Gogh's painting in the

disputed passage. The picture is brought in as an aid to imagine a pair of shoes, which

serve as the example of a tool. Heidegger has tried to clarify the differences among a

mere thing, a tool and a work. He has shown how in any ontology of beings from the

history of metaphysics, one of these three is given priority as the paradigm example of a

being or entity, in a way that makes it hard to grasp each of them on its own terms.125

When he turns to the painting, he is trying to describe the tool-being of tools (Zeugsein

des Zeuges), without having recourse to any philosophical theory about what entities or

substances are. He has already established that subservience (Dienlichkeit) is the

organizing principle of tool-being, just as he had in Sein und Zeit. To facilitate

{erleichterri) the imagining of a pair of shoes, which he claims is a thing familiar to

everyone, Heidegger suggests making use of a pictorial representation - "we choose a

famous painting by van Gogh, who painted such footwear several times" (GA 5, 18). The

painting is in other words introduced by virtue of its representational function, and it is to

serve as an aid for the philosophical investigation into the ontology of beings.

Heidegger then asks rhetorically whether we, if we just think of a pair of shoes in

general or look at the painting's empty shoes not in use, can experience what the tool-

being of tools is in truth. Should we not rather seek out the shoes in their use - when they

are serving the peasant women as she walks through the field for example? Heidegger

Hamsun to evoke the mood of the individual city-dweller. Hamsun, however, wrote modernist novels with
a clear anti-modernist streak, like Markens Grede (a novel that seems closer to the world and earth of
Heidegger's outlook); he was enthusiastic about national socialism; and even went to Germany to visit
Hitler during the war.
125
With the emphasis on production that is introduced in Greek philosophy with Plato and Aristotle, the
tool becomes the paradigmatic being. Cf. the discussion of form and matter and this schemas inadequacy
with respect to the artwork above.
 88

also notes, as Schapiro and Derrida later point out, that we cannot even know where the

boots are (or, Heidegger adds in 1960, to whom they belong) from looking at the

painting.126 They are there in an indeterminate space, and there is not even the tiniest

piece of earth to spot. Heidegger does in other words recognize the features that are

important for the later criticisms of him, but then adds his infamous "And yet" ("Und

dennoch") (GA 5, 19). This "and yet" introduces Heidegger's long description of the

world and the earth of the peasant woman. Through the shoes, attributed to a peasant

woman, the central Heideggerian terms of earth and world are introduced.127 The being of

tools is, with help of the otherwise invisible subservient tool that shoes are, determined to

be reliability {Verldsslichkeit).

Subservience (Dienlichkeit) is a distinguishing feature of tools, separating tools

from works and mere things, but this feature was already briefly noted before Heidegger

turned to van Gogh's painting. The outcome of the reflection on the shoes is a deeper

ontological insight: "This tool belongs to the earth and is protected in the world of the

peasant woman. Out from this protected belonging the tool itself arises to its self-repose

[Insichruheri]" Heidegger writes. In the painting, we realize that the manner in which the

This added qualifier of course also brings into questions Schapiro's interpretation, which attributes the
shoes in the painting to the painter. In his 1994 rejoinder, Schapiro asks regarding this addition: "Since
Heidegger's argument throughout refers to the shoes of a class of persons, not of a particular individual -
and he states more than once that the shoes are those of a peasant woman - it is hard to see why this note
was necessary. Did he wish to affirm, in the face of current doubts, that his metaphysical interpretation was
true, even if the shoes had belonged to van Gogh?" Schapiro, "Further notes," p. 150.
However, it is not clear in this context that 'earth' and 'world' take on a more abstract, philosophical
meaning (as they do in the next section of the art-essay). In the context of the van Gogh painting, the words
seem to be used in their colloquial, everyday sense. The initial description of the tool is consistent with the
tool analysis in Sein undZeit. The shoes are essentially inconspicuous when they work, that is, when they
are used in-order-to whatever Dasein 's activity is directed against. The differences are that the tool not only
reveals Dasein's world, but also its earth, and that we become aware of earth and world through looking at
the artwork, not by analyzing a breakdown situation.
 89

shoes are, their tool-being, is reliability (GA 5, 19). The subservience of tools is only a

consequence of their reliability, and their reliability is due to the tools belonging to both

earth and world (GA 5, 20). Heidegger's analysis is brief and poetic, but its thrust seems

to be that a tool is not sufficiently grasped as instrument but indeed has some

independence from the being-in-the-world that it serves. Another consequence of this

insight is that the paradigm of production, as giving form to matter, is misleading even in

the case of tools: "matter and form and the difference between them belong to a deeper

origin" (GA 5, 20). Even an ordinary, man-made thing is unfit to be thought along the

form/matter schema.

Heidegger then asks, again rhetorically, whether we might not also have

experienced something about works while we reflected on the tool in van Gogh's

painting. He claims we have, because it was the work that let us notice toolbeing. Van

Gogh's painting has spoken; and it has let us experience the truth about tools: "In the

vicinity of the work we have suddenly been somewhere else, than where we usually are.

The artwork let us know what shoes in truth are" (GA 5, 21).

Heidegger rules out that the insight into tool-being is the result of his subjective

achievement and instead stresses that the artwork does not merely improve our

illustration of toolbeing, but indeed it is through the artwork, and only through the

artwork, that the toolbeing of tools first comes to appear. Thus Heidegger puts forth the

central thesis of the art-essay - truth, here the truth of an entity, is set to work in an

artwork. The "definition" of what an artwork is will be elaborated and given further

content in the next section of the essay, but it is introduced as something that we appear
 90

almost to have stumbled upon in the course of another path of questioning. I say appear

because the development of Heidegger's text shows that the reflection on van Gogh was

not initially necessary for Heidegger to describe the artwork as a happening of truth. In

the first draft of the essay, the central theses and concepts of the essay are all in place,

even though the discussion of tool-being versus thingliness and workhood, as well as the
1 9X

use of van Gogh's painting, are absent. Also, the truth revealed in the reflection on van

Gogh does not sound like a truth that sets up a world and sets forth the earth. Certainly,

gaining knowledge about the reliability of tools is not a truth working as a uniting event

on the scale of the Greek temple. For this reason, it remains unclear whether this example

is an instance of an artwork as defined later on in the essay. It seems forced to think that

this painting sets forth an earth and opens up a world in such a way as to allow a

historical people be who they are. It rather seems as if the work reveals an indirect truth

for us - the philosopher and his readers - about someone else - the peasant woman.

Heidegger does not comment on his own description of van Gogh. The remainder

of this first section of the art-essay is devoted to possible objections to or questions about

the definition reached at the end of the van Gogh passage; these questions and objections

are presumably raised in the voice(s) of traditional aesthetics. First, the text objects to this

description of art, by asking whether truth is not a topic for logic, whereas art is about

beauty, the topic reserved for aesthetics. This objection reflects the
128
This does not amount to saying that this discussion is superfluous. As I suggest towards the end of the
chapter, a new motif of thingliness, that remains underdeveloped, is introduced with the investigation into
things and works. Taminiaux traces the moment of a "turn" within the working out of the art-essay in
precisely this discussion, suggesting that Heidegger here moves away from the more politically,
promethean interpretation of art to a meditation of the "coming to presence" of createdness, Taminiaux,
"The Origin," p. 168. However, 1 will maintain that van Gogh's painting is not of importance for
Heidegger's definition of art.
 91

"compartmentalization" of philosophy of which Heidegger is deeply critical. Secondly,

could it be that the emphasis on truth captures the correspondence with reality or that van

Gogh's painting is a work of art because it imitates a real pair of shoes? Heidegger

explicitly dismisses a representational understanding of his description of an artwork (GA

5, 22). The third question raised asks whether what is reproduced in the work is the way

of being (Wesen) of the thing in general. Presumably this suggests that van Gogh's

painting could be said to be true because it represents the form or essence of shoes. This

idealist position is also dismissed. As we know, these objections all miss the point

because they depend on a concept of truth that for Heidegger is conceptually parasitic on

a more primordial understanding of truth as aletheia.

Now that we have sketched the context of the use of the example, we can again

ask what the rhetorical point is of Heidegger's use of the painting, seemingly in passing,

as a mere heuristic for a different discussion. Perhaps the section on van Gogh is

primarily meant as a suggestive way to bring the reader into Heidegger's way of thinking

about art. As is clear from what follows in the essay, 'earth' is not meant in a literal

sense, as the earth of the field, but rather as what grounds a world (which in the case of a

farmer happens to be the field and soil that she cultivates), and hence even city shoes, if

they are depicted in such a way as to make truth happen, would be characterized by

trustworthiness as their tool-being, resting on earth and opening up world.129 This could

This is indeed the line of argument put forth by von Herrmann, who thinks any painting of any kind of
shoes will do. Schapiro's facts are irrelevant, because the truth in the painting can remain the same
independently of them, cf. von Herrmann, Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst, p. 25. Schapiro presumably
would respond that it is all the more damning for Heidegger, if von Herrmann is right. Hagi Kenaan also
makes this indifference his main point of criticism of Heidegger, cf. his "What Philosophy Owes a Work of
 92

save Heidegger from an obvious objection, because it would seem wholly arbitrary if

Heidegger's whole account of artworks depended on a particular painting and the status

of a pair of shoes in it. If we follow this line of interpretation, we can say that it is

unfortunate that he used van Gogh for such a rhetorical purposes, since, as the reception

has made clear, the use of this painting distracted from the example's further purpose in

the continuation of the art-essay. This would amount to saying that Meyer Schapiro read

too much into Heidegger's use of van Gogh, and that though the use of the example is

unfortunate, it is not damaging to the meaning of the essay, as it plays merely an heuristic

role.

I also want to suggest that there is something else happening in this example,

which might be more philosophically interesting, and that we can catch a glimpse of it in

light of the characterization of 'earth.' The investigation into the thingliness of things -

which makes a "detour" via van Gogh's painting and the nature of tools - is abandoned in

the first section of the essay, but resurfaces towards the end of the essay. There

Heidegger claims he knows how we can approach an interpretation of thingliness: "The

decisive looking-ahead preceding an interpretation of the thingliness of things must

consider the things as belonging to the earth" (GA 5, 57). The source of this insight is the

investigation of the artwork. When the thing-inquiry is abandoned and the artwork is

taken as point of departure for asking about art, what previously (in the first part of the

essay) characterized the thingliness of the work shows itself to be the earthiness

(Erdhafte) of the work. The description of earth fits well with the characteristics of

Art: Rethinking the Debate between Heidegger and Schapiro," in Symposium: Canadian Journal of
Continental Philosophy, No.3 ,Vol.8 (2004), pp. 587-606.1 take up Kenaan's critique in my conclusion.
 93

thingliness that Heidegger outlines in the opening of the art-essay, where thingliness is

resisting, withdrawing, self-sufficient, pulling itself back. Similarly earth is described as

the self-sufficient, enduring undisclosable, that which delimits everything present, and

resists presencing (Anwesenheit) except as concealed. The earth seems to have the

qualities Heidegger claims traditional philosophical conceptions of things miss when

approaching "mere things." Still, Heidegger claims that only with the artwork can

thingliness become revealed (in its partly absent way). That we need the work to access

thingliness is an example of how truth happens in the artwork (GA 5, 58). If this is the

case, it seems at least partly to explain the function of the van Gogh example at the outset

of the text. And, since Heidegger claims the artwork is necessary for realizing the nature

of tools, this truth of thingliness revealed in van Gogh's painting would never happen if

we only dwelled with things and let them be (in other words, just reflecting on a pair of

boots, like Schapiro suggests, would not make this clear to Heidegger).130

This is no apology for Heidegger's use of van Gogh, but it brings out a possible

answer to why Heidegger chose to include the example in the essay. The artwork is used

for the sake of philosophy, in the sense that reflecting on it brings out a point about our

relation to a certain kind of being, which on the face of it is not primarily relevant for

understanding art. Nevertheless, the wider consequences of the point Heidegger is trying

to get at here might in the end prove to be interesting also from the point of view of

130
von Herrmann writes in his commentary to "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" that this privileging of the
artwork ".. .heisst aber nicht, dass eine philosophische Analyse des Zeugseins und des Dingseins notwendig
den Weg durch das Kunstwerk nehmen muss," von Herrmann, Heideggers Philosophic der Kunst, p. 349.
He gives no reasons for this claim however. Perhaps because the reason is that Heidegger here seems to
ascribe a quite extraordinary importance to the artwork, which is unparalleled, and actually seems
incompatible with philosophical analyses that are made in both his earlier and later work (e.g. both in Sein
und Zeit and "Das Ding" is "thingliness" accessed without recourse to artworks).
 94

philosophy of art. The investigation of what it is to be a thing in the beginning of the

essay, which is developed and given a more prominent position in the final 1936 version,

is not there just to make ontological distinctions between work, tools and "mere"

(natural) things. The example of van Gogh's shoes reveals an interest on Heidegger's part

in a kind of "realism": in the alterity present in the thingly character of artworks and other

things, the absent, grounding "other" of human culture is glimpsed.131

Still, the use of van Gogh can be understood as revealing something deeply

problematic that Schapiro brings attention to, but which goes beyond the scope of the

latter's criticism of the art-essay. In fact, the interchangeability of van Gogh's painting

with any other painting of shoes, suggested by Heidegger's own imprecise introduction

of the painting and defended by von Herrmann's insistence that any painting of shoes will

do, poses a real challenge to Heidegger's text, even if the use of van Gogh's painting is

not meant to be a paradigmatic example of an artwork with which truth happens.

Heidegger appeals to art in order to make an ontological point. "The painting spoke,"

Heidegger claims, but the philosopher spoke for it.132 Schapiro maintains that what

Heidegger finds in the painting he could have found while merely contemplating a pair of

shoes. This is probably not right, as Heidegger tries to show that only some perspective

that breaks with everyday familiarity enables us to notice the trustworthiness that is the
131
This would also be a way to modify Poggeler's one-sided reading of the art-essay. Poggeler is right that
Heidegger is eager to find a new way to do philosophy in the 1930s. It is clear that truth and being are
thought in political terms in central texts like Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik, and that the art-essay shares
many themes with this text. However, the more modest inquiry into earth, thingliness, and a possible
different "realism" of "mere things" is also present in the late thirties, both in the art-essay and in the
lectures on Kant published as Die Frage nach dem Ding.
132
Hagi Kenaan expresses this point well: ".. .According to this [Heidegger's] understanding, the painting
is essentially a mute object whose communicability depends on those singular moments of oracular grace
which are inspired by the guidance of the philosopher." Kenaan, "What Philosophy Owes a Work of Art,"
p. 602.
 95

essence of being a shoe. However, Schapiro is right in noticing that the painting quickly

shifts into the background. This reveals a move that is characteristic of the art-essay:

particular artworks are quickly abandoned in favor of more general philosophical

considerations. Heidegger's aim is to determine what a work is, but the treatment of a
1 ^^

particular artwork, van Gogh's painting, is imprecise and insensitive. It seems that the

philosophical idea of an artwork is sought at the expense of the actual artwork taken up

for consideration. This is problematic because it can be understood as yet another

disenfranchisement of art by philosophy, which brings us to the heart of the problem for

interpreting the art-essay: is art a "tool" for Heidegger or is he sincerely trying to

understand art? This question will resurface in the discussion of Heidegger's harsh

criticism of aesthetics in the next chapter.

2.2.3 Art for the sake of truth and philosophy

Otto Poggeler starts his chapter on "Die Anfanglichkeit der Kunst" in his Der Denkweg

Martin Heideggers by stating that '"The Origin of the Work of Art' offers no philosophy

of art."134 Poggeler believes that Heidegger's concern and motivation in the mid-thirties

are not art, but being, and that art is merely a vessel for addressing being in a novel way,

133
This is the crux of the criticisms Hagi Kenaan and Michael Kelly raise against Heidegger. They both
focus on this point as symptomatic of the philosophical hubris Heidegger's text represents with respect to
art. Kelly claims this point reveals the indefensible absence of historical sensitivity in Heidegger's account,
whereas Kenaan sees it as an ethical shortcoming, suggesting that there is a moral aspect to the way
philosophy treats art. I return to these criticisms in my conclusion. Cf. Michael Kelly, Iconoclasm in
Aesthetics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, and Hagi Keenan, "What Philosophy Owes a
Work of Art."
Poggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, p. 207.
 96

and hence that the art-essay is better understood if read as a text about being. Whether

one agrees with Poggeler's bold statement of course also depends on what one takes a

philosophy of art to be. In the following, I will look at various ways of interpreting the

art-essay, beginning with the disagreement between von Herrmann and Poggeler. As I

have already noted, it is the various additions to the essay in particular that create

problems for a coherent interpretation of the work, and I will begin by looking at these in

some detail.

Heidegger begins his afterword to the art-essay by saying that "the preceding

considerations are concerned with the puzzle of art, the puzzle that art itself is. The claim

is far from a solution to the puzzle. The task remains to see the puzzle" (GA 5, 67). Here

Heidegger himself seems to challenge any attempt at understanding the art-essay as a

theory of art in any traditional sense. He then continues by raising the questions about the

end of art and the dominance of Erlebnis that I dealt with in Chapter One. The insistence

on not having provided a solution to the puzzle of art together with the reflections on the

end of art and the dismissal of contemporary views of art seem to greatly undermine a

strong reading of Heidegger's art-essay. This impression is reinforced by Heidegger's

Zusatz from 1956, in which he writes:

The consideration of what art is, is determined wholly and decisively only from
the question of Being. Art is considered as neither a sphere of achievement of
culture nor as an appearance of spirit; it belongs in the event, out if which the
"meaning of Being" (cf. Sein und Zeit) is initially determined. What art is is one
of the questions to which no answer is given in the essay. What presents the
semblance of such [answers] are leads for questioning. (GA 5, 73)
 97

This passage brings out three important points. First, art is thought only out of the

question of being. Poggeler takes this passage as support for his claim that the essay is

primarily about being and not art.135 Second, Heidegger emphasizes that his account is

different from a traditional aesthetic understanding of art as a product of culture or an

expression of spirit, which seems to be a way of explicitly distancing himself from Hegel.

Lastly, Heidegger claims to have provided no answer to the question of what art is. This

latter point does indeed seem puzzling and seems to be in conflict with what I have called

the definition of art as happening-of-truth above.

According to Poggeler's interpretation, truth is always at the center of

Heidegger's thinking, and in the art-essay art offers Heidegger an opportunity to think

truth in a new way, as an event (Ereignis).136 If Poggeler is right, this leads to some

further problems, because if it is the case that art is not a topic for philosophy in its own

right, but is used for some other philosophical purpose, it seems that Heidegger makes

use of art for the sake of the larger philosophical project.137 Poggeler argues further that

the view of art that results form using art in this manner is problematic. The consequence

of Heidegger's turning to art for the sake of truth is what he calls a romantic position. By

this he means that Heidegger's essay leaves us with a dilemma: since art has to return to a

way of being that it was before in order to restore its greatness, then either art has reached

an end or art must somehow regain its socio-historical importance as a truth-disclosing

event. The romantic position can hence either be a mourning - art is dead - or a longing -

135
Poggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, p. 207.
136
Poggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, p. 207ff.
1 7
This criticism is one Heidegger raises against modern aesthetics. I address Heidegger's criticism of
aesthetics in the next chapter.
 98

for a return to Greece. I have already noted that the latter view is quite unsatisfactory, as

it would entail some sort of conservative classicism.138 The consequences of the former,

however, are more complicated than what Poggeler recognizes and cannot be reduced to

romantic nostalgia. The end of art is not merely an anachronistic lament on Heidegger's

part, but also has consequences for what he sees as the future of art. That this is the case

will, however, only be apparent with the completion of this dissertation.139

In opposition to Poggeler's view, one could try to interpret the art-essay as a

general philosophy of art. Von Herrmann, at times in explicit opposition to Poggeler,

argues that the art-essay presents a theory of art that Heidegger held as his own view on

art all through his life. Part of the disagreement between Poggeler and von Herrmann

regarding the reading of the art-essay has to do with how one understands the post-scripts

and Heidegger's assertion that the art-essay needed a pendant. But even if we assume that

the text did not have these problematic addenda and if we put aside the questions of

Heidegger's own understanding of the text and look at the art-essay in isolation, it is

unclear how von Herrmann can avoid saddling Heidegger up with a quite unattractive

view, in ways I have suggested above. Against Poggeler, von Herrmann denies both that

there are shortcomings with Heidegger's text read as a positive theory and claims that the

art-essay, as a theory, can account for modern art. However, the reasons behind von

Herrmann's claims are difficult to grasp, since his work on the art-essay has the form of a

commentary. He seldom steps back from Heidegger's text to explain why he thinks it
138
It is also ruled out as an interpretation of Heidegger, since he explicitly reject classicism, cf. Chapter
Four.
139
To be fair to Poggeler, it is important to note that part of Poggeler's point is that Heidegger's thinking
develops, also concerning art, and that we can think along Heidegger's path and realize that art and
philosophy stand in a much more fruitful relationship than what the art-essay suggests.
 99

offers a good theory of art, or how it can contribute to our understanding of modern art.

Von Herrmann claims that there was space for art within the fundamental ontological

framework of Sein und Zeit (although art was not granted much attention), and that art

becomes a topic in the thirties not because of a politically motivated romantic attitude,

but rather because when Heidegger thinks Being historically (versus transcendentally),

that is, as event, art happens to be the first candidate at hand.140 Von Herrmann seems to

find wholly unproblematic that a changed attitude towards being proves the occasion for

a seemingly new attitude towards art.141 Instead, he emphasizes continuity in Heidegger's

project and seems unaffected by the possibility that art might just be used for the greater

philosophical project of investigating what it is to be.

Jacques Taminiaux offers another way of reading the art-essay, one that focuses

more on assessing the interesting discrepancies therein and less on classifying the text in

any of the categories suggested by von Herrmann and Poggeler. Instead, Taminiaux

stresses the fact that the addenda are indeed postscripts - Heidegger makes the last

additions more than two decades after giving the lectures that make up the original art-

essay - and points out that there is no reason to believe that Heidegger of 1956 holds

exactly the same view as Heidegger of 1936.142 Rather, his self-commentary might be

revealing for understanding the thinker's development. I think this is both

140
von Herrmann, Heideggers Philosophic der Kunst, p. 4.
141
von Herrmann, Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst, p. 20.
142
Taminiaux shares Poggeler's view that Heidegger's initial motivation for turning towards art is not art
itself, but locates an important philosophical shift in the period of when Heidegger finalizes the art-essay.
Taminiaux claims that the first versions of the original lecture "turn out to be voluntarist proclamations in
the name of the German Dasein" - proclamations that seem politically motivated rather than concerned
with artworks (Taminiaux, "The Origin," p. 167). Taminiaux does however think that there is a shift in the
third version of the essay (that is, the version printed in Holzwege). There the Promethean themes seem to
be weakened in favor of "the enigma of art" that Heidegger writes of in the afterword.
 100

hermeneutically the most sound way to understand the text, and one that is more in line

with Heidegger's repeated insistence that his thinking is "always on its way" and indeed

explores different ways, which means that Heidegger's texts need not be taken as a stable

whole expressing a unified theory. Taminiaux takes issue with the fact that Heidegger in

the afterword stresses that the essay has not provided an answer to the riddle that art is

but rather has made us see the riddle. Taminiaux suggests that if this really was so clear

already in 1935-6, then it seems surprising that Heidegger finds it pressing to stress it.143

Why is it important for Heidegger to emphasize this? Could it perhaps be that Heidegger

himself notices a problem in his thinking from the thirties, which he is now seeking to

resolve? In the 1956 addendum to the essay Heidegger points to specific passages that are

problematic.

On page 51 and 59 an important difficulty will present itself to a careful reader,

because it would seem that the words of "fixing truth in place" [ 'Feststellen der
Wahrheit"] and "letting the advent of truth happen" ['Geschehenlassen der
Ankunft von Wahrheit'] can never be reconciled.(GA 5, 70)

The problem here is Heidegger's use ofstellen and setzen in connection with the truth of

the artwork. On page 51, Heidegger writes that "the work's createdness means: the fixing

in place of truth in the figure." (GA 5, 51) The problem with this expression is that it

lends itself to a voluntaristic understanding of creation, which is not in line with

Heidegger's later focus on letting-be (Gelassenheit) as human being's most fruitful

143
Taminiaux writes of Heidegger's insistence: "It is difficult to read these words of the epilogue without
suspecting an ambiguity at the very core of the essay, the indication of a tendency to oscillate between the
exposure to the riddle and something very different: a solution proposed to a problem," in "The Hegelian
Legacy in Heidegger's Overcoming of Aesthetics," in Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment, p.
127.
 101

relation to being. Heidegger in 1956 comments that in 'Feststellen' there is a willing

which prevents the coming of truth, in opposition to the compliant 'Geschehenlassen,'

which releases or gives freedom for the advent of truth (GA 5, 70). Heidegger stresses

that both these descriptions of the truth happening in the artwork can be understood as

compatible if we think setting or fixing as "letting arise." Here he uses a statue as an

example, presumably in order to make us think of the creation of the statue, in the art-

essay described as a fixing of figure in the rift, as letting figure arise from the stone.144

Similarly, Heidegger notes that the whole phrase "setting-to-work of truth," the very

definition of an artwork, is ambiguous in that it is unclear whether truth is the object or

subject of this phrase. There are passages in which truth seems to be the object, and the

subject Dasein as artist and preserver. But the artwork is also described as being the

result of truth setting itself to work. However, Heidegger also adds that any event of

being is always addressed to human beings and is nothing without human beings (GA 5,

74). The problem according to Heidegger anno 1956, is that the relation between being

and human being is still not thought sufficiently.

