ON THE WORK OF ART AFTER THE “END” OF ART:

REFLECTIONS ON THE OVERCOMING OF AESTHETICS IN MARTIN

HEIDEGGER AND G.W.F. HEGEL

A Dissertation

Presented to

the Faculty of the Department of Philosophy

Villanova University

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

By

Snezhina Gabova

May, 2011

Under the Direction of

Dr. Walter Brogan

 UMI Number: 3468176

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ii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Over the many years devoted to my studies of philosophy and to this work, I have been

privileged to have teachers, family, and friends whose knowledge, support, patience, and

wisdom have been invaluable to me. I am particularly grateful to my professors Walter Brogan,

John Carvalho, and Dennis Schmidt for their unwavering faith in me. They have encouraged

me in every possible way from the start and have guided my work and philosophical

development with care well beyond the extent of their duties as my supervisors. I would also

like to thank all my colleagues and professors in the Philosophy Department who have made

my time at Villanova University both inspiring and enriching.

I dedicate this dissertation to my son, Svetoslav Kostov, and to my parents, Veska and Atanas

Gabovi. My gratitude to my brother-in-law, David Morris, and my sister, Emilia Angelova, is

more than words can express. Without their love and unconditional support during the years,

this work simply would not have been possible.

iii
 ABSTRACT

This dissertation explores commonalities as well as differences in the ideas of G.W.F. Hegel

and M. Heidegger on art and aesthetics, through a close study and textual analysis of their key

texts in this area, notably Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and the Lectures on Aesthetics and

Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art.” The study begins by tracing the reasons that led

Hegel to announce the “end” of art, in order to then examine Heidegger’s response to this

verdict with his own concept of the “origin” of art. To facilitate a “dialogue” between the two

philosophers on the nature of art, the dissertation situates Hegel and Heidegger in the context of

the history of aesthetics, taking its lead from Heidegger’s own reflections on aesthetics. The

study has three main findings. First, it establishes a common ground between both philosophers

with respect to their understanding of the nature of (great) art, specifically in terms of art’s

encompassing religious-historical function, whereby Heidegger both adopts and critically

transforms Hegel’s thesis. Second, it shows that Heidegger’s concept of “origin” must be

understood as inherently linked to his critique of aesthetics and his account of metaphysics and

the forgetting of Being, and is thus also intrinsic to his later notion of Ereignis and the

anticipation of the “other beginning.” To clarify this position, the concept of truth as aletheia

and as “setting-itself-to-work” in the work of art is discussed in detail. Third, based on a

reading of several of Heidegger’s later texts on art, this dissertation also shows that by thinking

the originary and the originative power of art, he is able to recuperate art from an aesthetic

framework of production and representation and grant it with enacting a dwelling place for

humans.

iv
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION …….………………………………………………………..….………... 1

PART ONE THE PLACE OF ART IN HEGEL’S SYSTEM ………….…….….……….. 12

CHAPTER 1
SPIRIT AND ART-RELIGION IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT..... 12

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ….………………………………………….……... 12

1. Historical Development of Hegel’s Concept of Art ……………………….………. 15

2. Art in the Phenomenology of Spirit ……..………………………………...….......... 19

2.1. The Concept of Absolute Spirit ………………………………………… 20

2.2. Absolute Spirit and the Concept of Art-Religion (Kunstreligion)………... 26

2.2.1 Why Kunstreligion? …………………………………………… 28
2.2.2. From Spirit as Werkmeister to “Spirit with a Mask”.................. 31
2.2.3. The Spiritual Work of Art: Tragedy and Comedy………..….... 35

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………...…..…. 44

CHAPTER 2
HEGEL’S CONCEPT OF ART IN THE LECTURES ON FINE ART ………....…….... 49

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ………………………………………….…….…..... 49

1. Development and Significance of the Lectures on Fine Art ………….……..….….. 52

2. The Science of Beautiful (Fine) Art ……………………….…………....…….......... 55

2.1. Absolute Spirit and the Need for Art …………………………….….….... 59

2.2. Form, Content, and the Artistic Ideal …………..…………………….…... 62

2.2.1. The Relationship Between Form and Content in Artistic
Configuration ………………………………………………………... 62
2.2.2. Form, Content, and the Concept of the Beautiful ……………… 65
2.2.3. The Concept of the Ideal ............................................................... 69

3. The History of Art …………………………………………………………………. 70

3.1. General Overview of the Forms of Art …………………………………. 70

3.2. The Story of Art from the Beginning to the End ……………………..….. 73
3.2.1. Symbolic Art …………………………………………………... 74

v
 3.2.2. Classical Art .………………………………….……………… 75
3.2.3. Romantic Art …………………………………………………... 80

4. Dissolution of the Romantic Form of Art …....……………………….……. 85

4.1. The Artist as tabula rasa …………………………………………….…... 85

4.2. Poetry at the Moment of Art’s Dissolution ….……………………..…...... 88
4.3. Dissolution of Art in Comedy ………………………………..…….……. 90
4.4. Hegel’s Vision of a Post-romantic Art ……………………………...….... 92

CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………..... 96

PART TWO HEIDEGGER ON THE BEING OF ART ………………………………….. 105

CHAPTER 3
HEIDEGGER’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE AESTHETIC TRADITION ………… 105

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS …...…………………………………………….…. 105

1. Heidegger’s Overcoming of Aesthetics ………………………………….………. 108

1.1. The “Hegelian” Legacy in Heidegger’s Project………………………… 108

1.2. Preparing for the Overcoming of Aesthetics …………………..…..…… 114

2. Heidegger’s Nietzsche Lectures The Will to Power as Art .………………….…... 116

2.1. The Meaning of Aesthetics .……………………………………………. 116

2.2. The “Six Basic Developments (Grundtatsachen) in the History of
Aesthetics” …………………………………..………….……………………120
2.3. Hegel and Heidegger on Great Art ……………………………………... 127
2.4. The Turn to Nietzsche ………………………………………………….. 134
2.5. The Discordance Between Art and Truth: Plato ………………..……..... 139
2.6. Art and Mimesis (Plato) ………………………………………………… 142
2.7. Beauty and the Disclosure of Truth (Heidegger’s Phaedrus) ……….….. 146
2.8. “Overturning” Platonism……………………………………………....... 147
2.9. Beauty and the Limits of Aesthetics (Heidegger’s Kant) ….…….…….... 150

CONCLUSION..…………………………………………………………………….. 156

CHAPTER 4
FROM HEGEL'S END OF ART TO HEIDEGGER'S OTHER BEGINNING ....…. 161

vi
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ………………………………………………….… 161

1. History of the Essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” …………………..…...…... 163

1.1. Die “Erste Ausarbeitung”……………………………………….…..……163

1.2. Philosophical Context of the “Origin” Essay: the Essence of Truth…….. 169

2. The Work of Art ……………………………………………………………….…. 174

2.1. The “Circle” of Art ………………………………………………….….. 174

2.2. Thing, Work, Equipment ………………………………………….……. 175
2.3. Van Gogh’s Shoes ………………………….. …………………………. 178
2.4. The Greek Temple …………………………………………....………… 183

3. Truth and Art …………………………………………………………………….. 187

3.1. The “Primordial Strife” of Unconcealment …………………………….. 187

3.2. Earth, World, and the Rift ………………………………………..…..… 190
3.2.1. Urstreit, Riss, and the Zerrissenheit of Spirit ……………....… 193
3.3. On Gestalt, Creation, and Createdness …………………………..…..…. 197

4. The Work of Art and Historicity……………………………………………..….... 205

4.1. On “Preserving”………………………………………………………… 205

4.2. Art as Dichtung ………………………………………………………… 210
4.3. Art as Origin: Founding, Grounding, Bestowing………………..…….... 215
4.4. Thinking and Creating From the Origin………………………………… 217
4.5. Responding to the Origin ………………………….…………………… 221

CONCLUSION ……………………………………………….…………………….. 224

CHAPTER 5
BEYOND THE ORIGIN OF ART: HEIDEGGER ON TECHNOLOGY, SPACE, AND
POETIC DWELLING ……..……..…………………………………...…….……… 228

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ..……………………………………………….…. 228

1. Does Heidegger Develop a Philosophy of Art? …………………………….....….. 229

2. Kunst und Technik ………………………………………………………………... 237
2.1. The Essence of Technology ……………………………………………. 238

vii
 2.2. Gestell…………………………………………………………………... 241
2.3. Poiesis, Techne, Physis ………………………………………………… 242
2.4. Technology and Art: Danger and Saving Power ……………………….. 248

3. Art, Space, and Poetic Dwelling …………………………………………………. 251

3.1. “Building Dwelling Thinking” ……………………………………….… 251

3.2. “Art and Space”………………………………………………………… 254
3.3. Heidegger and the Artists (Cézanne, Klee) …………………………….. 258
3.3.1. Cézanne ………………………………………………………. 258
3.3.2. Paul Klee……………………………………………………… 260

CONCLUSION (THE “END OF ART”: HEIDEGGER AND HEGEL REVISITED) ……. 263

WORKS CITED ……………………..……………………………………………………... 268

viii
 ABBREVIATIONS

Hegel

LFA 1, 2 Hegel's Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, vol. I-II. Translated by T.M. Knox.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Heidegger

BDT „Building Dwelling Thinking.“ Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by A.

Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

HK "Die Herkunft der Kunst und die Bestimmung des Denkens." Distanz und Nähe:
Reflexionen und Analysen zur Kunst der Gegenwart. Edited by Petra-Jaeger and
Rudolf Lüthe. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1983: 11-22.

IM An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by R. Manheim. New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1987.

KN “Heidegger's nachgelassene Klee-Notizen.” Heidegger Studies 9 (1993): 5-12.

KR “Die Kunst und der Raum.” Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2007.

N1 Nietzsche, vol. 1&2. The Will to Power as Art. Translated and ed. by D. F. Krell.
San Francisco: HarperOne, 1991.

PLT Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper &
Row, 1971.

QCT The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by W.

Lovitt. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977.

ix
 INTRODUCTION

This dissertation is a study of Hegel’s and Heidegger’s views on the nature of (great)

art. I focus on the understanding of the relationship between art and truth as found mainly in

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and the Aesthetics, and Heidegger’s “The Origin of the

Work of Art.” My project seeks to reexamine or at least provide a broader context to

adequately reexamine both thinkers’ ideas concerning the “overcoming” of aesthetics in the

age of multiple “endings,” most notably, the proclaimed “end of philosophy” and the “end of

history.” The conceptualization of the “end of art” stems from Hegel. Hegel’s statement

from the Aesthetics, concerning the “end” of (great) art is this: “considered in its highest

vocation, art is and remains for us a thing of the past (ein Vergangenes).”

With Heidegger’s renewal of the discussion of the “end” of art, however, crucial

insights concerning aesthetics, metaphysics, philosophy and finally, history, are brought to the

fore and it is my goal to shed light on several important (re)assessments of the role of art,

truth, and history as they emerge out of the Hegel-Heidegger encounter.

It is the critical engagement with Hegel’s thesis that determines Heidegger’s own way

of questioning art. For Hegel, art is past because it is no longer the highest and historically

necessary way in which truth comes to exist. As the sensuous representation of Spirit, art

cannot reveal the Absolute in its truth and is surpassed by religion and then philosophy. For

Heidegger, in Hegel’s philosophy we find the culmination of the history of aesthetics and the

philosophical reflections on the beautiful: Hegel’s philosophy recognizes the end of (great) art

(i.e., it presupposes the end of (great) art in the Hegelian sense of it.) Hegel is able to

recollect both the nature of art at its end (art’s Vollendung) and of aesthetics, as it completes

itself in metaphysics; yet, Hegel does not transcend the tradition of aesthetics. For Heidegger,

as evident from his interpretation of Nietzsche, it is Nietzsche who thinks aesthetics to an end

1
in the “physiology of art.” But Heidegger himself does not directly endorse the idea which he

ascribes to Nietzsche, namely, of art as the counter-movement of nihilism (even though we

might argue that he does so in “The Question Concerning Technology”).

Heidegger’s own position within the tradition of aesthetics is ambiguous: his attempt

is to think art beyond aesthetics and beyond metaphysics. That is, he seeks to move beyond

Hegel’s aesthetics, while at the same time maintaining the conditional validity of Hegel’s

judgment. In “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger writes: “[t]he truth of Hegel’s

judgment is not yet decided… Decision upon the judgment will be made, when it is made,

from and about this truth of what is. Until then, the judgment remains in force.”1 According

to Heidegger, the only way of grasping the true sense of art, specifically, whether today art is

“still an essential and necessary way in which that truth happens which is decisive for our

historical existence,” is to consider art outside of the aesthetic framework. Hegel’s statement of

the “end of art” marks the limits of thinking metaphysically about art (in terms of the economy

of subjective production and representation); as will become evident in the following chapters,

for Heidegger the question of what art is essentially is not accessible from the standpoint of

aesthetics as delivered over to us.

Laying out the reasons that motivate and sustain the ambiguity of Heidegger’s “radical

questioning of the concept of art”2 is therefore a central task in this comparative

interpretation. To assess the ambivalence inherent in Heidegger’s reflections on art, we must

note first that Heidegger’s thought does not form a complete break with Hegel and the

aesthetic tradition. Despite their differences, Heidegger’s reflections on the nature of art and

aesthetics, for instance, as outlined in his lectures on Nietzsche, reveal important

commonalities with those of Hegel. Heidegger is in basic agreement with Hegel’s thesis on

1
Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter (New
York: Harper & Row, 1971), 80. Hereafter cited in parentheses as PLT, followed by the page number. In the
body of the text, I refer to the essay as the “Origin.”
2
R. Bernasconi, “The Greatness of the Work of Art,” in Heidegger Toward the Turn. Essays on the Works of the
1930s, ed. by James Risser (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999); 99.

2
the end of (great) art in modern times, which, in Heidegger’s view, has been brought about by

the complete dominance of aesthetic experience and feeling (Erlebnis) in the creation and the

reception of artworks. In this respect, adopting Hegel’s thesis creates a seemingly paradoxical

position for Heidegger: this position is one of “overcoming aesthetics and yet validating it”

(Jacques Taminiaux’s formulation). For Taminiaux, Heidegger’s attempt at thinking art in a

non-metaphysical manner necessarily pits him against the “most metaphysical” aesthetics of

the West.3 Yet, staying within this “double bind” or double resource of the tradition defines

the possibility for the “overcoming of aesthetics”; for Heidegger, this implies a critical approach

to art that can effect a turning of aesthetics upon itself, namely, by inquiring into the elements of

art that are accessible to philosophical analysis, as well as into those aspects of art that remain

beyond philosophy’s reach.

It is necessary to clarify here that the discourse on the end of (great) art is itself not

unequivocal. For Hegel, “great” art is the art of classical Greece, called Kunstreligion (art-

religion) in the Phenomenology, and the art of the beautiful Ideal – the art of the classical

form of art in the Lectures on Aesthetics.4 In “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger

explicitly states that the topic of his analysis is “great” art;5 the nature and fate of “great” art is

at the center of the first volume of the Nietzsche lectures, The Will to Power as Art. In this

volume Heidegger discusses art and the history of aesthetics in terms of the vocation and the

need of art, echoing key Hegelian terms and ideas. Heidegger’s notions of “world-

withdrawal” and “world-decay” as applied to the history of artworks in the “Origin” essay

support Hegel’s view of the inherently historical, thus, finite, nature of the work of art.

3
Jacque Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment. The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to
Phenomenology, trans. by Michael Gendre (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); 131-132. It is also
interesting to note that Heidegger takes issue with Hegel’s statement on the end of art in the Epilogue, not in the
body of his essay. As M. Donougho remarks, Heidegger seems to be keeping his “distance from Hegel’s
metaphysical ‘Ge-stell’” while questioning the Hegelian thesis. M. Donougho, “Hegel’s Art of Memory,” in
Endings. Questions of Memory in Hegel and Heidegger, eds. Rebecca Comay and John McCumber (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1999); 141.
4
Hegel’s Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, vol. 1&2, translated by T.M.Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1975). Hereafter referred to as LFA, followed by volume number and the page number.
5
M. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art” (PLT 40).

3
 What underlies such similarity is the fact that both Hegel and Heidegger define the

need (Bedürfnis) and vocation or destining (Bestimmung) of “great” art not in terms of its

aesthetic quality or as a cultural phenomenon, but as a historically necessary and decisive way

in which truth comes into existence (respectively, within the Hegelian formation of Spirit and

the Heideggerian history of Being). For both philosophers, “great” art is constitutive for the

existence of a historical community of people; and for both “great” art is historical as one of

the ways in which the course of history itself unfolds (begins anew or takes a new turn within

an openness granted by art). Lastly, for both philosophers, there is a sense of finality – of

history, of philosophy, a final gathering of thinking, which gives the question of art a sense of

urgency. If Hegel’s claim is that art has come to an end as having exhausted its speculative

potential for Spirit, in Heidegger’s language that translates into the loss of the possibility of an

originary disclosure of truth and Being, as that which makes disclosure itself possible, as an

enabling-favoring-bestowing condition.

My argument in this dissertation is that while Heidegger does not completely reject

nor confirm Hegel’s verdict, his analysis of the nature of art exposes the limits of the validity

of that verdict. In fact, Heidegger seems to begin where Hegel left off in his assessment of

art: while Hegel claims that (great) art has lost its historical-religious function for modernity,

Heidegger attempts to recover it.6 Reflecting upon the import and consequences of Hegel’s

judgment, Heidegger transforms and delimits the meaning of that judgment within

metaphysical aesthetics. For Heidegger, grasping the sense of art’s ending proceeds as a task

of repetition, namely, the task of (re)thinking the sense of art’s origin and of art as origin.

Since for him both Western aesthetics and metaphysics are modes of the oblivion of Being

and modes of veiling the essence of truth and of art, (re)thinking art as origin requires a

6
Andreas Grossmann, „Kunst, Geschichte und Technik. Konstellationen von Heideggers Denken im Lichte seines
Gesprächs mit Hegel und Friedrich Georg Jünger,“ in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Bd. 52, H. 1 (Jan. -
Mar., 1998): 40-63; here 49. For Heidegger, according to Grossmann, art has to become again „an organon” of
philosophy.

4
critical engagement with and “overcoming” of the traditional concepts of aesthetics (as part of

the critique of metaphysics).7 Because Hegel’s verdict on the end of art has validity within

the context of Western aesthetics, in rethinking this verdict, Heidegger articulates a new sense

of the tradition’s unfolding as well. Ultimately, for Heidegger, the question of the end of art

becomes also a question of the possibility of thinking aesthetics free of the metaphysical

categories of the “first beginning,” and a preparation for a new sending of Being.

Accordingly, my task is to outline the main points of the Hegel-Heidegger encounter

and to examine how from this encounter follows the demand of rethinking the tradition and our

relationship to it. We are here confronted with the demand of engaging with the renewed

repetition of the question concerning art’s essence in the sense of interrogating art’s origin.

That question (of Wiederholung) is a significant part of Heidegger’s attempts to radicalize

philosophy, to direct his thinking to the roots or source of western philosophy, and represents a

radical way to take up traditional philosophical thinking. His project of working through the

concepts of aesthetics entails a retrieval of their original sense, in order then to probe the

possibility of art’s becoming again an “absolute need”: an essential way in which the truth of

beings as a whole is disclosed. He questions whether there is still the potential for art to offer a

countermovement to the forgottonness of Being that prevails in metaphysics as it does in

aesthetics, and so to provide a ground for a “poetic dwelling” of man today.8

For Heidegger, such a possibility is viable only if a repetition of the origin of art can be

invoked, upon the end of “great” art and the completion of aesthetics. “Repeating” the origin

entails turning to the “source of the essence” of art, recuperating art’s originary potential that

7
The task of overcoming metaphysics for Heidegger is a “task of thinking” – the step back or the way back into the
ground of metaphysics, understood as looking for the “essential and unthought core of metaphysics,” a new attitude
of thinking, as D. Schmidt writes. This step back takes the form of questioning philosophy itself, which is why at
this point “poetry and art first appear as other modes of discourse and ways in which the truth of Being is made
manifest. They become other ways of beginning and being en route to the task of thinking.” Dennis Schmidt, The
Ubiquity of the Finite (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988); 99.
8
Heidegger writes: "But the question still remains: is art still an essential and necessary way in which that truth
happens which is decisive for our historical existence, or is art no longer of this character?" (PLT 80).

5
has been covered over so far in the sedimented concepts of aesthetics and metaphysics. Here

origin (Ursprung), Heidegger emphasizes, has nothing to do with the creative powers of the

artist. Rather, a return to the “essential” origin of art is seen as a “turning” of Being itself, an

Ereignis (anticipated as the “other beginning”) in the history of Being. Yet, a new turning of

Being must be reciprocated by a turning of man, too. It is thus the question of Being – the

Seinsfrage – that provides for Heidegger the horizon for questioning art. As Heidegger says in

the Addendum to “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “the whole essay, deliberately yet tacitly

moves on the path of the question of the essence of Being. Reflection on what art may be is

completely and decidedly determined only in regard to the question of Being. Art is considered

neither an area of cultural achievement nor an appearance of Spirit; it belongs to the propriative

event [Ereignis] by way of which the ‘meaning of Being’ can alone be defined.”9 What is most

provocative about Heidegger’s project is the recognition that to conceive art as origin, one must

consider the grant of Being, that which grants disclosure but which has remained concealed,

unthought, unsaid since the beginning of Western philosophy. Essentially, Heidegger’s

thinking of the origin of art is thinking unconcealedness at the source of truth and Being. Thus,

Heidegger’s re-examination of the nature of art belongs inherently to understanding Being’s

destinal-epochal nature.

Furthermore, the engagement with art and aesthetics falls within the so-called “turn”

(die Kehre) in Heidegger’s thought, which comprises, simply put, a turning from an analysis of

the being of Dasein to an analysis of the event of Being itself that occurs in the Da of Dasein.10

Heidegger can only come to (re)think art as origin as long as he allows for the event-character

of Being; therefore he proceeds by critically appropriating the history of metaphysics,

exemplified, notably, in the speculative system of the Hegelian philosophy of Spirit. This gives

9
Ibid., 86.
10
James Risser sums up the “turn” toward the turn as a task involving a focus on the question of truth [the event of
disclosure of truth as art], an expansion of the task of the destruction of metaphysics [through critique of
aesthetics], and an attempt to re-think the question of history out of the turmoil of the 1930s [the political dimension
of the work of art] (text in brackets is mine). See James Risser, “Introduction,” Heidegger Toward the Turn, 2, 4.

6
Heidegger recourse to an originary, inceptual, poietic thinking and language, granted by the

originary disclosure of Being as art, which can effectively counter the language of metaphysics

and modern technology. Reading some of Heidegger’s later texts (“Building Dwelling

Thinking,” “The Question Concerning Technology,” “Art and Space”), I show that he comes to

adopt a language and terminology that are continually more poetizing and attuned to the

anticipated “other” beginning. I trace a progression in Heidegger’s work in terms of thinking

art as disclosive of a relationality in which the key notions become Da-sein, space-time, world,

earth, the fourfold, dwelling, Ereignis. Together, these notions provide an insight into our

historical destiny, inherently intertwined with the enigma or “riddle” of art itself as one of the

ways to dwell in the truth of Being.

In the following chapters, I pursue the main aspects of the encounter between Hegel and

Heidegger on the nature and end of (great) art by elaborating, first, on Hegel’s philosophy of art

and the meaning of his end-of-art statement. Next, I analyze Heidegger’s and Hegel’s views in

the context of the history of (metaphysical) aesthetics as it completes itself toward the end of

(great) art. Finally, through a close reading of Heidegger’s essay “The Origin of the Work of

Art,” I aim to assess the proximity between Hegel and Heidegger on the notion of art, as well

as Heidegger’s project of overcoming aesthetics in thinking art as disclosive of a poetic, non-

technological comportment to the world.

Accordingly, in Part 1, I present an analysis of Hegel’s account of art, history, and truth

as developed in the Phenomenology of Spirit and in the Aesthetics. In the first chapter, I focus

on Hegel’s Phenomenology, tracing the movement of Spirit’s formation – from religion in the

form of art, to revealed religion, and then to philosophy, in order to demonstrate the inner limits

of the work of art in revealing the truth of absolute Spirit. The second chapter of Part 1 focuses

on the arguments in the Aesthetics, in particular those relevant to explicating Hegel’s

understanding of the pastness of art or the end-of-art thesis. There are various readings of this

7
thesis. One group considers Hegel’s Aesthetics as classicist, i.e., arguing for classical Greek art

as the art of the (unrepeatable) artistic Ideal and limiting the scope of the end-of-art thesis

specifically to the beautiful Kunstreligion of ancient Greece. A second reading is based on

Hegel’s arguments in the Aesthetics of the dissolution of the romantic form of art and so, the

dissolution and self-transcendence of art itself. This reading views the end of art as a function

of Hegel’s systematic philosophy of Spirit, where both religion and philosophy supersede and

surpass art. In my discussion, I offer qualified support for both of these readings, showing how

they are conditioned by Hegel’s system and are not mutually exclusive. In support of the first

reading, Hegel’s thesis clearly does not mean that there will no longer be any arts in the

empirical sense of the term, but rather that from the point of view of the self-realization of

absolute Spirit art no longer has a historical mission. Hegel’s thesis also signifies an end of a

distinct and unique human need for art. I disagree with the classicist charge against Hegel and

show that the basis of Hegel’s thesis for the pastness of art is his understanding of the

differentiations in the cultural and historical function of art, since for him the highest vocation

(Bestimmung) and achievement of art is the representation of the truth of the Absolute for a

historical people (in this reading, I follow authors such as A. Gethmann-Siefert and A.

Grossmann.)

My own view comes closest to the readings of the end of art as entailed in Hegel’s

philosophy of absolute Spirit. I argue that the internal structure of the work of art determines

art’s necessary dissolution as an incomplete mode of representation of Spirit. That dissolution

happens at the end of art’s essential history, in the romantic form of art. As Hegel claims, it

belongs to the “fate” (I take that term from J. Bernstein) of art to show in its own medium of

sensuous externality the inability of art to satisfy the highest need of Spirit by means of that

same sensuous externality. Art is only one way of representation of the truth of the Absolute;

as part of Spirit’s formation, the experience of this truth itself is understood as historical. In

8
the course of Spirit’s self-development, the content of truth changes continually, and thus, the

mode of its artistic representation must change, too. Ultimately, art’s philosophical relevance

is defined in terms of the historical differentiations in the speculative potential of artistic

representation (this, in fact, is the underlying claim of Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics).

Based on the findings in the first part of the study, in chapter three I aim to outline the

common ground between Hegel and Heidegger on the nature of art. For Heidegger, I turn to the

arguments for the historical necessity and the vocation of art as presented in The Will to Power

as Art. I do this in an attempt to reveal the “Hegelian legacy,” as J. Taminiaux formulates it, in

Heidegger’s view on art. This allows me to evaluate each philosopher’s position within the

tradition of Western aesthetics; whereas for Hegel the end of (great) art happens as aesthetics

reaches its fulfillment, for Heidegger the decline of (great) art is part of a primordial

temporality; the decline happens already at the beginning of aesthetics. While Hegel opens up

the horizon for thinking through the end of art within aesthetics, Heidegger seeks to surpass and

overcome the tradition by opening up a space of art beyond aesthetic theory. The focus of the

third chapter is on Heidegger’s interpretation of the “six basic developments” in aesthetics.

His critique of the aesthetic conception of art targets above all the determination of art and the

beautiful in relation to man’s state of feeling and experience (Erlebnis) and the

subjectivization and humanization of art. Second, he challenges the mimetic notion of art

(Plato), which presupposes the ontological “distance” of art as “copy” from truth as idea and

relates to the metaphysical “matter-form” conception of art, critiqued also in the “Origin”

essay. Thematizing aesthetics as an intrinsic part of the destruction of the ontological

categories employed by Western metaphysics sets Heidegger apart both from the tradition and

from Hegel, in whom the tradition finds its completion. Heidegger challenges the aesthetic

view of art by conceiving of the nature of truth as an originary occurrence of the disclosure of

beings, which takes place in the artwork.

9
 Chapter four offers a detailed reading of “The Origin of the Work of Art.” I here set

out to articulate Heidegger’s own reflections upon art as an origin. My analysis focuses on

the notion of the work-being (Werksein) of the work of art, examining closely Heidegger’s

claim that art is the “setting-itself-into-work of truth” (sich-ins-Werk-Setzen der Wahrheit).

This allows me to articulate better the differences in the meaning of that statement within

Heidegger’s history of Being and Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit (where speculative cognition

can be said to unfold as an ins-Werk-Setzen of Spirit’s own activity, and return to itself, in

absolute certainty).

In the exposition of Heidegger’s views, I draw upon the “Erste Ausarbeitung” of the

“Origin” essay as well as other texts from the 1930s, such as An Introduction to Metaphysics,

the Rectoral Address, “On the Essence of Truth,” Mindfulness and Contributions to

Philosophy. In this way, we can see the full scope of Heidegger’s project, which

encompasses the critique of the alienation of truth from art and the possibility, inherent in this

alienation, to recuperate art’s origin thought in terms of a disclosure of Being. My main

argument in this chapter is that the nature of the work of art is founded on Heidegger’s

understanding of the essence of truth, conceived in the “Origin” essay as aletheia, the play of

concealment and unconcealment, of the presence and withdrawal of Being. I show that by

thematizing unconcealment and the setting of truth in the work of art, Heidegger can think art

in a non-representational, non-metaphysical, non-aesthetical way. What emerges as the main

contribution of the “Origin” essay to the question of art is the understanding of Being as

Ereignis which takes place in the work of art, such that art is destined to preserve and shelter

the truth of Being. In and through the disclosure of Being as it occurs in/as art, a non-

metaphysical thinking of Being is brought to play, an inceptual thinking, delimiting, at its

very source, the region of metaphysics. In concluding this section on aletheia, work, and

origin, I also engage with Heidegger’s interpretation of the poietic essence of art, the

10
definition of the work of art as Dichtung. It is precisely in the nature of the work of art as

poietic that Heidegger finds art’s originariness, its power to name and invoke the holy into the

Open. Against Hegel’s thesis of the exhaustion of art’s capacity to represent truth, Heidegger

posits art’s capacity as inaugurating and harboring the possibility of a new epochal beginning

in the history of (truth) Being.

To complement this point and to argue Heidegger’s stepping beyond the aesthetic

framework, in the last chapter I explore ways in which art, in the age of modern technology, can

counter the domination of Erlebnis and of technological Gestell. Heidegger’s attempt to find in

art a “saving power” with the resources to resist technological revealing necessitates a

rethinking of the poetic force of art with regard to the notions of techne and poiesis. The

overcoming of aesthetics relies on rethinking art as an origin by reconsidering the concept of

production itself. Accordingly, in his later works, Heidegger comes to conceive of creation

away from production and making, shifting rather toward a notion of receptivity and

releasement, of “letting beings be.” A reading of Heidegger’s later essay “Art and Space” is

helpful in articulating some of these points.

I conclude my discussion of Heidegger’s and Hegel’s views on art with some remarks

concerning the pivotal role of art for the task of thinking and philosophy. Here I focus on a later

text by Heidegger, “Die Herkunft der Kunst und die Bestimmung des Denkens,” a lecture given

to the Athens Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1967. In the last chapter I indicate how themes

from Heidegger’s later writings, more specifically, the notion of Ereignis, as well as his

reflections on the artwork of artists such as Chillida, Klee, and Cézanne, may help elucidate,

and perhaps, reevaluate, his attempt in “The Origin of the Work of Art” to think the possibility

and limits of great art.

11
 PART ONE

THE PLACE OF ART IN HEGEL’S SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

SPIRIT AND ART-RELIGION IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The first part of this study is dedicated to an analysis of Hegel’s account of art, history,

and truth, as developed in the Phenomenology of Spirit11 and in the Lectures on Aesthetics.

The primary task of this exposition is to define clearly the place of art in Hegel’s

philosophical system, for it is only in terms of the contribution of art to the development of

Spirit and of absolute knowing in that system that we can address the issue of an “end” of art -

of art as a thing of the past - in Hegel’s own terms. My goal in this part is to exhibit Hegel’s

understanding of the disclosive power of art, i.e., of expressing truth within a “metaphysical

aesthetics,”12 as preparation for the discussion of Heidegger’s critique of Western aesthetics in

the following chapters. It is important to consider the way aesthetics comes to play in Hegel’s

system in its full-grown form, specifically in light of the question whether the verdict on the end

of art is the result of forcing art into the mold of his speculative philosophy.

Respectively, in the first chapter, I focus on Hegel’s earlier writings and the

Phenomenology of Spirit, in order to trace the movement of Spirit’s formation and the place

of the work of art in revealing the truth of absolute Spirit – from religion in the form of art, to

revealed religion, and then to philosophy. The following main points are made in the course

11
G.W.F.Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
References will be provided to the respective paragraph number, followed by the page number. References to the
German text are for Phänomenologie des Geistes. The Project Gutenberg Ebook
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6698/pg6698.html
12
See Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, “Hegels These vom Ende der Kunst und der „Klassizismus“ der Äesthetik,“ in
Hegel-Studien, Band 19 (1984): 205-258; 207.

12
of this discussion. In my reflections, I am guided by the work of authors such as J. Taminiaux

and in particular, by his understanding of Hegel’s philosophy as the “speculative concept of

art.”13 I develop the argument that for Hegel the place of art and the fate or destiny of art, are

inscribed into a philosophical history of reason which is itself teleological, coming to

completion in Spirit’s absolute knowledge at the end of its formative history. That is, for

Hegel, art is understood as a necessary stage in the development of Spirit that also necessarily

must be transcended (sublated). This logic of Hegel’s analysis of art is found both in the

Phenomenology and in the Aesthetics. Understanding the history of art as inscribed within the

history of Spirit helps us understand better the peculiar historicity of the work of art and,

accordingly, the notion of art as past. As J. Taminiaux writes, “the first formulation of the idea

of the death of art is inscribed within a philosophy of history that is inextricably a philosophy of

absolute knowledge.”14 When history is understood as the “progressive maturing of absolute

rationality,” he continues, we find out that the place art occupies is “no more than a preliminary

degree – the higher degrees being the Christian religion and modern philosophy.”

In chapter two, I focus on the arguments developed in the Aesthetics on the pastness of

art or the “past character” of art.15 Hegel’s aim in the Aesthetics is to present not only a

historiographical examination of art; it is also Hegel's concern to examine Spirit’s past from an

aesthetic point of view. Thus two perspectives meet here - the essential history of art and the

essential history of Spirit (history viewed as the creative self-production of Spirit). That is to

say, as Hegel lines up the symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art in the Aesthetics, this is

also a projection of the path of Spirit seeking identity within itself. The romantic form of art is

the stage in which Spirit finds itself within its own internality as medium, destroying the

identity achieved in the medium of sensuous externality in the previous classical form of art.

Romantic art is said to be the consummation of the logical possibilities of artistic meaning in

13
See J. Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment, 41 ff.
14
Ibid., 66
15
A. Gethmann-Siefert refers to the “Vergangenheitscharakter der Kunst.“

13
representing truth; it brings art to its historical culmination and necessary dissolution. The

dissolution of art derives from the formal independence of artistic meaning and content that

characterizes romantic art, signifying also an end of the vocation of art as a specific mode of

self-understanding for a historical human community. The background questions to this

discussion are whether Hegel did over time (from his earlier writings to the Aesthetics) come

to impose stronger systematic requirements on art, thus leading to a certain “impoverishment

of the artistic”16 and, in relation to that, whether Hegel, as A. Grossmann argues, gave up on

the “mythology of reason”17 that had been part of his early philosophical project.

The analysis of the texts dedicated to art in the Phenomenology and the Aesthetics

indicates a commonality shared by history’s finality and art’s finality in Hegel. The end of

the story of Spirit’s self-formation in absolute knowing (the realization of the concept) is the

end of Spirit’s externalization in time (which is also the realm of art as the realm of the

sensuous). In history as comprehended (begriffen), on the other hand, we find a simultaneous

beginning for both history and art as experience legitimated in the concept. The historical

development of art described in both texts is itself only fully understandable from the

standpoint of reason’s complete explication at the end of history, which privileges the position

of the philosopher in the present. Thus, placed within a development whose endpoint is
16
See Richard Taft “Art and Philosophy in the Early Development of Hegel’s System,” in The Owl of Minerva,
vol. 18/2 (1987): 146. Taft argues that this “impoverishment” of art (and the related thesis of the pastness of art)
is a “necessary consequence implied by the role which art ultimately comes to have in the system. In turn, the
necessity with which this gradual impoverishment comes about is the same necessity which governs the
development and interaction of the parts of Hegel’s system.” Taft shows that the relationship between art and
philosophy for the later Hegel has to be seen as much more complex than a simple “displacement of art” by
philosophy or a “mere absorption” of art into philosophy, even though he does not pursue this question further.
In a response to R. Taft, W. Desmond argues that the idea of an “impoverishment” of art fails to capture all
aspects of the interaction between art and philosophy in Hegel’s system. Desmond maintains that though Hegel
came to realize that art in modernity seems to lack the religious function of manifesting the absolute that we find
in Greek Kunstreligion, he continued to ascribe an absolute dimension to art within the systematic standpoint of
the philosophy of absolute Spirit. For Desmond, a more faithful reading of Hegel would be to assume a “double
philosophical perspective on art.” First, art constitutes a realm of meaning unto itself. Hegel does not deny this,
nor is art to be seen as simply a vanishing “moment” in Hegel’s own system. Second, as a philosopher Hegel is
concerned with the philosophical issues that art provokes, with the place of art within the entire economy of
human significance. Desmond concludes that art has to be seen as a “realm unto itself, and yet also it must be
viewed in its interplay with other realms of human meaning, including philosophy itself.” See William
Desmond, “Response to Professor Taft,” in The Owl of Minerva, 2 (1987): 163-164.
17
Andreas Grossmann, “Hegel, Heidegger and the Question of Art Today,” in Research in Phenomenology, Vol.
20/1 (1990): 112-135; 125.

14
already known – Spirit in its essential truth – the significance of any artwork is primarily

historical.18 From a systematic standpoint, then, the evolution discernible in art toward

greater ideality of content and form already anticipates its dissolution when Spirit attains

absolute clarity about itself in the concept.

1. Historical Development of Hegel’s Concept of Art

From his earliest writings as a student in Tübingen to the last years of his life as a

professor in Berlin, art plays an important role in Hegel’s various philosophical formulations.

Although the details of his interpretation of art’s significance change over the years as he

developed his own philosophical position and as his first hand experience of works of art

increased, Hegel remained convinced of its general importance for his own philosophical

project. In what follows I sketch Hegel’s path to the lectures on aesthetics, in an attempt to

show the development of his thinking on art and the place of art within his system of

philosophy.19 I have chosen to focus on the fragment “The Earliest System-Program of German

Idealism”20 because it touches on topics that Hegel will continue to deal with in his later

philosophy and which may help us trace a connection between this early position of Hegel’s and

Heidegger’s own reflections on art.21 In this early text of Hegel’s we can see the beginnings of

18
In his article “Hegel’s Art of Memory,” M. Donougho studies Hegel’s conception of art (the work of art) “as a
form of memory and historical recollection” and Hegel’s “speculative recuperation of art’s past,” as part of the
question of art’s capacity to recollect the past, and, linked to this, Hegel’s way of reenacting the past in and as his
philosophical system. See M. Donougho, “Hegel’s Art of Memory,” Endings. Questions of Memory in Hegel and
Heidegger, 139.
19
For a more detailed discussion of Hegel’s early writings on art, see Richard Taft, op. cit.
20
“The Earliest System-Program of German Idealism” is a fragment written by Hegel in late 1796 or early 1797,
just after his arrival in Frankfurt, in collaboration with his friends Schelling and Hölderlin. The authorship of this
text has been the topic of dispute for a long time and has been associated with both Schelling and Holderlin. A
recent study by O. Pöggeler provides arguments establishing Hegel as the author of the fragment (“Hölderlin,
Hegel, und das älteste Systemprogramm”, in Das älteste Systemprogramm. Studien zur Frühgeschichte des
deutschen Idealismus, Hegel-Studien, suppl. vol. 9 (1969), 211-59.) See also David Farrell Krell “The Oldest
Program Towards a System in German Idealism,” in The Owl of Minerva, vol. 17/1 (1985): 5-20. The references in
my study are to the translation published in Dennis Schmidt, On Germans and Other Greeks. Tragedy and Ethical
Life, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); 84-85.
21
In this I am following the line of interpretation of A. Grossmann, for whom the fragment presents Hegel’s first
aesthetic reflections. Grossmann’s reading of the fragment and of Hegel’s Aesthetics aims to answer the question

15
a philosophical project that aims to encompass in one aesthetics and philosophy, mythology

and religion. In contrast to his later system, here aesthetics is clearly not simply one part of the

proposed “system,” but provides the basis for it. According to A. Gethmann-Siefert, the

“System-Program” was written by Hegel. As evidence, she traces two examples of continuity

between the fragment and the lectures on aesthetics: the insight that reason must be mediated

by making the idea mythological and aesthetic, and the fundamental significance that the

unity of mythology and art has for Hegel's understanding of the historical function of art.22

The incomplete first section of the fragment is devoted to nature, while the second has to

do with “the work of man.” A third section, about half of the entire fragment, is devoted to the

beautiful. Scholars have pointed out the difficulty in moving from the first to the second part of

the fragment, which constitutes some sort of “aesthetics.” As A. Grossmann argues, this

tension can be resolved if we consider that in the first section Hegel is addressing a question of

morality (in reference to Kant), but later, upon arrival in Frankfurt and under the influence of

Hölderlin, he came to think of the notion of Beauty as the highest idea which can bring together

freedom and nature.23 The second part, which treats “the work of man” (Menschenwerk),

includes a discussion of the Ideas as “objects of freedom” (Gegenstand der Freiheit).24 We are

confronted first with the realm of the theoretical, on the one hand, and the realm defined by the

concept of freedom, or the practical, on the other. Hegel then proposes a third realm, defined by

the concept of beauty, as providing a bridge between the two, for it is beauty “which unites

everything” in which “truth” and “goodness” have become “sisters” (verschwistert).

whether a new mythology of reason, i.e. a new beginning and a new place of art is possible today. He asks that
question of both Hegel and Heidegger and explores the ways in which Heidegger’s engagement with Hölderlin in
the 1930s, in connection with “The Origin of the Work of Art” essay, may be proclaiming “something like a new
mythology.” I come back to these questions in the following chapters on Heidegger. A. Grossmann, op. cit., 121-
25, 128.
22
Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, "Die geschichtliche Funktion der 'Mythologie der Vernunft' und die Bestimmung
des Kunstwerks in der 'Ästhetik,'" in Mythologie der Vernunft: Hegels ''Ältestes Systemprogramm des deutschen
Idealismus," edited by Christoph Jamme und Helmut Schneider (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1984): 226-60; 227.
23
A. Grossmann, op. cit., 114.
24
Hegel, “The Earliest System-Program,” On Germans and Other Greeks, 84.

16
 Hegel sees the highest act of reason as an aesthetic act (speculative unity is not

associated with conceptual reason); truth and goodness (what Kant would have referred to as

understanding and reason) are coming together only in Beauty. Hegel says, “In this way, poetry

gains a higher dignity; in the end she becomes again what she was in the beginning – the

teacher of humankind” (Lehrerin der Menschheit).25 As written in the fragment, such

unification can only happen when philosophers exercise their “aesthetic power” – and Hegel

asserts that the “philosopher must posses as much aesthetic power as the poet.” This is made

clear when he says that the philosophy of the Spirit is an “aesthetic philosophy.” What is

required of philosophers is to render the Ideas aesthetically and incorporate them into a new

“mythology of reason.” Philosophy itself must become “mythological” and only then will there

be “eternal unity” among men. As D. Schmidt writes in his commentary on the fragment, “the

text makes clear that the task of thinking, to foster and preserve human freedom… will find its

answer in the work of art.”26 In contrast to the focus of this early text, namely, that art (the idea

of Beauty) can shape and determine philosophy, in the lectures on aesthetics art will be

transcended by philosophy and art’s significance will be essentially historical, as one stage in

the historical unfolding of the concept.

In his writings after the “System-Program,” Hegel continues to engage with the issues

of philosophy and art. His work on the philosophy of Spirit taking shape during the Jena

period falls within what Taminiaux calls an “aesthetic schema.”27 In several essays, J.

Taminiaux traces the origins of what he refers to as the “speculative concept of art,” looking

specifically at Hegel’s Jenaer Systementwurfe from 1805-06. In Taminiaux’s account, in

these early texts Hegel repeatedly uses terminology coming from the field of aesthetics and

from specific works of art in order to provide a schema or model for characterizing his

conception of the unity of political and communal life. Spirit is conceived as its own peaceful
25
Ibid., 85.
26
Ibid., 81.
27
Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment, 47.

17
work of art and the “first version of the triadic articulation of the Absolute Spirit” appears.28

Based on these texts preceding the Phenomenology, Taminiaux argues that Hegel’s conception

of art as the “religion of art” or “art-religion” has already shaped up. The content of art is

absolute Spirit: the self-production of self as life conscious of itself and reflected within itself.

For Taminiaux, the very language and the concepts used to describe a path of inner

differentiation and achievement of unity within Spirit – that of “production,” “figure,” “work” –

open up a possibility to consider speculative thought functioning according to the model of

aesthetics.29 As Hegel writes, “The absolutely free Spirit, which has taken upon itself its past

determinations, from now on produces another world; this world expresses the shape of its own

Self [i.e. the Absoluteness of the Spirit]; a world in which its work is accomplished within itself,

and in which the absolutely free Spirit can reach to the intuition of itself as Self.”30 Similar to

the Phenomenology, in this early period the speculative concept also presupposes the specific

ethical and political order of the Greeks, defined by Hegel as a beautiful work of art and

understood as the unity of the universal and the singular. The conclusion we can derive from

Hegel’s pre-Phenomenology texts is that there is a close link between the discourse of the

“aesthetic schema” and the discourse in the Phenomenology, and the main referent of this

discourse is the life of the polis; the fundamental unity of communal life for Hegel finds its

representation in the language of the work of art.

By the time Hegel writes the Phenomenology in 1806/07, he has already given up on the

idea of beauty as the highest idea and highest act of reason. His conception of art has shifted to

reflect the new parameters of speculative philosophy. As precursor to the Aesthetics, the

Phenomenology develops further the discourse of the “aesthetic schema” referred to above and

provides a historical-philosophical account of art, seeking to define art’s necessity within the

28
Ibid., 42.
29
Idem.
30
G.W.F.Hegel, Gesammelte Werke, ed. R.-P.Horstmann and Johann Heinrich Trade (Hamburg: Meier, 1976),
8:277; cited in Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, Judgment, 42.

18
unfolding of Spirit’s path of self-knowledge. A parallel reading of Hegel’s treatment of art in

the Phenomenology and in the Aesthetics raises questions that are significant both for

understanding Hegel’s own view on art and for Heidegger’s engagement with Hegel in his own

works. In both the Phenomenology and the Aesthetics, the underlying theme is the relationship

between philosophy and art, the scope and limits of both as modes of representing Spirit. From

the concept of Spirit’s self-knowledge, Hegel derives also the notions of the vocation and need

of art. The key concept in the discussion of art in the Phenomenology – Kunstreligion or “art-

religion,” already indicates art’s transitional place in the system as its culmination leads to

revealed religion. But most important, starting with the Phenomenology, one can trace the path

of art’s dissolution: first as a provisional “end with a mask” (as W. Hamacher writes) in

comedy, to the end in romantic art in the lectures on aesthetics. In the Phenomenology, the

concepts of negativity and death - key for the unfolding of Spirit unto itself, become the key for

understanding art as well. The process leading to the sublation of time at the end of the

Phenomenology and the institution of absolute knowing reminds us that the work of art as an

exteriorization of Spirit is destined to become subject to Erinnerung, and only thus it is.

2. Art in the Phenomenology of Spirit

There are a few specific references to art and works of art in the Phenomenology of

Spirit, yet there is no grand narrative of the history of art as in the lectures on aesthetics. The

first instance is Hegel’s discussion of ethical Spirit based on a Greek tragedy – Sophocles’

Antigone (¶470-476). The other reference to art is in chapter VII on “Religion.” Here, art

appears in the form of art-religion, a stage prior to revealed religion, and as art-religion it is

ultimately sublated into the absolute knowledge of philosophy. Hegel’s discussion of

Kunstreligion describes the sequence of the abstract work of art (ancient Egypt), the living work

of art (the art-religion of ancient Greece), and the spiritual work of art (Greek tragedy and

19
comedy).31 This sequence anticipates the basic argument and structure of the Lectures on

Aesthetics where Hegel discusses the symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art. In both the

Phenomenology and the Aesthetics, we witness Hegel’s speculative method of philosophy

unfold, for which and within which the main principle is the “necessary overcoming of art.”32

The passage from art to religion in the Phenomenology does not rely on the existence of a

coherent system of art(s), free of religious elements, which is then transformed into a single

unified creed. Rather, this transition reflects the gradual evolution of the experience of the

divine, which is in the beginning essentially shaped by/as art, to a religious self-consciousness

which has emancipated itself from the immediacy of artistic form (and in the post-romantic

period, we witness art that comes to emancipate itself from religion).

To clarify the relationship of art and philosophy in the Phenomenology, I begin with a

synopsis of Hegel’s philosophy of absolute Spirit. I will treat Hegel’s text somewhat

selectively, focusing on those elements which have a specific contribution to the formation of

Spirit and the issue of a presumed “end of art.”

2.1. The Concept of Absolute Spirit

The philosophical elucidation of the movement of Spirit’s becoming absolute (the

Bildung of self-consciousness), involves both the shapes it goes through (Gestaltungen:

Bewußtsein, Selbstbewußtsein, Vernunft, Geist) as it seeks self-comprehension and how they

are presented to it. The appearance of the identity and order of the shapes of consciousness is

determined by the nature of the process of Bildung itself, i.e., Spirit’s progressive movement

to self-transparence, which ends in the self-certainty of absolute knowing. Indeed, for the

31
It would be wrong to consider Hegel’s reference to art in the Phenomenology as presenting a history of art; even
though he does not limit himself to Greek art only, the references are rather schematic. Here, self-consciousness is
presented as reflecting on its own speculative power, attempting to reach self-identity through the language of art.
32
Taminiaux, op. cit., 48.

20
process of Bildung we can say that it is an ins-Werk-setzen of Spirit, and that is, of Spirit’s

truth as it thus takes shape.

As Hegel himself understands it, speculative philosophy is the process through which the

absolute Spirit comes to recognize itself within all reality; in other words, it is the formative

activity of Spirit as it attains to unity of thought and being (by overcoming the contradictions

between external-inner, same-other, finite-infinite, human-divine, subject–object). Spirit

obtains speculative knowledge of itself (grasping the manifold as unity) when it becomes

completely aware of itself as both the ultimate condition and the result of its own cognition,

articulating this experience as the structure of knowledge (as Erfahrung.) In the final stage, at

the point of absolute knowing, Spirit achieves reconciliation of the certainty of its self-

knowledge and its truth.

The experience of consciousness is conceived as a process of negation and sublation of

the external, of the other and of reflectedness unto itself. In the attempt to comprehend itself,

while comprehending an object, consciousness repeatedly suffers a Bruch (breach) within itself,

because it posits difference within itself, which then must be sublated. Speculative thought is

able to produce and conceive the unity of the experience of consciousness, achieved by

overcoming conflict, negativity, and death, of the self-differentiation of consciousness within

itself. Consciousness moves forward within the dynamic of “in-itself” and “for-itself,”

understood, respectively, as the object of cognition and the consciousness of the act of this

cognition. The various shapes of Spirit in the Phenomenology are attempts to reduce the gap

between these two moments, and the dialectical movement is rooted in consciousness’ inability

to hold them together at once before itself.33 Hegel writes, “Consciousness simultaneously

distinguishes itself from something and at the same time relates itself to it ... and the

33
Donald Phillip Verene, Hegel’s Recollection. A Study of Images in the Phenomenology of Spirit (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1985), 15-16.

21
determinate aspect of this relating, or the being of something for consciousness is knowing.”34

The relation of consciousness to its object unfolds both as a relation to something other and

even more importantly, as a relation to itself. Self-consciousness emerges from the

comprehension of the dialectic of consciousness’ double relationality. “Consciousness is, on

the one hand, consciousness of the object, and on the other, consciousness of itself,

consciousness of what for it is the True, and consciousness of its knowledge of the truth.”35

According to Hegel, with the emergence of self-consciousness we have "entered the native

realm of truth."36 On Hegel’s view, the process of cognition happens as the “progressive

unfolding of truth” (fortschreitende Entwicklung der Wahrheit).37 In this unfolding, Spirit must

reconcile and keep in check its differing aspects as substance and subject, other-being and

being-for-self, das Andersein and Fürsichsein.38

In this way, the unity and identity with oneself is reached through the sublation of

difference and is seen as the result of the “labor of the concept.” Accordingly, truth for Hegel is

never a given but is accomplished in the movement of Spirit. This is what encompasses the

Hegelian content of “work,” in the sense of working through the stages of negation, loss, and

achievement (recuperation from loss). Speculative philosophy proceeds as the activity of

making explicit to itself both its object of cognition and its constitutive principles.