In light of thee considerations, I will suggest another way to read the art-essay.

The text can be understood as treating the origin in the sense of a description of the first

possibility of art. The text would then, with the description of the temple as its core, be a

way to address the puzzle of art by trying to understand its inception, that is, its origin, in

Such an understanding of the creation of the work is not wholly absent from the art-essay. Indeed, as I
tried to show in the preceding discussion of earth, if we are to take seriously earth as constitutive for figure
and work, then a certain "letting arise" on behalf of the artist seems to be indicated already. These aspects
of autonomy and alterity represent a motif that gets accentuated in Heidegger's later reflections on art, see
the discussion of Kant in 3.2.2.
 102

both a historical as well as an onto logical sense.'45 The Greek temple is revealing in this

respect and has a certain authority as a happening that is also at the origin of Western

philosophy in general. Such an interpretation leaves open what it would mean to set forth

an earth and open up a world today, and whether such an understanding of art is even

applicable at the end of metaphysics. In other words, we would have a description of the

work of art that need not be relevant today. In light of this view, we would have to

reconsider the historical element of Heidegger's description of art as a happening of truth

in order to be able to understand fully what "definition" of art Heidegger provides us

with. I believe this to be a more promising route of interpretation than those offered

above. Such an interpretation also needs to situate the definition of art in relation to the

understanding of history, which is the aim of Chapter Three.146

Accentuating the historical dimension of Heidegger's understanding of an artwork

makes it possible to interpret Heidegger in the following way: Heidegger's description of

an artwork in the art-essay vacillates between two positions. It is on the one hand

backwards-looking, trying to define the artwork as it can be said to be working in Greek

antiquity; on the other hand, it is more suggestive, understanding the work as a happening

that must be responsive to its particular historical context in such a way that it might

change quite fundamentally - indeed the truth that happens with the work might be of a

145
The analysis of art is typically "Greek," not just because of its choice of main example, but also because
of the focus on art aspoesis resulting from a techne, and as such the analysis is very similar to the account
given in Einfuhrung in die Metaphysics, where the scope is explicitly Greek, centered around Dasein as a
technites involved in a strife with Being. Taminiaux argues that the analysis in the art-essay is close to an
Aristotelian account (and thus close to the fundamental ontology of Sein undZeii) "The Origin," p. 155.
146
Another complimentary reading of the text is to read it primarily as a criticism of aesthetics. To flesh out
what this would mean, we would also need to look at the criticism of aesthetics in greater detail, which is
intrinsic to the account of the history of aesthetics and artworks dealt with in Chapter Three.
 103

very different nature in a different time - in the course of history. This dual position is

what enables the end of art thesis to be an open question for Heidegger. If Heidegger's

understanding of the artwork was limited to its Greek paradigm, it seems that the

question of the end of art would be very easy to settle - art in this sense is most certainly

over. The other description of art, as something inherently puzzling and earthy, is less

conclusive with respect to what would count as a work of art and hence could be open to

works that do not historically gather us together and identify us a peoples are still

artworks. At the time he is writing the art-essay, Heidegger is also working on history

and the possibility of a new beginning for philosophy. The artwork of the future will

necessarily relate to this history in a different manner than an artwork at the origin of

Western philosophy. Anticipating the next chapter, we can at least establish that nothing

rules out the possibility of post-national, post-metaphysical art. We could then say, to

supplement Poggeler's reading, that the romantic, nostalgic position he attributes to

Heidegger in the art-essay should rather be thought as a "being-historical position." What

this entails will only become clear in the next chapter.

 104

Chapter 3 THE METAPHYSICAL DISCIPLINE OF AESTHETICS

The end of art thesis, independently of the character of the "end" and how one defines art,

is a historical thesis.147 For Heidegger it is essentially tied to the development of

aesthetics. Heidegger's thesis is that metaphysics determines aesthetics, which again

determines art practice, and that the historical result of this influence is the end of art. The

emphasis on the philosophy of art does not mean that the end of art is independent of

developments in the history of art, because for Heidegger the history of artworks, the

social practice of art, and the philosophical treatment of art are all intimately connected.

Heidegger's thesis is historical, and concerns metaphysics. This means that two issues

must be addressed by a faithful interpretation of Heidegger's conception of aesthetics:

first, we need to make sure we understand how Heidegger understands the history of

philosophy and what he means by metaphysics. Both history and metaphysics are central

to his thinking, and both have quite specific and unusual meanings for Heidegger.

Second, since Heidegger is very sparse when it comes to defending this history he tells of

aesthetics - he gives a sketch of a historical development, but provides only a few "close

readings" of important moments in this history - some speculation is necessary to give

content to Heidegger's thesis.

Because the larger issues concerning metaphysics and history must be addressed

before an interpretation of Heidegger's account of aesthetics is possible, the first part of

the chapter tries briefly to address Heidegger's understanding of metaphysics and history,

This is the second of the three aspects of the end of art thesis identified in Chapter One.
 105

and the role these play within his own philosophical project. The second part of the

chapter is devoted to Heidegger's history of aesthetics. First, I deal with the description

of the origin of aesthetic reflection on art in philosophy. Heidegger finds this origin in

Plato and claims that the metaphysical foundations of Plato's philosophy informs his

notion of mimesis, which becomes the defining concept for understanding art in the West.

Second, I discuss Heidegger's engagement with modern aesthetics and what is often

referred to as the "subjectivization of aesthetics."148 Heidegger claims this

subjectivization - initiated by metaphysics - informs new concepts central to the

aesthetic discourse, like disinterestedness, aesthetic attitude and aesthetic experience.

Eventually the response to this development in aesthetics is Hegel's declaration of the

end of art.

The main source for understanding Heidegger's view of aesthetics is his first

lecture on Nietzsche, called "The Will to Power as Art," from 1936.149 This is where

Heidegger explicitly formulates his thesis that aesthetics is shaped by metaphysics and

culminates in the end of art. I will treat this text in more detail below, but in order to see

what is at stake in this thesis I will first turn to Heidegger's Beitrdge to provide a fuller

understanding of Heidegger's conception of metaphysics and history. Beitrdge is

Heidegger's great second work, which was supposed to mark a new direction in his

thinking, departing from the fundamental ontology of Sein und Zeit. Heidegger was

148
This is Gadamer's expression from Truth and Method, which has become widespread in descriptions of
modern aesthetics and especially of Kant's. Heidegger makes a point similar to Gadamer's, although
Heidegger does not use this exact expression. As will become clear below, Heidegger's understanding of
Kant is also quite different from Gadamer's. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, London:
Continuum, 1994, especially Part One.
149
Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. I-II. Heidegger prepared these lectures for publication (which
included some reworking of the material) in 1960.
 106

working on this text in the late thirties, while writing the art-essay and lecturing on

Nietzsche. Since as he writes that "the question of the origin of art ... stands in the most

intrinsic relationship with the task of overcoming aesthetics," it seems urgent to

supplement the reading of the art-essay with the discussion of the overcoming of

aesthetics in the Nietzsche lectures (GA 65, 503).

3.1.1 Metaphysics and the role of history

In Beitrage, Heidegger is concerned with preparing a second beginning for philosophy,

which means formulating a thinking that can replace or overcome metaphysics.

Metaphysics is the philosophical tradition that follows the first beginning of thinking in

Greek philosophy. Metaphysics is characterized as a thinking of beings, framed by what

Heidegger in the thirties calls the leading question [Leitfrage] - "What are beings?" -

rather than by the basic question [Grundfrage] - "What is it to be?" The leading question

shapes the tradition of metaphysics in such a way that the dominance of presence in Plato

and Aristotle develops into a conception of truth as correspondence. In modernity, the

certainty of this correspondence is secured in the subject - compare Descartes' and

Kant's I's - and eventually this dominance of presence reaches completion in the

Hegelian system where being is fully present as absolute knowledge.150 The leading

To present and assess fully this story about metaphysics lies beyond the scope of this dissertation.
Hopefully the discussion of some moments in the history of aesthetics below will throw some light on
Heidegger's understanding of the history of philosophy as the history of the development of the question of
beings (the Leitfrage). For various formulations of the nature of metaphysics see "Was heisst Metaphysik?"
(1929), published in Wegmarken, the 1935 lecture course published as Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik, and
the essay "Uberwindung der Metaphysik" (1936-46), published in Vortrage und Aufsdtze.
 107

question starts a philosophical movement that Heidegger sees as moving away from the

insights present at the initiating moment of Western philosophy.

When Heidegger addresses the history of philosophy, this general understanding

of the history of metaphysics always informs his reading. At the same time, Heidegger

uses the history of philosophy in order to think, because, for him, understanding the

history of metaphysics is necessary to understand the task facing philosophy in his time.

Most of Heidegger's lecture courses are devoted to interpretation of works of

philosophers in the Western canon, and in his texts written for publication, history is

present as a ground for reflection. In Beitrage, the question investigated all through

Heidegger's thinking, the question of being, is given meaning through a historical

critique. Heidegger here stresses the historical character and development of metaphysics

and the importance of history for overcoming metaphysics. History is, in other words,

central to his philosophical project.151

Nonetheless, Heidegger does not seem concerned about providing faithful

accounts of the work of other philosophers. Perhaps some of the most infamous cases of

Heidegger's use of other philosophers are his treatment of Plato, especially in the Sophist

lectures (to understand Plato one first needs to read Aristotle), the speculative

interpretation of Kant's first critique (Kant was onto something in the A-edition, but the

151
Richard Polt offers an interpretation of the role of history for thinking in Beitrage in Polt, The
Emergency of Being. On Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006.
See especially the section "Bethinking as Be-ing-Historical Thinking," pp. 107-115. The importance of
history is less present in Sein und Zeit, because the £>ase/«.s-analysis there seems to be general and
ahistorical (despite its incorporation of a historical element in this general analysis). In that sense, Sein und
Zeit stands within the tradition of metaphysics. However, a similar historical reflection is necessary even in
that work. The unpublished second part of Sein und Zeit was to clarify the question of Being through a
Destruktion of the history of Western philosophy, and in this sense the historical deconstruction was to
have a role parallel to the phenomenological analysis.
 108

whole B-edition is really a stepping back from the discovery that the imagination is the

unifying source of the human faculties), and his interpretation of Nietzsche (Nietzsche

can be understood by considering only a few passages, chosen because they reveal the

essence of Nietzsche's thinking, from the unpublished writings later brought together as

The Will to Power).

Heidegger does not appear to want to provide a "correct" interpretation of the

history of philosophy. His treatment of Plato illustrates this: Plato is sometimes villain,

sometimes right; sometimes it is Platonism, as in the misunderstanding of Plato, that is to

blame for development of Western metaphysics; sometimes it is Plato himself who

breaks the connection to the insights of the Presocratics.152 Heidegger never provides us

with one complete picture of Plato but instead chooses particular text passages for

analysis, usually in great detail. The passages he devotes himself to seem to be chosen

because they allow for reflection on a certain topic, rather than provide an insight into

Plato's thinking as a whole. As scholarly work, Heidegger's interpretation of the history

of philosophy is marred by selective and incomplete reading, biased approaches, and

projection of his own interests. These features of his interpretation are rather obvious, and

Heidegger makes no effort to apologize or cover this up. This does not mean that

Heidegger is a bad philosopher or a bad reader, but rather that his interest in the history of

152
Heidegger's treatment of Plato has been the cause of much debate, led by Paul Friedlander and
Heidegger himself. Friedlander objected to the treatment of Plato in Heidegger's "Platons Lehre von der
Wahrheit," cf. his chapter "Aletheia" in Paul Friedlander, Plato. An Introduction, New York: Harper, 1958.
However, since this debate primarily revolves around the question of when truth shifts from being a
description of thing to the human relationship to the thing, this makes little difference for our story. For
more recent work on "Heidegger's Plato" and Greek thought, see the collection D. Hyland and J.P.
Manoussakis (eds.) Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretative Essays, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2006.
 109

philosophy may not lie in offering truthful or "fair" treatments of works in the canon.

Why, then, is Heidegger reading and rereading the history of philosophy all through his

life? This is a question to which we need to have some provisional answer, if we are to

understand how and why we should read Heidegger's treatment of the history of

philosophy and, in particular, if we want to understand his historical conception of

aesthetics.

In Beitrdge, Heidegger explicitly comments on the importance of the history of

philosophy for his own thinking, and explains why the history of philosophy poses a

pressing philosophical question for him as a thinker. The leading question of metaphysics

has brought metaphysics to an end because it does not address the underlying question,

the question of being (GA 65, 173). This does not mean that metaphysics can just be

abandoned, but rather that in order to be able to set out a new beginning for thinking we

have to understand the history of the first beginning. Heidegger sees all refusal of

metaphysics, like the contemporary movements of positivism, biologism or naturalism, as

reactive and hence indirectly dependent on metaphysics. In fact, according to Heidegger,

"since Hegel's death (1831) all [philosophy] is only counter movements" (VA, 72). The

only way to enable thinking beyond metaphysics, and not just opposition to it, is to do

history of philosophy. In other words, the transitory task of thinking is explicitly

historical. Heidegger says of his own historical lectures that they belong to the domain of
 110

this task. At this specific point in history, philosophy needs to do history of

philosophy.

The history of philosophy is a Zuspiel, a pass (as in a game of soccer), to today's

philosophy. This Zuspiel is a play we can choose to respond to or not. If we want to do

history of philosophy as a response to the Zuspiel that the history of philosophy is, we

cannot understand doing history of philosophy as an interpretation of successive

doctrines put forth by philosophers, but rather as a "questioning discourse with their

[earlier philosophers'] way of asking questions [FragehaltungY (GA 65, 169). It is not

the individual teachings that have the ability still to speak to us, but rather the history of

metaphysics itself. The history of philosophy, understood as the history of metaphysics,

is informative because this history makes it possible for us to experience "that denial

belongs to the nature of Being" (GA 65, 175). Reflection on the failure of metaphysics as

a philosophy of presence brings out the absence that is also part of Being. This also

means that Heidegger is not dismissing metaphysics as "false"; instead, it invites the

question "what is it about being, that lets itself be understood as metaphysics?" There is

in other words something about being that invites metaphysical thinking, even if this

thinking distorts being.

In the history of philosophy, we can see being itself as an unfolding of events, as

what Heidegger calls Ereignis. Consequently, we can best make sense of Heidegger's

153
This claim has a strong Hegelian ring to it. In the discussion of Heidegger's history of aesthetics (3.2.3
below), 1 accept as a basic hermeneutic point that if you are to find a new way out of any crisis, diagnosing
the problem and analysing how you got there seem like natural measures to take. In the last section of the
chapter I also bring out where Hegel and Heidegger agree and differ on this matter. For a richer (and,
admittedly quite Hegelian) defense of the necessity of history for philosophy, see the work of Robert
Pippin, for example, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem and his introduction to The Persistence of
Subjectivity.
 Ill

treatment of the history of philosophy as "diagnostic," meaning that the history provides

tools for philosophy to understand itself and to approach philosophical problems. This

"diagnosis," understood as a kind of historical self-reflection, enables one to see what is

needed for the future of philosophy. Heidegger's own philosophy is, not unlike the

essentially temporal Dasein of Sein und Zeit, historical, meaning that his philosophy is

aware that it is already working within a historical tradition that provides it with a certain

direction, but his philosophy is also always projecting into the future. In this sense, even

Heidegger's writings on history should be understood as primarily being directed towards

the future of thinking. Heidegger is never "merely" a historian; he is primarily a

philosopher who is interested in the future of thinking, but he understands this as an issue

that is historical. Heidegger's treatment of aesthetics provides a condensed version of this

philosophical relation to history, and offers a clearer case for understanding Heidegger's

conception of the relation between history and philosophy, and between past and future.

3.1.2 Aesthetics as an aspect of metaphysics

Heidegger insists that aesthetics has a strong influence on Dasein's relationship to art.

This poses another challenge for an interpretation of "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,"

especially considering that aesthetics changes through its history. Given the history of

aesthetics, how can the paradigmatic description of the truth happening in and with the

Greek temple - a description of art before aesthetics - be taken as Heidegger's view of

other kinds of artworks, which stand within the history of aesthetics? To what extent can
 112

the insight about Greek art throw light on our art? The emphasis on history and

Heidegger's awareness of the historicity of his own project is another reason for thinking

that Heidegger himself offers obstacles for interpreting the description of the temple in

the art-essay as a paradigmatic case for a general theory of art. If we are to take

Heidegger's historical thesis seriously, we need to incorporate the historical element into

the understanding of an artwork. I think the centrality of history as a question for

philosophy (and the end of art thesis is a thought-provoking element of this) is the most

important argument against reading the art-essay as a general "theory" of art. The parallel

between the need to overcome metaphysics and the need to overcome aesthetics suggests

instead that thinking of art's historical origin is & first step towards thinking about the

current and future state of art.

In his first lecture on Nietzsche, "The Will to Power as Art," Heidegger provides

a short description of aesthetics and sums up the history of aesthetics in six revealing

"facts" (N I, 74). The description helps to clarify how Heidegger uses 'aesthetics' in this

period (the later thirties), and his historical summary supplies some of the reasoning

behind Heidegger's contention that aesthetics is determined by metaphysics.154

In Heidegger's brief genealogy, aesthetics is defined by contrast to ethics and

logic as aisthetike episteme, or "knowledge of human being's sensuous, perceptual and

emotional behavior, and of that which determines this behavior" (N I, 75). Episteme is

divided in to three categories, and all the three realms of philosophical knowledge are
154
This account in the lectures on Nietzsche eventually serves to show how Nietzsche's understanding of
art is still within the realm of aesthetics. This is because Nietzsche uses art in order to show what will to
power is. But since will to power is a metaphysical thesis, according to Heidegger, Nietzsches treatment of
art is "aesthetic," because it is used for a larger metaphysical project. I will be less concerned with
Nietzsche and rather focus on the history of the discipline Heidegger inscribes him in.
 113

directed at a distinctive goal: logic towards the truth, ethics towards the good and

aesthetics towards the beautiful. It is human feeling, together with our sensual and

perceptual abilities, that relates to, and determines, the beautiful. The beautiful is what

causes a certain state in us, so something is beautiful insofar as it provokes a particular

feeling. Hence aesthetics is, Heidegger claims, an observation or contemplation

[Betrachtung] of emotional states in relation to beauty, or of beauty insofar as it stands in

relation to an emotional state. As we will see, when aesthetics is fully articulated in

modernity, beauty itself".. .is nothing but what, in showing itself, brings about this state"

(N I, 76). Heidegger's characterization of aesthetics is again painted with broad strokes,

and there are exceptions to his description, but we can recognize these as features

especially of the modern, German tradition of aesthetics.

Given this starting point of the aesthetic, art is a topic of aesthetics insofar as it is

beautiful. The aesthetic manner of considering art determines the relationship between

artwork and human being as one between object and subject. The object is a carrier and

arouser of beauty, which corresponds to a particular feeling in the subject. The artwork is

an object of aesthetic consideration only insofar as it stands as part of this emotional

relationship between subject and object, and this relationship, based in the emotions of

the subject, sets the standard for consideration of the artwork. We notice here a clear

delimitation in the description of aesthetics: an artwork is the object of an aesthetic

consideration insofar as it is beautiful, and the consideration is aesthetic because it relates

(only) to the emotional state aroused by beauty. However, since the definition of beauty

is that it is something that arouses a certain state in an experiencing subject, we are

 114

caught inside a circular description. This circularity is problematic because art seems to

be granted no independent status within aesthetics.155

The force of Heidegger's criticism of aesthetics comes from his insistence that the

motivation and origin of aesthetics is not artworks or art experience, but rather

philosophy. Aesthetics takes over a certain paradigm about how to think of what is - be it

artworks, humans or other beings - from metaphysics.156 We see this metaphysical

feature emerge clearly when aesthetics is explicitly formulated as a discipline in

modernity; its knowledge secured via the subject, but clearly distinguished from other

kinds of knowing.157

To illustrate his claim that philosophy of art since Plato and Aristotle is aesthetics,

and to show aesthetics' role within Western philosophy and its relation to the history of

Western art, Heidegger provides his brief narrative of six "facts" from the history of

philosophy.

The first fact, Heidegger claims, is that the Greeks of antiquity had no "thinking-

conceptual reflection" corresponding to their great Greek art. They did not need one

either, Heidegger claims, because they had such a luminous, originally full-grown

knowledge, the sort of knowledge for which aesthetics was not necessary.

The second fact is the beginning of aesthetics. Heidegger claims aesthetics only

starts when the period of great Greek art is over, a period whose decline coincides with

155
This is the paradigm, and problem, of modern aesthetics. Briefly stated, the artwork is ontologically
dependent on subjectivity because its beauty is without connection to truth.
156
Aesthetics is in other words always motivated by the Leitfrage and not the Grundfrage of being.
Heidegger claims that this feature is already at work even when Plato and Aristotle attempt to reflect on
art. Even before the modern coinage of the word 'aesthetics,' any philosophical reflection on art in the
western tradition of philosophy is aesthetics.
 115

the rise of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. By the time Plato and Aristotle live and

work, the "luminous knowledge" described above is no longer characteristic of Greek

culture. Instead, in the course of the fourth century, basic concepts that are going to shape

the history of all questions about art are introduced. The most important ones are the

concept pair 'form' and 'matter;' the notion of art as a techne; and the understanding of

beauty in terms of form. These concepts are all related, and we will return to how

Heidegger sees them as decisive for aesthetics in my discussion of Plato below.158

The third important fact in the history of aesthetics is the beginning of modernity.

With the advent of modernity, a shift happens in the reflection on art that has its parallel

in metaphysics: the human being becomes the place for determining all beings, at the

moment when the self-certainty of self-consciousness - of the "ego cogito ergo sum" -

becomes the judge of all knowledge (N I, 81). Hence in the relationship to artworks, the

standard forjudging them becomes taste. In addition, a new understanding of what makes

art great develops in modernity: an artwork is now great if it is able to make evident to its

audience what beings as a whole are, or, differently put, it is great if it reveals the

absolute.159

Heidegger's fourth fact is that as aesthetics develops and gains importance, the

great art of modernity gradually becomes more rare. This leads Heidegger to the claim

158
It is peculiar that Heidegger here seems to make Hegel's point, but push it all the way back to Greek
philosophy, that is, that aesthetics replaces art, so to speak. When the philosophical reflection of art takes
shape, great art (presumably the world-opening and ground-providing works that do not need a
philosophical reflection to work) is already a thing of the past. Unfortunately, Heidegger does not comment
any further on his own observation here. The view of the great 4th Century philosophers as representing a
loss in the Greek understanding of art is one that Heidegger shares with Nietzsche.
159
The reference to Hegel is evident here, and as we shall see in the last section of this chapter, Hegel
enjoys a most prominent position in Heidegger's story about aesthetics.
 116

that when aesthetics reaches its greatness, great art is at its end. The completion of

aesthetics is the recognition and assertion that great art has reached its end. This

completion is embodied by Hegel's aesthetics and is decisive for the status of art and

aesthetics in the 19th century.

The fifth episode of the history of aesthetics is devoted to the "Gesamtkunstwerk"

attempted by Wagner. Heidegger sees this as an attempt at creating a great artwork in the

modern sense, but one that fails. According to Heidegger, Wagner's opera subjects all the

artforms that go into it to the dominance of the pure state of feeling. All the elements are

dissolved into one thing: Erlebnis, lived experience. The absolute is now experienced as a

mere undetermined feeling, and as such Wagner's artwork indirectly confirms the

declaration of the end of art.

The sixth fact from Heidegger's history of aesthetics is Nietzsche's reaction to the

development of modernity. Instead of characterizing Nietzsche as breaking with the

tradition, Heidegger interprets Nietzsche's "physiology of art" as confirming Hegel's end

of art thesis, just as Wagner does. When Nietzsche tries to free art from aesthetics by

declaring art a matter of natural science (physiology), to be studied within the realm of

facts, what Nietzsche in fact does, according to Heidegger, is to think the consequences

of the aesthetic questioning of art to its end: "the emotional state is reduced to the

triggering of nerve threads; to bodily states" (N I, 91).

Heidegger's brief history involves several claims that are unclear, given their

brevity, and some that seem simply unfounded. I will try to make sense of the story

Heidegger tells, and address some of its claims at greater length in the sections on Plato,
 117

Kant and Hegel below. That Heidegger dedicates his last two points to Wagner and

Nietzsche I take to reflect on the context of his history, rather than the general importance

he ascribes to these two figures.160 Since Heidegger's history is brief, making sweeping

claims and lacking in examples, it cannot make pretense to be a faithful account of the

history of aesthetics. Rather, what is interesting for our purposes is to what extent this

selective and speculative story shows something important about Heidegger's conception

of the relationship between art and its philosophical reflection.