Reconciling between thought and object in the process of simultaneous relation to itself and its

object, Spirit produces itself in progressively advanced shapes. As one commentator writes, the

labor of Spirit “in terms of the self-production of thought is as such characterized, with respect

to its goal, by self-determination, freedom in the fullest sense.”39

34
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, ¶82/52.
35
Ibid., ¶85/54.
36
Ibid., ¶167/104.
37
Ibid., ¶2/2.
38
Ibid., ¶17/10.
39
Martin J. De Nys, "Dimensions of Absolute Knowing," The Review of Metaphysics 61/3 (March 2008): 555
(22). Academic OneFile. Gale. Villanova University Library (PALCI).1 Aug.
2008 <http://find.galegroup.com.ps2.villanova.edu/itx/start.do?prodId=AONE>.

22
 Describing the process of self-production of Spirit (which entails the work of the

negative), J. Taminiaux claims that it is a process of “self-mirroring” of Spirit; indeed, of

speculation, which implies a “privileging of poiesis.”40 Working toward the identity and unity

of its knowing, Spirit is working to attain its own truth. For Taminiaux, this means a process in

which we see an identity of the worker, the work, and the working, aimed at achieving the

absolute certainty of Spirit within its own actuality. This process of experience can be

understood as poetic, according to Taminiaux, as it “allow[s] speculative thought to function as

an aesthetics… Indeed, the very use of words like production, figure, and work in characterizing

the Absolute Spirit in a speculative manner already announces with sufficient clarity the

speculative importance of art.”41 This is true to the extent that we understand the Hegelian

concept as the force of the negative as well as a formative power, constitutive of the structure

and content of knowing. That is, the intelligibility of what is known is present in and can be

realized in thought, because self-consciousness’ relation to the object is self-referential. Having

sublated all difference and returned to itself at the end of its path, Spirit comes to rest in

absolute knowledge (knowing itself as knowing, understanding itself in terms of its cognitive

achievement). Truth, then, is the absolutely mediated identity of Spirit’s existence with its

essence.

Having reached its goal, Spirit must come to terms with its own history (that is, time),

because absolute knowing is the return to self as recollecting, inwardizing (er-innern), of this

history. To realize its own concept means for Spirit to grasp (begreifen) itself in its own

otherness, in the shapes (Gestaltungen) of its own self-becoming. Hegel writes in ¶808 of the

Phenomenology that time “appears as the destiny and necessity of Spirit that is not yet complete

within itself” [Die Zeit erscheint daher als das Schicksal und die Notwendigkeit des Geistes, der

nicht in sich vollendet ist]. Furthermore, “Spirit necessarily appears in time [erscheint in der
40
Taminiaux, op. cit. 15
41
Ibid., 42. In the Phenomenology, Spirit is characterized as a “product of itself” and is the foundation of the claim
that ‘‘the Absolute …is essentially a result” (e.g., ¶20).

23
Zeit], and it appears in time just so long as it has not grasped its pure concept, i.e. has not

annulled [tilgt] time.”

Spirit’s self-understanding is inextricably bound to history, since it comes to

absoluteness only insofar as thought appropriates (recollects) its actual moments in time (in its

Entäußerung).42 Spirit comes to comprehend itself in the conscious self-mediation of the

contingent forms of its appearance in time (including the forms of art), which are now

understood as its limit – “sacrificing” the actual historical for the pure concept and recuperating

its loss at the same time (in the concept). In this, Spirit attempts to heal the split between

externality and innerness. Hegel writes in the last paragraph of the Phenomenology:

The goal, which is Absolute Knowledge or Spirit knowing itself as Spirit, finds its
pathway in the recollection of spiritual forms (Geister) as they are in themselves and as
they accomplish the organization of their spiritual kingdom. Their conservation, looked
at from the side of their free existence appearing in the form of contingency, is History;
looked at from the side of their intellectually comprehended organization, it is the
Science of the ways in which knowledge appears. Both together, or History
(intellectually) comprehended (begriffne), form at once the recollection and the
Golgotha of Absolute Spirit, the reality, the truth, the certainty of its throne, without
which it were lifeless, solitary, and alone.43

At the end of its path of education in absolute knowing, Spirit once again must come to terms

with death. It is no profane death, however, and it is ‘celebrated’ with a verse from Schiller

(which Hegel has apparently modified):44 “aus dem Kelche dieses Geisterreiche/schäumt ihm

seine Unendlichkeit.“ It is not clear how the “gallery of images” that Spirit has at its disposal

will be “reborn” so that Spirit can start afresh. There is a tension in Hegel’s text, significant

also for understanding the destiny of art. What the phenomenology of Spirit presents is that

absolute knowing proceeds from the “comprehended” or conceptual history; thus, only at the

end of its history does Spirit recognize itself as part of the process of conceptual-historical

42
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶807/492.
43
Ibid., ¶808/492.
44
See Gary Shapiro “An Ancient Quarrel in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” in The Owl of Minerva 17/ 2 (1986): 179-
180. Shapiro studies Hegel’s references to art in the Phenomenology, claiming that the book takes part in the
ancient quarrel between the arts and philosophy. The last quote from Schiller appears to be Hegel’s way of
showing that the poetic word necessarily must give way to philosophy when the science of wisdom comes on stage.

24
 recollection without which it would remain “lifeless and alone.” Accordingly, art’s

significance can be comprehended only at the end of its history, too. The time of Spirit is that

of Erinnerung, of recollection, of Spirit’s presentation to itself of the line of past “Spirits”; in

this case recollection is also preservation (Aufbewahrung). In the concept must be preserved

both the side of the temporal, the contingent, of becoming – erscheinendes Dasein – as well

as the side of erscheinendes Wissen, as described in paragraph 808 of the Phenomenology.45

The reconciling of past and present that happens at this stage bears an ambiguity in itself, to

the effect that the present is essentially imbued with pastness. The finitude of the historical is

exposed in the infinite prospective-retrospective movement of Spirit trying to grasp truth as a

whole. Consequently, truth harbors an ambiguity such that a claim to absolute recollection

appears problematical; equally problematical is a claim that thought can think itself

absolutely. By extension, the same is true for Hegel’s claim of an end to history.

The standpoint of absolute knowing as conceived by Hegel provides access to his

ontology; this is the basis for Heidegger’s understanding and judgment of the truth of Hegel’s

end-of-art statement.46 The premise of absolute Spirit as both the goal and beginning point of

philosophy is an issue for Heidegger. A quick look at Heidegger’s engagement with Hegel in

his lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology shows how critical is the question of the Absolute as

possible philosophical ground. Heidegger asks if the “Absolute is really real” in the

Phenomenology of Spirit. In order to be such, it must be “absolute” before the beginning of the

work itself, which the Phenomenology does not demonstrate; for Heidegger, the beginning is

fulfilled only at the end. Thus, his question, “Does only a leap into the wholeness of the

45
As one commentator writes, “[T]he history of the concept is the unity of historical and scientific knowing—not
one, nor the other, nor some third, but the two together, beide zusammen, the unifying relationship of both in which
neither is alone, that in which subject and substance are one insofar as their difference is preserved.” See Andrew
Haas “Being and Implication: On Hegel and the Greeks,” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social
Philosophy, Vol 3, No. 2-3 (2007): 192-210; 199.
46
For a detailed discussion, see D. Schmidt’s analysis in the chapter “The Question of the Absolute” in The
Ubiquity of the Finite, 124 ff.

25
Absolute remain?”47 Needless to say, Heidegger is taking issue with Hegel concerning an

ontology in which the place of Spirit as an end is presupposed as such in the beginning. What

Heidegger questions, in view of his own understanding of beginning and origin in “The Origin

of the Work of Art,” is the possibility for the unconditioned self-certainty of absolute knowing

which implies the totality of Spirit’s presence. For Heidegger, the issue is how can Hegel

“defend the claim of the original and fundamental presence of the Absolute for us… The point

at which Hegel and Heidegger cross paths is over the decision as to the presence or

impossibility of the Absolute for thought.”48 The problem of the character of absolute knowing

is seen as an aspect of the issue of Spirit’s historicity: if Spirit is the absolute, it is grounded in

[its own] absolute knowledge, as thought thinking itself. For Heidegger, that leads again to the

question of origin as possible ground which is not equivalent to the self-same presence attained

by Spirit, but rather envisions being as a process of disclosure, as the origination of ground.

The formation of Spirit as outlined is the philosophical context for Hegel’s

understanding of art. I will now proceed to the discussion of the work of art as described in the

Phenomenology.

2.2. Absolute Spirit and the Concept of Art-Religion

In the Phenomenology, the section on art-religion is integrated within chapter VII on

“Religion”; the analysis proceeds from “Natural Religion” to “Religion in the Form of Art”

(Kunstreligion)49 to “Revealed Religion.” Respectively, in the section on art-religion Hegel

discusses the abstract work of art (#705-719), the living work of art (#720-726), and the

47
“Doch ist das Absolute wirklich wirklich in der „Phänomenologie des Geistes“? Wenn ja, dann muss es dies sein
vor Beginn des Werkes selbst. Das Recht des Anfangs kann nicht durch das Ende erwiesen werden, weil das Ende
selbts nur der Anfang ist. Also bleibt nur der eine Sprung in das Ganze des Absoluten?“ M. Heidegger, Hegels
„Phänomenologie des Geistes,” (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1980), 215.
48
D. Schmidt, op. cit., 124.
49
Miller translates the term Kunstreligion (also künstliche Religion), which appears initially in ¶699, as “religion in
the form of art.” It seems to me that Hegel’s focus here is more on the work of art as an externalization of Spirit, of
Spirit as “an artist,” rather than on religion per se; Kunstreligion captures the encompassing religious-cultural
function of art for the Greeks. Below, I refer to “art-religion” or leave the original in German, where appropriate.

26
spiritual work of art (#727-747). Before we look at the details of Hegel’s discussion of the

particular works of art, I would like to draw attention to the following points:

1. The above division in the section on art-religion mirrors roughly the division of the

historical forms of art in the lectures on aesthetics - the sequence of the symbolic (associated

with the art of the Orient Persia, India, Egypt), classical (Greek art), and the romantic forms

of art (associated with the Christian religion). In the Phenomenology, Hegel does not

consider individual works of art, as he does in the Aesthetics. Unlike the Aesthetics, where he

places classical Greek sculpture as exemplary of beautiful Greek art and the Ideal, in the

Phenomenology he comes to highlight drama.

2. Through this division and the progression from the abstract work of art to the

spiritual work of art, Hegel emphasizes the point that the history of art exhibits a rational

development, aiming at reconciliation of meaning and form. This point becomes also the

founding principle of the discussion of the forms of art in the Aesthetics. The tri-partite

structure is bound by a teleological order and follows the progress from a more naïve

religious consciousness in art to the consciousness of the revealed religion of Christianity.

Having in mind that the culmination in the Phenomenology is the stage of Spirit called

absolute knowing, art-religion serves the cognitive purpose of Spirit to recognize itself in the

representations of art. The artwork is the ideal product of Spirit, evolving from the craftsman’s

accomplishment in the symbolism of natural religion to the beauty of the spiritual work of art in

drama. This line of development follows one main principle - the object and the form of art

become increasingly self-conscious. Hegel’s thematic focus is the potentiality of art to reveal

and provide spiritual knowledge, and through the sequence of art, religion and philosophy, he

traces the actualization of this potential (and its limits). The art work also illustrates the

process of formation implicit in the Hegelian concept: the closer the work of art comes to reveal

27
the self-consciousness creating it, the more self-consciousness comes to attain in the work

profound knowledge of itself as what it truly is.

3. The singling out of Greek drama as the highpoint of artistic development in the

spiritual work of art emphasizes the significance of language for the completion of Spirit’s self-

knowledge. In the discussion of the art of tragic drama and the discussion of Antigone in the

chapter on “Ethical Spirit,” Hegel shows that in the consciousness of the tragic work is attained

the highest unity of representation of pure Spirit. This reflects Hegel’s understanding that truth

is won in reconciling difference, in working through conflict and negativity (much like

Heidegger’s language of strife and rift in the “Origin” essay.) Second, it underlines the

significance that both Hegel and Heidegger place on the linguistic work of art as the highest

artistic accomplishment; for Heidegger, as we will see, all art is in essence poetic (as

Dichtung).50

2.2.1. Why Kunstreligion?

In the section on art-religion in the Phenomenology we find the first reference to the

emergence of “absolute” (great) art and art’s “first death” – in the transition from the Greek

tragedy to comedy (what W. Hamacher has called “the end of art with a mask”).51 Hegel

describes the actual Spirit corresponding to art-religion as “ethical or true Spirit.”52 In the

religion of art, Spirit has the “form of consciousness itself and it produces such a shape for

itself.”53 The subject engages in self-conscious rather than merely instinctive creative

50
Commentators have also suggested that we can read the Phenomenology as being in large part “a
confrontation, an Auseinandersetzung, with poetry and the poetic principle. Shapiro argues that there is a
difference in tone and intent between the Phenomenology and Hegel’s later writings on art, because, as he says,
the latter “take the autonomy of philosophy (or science) for granted [because of what the Phenomenology has
accomplished in that respect], and the Phenomenology must “show that philosophy is autonomous” (170). See
G. Shapiro, “An Ancient Quarrel in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” 167.
51
W. Hamacher, “(The End of Art With a Mask)”, in Hegel After Derrida, ed. by Stuart Barnett (London:
Routledge, 1998): 105-131.
52
“The religion of art belongs to the ethical Spirit” (¶750).
53
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶699/424.

28
activity. Hegel maps out the path of Spirit as an artist, seeking “a higher representation” of

itself; that path ultimately leads to art’s self-transcendence (in religion), foreshadowing the

self-transcendence of art as described in the Aesthetics. Hegel writes:54

In such an epoch, absolute art makes its appearance (tritt die absolute Kunst hervor).
Prior to this it is an instinctive fashioning of material; submerged in the world of
determinate being, it works its way out of it and into it; it does not possess its substance
in the free ethical sphere, and therefore does not have the character of free spiritual
activity for the self at work. Later on, Spirit transcends art in order to gain a higher
representation of itself (ist der Geist über die Kunst hinaus, um seine höhere
Darstellung zu gewinnen), viz. to be not merely the substance born of the self, but to be,
in its representation as object, this self, not only to give birth to itself from its Notion,
but to have its very Notion for its shape, so that the Notion and the work of art produced
know each other as one and the same (seinen Begriff selbst zur Gestalt zu haben, so daß
der Begriff und das erzeugte Kunstwerk sich gegenseitig als ein und dasselbe wissen)
(my emphasis).

The path of art as described is the path of Spirit learning and coming to grips with its finitude,

its own limits (“the self-knowing Spirit knows not only itself but also the negative of itself, or

its limit” ¶807). “Absolute” art is born out of the mourning of ethical Spirit: “This is Spirit,

inwardly sure of itself, which mourns over the loss of its world, and now out of the purity of self

creates its own essence which is raised above the real world.”55 Spirit creates out of mourning,

seeking to bring the past into the present for reflection and self-recognition, and so to redeem its

loss. The work of art is therefore a form of the work that Spirit must do in order to bring forth a

shape of its past world and to signify Spirit’s present. At the end of its path, in closing the circle

(“the circle which embraces the forms in which absolute substance has externalized itself”), the

artist (Spirit) will make an offering of the fruits of its work, which are thus works of

remembrance and recollection (Er-innerung) (¶753-754).

For Hegel, placing art within the discourse on religion is important for two reasons:

first, both art and religion yield only incomplete shapes of the self-presentation of Spirit;

artistic intuition (Anschauung) and religious “picture-thinking” (Vorstellung), respectively,

54
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶702/426.
55
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶701/425.

29
fall short of the unifying grasp of the concept, delivered by pure thinking in philosophy. But

secondly, it is also significant because Hegel situates both art and religion in the realm of

Spirit and ascribes to their nature and achievement certain absoluteness. Yet, the

manifestations of Spirit in art are plagued by the ambiguity of the externalization in sensible

matter. The speculative interpretation of the religious experience in the art forms chosen by

Hegel centers on the ways Spirit reveals itself in the sensible world and progresses in its

development from the realization that “substance is the absolute essence” (¶748-749) in

natural religion to “substance is subject,” realized in art-religion. What takes place in art-

religion is the effective negation of the substance and the new beginning of the absolute

subject, bridging over to the emergence of revealed religion. In Hegel’s words,56

In this [natural religion], Spirit knows itself as its object in a natural or immediate shape.
The second reality, however, is necessarily that in which Spirit knows itself in the shape
of a superseded natural existence, or of the self. This, therefore, is the Religion of Art;
for the shape raises itself to the form of the self through the creative activity of
consciousness whereby this beholds in its object its act or the self. [Sie ist also die
künstliche Religion; denn zur Form des Selbsts erhebt sich die Gestalt durch das
Hervorbringen des Bewußtseins, wodurch dieses in seinem Gegenstande sein Tun oder
das Selbst anschaut] (my emphasis).

Most significant for the understanding of art-religion is the transition that takes place from the

“artificers” (Werkmeister) in Egypt (with their emerging understanding of making as opposed

to simply “finding” nature) to the “spiritual worker” (geistiger Arbeiter), to Spirit as his own

artist in Greek art-religion. The transition from the Werkmeister to the geistiger Arbeiter is

essentially the process of the emergence of self-conscious creative activity. Art-religion is

defined by self-consciousness working through objectivity, transforming it for the purposes of

spiritual satisfaction and self-recognition.57 The more spiritual (self-conscious) the forming

process becomes, the more the external world is transformed in the resulting work; self-

consciousness too attains greater recognition of its creative powers. Hegel describes the

56
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶683/416.
57
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶701/425-6.

30
differentiations in the level of spirituality in the products of artistic work in terms of their

capacity to enable the self-recognition of Spirit. These differentiations are hierarchically

ordered, which, as we will see, marks also the overall teleological history of art described in

the Phenomenology and the lectures on aesthetics. The historical emergence and unfolding of

the different types of art works illustrates a progression in the movement to more spiritualized

forms of art, reflecting the changing relationship between subject and object in the process of

creation. As well, we can trace an evolution in the form of the divine being represented toward

ever more anthropomorphic manifestations – from the natural religions of light, plant, animal,

to the sculpted gods of Greek art and the linguistic expression of their actions in the epic and

drama, to God as Spirit in Christianity.

2.2.2. From Spirit as Werkmeister to “Spirit with a Mask”

In the section on “Natural Religion” Hegel discusses first the form of religion that in

the Aesthetics corresponds to the form of symbolic art (the art of the Orient – Persia, India,

Egypt). The manifestation of Spirit in this form of religion is what Hegel calls the “artificer”

or “craftsman” (Werkmeister). The artificer is not yet a true artist; his work, although it

corresponds to the meaning of work in general insofar as it “produces itself as object,” unlike

true, self-conscious artistic work it is “an instinctive work,” comparable to what bees do when

they build (bauen) their combs, as Hegel claims.58 The passage to art-religion involves a

transformation from unconscious to conscious creative activity:

[F]or in it [sphinx], the activity of the artificer, which constitutes self-consciousness,

comes face to face with an equally self-conscious, self-expressive inner being. In it he
has worked himself up to the point where his consciousness is divided against itself,
where Spirit meets Spirit…. These monsters in shape, word, and deed are dissolved into
spiritual shape: into an outer that has retreated into itself, and an inner that utters or
expresses itself out of itself and in its own self; into thought which begets itself, which

58
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶691/421.

31
 preserves its shape in harmony with itself and is a lucid, intelligible existence. Spirit is
Artist [Künstler.] 59

The work of the artificer is set on transforming sensible matter in a shape that is still

dominated heavily by materiality (e.g., the ancient pyramids, the obelisks). The works

produced by the artificer are not truly creative; it is a work that “still has not been, in itself,

fulfilled (erfüllt) by Spirit.” This description basically corresponds to the analysis in the

Aesthetics of the symbolic artwork, whose meaning for Spirit remains immersed in

exteriority. The products of the artificer’s activity exhibit in themselves the difference between

matter and form, between the material being-in-itself and the ideal being of artistic

consciousness. In changing a natural thing into an art object, the artist does not fully reflect

himself in the creative activity of production. At the same time, traceable is a gradual evolution

from more primitive objects to more complex forms, including organic life as objects of art

(¶706). This progression in the art forms coincides with the transition from working with

inorganic material to organic forms of life, enabling the process of self-recognition of the

artificer in his own works, too. The highest degree of spirituality in the abstract work of art is

achieved in the temple building: the temple both shelters the symbolic infinity of the deity

inside it and also inspires the individuals to celebrate the cult to immortal divinities in rituals

and festivals. Still, abstract art suffers from the “separation” of artist, art-work and its

audience:60 the perceiver understands the work as an independent object, indefinite and

indeterminate. As Hegel writes, “the work by itself is not, therefore, actually an inspired

work; it is a whole only when its process of coming to be is taken along with it.”61

59
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶698/424.
60
G. Shapiro, “Hegel’s Dialectic of Artistic Meaning”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, no. 35 (Fall
1976):23-35; 25.
61
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶708/429; translation slightly modified. The transition to fully spiritual art happens
gradually and entails liberation from the bounds of materiality, so Hegel: “As the work comes closer to itself in the
coming together of its aspects, there comes about thereby the other fact, that the work comes closer to the self-
consciousness performing it, and that the latter attains in the work knowledge of itself as it truly is” (¶693/422;
translation modified).

32
 The sculpture of the deity unites its wholly human and its beautiful idealized form;

according to Hegel, in the deity “the universal existence of nature (…) is, in this unity, that

element reflected into Spirit, nature transfigured by thought and united with self-conscious

life.”62 The sculpture signifies in this way the emergence of the concrete spirituality of the

artwork; it already reflects a hightened form of subjectivity of the artist herself. However, the

statue still harbors an immanent contradiction between its eternal ideal content and the sensuous

materiality embodying it. Following a progression in the spiritual transformation of matter, the

next work of art Hegel identifies is one whose materiality is more subtle and inobtrusive,

compared to the sculpture: he finds it in the phenomenon of language in devotional hymn.63

The hymn has the capacity of elevating the soul: “the objectivity of the statue is transcended,”

the self is driven inward, at the same time transcending the very space of the temple, promoting

what Hegel calls the “purification of the soul” (¶715). This process of interiorization that

occurs in the cult points toward a change in the notion of the divine: from the exteriority of the

material symbolic form to the inwardness of the artist’s self-consciousness. The oracle

constitutes the first stage of art-religion that exists in language and in connection with the

oracle, Hegel elaborates on the central role of the cult.

The abstract work of art is superseded by the “living work of art” (discussed in

paragraphs 720-726). Here, the unity between the objective and the subjective carried out in the

cult is described as the mystery of the “transubstantiation” of substance, the mystery of the

Bacchic ecstasy and enthusiasm. The music and dance of the Dionysian frenzy bring forth a

synthesis between the sculpted image of the anthropomorphic god and the living artist. The

ritualistic cult attains its culmination into a truly artistic phenomenon: drama. Drama allows for

the living body of the actor to replace the beautiful statue. The living work of art thus

62
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶707/428.
63
Hegel writes, “[t]he work of art therefore demands another element of its existence, the god another mode of
coming forth than this, in which, out of the depths of his creative night, he descends into the opposite, into
externality, into the determination of the thing which lacks self-consciousness. This higher element is language – an
outer existence [Dasein] that is immediately self-conscious existence [Existenz].” (¶710/429-30)

33
accomplishes what abstract art failed to do – namely, collapsing (though provisionally) the

distinction between the artist and the object, between subjective inwardness and external

nature. In the festival, the artist ‘shapes’ herself into an artistic object; what she does or is, is

a work of art - “an inspired and living work of art.”64 In the Bacchic revel and frenzy the

artists or performers assume the role of “living” artistic objects, breaking free from the

constraints of external form and the bifurcation between (creative) subject and independent

(created) object. However, such liberation is both incomplete and temporary; it vanishes

when the celebration is over. Hegel shows this in the following passage which describes the

limit form of the living work of art and the transition to spiritual art:

In the Bacchic enthusiasm it is the self that is beside itself, but in corporeal beauty it is
spiritual essence. The stupor of consciousness and its wild stammering utterance in the
former case must be taken up into the clear existence of the latter, and the non-spiritual
clarity of the latter into the inwardness of the former. The perfect element in which
inwardness is just as external as externality is inward is once again speech.65

The transition from the living to the spiritual work of art is needed in order to bring forth a work

of art in which self-consciousness can reflect itself, without the artist and spectator losing

themselves in that object. According to Hegel, this is accomplished in the linguistic work of art;

language is the external embodiment of an internal meaning and can facilitate the unity of artist,

work, and spectator. Respectively, Hegel considers the linguistic work in the examples of the

oracle, the epic poet, and drama.

In the epos, the epic poet transcends the work of the artificer, because his object is no

longer simply external nature as he now begins to recapture (erinnern) what has been created

in words. Yet the epic poet still needs to speak through the Muses and only the tragic actor in

the Greek drama will accomplish the identity between the artist as creator and the person of

the tragic actor, as performer. The dramatic work will enable the subject to attain the unity of

64
See specifically ¶725-726 in the Phenomenology.
65
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶726/439.

34
both its formative and performative powers, but with this, the work of art as the space for this

unity to happen will be transcended.66

2.2.3. The Spiritual Work of Art: Tragedy and Comedy

The spiritual work of art finds its medium in language; this constitutes a significant step

forward in the representation of Spirit. Compared to the abstract or living work of art, language

more adequately expresses the self-conscious creative power. Hegel devotes significant space

to Greek tragedy and comedy in the Phenomenology as they form an intrinsic part of the

Bildung-process of absolute Spirit.67 More specifically, they play a role in Spirit’s actualization

through the experience of repeated inner division and difference. Tragic drama demonstrates

best the constitutive principle of Spirit’s self-formation: tragedy stages the absolute as the

subject of conflict and difference, and the process of surmounting that conflict by recollecting

the original unity from which the difference is derived. As it traverses its “path of suffering,”

consciousness learns that each claim to the absoluteness of the knowledge and shape it has

attained at the previous step is only provisional. The reversal in comprehension that thus comes

about leads consciousness to comprehend the conditions of its own (tragic) knowledge as

conditions of its own selfhood.

For Hegel, the linguistic artwork actualizes, for the first time, self-conscious subjectivity

inasmuch as in poetry and drama we no longer have an alien and contingent language (i.e., of

the oracle), but the “true self-conscious existence” and a fully spiritual medium (¶713).68

Furthermore, the dramatic work of art allows for a synthesis between the subjectivity of the

66
H.S. Harris writes that the “climax of art religion is in the three moments of poetic expression: Universal-Epic,
Particular-Tragic, and Singular-Comic.” See H.S.Harris, Hegel: Phenomenology and System (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1995), 86.
67
Needless to say that both Hegel’s and Heidegger’s understanding of the nature and philosophical significance of
art can be discerned from their respective treatment of tragedy, specifically, Sophocles’ Antigone. A detailed
comparison of their accounts and relevant texts is beyond the scope of this research and I will therefore restrict
myself to some general remarks on tragedy in this and the following chapters.
68
The inner certainty of the artist requires a medium for its unequivocal expression, and this is language - “an outer
existence (Dasein) that is immediately also self-conscious existence…language is the soul existing as soul”
(¶710/430).

35
creator and the hero: the actor completes the poet’s creation and at the same time brings to life

the character of the role being played. The artist is no longer merely implicit in the work or

overwhelmed by Bacchic enthusiasm; the tragic actors are now “artists who make the inner

being external.” Neither the language of the oracle nor of the epic poet can accomplish the

speculative interpenetration of inwardness and externality which takes place in drama. In

addition, on stage we see many arts (poetry, music) coming together, representing the ideality of

life itself. Unlike the preceding forms of art, drama no longer appears in the abstract (foreign)

external shape which prevents spiritual identification; the spectator, just like the artist on stage,

can recognize himself in the work of art as does the artist who plays the character behind the

mask. In the words of M. Donougho, Hegel sees drama and tragedy as more than an ancient

phenomenon - it is a recurring feature in the attempts to represent (vorstellen) a speculative truth

in sensuous form.69

Tragedy is the first kind of spiritual dramatic work that Hegel discusses. Let me point

out first that there are “systematic differences” between the two major contexts in

the Phenomenology where Hegel discusses tragedy. In the chapter on Sittlichkeit, Hegel refers

to tragedy as “a document through which to read the structure and tensions of the ethical realm

of communal life,”70 in particular, examining the conflict and divisions between individual and

community, divine and human law, the singular and universal, and death. The conflict between

Antigone and Creon is a conflict within the heart of the polis, and in Hegel’s analysis we see

nature become spiritually mediated while in turn culture is discovered to be based on a natural

immediacy. In this instance, in the tragedy we see a “sort of model for the operations of Spirit”

in its experience.71

69
Martin Donougho, “Hegel’s Pragmatics of Tragedy,” Idealistic Studies, 36/3 (2006): 153–168; 153.
70
G. Shapiro, “An Ancient Quarrel,” 174.
71
My reading of this part in Hegel is largely indebted to the work done by Dennis Schmidt. Schmidt writes that
Hegel’s relation to tragedy is the first “thoroughly speculative theory of tragedy.” He also notes that the tragic
structure is used as an “interpretive model” for understanding a particular concept and it always represents “an
advanced stage in the development of consciousness.” Schmidt outlines four key aspects of the tragic structure in

36
 In the chapter on art-religion, Hegel is primarily concerned with tragic drama as an

artistic genre and its capacity to bring to life an essential stage in Spirit’s fulfillment, compared

to other forms of art and religion.72 Hegel focuses his argument on showing how Greek art is

essentially and deeply devoted to the problem of understanding the divine by means of the

human, and the capacity of tragic language to mediate the relations between singular/universal,

individual/communal. The inclusion of tragedy in the project of the Phenomenology

emphasizes the logic of conflict, suffering, and loss, of the power of the negative as the

underlying principle of the development of self-consciousness. To use Heideggerian terms,

Hegel’s attempt is to set to work the conflict between the human and the divine, in order to test

the limits of the art work’s disclosive power. But Hegel also demonstrates the deficits of the

tragic work of art in representing the truth of Spirit, which is therefore superseded by comedy:

this event qualifies as art’s first “end.” The movement of tragic thought exposes itself as

limited and comes to show again the fragility of Spirit’s attempt at completion, (historical)

closure, and grasping the whole without reserve.

Tragedy marks one of the last stages in the formation of Spirit: a new self-conscious

existence, in which Spirit recognizes itself as the producer of (its own) spiritual content. This is

best exemplified in the dramatic play where the language and the actors’ performance on stage

come together to demonstrate that achievement. That is why for Hegel drama is the perfected

or fully realized form of the spiritual work of art - action in the dramatic arts is a staging of

Hegel: (1) the tragic structure is only ever used in the second stage of the development of a particular concept; (2)
the tragic only intervenes in the confrontation of a singularity with a universal; (3) the use of the tragic always
raises the question of the concrete being of the law; and (4) the tragic must always be thought along with history.
See On Germans and Other Greeks, 89-93. At the same time, in his detailed account of the philosophical reception
of Hegel’s treatment of tragedy, M. Donougho shows that the question of whether Hegel does have a theory of
tragedy is still a topic for debate. M. Donougho, “The Woman in White,” The Owl of Minerva, 21/1 (Fall 1989):
65-89. Shapiro, for one, points out that Hegel does not seem to have a “theory” of tragedy; rather in each of the
places Hegel is writing about tragedy he has some other philosophical aim different from simply defining a literary
genre. G. Shapiro, “Hegel’s Dialectic of Artistic Meaning,” endnote 16, p.34.
72
In the Aesthetics, Hegel claims that Antigone is “one of the most sublime and in every respect most excellent
works of art of all time” because in it appears in outstanding representation the “tragic clash” between divine and
human, universal and singular, etc. “Everything in this tragedy is logical; the public law of the state is set in conflict
over against inner family love and duty to a brother; the woman, Antigone, has the family interest as her 'pathos'”
(LFA 1, 464) .

37
the life of Spirit, the heightened form of spiritual experience. This applies not only to the

content of the tragic work but also to the form of presentation (Darstellung) of the artistic

content, together with the self-presentation and performance of the actor on stage. In the

dramatic work we see exhibited (in a show, Schau), the workings of presentation

(Darstellung) as a form of cognition. In other words, the Darstellung of performance

mediates the accomplishment of the individual’s self-presentation as self-consciousness. The

self-conscious artist takes his own activity explicitly as a model for humanity in general.73 As

one commentator writes, tragedy “shows” the phenomenological appearing of action as self-

representation; tragedy is shown not merely to be presentation but also “shows itself” to be

presentation.74

For Hegel, Sophocles’ Antigone exposes the conflict of the human law of the state and

the divine law of the family.75 The problem of the tragic heroes is one of knowledge and

ignorance; in a world split by conflicting ethical powers, each is fully aware only of their own

part and therefore even their self-knowledge is deficient (“the doer finds himself thereby in

the antithesis of knowing and not-knowing.”)76 What is more, the tragic characters identify

(falsely) with universal essentiality. When Hegel discusses tragic action in the Aesthetics, for

example, he emphasizes the fact that the hero, through his acts and deeds (Tat) imitates and

displays a divine end, the ethical law. Thus, Hegel’s analysis focuses on the awareness of the

heroes of this moral conflict as such and the role that the gods play in destining the conflict

with their pronouncements (divine fate). In this context, the crux of the tragedy is “the failure

73
“The hero is himself the spokesman and the representation given brings before the audience - who are also
spectators - self-conscious human beings (selbstbewußte Menschen)” (¶733/444.)
74
M. Donougho, “Hegel’s Pragmatics of Tragedy,” 156, 160 (Donougho is citing Christoph Menke). The mask
worn by Greek actors in tragedy and comedy is part of this logic of presentation/show and the aspiration to claim
essentiality and universality for the individual, which he does not yet possess (¶741/449).
75
Given the purpose of this study, it is not possible to discuss in detail the manifold aspects of the clash between
Antigone and Creon; I have chosen to focus on the logic of tragedy as a genre and its place in Hegel’s general
conception of art in the Phenomenology.
76
Hegel develops this point in more detail in ¶737-738/446-7. The clash between the tragic heroes is a clash of two
moral standpoints, each having its particular justification: “the opposing powers of the content and of consciousness
[are] both equally right, and therefore, in their antithesis, which is brought about by action, are equally wrong”
(¶740/448).

38
of self-knowledge …and the incompleteness of the artist’s effort to rescue self-consciousness

from its objectification in the gods.”77

Tragedy documents the emerging division between self and substance and the

discovery of the “deceptive knowledge” consciousness has followed thus far. The self comes

to grips with the realization that playing a character has only been a show of “pretensions” of

universal essentiality, for the self appears as merely “assigned to the characters, not as the

mediating factor of the movement.”78 What happens on stage is “the disclosure of the

nothingness at the heart of these matters, the disclosure of the absurdity that cannot be

assimilated to the speculative task of Spirit.”79 The actor, wearing the mask, pretends only to

act in accordance with the universal but he comes to the recognition that “the true union, that

of the self, Fate, and substance, is not yet present. The hero who appears before the onlookers

splits up into his mask and the actor, into the person in the play and the actual self.”80 In other

words, the tragic hero with the mask fails to achieve reconciliation and unity between self and

the persona, represented by the mask. The mask, like the sculpted statue, is an externalization

of consciousness which prevents the gap between the character (as the work of art, the role

played) and self (as artist, the one playing) to be fully mediated and closed. As long as the

self is invested into the mask, it will appear to “stand in” for the self – to take the self’s place.

As long as the mask is on, it will be seen as masking true Spirit.

With the realization that the mask is a guise or ruse, of sorts, “the self-consciousness of

the hero must step forth from his mask and present itself as knowing itself to be the fate both of

the gods of the chorus and of the absolute powers themselves, and as being no longer separated

from the chorus, the universal consciousness.”81 The mask turns out to be pure contingency

which cannot represent the absolute, so that now self-consciousness can only actualize itself by

77
G. Shapiro, “Artistic Meaning,” 30.
78
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶742/449.
79
D. Schmidt, “Why is Spirit Such a Slow Learner?” Research in Phenomenology 32 (2002): 26-43; 40.
80
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶742/450.
81
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶743/450.

39
destroying it. The act of dropping the mask indicates that tragedy, as artistic form, has reached

a limit: the tragic artist fails in his self-recognition as who he truly is. Removing the mask is at

once the act of revealing the self, but at the same time the realization that there is nothing

(substantial) behind the mask.82 For the tragic self-consciousness, there is nothing else behind

the mask - the actor/character identifies himself only with his persona.83 The resolution of the

tragic conflict is just artful, artificial, künstlich, i.e. there is no resolution (as he writes, the tragic

‘reconciliation’ passes through Lethe, consciousness is immersed in forgetfulness and oblivion).

The presumed unity of “self, Fate, and substance” thus amounts to a “hypocrisy.” By exposing

the mask as what it is, a mere show, Hegel exposes the notion of an aesthetic view of the world

as hypocrisy: it lacks substance and makes an illusory unity appear as the accomplishment of

the self; yet the mask cannot reflect back to the self.

The recognition of this hypocrisy is accomplished in comedy. In comedy, the actor

himself drops the mask and actors and spectators alike experience the dissolution of the play.

The comic character takes the tragic hero's position seriously and follows its logic to the point

where it reveals its absurdity and destroys it; the actor now plays with the mask.84 Comic action

cancels the false elevation of tragic subjectivity to universality. By removing the mask, it

reveals that “whatever assumes the form of essentiality over against it [self-consciousness], is

instead dissolved in it…[while] the self preserves itself in this very nothingness, abides with

itself and is the sole actuality” (¶474). Commentators such as G. Agamben85 and W. Hamacher

82
Or, it is only “Spirit looking the negative [i.e., itself] in the face, and tarrying with it,” ¶32.
83
Hegel writes in ¶733, “Just as it is essential for the statue to be the work of human hands, so is the actor essential
to his mask – not as an external condition from which artistically considered we must abstract; or, so far as we do
have to make abstraction from it, we admit just this, that Art does not yet contain in it the true and proper self.”
84
“The self, appearing here in its significance as something actual, plays with the mask which it once puts on, in
order to be its own person; but it breaks away from this seeming and pretence just as quickly again, and comes out
in its own nakedness and commonness, which it shows not to be distinct from the proper self, the actor, nor again
from the onlooker” (¶744).
85
G. Agamben, The Man Without Content, trans. Georgia Albert (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
Agamben writes: “The artist is the man without content, who has no other identity than a perpetual emerging out of
the nothingness of expression and no other ground than this incomprehensible station on this side of himself” (55).
I would side with Agamben and explore the claim that there may be more common ground between Hegel and
Heidegger in how they see subjectivity (non-metaphysically) in the process of creating works of art. I discuss this
question in more detail in the next chapter.

40
have interpreted the “play of the self with the mask” in comedy as exposing the emptiness or

effacement of the self; if so, this would undermine the possibility to conceptualize art from such

a ‘ground,’ indicating rather the lack of ground.86 Hamacher, for instance, understands this

“play with the mask” as opening a site, a “vacancy” which can engender a subject; in the free

play of/with the mask, he sees a peculiar “autopoesis” of the self taking place.87 If he is right,

then comedy would be the culminating stage in terms of the production of artistic meaning and

of the self as an artist: the individual traversing all the shapes of art-religion to see itself

eventually as creator, agent, and spectator in one, free from the reign of the gods and subject to

no external force. On the other hand, this would also indicate that no artistic form is any longer

determinable as representation of the Absolute; no form which would correspond to it. Thus in

comedy form itself dissolves, annuls itself. Ironically, through the dissolution of form and by

exposing the production and presentation of artistic content (i.e., in comedy the separation

between character and actor, between actor and spectator dissolves), art exposes its immanent

limit.88 Comedy stages that limit and this is the irony of art, because what happens in comedy

is a relentless turning of the negative power of self-consciousness against anything, even against

itself.89 The comic actor is free to drop the mask because he is free to ridicule – along with his

comic character – both himself and the world, and each laughs at himself and the world. In the

same way, the spectator is completely at home in the drama performed before him and sees

himself as an actor, too.90 This gives Hegel reason to state:

What this self-consciousness beholds, is that whatever assumes the form of essentiality
over against it, is instead dissolved in it - in its thinking, its existence, and its action, -
and is at its mercy. It is the return of everything universal into the certainty of itself
which, in consequence, is this complete loss of fear and of essential being on the part of
all that is alien. That self-certainty is a state of spiritual well-being and of repose therein,
such as is not to be found anywhere outside of this comedy.91

86
W. Hamacher, “(The End of Art with the Mask”), Hegel After Derrida, 124-125.
87
Ibid., 116.
88
Hamacher, op. cit., 105.
89
Ibid., 106.
90
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶747/452.
91
Ibid.

41
What defines comedy best is this unparalleled (but also somewhat odd) “state of well-being”

and “repose.” As a stage in the formation of consciousness, comedy achieves such “repose”

because it finally comes to eliminate the gap between self and its work, and in the self-

certainty thus acquired, Spirit “genuinely overcomes its tendency to a form of repetition that

keeps it such a slow learner.”92 In repose, the restlessness of tragic action seems to be stilled.

Comedy appears to complete the project for reconciliation in the tragic drama, because in

comic consciousness “what is for-itself and what it is for-us collapses… Art realizes its aim

when one who plays at or puts on this show is no longer clearly distinct from one who

watches the show.”93 Art is revealed as what it is – a show (Schau) or, if we use the logic of

form and content, which is prominent for the Aesthetics, the work of art is revealed as artistic

Schein.

In the context of the Phenomenology, it is in comedy that art dissolves. But this should

not be thought as an empirical “end” or even less, the “death,” of art (just like the statement of

art as past from the Aesthetics does not means an end of art, either). Hegel refers to this event

as “transcendence” or “self-transcendence” of art (über die Kunst hinaus), or, as the quote

below indicates, “completion” (vollenden) and “consummation” from the view point of Spirit

seeking an adequate presentation of itself. The movement über die Kunst hinaus represents the

moment when Spirit can play the full act in its own self-presentation (which includes both the

activity that brings forth the presentation and that presentation itself); the moment when the

productive activity of Spirit – as artist - is completed and fully exposed. Hegel writes,

[i]n it [individual self], art-religion is consummated and has completely returned into
itself (Die Religion der Kunst hat sich in ihm vollendet und ist vollkommen in sich
zurückgegangen).…the actual self of the actor (Schauspieler) coincides with what he
impersonates, just as the spectator (Zuschauer) is completely at home in the drama
performed before him and sees himself playing in it.94

92
D. Schmidt, “Why is Spirit Such a Slow Learner?”, 41.
93
G. Shapiro, “Artistic Meaning,” 32.
94
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶747.

42
I believe the reference to vollenden here indicates that “end” must be understood in terms of

fulfillment, completion, even closure, instead of termination. The moment of dissolution is the

moment of completion as well because here art sets forth (darstellen) for a show its own

concept. That moment might be thought as the moment of art’s “becoming art for the very first

time”95, precisely because of making visible its own limit. In an ironic way, art can only show

and enact its own dissolution in art (as Hegel says, not to be found anywhere outside of

comedy).

We must also consider another aspect of Hegel’s claim that in comedy art dissolves and

this signals art’s deficiency in presenting true Spirit compared to philosophical discourse. It

might be though that comedy achieves even greater transparency of Spirit to itself in terms of its

self-knowledge (both object and condition of it). The comic consciousness plays with the mask

and plays with its meaning – consciousness has come to recognize its own ruse and to

incorporate it into the process of cognition. Irony is part of the play. Schematically, the act of

dropping the mask seems to be the same as the gesture of Aufhebung, which makes possible

the process of dialectical philosophy. If so, then the insight into the truth of Spirit achieved in

art, and specifically, in drama and comedy, would be on a par with that achieved by thinking.

This can be viewed as a resource in art that might reverse the relationship between philosophy

and art in favour of the latter, perhaps, in a more Heideggerian move.

In this case, Hegel would have to reconsider his own claim of the dissolution of art and

its transcendence by religion and philosophy for the sake of reflective, more complete,

conceptual knowledge. That might explain the “loss of fear,” “self-certainty,” “well-being” and

“repose” of self-consciousness, in which art-religion finds its consummation and to which it

95
Hamacher, op.cit., 105. A similar argument is developed by G. Agamben: “Hegel thinks about art in the most
elevated manner possible, that is, from the perspective of its self-transcendence. His is in no way a simple eulogy,
but is rather a meditation on the problem of art at the outer limit of its destiny, when art loosens itself from itself
and moves in pure nothingness, suspended in a kind of diaphanous limbo between no-longer-being and not-yet-
being.” Thinking, eventually, will accomplish the mediation of tragedy and comedy, by coming to terms (as
Begriff) of the notions of subject and substance, which art aimed to present in a figure. G. Agamben, Man Without
Content, 53.

43
returns. Comic consciousness has achieved, it seems, a higher level of “self-possession” and

“self-appropriation” - precisely because it has appropriated into itself its own end, its own past.

If comedy continues as the play of masks, we have to assume that it has incorporated the end

within the play, too; otherwise there would be no completion to the play. As long as the play

continues, the experience of this end will continue as well; an end without ending, of sorts,

presented on stage.96

CONCLUSION

Let me summarize the main points of the discussion so far and provide some preliminary

conclusions regarding the notion of an “end” of art as Hegel understands it.

1. The discussion of the section on art-religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit makes

clear that art is assigned a very specific place in Hegel’s philosophy. The rational

(re)construction of the formation of absolute Spirit that Hegel provides determines also the

rational (re)construction of the history of art. However, it is important to keep in mind that

this history is rather schematic, not aimed to be a history of artists and artistic events (unlike

the project of the Aesthetics). Second, in the Phenomenology, Hegel is not interested in

developing an aesthetic account of art – the aspects of the work of art on which he focuses

deal primarily with the manifestation of the formative power of self-consciousness in the

object. Third, the discussion of art is located in the section on religion; the achievement of

art-religion is to prepare Spirit for the “true” revealed religion of Christianity; from the point

of view of revealed religion, art is Spirit’s past.

2. Similar to the Aesthetics, where Hegel claims that art represents the “divine” and the

“highest interests” of the community, Kunstreligion in the Phenomenology emphasizes the

96
Hamacher, op.cit., 123.

44
religious aspects in art. His interest is in the way artistic creation (through figure and

language) can support the attainment of self-knowledge. Therefore, it will be fair to claim

that insofar as the essence of art is related to the absolute, art is not overcome by aesthetic

experience. Indeed, in both the Phenomenology and the Aesthetics, Hegel claims art’s

absoluteness in relation to art’s capacity to shape the experience of the divine. In both of

these texts art is the product of individual creative self-consciousness, but this human

creativity is mediated by the power of absolute Spirit which transcends the finite individual.

3. A particular achievement of the Phenomenology is the initial division and description

of artistic genres within the scope of art-religion. The principle of division reflects the level of

advance in artistic creativity (as self-conscious making); the type of sensuous medium and its

natural evolution to the pure spiritual (linguistic) work of art; the religious significance and

communal identity of the work of art. Thus, Hegel’s discussion includes (in a progressing

movement) architecture, sculpture, hymn, epic, tragedy, comedy; respectively, they form the

path of artistic Spirit from its initiation in abstract art to the dissolution of art in comedy and

into revealed religion.

4. Tragedy and comedy occupy a central position in both Hegel's Phenomenology and

the Aesthetics. As the discussion showed, Hegel takes comedy to be the completion of art-

religion, the consummation of the artistic construal of meaning in the evolution from abstract to

spiritual art to philosophy. Comedy in both of Hegel’s texts appears as paradigmatic for all art

in terms of achieving the identity of spiritual (formative) activity and external objectivity;

comedy is also the genre in which art comes to transcend its form and dissolve.97 Hegel

emphasizes that an essential characteristics of great comedy is the fact that the comic characters

and actors laugh at themselves as well as being laughable (LFA 2, 1233-36). The comic actors

97
Hegel writes at the close of the lectures on aesthetics: “Satisfied in itself, it [absolute subjective personality] no
longer unites itself with anything objective and particularized and it brings the negative side of this dissolution into
consciousness in the humor of comedy. Yet on this peak comedy leads at the same time to the dissolution of art
altogether” (LFA 2, 1236).

45
recognize that absolute content has been revealed and they have the freedom to play with that

content however they see fit. As Shapiro notes, at this stage the “puzzles of meaning, which

characterized the previous forms of art”98 (the abstract and the living work of art), have now

disappeared: as comic consciousness discovers, there is no secret behind the mask. Both artist

and art-work have been disavowed of their substance and are exposed on stage. 99 Thus both

comic actors and the spectators of the comedy can state, with Hegel: “What through art or

thinking we have before our physical and spiritual eye as an object, has lost all absolute interest

for us if it has been put before us so completely that the content is exhausted, that everything is

revealed, and nothing obscure or inward is left over any more.”100 This is the moment in the

history of art when art is no longer received and appreciated for itself; reflection is needed in

order for the individual to be able to decide what is art and to judge its aesthetic value. This is

the moment when thinking and philosophy take the stage; as a matter of fact, this is the premise

of Hegel’s Aesthetics. How far or how close Hegel of the lectures on fine art is to Hegel of the

Phenomenology, is the topic of the next chapter.

In the beginning of the chapter on revealed religion, Hegel describes a beautiful though

mournful picture of Unhappy Consciousness. He vividly depicts the death of a world that has

gone by, but whose works remain as monuments to their Spirit:

The statues are now only stones (Leichname), from which the living soul has flown
…The works of the Muse now lack the power of the Spirit…They have become what
they are for us now – beautiful fruit already picked from the tree, which a friendly Fate
has offered us…It cannot give us the actual life in which they existed…so Fate does not
restore their world to us along with the works of antique Art, it gives not the spring and
summer of the ethical life in which they blossomed and ripened, but only the veiled
recollection of that actual world. [And yet] the Spirit of the Fate that presents us with
those works of art is more than the ethical life and the actual world of that nation, for it
is the inwardizing (Erinnerung) in us of the Spirit which in them was still [only]
outwardly manifest.101 [der Geist des Schicksals, der uns jene Kunstwerke darbietet,

98
Shapiro, “Artistic Meaning,” 31.
99
Compare Hegel’s statement in the Aesthetics: “Art in its beginnings still leaves over something mysterious, a
secret foreboding and a longing, because its creations have not completely set forth their full content for
imaginative vision” (LFA 1, 103).
100
Hegel, Aesthetics (LFA 1, 604).
101
Hegel, Phenomenology, ¶753/455-456.

46
 mehr als das sittliche Leben und Wirklichkeit jenes Volkes, denn er ist die Er-Innerung
des in ihnen noch veräußerten Geistes, er ist der Geist des tragischen Schicksals, das
alle jene individuelle Götter und Attribute der Substanz in das eine Pantheon
versammelt, in den seiner als Geist selbstbewußten Geist.]

Besides reminding us of a similar passage in Heidegger, for whom just as well works of

art suffer “world-decay” and “world-withdrawal”102, what the above text suggests is that in its

core, Hegel’s philosophy of the absolute is just as much a philosophy of return, of Er-

innerung of the Spirit externalized (veräusserten Geistes). The time of the works, when they

were perceived as offerings to the gods, are gone, because the gods themselves are gone

(comedy has “depopulated the heavens.”) The passage takes us back to the paragraph in the

section on art-religion which describes Spirit in mourning, creating out of mourning a world

for itself (¶701). What this indicates is that the work of art is from the start destined to be the

work of remembrance and recollection, to be part of Spirit’s drama of self-recognition and

homecoming. At the same time, art can be the offering (also sacrifice) to absolute truth, some

sort of exchange, between being and truth.

But this is not, I believe, a nostalgic gesture or desire to remain in the past (nor is this

a longing for a revival of Greek Kunstreligion in Hegel). Rather, it signifies that the work of

art is the site of both the singularity of experience of the work of art and the universality of

conceptual understanding of this experience. Hegel is not falling under Heidegger’s criticism

that the work of art today is “dying” in the “element of Erlebnis.”103 What the account of art

in the Phenomenology of Spirit teaches is that art is indispensable for Spirit; it belongs to the

essence of Spirit to give itself shape in formative activity. That is to say, art belongs to the

realm of the absolute, it can be a promise, a call, to the absolute, but it could as well be only

the memory of a loss, failure, lack. Hegel is painting just that picture of a lost world

(resembling, to an extent, the gallery of images at the very end of the Phenomenology). The

102
M. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art” (PLT 41).
103
Ibid., 79.

47
works are only reminders of achievements that are no longer; a mere scaffolding, a ladder no

longer needed. But in this “nothingness” the individual “preserves” itself – because this

nothingness is what it has been. What we see might be indeed a deserted, broken world; what

Spirit sees might be just another play with a mask.