3.2.1 The first philosophical consideration of art: Plato on mimesis

For Heidegger, "great Greek art" appears to refer to art from before the fourth century.161

Heidegger claims that together with the decline of great art, great philosophy also ends,

by which he presumably means the thinking of the Presocratics. However, Heidegger's

claim that there is no corresponding aesthetics in this period is hard to verify. Art was

intimately connected with religion and myth, and as such might not have been regarded

as object for independent reflection at all. Even so, the tragedies were after all entered

into contests, where the audience judged them, which presumably demanded some

reflection on the play before them. Heidegger does however stress that the absence of

160
That so much space is devoted to Wagner, as the only artist Heidegger mentions, is for example not a
sign that he is a great or important artist in the history of the West - Heidegger clearly despises the
composer - but rather an indication of the important role Wagner plays for Nietzsche's philosophy of art
(which is after all the main focus of Heidegger's lecture course).
161
It is true that much of what we think of as great Greek art is already a thing of the past by the time of the
philosophy of Plato and Aristotle; the tragedies are written, the temples with their sculptures are built, and
the oral tradition of the Homeric epos is slowly losing importance. However, Greek art is still very much
alive, and both traditions of comedy and poetry flourish alongside the development of Greek philosophy.
 118

aesthetics does not mean that the Greeks merely "lived" art without it bearing any

relation to concepts or knowledge.162 Presumably then, the important point is that at what

he calls the first beginning of Western thinking there is great art, independently of

aesthetics.

Even though Heidegger's claims about the relationship between Greek art and

Greek thinking before the fourth century are vague, we can grant him the most important

point: there seems in this period to be little contribution to aesthetics.163 In passing,

Heidegger also makes an important point: he stresses that a "thinking-conceptual"

(philosophical) reflection need not be the same as what he has described as aesthetics. In

other words, on Heidegger's view, aesthetics is not the only possible philosophical

reflection on art or the only way to know or gain knowledge from art. Thus, after the

completion of aesthetics and the end of art, a new reflection on art is in principle possible

for Heidegger.

The second stage in Heidegger's history concerns the impact of Plato and

Aristotle on the future development of aesthetics. Note that Plato and Aristotle are not

part of what Heidegger characterizes as great philosophy and thus do not possess the

"luminous knowledge" ascribed to the Greeks in the first stage. Plato and Aristotle do,

"Das Fehlen dieser gleichzeitigen denkerischen Besinnung auf die grosse Kunst besagt auch nicht, diese
Kunst sei damals nur "erlebt" worden, in der dunklen Aufwallung der von Begriff und Wissen ungetasteten
Erlebnisse" (N I, 78). This dismissal of Erlebnis is in line with Heidegger's critique of the present in
Beitrdge (cf. section 1.2.2), but it could also be a criticism directed at Nietzsche's celebration of the
Dionysian, attributed to the pre-aesthetic Greek world of Antiquity in Die Geburtder Tragodie.
163
At least, it seems absent in the extant material. Cf. G. M. A Grube, The Greek and Roman Critics,
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1968. Grube goes through all "criticism" on art in Greek Antiquity, from the very
first comments and onwards.
 119

however, try to give shape, in a more systematic way, to philosophy. With them, we have

the first examples of how metaphysical considerations influence aesthetics.

I will here try to discuss this first moment of aesthetics by looking at the

interpretation of Plato that Heidegger offers in this context. In order to prepare for his

argument that Nietzsche's philosophy is a reversal but not an overcoming of Plato,

Heidegger offers an interpretation of Plato and the relation between truth, beauty and

mimesis.164 Heidegger's interpretation of Plato reveals Plato to be a more ambiguous

figure in the history of aesthetics than the unequivocal characterization in the second

"fact" suggests. As will become clear in the following, Plato's understanding of mimesis

contains real insight, even though it makes sense only within a certain metaphysical

picture.

As Heidegger has argued elsewhere, Plato states, or rather misstates, the first

question of philosophy as a question about entities instead of a question about what it is

to be.165 This leads Plato to investigate beings, which is what leads him to his central

notions of eidos and idea, according to Heidegger. These notions are central to Plato's

"aesthetic" notion of mimesis, and hence shape Plato's understanding of art. The

contemplation of "how something looks" (which is how Heidegger translates Plato's

eidos) eventually leads Plato to the concept pair of hyle and morphe - matter and form -

which is later taken over by Aristotle and is formative for thinking all through the history

of Western metaphysics. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, in the art-essay,

Heidegger writes that the form-matter distinction is the conceptual schema for all

164
For a brief treatment of Heidegger's criticism of Nietzsche, see the last section of this chapter.
165
E.g. SZ 6.
 120

aesthetics. The pervasiveness of the form-matter distinction in aesthetics does not,

however, mean that it belongs in the realm of art and artworks (GA 5, 12).166

When Plato investigates the experience of an artwork, it too is approached

according to the concepts of eidos, hyle and morphe. Beauty, the characteristic feature of

an artwork, is given meaning through the conceptual framework taken over from Plato's

account of perception. Beauty is characterized as ekphanestaton: what shows itself and

appears the most. To get a more concrete sense of what this introduction of metaphysical

concepts into the consideration of art means, I will turn to Heidegger's reading of the first

pages of Republic X where Plato famously has Socrates denounce art because of its

general mimetic character. Heidegger's interpretation of these passages shows how

metaphysics informs the notion of mimesis, and hence supports his wider thesis about the

metaphysical motivation of aesthetics. Heidegger's interpretation of the role of mimesis

also has the virtue of not dismissing Plato's text as displaying a "primitive"

understanding of art; as favoring a naturalism in the arts; or as uncritically making use of

mimesis as defining characteristic of art (N I, 172).

The argument in the final book of the Republic is concerned with art's relation to

truth. Socrates' argument goes roughly as follows: an artist is someone who imitates the

things of the world of becoming, as if he walked around in the world with a great mirror.

Things of the world of becoming are copies of the eternal forms of being; artworks are

copies of these copies; hence artworks are further removed from the idea itself and share

166
Heidegger writes further that when this concept pair gets connected to rationality (form as rational,
matter as irrational) it develops into the subject-object relation - "a conceptual mechanics that nothing can
resist" (UK, 17). This is an example of the power metaphysics has, which is not necessarily legitimately
applied to other realms.
 121

even less in truth than other things. One of the dialogue's examples is that of a painting of

a bed, which is just a copy of a physical bed, which again is a copy of the idea of bed,

which the craftsman considers when making a particular physical bed. The painted bed is

just a copy of a copy; it shows just one aspect of the bed, as seen from only one point of

view, and one cannot even sleep in it. On the basis of this analysis Socrates argues that a

world without art would be a world closer to truth. Mimesis, the essence of art, is in the

context of platonic metaphysics "bad." The criticism seems sweeping and

unambiguous.167 What is interesting as a anticipation of Heidegger's interpretation,

however, is that interjected in the description of the artist's relation to eidos - the look he

is trying to capture - is the hylemorphic dimension, since the craftsman serves as a

"middle term" between artist and eidos.

What is important to note for Heidegger is that the argument in Book X is based

on a metaphysical understanding of what is and is not simply a politico-practical matter.

Art's status in the early parts of Republic can be explained as following from art's

subordination to a political context. The partial appreciation of art presented in Books II

and III values art insofar as it is useful - as an educational tool subordinate to a political

goal. Plato questions the role and essence of art within the framework of the construction

of the perfect city; hence art is reduced to its didactic function. However, by the time

Plato has reached Book X, the context is entirely different; the dialogue's main concern is

now philosophy or knowledge, argues Heidegger (N I, 171). In the course of the

dialogue, most significantly through the cave analogy in Book VII, the question about

167
This argument is strengthened further by the psychological argument of Book X, which claims that
artworks have a psychological attraction that also turn people away from truth.
 122

politics has been transformed into a question about our relation to what is as such, that is,

into a question about the truthful relation to beings. This is the domain of philosophy, and

philosophy then acquires status as the kind of knowing that gets to rule, both in the city
1 /1Q

and in the dialogue.

In Book X, the renewed inquiry into art is hence philosophical, and the concern is

no longer the relationship between art and politics but between art and truth. It is

important for Heidegger to stress this context, because that is in fact what enables him to

make sense of what on the surface can seem like rather ignorant conceptions of art

("second rate copy") and artist ("mirrorer"). On a superficial reading, one could be

tempted to say that Plato's discussion rests on unfounded assumptions; it is surely

misconceived to think of the painter as a mirrorer, just as it is ignorant to compare the

painted bed to a regular bed and determine the former to be lacking because it cannot be

slept in - both these characterizations seem to miss the mark, as none of them seem to

address what art is really about. Heidegger, however, argues that the dialogue's notion of

mimesis is deeper than this, and in fact intrinsically motivated by the philosophical

framework, which makes Plato's discussion seem less arbitrary. "The inner possibility

and foundational reason" for understanding art as mimesis is the Greek understanding of

being and truth, Heidegger claims. The Greek concept of truth is decisive for the concept

of mimesis, and in fact "only on this ground does mimesis gain sense and weight, but also
necessity" (N I, 172). Heidegger believes we here see the first formulation of a concept
168
On Heidegger's reading of the Republic, the distinction between philosophy and politics then collapses.
The ordering of the community follows from the metaphysical "order," that of beings and human beings'
relation to being. The decisive passage enabling this shift is in the cave analogy, where the understanding
of truth shifts from unconcealment to correspondance, and hence is "subjectivized." Cf. Heidegger,
"Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit."
 123

that is extremely influential for all later aesthetics, and it is a concept that is necessary,

and meaningful, only within a certain metaphysical context.

So what exactly is this metaphysical context and this concept of truth? What is

important for Heidegger is that, in the platonic dialogue, eidos does not mean concept,

which is a typically modern way of understanding "Platonic forms." Eidos rather means

more literally the look (Ausseheri) of something.169 When we are standing in front of a

bed, and recognize it as a bed, we capture its eidos, in that the bed is present as what it is.

The "essence" is on the surface so to speak; the idea is present in the thing as its outward

look, its eidos. The core of the Platonic "method" is, according to Heidegger, not to order

particular things under an idea, but rather, when faced with the manifold of the particular,

to approach the manifold in such a way that it can be related to the singularity of its

uniform look and to grasp both at the same time. The look is perhaps better thought of as

a visual schema underlying all aspects of a thing that share in this look. Beds have a

certain look, and that recognizable eidos needs to be present in the particular for it to be a

bed. There is a certain interchanging relation (Wechselbezug) between look and

particularity when we grasp a particular thing as what it is. This interchanging is also

present in language; whenever a word is spoken, it is directed two ways, towards the

particular we are talking about - this bed - and also to that which the thing is talked about

as - its "bedness", that unified look that is present and addressed in this thing before us.

The particular and accidental features of this bed in front of me, its shape, size,

squeakiness and faults, are present through the scope of the bed's look. The look is being;

169
As from horao, vb., to see, whose aorist active form is eidon. Aussehen has the sense of outwards
appearance, e.g. the way we look to people who watch us.
 124

the look is what is unified and lasting and present. This is how the theory of forms is

related to the conception of truth, according to Heidegger: since truth is understood by

Plato as everlasting and unchanging, the eidos is what is most true in a thing. The thing's

particularity is bound to change in the course of time and hence, as a part of becoming,

the thing is less true.

It is against this backdrop that we must understand art as mimesis. Mimesis is a

poiesis, a kind of making, that is, a copying of the way something else looks. On the

background of the account of eidos and being given above, we can give more sense to

Plato's use of the mirror metaphor in Book X. The first obvious fault of this metaphor,

which seems obvious even within the dialogue, is that artists produce something, a work,

but walking around in the world holding up a mirror does not seem like poiesis on

anyone's account - no thing is made. Heidegger stresses that here we have to remember

the meaning of poiesis that grounds the metaphor: this making is a bringing forth {her-

stelleri) of an idea as a look in something else (N I, 180). If we think of making

something in this light - to make something is to bring forth an eidos - then what is

important in making is to bring an insight into the world, not to bring forth a thing. The

eidos is not something the maker himself can produce; rather it is something eternal that

he "mirrors" when he lets it show itself in the thing he is making. The carpenter brings

forth the eidos of bed, when he looks to the idea before crafting his particular exemplar in

such a way that it is present in the thing, but he does not make this idea. If this bringing

forth of a look what it is to produce, then "mirroring" can also make sense as a metaphor

for production. However, the artist's bed is not the result of considering the same bed (the
 125

eidos) as the carpenter considered - the artist does not try to make the look of the

"bedness" present in his painting - instead he just copies a single aspect of the physical

bed, which is already a copy. In this sense, the artist does not have to know the look of

that which he brings forth, and his poiesis is less true. The bed he paints is not less true

because it is impossible to sleep in it - its lack of utility is not its flaw - but rather, it is

less true because it shares in only one aspect of the look of the bed. It is removed from

truth by being a sensuous particular, but so is the carpenter's bed; the reason the painted

bed fails when compared to a regular bed is primarily because it is one-sided and

incomplete and hence shares less in being (N I, 188).

Heidegger's interpretation turns out to be more nuanced than what we might

initially expect. At the end of Socrates and Glaucon's discussion, mimesis is not

characterized by re-presentation, but rather by its inability to produce the thing it

portrays. Heidegger stresses that this is in fact essential to the Greek-platonic

understanding of mimesis: Plato does not have a naive understanding of what mimetic art

is about - he knows that the point of art is not to create some sort of trompe I 'oeil, or

beds one could sleep in for that matter - but rather from his philosophically informed

point of view, mimesis is already characterized by lack, restricted as it is in its ability to

make being present. Art is then with respect to truth always a subordinate. Appearance

and self-showing is at the core of Platonic metaphysics, and mimesis, as art's manner of

showing and appearing, is "a remainder of the real self-showing of being" (N I, 189). The
 126

idea is not present as eidos in the artwork; only one visual aspect of it is still present, an

eidolon.

Heidegger's interpretation of Plato offers a different way to think of what it would

mean to imitate. Given the philosophical context where being is present in the world as a

look and where what something is is present in its surface appearance, the primacy of

mimesis in considerations of art is quite natural. What is clear from Heidegger's account

is that Plato's motivation is metaphysical and does not stem from some specific feature of

artworks. Thus Heidegger shows how the emphasis on mimesis has origins that are

external to art, but he also shows how the insights of the notion reaches far deeper than

what we might think if we consider mimesis as "mere copying."

Heidegger claims the mimetic aspect is essential to Greek understanding of art.

This seems quite uncontroversial. Aristotle in his Poetics starts out by "following the

natural order" and hence begins his study by simply stating the first principles of

artworks: they are all modes of mimesis.171 When the artists (including poets, sculptors,

painters, musicians, rhapsodes, actors and choral dancers) are first introduced by Socrates

in Book II of Republic, they are also all called mimetes (373b). However, it is not obvious

how we should understand mimesis as used by the Greeks. It is not clear that the word

Heidegger has here offered an interpretation that makes sense of the dismissal of mimesis. Another still
unanswered question is how to make sense of the characterisation of knowing as production!poies is that
underlies the conversation in Book X in relation to the rest of the dialogue and the Platonic conception of
knowledge in general. Heidegger is right that the metaphysics of Books V-VII are important in order to
understand this last section of the Republic, but at the same time the description of ideas as produced by a
divine craftsman seems to be in opposition to the visual model of knowledge from these earlier books. For
a critical treatment of difficulties caused by the theory of forms as presented in Book X, cf. Charles
Griswold, "The Ideas and the Criticism of Poetry in Plato's Republic, Book 10," in Journal of the History
of Philosophy, Volume XIX, No. 2 (1981), pp. 135-150.
171
Aristotle, Poetics, 1447al7.
 127

had the specific aesthetic signification that it has for us.172 Heidegger claims that the

singling out of one shared feature of all works of art is the beginning of aesthetics, but

there seems to be little awareness of mimesis as a specific aesthetic characteristic for the

interlocutors in the Republic. It is also not clear that the original meaning of mimesis is

well captured in either of its common modern translations, 'imitation' or 'representation'.

Heidegger translates the ancient conception of mimesis as nachmachen, and insists that

imitation as the essence of art is made meaningful because of the metaphysical

framework articulated by Plato.

Assuming that our everyday understanding o f mimesis' is representation in the sense of copying.
173
But is the sense of mimesis Heidegger acquires on the basis of Book X viable? In their respective works
on the early use of 'mimesis', Stephen Halliwell and Goran Sorbom discuss several possible interpretations
of what 'mimesis' meant to the Greeks. The interpretations fall into three main groups; one understands
'mimesis' as primarily expressive, another as imitation, and the third as signifying a metaphorical use of
'miming', with both expressive and imitative elements The first position is most prominently forwarded by
Hermann Koller, in Die Mimesis in der Antike, Bern: Francke, 1954, the second by Else, in "Imitation in
the Fifth Century," Classical Philology 53 (1958), pp. 71-90, whereas Stephen Halliwell's The Aesthetics
of Mimesis, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, and Goran Sorbom's, Mimesis and Art. Studies in
the Origin and Early Development of an Aesthetic Vocabulary, Uppsala: Scandinavian University Books
1966, both support a version of the third. Halliwell has what seems to me the mostnuanced understanding
of the Greek conception of mimesis, arguing it is correctly understood as a combination of expressive and
representational elements: "My own position, very roughly, is that expression is the sensory representation
of nonsensory properties (paradigmatically affective, dispositional, and evaluative states of mind); I also
take artistic expression to emcompass both properties of represented states of affairs (e.g., of fictional
characters) and of the perspective of a representational viewpoint (whether of an actual or "implicit" artist
of viewer)," (Halliwell, 14n). Hermann Koller has suggested that the original meaning of mimesis was
more expressive/creative than what we now think. According to Koller, the center of meaning of mimesis is
actually dance, so he claims the word cannot make sense as "copying" (Nachahmung), but that the word
should rather be understood as representation (Darstellung) in the sense of expression (Ausdruck). Koller's
view could be described as focusing on the affective aspect of representation. In Plato there is an emphasis
on the affective role of art (later in Book X Socrates still worries that exposure to poetry about cowards will
make the listeners more cowardly); however, this seems to be a result of the audience member's unhealthy
identification with particulars, not of artworks more or less abstractly expressing emotions. On the whole,
Koller's formal-expressive understanding of art does seem suspiciously modern - the characterization of
music as expressing pure feeling is prevalent in romanticism, but potentially completely foreign to Plato.
Contrary to Koller's view, it is quite possible that the Greeks perceived of their music (accompanied by
song) and dance as imitative. As will become clearer below, Heidegger would find Koller's understanding
of mimesis anachronistic, as Koller's interpretation requires a different metaphysical framework that only
appears with modernity. Else argues for understanding mimesis as imitation, miming or replication -
directly representing through different media the looks and actions of men, animals or things. Halliwell and
Sorbom's third position(s) is closer to Else's, but they both emphasize that the use of mimesis in the fourth
 128

Heidegger ends his chapter on mimesis in Plato by quoting Erasmus on Dtirer:

"When he shows a singular thing in any manner, he, the painter Diirer, does not bring a

single, particularized look, just like it has offered itself to the eye, to presence," (N I,

189). When Dtirer shows the particular in its particularity he makes the being of that

thing come forth; he makes the "animal-being of this animal visible" (N I, 190). Diirer's

engraving of a particular hare is then, to use Plato's vocabulary, not an eidolon, but

indeed a manifestation of the idea as eidos in the work.174 "Clearly," Heidegger asserts,

"Erasmus here speaks against Plato" (N I, 190). The understanding of mimetic art

expressed by Erasmus is not imitative in the sense we find it in the discussion of Plato

above, but rather it represents being, which cannot be found in artworks according to

Plato. Thus art is seen by Erasmus as being able to express something that is usually

overlooked when we perceive ordinary things. "That Erasmus and Dtirer are able to speak

like this presupposes that a change in the understanding of being is under way,"

according to Heidegger (N I, 190). Unfortunately, he does not continue to specify what

this change consists in, but we can make a qualified guess.

and fifth centuries is metaphorical, having its origin in "what mimers do." They argue the various senses in
which mimesis is used is due to the word's metaphorical status. By going through the various uses of
mimesis in the literature, they show how the sense of the word(s), taken as the beginning of an aesthetic
vocabulary, is multifarious at this point. Sorbom and Halliwell both seem to have a wider notion of what
one can "mime" than Else, and hence leave room for a certain vagueness with respect to what the object of
mimesis is: what is mimed when all art is characterized as mimetic - subject-matter, species-characteristics
or particular, existing phenomena? It seems clear that we are not justified in equating the ancient use of
mimesis as likeness with the standard of likeness appealed to in the modern schools of realism or naturalism
(this is in line with the caution against anachronism expressed by Heidegger from the outset of his
discussion), and also that concrete likeness (although not necessarily visual likeness) is at the heart of the
various uses of mimesis as it first takes shape as an aesthetic concept. Through the development of the
metaphysical systems of Plato and Aristotle, mimesis takes on a more specific meaning and is incorporated
into a philosophical vocabulary for describing art.
174
Cf. Durer's Hase. This famous engraving appears in discussion in the WS 36/37 lecture course on
Schiller.
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There is a shift in the understanding of what is presented through mimesis from

the Greek to the modern period. What it means to represent (the modern notion) is not the

same as what it means to imitate. In the Republic, mimesis is about surface and physical

appearance, whereas Erasmus seems open to the possibility of representing an "essence."

For comparison, Erasmus' position seems to entail that an artwork could express "bed-

ness," whereas an ordinary thing could never be more than a bed. Other, typically

modern, features emerge in Erasmus' statement: first, knowledge of being is attainable by

the artistic subject; somehow an artist can express something that is not normally visible

in a regular thing (assuming that we usually don't have an experience of seeing "hare-

being" [Hasenseiri] when we see a hare). Secondly, being appears no longer to be present

as a look on the surface of things, but rather it is something that needs to be grasped and

then represented by a subject through some other means; presumably, being has become

more "conceptual" and less visual than what Heidegger contends is the case for the

Platonic idea. We can say that the conception of mimesis moves further towards the

expressive interpretation put forth by Koller. "Hare-being," or the essence of what it is to

be a hare, is a representation {Darstellung) of something that a subject can grasp, and not

something that can be simply imitated from the visual surface of the particular animal.

The contrast between Plato and Erasmus illustrates how through the history of western

philosophy, mimesis remains central to aesthetic understanding, even as the metaphysical

i nc

framework changes.

175
Heidegger is certainly right in stressing the importance of this aesthetic category. Even modern theories
that try to deny mimetic theory can be said to work within the framework set up by this concept. E.g.
Collingwood and Croce's criticism of mimesis in favor of a more expressive theory can be interpreted as
battles over what mimesis really is. The impossible task is of course to prove the causal relationship
 130

It is also worth noting that Heidegger in "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes"

dismisses representation as a central feature of art, and of his own philosophical treatment

of art, but he does not explicitly dismiss mimesis as such. The unconcealing of a greater

order or whole, the work's world and ground, is the truth of the artwork. However, the

relation between that which does the unconcealing and what is unconcealed in the

artwork is not to be understood as imitation or description of the real, Heidegger stresses.

He hence dismisses traditional representational theory, which understands the truth of

representational art according to a correspondence between depiction and reality.176 He

also denies that the nature of the artwork consists in its representing the idea or "general

essence" of a thing. Heidegger chooses a non-representational artwork as his main

example to make his point; "with what essence of what thing does the Greek temple

correspond? Who could claim the impossible, that the idea of the temple is represented in

the building?" (GA 5, 26).

Mimesis, understood as representation or imitation, seems to presuppose a

temporal order, where the mimetic artwork always 'follows' whatever it represents. This

fits a conception of truth as relational, as a correspondence, for example, between fact

and assertion. However, since Heidegger stresses that art has to do with truth and since

truth in its most original form is not captured when we think of truth as correspondence

but should rather be thought as an event, the mimetic could not possibly be at the core of

Heidegger suggests, i.e. that changes in the understanding of mimesis are caused by development in
philosophy and do not stem from development in art. These realms and their mutual influence cannot be
clearly demarcated. However, it seems less controversial to assume that philosophers, whenever change
occurs for whatever reason, will try to make the conceptual reflection of art consistent with their wider
philosophical outlook. Since metaphysics is the most general discipline of all, it is in its power to
incorporate any other sub-discipline.
176
He explicitly refers to Aristotle and medieval philosophy here (GA 5, 14).
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what it is to be art. In the original conception of mimesis in Plato, mimesis is related to

truth. As the understanding of truth changes so does the understanding of mimesis, and

art gets interpreted only as representational and in relation to truth as correspondence.