48
 CHAPTER TWO

HEGEL’S CONCEPT OF ART IN THE LECTURES ON FINE ART

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The subject of this chapter is Hegel’s understanding of art as presented in the series of

lectures on art he gave from 1820 to 1831. As the previous discussion showed, it took Hegel

years to develop a distinct conception of aesthetics, immanent to his system of philosophy but

also endowed with a level of independence regarding its relationship to religion and philosophy.

Central in this conception is Hegel’s theory of the historical forms of art, which allows him to

approach simultaneously the issue of art’s ideality and art’s historicity (Geschichtlichkeit).104 In

his considerations of art Hegel is guided by the logic of completion of Spirit, the configuration

of the historical process in which consciousness is defined by the not-yet of the moments and

the final stage (of absolute Spirit) to come.

In chapter one, we saw that art achieves its first determination as such in the Greek art-

religion, which is historically differentiated from the true, revealed religion of Christianity and

subsequently, from philosophy. This differentiation is conditioned by the underlying principal

distinctions in the cognitive capacities of art, religion, and philosophy, already established by

the time of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The work of art, in the context of the Phenomenology,

proceeds from Spirit that is yet incomplete, but this incompletion or absence is at the same time

constitutive for it. Thus, art holds a key position within the historical Bildung-process of Spirit:

it is a transitional stage but endowed with a specific privilege, insofar as it enables the

emergence of a new shape of Spirit. In the lectures on aesthetics, classical Greek art is the

realization of the artistic Ideal. Nevertheless, this special locus of Greece in Hegel’s philosophy

of art does not prompt an attitude of nostalgia since it is indexed to the future in terms of Spirit’s

104
On this topic, see Klaus Düsing, “Idealität und Geschichtlichkeit der Kunst in Hegels Ästhetik,“ Zeitschrift
für philosophische Forschung, Bd. 35, H. 3/4, Zum 150. Todestag von Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (Jul. -
Dec., 1981): 319-340.

49
completion in the proper medium of the philosophical concept. The aesthetic preservation of

classical art (and so of Spirit’s past) happens in the history of art; laying out a grand narrative

of art is one of the accomplishments of Hegel’s aesthetics as it thus aims to capture both the

elements of the ideality and historicity of art.

On the other hand, as it has become clear in the chapter on art-religion in the

Phenomenology, the ambivalence of art reflects the fact that its highpoint is also the point of its

(first) ending in comedy; the second is effected in the dissolution of the romantic form of art

described in the lectures on aesthetics. In Greek comedy, we witnessed the artistic Darstellung

of art’s ending and the irony built into the work of art. Hegel’s words “Spirit is an artist” (¶698)

are ironic (ironizing Spirit itself) to the extent that in designing, in producing the work of art,

self-consciousness acts subversively, creating and enacting a shape of itself that is only indeed

artistic, künstlich, a Schein.105 Eventually, art features only as “scaffolding” [Gerüste der toten

Elemente ihrer äußerlichen Existenz] for Spirit in the process of its formation: its role is

external, provisional, to be re-placed, to be recollected. At the same time, and this is yet another

aspect of the ambivalence of art, art’s end is impossible to finalize. The works of art remain

like ruins (or like “corpses,” into which the statues of the past have turned),106 but in them, in

this radical “nothingness,” while also the subject’s ownmost, as Hegel says, is preserved what

has been and what Spirit will have to recuperate as it moves on. The work of art and the subject

as artist falter in their formation on the limits of externalization (Entäußerung) and

internalization (Erinnerung), of the sensible as penetrated by inwardness, i.e., on their

relatedness in a specifically artistic configuration which aims to bring forth the truth of Spirit.

Thus the “first” end of art, but to an equal degree also the “second,” reveal the fundamental

logic of Spirit’s development, which is none other but the logic of limitation and the

philosophical comprehension of this limitation (including the task of philosophy bringing to

105
As M. Donougho writes in his commentary on art in Hegel’s Phenomenology, art creates a “subject” in quotes,”
indicating its problematic status. M. Donougho, “Hegel’s Art of Memory,” 157-8.
106
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, ¶753.

50
word the truth of the ending or pastness of art). In this sense, both the accounts of art in the

Phenomenology of Spirit and the Aesthetics put philosophy to the test of speaking from the

limit, from the end and of the end.

In view of the above, I propose in this chapter to read Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics in

the perspective of the end(s) or dissolution of art, specifically tracing the conditions which

necessitate such a development in the history of art. In his lectures, Hegel argues the pastness

of art as the pastness of the “great” art of the artistic Ideal, itself assigned to an already past age

of truth and religious worldview (classical Greece). To the extent that, according to Hegel’s

history of art, only the classical form of art (the art of the Ideal) is art per se (the preceding

symbolic art being a pre-art and the following romantic art being a transcendence,

Überschreiten der Kunst), is classical art a thing of the past. As we unravel Hegel’s argument,

we see that neither the before nor the after of art can be conceived strictly as points in time, but

rather as moments within the formation of the truth of Spirit, which is fully attained in the self-

transparence of Spirit to itself in the medium of the concept. Thus Hegel claims that art

becomes past when truth, withdrawn from the world of sense, is available to consciousness

independently of art – in religion and philosophy - that is, when art no longer satisfies the needs

for cognition, and that this is the result of the development of art itself. The rise of aesthetic

reflection corresponds to the self-transcendence of art, since philosophical thought is now

called to conceptualize that which previously art had only embodied sensuously.

My discussion begins with an analysis of Hegel’s concept of art as developed in the

Lectures on Fine Art, followed by an analysis of the historical forms of art and their

progression leading up to the dissolution of art in romantic art. I conclude with an assessment

of Hegel’s statement of the pastness of art (end-of-art thesis) and its reception in modern

philosophy.

51
1. Development and Significance of the Lectures on Fine Art

Hegel’s Lectures on Fine Art, which date from Hegel’s later Heidelberg (1816–18) and

Berlin (1818–1831) periods, are not among the writings published during his lifetime. Hegel

gave several series of lectures on art – one at Heidelberg in 1818 and four at the University of

Berlin (in 1820–1821, 1823, 1826, and 1828–1829). It was Hegel’s student H. G. Hotho who

compiled Hegel’s manuscripts and student notes (taken by Hotho and others) from the last three

versions of the lecture series into what are today known as Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics or

Hegel’s Aesthetics. A lot has been said about the authenticity of the text of the Aesthetics

because of these circumstances. One of the most prominent scholars of Hegel’s Aesthetics,

Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, has dedicated significant efforts into providing a comprehensive

overview of the available source material and an extensive editorial work that has produced the

texts that we today read as Hegel’s aesthetics. Since Hegel never wrote a manuscript for

publication and also never finished reworking or adding to his lectures in his lifetime,

Gethmann-Siefert suggests thinking of the aesthetics as a “work in progress.” The text

published after Hegel’s death gives an impression of a complete, thoroughly worked out system,

which might be the result of Hegel’s publishers’ and editor’s ambition to preserve Hegel’s

philosophy for later generations.107

The place of Hegel’s aesthetics within the tradition of German Idealism as well as

modern philosophy of art is determined by its achievements: on the one hand, as Heidegger

claims, Hegel’s aesthetics is the “most comprehensive reflection on the nature of art because it

stems from metaphysics” (PLT 79). On the other hand, in his detailed account of the history of

art within the perspective of his idealist philosophy and in dialogue with Romanticism and

Kantian aesthetics, Hegel claims both art’s autonomy as well as its dialectical relationship to

religion and philosophy (art has a significance in itself, but at the same time, the issues it
107
See, for example, Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert „Die Transformation der Berliner Vorlesungen zum System“ in
Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Bd. 56, H. 2 (Apr.-June, 2002): 274-292.

52
provokes must be taken up by religion and philosophy). As A. Speight writes, Hegel departs

from Kantian aesthetics in articulating a notion of beauty as decisively related to works of art

rather than natural phenomena but avoids, on the other hand, a “Romantic valorization of art

over philosophy.”108 Two other claims distinguish Hegelian aesthetics from his predecessors:

that beauty belongs exclusively to art, not nature, while also maintaining that art is not an

imitation of nature; second, that art, free in its ends and means, is not limited to goals such as

moral betterment or moral education (LFA 1, 7).109 Needless to say, perhaps the most attention

and controversy from Hegel’s ideas in the lectures has drawn his (in)famous thesis of the “end

of art.” The context of that statement is Hegel’s insistence on the connection between the

aspects of art’s ideal nature and the unfolding of this nature in different historical forms. What

are the implications of such view and what Hegel’s statement on the end of art means is the

subject of discussion in what follows.

In an article on Hegel’s aesthetics, Robert Pippin writes that “the first thing we should

understand about Hegel’s view is that there is an “absence of aesthetics” in Hegel’s treatment of

the beautiful and fine art.”110 He does not mean to reject Hegel’s work but to provide further

specifications of Hegel’s project in the lectures. Pippin argues that what distinguishes Hegelian

aesthetics from a modern aesthetic theory concerns first, the absence of a “recognizable theory

of aesthetic judgment”; second, the absence of a well defined account of aesthetic experience;

third, the Hegelian treatment of art does not consider the ontological status of the work of art

(art as such vs. only great art) and its properties.111 For him, Hegel’s philosophy of art is not a

108
Allan Speight, "Hegel and Aesthetics: The Practice and “Pastness” of Art." The Cambridge Companion to Hegel
and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy. Ed. Frederick C. Beiser. Cambridge University Press, 2009. Cambridge
Collections Online. Cambridge University Press. 16 July 2010 DOI:10.1017/CCOL9780521831673.015; p. 380.
109
S. Bungay writes “nobody any longer demanded that art have a moral effect and be edifying or instructive; and
nobody demanded that it imitate nature.” S. Bungay, Beauty and Truth: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1984); 188.
110
Robert Pippin, "The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Aesthetics." The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and
Nineteenth-Century Philosophy: 394-418; here 403. Ed. Frederick C. Beiser. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Cambridge Collections Online. See also Robert Pippin, “What Was Abstract Art? (From the Point of View of
Hegel),” in Critical Inquiry, vol. 29/1, Fall 2002.
111
R. Pippin, “The Absense of Aesthetics,” 394-95.

53
theory of representation or expression, nor a classical theory of mimesis. Commentators have

also noted Hegel’s relative lack of interest in a theory of genius, especially as compared with

Kant or Schelling (a claim made, for example, by K. Düsing).

What distinguishes Hegel from modern philosophers of art seems to be his focus on

the centrality of aesthetic content (Hegel’s aesthetics is an “aesthetics of content,” eine

idealistische Gehaltsästhetik),112 which lends itself to conceptual analysis. On Pippin’s view,

it is the ideality of content that determines successful art, especially great art, as defined in

Hegel’s lectures. This content is the divine, the “highest interests of humanity” and most

comprehensive truths of Spirit: content conditions the unique relationship between thought and

sensibility in the work of art, the unique dynamics of the artistic meaning and shape

(Bedeutung/Gestalt), the sensibilization of the spiritual and the realization of the Idea in a

sensuous form. In short, constitutive of art’s essence is the logic of the identity of Idea and its

externalization in sensuousness, or the “inner–outer relation’ [which is] central to properly

understanding Spirit and its products.”113

I think that this “inner-outer” relation underlies Hegel’s historical-logical perspective in

the analysis of art (in which the historical does not take precedence but follows the formal

analytic schema). Hegel’s analysis proceeds systematically as a specification of the various

forms this relation can take (with respect to the artistic Ideal, i.e. of beauty); an account of the

actual forms of beauty in history (Hegel’s view of the development of art through successive art

forms, such that the transitions between them generate the distinctive history of art); and finally,

an account of the individual arts and beauty as achieved by each of them. In Hegel’s approach,

the formal (logical) and the historical aspects of the definition of art at work are intertwined:

112
K. Düsing claims the same, op. cit., 319. Dieter Henrich writes about the relationship between content and form
the following: “on the one hand it [Hegel’s aesthetics] offers a theory of the meaning of the work, an aesthetic of
content more rigorous than anything comparable before or since, while on the other hand the content which appears
is defined purely as form.” D. Henrich, “The Contemporary Relevance of Hegel’s Aesthetics,” in Hegel, ed. M.
Inwood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 203.
113
Pippin, “Absence of Aesthetics,” 409.

54
the historical development of art follows from the formal definition of the Ideal and its

various configurations unfolding in time. Since the Ideal is based on the absolute content

which is the divine, Hegel presents an art history proceeding from an idealist metaphysical

foundation. Accordingly, Hegel’s aesthetics can formulate and is governed by a clearly

defined vocation or task of art (Bestimmung der Kunst), rooted in the necessity of art to

represent absolute content; this task therefore defines the historical fate of art, too. To think

the fulfillment of this fate or destiny in terms of Vollendung (completion, reaching a goal),

entails the logical necessity of one form to be superseded by another in the self-development of

truth (of Spirit). Hegel’s end-of-art thesis is in this sense premised on the notion of the

Vollendung of art. But we must also state that the Vollendung of art (which also implies its

“end”) is inextricably linked to world-historical development. To put it differently, the end-of-

art thesis (conceived as fulfillment of the artistic Ideal) and Hegel’s system of philosophy of

Spirit are premised on an essential connection of the political, religious, and social aspects in a

particular historical epoch and worldview.

2. The Science of Beautiful (Fine) Art

Hegel begins his lectures with a “scientific” analysis of the realm of fine art114 as

situated within the larger system of the science of philosophy – “the point from which a true

Science of the Beautiful must go forth” (Stellung des Kunstschönen im Gebiete der Wirklichkeit

überhaupt sowie der Ästhetik, Philosophie und Religion). Logically, beyond this point the

science of the beautiful cannot go, because it constitutes the point at which aesthetics is

114
Clarifying the terminology of his lectures, Hegel says that “aesthetics,” “philosophy of art” and “philosophy
of fine art” are used interchangeably. “We will therefore let the word 'Aesthetics' stand; as a mere name it is a
matter of indifference to us, and besides it has meanwhile passed over into common speech. As a name then it
may be retained, but the proper expression for our science is Philosophy of Art and, more definitely, Philosophy
of Fine Art” (LFA 1, 1).

55
transcended into religion and philosophy. Situating art with respect to the “finite world” and

with respect to religion and philosophy, Hegel writes:

This is the point at which we have to begin in the philosophy of art. For the beauty of art
is neither the Idea as conceived in Logic, i.e. absolute thought as it is developed in the
pure element of thinking, nor yet, on the other hand, the Idea as it appears in Nature; on
the contrary, it belongs to the sphere of Spirit, though without stopping at the knowledge
and deeds of the finite Spirit. The realm of fine art is the realm of the absolute Spirit.
(LFA 1, 94; my emphasis)

In defining the province of aesthetics as beautiful art, Hegel explicitly excludes the beauty of

nature from his analysis. Artistic beauty is higher than merely natural beauty because only the

former is born out of Spirit. Further, Hegel finds the “genuine origin” of aesthetics as a “proper

science” in the very capacity of philosophy to apprehend itself and its own essence in the

conditions of modern culture. Discussing the aims of art (Zwecke), Hegel recognizes that

modern culture has introduced and suffers from an opposition and contradiction within modern

intellect. “But for modern culture and its intellect this discordance in life and consciousness

involves the demand that such a contradiction be resolved” (LFA 1, 54). He describes this

opposition and conflict as one between temporality and sensibility, the common world of

reality, on the one hand, and freedom and the realm of thought, of eternal ideas, on the other.

Divided between these two seemingly irreconcilable worlds, human “consciousness wanders

about in this contradiction,” unable to find satisfaction in either of the two worlds. In this time

of crisis and being torn asunder,

[I]t becomes the task of philosophy to supersede the oppositions, i.e. to show that
neither the one alternative in its abstraction, nor the other in the like one-sidedness,
possesses truth, but that they are both self-dissolving; that truth lies only in the
reconciliation and mediation of both, and that this mediation is no mere demand, but
what is absolutely accomplished and is ever self-accomplishing. (LFA 1, 54-55)

Philosophy must show that only the unity of freedom and necessity, Spirit and nature, finite

being and the divine, is the truth: philosophy provides the theoretical insight into this truth.

Hegel assigns the same task to beautiful art as well: it is one of the means (eine der Mitten)

56
for the reconciliation (auflösen) of the “opposition and contradiction between the abstractly

self-concentrated Spirit and nature” (LFA 1, 56). In other words, Hegel defines the place of

art as a particular form of mediation [making] within the larger story of consciousness as it is

set to work in the world: driven by desire for unity and seeking reconciliation within

discordance. Furthermore, in accomplishing this task, art is autonomous and cannot be

reduced to other, external to it, ends; if art were reduced either to a “mere entertaining game”

or a mere “means of instruction,” that would constitute a “boundary at which art is supposed

to cease to be an end in itself,” writes Hegel (LFA 1, 51). Other “ends, like instruction,

purification, bettering, financial gain, struggling for fame and honour have nothing to do with

the work of art as such and do not determine its nature” (LFA 1, 55).

Crucial for understanding the Bestimmung or vocation of art as conceived by Hegel is

his main claim that only when philosophy has understood its own task as the overcoming of

the highest contradiction, i.e. when philosophy has grasped its own essence as speculative,

“has [philosophy] grasped… at the same time the essence of nature and art” (hat sie ihren

eigenen Begriff und eben damit auch den Begriff der Natur und Kunst erfaßt) (LFA 1, 56).

Hegel calls this self-understanding of philosophy its own “reawakening” (Wiedererweckung)

and it is precisely in this reawakening that aesthetics proper, as a science, finds its origin and

art finds its higher “estimation” (Würdigung). All of these claims boil down to the argument

that art, like philosophy, belongs to the realm of absolute Spirit (LFA 1, 94).

Consequently, in the crisis of the modern day, it is precisely the speculative capacity

of art to effect the reconciliation - in a sensuous shape - of those contradictions in the finite

human existence that is called into question and that Hegel targets with the claim of art

becoming a thing of the past. Hegel defines this capacity of art as follows:

Against this, we must maintain that art's vocation is to unveil the truth in the form of
sensuous artistic configuration, to set forth the reconciled opposition just mentioned,

57
 and so to have its end and aim in itself, in this very setting forth and unveiling (LFA 1,
55, my emphasis).115

Hegel’s language here is not very different from the language in the Phenomenology of Spirit,

which characterized the movement of Spirit to self-certainty as the production of the true and

the continuous work of Spirit. The work of Spirit is the attainment of unity through the

sublation of difference; in the process of knowing, a material existence must be reconciled

with thought, in the medium of thought. This is a reconciliation of Spirit with itself, within

itself, making explicit to itself its own absoluteness, i.e., its own recognition of itself as such.

The specific task of art is the presentation (Enthüllung, as “showing-forth,” exposition) of the

achieved unity. Hegel establishes important connections between art, truth, and the specific

artistic configuration of Spirit’s essence. The intertwining of the Darstellung and Enthüllung

of truth in the art object indicates that in the artistic configuration there is a “show from

within a show,” that the work of art is a phenomenal experience for consciousness. As

Darstellung, it exposes its identity and how this identity (of the sensuous configuration of the

Idea) is achieved. In this “presenting itself of itself as showing” is rooted the true goal and

essence of the art object (ihren Endzweck in sich, in dieser Darstellung und Enthüllung selber

habe). Hegel further explicates the structure of the work of art and the specific way in which

it facilitates the cognition of Spirit, writing as follows:

The Absolute itself becomes the object of the Spirit, in that the Spirit reaches the stage
of consciousness and distinguishes itself within itself as knowing and, over against
this, as the absolute object of knowledge. …But, looked at in a higher speculative way,
it is the absolute Spirit itself which, in order explicitly to be knowledge of itself,
makes distinctions within itself, and thereby establishes the finitude of Spirit, within
which it becomes the absolute object of the knowledge of itself (LFA 1, 93-4).

115
„Hiergegen steht zu behaupten, daß die Kunst die Wahrheit in Form der sinnlichen Kunstgestaltung zu
enthüllen, jenen versöhnten Gegensatz darzustellen berufen sei und somit ihren Endzweck in sich, in dieser
Darstellung und Enthüllung selber habe“ (Ä 13, 82). References to the German text are given to G.W.F.Hegel,
Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, I, Werke in 20 Bänden, Band 13, Eds. Eva Moldenhauer und Karl Markus Michel
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1994). References are in parentheses with volume number first,
followed by the page number, e.g. (Ä 13, 82).

58
The identity of knower, the object known, and the activity of knowing underlie Spirit’s

development and it is this identity that art has to unveil but in a sensuous shape, in sinnliche

Kunstgestaltung. On the path to its own absoluteness, Spirit comes to understand the meaning

of its own formation (attaining identity) aesthetically, so that “work” marks both the form and

content as they fuse in Spirit’s activity. Thus, conceiving Spirit aesthetically entails considering

the Tätigkeit of Spirit as artistic production – a certain mimesis, self-reflexiveness of Spirit

(work signifying work), realized in Kunstgestaltung.116 The expression “work of art” signifies

spiritual content (Spirit’s being) which is simultaneously the creative forming activity; insofar

as it is “worked out,” produced, the unity of content and form is fragile; hence, the ambiguity of

artistic Schein (shine, show) constitutive for Hegel’s definition of art and the beautiful Ideal. In

this perspective, the history of art – in the sequence of the art forms as described by Hegel –

traces the possibilities (and limits) of artistically articulating spiritual content and the way this

reflects on the individual and communal cultural and religious self-understanding through art.

The logic of artistic creativity as work reflects for Hegel an essential need of Spirit, which I

discuss in the following section.

2.1. Absolute Spirit and the Need for Art

In the “Introduction” to his lectures, Hegel writes that the universal need for art stems

from the fact that the human individual as Spirit comes to know himself in what he puts before

himself as his own creations. In works of art, the individual “duplicates” himself by giving

outward reality to what is within him, in order then to “lift the inner and outer world into his

spiritual consciousness as an object in which he recognizes again his own self” (LFA 1, 31).

Art is an “absolute need” of Spirit because in order for Spirit to understand itself in its truth and

116
Creating a spiritual significance embodied in the sensuous shape of an artwork is the Hegelian sense of “Spirit
setting itself into work” (echoing – but preceding - Heidegger’s “truth-setting-itself-into-work”). This was
discussed in Chapter 1 in terms of the self-production of Spirit in art-religion, in relation to Taminiaux’s notion of
the “aesthetic schema” operative in Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit.

59
to reconcile its idea (Idee) with its actuality (Wirklichkeit), Spirit must recognize itself in its

sensuous appearance. In works of art Spirit gives itself sensuous presence and being (sinnliche

Gegenwart) (and the emphasis here must be on “presence,” as the privileged form of being of

Spirit.) It thus “heals” itself from the breach (or “rift,” as Heidegger would say) between its

conflicting aspects – finite and infinite, sensible and supersensible, human and divine, real and

ideal (LFA 1, 8).

In the need of art Hegel finds the origin of art as well. “This is the free rationality of

man in which all acting and knowing, as well as art too, have their basis (Grund) and necessary

origin (Ursprung)” (LFA 1, 32). This is not because art seeks to imitate nature, but because its

purpose is to express and embody free Spirit. In this movement effected by art from within

Spirit to externality is achieved the reconciled, concrete totality of Spirit with objectivity in the

sensuous. As a form of making, art is poietic (to use a Heideggerian word), it creates a world of

sensuous objectivity in which alone, and not in existing nature, Spirit can recognize itself.

While natural things are “immediate and singular,” the human being as Spirit must transcend

itself as a natural thing in-itself, in order to become for-itself. In other words, in the work of art,

human beings “produce” their Spirit (sich selbst hervorzubringen) (LFA 1, 31). The

relationship between the human being (inner) and her product (outer) must be such that it can

bring forth this identity, an identity that is precisely worked out, produced in the external artistic

configuration. Thus produced, such identity will allow the recognition and recollection of

oneself in the external shape.117 Hegel describes this recognition as a “healing” of Spirit

(echoing the same image from the Phenomenology, ¶669):

117
Hegel explains in more detail this claim: “Thus art on its sensuous side deliberately produces only a shadow-
world of shapes, sounds, and sights; and it is quite out of the question to maintain that, in calling works of art into
existence, it is from mere impotence and because of his limitations that man produces no more than a surface of the
sensuous, mere schemata. These sensuous shapes and sounds appear in art not merely for the sake of themselves
and their immediate shape, but with the aim, in this shape, of affording satisfaction to higher spiritual interests,
since they have the power to call forth from all the depths of consciousness a sound and an echo in the Spirit. In this
way the sensuous aspect of art is spiritualized, since the Spirit appears in art as made sensuous” (LFA 1, 39; my
emphasis).

60
 But this breach (Bruch), to which the Spirit proceeds, it is also able to heal. It generates
out of itself works of fine art as the first reconciling middle term between pure thought
and what is merely external, sensuous, and transient, between nature and finite reality
and the infinite freedom of conceptual thinking (LFA 1, 8).

Hegel stresses on a further dimension of the determination of art as an absolute need of Spirit

which bears directly on his statement of the end or the pastness of art. It relates to the religious-

historical vocation of art, epitomized in Hegel’s view of art as the “first instructress (Lehrerin)

of [a] people” (LFA 1, 50). (Recall here the same expression from the “Earliest System-

Program”). In this role of art Hegel recognizes the greatness of the work of art. What defines

great art its capacity to embody the “ethical life” of a people as a whole; great art “affords

satisfaction to higher spiritual interests”; respectively, when it can no longer fulfill this task, it

becomes a “thing of the past.” Furthermore, great works of art can lead a people to understand

themselves as a historical community, in shaping and expressing their basic world-views

(Weltanschauung) and religious consciousness (LFA 1, 30). This understanding explains

Hegel’s claim that the basic historical forms of art are determined by the concept of the divine

that they represent (LFA 1, 175). The Hegelian vision of great art is built upon the key notions

of art’s task or vocation (Bestimmung), the necessity or need (Bedürfnis) of art and the

actualization (fulfillment, Vollendung) of Spirit’s truth in world-historical development (which

is where the Aesthetics and Hegel’s philosophy of history intersect). The connection between

historical development and the achievement of truth determine art’s historicity and along with

that, its essential dimension as religious phenomenon:

[…] is fine art truly art and it only fulfills its supreme task when it has placed itself in
the same sphere as religion and philosophy and when it is simply one way of bringing to
our minds and expressing the Divine, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most
comprehensive truths of the Spirit. In works of art the nations have deposited their
richest inner intuitions and ideas, and art is often the key, and in many nations the sole
key, to understanding their philosophy and religion. Art shares this vocation with
religion and philosophy, but in a special way, namely by displaying even the highest
[reality] sensuously, thereby bringing it nearer to the senses, to feeling, and to nature’s
mode of appearance (LFA 1, 7-8; my emphasis).

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The above quote from Hegel’s Aesthetics emphasizes a critical consideration concerning art,

namely, the similarity and difference that art shares with religion and philosophy. Art “shares”

the same “vocation” with religion and philosophy, as it is called to represent the same ideal

content (LFA 1, 101). Art, religion, and philosophy aim to grasp their absolute object;

however, they differ in the scope and completeness of their representation of the absolute. Both

art and philosophy are products of Spirit, though the work of art is not the Concept but a

development of the Concept out of itself.

By definition, art is distinct from both religion and philosophy as it represents the

absolute in the mode of sensuous intuition (Anschauung) and feeling. In Hegel’s system, the

sensuous representation is the first shape of absolute Spirit, followed by religion and

philosophy; due to its form, art is also limited to the presentation of “only one sphere and stage

of truth” (LFA 1, 9). There is an immanent limitation of the artistic form because the sensuous

determination of Spirit cannot express the whole of its supersensible reality. The materiality of

the artistic form prevents Spirit from attaining complete explication and perfect self-identity in

art; as we have seen in the discussion of the Phenomenology, the only fully adequate medium

for the essence of Spirit in self-knowledge is conceptual thought. As it matures, Spirit seeks

freedom from its dependence on the external; Spirit is said to reach its ownmost element and

reconciliation with itself in the concept. In the products of art, Spirit discovers its own past

activity and must articulate in concepts what is essential in art. In the philosophical self-

reflection on its past as art, Spirit comprehends the truth of art conceptually. Thus, for Spirit art

exists as a thing of the past.

2.2. Form, Content, and the Artistic Ideal

2.2.1. The Relationship Between Form and Content in Artistic Configuration

So far, we have followed the general logic operative behind the concept of art and its historical

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unfolding, including art’s being superseded by philosophy. A closer look at several key

Hegelian concepts - form, content, beauty, shine, will allow a more comprehensive

understanding of the end-of-art thesis and set the stage for assessing the Hegel-Heidegger

encounter on that issue.

As we have seen, Hegel claims that the absolute content is central and indispensable to

great art. He specifies this content as the Idea, while its form is the configuration of sensuous

materiality (LFA 1, 70). [Es ist bereits gesagt, daß der Inhalt der Kunst die Idee, ihre Form die

sinnliche bildliche Gestaltung sei. Beide Seiten nun hat die Kunst zu freier versöhnter Totalität

zu vermitteln (Ä 13:100).] The Idea Hegel defines as the totality of the Concept (Begriff) and

objectivity, the real existence of the Concept in concrete unity. The Concept through its own

activity posits itself as objectivity. However, the Idea in art is not the logical idea but the Idea

in unity with reality (Wirklichkeit); it is the Idea in an individual form, as appearing,

erscheinend. When this form is adequate to the Idea, it constitutes the artistic Ideal (LFA 1,

73). As the incarnation of the Idea in a sensuous form, art arises from a twofold impulse. On

the one hand, sensuous reality, which enters into the artistic work only as appearance (and not

as sheer materiality), is transformed into an ideal sensibility, it is “spiritualized.” Inversely,

spirituality, to the extent that it is mediated by the imagination, is “made sensuous.” The artistic

object thus appears ‘suspended’ in mid-air: it is no longer a purely material existent but not yet

pure thought (LFA 1, 38). It is aspiring to become pure thought by overcoming its material

nature but remains nevertheless tied to the conditions of its sensuous existence; in a sense, there

is no proper place for the work of art. 118 As Hegel writes, the work of art remains “essentially

a question” (eine Frage), “an address” (eine Anrede), “a call” (ein Ruf) (LFA 1, 71). The

sensuous shape in the art object is meaningful insofar as it identifies the sensuous with spiritual

content; but art does not cancel nor transform the sensuous into something wholly different.

118
This is what J. Sallis calls the “double bond” of art to the sensible and to Spirit at one and the same time. J.
Sallis, “Stone,” in Endings. Questions of Memory in Hegel and Heidegger, 202.

63
“The inner (content) shines in the outer (form) and makes itself known through the outer, since

the outer points away from itself to the inner” (LFA 1, 20).

Two points must be made here: first, the above statement directs us to the general

structure of art as symbolic – art indicates a meaning it does not actually contain (the elements

of the beautiful point to something inward, a content, and something outward which presents

that content.)119 Just as the symbol conveys in one and the same move something more than its

own presence but less than the meaning intended, art oscillates between its immediate material

presence and its conceptual ideality. This lends the artistic configuration of spiritual content

ambiguous in its nature and puts restrictions as to its disclosive capacity.

Second, the artistic configuration of sensuous material must make explicit and visible an

“implicit” content, which becomes determinate in/as this individual externalized or actualized

work of art.120 The sensuous and the spiritual content are not independent but are necessarily

inter-penetrating, and their articulation as this sensuous form for this spiritual content happens

in the artwork. Hegel emphasizes throughout the lectures that achieving complete fusion of

form and content, as the expression of the movement and repose of Spirit, is the ultimate goal of

art in its speculative task of unveiling the truth. Through the indication of something other –

what is only meant but still tied to the sensuous, only presented sensuously but not

conceptualized – art can realize its claim to truth, however, only in a limited way. The

artwork’s materiality points beyond itself to something other, but the formal distinction between

ideal content and materiality remains a difference that cannot be overcome. At the same time,

art cannot break away from the spell of the sensuous, which is its immanent limit to the

mediation of truth. “For precisely on account of its form, art is limited to a specific content.

119
For a detailed discussion of art as symbolic, see Kathleen Dow-Magnus, “Spirit’s Symbolic Self-Presentation,”
in The Owl of Minerva, 30:2 (1999): 155-203. Also, Paul de Man, “Sign and Symbol in Hegel’s Aesthetics,”
Aesthetic Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996): 91-104. In a discussion of imagination in
the Encyclopedia III, ¶456 Zusatz, Hegel refers to the symbolizing, allegorizing, or poetical imagination, which
displays the Idea in the form of sensible existence.
120
R. Pippin, “The Absence of Aesthetics,” 410-411.

64
Only one sphere and stage of truth is capable of being represented in the element of art” (LFA

1, 9). Because of this double limitation, the destiny of art seems prefigured from (its) the very

beginning; its supersession (Aufhebung) by a more adequate medium of presentation of Spirit

necessarily coincides with its dissolution (Auflösung), conceived by Hegel as art’s transcending

itself in its own form. Later in this chapter I discuss this claim in more detail.121

2.2.2. Form, Content, and the Concept of the Beautiful

The upshot of Hegel’s view on the connection between form and content is that by

enabling the Idea to appear in a sensuous configuration adequate to it, art accomplishes the

production of the beautiful, which itself is defined as the “sensuous appearance of the Idea” (das

sinnliche Scheinen der Idee) (LFA 1, 111). The beautiful is grasped as the Idea in its immediate

unity with reality, and only in so far as this unity is immediately present in sensuous

appearance. That is to say, the beautiful in art requires that both the Idea and the artistic shape

be individuated, in order for spiritual content to be adequate for presentation in an external,

sensuous shape; only then does beauty occur. Here the limitation to the truth-disclosive

capacity of the work of art concerns its content: “Only one sphere and stage of truth is capable

of being represented in the element of art. In order to be a genuine content for art, such truth

must in virtue of its own specific character be able to go forth into [the sphere of] sense and

remain adequate to itself there” (LFA 1, 9).

Indeed, this requirement prompts the definition of the beautiful Ideal: “reality, shaped in

accordance with the Concept of the Idea, is the Ideal” (LFA I, 74). As Hegel will argue later,

121
On this issue, for instance, Gadamer criticizes Hegel and idealist aesthetics for defining the beautiful in art as the
sensuous appearance of the Idea (in a revival of Plato’s thesis on the unity of the good and the beautiful),
presupposing that truth as it appears in art can be transcended by philosophy which conceives the Idea as the
highest and most appropriate form for grasping truth. According to Gadamer, “art is a unique manifestation of truth
whose particularity cannot be surpassed….Art is only encountered in a form that resists pure conceptualization.”
For him, art “is not related to an ultimate meaning that could be recuperated in intellectual terms.” H.-G. Gadamer,
The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, ed. by R. Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 37.

65
the Ideal is only achieved in classical art, exemplified in the works of ancient Greek art. In

Greek art there is complete correspondence between content and form, that is, between the Idea

and its sensible presentation.122 As Hegel writes, “Only in the highest art are Idea and

presentation truly in conformity with one another, in the sense that the shape given to the Idea is

in itself the absolutely true shape, because the content of the Idea which that shape expresses is

itself the true and genuine content” (LFA 1, 74-75).

The definition of the category of the beautiful in the Aesthetics distinguishes Hegel from

his predecessors, for example, Kant, but also from his successors: there is no discussion of the

beautiful in Heidegger.123 A. Gethmann-Siefert argues that since his earliest writings Hegel has

been working to deliver a determination of the nature of art and the beautiful. According to her,

in the Aesthetics Hegel is said to present “a metaphysics of the beautiful as metaphysics of art,”

premised upon the “historical function” of art.124 In Gethmann-Siefert’s account, Hegel’s

aesthetics is metaphysical because it argues beauty as the vehicle of truth and art as

fundamentally “conditioned” by the presentation of truth (Wahrheitsdarstellung verpflichteter

Kunstbegriff). That is, Hegel’s aesthetics introduces a limitation to artistic presentation on

systematic grounds, since the presentations of art are conceived as presentations of truth. In that

respect, Gethmann-Siefert also claims that the definition of beauty developed by Hegel must not

122
Günter Figal & H.G. Flickinger, “Die Aufhebung des schönen Scheins. Schöne und nicht mehr schöne Kunst im
Anschluss an Hegel und Adorno,” in Hegel-Studien, Band 14 (1979):197-224; 205. Flickinger and Figal write,
„Nur dort ist Kunst ausgezeichnete Weise der Erkenntnis von Wahrheit, wo sie als schöne Kunst Wahrheit selbst
setzt, wo Wahrheit in den Formprinzipien der Kunst unmitterlbar aufgehoben ist.“
123
On the other hand, this is an aspect of the Aesthetics for which Hegel has been criticized by many: he focuses
entirely on the beauty produced in art but excludes the beauty of nature (even though he writes "Now the first
existence of the Idea is nature, and beauty begins as the beauty of nature [die erste Schönheit is die
Naturschönheit]" (LFA I, 116). For example, R. Pippin states that Hegel may be one of the few philosophers for
whom the beauty of nature was “of no significance whatsoever.” The artistic work is produced by Spirit for Spirit.
Pippin emphasizes the fact that fine art, for Hegel, is “liberation from nature” – human beings stripping the world of
its “foreignness,” a humanizing transformation to achieve independence from the natural. See Pippin, “Abstract
Art,” 7. Adorno also sides in this criticism of Hegel: "Natural beauty vanished from aesthetics as a result of the
burgeoning domination of the concept of freedom and human dignity, which was inaugurated by Kant and then
rigorously transplanted into aesthetics by Schiller and Hegel; in accord with this concept nothing in the world is
worthy of attention except that for which the autonomous subject has itself to thank." See T. Adorno, Aesthetic
Theory, tr. R. Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 62; 70 ff.
124
A. Gethmann-Siefert, „Hegels These vom Ende der Kunst und der „Klassizismus“ der Aesthetik,“ 207. K.
Düsing states: „Hegel begründet in seinen Berliner Vorlesungen die Ästhetik als eine idealistische Metaphysik der
Kunst.“ Klaus Düsing, op.cit., 319.

66
be understood in a purely aesthetic way but in terms of art’s capacity as universal mediation of

truth.125 What must be understood regarding art’s ability to mediate truth is that for Hegel a

work of art “must always be considered as a historically-relative cultural achievement, as the

vehicle of the morality of particular historical communities.”126

Hegel writes, “for us, the Concept of the beautiful and art is a presupposition given by

the system of philosophy” (LFA 1, 25). The Concept must contain, reconciled within itself, the

“extremes” of “metaphysical universality” with the precision of “real particularity.” The

essence (Wesen) of the beautiful and its production in art is precisely the unity of the concept

with the individual appearance (individuelle Erscheinung). Hegel himself warns that even

though the beautiful can only be understood in its essence in philosophical reflection, if we were

to consider only the general logico-metaphysical nature of the Idea, we will fall into abstract

metaphysics (LFA 1, 21). But, is not Hegel doing exactly this when he says that “the beauty of

art is the beauty born of the Spirit and born again”? It would seem that at the moment when

artistic beauty is recognized and rediscovered in the work, it is “reborn” as philosophical

knowledge of the beautiful. The quoted statement itself should be understood as pointing to the

reflexivity of creation, as a form of self-knowledge achieved in and as art. Spirit doubles as

artist and rediscovers itself as an object of art in philosophical recollection.

Unlike Hegel’s position expressed in the “Earliest System Program of German

Idealism” where beauty was the one idea called to embrace all other ideas, in the Aesthetics

Hegel determines beauty as the sensuous shining of the Idea, and art, together with religion

and philosophy, proceeds from and belongs to the sphere of absolute Spirit. What

distinguishes truth and beauty is the requirement for the Idea to “realize” itself externally, to

win for itself a concrete objective existence. When truth in its external existence is present to

125
“Schönheit’ ist die Charakteristik der Erfüllung der geschichtlichen Funktion, sc. der Wahrheitsvermittlung [der
Kunst]”; Gethmann-Siefert, op.cit., 238.
126
„[E]in Werk immer als eine geschichtlich-relative Kulturleistung, als die Einrichtung der Sittlichkeit
bestimmter historischer Gemeinschaften aufgefasst werden muss.” A. Gethmann-Siefert, Die Funktion der Kunst
in der Geschichte. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Ästhetik (Bonn: Bouvier, 1984); 380.

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consciousness immediately, and when the Concept is immediately in unity with its external

appearance (sinnliches Scheinen), the Idea is not only true but also beautiful. How is

Scheinen to be understood here? Hegel explains that the sensuous must sacrifice (aufgeben)

its independence in beauty because sensuous immediacy is only “worth” as the appearance

(Schein, showing, shining) of the Concept (in its objectivity) and only as such can represent

(darstellen) the Idea (LFA 1, 111). Artistic representation (Darstellung) shows the shaping

(Gestaltung) of the appearance of the Idea (Erscheinung) perceptually; the beautiful object in

its existence, Hegel contends, “makes its own concept show forth/shine as realized (als

realisiert erscheinen).”

What is termed “appearance” here does not introduce an opposition between truth and

reality; appearance is essential to truth: “Indeed the appearance (Schein) itself is essentially the

essence (Wesen); the truth would not be if it did not appear” (LFA 1, 8).127 Furthermore, the

appearance in art has “a higher, deeper sense and meaning” which it communicates through an

immediate material presence. The pure shining (Schein) of art has the advantage [over nature]

that it points “through and beyond” itself (hindurchdeutet) to something spiritual which is

supposed to come to representation through it: the artwork’s materiality points beyond itself to

something other (LFA 1, 9). In Hegel’s view, this is what beautiful art can accomplish in

cognition – the beautiful shine should not be understood negatively but in its constitutive role

for the representation of truth in art. It is through the Selbstdeutung of beautiful Schein that

truth is visible. The need for the artistic shaping of the beautiful is grounded in the Idea itself,

and art is called to present (darstellen) the Erscheinung of the ideal content. Hegel’s statement

that art is “born of Spirit and born again” acquires a new aspect in meaning, i.e., that self-

conscious spirituality (Geistigkeit) shows itself and shines in artistic representation in both the

ideality of content and the forming principles that configure it for such show.

127
„Doch der Schein selbst ist dem Wesen wesentlich, die Wahrheit wäre nicht, wenn sie nicht schiene und
erschiene, wenn sie nicht für Eines wäre, für sich selbst sowohl als auch für den Geist überhaupt“ (Ä 13, 21).

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 2.2.3. The Concept of the Ideal

Hegel’s understanding of beauty provides the basis for the definition of the Ideal of art:

“Taken thus, the Idea as reality, shaped in accordance with the Concept of the Idea, is the Ideal”

(LFA1, 74). The Ideal represents the unity of sensuous form and ideal content, achieved only in

classical art. In the Ideal, both beautiful nature and beautiful humanity are subject to the

universal Idea since nothing exists beyond the Idea’s self-determinate activity. Hegel analyzes

the aesthetic determination of the Ideal’s existence in terms of the dependence-independence

relationship which is explicitly a relationship based on the systematic concept of freedom.

From the systematic viewpoint, 1) the classical artistic Ideal is the first factual existence of the

Idea, and therefore 2) it is the Idea’s simplest existence and unity in which humanity is raised up

to the Ideal; just as 3) the Ideal is purely aesthetic unity raised up to the philosophically valid

existence of the real identification of the historical, the moral and the logical. However, in

contradiction to the grounding character of the Ideal, by claiming the identification of the Ideal

with a particular art form, i.e. the classical Greek art form, Hegel naturalizes the Ideal’s

existence as empirically real and concretely historical. (Insofar as the Ideal is necessarily

universal, it does not imply history or historical decline.) Thus it is the viewpoint of history

that renders the Ideal or the aesthetic and ahistorical determination of existence as purely

contingent.

On the other hand, this ideal type does not unfold from within itself but from the

absolute dimension of the reflective form, as its logical construct. The philosophical absolute

knowledge necessarily predetermines the decline of the Ideal’s genuine life and its transition

to something else. The Greek epoch does not belong to itself but to the logical form

(Concept); it is a spectacle [show, Schein] of the logical form which has the power to develop

its other but also to return to itself in its purity, letting the spectacle die away.

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3. The History of Art
3.1. General Overview of the Forms of Art

Having looked at the concept of art, in this part of the chapter I focus on the second

major division within Hegel’s text – the history of art and the forms of art. (The basic divisions

of the aesthetics proceed in terms of the universal (the concept of art); the particular (the forms

of art), and the singular (the individual arts). The forms of art are grounded in the

particularization of the Idea in external appearance and reflect the specific configurations of

particular content into corresponding form. As Hegel’s argument on the concept of art showed,

the Idea carries within itself the principle and measure of its particularization and mode of

external appearance; the Idea is its own “free configurator” (LFA 1, 75).

In his view, the Idea manifests itself historically in the different epochal formations of

Spirit; the unity of form and content in these formations may vary, depending on the state of

development of either the content or the form. Accordingly, the history of art for Hegel unfolds

as a totality of the particular configurations of the Idea, as different “relations of meaning and

shape,” conceived of as “forms” of art. Through this development of the Idea, artistic beauty

comes forth as a totality of particular stages and forms:

These forms [of art] find their origin in the different ways of grasping the Idea as
content, whereby a difference in the configuration (Gestaltung) in which the Idea
appears is conditioned. Thus the forms of art (Kunstformen) are nothing but the
different relations of meaning (Inhalt) and shape (Gestalt), relations which proceed
from the Idea itself and therefore provide the true basis for the division of this sphere
(LFA 1, 75).

Three main forms of art comprise the history of art for Hegel: the symbolic, the

classical, and the romantic. The forms are discussed in Part II of the Aesthetics, which serves

as a link between the analysis of the concept of beautiful art (Part I) and the system of the

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individual arts (Part III).128 These forms are modes of artistic expression that dominate a

particular culture at one period of its development and that succeed one another as distinct types

of world-view (Weltanschauungen). Consequently, the forms of art provide the basis for

understanding both the artistic practices in each historical epoch as well as for the self-

understanding of the community through art in that epoch. (The main stages in the history of

art reflect the most decisive changes in the history of truth (Spirit). As we have already seen in

the Phenomenology, for Hegel the understanding of truth at any age of spiritual development

presupposes a respective conception of the divine; here, the main forms of art are differentiated

as particular modes of the religious consciousness dominating a historical age, too. As part of

his systematic discussion, Hegel also correlates the forms of art with individual types of art

(e.g., Greece with sculpture, the East with architecture); unique world-historical moments and

events are connected to particular works. The Great Sphinx of Egypt, for example, is for Hegel

both a great artwork and a dividing line between different civilizations. Finally, the historical

succession of the forms of art depends on the level of adequacy of the Idea’s configuration in

sensuous materiality (which will determine also art’s eventual dissolution.)

In other words, Hegel’s understanding of the truth of art is revealed and enacted

through art’s history. The symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art, as the three relations

of the Idea to sensuous shape, consist, respectively, in the “striving for” (Erstreben), the

“attainment” (Erreichen), and the “transcendence” (Überschreiten) of artistic form, i.e. of the

Ideal of beauty (LFA 1, 81). Accordingly, in traversing the various configurations of the forms

of art Spirit first seeks its sensuous identification, then attains its full correspondence with the

sensuous, and finally surpasses its sensuous shape. For that reason, Hegel claims the necessary

historicity of the sequence and the transitions between the three forms of art. This is also

128
Here we find one significant difference between Hegel and Heidegger, whose reflection on the essence of art
does not involve or rely on an account of the historical development of the arts that makes up most of Hegel's
lectures.

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implied in his view of the history of art as a progressive idealization of meaning that is

necessarily accompanied by a growing abstraction from materiality in the means utilized for the

realization of the beautiful (e.g., the development from architecture in symbolic art to poetry in

romantic art). As Gadamer claims, the succession and unfolding of the forms of art is therefore

inherently linked to Hegel’s thesis of art as a thing of the past.129

In her analysis of the historical function of art, Gethmann-Siefert also emphasizes that

the succession and development of the forms of art brings to the fore their essential historicity,

understood in terms of ideality which unfolds in time. In this unfolding, the specific unity of

the Idea and its external configuration in each of the art forms contributes to fulfilling the

historical vocation and task of art. The end-of-art thesis is therefore relative to the achievement

of unity of content/shape in each of the art forms and the level of its adequcy. The transition

(Übergang) from one form to the next, and along with it the differentiation in the “historical

impact” (Wirkung) of art within the respective historical epoch, provide philosophical insight

into the vocation of art.130 Gadamer supports such view, too; according to him, those transitions

matter not so much as linear points in time, but rather in terms of their ”arranged succession”

(Ordnung), as proceeding from the philosophical reflection upon them.131

One final remark: introducing the forms of art, Hegel also states: “after studying artistic

beauty itself and on its own account, we must see how beauty as a whole decomposes (zersetzt)

into its particular determinations (besonderen Bestimmungen)” (LFA 1, 75). The central idea in

the passage is that of a whole which decomposes in an orderly manner. The idea of dissolution

is conveyed by the verb zersetzen, which suggests, in addition to fragmentation, disintegration,

the eventual disappearance of the “wholly beautiful” object from view within the historical

development of the artistic Ideal. This is an explicit reference to the romantic form of art, in

129
H.G. Gadamer, “Die Stellung der Poesie im System der Hegelschen Ästhetik und die Frage des
Vergangenheitscharakters der Kunst,“ Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 8 (Tubingen: J.C.B.Mohr, 1993): 221-231.
130
Gethmann-Siefert, “Hegels These vom Ende der Kunst,” 222.
131
H.G. Gadamer, op. cit., 228.

72
which the destruction (zerfallen) of artistic beauty is carried out, and through this, the

dissolution of art.

3.2. The Story of Art from the Beginning to the End

In the beginning of the Lectures on Fine Art, Hegel claims that art, “considered in its

highest vocation, is and remains for us a thing of the past (ein Vergangenes)” (LFA 1, 11).

Many scholars have understood Hegel as declaring the “end” or “death”132 of art, the permanent

closure of the category “art.” Other commentators have argued convincingly that Hegel never

envisioned the end of art as such.133 According to those scholars, if properly understood within

the framework of his philosophical system, Hegel’s statement refers to the inherent limitations

of art to express the highest truth of absolute Spirit. By definition, art presents Spirit in a

sensuous form; it is thus a necessary moment in Spirit’s unfolding and education, followed and

superseded by religion and philosophy. For Spirit that has returned to itself from externality,

having reflected and assimilated into itself that externality, its own sensuous appearance in the

work of art is determined as already past, vorüber, vergangen. In Hegel’s words, “the ‘after’ of

art consists in the fact that there dwells in the Spirit the need to satisfy itself solely in its own

inner self as the true form for truth to take” (LFA 1, 103).

The history of art for Hegel unfolds as a story with a beginning, middle, and an end

(reminiscent, of course, of the progression of Kunstreligion in the Phenomenology). Art begins

132
For instance, Croce’s claim that Hegel lays “the whole [art] in its grave, leaving philosophy to write its epitaph.”
B. Croce, Aesthetics, tr. A. Maude, (NY: Noonday Press, 1958), p. 302 ff.
133
Among them A. Gethmann-Siefert in “Hegels These vom Ende der Kunst und der Klassizismus der Ästhetik”;
A. Grossmann, “Spur zum Heiligen. Kunst und Geschichte im Widerstreit zwischen Hegel und Heidegger,” in
Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 36, 1996; Jacques Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment; William Desmond, Art
and the Absolute. A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986). Curtis Carter argues that “Hegel did
not intend the death of art and [his aesthetics] implicitly liberates art from its past forms and from a narrow
construing of content.” Curtis Carter, “A Re-examination of the ‘Death of Art’” in Art and Logic in Hegel’s
Philosophy, ed. by Steinkraus, W. & Schmitz, K. (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1980), 85; Stephen Houlgate,
“Hegel and the ‘End’ of Art,” The Owl of Minerva, vol. 29/1 (Fall 1997): 1-19; Robert Pippin, “What Was Abstract
Art? (From the Point of View of Hegel),”; H.-G. Gadamer, “Ende der Kunst? Von Hegels Lehre vom
Vergangenheitscharakter der Kunst bis zur Anti-Kunst von heute,“ Gesammelte Werke Bd. 8 (Tübingen: J.C.B.
Mohr, 1993).

73
in a stage of indeterminacy that he describes as symbolic art, followed by its height in the stage

of classical art; the last stage is that of romantic art which seals art’s essential progress and

accomplishes its self-transcendence. However, the history of art is not complete (vollendet)

when art achieves its vocation and the Ideal in classical Greece; art’s Vollendung only comes

with the dissolution of the Ideal. This development is conditioned by the progressive

transformation of truth and the immanent limits of artistic form to express this truth. In Hegel’s

view, the onset of a modern, reflective culture in the romantic age gradually replaces works of

art as the only and sole means to satisfy the highest need of Spirit. Thus, with respect to its

highest need, art will become a thing of the past.

3.2.1. Symbolic Art

The beginning of art for Hegel is characterized by immediacy and indeterminacy.