Philosophy's dominance over art, which is captured in Plato's use of mimesis,

restrains our relationship to art, as practitioners as well as audience, and makes it adhere

to the interpretative framework offered by metaphysics. Heidegger's rejection of

representation as a key to an adequate understanding of art does not mean that he fails to

recognize the importance of mimetic features in artworks. Most of the works Heidegger

is interested in are also what we could call representational. However, Heidegger objects

to the importance typically assigned to representation in understanding art. Aesthetics

fortifies the importance of mimesis, making all European art essentially characterized by

representation and presence.177 Heidegger's point is that this limitation of what art can be

is an unwarranted restraining of art. John Sallis asks whether we can find another "more

originary mimesis" in Heidegger's art-essay.178 He suggests that one can interpret

Heidegger's description of the truth of the artwork as mimesis:

... a mimesis that would take place precisely in giving place to truth (...) a
mimesis that would take place in and as the Gestalt in which truth would be set
into the work, placed there, without having preceded the work and yet in such a
way as to be doubled in the play of reciprocity between work of art and the strife
of world and earth. 179

In a 1958 colloquium Heidegger still claims: "Die europaische Kunst ist in ihrem Wesen durch den
Charakter der Darstellung gekennzeichnet. Darstellung, eidos, Sichtbar machen. Das Kunstwerk, das
Gebilde, bringt ins Bild, macht sichtbar." Martin Heidegger, "Die Kunst und das Denken", in Heidegger in
Japan, p. 212.
17
John Sallis, "Heidegger's Poetics: The Question of Mimesis" in W. Biemel, und F.-W. von Hermann
(ed.), Kunst und Technik, p. 177.
179
Sallis, "Heidegger's Poetics," p. 188.
 132

In such an interpretation, mimesis is no longer the traditional concept of aesthetics with

its temporal character, but rather it has been given an ontological meaning, where what is

"mimed" is the nature of being itself. When truth becomes static in Plato, and no longer

captures the dynamic happening of aletheia, such an understanding of mimesis is not

possible.

3.2.2 Aesthetics subjectivized: Kant on beauty and disinterestedness

After establishing that Plato and Aristotle lay down the parameters for all further

reflection on art in the tradition, Heidegger makes an enormous leap in his story, as the

next "fact" in his history of aesthetics is the event of modernity. With modernity,

metaphysics becomes grounded in the centrality of the subject's self-consciousness;

Descartes' cogito as securing certainty is Heidegger's paradigmatic example. "I myself

and my states are what first and really is," Heidegger writes, and this being, the self,

known through introspection, is what gives the foundation and standard for how being

can be experienced, shaped or determined (N I, 81). Since the subject provides the

standard for the knowledge of all kinds of beings, the manner in which human being

relates to other beings becomes central for philosophical inquiry. In modernity, the

importance of aisthesis hence becomes more perspicuous, and aesthetics is more

consciously sought after and grounded. The turn towards the subject in modernity is the

reason why "...only now a name is given to a manner of observation, which has been

prepared over a long time. 'Aesthetics' is to be in the area of the sensuous and feeling just
 133

as logic is in the realm of thinking" (N I, 82). This means that only now is aesthetics

explicitly recognized as a discipline, "the logic of the sensuous."

Again, a problem with Heidegger's account is that it is sweeping. His claim about

modern aesthetics seems to span all thinkers from Descartes to Hegel.180 What is

important for our purpose though is to notice the two important features that Heidegger

associates with modernity: the first is that the grounding of philosophy in subjectivity has

its parallel in aesthetics, making aesthetics into an investigation of taste.181 The most

thorough and systematic example of this is Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft. The second

feature concerns the object and purpose of art. Greatness of art is now determined with

respect to art's ability to fill a certain reflective function, that is, art is great to the extent

that it presents the whole, absolute or the unconditional to its audience. This means that

greatness is not dependent on the quality of the creation but on its relevance

(Wesentlichkeit) (N I, 82).' The reflective function of art, stated as an aesthetics

criterion, supports Heidegger's thesis that aesthetics is shaped by metaphysics. Why else

should something like "the absolute," a concept which in itself seems incomprehensible

outside of philosophical framework, be essential in order to determine greatness in art?

Why is this what makes art "great"? What both characteristic features of the third stage of

In general when talking about modernity, Heidegger lets Hegel's aesthetics be defining for modern
aesthetics as such, because it is the completion and highest achievement of aesthetics. I will elaborate on
this interpretation of Hegel in the next section of this chapter.
181
This certainly seems like a plausible characteristic of the 17th Century - George Dickie calls it "The
Century of Taste" - and the development of aesthetics in both Britain and Germany, although quite
different, can be said to share this feature. In both traditions the centrality of taste is also due to the
metaphysical assumptions of these traditions, where accounting for the subject's perception and judgment
becomes the key philosophical issue. Heidegger rather consistently ignores the British strand of philosophy,
concentrating on Kant and the post-Kantian tradition.
182
This is Hegel's conception of art, but as we shall see, Heidegger locates a similar structure in Kant's
appreciation of beauty as symbol of morality.
 134

the history of aesthetics make clear is that art, the practice and its works, imports

standards that are philosophically motivated.

While the modern development of aesthetics and the aesthetic comportment

towards art is taking place, art suffers a decline, Heidegger claims. The development of

art in modernity is a decline given aesthetics' own definition of greatness - it is important

to note that Heidegger is not presenting a personal dislike for the art of modernity -

because art is increasingly less able to fulfill its basic task, representing the absolute. To

sum up Heidegger's third fact from the history of aesthetics: modernity, the age of

aesthetics, harbors a paradox, since the philosophical treatment of art flourishes while at

the same time the very object of this philosophy - art - suffers a decline. This paradox

leads to the fourth fact, that is, the end of art.

I will here try to address the claims of Heidegger's third episode by focusing

especially on his interpretation of Kant, in order to see to what extent the case of Kant

can illustrate and make sense of the claims Heidegger makes about modern aesthetics.

This emphasis on Kant is partly motivated by Heidegger's text, which turns to Kant in

order to explain how Nietzsche misunderstands the Kantian heritage. According to

Heidegger, the reception of Kritik der Urteilskraft, and the notion of disinterestedness

specifically, is partly what leads aesthetics into its current poor state. The vindication of

Kant against Nietzsche also provides Heidegger with an opportunity to address beauty,

both as an aspect of art and as a category of aesthetics (that is, both the nature of beauty

and its metaphysical construal in aesthetics). There is also an external motivation for

choosing to focus on Kant in this context: the idea of "the subjectivization of aesthetics"
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as a development with great significance for the status of both art and philosophy has

become widespread thanks to the influential work of Heidegger's student, Hans-Georg

Gadamer. In Truth and Method, this subjectivization is the (negative) motivation for

Gadamer's hermeneutics, and Gadamer identifies Kant as the source of the subjectivist

turn in aesthetics.183 However, I will stress how Heidegger's reading of Kant, which

covers only one aspect of the third critique, cannot be said to lend itself to the same

criticism that Gadamer raises against Kant. I suggest that Heidegger is less interested in

presenting a complete narrative of Western aesthetics (where Kant is cast as the villain),

and that his comparative inconclusiveness reveals different motivations underlying the
1 84

Heidegger and Gadamer's respective projects.

In his reading of Kant in Truth and Method, Gadamer stresses that even though

the aesthetic judgment is universally binding on Kant's account, it is still grounded in the

subject's cognitive faculties, and, most importantly, it is deemed to be without any insight

with respect to the world. Simply put, art is detached from truth; in taste "nothing is

known of the objects judged to be beautiful, but it is stated only that there is a feeling of

pleasure connected with them a priori in the subjective consciousness."185 In other words,

The first part of Gadamer's work can be seen as an explication of the third stage in Heidegger's history;
several of the points Gadamer makes seem to illustrate what Heidegger mentions only in passing, and I will
discuss his account of certain features of modern aesthetics below.
184
1 realize that Gadamer deserves more nuanced treatment than he is afforded here. An interesting and
instructive piece with respect to his understanding of Kant is Kristin Gjesdal, "Against the myth of
aesthetic presence: a defense of Gadamer's critique of aesthetic consciousness," Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology, vol, 36, no.3, pp. 293-310. There is also another interesting portion of the
section on subjectivized aesthetics in Truth and Method that is valuable for us. Gadamer's maps out the
development of Erlebnis aesthetics, tracing it back to Fichte's influence on the Neo-Kantians. As we saw in
Chapter One, the focus on Erlebnis in aesthetics is the correlate to the end of art according to Heidegger.
Heidegger, however, does not himself offer much description of the background of such aesthetics, nor
does he provide a critique of its proponents, or even identify them.
185
Gadamer, Truth and Method, p.43.
 136

the price art pays for the autonomy it obtains through the reflective judgment's

disinterestedness is that art has to give up any epistemological importance; this price is,

according to Gadamer, too high and eventually leaves art bankrupt.186 As we will see,

Heidegger seems less bothered by this fact in his reading of Kant in the Nietzsche

lectures; however, we can presume that a similar concern is implicit in the

subjectivization noted in the third stage of Heidegger's narrative. We might say that

Heidegger's history is more descriptive, whereas Gadamer formulates a critique, which

wishes to restore a notion of art deeply embedded in an ethical and political tradition.187

Let us now return to Heidegger's understanding of Kant's role in the history of

aesthetics. Since the reception of Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft and its notion of

'disinterestedness' according to Heidegger has a detrimental effect on the tradition,

"getting Kant right" is key to understanding both Heidegger's negative assessment of the

tradition of aesthetics, and what he sees as its positive potential. Again, Heidegger's

engagement with history has two aspects: it is both revealing for the history of aesthetics

(as a history of decline), and it provides insight into the subject matter, that is, what

beauty is. Surprisingly, in Heidegger's reading of Kant, he seems to find potential to

counter modern aesthetics, precisely in one of its key texts. This is possible due to the

Gadamer emphasises that sensus communis in Kritik der Urteilskraft is not connected to a moral or
political tradition. His concern about the truth that he regrets art is no longer related to, is hence primarily
ethical and political. As we know in the art-essay Heidegger does emphasize the truth of art in a political
manner - it shapes a people - but in the context of Heidegger's treatment of Kant's aesthetics, no such
concern surfaces.
187
To juxtapose the two philosophers' projects, one could say that the descriptive account of a certain
development makes possible an understanding of Heidegger's reading of the history of aesthetics as
oriented towards the future, whereas Gadamer's project is more conservative. Heidegger's goal is not to
revive a role for art, but to investigate if there is a new role for art to play in the future.
 137

selective and speculative way of reading noted above and serves as an example of the

constructive element of Heidegger's deconstruction of the tradition.

In Kant's third critique, the beautiful is defined as the object of disinterested

pleasure. Kant's definition of beauty has been the cause of much debate; taken at face

value it seems to contradict our experience with beauty. If 'disinterested' is meant to be

understood as 'indifferent' or 'not interested,' the definition seems counter-intuitive - not

to desire what one finds pleasant appears to conflict with most people's psychology. A

similar objection is the basis for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's shared dislike for Kant's

theory and their motivation for defining themselves in opposition to such a view,

according to Heidegger. Heidegger however boldly asserts that Kant's influence on the

later development of aesthetics is based only on misinterpretations of Kant. This means

that Heidegger is reading Kant against the reception in German post-Kantian

philosophy.188

Heidegger charges Nietzsche and Schopenhauer with overlooking both the

technical meaning of "without interest" in Kant, as well as the intimate connection

between disinterestedness and "pleasure of reflection." When we approach something

with interest, we are possessing it, using it as a means for some other end; we take it up

with a view to something else. To judge something as beautiful, however, is not

188
Heidegger's discussion of Kant in the Nietzsche lectures is brief. I have made use of what Heidegger
says about Kant in his lecture course on Schiller from the same period to support some of the inferences I
make in what follows. The latter text is based on second-hand seminar notes and will not be published in
the Gesamtausgabe, but was recently edited and published by the Marbach Archiv. Not surprisingly, since
Schiller is the successor who according to Heidegger actually grasps what is essential in Kant, and since
Schiller's contribution to philosophy, the introduction of the historical, history-grounding Dasein of being
human, is based on Kant's notion of beauty, Heidegger's lectures on Schiller are to a large extent devoted
to Kant (N I, 107, 113). This makes them a valuable source for understanding Heidegger's interpretation of
Kant. See Martin Heidegger, Ubungenjtir An/anger. Schillers Briefe Uber die asthetische Erfahrung des
Menschen. WS 1986/37, Marbach: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 2005.
 138

predicated on some other interest; rather, to find something beautiful we must let what we

encounter "come before us purely as itself, with and according to its own rank and worth"

(N I, 109). The subject's relation to the beautiful is one of "freie Gunsf - free favouring

- which Heidegger glosses as a letting the encountered be and granting it what belongs to

it and what it brings to us. Disinterest is not indifference, according to Heidegger, but

rather an attitude of openness, as opposed to the patronizing, positing attitude of

interest.189 The aesthetic stance that allows one to experience beauty is hence one of

"letting be" on Heidegger's reading of Kant. That stance can be positively described, and

here Heidegger seems to align himself with Kant.

The misunderstanding of Kantian disinterestedness is due to a double mistake,

according to Heidegger. The first is that the negative description of "without interest" has

been taken as the exclusive definition of beauty. The second mistake is that "without

interest" has been interpreted as an exhaustive description of the relation between subject

and aesthetic object, when in fact it is when the object is approached "without interest"

that what Heidegger calls the essential relation between the two comes into play. This

relation is characterised by more than 'disinterestedness'; it is a source of reflection and

knowledge. To quote Heidegger: "only now [when approached without interest] does the

object come to light as pure object, and ... this coming-in-to-light is the beautiful. The

word 'beautiful' means the appearing in the radiance of such coming to light" (N I,

189
Heidegger's language here invites associations to Kant's moral notion of autonomy; the
disinterestedness understood as free favouring is an attitude of respect. This is an association that Kant
would reject, since in a practical (ethical) judgement the subject does have an interest, e.g. in the object's
existence. In fact as we will see below, since the aesthetic is not separable from the ontological for
Heidegger, the independent existence of the beautiful object is in fact important and not excluded from the
appreciation of beauty.
 139

HO).190 It is important to pay particular attention to Heidegger's reinterpretation of

Kant's understanding of the beautiful, because, as is often the case, his interpretation

throws as much light on his own views as on Kant's. The important features we should

note from Heidegger's interpretation is that there is an essential relation between subject

and object, which can also be positively described (in contrast to the traditionally

negatively interpreted disinterestedness); the relation is one in which the subject lets be,

and the object comes forth. The coming forth has a radiance, it shines, and this is what is

beautiful. In contrast to Kant, what comes into play is not the faculties of the subject, but

rather the relation between subject and object itself - the play that is determinate for

beauty is "moved out" of the subject and into the world, to the space between human

being and the beautiful thing. Hence beauty is no longer something that needs to be

judged by the subject, following his or her experience of harmonious free play of the

imagination and understanding, but beauty is rather a shining of the object in this space.

To make somewhat more clear - if not concrete - what Heidegger means when he

recommends disinterestedness as letting be so that something comes forth and shines

beautifully, I will now return to the art-essay, where Heidegger uses the same language as

in the Kant interpretation. The description of what it means to "let be" in the context of

the art-essay helps us understand why Heidegger praises Kant's recognition of the

importance of not making the beautiful thing an object of our interest and appropriating it

as another thing or tool for our use. From the perspective of the audience, letting the work

be means not appropriating it, but letting it change and shape one's world. A work that is

'Schein' is also Schiller's understanding of beauty in his Briefe.

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independent from the human unconceals its being in a more striking manner, and through

disclosing itself as other, it thrusts through and shakes our world; it thrusts the familiar

aside and brings the unknown to the surface (GA 5, 54).

To submit to this displacement means to transform our accustomed ties to the

world and earth and henceforth to restrain all usual doing and prizing, knowing
and looking, in order to dwell [Verweilen] within the truth that is happening in
the work. Only the conduct [ Verhaltenheit] of this dwelling lets the creation be
the work that it is. This: letting the work be a work, we call the preservation of
the work. (GA 5, 54)

Letting the work be - or in Kant's language, experiencing beauty without interest -

would mean to adjust to the truth of the artwork and let that make a claim on us,

according to Heidegger. Is there anything like such a displacement in Kant's account? I

raise this question in order to bring out what Heidegger appreciates in Kant, but also what

is lost in his interpretation.

Disinterestedness is for Kant a precondition for the purity of an aesthetic

judgment. Kant describes the aesthetic judgment as resulting from the pleasure of

reflection.191 According to Heidegger, with the interpretation of the relationship to the

beautiful as "pleasure of reflection" Kant penetrates into a "fundamental state of human

beings, in which humans for the first time come to grounded fullness of their nature" (N

I, 113).192 This pleasure of reflection is the core of Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft and it is

what grounds beauty as a symbol of morality. The aesthetic relation - the relation to the

191
Note that Heidegger refers to Kant's asthetische Urteil only as the asthetische Verhalten, consistently
circumventing 'judgment.' This circumvention is significant and I will return to it below.
192
This is the way the greatness of art serves its metaphysical function, in the case of Kant. As a symbol of
morality, beauty points to the unconditioned qua the supersensible common ground of nature and freedom
(cf section 57).
 141

beautiful - becomes the human comportment to being that make us fully who we are (N

I, 113).193 What it means to be "fully who we are" is, however, quite different for Kant

and Heidegger. If there is any displacement involved in the disinterested pleasure

experienced when making a judgment of beauty for Kant, it would have to be a moral

displacement, one that comes from realizing the analogy between the judgment and one's

own autonomy.

Heidegger notes that the core of Kant's critique is the "Lust der Reflexion" and its

analysis in sections 57 and 59. In these sections ("Resolution of the Antinomy of Taste"

and "On Beauty as a Symbol of Morality"), Kant claims both that the reflective judgment

of taste points to a supersensible substrate of humanity, that is, the judgment arouses an

interest - from the perspective of the subject - in a purposively organized nature which

we are part of and in which the pleasure we feel when confronted with beauty is shared.

Note that this purposiveness is ideal, as Kant says "it is we who receive nature with favor,

not nature that favors us."194 The free judging of the beautiful is also analogous to the

freedom that we as moral agents have to give ourselves laws, and hence taste "as it were

makes possible the transition from sensible charm to the habitual moral interest without

too violent a leap."195 This is how the experience of beauty makes us who we are, as

Heidegger says: it moves us to reflect philosophically on our place in nature and on our

193
The pleasure of reflection is also the state that Schiller grasps as the condition for the possibility of the
historical, history-grounding being of humans in his development of Kant. As we know from the
documentation of Heidegger's lecture course on Schiller from the period, this interpretation of Kant's
"pleasure of reflection" is the aspect of Schiller's thought that Heidegger especially appreciates. We can
imagine that this is due to Schiller's recognition of the importance of historicity and its introduction into
transcendental philosophy.
194
Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, 350.
195
Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, 354.
 142

freedom. Viewed from the perspective of the art-essay, Heidegger's appropriation of

disinterestedness as letting be "historicizes" the moral aspect of the experience of beauty,

so fundamental to the aesthetic judgment of Kant's Critique, into something like a

historically specific ethos.

'Disinterestedness' is letting be, letting be is preserving, and preserving is

"standing-within" the clearing that is happening in the work. This "standing-within"

describes a certain ontological relationship to the artwork and its truth, but it also has an

ethical dimension, in that the relationship harbors a certain Sittlichkeit. To preserve the

truth and beauty of an artwork is to live on the earth and in the world the artwork sets up,

having projects and being together with other people:

Preserving the work does not reduce people to their experiences [Erlebnisse], but
pulls them into the belonging of the truth happening in the work, and so grounds,
out of the relation to unconcealedness, the being-for and -with one another as the
historical standing-out of Dasein. (GA 5, 55)

The result of a proper comportment towards and experience of art is hence a manner of

being that is open, shared and historical - quite different from the simultaneously

universal, private and emotional experience of so much of modern aesthetics - but

perhaps most importantly in comparison to Kant, it is not an experience which reflects

our being rational, autonomous moral agents. What was moral in Kant becomes at best

something like the ethos of the world of the artwork. We see that the ontological aspect

of the artwork takes over for the moral aspect that was so important for Kant.

At this point, it becomes clear how Heidegger's interpretation of beauty and

disinterestedness has taken us far away from the theoretical landscape opened up by
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Kant. The focus of Kant's third critique is the act of judging, which is also central to any

understanding of his aesthetics of the beautiful. Heidegger shows appreciation of Kant

but without acknowledging the importance of judgment. While a theory of judgment will

concern itself with intersubjective standards of judging, Heidegger's "theory," being less

interested in the judging subject, will not. Instead, the criteria for beauty have a historical

character; beauty cannot be described independently of the historical situatedness. The

radiance of beauty is no universal ahistorical quality, but instead it belongs to the work

and its world. In the art-essay, Heidegger "defines" beauty as a way truth-as-

unconcealedness is.

Heidegger initially stressed two features of the episode of modern aesthetics; the

first was subjectivization and the second was the definition of greatness as revealing a

totality or absolute. The modern period's subjectivization of the relation to the artwork is

the cause of the growing chasm between the truth and aesthetics. It is clear from the

account of Heidegger given above that the wrong aesthetic stance (not letting be) would

prevent the possibility of the essential relation to art (stepping into its truth), which would

eliminate the possibility of experiencing truth or beauty, and hence would make art

unimportant for that age (it could not be "great"). In this manner, aesthetics causes the

end of art.

However, there is a close connection between truth and beauty in Heidegger's

reinterpretation of Kant, and hence it is not clear that the first feature of modern

aesthetics, subjectivization, has such detrimental effects. It is the experience of beauty

that brings the subject into being fully who he or she is. Only a misunderstanding of
 144

Kant, focusing primarily of disinterestedness and overlooking its connection to morality

and the belonging to a kingdom of ends that follows with it, would justify seeing Kant as

being wholly lacking concern for truth.196 The lesson to learn from the case of Kant could

hence be that subjectivization together with a metaphysical framework allowing this

subject an important place in a teleological whole is not in itself a sign of decline.

Misunderstanding Kantian subjectivity, however, does have detrimental consequences.197

A strange paradox emerges in Heidegger's text: on the one hand, he offers a

general description of modern aesthetics as diminishing the importance of art in his short

history of aesthetics, while on the other hand he offers a reading of Kant and an

alternative understanding of our relation to beauty that counters this tendency in

aesthetics. Reflecting on the history of philosophy seems to offer alternatives to the

"logic" of that very history; Heidegger's readings hence bring out what might be thought

of as undercurrents or overlooked options in the history of philosophy.

In Heidegger's reinterpretation lies an attempt to rescue the category of beauty.

Beauty has been dismissed as uninteresting or irrelevant or even unacceptable to 20th

century art, but then it has primarily been understood as a mere "pleasure-generator," and

the criticism seems to fall in line with Heidegger's wider criticism of Erlebnis as the

paradigm for aesthetic experience. Focusing on the feeling created by beauty seems self-

196
It is, however, quite clear that the truth that art conveys for Kant is of a different sort than the truth of art
that Heidegger seems most interested in.
197
Another line of thought following from Heidegger's third "fact" that I have not considered here, might
bring out more problematic consequences of Kant's project. Heidegger notes that less and less art of the
"great" kind is being made. In Kant's case, a great artwork would presumably be an artwork that
successfully portrayed an aesthetic idea, so rich in associations and thoughts and beauty that it resulted in
the subject reflecting on his or her own constitution and that constitution's relation to nature and freedom.
Perhaps implicit in Heidegger's "fact" is the contention that this criteria of greatness is philosophically
motivated and almost impossible for art to actually live up to.
 145

indulgent and irresponsible and to an extent also makes art unimportant, as it is relegated

to dealing primarily with emotions, construed as merely subjective properties. The

understanding of beauty that Heidegger suggests is of a beauty that is never merely self-

referential or something to indulge in; it cannot be about ornamentation, beautification or

"surface." Beauty radiates in the midst of the most important events, according to

Heidegger; the essence of beauty is the "Beriickend-Entruckende" - it both moves you

closer and pulls you away.198 In art, beauty both draws us towards itself, the sensuous,

and pulls us away from the ordinary by revealing Being to us. Beauty hence is not merely

aesthetic, but has an ontological aspect as well. As the above development of Heidegger's

short interpretation of Kant has tried to bring out, this is indeed analogous with Kant's

own understanding of the relationship between aesthetic judgment on the one hand and

morality and nature on the other. This relationship is both sensuous and leaves room for

reflection. This latter aspect, which in Kant ties beauty to the notion of greatness in

nature and morality, can confirm Heidegger's description of aesthetics as given content

by metaphysics. Heidegger's diagnosis of the third fact of aesthetics was that the

revealing of the unconditioned or absolute is the criterion of greatness of art in this

period. It is precisely the relation to metaphysics that seems to save beauty from the

accusations of irrelevance and secures beauty as also conceptually interesting. It is in the

later stages of aesthetics, when metaphysics is replaced by nihilism, that beauty becomes

thoroughly empty of knowledge and given over to the sensuous.