Symbolic art is the historically first form of art for Hegel, but since it presents deficiencies with

respect to both its content and form, Hegel argues that this stage is only pre-art, or Vorkunst, the

“threshold” of art (LFA 1, 303). Symbolic art operates with an idea of the divine (as content)

that lacks differentiation, clarity and concreteness; the Idea is determined abstractly, and for that

reason, the correspondence of meaning and shape in the work of art remains abstract, too.

Hegel describes both the Oriental and Egyptian art as characterized by a “riddle” or an

“enigma,” like the enigma of the Sphinx. Architecture is the art typical for this period because

it provides forms of art closest to the immediacy of materiality in nature.

Symbolic art relates to the ancient religions of the East where the dominant religious

consciousness was one of awe before the infinite and reverence before its mystery. These

religions “could not master true beauty because their mythological ideas, the content and

thought of their works of art, were still indeterminate” (LFA 1, 74). This indeterminate

religious content and conception of the divine could only find expression in indefinite external

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forms, e.g., the Egyptian pyramids. At this stage, we see the struggle of art to become truly

artistic; yet the configurations of matter only manage to intimate a partial understanding of the

divine. Such artistic constructions have significance only as symbolic, pointing beyond

themselves to a fully transcendent and sublime content.

Therefore, symbolic art is conceived as merely an attempt to realize the reconciliation of

Idea and sensuous presentation, and external existents are understood to be the immediate

actuality and presence of the Absolute (LFA 1, 324). The meaning projected by consciousness

cannot be experienced as meaning in the artistic shape. Hegel thus argues that in symbolic art

the sensuous representation is not, as art demands, “formed,” “shaped,” and “invented” by the

Spirit; on the contrary, the adequate expression of the divine is “found” (vorgefundene) and

“enunciated” directly in the external things (LFA 1, 331). Only when Spirit becomes inwardly

clear to itself and only when the inner becomes free to picture to itself what it is in its essence in

a fully “spiritual act” (aus dem Geiste erfundene), does there begin the proper impulse towards

art (LFA 1, 351).

3.2.2. Classical Art

The full correspondence of form and content, of the natural and the spiritual that

characterizes the artistic Ideal appears for the first time in classical Greek art. Art reaches its

historical peak in Greece as Spirit permeates its external forms completely and fully; the natural

element in the work of art is entirely idealized and in it Spirit appears in its individuality.

Classical Greek sculptures - “the God-making art,” as H.S. Harris calls it - reveal precisely this

perfection in the embodiment of the divine in the human physical form; sculpture is the

exemplary art of the classical Ideal.134 While symbolic art uses the human form in order to

134
H.S. Harris, “The Resurrection of Art,” The Owl of Minerva 16/1 (Fall 1984): 5–20; 10. It is interesting to note
that the plastic artwork – specifically the classic sculpture of the Olympic god – is described in the Aesthetic as the
paradigm of the phenomenon of the beautiful, while in the Phenomenology it plays the role of highlighting the

75
represent something of the abstract qualities of the divine, classical art refers to nothing but

genuine human subjectivity. The human shape becomes the paradigmatic artistic form

“because the external human form is alone capable of revealing the spiritual in a sensuous way“

(LFA 1, 433). The Greek experience of the divine presupposes spiritual content that is uniquely

suited to artistic representation - in a way that was never so before and would never be so again.

“Nothing,” states Hegel, “can be or become more beautiful” (LFA I, 517). The development of

the classical form consists in a determination such that classical art engenders both form and

content out of itself, revealing its origin into its own sphere (sich selbst deutende Bedeutung).

What underlies this development is the notion of truth (as art’s content) that is determinate in

itself and suited for artistic representation in individual form. Therefore, only classical Greek

art accomplishes the highest artistic manifestation of spiritual truth.

As it obtains complete idealization of the natural and full incarnation of Spirit,

classical Greek art accomplishes the Ideal of art. It fulfills the highest artistic vocation in

giving direct expression to the freedom and religious beliefs of the Greek people. The

absolute unity of form and content achieved in Greek art has an ethical significance as it

reflects the ethical substance of the Greek polis. For the Greeks, Hegel argues, it was the

poets and artists who became the “creators” of their gods; they gave their nation a definite

idea of the “work of the Divine, or, in other words, the definite content of religion” (LFA 1,

102). Hegel writes:

[T]he poets and artists became for the Greeks the creators of their gods, i.e., the
artists gave the nation a determinate idea of the action, life, and effect of the Divine, in
other words, the determinate content of religion. And it was not as if these ideas and
doctrines were already there, in advance of poetry, in an abstract mode of
consciousness as universal religious propositions and determinations of thought, and
only later were first clothed in imagery by artists and given an external adornment in
poetry; on the contrary, the mode of artistic production was such that what fermented
in these poets they could work out only in this form of art and poetry (LFA 1, 102; my
emphasis).

religious phenomenon in the ritual worship and devotion that takes place in the temple, relevant for the living work
of art.

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 For Hegel, the great Greek poets and thinkers are first and foremost artists of

themselves; so “…Phidias, Plato, Sophocles above all [are] all of them out-and-out artists by

nature, ideal artists shaping themselves, individuals of a single cast, works of art standing there

like immortal and deathless images of the gods” (LFA 2, 719). Classical Greek art thus satisfies

the highest, absolute, need of Spirit, since it appears as the necessary but also the sole form in

which Spirit could become conscious of itself as the whole, as truth:

[W]hen art is present in its supreme perfection…it contains the kind of exposition most
essential to and most in correspondence with the content of its truth. Thus, for example,
in the case of the Greeks, art was the highest form in which the people represented the
gods to themselves and gave themselves some awareness of truth (LFA I, 102; my
emphasis).

In other words, the Greek understanding of the divine occurred in its truth not simply in art, but

as art; art fulfills its highest religious-historical function of sustaining the polis. Only in the

epoch of Greek art-religion was the spiritual content genuinely appropriate to its representation

in sensuous form; the ethical life in the community is itself beautiful.135 Hegel writes as

follows:

[T]he Greek people has brought its Spirit into its conscious perception, vision, and
representation, and has given them by art an existent embodiment which is perfectly
adequate to the true content. On account of this correspondence which lies at the
essence of Greek art and of Greek mythology too, art in Greece has become the
supreme expression of the Absolute, and Greek religion is the religion of art (Religion
der Kunst) itself (LFA 1, 438; my emphasis).

135
In the lectures on the philosophy of history, Hegel describes the Greek polis itself as a work of art: “This stamps
the Greek character as that of Individuality conditioned by Beauty, which is produced by Spirit, transforming the
merely Natural into an expression of its own being… it is not free, self-determining spirituality, but mere
naturalness formed to spirituality — spiritual Individuality. The Greek Spirit is the plastic artist, forming the stone
into a work of art. In this formative process the stone does not remain mere stone — the form being only
superinduced from without; but it is made an expression of the spiritual, even contrary to its nature, and thus
transformed. Conversely, the artist needs for his spiritual conceptions, stone, colors, sensuous forms to express his
idea. …The Egyptian Spirit also was a similar laborer in Matter, but the Natural had not yet been subjected to the
spiritual. No advance was made beyond a struggle and contest with it; the Natural still took an independent
position, and formed one side of the image, as in the body of the Sphinx. In Greek Beauty the sensuous is only a
sign, an expression, an envelope, in which Spirit manifests itself…. Such are the qualities of that Beautiful
Individuality, which constitutes the centre of the Greek character. We must now consider the several radiations
which this idea throws out in realizing itself. All issue in works of art, and we may arrange under three heads: the
subjective work of art, that is, the culture of the man himself; - the objective work of art, i.e., the shaping of the
world of divinities; - lastly, the political work of art - the form of the Constitution, and the relations of the
Individuals who compose it.” See Hegel’s Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree, (New York: Dover Publications,
1956); 257-258.

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Yet, attaining the artistic Ideal is only one moment in the history of art; Greek art is not its final

form but a transition to a new form of art. For Hegel, classical Greek art contains within itself

the principle of its own dissolution: it takes as its subject-matter Spirit, the universal and

infinite, in a sensuously concrete form and presents the unification of spiritual and sensuous

existence as the “correspondence” of the two (LFA 1, 79). The development of the individual’s

consciousness of the divine conditions a move beyond the anthropomorphic gods of Greek

religion to the spiritual god of Christianity; respectively, the history of art moves from the

classical form of art to the romantic. Spirit, as the infinite subjectivity of the Idea and an

absolute inwardness, cannot be shaped outwardly in its truth if it must remain molded into a

bodily existence.136 For this reason Hegel claims that “the content of the classical beauty of art

is of course still defective, like the religion of art itself” (LFA 1, 435). Classical art does

express Spirit because it presents it to itself in a sensuous form, but it does not express Spirit as

it is truly in itself (LFA 2, 703, 713). “Classical art and its beautiful religion therefore do not

satisfy the depth of Spirit; as concrete as they are in themselves, they remain indeed still abstract

for Spirit” (LFA 1, 436). Even though classical art achieves perfection in terms of the unity of

artistic beauty, it fails to achieve perfection in terms of representing absolute truth. It is art’s

peculiar destiny to expose the limits of classical beauty by surpassing its own attainment of the

Ideal.

In the classical artistic Ideal inheres the heterogeneity of the human concept exhibited in

the art work of Greek sculpture. This concept of humanity is of an anthropomorphic form that

136
One further point is Hegel’s analysis of the inherent contradiction within the Ideal – the (im)possibility of the
sensuous as perfect embodiment of the spiritual – in Greek sculpture. Hegel shows that the absolute perfection of
Greek sculpture is simultaneously a sign of its own ruin; that mourning and the sense of loss are at the heart of the
artistic form: “The blessed gods mourn as it were over their blessedness or their bodily form. We read in their faces
the fate that awaits them, and its development, as the actual emergence of that contradiction between loftiness and
particularity, between spirituality and sensuous existence, drags classical art itself to its ruin (Untergang)” (LFA I,
485). In a commentary on Greek art, A. Cutrofello writes that classical sculpture suggests that art itself is a work of
mourning. For further details, see Andrew Cutrofello, “The Blessed Gods Mourn’: What is Living-Dead in the
Legacy of Hegel,” The Owl of Minerva, 28/1 (Fall 1996): 25-38; 31.

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is human in shape but natural in matter (LFA 1, 432-436). The heterogeneity of the human

figure – matter (foreignness) and human form (homeliness), which Greek sculpture exhibits,

reflects the main distinction between substance (foreignness) and subject (homeliness) in

Hegel’s philosophical scheme. The sculptural art work is torn between the spectacle of simple

natural form and the ethical substance’s excessive nature. Greek sculpture is most significantly

foreign to the Christian concept of humanity; sculpture is anthropomorphic and hence foreign to

the Christian concept – the sculpted human form is exceeded by the natural matter in which it is

immersed. “Speechless transgression” rather than “expression” is the term that characterizes

the classical artist’s effort to return home from nature through beauty.

Therefore, the classical Ideal must be transcended as one essentially past form of Spirit’s

sensuous appearance, specifically as the past form of the beautiful embodiment of Spirit. The

transcendence is accomplished by the romantic form of art whose fundamental principle is the

return of Spirit to itself, within the inwardness of subjectivity. Romantic art can be considered

the effect, within art, of this new stage of truth that pushes it to go beyond art itself, eventually.

Whereas Greek beauty displays the inner life of spiritual individuality as entirely embodied in

corporeal shape, for romantic art it is absolutely necessary for the soul, although appearing in

externality, to “show itself at the same time as being brought back out of this corporeality into

itself and as living in itself” (LFA 1, 531). The classical artist is not a universally concrete

individual (this is achieved in romantic art). Spirit can find its correspondent existence only in

its own native spiritual world of feeling, the heart, and the inner life in general (LFA 1, 518).

The new task of romantic art is therefore defined as follows: “bringing before contemplation in

this human form not the immersion of the inner in external corporeality but, conversely, the

withdrawal of the inner into itself (Zurücknahme des Inneren in sich)” (LFA 1, 520).

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 3.2.3. Romantic Art

The romantic form of art presupposes a higher mode of consciousness, defined by a new

relationship of religion and art; this transformation proceeds from the mode of revelation of the

divine in Christianity. Because Christianity conceives God as absolute Spirit, “the true element

for the realization of this content is no longer the sensuous immediate existence of the spiritual

in the bodily form of man, but instead the inwardness of self-consciousness” (LFA 1, 80). As

Spirit turns inwardly, romantic art must accomplish a respective turn away from exteriorization

in sensuous matter. Necessarily, this is a turn of art against itself, as it performs the very

process of withdrawal and step beyond the sensuous (überschreiten) in its own medium of the

sensuous. The romantic form of art comes to expose this inner contradiction not just in itself,

but in the entire sphere of art:

This restrictedness lies in the fact that art in general takes as its subject-matter the Spirit
(i.e., the universal, infinite and concrete in its nature) in a sensuously concrete form, and
classical art presents the complete unification of the two. But in this blending of the two,
Spirit is not in fact represented in its true nature. For Spirit is the infinite subjectivity of
the Idea, which as absolute inwardness cannot freely and truly shape itself outwardly on
condition of remaining molded into a bodily existence as the one appropriate to it (LFA
1, 79).

Since Christianity is the essential presupposition for the romantic form of art,

subjectivity and its reconciliation with the divine now constitute the content of art and

distinguish it from the previous forms (LFA 2, 816-17). The romantic artist strives to achieve

the disclosure of Spirit in its true form, realizing, however, that the sensuous embodiment

ownmost to art fails to complete this task (LFA 1, 80-81). The material sensuous shape is

needed for the expression of the incarnate life and work of Christ, but is not capable of

presenting and communicating the subjective divine love hidden within. The inwardness of

love cannot appear in a bodily shape in contrast to the Greek gods whose spiritual freedom was

80
immersed in the idealized bodily shape, in actions and events.137 For the reconciliation of

subjectivity with God, Spirit must experience the death of its material counterpart, of the body,

in order to be free again.

According to Hegel’s argumentation, the principle of subjectivity implies the sacrifice of

the naïve unity of the Spirit in bodily form, as well as positing of the body as negative in order

to lift the inner life out of externality (LFA 2, 794). The experience of the death of the body

fulfills the last and ultimate return of Spirit to itself. The essentially artistic body of the classical

Ideal must live through its own dissolution, necessarily superseded by the infinite Christian

subjectivity, in accord with the development of the systematic concept of freedom. The

spiritual individuality of the classical Ideal is pre-moral and pre-historical since it cannot

overcome that which is only to be overcome by revealed religion, i.e. subjective morality and

historicity. The classical artistic Ideal incorporates the unity between nature and humanity,

where nature is no longer formless and foreign, but is not yet purified in the universally

mediated moral concept of humanity either.

What was impossible in classical art happens in romantic art: Spirit overcomes its own

corporeal finitude and thus elevates itself to infinite spirituality. The content of romantic art is

the human knowledge of having God within; the spiritual act of reconciliation happens in love,

as the absoluteness of Spirit in the return to itself out of externality (LFA 1, 539). The turn to

inwardness thoroughly transforms art’s task as representation of the absolute. The infinite

inward depth of subjectivity, defined by the most intimate relationship to the divine, manifests

an excess that goes beyond the confines of the artistic form. The romantic form is one where

137
The Greek gods not only mourn their bodily form, they are also “sightless”; in Hegel’s own poignant words, in
the Greek sculpted gods, “soul cannot meet soul nor eye eye” (LFA 1, 521). An interesting figure that marks the
transition between the classical and the romantic, in my view, is Hegel’s comment on the bust of Goethe: “it is the
firm, powerful, and timeless Spirit which, in the mask of encircling mortality, is on the point of letting this veil fall
away and still lets it just hang freely around itself” (LFA 1, 484). Hegel describes the very subject of the statue – the
subject of the past by determining its content through the perspective of the present. The romantic living artist
himself, Goethe, is the content of the Greek statue.

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the Idea begins to transcend what can be incorporated into any sensuous configuration. As in

symbolic art, there is here an excess but in reversed direction: it is the excess of Spirit over the

sensuous, rather than the dominance of sensuous materiality over Spirit. Having assimilated the

sensuous within its ideal totality, Spirit no longer needs the external-sensible explication in the

form of art. Spirit is self-sufficient in its inmost inwardness, and so, indifferent to external

presentation. The romantic arts of painting and music best express the principle of subjectivity

that governs romantic art; painting presents the “shining forth” of Spirit rather than the unity of

Spirit and its sensible shape as in classical art (LFA 2, 795). This new shift in form Hegel

describes as follows:

Spirit is pushed back into itself out of its own reconciliation in the corporeal into a
reconciliation of itself with itself. The simply solid (gediegene) totality of the Ideal is
dissolved, and it falls apart into the double totality of (a) subjective being in itself and
(b) the external appearance, in order to enable Spirit to reach through this disunity
[Trennung] a deeper reconciliation with its own element of inwardness (LFA 1, 518).

As subjectivity withdraws into itself, emancipating itself from externality, the task of

identifying sensuous elements to embody this free subjectivity becomes completely arbitrary;

meaning and artistic configuration become indifferent to one another (LFA 1, 531). Yet, the

unity of artistic beauty, as conceived in the Ideal, cannot subsist if meaning and its embodiment

are arbitrary and exist only in a “loose connection” (LFA 2, 794). Consequently, with sensuous

appearance becoming accidental and non-essential to art, art loses its ties with beauty: “the

beauty of the classical ideal, and therefore the beauty in its very own shape and its most

adequate content, is no longer the ultimate thing” (LFA 1, 518; my emphasis). With romantic

art “turning its back on the summit of beauty,” the artistic beauty of the Ideal has come to its

final decomposition and dissolution; now it is something “subordinate” (Untergeordnetes) for

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Spirit and art must turn to presenting a new spiritual beauty.138 The art of the past is “the no-

longer-beautiful art.”139

The romantic form of art is one of disunity, disintegration, scission. Hegel’s language

itself shows that: he describes it as Zwiespalt, Zerrissenheit, Zerfall, Trennung, Versöhnung,

Zerreißung, Rückkehr zu sich, Auseinanderfallen dieser Seiten, über sich selbst hinausgehen,

Zuffälligkeit von Inhalt und Gestaltung, Auflösung, etc. If classical Greece had been a beautiful

home for Spirit, Spirit is now displaced, homeless, dispersed. The unity (homeliness) however

cannot be restored by art itself but must be grasped (begreifen) by the philosophical concept

(Begriff) in order to find its truth there. As Gadamer suggests, in the new circumstances art has

to operate under a “more rigorous demand for truth” (höheren Wahrheitsanspruch).140 On the

other hand, by looking at the romantic form of art as a Zerfallsform (one of decline), the idea of

the Vollendung or completion, of the fullest realization of the possibilities of art, must be

rethought. Working through its disintegration is a new experience for Spirit; its ability to abide

in negativity will raise it out of its loss into its ownmost in the concept:

With this self-diremption (Zerreissung) there is bound up, conversely, the necessity of
rising out of this state of scission (within which the finite and the natural)… Therefore
the spiritual reconciliation is only to be apprehended and represented as an activity
(Tätigkeit), a movement (Bewegung) of the Spirit, as a process in the course of which a
struggle and a battle arises, and grief, death, the mournful (LFA 1, 522).

This development is reinforced by the emergence of a new subject-matter of art: the inner

subjective world of the individual. The new content of romantic art is “the depths and heights
138
For A. Hofstadter, it belongs to the destiny of art to destroy beauty and it is the task of romantic art to
accomplish it. “In der romantischen Kunst wird das klassische Bild zerrissen. Es bedarf solchen Zerreissens eben
weil seine Schönheit vollkommen ist…Das Geschick der Kunst: die Schönheit zu zerreissen. Die Aufgabe der
romantischen Kunst: die Vernichtung der Schönheit darzustellen.” See A. Hofstadter, “Die Kunst: Tod und
Verklärung,” in Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 11 (1974); 277. We come back here to the idea introduced in the beginning
of the discussion of the forms of art, namely, that in the progressive unfolding of art beauty decomposes (zersetzt)
and, ultimately, disappears from the realm of art. Beauty belongs to the past Ideal. This also shows Hegel’s own
evolution from the “Earliest System-Program of German Idealism” which claimed the idea of beauty as the summit
of rational knowing. The wider significance of this fact is that beauty will no longer be seen as an essential
condition for the possibility of the work of art – an argument that Nietzsche will introduce later on, against the
aesthetic tradition of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel himself. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, in Basic
Writings of Nietzsche, ed. W. Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1992); 103.
139
As the expression of Hans Robert Jauss goes, “die nicht mehr schönen Künste.”
140
H.-G. Gadamer, “Die Stellung der Poesie im System der Hegelschen Kunst,“ 229.

83
of the human heart as such, mankind in its joys and sorrows, its strivings, deeds and fates”

(LFA 1, 607). Hegel identifies it as the new “Holy of Holies” of art, or what he calls Humanus,

the human being now elevated to the status of ‘absolute’ content of art.141 With Humanus, art

ceases to be the presentation of a specific self-understanding of ethical life and the divine for a

historical community. Art is now free from a “bondage” to such a content and mode of

portrayal. Such “bondage,” Hegel says, is “a thing of the past,” and “[t]oday there’s no material

which stands in and for itself above this relativity, and even if one matter be raised above it, still

there is at least no absolute need for its representation by art” (kein absolutes Bedürfnis

vorhanden, daß er von der Kunst zur Darstellung gebracht werde) (LFA 1, 605; my emphasis).

In contrast to Greek Kunstreligion, the historical truth of the Christian religion is already

available for consciousness in a form other than art: art is no longer necessary as the sole form

for truth to take. Regardless of how free the artist is to create, those creations are no longer

great art for Hegel – there is no longer an absolute content for an absolute form.

As a result of these transformations, the artist’s own forming activity becomes the

content of artistic presentation. The artist is free to embody in the artistic object nothing but his

or her own creativity; subjective skill itself becomes the sole focus of the work of art (LFA 1,

607). The subject begins to create art as a signifier in which she can explicitly recognize herself

(in contrast to symbolic art, where Spirit was overwhelmed by the otherness of nature or

classical art, where spiritual individuality comes into its own but is still bound to nature as its

141
The idea of Humanus is an implicit reference to an epic poem of Goethe’s, “Die Geheimnisse,” as detailed by M.
Donougho in his “Remarks on ‘Humanus heißt der Heilige’” in Hegel-Studien, Band 17, (1982): 214 ff. Donougho
argues that the real problem for Hegel’s own time is that “there is no longer anything hidden to explicate, no
religious meaning to hold our interest and belief, no living dialectic of form and content. The artist has reduced both
form and content either to the empty play of his own ego or to what would be called nowadays the play of the
signifier, a string of tropes and literary conceits. …How can art retain its cultic power once it has become
secularized in this way […] How does Hegel think art can generate interest, now that everything has been brought
out to the surface? Quite simply by dusting off Oedipus’ old answer to the riddle of nature. For it is human
imagination that lies behind the formalist troping of artistic egoism.” (223) But Donougho also suggests that “the
‘new saint’ of Humanus amounts to a parody of religion and of art, too.” That is, Hegel would not think that new
movement of art as worthy of respect (which is in line with Hegel’s criticism of romantic irony and the relegation
of art to subjective caprice.)

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sensuous other). What distinguishes the romantic consciousness is its newly won freedom to

play with and work through the artwork’s meaning, to identify or distance itself from it, and to

make judgments about what is created and what was meant. Even in dissolving the artistic

object romantic consciousness is creative, being able to represent that creation and dissolution

conceptually to itself. The artist is said to produce a content which is ultimately nothing but her

own forming activity: form and content are reflexively one and the same. Such reflexivity is

already recognition of the fact that the actualization of self-conscious subjectivity entails

independence from the sensuous elements of art, freedom from “the power of sensuousness”

(LFA 1, 49). Beginning with the dissolution of romantic art, the identification with the images

of art becomes a question of philosophical cognition; the subject’s effort to grasp itself and to

express the full intensity of that experience in conceptual terms is the underlying logic of the

(self) transcendence of art.

4. Dissolution of the Romantic Form of Art

4.1 The Artist as tabula rasa

As it pushes the artistic form to its limit, romantic art carries out its disintegration

(zerfallen) into “contingent externality” and “contingent subjectivity,” respectively (LFA 1,

608). Spirit “dissolves every classical union of inwardness and external appearance and flees

out of the latter back into itself” (LFA 1, 301). As Hegel writes, with respect to both ideal

content and its creative formation the artist becomes a tabula rasa:

Bondage to a particular subject-matter and a mode of portrayal suitable for this

material alone are for artists today something past (etwas Vergangenes), and art
therefore has become a free instrument which the artist can wield in proportion to his
subjective skill in relation to any material of whatever kind (LFA 1, 605).

85
The immediate identity of the artist and his material (substance), which was characteristic of

the classical Ideal, has gone. The romantic artist is free individual spirituality and a free

creative agent, searching to ground himself in his own creative project. With regard to this

state, G. Agamben claims that “art is now the absolute freedom that seeks its end and its

foundation in itself, and does not need, substantially, any content, because it can only measure

itself against the vertigo caused by its own abyss.”142 Two implications of this claim are

worth mentioning here. On the one hand, following the line of analysis presented by G.

Agamben, there is the danger that the artist as “the pure creative formal principle” will reject

any substantive content in order to identify himself fully with that same principle (sort of

mimesis of his own creative activity).143 On the other hand, such artistic project – which

Hegel identifies with romantic irony - amounts to seeking necessity in the contingent or

raising the inessential to the essential. Given the contingency (Zufälligkeit) of form and

content, the artist has only his forming activity to represent as both form/content, in their

simultaneity and indistinguishability (i.e., no metaphysical truth behind). This is the

condition when the artist (and art) becomes her own object in an infinite negative potentiality

(when absolute subjectivity is taken as “null in its self-destruction” (LFA 1, 67).144 The ironic

stance of the romantic artist reverses the universal need of art which Hegel had defined as the

“doubling” of man in his own products and granting himself being in the sensuous. Now the

artist seeks to ground himself in the force of negation, in order to transcend the sensuous, thus

going beyond the form of art by dissolving it, not into philosophy, but into his/her own

singular life. This is precisely the self-transcendence, hinausgehen über sich, of art; nothing

142
G. Agamben, Man Without Content, 35.
143
Alternatively, in discussing the end-of-art thesis Gadamer writes that in the 19th century comes to an end the
self-evidence of the “Christian-humanistic tradition” and so the end of a great mythos. At the same time, “art
becomes art for the first time” (Kunst sich als Kunst weiß). As Gadamer puts it, the thesis of the pastness of art
means in truth only the liberation (Freisetzung der Kunst als Kunst) of art as art. See H.-G. Gadamer, “Die Stellung
der Poesie,” 228.
144
The German reads „ein Nichtiges, ein sich Vernichtendes,“ which Agamben translates alternatively as „a self-
annihilating nothing.“ G. Agamben, op. cit., 56.