N I, 199, and Martin Heidegger, Erlauterung zu Holderlins Dichtung, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann, 1971, p. 52.
 146

3.2.3 Hegel, indebtedness and development

The fourth fact of Heidegger's history of aesthetics is Hegel's aesthetics, which is at once

the completion of aesthetics and the end of great art. Heidegger, through the three

previous stages of history, tried to establish that metaphysics gives shape and direction to

aesthetics in such a way that this discipline eventually destroys its own topic. With

Hegel's system, philosophy gains the ultimate power, as reason and reality become one,

and art loses out. As he does in the afterword to the art-essay, Heidegger quotes from the

famous passages of Hegel's introduction and argues that the fact that artworks are still

made poses no challenge to Hegel's theory.199 The fact that art has become a matter of

enjoyment for a certain class of people confirms that art has lost its power to express the

absolute or, in other words, to be great (N I, 83). This state of affairs is the point of

departure for the art and aesthetics of the 19* century. Before attempting to answer what

Heidegger's acknowledgement of the end of art means for his interpretation of Hegel's

descendants, I will compare Heidegger's and Hegel's histories so far.

Heidegger seems to accept the self-proclaimed status of Hegel's aesthetics as the

consummation of Western aesthetics. This status accorded to aesthetics is the result of a

historical argument in Hegel, and for our purposes it is necessary to understand the extent

to which Heidegger agrees with Hegel's history of art. It is obvious that the two

respective histories are very different - Heidegger has nothing like the rich account of the

development of the arts through history or the development and meaning of the different

forms of art that makes up most of Hegel's lectures on aesthetics. However, Heidegger

Cf. Chapter One below.

 147

suggests that his "happening of truth as art" is analogous to Hegel's "manifestation of

historical spirit as art." As we have seen in the previous chapters, there are several more

or less explicit admissions of similarity and agreement with Hegel in Heidegger's art-

essay, as well as in the Nietzsche lectures. Heidegger recognizes great art as something

that opens epochs and enables a certain historical identity for a people; Heidegger himself

glosses Hegel's end of art thesis as the question of whether art is a decisive way for truth

to happen any longer; and Heidegger says the change in the nature of truth corresponds to

the history of the essence of Western art. I think two challenges to an interpretation of

Heidegger's philosophy of art are raised by the proximity to Hegel. First, by aligning

himself with Hegel with respect to the understanding of great art and the role of

aesthetics, Heidegger invites further reflection on the interpretation presented by

Poggeler (in my Chapter Two), since a romantic or nostalgic interpretation of Heidegger

is challenged by Heidegger's alignment with Hegel. Second, in the lengths he goes to

accommodate and even accept the history of Hegel's aesthetics, Heidegger also brings

into question the status of his own attitude towards aesthetics. What is the status of

Heidegger's critique of aesthetics when he seems able simultaneously to criticize and

appreciate aesthetics? I will treat these as two interpretive problems in the following.200

In the secondary literature, Jacques Taminiaux stands out as atypical and I think commendable, in that
he stresses that there is tension at the heart of Heidegger's thinking about art. Instead of reconstructing one
view on Heidegger's behalf, he pursues the tensions and as a result produces some of the most interesting
readings of Heidegger. Taminiaux writes Heidegger's ambiguities into a longer story about a tension
between speculation and judgment that he traces from the third critique and all through the post-kantian
tradition. This section of my chapter attempts to view Heidegger in light of Hegel, hence seeing the
problem of his philosophy of art as a historical one, and is indebted to Taminiaux' Poetics, Speculation and
Judgment.
 148

Heidegger's appraisal of art can be understood as romantic in the sense that an

artwork is an all-important event with world- and history-transforming power. Art is a

bearer of truth and harbors the greatest potential for meaning. At the same time, the

creation of the work and the work itself cannot be grasped in advance, critically assessed

or conceptually exhausted. The core "definition" from the art-essay, modeled on the

Greek temple as a paradigmatic example, has led commentators to identify a romantic

strand in Heidegger's thinking about art.201 The nostalgia for the Greek world, largely

initiated by Winckelmann's pioneering work in Greek art history and archeology, is very

visible in German culture of the 19th Century, from the presence of Greek imagery in

poetry, via the popular interest in the collections of Greek sculpture to Nietzsche's

celebration of the Dionysian. Perhaps most indicative of this tendency in Heidegger is the

importance of religion for art. The greatness of the Greek temple is clearly related to its

religious function in the Greek community. If the temple is paradigmatic for any future

truth-revealing artwork as well, then it could be that a new mythology must be introduced

for art to regain importance. Heidegger's position could then be similar to the one

expressed in the first "System-Program" of German Idealism, written by Heidegger's

"muse," Holderlin, together with Schelling and Hegel in 1796.202 The program is

revolutionary in its scope, and expresses a need for an aesthetic philosophy, in which
201
This both includes a nostalgia for the Greek world and a certain promethean understanding of the artist -
the artist is someone who challenges being and out of this strife wrestles from being a new happening of
truth, which sets up a world and introduces standards (including political ones) for a historical people that
cannot be judged in advance. This strand is most visible in the works leading up to the art-essay, that is, in
the first lecture courses on Holderlin and in Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, where it sounds like the truth of
art will create a new mythology in which art can achieve greatness.
202 " j j j e oldest System-Program of German Idealism," in Friedrich Holderlin: Essays and Letters on
Theory, tr. and ed. Thomas Pfau, Albany: SUNY Press 1988. There has been, and still is, some debate
about the authorship of this text, but whose ideas were most influential in the formulation of the program is
not vital to our discussion.
 149

poetry and philosophy are one and together become a "teacher of humanity." Similarly,

Heidegger seems to accept and support this "mythology" as it is expressed in Holderlin's

poetry. Even if Heidegger interprets Holderlin's lament of the gods' absence and the

mythological imagery not as nostalgia, but as an attempt at inciting a new history, that is,

as something that is important for the future, it is still the case that on this interpretation

of the future the relationship between mythology and community appears to be modelled

on the history of the first beginning of Western civilization in Greece. The question

remaining is whether Heidegger wants the described historical origin of the artwork

reawakened for the future. In other words, whether the art of the future would be

significantly similar to the art of the first beginning. If so, it might need a new

mythology. However, given the insistence on behalf of philosophy that a repetition of the

first beginning is not an option for the future, I find such a reading implausible.

On the other hand, if Heidegger aligns himself with Hegel, such a romantic

position seems impossible to uphold. By the time of his aesthetics lectures, Hegel's

position is clearly opposed to that of the System-Program. Hegel's historical thesis argues

that the romantic conception of art is untenable at the present point in history, and that art

after the end of art must play a far less important role than what the romantic philosophy

of art recommended. Romantic art dissolves into two modes - "on the one hand, into the

imitation of external objectivity in all its contingent shapes; on the other hand, however,

203
Cf. for example: "I will speak here of an idea which, as far as I know, has not occurred to anyone — [.]
We need a new mythology, however, this mythology must be at the service of the ideas, it must become a
mythology of reason. Until we render the ideas aesthetic, that is mythological, they will not be of any
interest to the populace, and vice versa: until mythology has become reasonable, the philosopher has to be
ashamed of it. Thus the enlightened and the unenlightened finally have to shake hands; mythology must
become philosophical in order to make the people reasonable, and philosophy must turn mythological in
order to make the philosophers sensuous." "The Oldest System-Program of German Idealism," p. 155.
 150

the liberation of subjectivity, in accordance with its inner contingency, in humour" - and

neither of them is at all concerned with any new mythology. Greatness is now

unavailable to art, and art's vocation is much more local and secularized; Humanus,

mankind itself, is the only new "holy of holies."204 Art is now free to explore any subject-

matter in any form or material, but with this freedom comes a lack of importance, on

Hegel's account.

If Heidegger accepts Hegel's aesthetics up to and including the end of art thesis,

how is one then to understand the nostalgia that Poggeler finds in Heidegger? As I

suggested in the previous chapter, one can assume that Heidegger goes through a

development, and that the afterword's emphasis on the end of art tries to correct a

tendency in the original essay, modifying the idealized, general account of art by

stressing that account's historical limitations. Or perhaps Heidegger is a kind of Hegelian

all along, and that much of the description of art in the art-essay, primarily the middle

section, "Work and Truth," that deals with the Greek paradigm, is "just" history. If this is

the case, then the art-essay is more of an account of an origin that once was than a

description of a prevailing essence. The description of the Greek temple can be

interpreted along Hegelian lines, hence allowing for an understanding of Heidegger's

history of art and aesthetics to be compatible with Hegel's up to the end of art. There are

certain advantages to such a "Hegelian" reading of Heidegger's art-essay. For one thing,

one could dismiss the apparent aestheticizing of politics as something Heidegger merely
204
Aesthetics, p. 607-608. Hence the role left to art is to help educate this mankind, by helping it reflect on
itself. This is why Gethmann-Siefert stresses the educational aspect of art in Einfiihrung in Hegels Asthetik.
For an interesting comparison of the role of mythology and art in Heidegger and Hegel, see Andreas
Grossmann, "Hegel, Heidegger, and the Question of Art Today," Research in Phenomenology, vol. XX
(1990), pp. 112-135.
 151

attributes to a Greek past.205 Also, we would not have to defend Heidegger's alleged

"theory" as applicable for today's art. The Greek origin of art is importantly different

from today's artworld and no one should be surprised that Heidegger's description is

unrecognizable as a possibility today - at the end of art, it is not. In other words, the

"Hegelian" reading could be a way to counter Poggeler's main criticisms of the art-essay.

However, the second tension problematizes such a reading.

The second tension that shows itself when we compare Hegel and Heidegger on

the history of aesthetics is caused by the fact that Hegel's history is precisely aesthetics

itself. As we know, Hegel's history of the decline of art's importance and the

corresponding rise of philosophical reflection on art is the aesthetic theory, according to

Heidegger. It is not clear how Heidegger could be so close to Hegel without endorsing

the latter's aesthetic theory. However, Heidegger's stated objective, from the very first

writing on art and reiterated in the last sections in Beitrage, is overcoming aesthetics.

Thus, accepting the end of art thesis as Hegel formulates it creates a seemingly

paradoxical position for Heidegger, which Taminiaux formulates as "overcoming

aesthetics and yet validating it." Taminiaux notes that Heidegger's attempt at thinking art

in a non-metaphysical manner at the same time intersects with the most metaphysical

aesthetics. Before trying to untangle this position, I will continue the "Hegelian" line in

Heidegger a bit further. As already suggested, Heidegger's understanding of Greek art

205
This feature is most prominent when Heidegger seems to equate the act of the statesman and the artist in
Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik and the first lectures on Holderlin.
206
Taminiaux, "The Hegelian Legacy," p. 129. Differently put: "Recognizing that the empire of
subjectivity over art is not an invention of aesthetics, but the expression given by aesthetics to the principle
that really rules over modernity, amounts to validating aesthetics under its most metaphysical figure - the
one found in Hegel's Lectures on aesthetics..." "The Hegelian Legacy," 128.
 152

can be interpreted along "Hegelian" lines. The two episodes of Heidegger's history that

follow the fourth stage, that is, the events in the philosophy of art that come after Hegel's

thesis of the end of art, can also be understood as in line with Hegel's narrative. The fifth

and sixth phase of Heidegger's history are important within the specific context of the

lectures on Nietzsche, but they also provide illuminating as descriptions of the state of art

and aesthetics after the end of art, that is, the period that Heidegger's sees himself a part

of.

The fifth episode of the history of aesthetics is made up by the attempt at creating

a "Gesamtkunstwerk." Heidegger argues that Wagner's "Gesamtkunstwerk" - an artwork

that tries not only to combine all the other arts into a whole, but also to gather a whole

people around it - is not great art, but rather an example of how art fails in the age of the

end of art. From both Beitrdge and the art-essay, we have noted the disdain Heidegger

expresses for "lived experience" [Erlebnis], and his criticism of the emphasis on lived

experience as the prevalent way of understanding our relation to art is given more content

in his discussion of Wagner.207 Heidegger mentions how Wagner's work is accompanied

by theoretical work, by which Wagner explicitly tries to tie the artwork to politics, to

German culture widely conceived and to the future. If successful in creating such

relevance, these would all be features of a great work of art - but Heidegger says this

attempt at restoring greatness instead brings to light the creeping barrenness and the

uprooted-ness of Dasein in the mid-nineteenth century. The root of the problem is the

dominance of music and the orchestra in Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk. Heidegger claims

Cf. my Chapter One.

 153

that the authority of music entails the authority of pure feeling in the reception of the

work. This is how he describes the German composer's music:

...the rage and fervor of sensation, the great spasm, the blissful dread of the
melting away in delight, the absorption in the "bottomless sea of harmonies", the
sinking under into the excitement, the dissolution into pure feeling as release: the
lived experience [Erlebnis] as such becomes decisive (N I, 85)

The core of Heidegger's criticism of the Gesamtkunstwerk is that the operatic work

represents a reduction of the artwork to an arouser of sensuous and emotional experience,

which has serious consequences for Wagner's work as a great work of art. Since the

standard for a great work of art in modernity is its ability to express the absolute (as

Heidegger, echoing Hegel, states in the third stage of the history of aesthetics), and since

to create a "total artwork" for the German people also seems to be the express desire of

Wagner, the surrender to pure emotion is devastating. In the opera, through the

dissolution into feeling and fleeting nothingness, the absolute becomes the purely

indeterminate (N I, 86). This indeterminate emotion is not something that can serve the

important tasks of identification and reflection for a people, which is what the great

artwork was supposed to manifest. Instead, the audience is giving itself over to a mere

lived experience - an intensely experienced moment, but nothing more.

The growing importance of music amongst the arts is due to the development of

aesthetics. The basic aesthetic attitude the subject has towards art is that of feeling, but in

romanticism this state of feeling is made "barbaric" and left to itself - it is no longer

accompanied by any thinking (N I, 87). The emphasis on feeling in late romantic art

leads to the subject's absorption in and assimilation with the surroundings, which
 154

prevents the necessary distance and space for granting identity to either the I or to other

beings.208 What is lacking in this failed attempt at great art is that in the opera music is

given the greatest importance at the expense of poetry. In the ensuing submission to

feelings "the space for a grounded and positioned stance amongst beings is lacking,"

Heidegger writes, "such a space can only be created by great poetry and thinking" (N I,

87). In this sense, an emphasis on feeling in the artwork hinders the artwork from

becoming important. Accordingly, Wagner's work just confirms the proclamation of

Hegel's aesthetics - art is over. Heidegger further claims that aesthetics is on a decline in

the post-Hegelian period. Because metaphysics is becoming increasingly exhausted, the

knowledge of art is transformed into "the mere facts" of art history and aesthetics

becomes the psychology of the "aesthetic man" (N I, 89).

The sixth fact of Heidegger's story is the end point of the history of aesthetics.

Nietzsches's attempt at subverting the relationship between art on the one hand and

religion, morality and philosophy on the other, is according to Heidegger the natural last

resort for aesthetics after the end of art. Nietzsche reduces the psychology of the fifth

stage to a physiology of art, in which the aesthetic state of feeling becomes a kind of

intoxication (Rausch). Nietzsche's philosophy of art is then "the consequence of thinking

the aesthetic question of art through to its end;" it remains aesthetics, because the

aesthetic state is its point of departure (N I, 91). A physiological, or naturalized,

aesthetics is still aesthetics. In Besinnung, an unpublished text written just after

completion of Beitrdge, Heidegger explains this assessment of Nietzsche further:

208
This critique of romantic art should again suggest that Heidegger might be closer to a critical or rational
position of Kant or Hegel than to that of the German Romantics.
 155

Nietzsche's concept of art as "life stimulans" refers to a peculiar intermediate

position between the aesthetic, metaphysical work-based art and the complete
consolidation of the nature of art as aligned with machination. (GA 66, 36)

Nietzsche is hence deeply metaphysical, even though his philosophy of art might look

very different from traditional aesthetics.209

This inscribing of both Nietzsche's overturning of the relationship between art

and truth and of Wagner's romantic Gesamtkunstwerk into the history of aesthetics - as

confirmations and continuations of its completion in the end of art - seems to confirm

Hegel's theory yet again.210 The paradigm for understanding both facts of the nineteenth

century remains Hegel and his aesthetics. The question remaining is still how Heidegger

can both confirm and overcome aesthetics.

One way to think of Hegel's history of aesthetics is as a narrative that is accurate

from within the perspective of metaphysics. It can seem as if Heidegger takes Hegel's

history as such a fact; the history captures the inevitable development of art, given that

art is metaphysically determined. Parallel to this, in Beitrdge Heidegger's attitude to the

development of metaphysics seem to be recognition of a certain chain of (unfortunate)

events rather than dismissal of the tradition for being "wrong." If Heidegger is to take

historicity seriously, claiming that history is "wrong" seems absurd. What can help us

understand Heidegger's position with respect to Hegel's history of aesthetics better is the

209
Heidegger is here referring to the mature Nietzsche and Der Wille zur Macht especially. The emphasis
on the Dionysian in Geburt der Tragodie is more in line with Wagner and the fifth stage.
210
Taminiaux also supports such a reading: "These last two facts cannot indeed be found in Hegel, but they
confirm and continue a series whose style we may identify as Hegelian because they imply that in this
present-day and age of planetary technology - whose metaphysical essence Nietzsche anticipated in the
twin doctrines of the will to power and of the eternal return - art does nothing but perpetuate its
nonessence," "The Hegelian Legacy" p. 145.
 156

end of art. This is because the end of art brings out one very important difference

between the two thinkers, that is, their very different understanding of the truth that is

revealed and enacted throughout history. Unlike Hegel's, Heidegger's history is not

teleological.

Given that the telos of Hegel's history is absolute knowledge, the end of art

coincides with a full articulation of spirit as philosophy. It is indeed a happy moment, in

") 1 1

which art becomes less important, but without this signifying a cultural loss. Hence a

Hegelian like Pippin recommends something like an endless modernism, where self-

reflexivity is the height of artistic practice.212 However, in Heidegger's history there are

more unfortunate aspects to the end of art. The attitudes towards art expressed by

Wagner's and Nietzsche's aesthetics are signs that the outcome of the end of art is more

problematic than Hegel's story admits. Wagner's and Nietzsche's attempts at restoring

importance for art are presumably reactions to the current metaphysical situation not

offering the kind of rational enlightenment Hegel sees actualized in European

modernism. Heidegger can make sense of these appendixes to the history of aesthetics,

as the more troublesome aftermath of the end of art, because the truth that he sees

revealed in the history of aesthetics is not the Hegelian truth.

Again, turning to the understanding of metaphysics in Beitrdge will prove

helpful. History is a way truth happens and the history of philosophy is the result of a

certain response to the Ereignis of being. The history of Western metaphysics provides
21
' As Hegel writes about the end of the romantic form of art, this development "... we must not regard as
a mere accidental misfortune suffered by art from without owing to the stress of the times, the sense for the
prosaic, lack of interest etc., on the contrary it is the effect and the progress of art itself..." Aesthetics, Vol.
I, p. 604.
212
Cf. 1.2.2 below.
 157

the occasion to ask two constructive questions, both "what is it about being that lets

itself be grasped philosophically as metaphysics?" and "what aspects of being remain

unthought in the tradition's representation of it?" Studying the history of metaphysics is

thus informative both in a negative and positive sense. The twofold questioning is

appropriate in the lesser context of aesthetics also. Artworks can easily be approached

under the paradigm of presence and hence be understood according to the leading

question of metaphysics ("what are beings?"). In this sense, the aesthetic response to art

throughout the history of western thinking is made possible by being itself. The telos of

the history of western metaphysics cannot be complete presence, however. This is

because truth, the happening of being, is not itself characterized by presence. Truth is

instead characterized by both presence and absence, openness and withdrawal. Hegel's

mistake then, is to assume that the truth of metaphysics is the truth of being, to use

Heidegger's language.213

At the beginning of aesthetics, in Plato's account of mimesis, art has to be

inferior given the definition of truth. In Hegel - the completion of metaphysics - art is

insufficient because truth is complete presence as the expression of a whole. Art's

shortcoming cannot be avoided within metaphysics. However, if absence, withdrawal,

hiddenness and refusal are part of what is and an important element of truth, then art

need not be incomplete with respect to truth, and art need also not be outpaced by

213
Of course, Heidegger repeatedly invites the parallel with Hegel. In the years leading up to the art-essay
and Beitrdge, in his attempt to formulate a philosophy for the German people, Heidegger seems to operate
with a notion of spirit that echoes Hegel's understanding of history. Cf. Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and
the Question, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
 158

history. Then the distinctive features of art that make it inferior from a metaphysical

point of view are features that art has in common with being.

Heidegger's studies of episodes in the history of aesthetics can be understood as

attempts to discover what remains undeveloped by the tradition. The double resource of

the tradition shows itself in the interpretations I have discussed. In order to "overcome

aesthetics," a philosophical treatment of art will have to reflect aesthetics into itself - by

way of asking "what is it about art that lets itself be philosophically understood and

expressed as aesthetics?" and "what aspects of the essence of art are left out by

asesthetics?" I think we see these two questions at work in Heidegger's treatment of the

history of aesthetics in the Nietzsche lectures where, as I have shown, the interpretations

of Plato and Kant inscribe these two thinkers in the history while finding material for

reflecting on art within their work.

Heidegger tries to grasp what is overlooked by aesthetics, and the moments of

earth, freie Gunst and the mimesis of truth are attempts at drawing attention to these

aspects of art. When art is freed from aesthetics, these aspects can again work.

Reflecting on the origin of Western art, as in the Greek temple, gives one glimpse of this

suppressed aspect. It does not, however, provide a definition of or normative

recommendation for art or art theory. When I said above that Heidegger's description of

the Greek temple lends itself to a Hegelian interpretation, that is possible only given one

omission. It is possible if earth is interpreted as something unthought, that eventually,

through history, is actualized and brought to spirit's consciousness. If earth is understood

in the more radical way I suggested in Chapter Two, however, earth is essentially
 159

ungraspable and impossible to articulate. Earth taken seriously as alterity, not just as

temporary otherness that will eventually become one, breaks the Hegelian grasp and

challenges the aesthetic understanding of art. This is the most valuable strand of the art-

essay.
 160

Chapter 4 ART AND PHILOSOPHY AFTER THE END OF ART

As I argued in chapter one, there are three characteristic features to the end of art thesis:

(1) a definition of art; (2) a certain view of history; and (3) a particular relationship

between art and philosophy. The relationship between art and philosophy is partly

described in the previous chapter's account of Heidegger's view of the history of

metaphysics and of how his own thinking relates to that history. What I want to do in this

chapter is to bring out how philosophy and art relate in Heidegger's post-aesthetic

thinking.

Heidegger at times seems to endorse the end of art thesis as a way of assessing

contemporary art. Art is dead, and the state of the artworld proves it - disapproval of the

art of his time is widespread in Heidegger's later texts. The result of the history of

aesthetics is that art is no longer "great." It is a spectacle - merely one commodity

amongst others - and, in fact, it is questionable whether art brings forth artworks any

longer. Indeed, his expressed attitude often makes it seem that the art of his time,

modernist art, does nothing but confirm the end of art.214 As we will see, however,

though Heidegger sees many problems with the contemporary situation in art, the

criticisms are accompanied by a sense of art still having the potential to be something

very important.

214
This implies that Heidegger passes a more devastating verdict over art than either Hegel or Danto do
when pronouncing the end of art. For Danto, art achieves freedom to be anything it wants after the end of
art, which, although Danto admits being somewhat disappointed with the art of the early eighties, does not
rule out the making of fabulous and stimulating art. For Hegel, art is no longer of utmost importance, but
that does not mean that the art after the end of art is bad. If the goal of art is now to provide education and
reflection for the citizen of the democratic state, then the bourgeois drama of the late 19th century should be
one excellent example of a good artwork performing the function left open to art to fill.
 161

In the first part of this chapter, I focus on Heidegger's general assessments of art

and on his description of his own post-aesthetic contemplation of art. I will make use of

several different texts in order to support my claim that Heidegger does not have a

philosophy of art; he is rather explicit about that over the span of the last four decades of

his life. I show how Heidegger criticizes his contemporary "artworld," which is still

dominated by metaphysics, but also considers art as a possible liberator from the

domineering technological mindset that is so pervasive in the 20th Century. In the second

part of the chapter, I turn to the question of what a post-metaphysical art might be like

more concretely. I here focus on Heidegger's comments on the work of Cezanne, Klee

and Chillida. Heidegger was very interested in the work of these quite different modernist

artists, and I approach them as possible candidates for a post-metaphysical art.

4.1.1 Art without artworks (1936-39)

In the last section of Beitrage, Heidegger comments explicitly on what he sees as

philosophy's task with respect to art.215 He states that it is a misunderstanding of his turn

to the first beginning, that is, his thinking on the ancient Greeks, to think that he espouses

some sort of "classicism" (GA 65, 504). As with his larger confrontation with

metaphysics, the reflection on the origin of the artwork is a preparatory step in order to

215 ££ "VII. Das Seyn." This section was not part of Heidegger's outline for the text, cf. editor's afterword.
We do however know that it dates from the same period, i.e. the years following the writing of the art-
essay.
 162

make possible a new beginning, not a repetition.216 What is important is to think

historically (geschichtlich), and not to "count historiologically" (historisch), and

discussions about classicism usually miss this point. Thinking historically does not

permit the revival of old ideals so central to classicism. What is important to Heidegger is

hence not Greek art per se, as classical paradigms, but our philosophical relation to

history. Heidegger thereby distances himself from contemporaneous debates in art.218 He

claims further that a world without an artworld might indeed have more historical and

creative power than the present. Heidegger recommends an art distanced from the

artworld and from culture, because otherwise culture dictates what art can be, what

counts as a work and what the goal of art is. The result of such influence of culture is that

what we experience and enjoy as art might be merely a "simulacrum of historical skill"

(GA 65, 503). What Heidegger presents in these pages of the Beitrdge are two possible

alternatives for art's situation after the end of art: (1) the commodified art of the culture

industry, which will essentially be too weak to reveal anything but the world-view put

forth by machination and hence create "simulacra" or "kitsch"; (2) what Heidegger calls

Kunstlosigkeit, which is a knowledge or awareness that we are living in a time without art

(GA 65, 505). In this case, realizing that art has reached an end harbors the possibility of

a new future. These two alternatives show that the end of art is very real to Heidegger,

but that a rebirth is possible.

Cf. the description in Chapter Three of the necessity to think through the first beginning in order to
make possible a second beginning.
217
Here I am borrowing from Macquarrie and Robinson's attempt at distinguishing between Geschichte
and Historie and these words' respective adjective and adverbial phrases, in their translation of Sein und
Zeit.
218
Most notably, he distances himself from the decision made by the NSDAP leadership, that German art
should be classicist, modelled on Greek sculpture and architecture.
 163

In Besinnung, in a section entitles "Art in the age of completion of modernity,"

Heidegger elaborates on art's difficult situation and reflects on its future. He claims

that the art of his time is "completing its metaphysical nature" and that this shows itself in

the disappearance of artworks, even though art persists (GA 66, 30). This statement can

be understood against the background of Heidegger's particular understanding of work,

which entails a strife between earth and world, and which captures the event of being as a

figure. The claim that art no longer produces artworks is not merely referring to

conceptual art - Heidegger probably had no idea of the avant garde challenges of the

artwork that were already appearing in the first half of the 20th century — but to a much

wider phenomenon: there are no artworks, perhaps because art is not working.220 He

claims that it is impossible to ask for art's meaning behind its creations, because the

ultimate standard and meaning is the lived experience (Erlebnis) felt by the audience. Art

is all technique, producing certain emotional responses in individuals. The paintings,

plays, poems and musical pieces of Heidegger's time are not works in the strict sense:

The genres of art hitherto dissolve and remain only in title or as a remote, unreal
realm of preoccupation for futureless romantics who have arrived too late (GA
66,31).

From these passages from Besinnung, it is clear that Heidegger does not have a

conservative agenda for future art, since both classicism or romantic nostalgia are
219
"Die Zeitalter der Vollendung der Neuzeit" is another of Heidegger's description of the age of end of
metaphysics, the age of technology or machination, the age of nihilism, in other words, of time after Hegel.
I will for brevity's sake at times refer to this as modernism in the following.
220
Note that after the war, in the discussion of the work of Paul Klee, the absence of work seems to have a
different and less negative meaning. "Work" can also be understood against the background of techne as
man's confrontation with being. This confrontation, as it is in the Greek "making present" of the artwork
for example, is an expression of the attitude towards being that eventually leads to the technological
mindset.
 164

impossible responses to the current situation.221 However, his anti-modernism might be

said to reveal a pessimistic conservatism, in the sense that even though aesthetics might

have been bad for art in the long run, Heidegger seems to appreciate that aesthetics at

least allowed art to play an important role for several centuries. What has replaced

artworks in the 20th century are attempts to control and unify the masses, especially

through film.222 The growth of the artworld and the art industry, especially of popular

museums and exhibitions, do not offer any "working art" to their audiences. "The

exhibition means that what is shown is essentially already fixed," Heidegger writes (GA

66, 32).

How then are we to think of art? Is there any way to "free" art from the end of

art? Heidegger seems to think that he is not just reminiscing about a lost artworld, but

contemplating art in a manner that opposes the present culture. Contemplation of art

cannot be sought in art history, Heidegger claims. More importantly, Heidegger

explicitly distances his way of contemplating art from anything that could be called

philosophy of art:

Again, Poggeler's charge against the art-essay, that it harbors a romanticism, clearly cannot be
Heidegger's view. This text is written only a couple of years after the art-essay.
222
Note here that Heidegger does not fault the film medium, but rather what it is used to show. What is
kitsch, he writes, is not this form of art itself, but rather what it offers as worth experiencing (erlebenswert).
"'Kitsch' is not "bad" art, but rather the best practical knowing, although empty and inessential, which
assists the public propaganda in attaining its symbolic character, so that it can secure its significance" (GA
66, 31). This is contrary to the accusation sometimes put forth that Heidegger is "against" new media. This
would only be the case if any art that reaches a wide audience is bad by necessity. (Heidegger would
however, probably align himself with critiques of "mass society" and of the idea of people as "mass" as it
is formulated by the Frankfurter School for example. The 20th century development of "mass media"
initially rested on such an idea of human beings.)
223
The reason for this is that art history is concerned with the possibilities of art as it has been up to now,
that is, the art of aesthetics, but since we might be standing in front of such a radical shift, art historical
knowledge is not really relevant for contemplating the future.
 165

Decisive contemplation of art must stand outside art theory, which is why the
overcoming of aesthetics can be merely a incidental task, which is easy to
misunderstand, while it can make one think that aesthetics will only be replaced
and exchanged by another consideration. It is also not about emphasizing the
work "an sich" in contrast to the artist and the recipient and both the historical
conditions and effective relations, because also this emphasis need not step out of
the metaphysically experienced art; as the work is only grasped as "object" (GA
66, 36)

This quotation throws much light on Heidegger's self-understanding in the years after

finishing the art-essay. First, we see that overcoming aesthetics, what Heidegger claims is

the purpose of the art-essay already in the very first draft, is not an end in itself, but

valuable as a necessary transitory step towards a wholly different attitude towards art.

Second, neither a focus on the particular historical situatedness of a work, nor an effort to

narrow down the scope to include only the work (as, for example, in the aspirations of

New Criticism), are successful ways to save art from a culture dominated by

machination. Both strategies are dismissed by Heidegger as remaining too easily within a

metaphysical framework. Third, Heidegger also makes clear that the goal of his

reflections on art's future and future art is not to form a theory or philosophy of art. The

goal is to occasion a change in the nature of art, from the "dead" art of the present to a

living art of the future. It is not clear that there would be anything like a philosophy of art

in the future, or that this art would need a philosophical reflection at all. Since Heidegger

writes Besinnung only a few years after the art-essay, it should also make clear that the

tensions in that text that I note in Chapter Two must have been apparent to Heidegger, if

not during, then certainly soon after finishing the essay.

The mood of Heidegger's text, written just before the war, is particularly sinister.

Heidegger does not seem to have much hope that his contemplation will yield results or
 166

that art will free itself from metaphysics. The culture business is a powerless, sedating

means of resistance, he writes. Culture's inability to challenge the dominance of

machination and its functional, technological thinking results in a historical situation,

...in which being does not even show itself as the fleeting pale shadows of a
dream; being - a ringing last reverberation of a mere shell of a word - and its
question? Not even an error, just indifference. (GA 66, 40)

In other words, the end of art coincides with a severe crisis in human beings' relationship

to what it is to be. It is apparent, then, that the end of art is a much more dire event for

Heidegger than for Danto or Hegel.224 This is because it falls together with the

dominance of technology, which I turn to now.

4.1.2 Art in the age of technology (1953-56)

The status of modernist art clearly continues to bother Heidegger later in his career. In the

1955-56 lecture course, published as Der Satz vom Grund, Heidegger writes of abstract

art:

The techno-scientific construction of the world launches its own claims on the
creation of all beings that force themselves into its light. Therefore, what we
imprecisely call "abstract art" has its legitimate function in the realm of the
techno-scientific construction of the world. (SvG, 41)

224
For both Danto and Hegel, art is less important after the end of art precisely because it has no specific
counterpart to express. For both philosophers, this has a historical reason. We are at the end of history as
we know it, or rather as art can relate to and express it, be it the history of art itself (Danto) or the history of
Spirit (Hegel). Both Danto and Hegel see this post-historical world as characterized by freedom, and it is
precisely this freedom that makes art less important after the end of art. For Heidegger on the other hand it
is important to show that the being of this scientific world-civilization is not best characterized by freedom,
but is rather making any free shaping of history or important decision close to impossible.
 167

This remark can be taken to mean that Heidegger understands abstract art to adhere to the

abstract, axiomatic language preferred by technology (a contemporary descendant of the

principle of sufficient reason) and that Heidegger is accusing abstract art of being in the

service of technology.225 One could perhaps think of the work of the Italian futurists in

this light. Of course, the popular American abstract art of the 1950s was precisely not

"constructed" in this way. One could also think that Heidegger criticizes abstract art the

way he criticizes Nietzsche, that is, that negating the representation of metaphysical art is

no overcoming but merely inverting the old paradigm. However, I think Heidegger's

position is more complex. The context of the quotation is the question of whether human

beings have the ability to respond to technology and whether this would allow for new,

free possibilities for human Dasein. And within this context, the "legitimacy" of

abstraction could mean that it is a possible way to respond to technology. Heidegger's

take on abstract art must be understood in light of the historical understanding of art. In

1950, he writes the following to Petzet, as a response to Petzet's text on an abstract

gouache by a young artist called Mathias Goeritz:

E.g. Julian Young reads Heidegger's comment this way, claiming that Heidegger sees abstract art as
failing to break with metaphysics. Young, Heidegger's Philosophy of Art, 166. Giinther Seubold uses
stronger language, claiming that Heidegger "has most ardently thrown out [abstract art] and displayed its -
even if working without objects - metaphysical nature," Seubold Kunst als Enteignis, p. 118. In what
follows the reader will see that I find such an interpretation unwarranted.
226
By the 1950s, abstract expressionism (which we have no knowledge of Heidegger being aware of at all)
has developed into a movement that is better described as expressivist, emphasising the uncontrolled and at
times random expression of movement in painting. If Heidegger were to interpret this art as influenced by
the technological mindset, his previous strategy of correlating lived experience and individual expression as
the companion to the domination of the technological would probably prove more successful.
227
Heidegger calls abstract art sometimes abstrakt and other times gegenstandslos, literally "object-less
art" in German.
 168

...the question of the lecture: what is the artwork in front of us does not seem to
me clear enough in all respects. Underneath the question could be lurking: is it an
artwork at all? Or is art together with metaphysics made invalid? Does perhaps a
much deeper tremor hide beneath the anxiety of abstract art? The end of art? The
coming of something that we have no name for? 228

This quotation strongly suggests that Heidegger thinks the status of abstract art is unclear

because of its historical situation. Nothing implies that the formal elements or lack of

representation cause him to doubt whether the abstract painting is an artwork. Instead, the

doubt arises because it belongs to the last stage in a historical development. Truth

happens in an artwork, Heidegger wrote in 1935; is Heidegger implying that at the end of

Western metaphysics there is no such happening to capture in a figure? Is the truth hiding

behind the modern artwork - the truth of the end of art - the fact that nothing important

can be expressed?

In another passage from Der Satz vom Grund, Heidegger writes that the power of

the technological world-view, which can be understood as a kind of foundationalism that

completely determines and secures beings, has achieved complete freedom in the present

age. That art becomes without object in such a climate "...testifies to [abstract art's]

Petzet, Aufeinen Stern zugehen, p. 161.

229
Julian Young argues very briefly that there is a distinction between what he calls "semi-abstract" art and
abstract art proper (Malevich's "Black Square" is an example of the latter), and that Heidegger would not
be able to accuse the latter of further representing the Gestell (i.e. what Heidegger so far has referred to as a
technological world-view). This is because abstract art proper does not represent anything. This argument
is somewhat problematic, as it is not clear that capturing the happening of being in a look has to be
"representational" in a traditional sense at all. As I suggested in the section on mimesis in chapter 3, what
seems to be right about understanding art as mimetic is not to understand it as "copying." It is not clear why
the look of the event of being has to be the look of a thing at all (the temptation to think in this way is I
believe the example of Van Gogh's shoes and Heidegger's later writing on the thing). I do agree with
Young's claim that it is the "semi-abstract" art that could be said to lend itself to glorifying the Gestell, and
Young also mentions Italian futurism as a possible object for such a criticism. The interesting question
remains how to distinguishing between modernist artworks and why some semi-abstract art, like Klee's, can
play such a very different role on Heidegger's view. In the end, I think appeal to different levels of
representation is going to prove unhelpful in the case of Heidegger.
 169

historical legitimacy, and most of all, if abstract art itself grasps that its creations can no

longer be artworks, but something that we still lack an appropriate word for" (SvG, 66).

Here we see that the "legitimacy" of abstraction consists precisely in its resistance to

technology, and that art cannot work as it has before. What does it mean to say that art

produces no work? It is tempting to interpret Heidegger as having grasped something

essential about modernism, that is, its self-reflexivity and efforts to be about nothing

outside itself. Whether Heidegger thinks that abstract art is another sign of the end of art,

or that it points to art's future, is not clear in this context. However, we will see that these

topics resurface in Heidegger's encounter with Klee below (4.2.2). I would suggest that

abstract art can also be seen as "legitimate" in the sense that it shows that there is nothing

to make present in art in the current age, no truth about being to reveal. Already in the

art-essay Heidegger writes how an artwork is more powerful when remote from its

surroundings and in Besinnung he repeats how art in late modernity must dissociate itself

from culture (GA 5, 54). Abstract art can be interpreted in several ways, both as

expressing and celebrating subjectivism and constructivism in their most extreme forms,

or as refusing to speak the language of kitsch, refusing to stimulate and entertain through

its resistance to signifying at all, and hence as rejecting the technological, subjectivist

climate. How to interpret the remarks on abstract art is further complicated by

Heidegger's appreciation of Paul Klee, whose work extends from pure abstraction and

quite "technical" exercises with shape and color, to playful constellations of naive

figures, machinery and abstract shapes.230 Are Klee's paintings and drawings examples of

For mention of some particular artworks see 4.2.1.

 170

art that "knows" that what it produces are not artworks? If so, not being a work need not

be a failure but an artistic necessity after the end of art. As we turn to the essay on

technology, we will see that it might be possible for modern art to challenge technology

and Gestell "from within."

Heidegger's technology essay is written in 1953-54, that is, fifteen years after

Beitrage. The analysis of the essence of the technological is quite similar to the

description of machination (Machenschaft) in the earlier text and also seems consistent

with the description of the "cybernetic world" of Heidegger's later lecture in Athens.

As I showed in Chapter One, the importance of machination as a paradigm for

understanding the world around us has its counterpart in the emphasis on Erlebnis in the

realm of art and culture. No matter how important or celebrated art is deemed to be, if it

is appreciated as a source of individually lived experience, Hegel's thesis of the end of art

remains valid, according to Heidegger. In the technology essay, however, a more positive

potential is bestowed upon art.232

The nature of technology is not anything technological, Heidegger writes (VA,

9). Underlying the anthropological and instrumental understanding of the technical is a

certain fundamental outlook, what Heidegger calls the "enframing" (Gestell). Viewing

our surroundings as "standing reserve" is the essence of technology (VA, 23). This way

of being, which pervades humans as much as technological things, is a reflection of the

For the latter text, see the next section of this chapter. It seems clear that by the 1950s Technik is the
preferred word for what Heidegger calls Machenschaft in the period of Beitrage und Besinnung. Cf. the
later added marginalia in Besinnung, where Technik is used as synonymous with Machenschaft.
232
1 will here leap quite freely between different texts that span over a thirty year-period. I hope to have
shown that there is enough similarity between these texts and the way they treat the same themes to make
this acceptable.
233
For my hesitation against rendering Wesen as 'essence', see Chapter Two.
 171

subjectivist tendency in modernity - Heidegger quotes Heisenberg's claim that today's

man must produce reality as an extreme case of this - in which the world becomes a

reflection of human being. But by failing to see the challenge of the Gestell, human

beings lose track of themselves. The age of technology is dangerous, as it threatens to

finalize metaphysics as complete nihilism, in which no future can be seen for history, in

the sense that, so encapsulated in a world-view, we cannot project future possibilities for

historical change.234 But towards the end of his essay, Heidegger repeats Holderlin's line

that "in the greatest danger, rests the saving power." Perhaps art could be this saving

power, the source of revealing like it once was?

We recognize the tone of the reflections on the end of art (and of Hegel) from the

afterword to the art-essay - we do not know whether art still harbors this highest

possibility, Heidegger writes (VA, 39). He continues,

a decisive confrontation with technology can only happen in a realm that is

familiar with technology, but at the same time fundamentally different from it.
Such a realm is art. Admittedly only if the artistic contemplation does not
cover up the constellation of truth, which is what we are seeking.
Hence, we attest to the emergency by way of questioning; that we cannot
experience the nature of the technological for noisy technology, that we cannot
preserve the way art is for noisy aesthetics. The more we consider the nature of
technology by way of questioning, the more secretive becomes the nature of art.
(VA, 39)

Some of this is familiar - truth happens in art, unless art is muted by aesthetics. What is

striking and different about the possibility ascribed to art here, both in comparison to the

234
Interesting as an aside here that Heidegger here suggests that the situation of the West today is
compatible with an end of history thesis. I do not here want to discuss whether Hegel has such a thesis or
what it would entail, but just note that for Heidegger in any case, the end of history would be the unhappy
result of a misguided, deeply nihilistic understanding of self and being.
 172

earlier pessimism and criticism of culture and in comparison to the description of the

happening of truth in the art-essay, is that art is the realm in which what is characteristic

of our time is to be challenged. This is the converse of the Hegelian understanding of

art's vocation, in which art reaches its highest possibility as expression of spirit, or to use

Heidegger's language, as opening up a historically and geographically distinct world.

Given this difference, could it be that art's role after metaphysics is precisely to be the

other in which the otherwise all-embracing Gestell can be noticed? If so, that suggests a

historical shift, from art as unconcealing, revelatory if you wish, at the beginning of

Western metaphysics, to art as having a different role, that is reflective and critical, in the

post-metaphysical, nihilist world of technology.235 In the former case, truth happened in

art in a way that allowed the preservers of an artwork to live in its world and inhabit its

earth - and this did not take any further reflection on their part - and the truth of the

artwork seemed to provide them with an identity. If art's saving power is to challenge and

make us aware of the Gestell, then that event is not in itself a world we can inhabit. Its

truth, moreover, would challenge our modern identities in manner that would require

reflection about who we are and want to be on our part.

Is this the role for art implied in Heidegger's appeal to art as a "saving power"? If

this were the case, Heidegger would seem to recognize the need for modernism as

235
If this is the case, Heidegger would seem to display a certain affinity with other thinkers of late
modernity, like Lukacs and Adorno, who allow art a crucial role in their critical projects. A superficial
reading of the van Gogh passage of the art-essay could also invite such a comparison. On such a reading
the truth of art comes about through something like a Verfremdungseffekt. Heidegger is, however, not doing
critical theory, and as I will suggest towards the end of the chapter, art's challenge works in ways that seem
far more subtle and less conceptual or political than in versions of critical theory. For a comparison and
defense of Heidegger's critique of technology vis-a-vis Marcuse's, see Iain Thomson, Heidegger On
Ontotheology: Technology And The Politics Of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
 173

importantly different art for historical reasons. Modernism would then be primarily

understood not in terms of art's history - like both Greenberg and Danto understand

modernist art - but in terms of being's history. The task of modernist art would then be to

suggest and enable change, which it would do by showing us the essence of technology

as an event of being. Of course, Heidegger is giving us little to build on here. We are

merely presented with a possible role for art after aesthetics. And little is said of what it

would mean to challenge technology, or what it is about art that makes possible an escape

from technology or aesthetics. Presumably to escape from aesthetics would be for art to

escape Erlebnis, but how does art do that?

There is one aspect of this proclamation on behalf of art that should reawaken a

previous concern: does the recommendation of art, implicit in it possibly being a "saving

power," again suffer from the all too familiar philosophical disenfranchisement of art. If

art is to show us the truth of technology, is that not yet again to take up art in order to

solve problems of philosophy? We suspect that the hope that art can challenge

technology overdetermines what art is and should be. After more than two thousand years

of aesthetics, looming in the background is always the worry that the motivation for

granting art this important role is really philosophical and that Heidegger is indeed guilty

of expectations that are wholly arbitrary, if viewed from the perspective of art and artistic

practice.

Below I suggest some reasons why this need not be the case, given the

interpretational approach I have championed. As I have argued so far, there are several

reasons to doubt that Heidegger has a theory of art. If one accepts this to be the case, it
 174

should be clear that these remarks about art towards the end of the essay on technology

need not be taken as signaling a post-aesthetic theory of art or as setting the agenda for

art in our time. As Heidegger states explicitly in 1939, his contemplation need not entail a

philosophy of art. Heidegger might just be pointing to something that art could do,

without this being a claim about all art, or a criterion of post-metaphysical "great" art.

In the short text called "Technik und Kunst - Gestell" written in the period of the

technology-essay, Heidegger makes it quite clear that his reflections on art are not to

result in any philosophy of art and that he is not staking out any philosophical agenda for

modern art:

Only art can determine art (not reflection or planning external to art). But how
does art make decisions about itself? It is itself nothing absolute...
Kunst und Gestell. What and how art can be in the age of enframing? Cannot be
determined, cannot be read off somewhere - only: "artistically" decided, so that
in such art and in it alone lies the answer to itself, within the event. No
organization, but an occasion of steady and authoritative contemplation.236

I take this passage to be a clear caution against repeating the mistakes of aesthetics. And

it indicates that Heidegger was aware of the danger that his own philosophical thinking

on art might fall back into the disenfranchising tendency of aesthetics and that he

consciously sought to avoid it. In the passages quoted above, Heidegger states that what

art is in our age cannot be determined or captured from outside of art. Hence, Heidegger

rules out the possibility that philosophy could somehow dictate an agenda for art, and

that, even if art might be the realm capable of challenging technology, it would be

236
Martin Heidegger, "Kunst und Technik," in Biemel, W. und F.-W. von Herrmann (eds.), Kunst und
Technik. Gedachtnisschrift zum 100. Geburtstag von Martin Heidegger, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann,
1989, p. XIII.
 175

impossible for philosophy to predict or describe what kind of art this would be. This

would presumably also extend to questions of style or medium, so that the question from

the beginning of this section, that is, whether Heidegger is "against" abstract art or not,

cannot be answered on philosophical grounds.

4.1.3 Heidegger on Greeks and contemporaries (1967)

In 1967, Heidegger gives a lecture to the academy of arts and sciences in Athens, called

"Die Herkunft der Kunst und die Bestimmung des Denkens."237 The short text is

concerned with three questions - What is the origin of art in Greece? What is the

contemporary situation of art, in view of its origin? And what determines Heidegger's

own thinking about these questions? In other words, Heidegger is still asking the

questions that we have seen are central from the first turn to art in the mid-thirties. In this

text, however, he explicitly states that contemplating the origin of art does not mean

asking for a formulaic definition of art or telling a historically accurate narrative of how

art arises in Greece (D, 136). Heidegger is neither doing art history nor offering a general

theory of art.

The first question - what is the origin of art in Ancient Greece? - is, as I have

argued in Chapter Two, a viable and the least problematic way to understand what the

question of the origin of art amounts to in the art-essay.238 When Heidegger brings this

Martin Heidegger, "Die Herkunft der Kunst und die Bestimmung des Denkens," in Denkerfahmngen.
1910-1976. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1983.
238
Note that in 1967 the word translated as origin is Herkunft versus the earlier text's Ursprung.
 176

question up again in 1967, he makes a few points that are enlightening for the previous

discussion of the art-essay. The origin is a historical origin, and the question does not ask

for an account of the essence of art. Instead, the question is the sort of query that is

answered by appeal to the goddess Athena, who is the origin of the temple, Heidegger's

main example. His description here is fairly concrete, and one can understand it in the

context of both the general description from the art-essay and his description of the

coming to be of art in the Greek world of Plato and his predecessors.

Heidegger describes the temple as a response to Athena, the goddess for whom

the temple is erected. The temple is manifesting the eidos of this goddess: "the atlas

metope of the Zeus temple lets the goddess shine forth" (D, 136). With the artwork, the

invisible becomes visible. Heidegger describes art in general (techne) as knowledge

which looks ahead (vorblickt) to that which is "gestalt-showing, measure-giving, but yet

still invisible" (D, 137). Recall Heidegger's interpretation of the understanding of

mimesis from Plato's Republic X. What the stone carver does when making the relief is

to look ahead to the eidos of Athena, in a manner similar to that of the carpenter who

wants to make a bed. The carver then brings this eidos into the visibility and

perceptibility of the work.

The "looking ahead" of art needs illumination. This light is provided by Athena's

gaze, which throws a light and makes all things become present in a certain manner.

Athena delimits the mountains, the trees, the islands, the figures and images. Presumably

we can understand this image as pointing to how the religious understanding of being

"lights up" a certain way of seeing what is, being, that the artist then looks to when
 177

shaping an artwork. Heidegger then claims that what is in the most general sense is what

the Greeks referred to as physis. Physis is a claim (Anspruch), and art is a response to this

claim. Still, "art is no copy or representation of the already present" (D, 139). Instead the

art (techne) and physis belong together and complement each other. The result of the two

coming together is quite literally work, and a work. The source of the artwork is the

claim of nature on Dasein, and through Dasein 's response to this claim through techne,

being is made present in and as the work.239

It is interesting to recall the motive of the relation between physis and Dasein as

the source of artwork, because Heidegger asks whether any contemporary art stands

under the same claim as the art of Ancient Greece did. Does being make a claim on us

today, a claim to which we can respond through art? From the accounts above, we know

that this question amounts to asking about the relationship between art at the beginning of

metaphysics and art at the end. Heidegger answers the question indirectly, by referring to

one of his favorite motifs from Holderlin: the gods have fled. Certainly there is no

Athena, and also no other religious or mythological dimension that appears to play the

function of the Greek gods in relation to art. The illumination of what is, which the artist

can look ahead to when making his or her work, has no divine cause. There is no

religiously grounded "whole" that can make a claim on us. In addition to the absence of

religion, neither a people nor the national state constitute the limits of the realm that art

responds to. But then from what realm does the claim come from, the claim to which

This idea is central to Einjuhrung in die Metaphysik, and also returns in the discussion of the Greek
artwork in the art-essay. For a thorough discussion of the role of this idea in Heidegger's thinking, see
Gregory Fried, Heidegger's Polemos.
 178

contemporary art might respond? After posing this question, Heidegger answers that "it is

tempting to call this [realm] the scientific world" (D, 140).240 We might think, he writes,

that the whole of being is something like a unified, scientific world civilization in late

modernity. But this whole is the realm described in the technology-essay, whose nature

we do not fully understand, and hence it is still unclear what an artistic response to this

"whole" would amount to.

As I have tried to argue through this study, it is misleading to think of the Greek

paradigm as the ideal of art for Heidegger. If one does, his theory becomes strangely

asymmetrical. The difference between us and the Greeks then seems to be that the

historical truth of who the Greeks are could be expressed by art, whereas ours is hidden.

Since the nature of the realm that art responds to - technology - eludes our grasp, it

seems we in late modernity suffer from bad faith, whereas the Greeks had some sort of

direct access to the truth of being. The ambiguity in how to interpret the description of

the Greek artwork is partly Heidegger's own fault, because his description of Greek art so

closely resembles Hegel's description of the Ideal of classical Greek art. In Hegel, the

artwork is a sensuous expression of mind or spirit. But what is important in Heidegger's

account is that the work is also always harboring what is in principle inaccessible to the

mind, and what cannot even be given a sensuous expression, that is, earth. For Heidegger,

the covered up aspect of aletheia, the absence that goes together with the presencing of

truth, is what remains unthought in the tradition of metaphysics and aesthetics, starting

already in the Greek world, leading all the way to our "current Geschick." Hence, when

240
The scientific world, characterized by calculation and cybernetics, seems equivalent to the world of
technology and machination of earlier texts.
 179

Heidegger turns to think about the Greek origin in 1967 he is not nostalgic, but he instead

points to what remains unthought at the outset of Western metaphysics.

4.2.1 Art without aesthetics

I now turn to two related and very important points that are repeated in all these texts

spanning over several decades. The first point concerns philosophy's inability to dictate

an agenda for art. The second point the possibility of a post-metaphysical art and coming

to a better understanding of it.

As we have seen above, Heidegger provides numerous negative descriptions of

what art is in the wake of the end of art. When he does raise the possibility of art

challenging technological thinking's hold on us, he does not say how art could do this or

what kind of art that would be. As I suggested in the discussion of his few comments on

abstraction in art, it is not clear what formal aspects such an art would have or how the

nature of the technological is made art's topic. For example, he does not answer these

questions: should the technological be represented in the object of the work? Or

technology's opposite? And how would this relate to the style of representation? Part of

the reason for Heidegger's caution in this regard comes from taking seriously what it

would mean for art to be an event or a happening. Intrinsic to art as event is the play

between presence and withdrawal, between earth and world. In an artwork, these

elements and the strife between them are "captured" simultaneously in a figure. The most

serious consequence of this account for philosophy is that since art is only in its
 180

instantiations as artwork, it cannot be captured in a general, philosophical account, at

least not in any interesting way.241 There can, however, be philosophical reflection on art

and artworks after the event. Philosophy has no prescriptive role because the meaningful

artistic response is not known in advance. It here seems quite clear that the role of

thought in relation to art is very far from the role traditionally assumed by philosophy.

How can art oppose or respond to the hold of technology? In the 1967 lecture, it

sounds like what is important for changing our relationship to the Gestell is to realize that

this technological world civilization of ours is merely one episode in the history of being;

or, put otherwise, what we might think is an achieved level of full perspicuity and

domination is really just another world view, in which what is still remains partially

hidden. To the extent that we do not realize this humbling truth, the Gestell becomes our

Geschick, which we cannot escape.

The event that an artwork is, because of its double character of presence and

absence, is in principle able to reveal something parallel to the nature of technology:

there is something absent and hidden that goes along with the presencing. Heidegger

holds on to his insight from the art-essay, which described art as the opening up of world

and the setting forth of earth. This retention is significant, because it also suggests that if

we want to understand who we are, what we seek is not to make all that is available to

By this I mean that Heidegger's account of art in general would be so general - something like "art
happens as events" - so that it would not be particularly illuminating or interesting for anyone trying to find
out what art is. It is curious that Danto thinks his philosophy has a similar consequence. Danto thinks that
now that he has given us a lasting ontological definition of art - art is a thing that embodies its meaning -
there really is not a need to do further philosophy of art. Now we should instead turn to particular artworks
and do criticism.
 181

inspection and thought. To seek as much is to fall prey to the illusion of the technological

world civilization. Heidegger believes modesty is needed instead. He writes

Must not the work show [itself] as working in that which is not available to
human beings, in the self-secluding, so that the work not only says what is
already known, familiar and done? Must not the work of art quiet that which
hides, that which, as self-secluding, evokes the dread in human beings for what
does not let itself be either planned or managed, calculated or made? (D, 148)

We do not know the answer to these questions, Heidegger writes, but they seem to be

conditions for art provoking a change in our relationship to being (with the further

consequence of establishing a different way of living). The point here is that the features

of the artwork that we previously referred to as earthy are precisely what can enable the

experience of the self-secluding, absent side of being, which we in the technological age

dread. One way to think of this more concretely is in terms of the artwork's alterity as

captured in its materiality and self-sufficiency. As argued in Chapter Two, "earth" cannot

be reduced to either of these aspects, but thinking about them in relation to modern art

might be a way to imagine how and what art after aesthetics might be for Heidegger.

In the history of aesthetics, the absence-made-present in the artwork can be

interpreted in mythological or religious terms. The setting forth of earth is part of a

granting that is unavailable to human understanding, but which can still be made sense of

as part of man's understanding of being. In a Catholic church for example, a specific

truth happens, as the divine becomes present as the Madonna and child.242 There is a

sense of an inaccessible dimension of being, the divine, but it is made present in the

Cf. Heidegger's short text "Uber die Sixtina" (GA 13, 119-123).
 182

world through art.243 What is different about the situation of late modernity is that there is

no awareness of a withdrawing side of being at all. We might accordingly think that there

are two main ways in which the Gestell could be confronted. One way would be if the

"movement" of the artwork went in the opposite direction, from presence to absence. We

can think of the abstract painting as having such an effect - here we have a medium that

we know as representational, the painting, suddenly closing itself up on itself instead of

making present gods, ideas or worldly beings.244 Another way this could happen would

be if the artwork in some way could represent the Gestell - the enframing of being that

treats what is as standing reserve - either as limited or as incomplete in opposition to

another kind of being. This confrontation could perhaps happen if one managed to show

technology in conflict with earth, where human techne was not displayed as beautiful

mastery, but rather as entwined in something that tries to overcome it.

There are three modernist artists that make a particularly strong impression on

Heidegger, the sculptor Eduardo Chillida and the painters Cezanne and Paul Klee. In the

following sections, I attempt to think more concretely about post-metaphysical art by

looking at what Heidegger has to say about them.

In this sense, Christianity, especially in its Catholic form, is deeply metaphysical.

244
We could hence think of the modernist abstract painting as resisting any aesthetic ideas. Again, this
would have to be argued by means of interpretation of particular paintings, perhaps this could be claimed
about the work of Cy Twombly or Barnett Newman, for example. It is of course also possible to interpret
for example Abstract Expressionism of Pollock's kind as precisely the opposite, as for example embodying
the aesthetic idea of freedom.
 183

4.2.2 Painting after aesthetics. Cezanne and Klee

Towards the end of his life, Heidegger travels several times to Provence, to the land that

was the surroundings of two of the painters he most admired, van Gogh and Cezanne.245

Heidegger takes a growing interest in Cezanne's work, partly initiated by Rilke's letters

on the artists. The late paintings of landscape and natural objects fascinate Heidegger the

most, especially the many studies of the mountain Sainte-Victoire. At this time, he is also

fascinated by the art and theoretical writings of Paul Klee. The experience of nature and

the critical reflexivity of the artistic endeavor are two themes that particularly occupy

Heidegger in his late engagement with modernist painting. This section tries to show how

these become topics for his thinking on Cezanne and Klee.

In Besinnung, Heidegger argues that in the technological age even nature is

thought in terms of the structures of machination - factories, airports, powerplants, and

military compounds - and is thus lost, since it shows itself merely as a contrast, making

"beauty" its characteristic feature. Beauty is transformed under the domination of

machination also, into merely that which "pleases the predator [Raubtier] man" (GA 66,

30). Even when we enjoy a beautiful landscape, we see a technological figure, Heidegger

claims, and, strictly speaking, there is no landscape to see, because our gaze is already the

gaze of machination, control and utility (GA 66, 33). What then about Cezanne's

paintings? Is what is so fascinating with Cezanne's series of Montagne Saint-Victoire that

the landscape comes forth freed from machination?

In a short poem called "Cezanne," Heidegger writes:

245
Heidegger goes to Provence for the first time in the mid fifties and after that begins to travel to the south
of France frequently; he gives a series of seminars in Le Thor in the late sixties.
 184

Im Spatwerk des Malers ist die Zwiefalt

von Anwesendem und Anwesendheit einfaltig
geworden, "realisiert" und verwunden zugleich,
verwandelt in eine geheimnisvolle Identitat

Zeigt sich hier ein Pfad, der in ein Zusammen-

gehoren des Dichtens und des Denkens flihrt? (D, 163)246

The achievement of Cezanne's painting is that the twofold of present and presencing

becomes simple or united. The thing that is presented, the mountain, becomes united with

the happening of being, here the event that the mountain is. Does that mean that the

object and the technique of presentation are entwined? What is unclear in Heidegger's

remarks about Cezanne is what the presencing is - is the painting a presencing? Or is the

painting a representation of presencing? Heidegger's point does not appear to be about

the technique of representation. Heidegger has no specific analysis of how Cezanne's

painting works as painting. Instead, Heidegger literally walks Cezanne's path, and

repeatedly enjoys the view on the mountain; thus, it seems to be the presencing of the

mountain itself that Heidegger is concerned with and that Cezanne captures. Hence the

relationship of the poem, between the presented and presencing is not between object and

representation, but rather with the present thing and the happening of being. What

Heidegger sees happening in the work of Cezanne is in this way the same as what he is

The poems are written for Rene Char in 1970; Heidegger merely calls them Gedachtes. I choose to leave
it untranslated, since it would be almost impossible to render its meaning and style in English.
 185

himself aspiring to: bringing attention to the event of being. In Cezanne, this happens

through the contemplation of the "thing," be it a still life or a mountain.247

When we see nature this way, as we do when looking at Cezanne's painting, we

see a landscape, or to put it another way, we see nature as it unfolds and is. Is this a

challenge to technology? Does the depiction of what it is like to experience a mountain

and a landscape make us able to free ourselves from the hold technology has on us?

The thinker Heidegger here gives priority to the Dichter - the artist has found the

"path" that Heidegger's thinking seeks before the philosopher steps upon it. The priority

is given because art has a way of grasping being happening, which is another way of

saying that truth happens as a work in art. Heidegger reportedly says of one of his visits

to Aix that "these days in Cezanne's home region are worth more than a whole library of

philosophical books. If only one could think as directly as Cezanne painted."248 A

legitimate worry arises: has art become philosophy on Heidegger's interpretation? Are

we yet again witnessing the philosophical appropriation of art? Is Cezanne appreciated,

instead of other modernist art, because he and the other post-impressionists happened to

have an agenda similar to Heidegger's, that is to bridge the gap between presencing and

As we know, the analysis of entities in Sein und Zeit it might be surprising that such an experience could
come from contemplating things at all. However, Heidegger's relationship to things is perhaps the field of
his thinking that undergoes the greatest change form the early period to the late texts. Heidegger becomes
more and more interested in what Sein und Zeit would call "mere things" and the question of thingliness is
another central question in the art-essay. By the time of the 1950 essay "Das Ding," it seems like
contemplating things is a way to break with a scientific or everyday absorbed way of relating to beings. In
Heidegger's thinking we see a movement towards what I would call a realism, in which precisely the being
of other things, be it simple things like rocks, is recognized by thinking in a way that seems impossible
given the description of Sein und Zeit (the exception here being the broken tool, which we do suddenly
notice as "other," however, the goal of our thought is immediately thrown back on ourselves also in this
situation; broken hammers show something about us, not about granting of being). Tracing the motif of
things in Heidegger I believe could produce a similar story to the one I am trying to tell here about art.
248
As reported by Buchner in G. Neske, (ed.), Erinnerungen an Martin Heidegger, Pfulligen: Neske, 1977,
p. 47.
 186

what is present? Some of this worry will reappear when we shift our attention to

Heidegger's interest in Klee. Unlike Cezanne, however, Klee cannot be said to initiate or

insinuate a "phenomenology of perception." There is nothing in Klee that gives the

experience of "raw nature" that Cezanne tried to grasp.

In the late 1950s, Heidegger discovered the work of Paul Klee. Heidegger saw

many different works of Klee, paintings, drawings and watercolors, and we know he

liked "Heilige, aus einem Fenster" and "Ein Tor," for example, as well as some of Klee's

cartoonish drawings.250 Heidegger was very enthusiastic about the artist and reportedly

announced that after this encounter he had to write a "pendant" to the art-essay. However,

It is remarkable that Merleau-Ponty is also very interested in Cezanne and the paintings of Sainte
Victorie. He describes Cezanne as grasping the experience of what it is like to perceive the mountain on a
pre-reflective level, before the image is organized by conscious thought. The art historian Gottfried Boehm
reads a similar point as that made by Merleau-Ponty into Heidegger's appreciation of Cezanne, cf.
Gottfried Boehm, "Im Horizont der Zeit: Heideggers Werkbegriff und die Kunst der Moderne," in Biemel,
W. und F.-W. von Herrmann (eds.), Kunst und Technik. Gedachtnisschrift zum 100. Geburtstag von Martin
Heidegger, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989, pp. 255-286. Such an interpretation has some
legitimacy, given Cezanne's own description of what he was trying to do, and perhaps is it not so surprising
that there is some similarity between his artistic project and the philosophical project of phenomenology, as
they are both movements of modernism. However, a heightened awareness of the phenomenology of visual
experience does not seem to be what is on Heidegger's mind in this period. It is also not clear how some
pre-reflective, uncritical experience of nature is going to be robust enough to challenge the Gestell; perhaps
it could indirectly, by making us aware of a very different, more fundamental way that nature is -
Heidegger does not tell us. It is interesting to note that Merleau-Ponty moves away from this reading of
Cezanne in his later writings on art. In "Eye and Mind" the artist Merleau-Ponty reflects on is none other
than Paul Klee. The parallel interests of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty can make one wonder whether this
reveals something about the phenomenological project, more than about art. Jonathan Gilmore offers a
thoughtful analysis of Merleau-Ponty's philosophical treatment of art, as well as in interesting discussion of
the possibilities and problems of a phenomenology of art, in his article "Between Philosophy and Art," in
T. Carman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004. For an in depth interpretation of Heidegger's appreciation of Cezanne's art, see Seubold's Kunst als
Enteignis pp. 103-119. Christoph Jamme offers a short reflection in his "The Loss of Things. Cezanne,
Rilke, Heidegger" and is currently working on a book on Cezanne and philosophy. For another critical
account of the philosophical appropriation art from the art historian, cf. Meyer Schapiro, "Cezanne and the
Philosophers," in M. Schapiro, Worldview in Painting: Art and Society Selected Papers, Volume V, New
York: George Braziller, 1998.
250
Petzet reports on several quite different works of Klee that grasped Heidegger's attention. Heidegger
had much time to enjoy the largest collection of Klee's works in the art collector Beyler's villa in Basel and
hence should have an informed impression of Klee's oevre as a whole. Cf. Petzet, Aufeinen Stern zugehen,
pp. 154-159.
 187

Heidegger never did, and what it is about Klee that spurred him to think he should, as

well as what it was he intended to add to his essay, remain unknown. The two most

influential commentators on Heidegger's philosophy of art interpret Heidegger's

announcement in totally contradictory ways. Poggeler takes it to mean that Heidegger

realizes the shortcomings of the art-essay and feels the need to write something new or

different about contemporary art. Von Herrmann, on the other hand, assumes that what

Heidegger wanted to do was write a continuation of the art-essay, in which he would

extend his analysis to cover modernist art. Since I interpret the art-essay as presenting not

a general theory, but a turn to thinking about our relationship to art and being historically,

or to use Heidegger's language, as a propaedeutic to further being-historical thinking

[seinsgeschichtliches Denken] in which art plays an important role, I see no reason to

think of a pendant inspired by a modernist artist as having to be either a critique or a

defense of a former theory. Indeed, on my story, what we probably could expect are

reflections on artworks after aesthetics, that is, on art stemming from a very different

historical and philosophical context than the art discussed in 1935.251 With Klee,

Heidegger seems to catch a glimpse of a future determination of art.

Heidegger's fascination with Klee is very interesting precisely because it seems

both to provide a challenge to some ways of interpreting Heidegger's attitude towards art

251
Here I am indebted to Giinther Seubold, since Heidegger's notes are not published or accessible, but
Seubold received permission to do research into this material and has made it available as "Heideggers
nachgelassene Klee-Notizen" in Heidegger Studien, 9, 1993, pp. 5-12. He develops an interpretation of the
material in light of Heidegger's thinking in his book Kunst ah Enteignis. The points I make here rest
primarily on Seubold's work, although 1 do not follow him all the way in making an interpretation based on
this material. Otto Poggeler has also undertaken to interpret the relationship between the thinker and the
painter in Bild und Technik. Heidegger, Klee und die moderne Kunst. That work tries to fuse Heidegger's
work on art with more art historical work on early modernist painting
 188

and to suggest what art after the end of art might be like. However, the textual basis for

any interpretation is minimal. The material is primarily Heidegger's own comments,

quotes and highlighting of certain passages in Klee's own theoretical texts. I will hence

just point to some of the themes that seem to be on Heidegger's mind when working on

Klee, and relate them to his own texts discussed above.

Klee composed several theoretical texts. Although Heidegger questions whether

Klee actually grasps what happens in his own creations, he thinks it makes sense that

Klee's painting is accompanied by writing. Precisely because art is changing, Klee has

the need to work out theoretically what he sees as the possibilities of art. Heidegger's

story differs from the more traditional story of modernism in that on his view, the goal of

modernist art is neither autonomy nor self-consciousness, as in, for example, the freedom

that comes from separating "pure painterly-ness" from representation. Nor is it the

completion of a narrative, as Danto claims. According to Heidegger, the point is rather

that reflection is demanded in a period of great change, not necessarily in order to define

what art is, but instead to investigate what art can be. The reflexivity of modernism is

hence not a Vollendung or the last stop in a narrative on Heidegger's story, but rather a

sign of transition and searching.

In the comments on Klee, the questions of abstraction and work resurface.

Heidegger says that "the less representational" Klee's works are, the more they shine

forth [erscheinender], which suggests that moving away from traditional styles is a good

thing. Further, he says that there are no beings, no objects, no eidos, in Klee's work.

As reported in Petzet, Aufeinen Stern zugehen, p. 159.

 189

Still, Heidegger writes in one of his notes from reading Klee, seemingly again

disparaging abstract art, "Today's art: Surrealism=metaphysics; abstract art=metaphysics;

objectless art=metaphysics."253 The only way to resolve what seems to be a contradiction

is to assume that these formal features are not in themselves decisive of whether an

artwork is metaphysical or not. Klee's work challenges the representation of objects that

is typical of traditional metaphysical artworks, but does not merely become its

counterpart, which is sometimes all that abstraction is, on Heidegger's view. Heidegger's

further comments give the impression that Klee is interesting precisely because he is

somewhere between representation and abstraction, so that he challenges notions of

object, representation, figure and even image (Bild). Heidegger claims that Klee's work is

less like pictures than states (Zustdnde). Hence both what the artwork is about and how

the work is seem to be changing. Perhaps this development is what happens when the

Gestell gets challenged, when our way of seeing and relating to things around us gets

shifted, as in the encounter with Klee.

In this context, Heidegger also asks if the transformation of art will have space for

"works." Here again, it seems that not being a work need not be entirely negative,

perhaps because the role of the "new artwork" (for lack of a better, different word) is no

longer to work on physis through techne, in the Greek sense of the artwork, but rather to

provide a state, a place, or an occasion to reflect. This might be why Heidegger admires a

small watercolor by Klee, "Heilige, aus einem Fenster," which shows a face towards an

empty background. The image is made up of flat surfaces, colors and lines. This little

Seubold, "Klee-Notizen," p. 10.

 190

image brings with it the whole world, Heidegger claims. It has a silent mood that lets us

see. It is not an existential mood, Heidegger points out, but a mood which we should

think of as "the innocence of the relation to the fourfold."254 In late modernism, art no

longer opens up a world and sets it back on earth, with the grand historical, cultural and

political implications that come with this event, but art can create a mood and place for

reflection. This is not work in the ontological sense that Heidegger find so interesting, as

resulting from the original, Greek sense of techne, because what is happening in this

event is not Dasein taking up being as a challenge. Instead, it is an occasion for being to

be seen. To recall the phrase from the Kant interpretation in Chapter Three, it is a matter

of merely letting being be. By contrast, working on physis and making it present is

precisely what we have taken to such an extreme in the age of technology, that we have,

so to speak, "lost sight of being."

4.2.3 Sculpture and place. Chillida

In the technology-essay, Heidegger suggests that art could be a realm that challenges

technology through its familiarity with and difference from technology. A more concrete

way to understand the meaning of this suggestion is offered in "Kunst und Raum," a text

written in the last decade of Heidegger's life. The text is a short piece that Heidegger

wrote after having met the Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida, and is a response to their

254
The little work, a watercolor with chalk, can be seen on the website of the Paul Klee-Stiftung,
http://www.zpk.org/ww/en/pub/web_root/act/sammlung_paul_klee/datenbank_paul_klee/collection.cfm
255
Heidegger, "Kunst und Raum," in Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, 2nd ed., Frankfurt am Main:
Klostermann, 2002 (GA 13).
 191

conversations about the sculptor's work. Chillida is certainly a modernist - his works are

mostly abstract, some of them seem to barely be wrested out of stone, and others are large

constructions of sculpted iron. Some works give quite organic associations while others

recall machines and industrial structures. Some are outdoor sculptures, which (one might

say) make earth and sky strikingly visible.256 As with Klee, Chillida is interesting because

Heidegger's appreciation of his work provides further evidence that he does not simply

dismiss all abstract art.

The figuration of sculpture happens through demarcation, as marking in and out

(Ein- und Ausgrenzen), and through this limiting, space is put in play, writes Heidegger

(GA 13, 204). Space is thematized through the sculpture: it is closed off, broken up and

shown as empty volume. The key to plastic art is embodiment, but what exactly is

embodied by a sculpture? Heidegger considers something that sounds quite like the realm

in which technology can be challenged:

The plastic body embodies something. Does it embody space? Is the plastic a
capturing of space, a mastering of space? Does the plastic then contradict the
techno-scientific conquering of space?
... Art and scientific technology view and treat space in dissimilar ways (GA 13,
204)

Heidegger's text continues as a meditation on space, trying to get at it in a manner that is

not the scientific correlate to the technological mindset. Eventually, it is not our modern

notion of space that is confronted by sculpture, but rather, sculpture is the embodiment of

place(s), Heidegger claims. A place is something that opens up a region, that gathers the

256
Paradigmatic here is the work "Wind comb," made for and displayed on the rocky and windy shore of
San Sebastian. A large part of Chillida's work is in the collection of Chillida-Leku in San Sebastian, and
the museum website gives a good impression of the variety in his work. Cf. www.eduardo-chillida.com.
 192

open around itself. It is quite unlike the abstractly thought pure space of modern physics.

A place is where things can linger and human beings live among things (GA 13, 208).

This very clearly echoes the lecture "Bauen Wohnen Denken" that Heidegger gave in

1951.257 In this text, Heidegger focuses on a kind of building that enables living

(wohnen), and he writes that living is a sojourn [aufenthalten] amongst things. He is

directly taking on the problem of the technological world, and in this case the destruction,

emptiness and homelessness that follows in its wake.258 Heidegger describes the

architectural structure of a bridge as a thing that creates a region or neighborhood around

itself- presumably what Chillida's sculpture can do. Such an interpretation of the plastic

artwork makes sense, especially if we think of some of Chillida's outdoor sculptures - a

work like "Wind comb" makes the elemental visible and grasps it in such a way that a

Heideggerian description can make sense. With the "comb," open space becomes a

neighboring region around a place.

Some of Chillida's sculptures are also strikingly "earthy." They are often big and

heavy blocks that give an impression of being minimally manipulated, except for a rift

that (one is tempted to say) makes the struggle between earth and world visible. In these

sculptures, one sees the happening of figure coming out of the stone, iron or terra cotta in

a way that brings associations both to the description of the strife of earth and world in
257
The essay is Heidegger's contribution to the "Darmstadter Gesprachs II," which were part of an ongoing
symposium from 1950 to 1975, featuring mainly architects, discussing how to rebuild Darmstadt, a city that
was almost completely destroyed during the war. During the main allied attack on Darmstadt in September
1944, more than 11,000 people were killed and more than 65,000 people left homeless (the total population
before the bombing was ca. 115,000). The question of "dwelling" hence takes on a very concrete meaning
in post-war Germany. The topic of the second meeting was "Mensch und Raum" and the main focus were
the presentations by several architects of their plans for new buildings and institutions in the city.
258
Heidegger seems to understand the destructions of modern war, here the Second World War, primarily
as results of the domination of technology. Whether this is an adequate understanding of the war is a
legitimate question, but one that I will leave untouched for now.
 193

the art-essay and also to the description of the unification of the presented and presencing

in Cezanne. Unlike Cezanne's mountain, however, these sculptures do not represent

anything, so that the "event" strikes one even more as something given but self-sufficient

and enclosed on itself. And unlike a stone in a quarry, these figures are not available to

manipulation, even if they remind us most of something out of nature, something mute. It

is as if the presence of absence that happens with the rift separates the sculpture from

human manipulation and hence is other to those who encounter it.259 Or, to use more

Kantian language, it warrants a kind of respect. Perhaps these were the kind of

conversations Heidegger and the sculptor had. We know little of them. It seems to me,

however, that Heidegger's description of place, rift, and earth suggest themselves most

immediately in these works.

Finally, towards the end of his short essay on art and space, Heidegger offers a

familiar description: "The plastic arts: the embodiment of the truth of being in works that

bring about their own place" (GA 13, 209). This seems to suggest that the sculpture is

very close to the architectural (indeed, it is unclear that Heidegger would distinguish

between them at all). It counters Gestell by suggesting a very different kind of space,

space as place, which disappears in technology. At the end of his essay, Heidegger also

says that the truth of being does not depend on embodiment. The sculpture is merely one

possible way for art to happen, and with the sculpture it happens as place. Likewise, art is

J.M. Bernstein makes a similar point about modernist art, arguing against a romanticist poetics (from the
point of view influenced by Adorno), in his article "Poesy and the Arbitrariness of the Sign. Notes for a
critique of Jena romanticism," in N. Kompridis (ed.), Philosophical Romanticism, London: Routledge,
2006. As the folowing quotation brings out, the point could just as well have been made by a Heideggerian
critique of post-modernism: "In modernism, however, the insistence upon material non-meaning has been
the means through which meaning and materiality might be soldered together: significant stone reveals
mere stone as silent stone" (my emphasis), p. 167.
 194

one possible way for being to happen. Heidegger ends his essay with a quote from

Goethe. This quote is also an appropriate end to this chapter, as it emphasizes both that

art can be true and that art is not the only way for truth to happen:

It is not always necessary that the true takes on a body; already enough, if it
spiritually floats around us and causes connections, if it reverberates through the
air in a sincere, friendly manner as the tone of the bell. (GA 13,210)
 195

Conclusion WHAT DO WE OWE A WORK OF ART?

The end of art becomes a sign of crisis, need and possibility for change from the point of

view of Heidegger's thinking. As I hope to have shown, the presence of the end of art

thesis greatly complicates how we can interpret Heidegger's philosophical treatment of

art. It also brings us to the heart of the question of what philosophy is - for Heidegger

this is something that is in constant need of reconsideration and re-articulation. The end

of art invites meta-philosophical questions, presumably because the boldness and

straightforward implausibility of the thesis immediately makes one question its

legitimacy. By way of conclusion, I would like to reflect on these meta-philosophical

issues by looking at some particularly challenging criticisms of Heidegger's thinking on

art. But first, I briefly summarize what I think I have accomplished in this study.

In Chapter One, I analyzed the end of art thesis by picking out three

distinguishing features that would be part of any formulation of such a philosophical

thesis. These are (1) a certain definition of what art is, (2) a certain conception of history

or narrative, in which it makes sense to say that art comes to an end, and (3) a certain

relationship between art and philosophy that enables philosophy to declare a terminal

condition on art's behalf. I then moved on to provide a context for the philosophical

declaration of the end of art, both in terms of its history (Hegel's original formulation)

and in terms of how it is understood in philosophy today (primarily in the work of Arthur

Danto). The contemporary discussion is especially concerned with the meaning of

modernist art, since that is understood to be more philosophical than any previous
 196

movement in art, and as such invites reflections on the end and/or future of post-modern

art. Heidegger's endorsement of the end of art is both clarified by and helps to clarify the

different meanings of Hegel's and Danto's respective formulations.

In Chapter Two, I undertake a critical reading of "Der Ursprung des

Kunstwerkes" and attempt to make sense of this text in light of Heidegger's later

endorsement of the end of art. Since the endorsement makes it difficult to understand

Heidegger as having a general, ahistorical definition of art, I proceed to emphasize the

problems for any interpretation of Heidegger's art-essay as embodying a philosophy of

art in a traditional sense. Heidegger's text can only be understood in a consistent manner

if we assume that his ambition in the art-essay is less systematic and general. Then I

proceed to show that there are interesting aspects of Heidegger's account, especially the

notion of earth, that can be valuable even if we abandon Heidegger's "definition" of an

artwork as grasping the essence of art.

The interpretational difficulties of the art-essay can be resolved, I argue, when one

reads the text in light of Heidegger's understanding of the history of aesthetics, and of his

self-understanding in relation to that history. In Chapter Three, I attempt to make sense of

this history and its meaning. It here becomes clear how Heidegger thinks metaphysics,

through aesthetics, informs the development, understanding and possibilities of art. The

result of this influence is that when metaphysics reaches completion with Hegel, art

comes to an end. The reason art comes to an end, however, is less positive than Hegel

thought - art is replaced not by freedom based in rationality, but by the nihilism of late

modernity, in which art is merely a source of individual Erlebnisse and without truth.
 197

Chapter Four focuses on Heidegger's writing on art and philosophy after the end

of art in order to demonstrate that Heidegger himself thinks any traditional philosophy of

art is impossible or at least misconceived in our time. He does see a positive future for art

after metaphysics and even signals that art can be a resource for philosophical reflection

on the technologoical age of late modernity. However, the nature of this future post-

aesthetic art cannot be determined by philosophy in advance. Heidegger's growing

interest in modernist art seems be accompanied by a more explicit distancing from any

philosophical project that can have the name "Kunsttheorie." Judging from Heidegger's

own practice, it seems that art is still a topic for philosophy, but as a source of suggestion,

reflection and speculation for a philosophy without any pretence to a universal

determination of art.

A theme that has returned to the surface of discussion from time to time

throughout this dissertation is philosophy's tendency to disenfranchise art. Danto, who

uses the particular phrase, thinks his definition of art together with his understanding of

art's history and end avoids this charge. However, the same objection can be raised

against Danto - why does art have to have self-consciousness as telos, and why is it up to

philosophy to take over the question of art's definition and thereby free art to the present

situation of pluralism? The figure of disenfranchisement can be recognized in the thought

of Hegel and Heidegger, where metaphysics forces art to reach an end. In the case of the

former, this necessity is due to the telos of spirit; in the case of Heidegger, on the other

hand, this is more of an unfortunate consequence of a certain understanding of things

running out of control. The question about disenfranchisement is really about the
 198

legitimacy of philosophy of art in general. Pushed to extremes, the problem of

disenfranchisement seems unavoidable for philosophy - if art is essentially particular, it

seems the only viable philosophical response is a kind of nominalism. If this were the

case, then no philosopher can quite escape the criticism, and we should give up

philosophy of art.

Some of the most formidable objections to Heidegger charge his philosophical

thinking with disenfranchising art. These objections are all rooted in readings of the art-

essay, and I use them as occasions to reflect on how my approach to Heidegger's

philosophy of art might shift the focus of these criticisms to more interesting questions.

Michael Kelly, in his book Iconoclasm in Aesthetics, criticizes Heidegger for

being iconoclastic. By "iconoclasm" he means a tendency to "conflate the philosophical

interest in the universality of art - which is always expressed in terms of more particular

interests, such as truth, essence, definition, or meaning - with what constitutes art."260

This means that what philosophy finds philosophically most interesting about art also

gets made into a necessary criterion for what counts as art. It is certainly easy to see this

feature in the art-essay, since it happens to be truth of Heidegger's kind that constitutes

the nature of art, and this truth is used to criticize an entire tradition of aesthetics, because

this tradition misses the "aletheic" dimension of art. A further problem, in Kelly's eyes, is

Heidegger's tendency to overlook art's particular historicity - the ontological

understanding of art, even if it has history as a component, is ahistorical - and this

tendency explains Heidegger's dubious interpretations of artworks, as shown in the

Kelly, Iconoclasm in Aesthetics, p. 6.

 199

example of Van Gogh's shoes.261 Kelly's overall objection is that when the philosopher

abstracts from the particular, historical situatedness of the work, he also displays a

disinterest and distrust in art. Put otherwise, Heidegger does not care about what art is

except as something revealing being (disinterest), and then he faults art for not doing this

well enough (distrust). Kelly criticizes Heidegger (together with Adorno, Derrida and

Danto) for having "raised expectations that should not have to meet, for art should not be

judged by philosophy's interests."

Hagi Kenaan also takes the interpretation of van Gogh's shoes as his starting

point and criticizes Heidegger for ignoring the particular historical context of the

painting, but his criticism concludes on a note different from Kelly's. Kenaan also

charges Heidegger's thinking with disenfrachisement, but here the charge takes on an

ethical dimension. Kenaan recognizes, and sympathizes with, what he calls "Heidegger's

philosophical principle of 'letting be'" as one of openness to what philosophy cannot

think without reconfiguring it - what I have called "the other" or "alterity." Kenaan

claims that Heidegger displays this principle in his encounter with Van Gogh, however,

and, since Heidegger's reading of Van Gogh is so notoriously problematic, that in the end

it discredits Heidegger's attempt at "letting be."263 Heidegger's mistake is that, in spite of

what he implies by "letting be," his philosophy is fully self-sufficient - whatever is

261
Kelly, Iconoclasm in Aesthetics, pp. 30-43.
262
Kelly, Iconoclasm in Aesthetics, p. 189. Kelly's work is primarily negative, but it seems that his
alternative to these four modern philosophers' treatment of art is to approach art with a sensitivity to art's
history and without a philosophical agenda; that is, he appears to recommend what I would call a
philosophically informed criticism.
263
"What may thus easily hide in the gesture of emancipating the painting's speech is a patronizing attitude
that imposes on the communicability of the painting the confines of a philosophical event," Kenaan, "What
Philosophy Owes a Work of Art," p. 602.
 200

thought is already contained in the philosophy, and no encounter with an artwork's

different way of speaking changes this philosophy. Kenaan sympathizes with the attitude

of "letting be," but he sees the opposite at work in Heidegger's actual encounter with the

other, in this case Van Gogh's painting. This amounts to overlooking the ethical

responsibility that philosophy owes the work of art, Kenaan concludes.

In light of my interpretation, I believe these objections can be, if not refuted, then

at least considerably mitigated. Since Heidegger's goal is not to establish necessary

conditions for a universal theory of art, his interpretation of artworks are not applications

of a general theory, and the philosophical motivation behind them is not the same in

every instance. Heidegger's interest in the art of his own time, modernist art, is not

philosophical ambitious in any traditional sense. His interest does not entail any intention

of creating a philosophical theory of what art is or ought to be in the post-metaphysical

era. When it comes to modernist art, it seems that Kelly's charge of disinterest is too

harsh. Surely, Heidegger is not interested, for example, in all aspects of Klee, and what

he chooses to focus on is probably influenced by philosophical interest. Nevertheless, a

self-awareness and reflection on the role of philosophy, history and tradition influence

Heidegger's own contemplation of modernist art. As for the distrust, it is true that some

art will be dismissed as uninteresting, kitsch or aesthetic, because it does not reveal

anything true. However, if the philosophical claims are not universal, I do not see that it

is problematic to dismiss some art as less interesting.264 As for Hagi Kenaan's criticism,

264
The distrust becomes problematic when it becomes sweeping, as in Plato's account. If Heidegger is
doing philosophically inspired and motivated reflection on art without claims to necessity, universality or
the like, it is less problematic, and also leaves space for the possibility of someone disagreeing about
 201

there are good reasons (some elaborated in this dissertation) for not taking the Van Gogh

painting as the final word on Heidegger's thinking about art. It seems clear that

Heidegger does recognize something like an ethical-ontological commitment to being as

other, a recognition of alterity already visible in the discussion of Kantian disinterest

from the late 30s. And it is unclear to me that any philosophical engagement of art could

be said to avoid "speaking for" the painting to some extent. That is what interpretation

has to do. The interesting philosophical task - in light of both Kenaan and Kelly's

criticism - would be to work out a space between the extremes of philosophical

disenfranchisement on the one hand and the complete respect for historical particularity

and alterity on the other. Here there would hopefully be space for something like

philosophically inspired criticism as well as philosophy inspired by art.266 It seems to me

that, as philosophers, what we owe a work of art is the creation and cultivation of this

space.

Throughout his life, Heidegger wrestles with the question of being, and his

personal interests in art are motivated by that question. That is not more objectionable

than someone seeking out art depicting dogs because of a deep fascination with human-

canine relationships. As long as one does not create a rigidly normative or

overdetermining theory about art in general on this basis, it seems perfectly acceptable.

particular artworks and finding them important or interesting for other reasons than the ones considered by
Heidegger.
265
The alternative seems to me, as suggested above, to be deeply anti-philosophical. If no generalization or
speaking-for is acceptable, we are forced to give up on philosophy of art even in its least metaphysically or
normatively committed sense.
266
1 think Arthur Danto in his work as a critic has given us many interesting examples of the former and I
still think Heidegger offers much of the latter, see for example his attempt at articulating the relationship
between Dasein and being based on readings of the coral ode in Antigone (these are interesting pieces of
philosophy, if not the best pieces of critical interpretation), cf, Einjhrung in die Metaphysik and GA 52.
 202

Given Heidegger's sensitivity to the problems of traditional aesthetics, his explicit

caution against replacing aesthetics by some new theory of art, and his repeated

uncertainty about what is to come (be it the future in general or the future history of art),

the most we can infer from Heidegger's writings is an abiding and thought-provoking

interest in the subtle ways in which being comes to light in both classical art and art of

our time, but very little that can be understood as a systematic or normative philosophical

endeavor. The value of Heidegger's writing on art, if it is not offering a general theory of

art, stems partly from its ability to inspire valuable criticism of artworks, though

Heidegger himself does not undertake that project.267

In this dissertation, Heidegger's philosophical treatment of art has been thought in

light of the end of art thesis, and hence quite naturally the problem of disenfranchisement

has been looming on the horizon in my interpretations and discussions. I have argued that

Heidegger does not have a unified, general philosophy of art, an argument that, if

trenchant, takes the force out of the disenfranchisement-objection. By way of conclusion

and as a means of reinforcing this arument, I would like to respond to three objections by

Julian Young to the position he dubs the "Heidegger-attempts-no-philosophy-of-art-

position."268

I think John Sallis' Shades and Stone are examples of such an undertaking. The quality of these text are
not in their philological or critical achievements - such an approach is absent - the texts are rather
"performative," as they through suggestive and rich descriptions of the phenomena of light and weight
makes the reader aware of the happening of meaning in painting and building. Cf. John Sallis, Shades—Of
Painting at the Limit, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998, and Stone. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1994.
268
Julian Young Heidegger's Philosophy of Art, pp. 172-174.
 203

Young maintains, first, that Heidegger does have "seriously intended, and

seriously interesting, view about the character of Western art in general."269 Second, he

maintains that the "Heidegger-attempts-no-philosophy-of-art-position" has unreasonable

demands of comprehensiveness. Third, Young writes that this position holds that

philosophy of art should be objective and not thought from the perspective of a particular

philosophical position. Implicit in these arguments as objections is the question of what

we demand of a philosophy of art.270 As to the first objection, I certainly think Heidegger

is an interesting philosopher with something serious to say. As to the second and third

objections, my own argument does not rely, explicitly or implicitly, on the assumption

that a theory of art must be comprehensive or objective (which would amount to the

conclusion that, ipso facto, Heidegger's position, since it is lacking comprehensiveness

and objectivity, is no theory).271 I do, however, think that comprehensiveness and

objectivity would be virtues of a philosophy aiming to address "art in general," which

relates to Young's first objection. If a general theory does not entail objectivity or

comprehensiveness, then I do not understand what "in general" means. This is another

way to say that the subject matter of the theory, that is, the artworks one is theorizing

about, are owed some respect.272

Julian Young Heidegger's Philosophy of Art, p. 173.

270
1 think there is some confusion of what one means by "philosophy of art" here. It is clear that Seubold,
this author, and, I believe, Heidegger take 'philosophy' to mean something closer to the strict, universal
and systematic treatment that characterizes philosophy through the history of aesthetics. There is no sign
that'Kunstphilosophie' would mean anything but 'aesthetics' for Heidegger, whereas it clearly has a wider
meaning for Young.
271
Although, as is in clear in Chapter Two, I certainly think these would be legitimate features to consider
when assessing the value of a theory claiming to grasp the essence of art.
272
Which is not at all like saying that the theory is "objective," but that a way to mitigate between theories
and to judge their merits is to see in what way they are sensitive to what they theorize about.
 204

As I have argued in this study, Heidegger does not have a "philosophy of art" of

the kind that, for example, von Herrmann finds in the art-essay. The absence of such a

theory is salutary since the philosophical theory von Herrmann attributes to Heidegger is

completely insulated from art, such that the theory remains the same no matter what

artwork he turns his attention to. When a work is impossible to fit into the theory, it can

merely be dismissed as "not great." I certainly am critical of theories that become

procrustean beds like that. But my aversion to such theories is not tantamount to Kelly

and Kenaan's line, which demands so much sensitivity to particulars that a general theory

seems close to impossible. Against Young's first objection, I must stress that the goal of

the present study is not to deny that Heidegger has a philosophical interest in art that is

general, speculative and serious, but rather to encourage more caution and care in

assessing what that means and what that entails. Moreover, it points to the need to

open up a space to engage art philosophically in the realm between aesthetics and art

history. Since thinking in this realm would have to be receptive to developments in

philosophy, history and art, this ongoing task remains appropriately open-ended. This

conclusion of the present study corresponds, I submit, to precisely what Heidegger - with

varying degrees of success, throughout his career - was trying to do in thinking about art.

This makes me suspect that the disagreement I and Young would have would primarily be about how
strictly to apply the term "philosophy of art."
 205

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CURRICULUM VITAE

INGVILD TORSEN

Home 11 Kelly Road, Cambridge, MA 02139

Department Department of Philosophy, Boston University, 745 Commonwealth
Avenue, Boston, MA 02215
Telephone (617) 441 0586
e-mail torsen@bu.edu

AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION

Continental philosophy, especially Heidegger and phenomenology; Aesthetics

AREAS OF COMPETENCE

Ethics; Kant; Wittgenstein; Existentialism

EDUCATION

2007 Ph.D., Philosophy, Boston University

Dissertation title: "After Aesthetics: Martin Heidegger and the End of
Art."
First reader: Dr. Daniel O. Dahlstrom.

2001 Cand. philol., Faculty of Arts, University of Oslo

(comparable to M. A. in philosophy)
Thesis title: "Setting truth to work: On the origin of Heidegger's turn
towards art"

1997 Cand.mag., Faculty of Arts, University of Oslo

(comparable to B.A., comprised of two years of philosophy, one year of
comparative literature and one year of media studies)
 217

SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS

2006 Junior Visiting Fellowship, Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom

Menschen, Vienna
2005-2006 H.B. Earhart Fellowship, Earhart Foundation
2005 Humanities Foundation Fellowship, Boston University
2005 Graduate Student Travel Grant, American Society for Aesthetics
2004-2005 Dissertation Fellowship, Boston University
2004 Outstanding Teaching Fellow Award, Boston University, College of
Arts and Sciences
2001-2004 Teaching Fellowship, Boston University
2000-2001 Fulbright Fellowship, Fulbright Foundation
2000 University student grant, University of Oslo
2000 Travel grant, University of Oslo, Philosophy Department

PUBLICATIONS

"Iain Thomson's Heidegger on Ontotheology." Book review, Review of Metaphysics

(Vol. 60, No. 2)

"The Metaphysical Discipline of Aesthetics: Martin Heidegger on The End of Art," in

MacLachlan and Torsen (eds.): History and Judgment. (Vienna: IWM Junior
Visiting Fellows' Conferences, Vol. 21)

History and Judgment, co-edited with introduction, together with Alice MacLachlan
(Vienna: IWM Junior Visiting Fellows' Conferences, Vol. 21)

PRESENTATIONS

"The Metaphysical Discipline of Aesthetics: Martin Heidegger on The End of Art,"

Junior Visiting Fellow Conference, Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom
Menschen, Vienna, June 8, 2006

"Whose shoes are these? - The conflict between philosophy and art history in
Heidegger's use of van Gogh," Junior Fellows Series, Institut fur die
Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, April 26,2006
"The World of the Artwork in Heidegger's 'The Origin of the Work of Art'," Department
of Philosophy, University of Maine, Orono, January 19, 2006

"The Metaphysical Discipline of Aesthetics: Martin Heidegger on The End of Art,"

American Society of Aesthetics, annual meeting, Providence, RJ, October 19-22,
2005

"When theory does violence to practice: the case of Heidegger's philosophy of art,"
Nordic Society of Phenomenology, 3 rd annual conference, University of Bergen,
April 22-24, 2005

"True Beauty: Martin Heidegger's vindication of aesthetics," "(Re)discovering

Aesthetics" Conference, University College Cork, July 7-9, 2004

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

2006-2007 Visiting Lecturer, Bridgewater State College, Philosophy Department

PHIL 101, "Reasoning and Value." Developed syllabus and lectures
independently.

2004 Instructor, Boston University, College of Arts and Sciences

PH 259, "Philosophy of the Arts." Developed syllabus and lectures
independently.

2001-2004 Teaching fellow, Department of Philosophy, Boston University

PH 150 "Introduction to Ethics," for Prof. Daniel Dahlstrom (2001) and
for Prof. Philip Ivanhoe (2004)
PH 155 "Philosophy and Politics" for Prof. Stanley Rosen (2003)
PH 160 "Reasoning and Argumentation" for Prof. Thomas Ricketts (2002)
PH 350 "History of Ethics" for Prof David Roochnik (2003)
Taught sections, tutored students and graded all assignments.

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

2003-2005 Assistant to Professor Daniel O. Dahlstrom on his translation of

Heidegger's Introduction to Phenomenological Research/Einfuhrung in
die phanomenologische Forschung, Gesamtausgabe Band 17 (Indiana
University Press, 2005) from German to English, and on his book
Philosophical Legacies (Catholic University Press, 2007).
ACADEMIC SERVICE

2004-2005 Organized the Graduate Student Workshop of the Philosophy Department

at Boston University; a forum for students to present and get feedback on
current research projects.

LANGUAGES

English; Norwegian; German

MEMBERSHIPS

American Philosophical Association

American Society for Aesthetics
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
Nordic Society for Phenomenology

REFERENCES

Professor Daniel O. Dahlstrom

Address: Boston University, Dept. of Philosophy, 745 Commonwealth Avenue,
Boston, MA 02215
Telephone: 617 353-4583

Professor C. Allen Speight

Address: Boston University, Dept. of Philosophy, 745 Commonwealth Avenue,
Boston, MA 02215
Telephone: 617 353-4586

Professor David Roochnik

Address: Boston University, Dept. of Philosophy, 745 Commonwealth Avenue,
Boston, MA 02215
Telephone: 617 353-4579

Professor Juliet Floyd

Address: Boston University, Dept. of Philosophy, 745 Commonwealth Avenue,
Boston, MA 02215
Telephone: 617 353-3745