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else is there to be presented and no subject to do so, but a pure figuration of the imagination,

an excess of pure inwardness.

The second implication: J. Taminiaux, in discussing Hegel’s thesis of the end of art

writes that the metaphysics of absolute subjectivity cannot integrate within itself that part of the

“death of art” theme which seems to subvert this subjectivity, namely “the ever-again-renewed

enigma of unconcealment,” which is imperceptible to metaphysics. That enigmatic revealing

has its roots in what metaphysics takes to be an arbitrary repetition of the insignificance of art,

the perpetuation of the tabula rasa.145 For Taminiaux, however, “this enigma of

unconcealment” plays a double role, so to say: by confirming the total freedom of the artist in

her creative activity and the search of possible content with which to identify herself, it

simultaneously confirms also the absolute abyss and powerlessness of (metaphysical)

subjectivity in the act of establishing itself.

4.2. Poetry at the Moment of Art’s Dissolution

In the second volume of the Aesthetics, dedicated to the individual types of arts, Hegel

develops a different line of the argument of the self-transcendence of art in the discussion of

romantic poetry. He writes, “Yet, precisely, at this highest stage, art now transcends itself (über

sich selbst hinaussteigen), in that it forsakes the element of a reconciled embodiment

(Versinnlichung) of the Spirit in sensuous form and passes over from the poetry of the

imagination to the prose of thought” (LFA 1, 88–89; LFA 2, 968). As the ultimate separation of

Spirit and sensuous externality, as the completion of the artistic Entsinnlichung

(denaturalization) of the spiritual and the Vergeistigung (spiritualization) of the sensuous in the

work of art, “poetry,” says Hegel, “destroys (auflösen) the fusion of spiritual inwardness with

external existence to an extent that begins to be incompatible with the original conception of

145
J. Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment, 71.

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art, with the result that poetry runs the risk (Gefahr) of losing itself in a transition from the

region of sense into that of the Spirit” (LFA 2, 968; my emphasis). Hegel calls the art of

speech or poetry “the absolute and true art of the Spirit and its expression as Spirit, since

everything that consciousness conceives and shapes spiritually within its own inner being

speech alone can adopt, express, and bring before our imagination” (LFA 626; LFA 1158).

Gadamer, commenting on this end of art, argues that the place of poetry in Hegel’s Aesthetics

reveals the logic of art’s teleology as a “hierarchy of spirituality” such that only poetry has its

being in Spirit alone.146 As we have seen, poetry at its highest (in drama), presents the full

potential of art to reveal the logic of resolving the internal conflicts of Spirit at specific

moments of human history. In the modern day, however, Spirit can no longer rest content with

this artistic expression alone. It is no longer adequate for it; art is by necessity complemented

by philosophy.147

There is thus a paradox in romantic art; it has to show in actual works of art the fact that

Spirit can no longer express itself completely or satisfactorily by means of artistic

representation, in particular, in the medium of sensuous externality. Hegel draws the final

conclusion and his verdict on the historical fate of art:

[i]n this way romantic art is the self-transcendence of art but within its own sphere and
in the form of art itself (Hinausgehen der Kunst über sich selbst, doch innerhalb ihres
eigenen Gebiets und in der Form der Kunst selber) (LFA 1, 80; my emphasis).

146
Jean-Luc Nancy describes this moment as the transgression of the “law of art” – the “law of sensible
exteriorization.” Jean-Luc Nancy, The Muses (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 42. See also H.-G.
Gadamer, “Die Stellung der Poesie im System der Hegelschen Ästhetik,” 229.
147
Consider also what Hegel says about a certain correlation between the modes of expression of art and
philosophy: “[T]he work of art differentiates the fundamental topic that has been selected as its center by
developing its particular features, and to these it imparts the appearance of independent freedom…This may
therefore remind us of the procedure of speculative thinking which likewise must develop the particular, out of the
primarily undifferentiated universal, up to independence… By means of this mode of treatment speculative
philosophy likewise produces works which, like poetical ones in this respect, have through their content itself
perfect self-identity and articulated development” (LFA 2, 984).

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 For Hegel, only philosophy will be able to heal such a self-inflicted wound and allow an

adequate grasp of the finality and significance of this experience.148 The further art’s

abstraction from its dependence on sensuous immediacy goes, the further artistic creativity

reveals itself as self-determining, free, self-authorized; such freedom is constitutive of the

nature of modern subjectivity against the ethical substance of classical art (LFA 1, 606). This is

also a further recognition of the increasing self-reflexivity of the artistic presentation in

romantic art; artistic form thus reaches beyond itself only to be taken up by religion first, and

then by philosophical reflection (LFA 1, 13).

Romantic art is most adequate in the revelation of its own truth insofar as it recognizes,

through its own failure, that the truth of humanity as reconciled with the divine cannot be fully

exhibited in any particular artistic form but is best articulated in the “prose” of thinking. This

means that, through the new rule of the principle of subjectivity, romantic art marks not only the

end of the classical period, but also effects, simultaneously, the transition from the realm of art

to the realm of philosophical thinking. In that realm, Spirit finally finds itself and no longer

needs the sensuous appearance in the works of art; rather, it needs to grasp conceptually, in a

philosophy of art, what has manifested itself as the true content of art. As A. Grossmann

argues, the mere sensuous appearance of the Idea is thus superseded by the self-sufficiency of

the absolute idea in philosophy.149

Having described the inner limits of romantic art, Hegel also states that in searching for

new artistic construal, the romantic artist cannot and should not revert blindly to adopt past

models: “When art has run its course, it does not end in a holding pattern but rather fades to

black: No Homer, Sophocles, etc., no Dante, Ariosto, or Shakespeare can appear in our day;

what was so magnificently sung, what so freely expressed, has been expressed; these are

148
Hofstadter refers to the dissolution of the romantic form of art as art’s “suicide.” A. Hofstadter, “How to Escape
from Hegel’s Aesthetics!”, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 9/1 (1982); 16.
149
A. Grossmann, “Spur zum Heiligen. Kunst und Geschichte im Widerstreit zwischen Hegel und Heidegger,”
Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 36 (1996), 63.

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materials, ways of looking at them and treating them which have been sung once and for all.

Only the present is fresh, the rest is pale and paler” (LFA 1, 608). He explicitly states that just

like artists and works of art are the products of their historical world,150 in the same way they

also fade away with the decay and decline of those historical worlds and worldviews. The

historical worldviews of the past cannot be restored in their living form into the present, for they

have lost their validity. For Hegel, “it is therefore no help to him [the artist] to adopt again, as

that substance, so to say, past world-views” (LFA 1, 606). On the other hand, if art has

succeeded in revealing its content and has exhausted the possibilities of artistic construal, then

the only reason and need to reawaken this art would be in order to turn against it, says Hegel

(LFA 1, 605). The artist of today, in Hegel’s view, is characterized by

his great and free soul [which] must know and possess its own ground, it must be sure
of itself and confident in itself. The great artist today needs in particular the free
development of the Spirit… [O]ver all determinate forms of intuition and presentation
the free Spirit [freie Geist] has made himself master in that he… ascribes value to
them only on the strength of the higher content which in the course of his recreation he
puts into them as adequate to them (LFA 1, 606).

However, besides the emphasis here on freedom and the individuality of the artist as

becoming self-legislating in modern times, Hegel is not providing more insight into how post-

romantic art should continue and look like. R. Pippin claims that Hegel gives us little sense

of how this great art shall be produced since “the only forms of art he allows as ‘post-

romantic’ are greatly diminished in ambition and importance.”151

4.3. Dissolution of Art in Comedy

In concluding the discussion of the dissolution or self-transcendence of art, it is

necessary to look at one final element. In all the lecture notes on Hegel's Aesthetics, comedy

150
“Further, every work of art belongs to its own time, its own people, its own environment, and depends on
particular historical and other ideas and purposes” (LFA 1, 14).
151
R. Pippin, “Absence of Aesthetics,” 415.

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has the last word. The dramatic arts are the highpoint of artistic meaning and the milieu in

which art transcends itself is comedy. Hegel writes, “[romantic] absolute subjective

personality… [s]atisfied in itself, it no longer unites itself with anything objective and

particularized and it brings the negative side of this dissolution into consciousness in the humor

of comedy. Yet on this peak comedy leads at the same time to the dissolution of art altogether”

(LFA 2, 1236; my emphasis).

Hegel finds in the irony of the objective humor of the romantic artist the rule of inner

subjectivity over artistic content, which implies the negation of the significance of the outer

world. He characterizes this as the free reign of irony when everything is a plaything for artistic

subjectivity (LFA 1, 601-602). The romantic art of irony presents the subordination of the

external content to the particular personality of the artist - the content of art becomes a pure

appearance, produced out of the artist’s own inwardness. Inner subjectivity and outer

configuration are formally independent, reflecting the romantic flight into inwardness. The

artist, in Hegel’s metaphor, behaves like a “dramatist,” who puts on stage his characters.

“Therefore the artist’s attitude to his topic is on the whole much the same as the dramatist’s

who brings on the scene and delineates different characters who are strange to him” (LFA 1,

605). The artist is self-determining, but by subverting all forms and limits of artistic creation

(because of their contingency), the artist indeed must face and question the boundaries of art –

with respect to both the content of art and artistic form. In the dramatic art, “the whole man

presents, by reproducing it, the work of art produced by man (der ganze Mensch das vom

Menschen produzierte Kunstwerk reproduzierend darstellt)” (LFA 2, 627).

The greatest merit of Hegel's discussion of comedy is his insight into subjectivity and

particularity as the distinguishing features of the genre: “What is comical [...] is the subjectivity

that makes its own actions contradictory and so brings them to nothing” (LFA 2, 1220). The

comic character aims to elevate the self and self-consciousness above and against objectivity,

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but it is precisely this effort that is negated in comedy. Hegel writes that in comedy the reduced

reality is brought into artistic portrayal in such a way that it destroys itself from within, “in the

madness of its ruin,” so that precisely “in this self-destruction of the right, the true can display

itself in this reflection as a fixed and abiding power, and madness and unreason are now left

with the power of directly contradicting what is inherently true” (LFA 1, 511). He is also quick

to mark positively what he calls “objective humor” versus “subjective” humor, which he

considers more subversive and dangerous. Humor basically loses sight of, and ceases to

pursue, the embodiment of reconciliation (of inwardness and externality) – which, as Hegel

emphasized in the beginning of the lectures, is the proper task of art.

4.4. Hegel’s Vision of a Post-romantic Art

Concerning the art of his own time, Hegel does not have a single or unified judgment on

any of the artists or artworks of that period. He appears quite enthusiastic about Dutch painting

which he calls the most perfect, “vornehmlichste.” Not because the paintings represent some

Ideal, not because their representations are lifelike, but because of the profundity of grasping

artistically this “most transitory and fugitive material, and to give it permanence for our

contemplation in the fullness of its life, is the hard task of art at this stage” (LFA 1, 599). What

meets the eye now is the subjective re-creation of the external world in light and color, which is,

as it were, “an objective music, a peal in color.”152 In Hegel’s words, “The one thing certain

about beauty is, as it were, appearance for its own sake, and art is mastery in the portrayal of all

the secrets of this ever profounder pure appearance of external realities” (LFA 1, 598). In

Dutch painting, A. Grossmann claims, Hegel discovered the path of religious art to the profane,

152
On Hegel’s interest in painting, see also J. Sallis and his “Carnation and the Eccentricity of Painting,” in
Transfigurements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); 74-105.

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the freeing of art from Christian religious contents and immersing itself into mundane

matters.153

Among those who have tried to discern how art could develop in the modern times, what

new forms of art could follow upon the end of romantic art, based on Hegel’s point of view (or

the few indications that he gives), is Stephen Houlgate.154 He places emphasis on Protestantism

because it frees art from being dominated by religion and allows it to become fully secular. In

Houlgate’s view this is significant for Hegel because in the modern times, “Protestantism

allows art to explore with a good conscience the subtle beauty of everyday. Once art has

become liberated in this way, however, its distinctive vocation is no longer to give expression to

the Divine. Art is thus no longer able to fulfill its highest calling.” 155 At the same time, Hegel

is critical of art that does not display images of concrete life and human freedom, but give

expression to the artist’s creative activity itself – abstracting from the concrete embodied form

that human freedom may take (LFA 1, 600). This art does not have the divine as its content but

presents the free play of artistic creation:

In general, in similar productions of this kind we have before us no subjective longing,

no being in love, no desire, but a pure delight in the topics, an inexhaustible self-yielding
of imagination, a harmless play, a freedom in toying alike with rhyme and ingenious
metres—and, with all this, a depth of feeling and a cheerfulness of the inwardly self-
moving heart which through the serenity of the outward shape lift the soul high above all
painful entanglement in the restrictions of the real world (LFA 1, 611).

Houlgate also argues that Hegel would advocate a modern art of beauty because of his

belief that in the modern world it is “concrete human freedom and life” that have to be

expressed, instead of the “abstract, subjective freedom of Romantic irony.” For Houlgate,

“Hegel thinks that a new form of art, which continues to fulfill the genuine task of art, is

resurrected from the “death” of art in ironic humor.”156 This new form of art may not be

153
A. Grossmann, “Question of Art,” 119-120.
154
Stephen Houlgate, “Hegel and the ‘End’ of Art,” 1-19.
155
Ibid., 14.
156
Ibid., 14.

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capable of fulfilling the highest vocation of art – expressing the truth of religion – but can

present “in a concrete, determinate form secular human freedom and natural life.” For Hegel,

the new content of his contemporary art would be, for instance, “the appearance and activity of

imperishable humanity in its many-sided significance and endless all-round development which

in this reservoir of human situations and feelings can now constitute the absolute content of our

art” (LFA 1, 608). In Houlgate’s view, art will continue to be a need for us in the modern world

just like philosophy and religion; still, he maintains that modern art should “offer us the

concrete intuition of freedom and life incarnate,” otherwise it would be depriving us of an

essential form of self-consciousness.157

In contrast to Houlgate, R. Pippin maintains that the art of modernity (for Hegel in his

own time this was late romanticism) must ultimately become “an art which transcends itself as

art,’ eschews as nostalgic, not genuine, both the beautiful as ideal, as a vehicle for the

externalization and recognition of our highest values, as well as the reliance on inwardness,

authenticity, purity of heart and the heightened importance of subjectivity.”158 Pippin, for

example, also argues that Hegel simply “failed to imagine,” to think of a postromantic form of

art – “an outer form for a post-romantic understanding of freedom” – and his failure should not

be justified as a “systematic” or “necessary exclusion” given the requirements of Hegel’s

philosophy.159

It is true, and commentators have pointed this out, that Hegel does not provide much

information or perspectives what possible post-modern forms of art would look like in the wake

of the dissolution of romantic art. The various readings of the meaning of such dissolution

certainly do not help in figuring out what such post-Hegelian art would be. One reason for this

is also the way Hegel justifies the progression and sequence of the forms of art. As we have

seen, the universal art forms are the historical expressions of the Ideal, in terms of their

157
Ibid., 18.
158
R. Pippin, “Absence of Aesthetics,” 413.
159
Ibid., 415, note 44.

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adequacy in presenting the absolute subject-matter in art (LFA 1, 607). The forms of art have a

bearing above all on the absolute truth which art attains, and in Hegel’s account the origin of

their particular differences is rooted in the specific interpretation of what counts for

consciousness as absolute and carries in itself the principle for its mode of configuration (LFA

1, 606). The transitions between the forms themselves reveal their historicity and raise

questions about the relation between philosophy as a system and art. If art is no longer the

highest need for Spirit, does it mean that it has lost all capacity to satisfy any need or that there

has been a shift to reflection as the highest need of Spirit in the present? (Recall that art is by

definition limited to only a certain degree of accomplishing its task, due to its form.) Hegel

maintains that the transitions between the forms of art must be grasped as logically necessary

but not as dialectically ordered (this is the argument raised by A. Grossmann against C.

Carter.)160 Romantic art, for instance, does not effect a synthesis of the symbolic and classical,

but repeats – though in a different mode, the incongruence of ideal content and sensuous shape

characteristic for symbolic art. For R. Pippin, the historical succession of art forms emphasizes

Hegel’s role as a ”founder of the historical study of art,” in particular the fact that he is “the

most important proponent of the idea that artworks must be understood as of their time,” as part

of the existing Weltanschauung. That would also support the thesis that Hegel’s statement of

the end of art is relative to a concrete historical epoch, i.e. art cannot “matter,” as Pippin says, to

us in the same way it did in his own or some other time.161 Any post-romantic art would have

to take account of the already exposed limitation of art as a vehicle of self-knowledge; building

on that, it should seek its own way of gaining relevance to the modern (and post-modern)

subject.

160
A. Grossmann, „Spur zum Heiligen,“ 59.
161
R. Pippin “What Was Abstract Art,” 12.

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CONCLUSION

Let me summarize the points I have presented in this chapter regarding Hegel’s view on

great art and the end (pastness) of art.

1. Hegel’s thesis concerns the pastness of art as premised on two basic claims. The

first acknowledges that art no longer serves Spirit’s highest needs (as it once did); the second

concerns the relationship between art and philosophy and the implication that art eventually

must be transcended into philosophy (which puts art in a position of subordination.) Just as

important and linked to the above point is Hegel’s insight that, particularly modern art,

inevitably and necessarily leads us to question art’s claim to absoluteness and the historical

relevance of art (i.e., its capacity to embody basic metaphysical truths reflective of a given age).

The distinction Hegel introduces between art (great art) and non-art rests upon that very

capacity of art to embody and represent the highest ethical truths as constitutive of a historical

community.

Evidenced by the history of art in Hegel’s lectures, what brings art to its historical

culmination and the overcoming of its form as spiritual condition and highest need of Spirit is

the consummation of the possibilities of artistic representation of the absolute. The self-

transcendence of art does not mean the death of art and certainly not, the termination of artistic

production. It means that, from the point of view of philosophical reflection, the sense of unity

(of nature and ideality), achieved in the work of art no longer counts as the highest truth. The

absolute is rational and can only find its ultimate explication in the conceptual discourse of

reason rather than in the sensuous configurations of art. The Aesthetics performs the same

movement of philosophical reflection on art as the Phenomenology of Spirit: the self-

transcendence of art happens once it has unfolded in time and it is “us” philosophers who are

contemplating (betrachten) it now. As Hegel says at the end of the Aesthetics, we have

succeeded in “weaving” a philosophical garland of “every essential category of the beautiful

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and every essential form of art to art.” Such weaving, Hegel says, is the “worthiest” task of

philosophy.

2. It should also have become clear from the exposition that Hegel does not intend the

“end,” “death” or “termination” of art. We can distinguish the following basic claims (or

“ends”), as they pertain to the fate of art described in the Aesthetics. Hegel speaks 1) of the past

character of great art (as vergangen, ein Vergangenes). When referring to the pastness of art, he

means specifically the great art of classical Greece (it is great because it is the art of the artistic

Ideal and expresses the highest truths of Spirit). Hegel refers to 2) the “dissolution,”

“transcendence,” “self-transcendence” (Auflösung, Aufhebung, Hinausgehen über sich) of the

form of art as the sensuous representation of an absolute content. This happens in the period of

romantic art, in the epoch of Christianity. Hegel also claims 3) that art “no longer counts for us

as the highest manner in which truth fashions existence for itself.” These claims are defended

by Hegel and exemplified on the level of the particular art forms as well as the individual arts

(the levels of essential and empirical history of art). The development of the forms of art, from

the symbolic to the romantic, marks the gradual movement from the non-reflective

identification in the works of art (in symbolic art) to the conscious, reflective self-understanding

in the concepts about art (what is specifically characteristic for modern post-romantic culture).

Post-Hegel artists and spectators of art alike can no longer live in art as it was the case with the

Greek Kunstreligion; the time of the great art of classical Greece as the ethos of the community

is past. Art no longer “matters to us” in the same way with its capacity to attain the synthesis of

the individual and the universal, of thought and sensibility – a synthesis that defined the

beautiful art of the Ideal.162

162
See R. Taft, “Art and Philosophy,” 161-162. He argues that with the loss of its historical role for the community
in modern times and with the gradual abandonment of the idea of a mythology of reason, art also suffers a
‘relativization’ and is displaced – a necessary displacement required by the philosophical system. Such
displacement is reflected in the premise that epochs in the history of art are connected to the history of Spirit.

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 3. The necessity of art’s transcendence, as we have seen, is generated by the self-

articulation of the Concept: as long as a particular configuration of the Concept remains

inadequate to its content, then that configuration will dissolve and be superseded by a new and

more adequate shape. In the realm of art there remains a difference introduced and preserved

by sensuous materiality that must be overcome in a more primordial identity; the sensuous

marks a limit of art’s achievement in speculative knowing. Because art cannot grant the

transparency in which Spirit reveals its absolute truth, as already quoted, “art no longer counts

for us as the highest manner in which truth fashions an existence for itself” (LFA 1, 103). With

this realization, the realm of beautiful art has been completed and superseded by philosophy.

Hegel states:

Therefore we acquire as the culmination of the romantic in general the contingency of

both outer and inner, and the separation of these two sides, whereby art annuls itself
(sich aufheben) and brings home to our minds that we must acquire higher forms of the
apprehension of truth than those which art is in a position to supply (LFA 1, 529; my
emphasis).

4. Hegel’s claim is thus essentially not about the end (death, termination) of art as such,

but the end of art’s distinct cultural and historical function; it is also an end of a distinct and

unique human need for art (I am following here the argumentation developed by authors such as

A. Gethmann-Siefert, A. Grossmann). The pastness of art is conditioned not only by

philosophical discourse superseding art, but also by the progressing rationalization of modern

culture; its prosaic, non-heroic nature comes to dominate so that the artistic image of truth is

displaced, no longer needed, because it can be grasped conceptually.

5. As the discussion of both the Phenomenology and the Aesthetics showed, Greek art as

the Ideal of beauty is granted a special place in the history of art. The example of classical

Greek art reveals the essential traits of the cultural and religious function of great art for the

human community. The accomplishment of Greek art should be understood in terms of an

overall project for the realization of human nature in its highest possibility, the potential for the

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realization of the principles of reason in an encompassing political and religious worldview.

This is the foundation of the harmony, created by art, between nature, political life, and culture

in Greece. Does this mean Hegel’s aesthetics is classicist?

For A. Grossmann, Hegel’s aesthetics shares the classicist dogma, supporting the

exemplary character of classical Greek art as the Ideal. But Grossmann also specifies that

Hegel does not, on that basis, derive rules for the present or future of art, unlike Winckelmann

who suggests the imitation of the ancient.163 Hegel can, with Goethe, claim that beauty

achieves its highest form in classical Greece, but unlike Goethe Hegel does not advocate a

return and renewal of classical art nor making it into a paradigm for modern times. If we wish

to consider Hegel’s Aesthetics as a response to the homesick spirits of his own historical time

who seek both after the simple unity of the beautiful and the sublimity of nature as a possible

home, the (German) romantics’ quest for a Greek home may turn out to be a quest for the Ideal

as the illusion of existence. The very perspective of the Romantics creates the Ideal out of the

impossibility of its existence. The pastness of art and the dissolution of the beautiful may

provoke a reading of Hegel that man is a homeless being who lives through all and only the

impossible Ideal of the feeling of being at home. A possible correlate to this idea can be found

in Hölderlin’s Hyperion, in Hölderlin’s verse at the end of “The Origin of the Work of Art” or

in Heidegger’s charge against aesthetics as having displaced true art and against the danger of

the technological age for art and for human being. I would hesitate, though, to argue that

Hegel’s aesthetics is classicist or that his project is one of nostalgia for Greece.

In his lectures, Hegel offers a discussion of Schiller’s poem “Die Götter

Griechenlands” (LFA 1, 507). In its first version, the poem had expressed a powerful

“longing [Sehnsucht]” for the Greek past and a sharp critique of Christian culture. Schiller

163
A. Grossmann, Spur zum Heiligen, 64. In support of the no-classicism idea see also Donougho, “…that his
[Hegel’s] aesthetic philosophy is neither classicist (it does not subsume everything to sculpture) nor modernist (it
does not dissolve all into subjectivity).” M. Donougho, “Hegel’s Art of Memory,” 159.

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revised the poem some years later and added a stanza that acknowledges “Was unsterblich im

Gesang soll leben/Muss im Leben untergehn” (What shall live undyingly in song (i.e., the

gods of Greece)/ must pass away in life). Hegel writes, referring to the above lines: “With

these words, there is ratified what we have just mentioned” – namely, that the Greek picture

of the world, “the Greek gods had their seat only in ideas and imagination; they could neither

maintain their place in the reality of life nor give final satisfaction to the finite Spirit” (LFA 1,

508).

According to Gethmann-Siefert, the argument of Hegel’s alleged classicism in the

Aesthetics is founded on the premise that the historical function of art is fully understood as

based on a past “Ideal,” on the function of art in ancient Greece. She argues that we need to

look at the end-of-art thesis in its specific reference to the past character of the Greek ideal

(Vergangenheitscharakter des griechischen Ideals).164 Only thus can we grasp Hegel’s true

intent, i.e., determining Greek art as the manifestation of the Ideal, understood as the capacity of

art to create something significant, not in terms of following canonical (classical) rules or

measures for producing beautiful artistic objects. In this respect, the thesis of the past character

of art does not ascribe a classical bent to Hegel, because he is not passing aesthetic judgment on

the exemplarity of classical art for past and future forms of art. For Gethmann-Siefert, Hegel’s

‘classicism’ does not mean privileging the past over the present, nor is Hegel advocating the

return or repetition of Greek art and culture.165

In positing Greece as the Ideal, Hegel also has in mind that the actualization of the Ideal

shows the pastness of a specific realization of the Concept. Here as well Hegel’s arguments are

not purely aesthetic but historical-philosophical, with respect to the necessary progress of the

actualization [Verwirklichung] of reason and freedom to a higher stage. The “Ideal” for Hegel

is past not simply with regard to art and artworks but with regard to their historical function as

164
Gethmann-Siefert, “Ende der Kunst,” 226-7.
165
Ibid., 232.

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worldviews: this must change in order to reflect the consciousness of a new kind of freedom for

romantic subjectivity. Furthermore, in terms of the relationship between the “moderns and the

ancients,” in the Aesthetics Hegel seems to argue that with respect to the universality of the

historical task of art ancient art supersedes modern; with respect to the capacity for cognition

and mediation of truth, the modern world surpasses the ancient. So, Gethmann-Siefert

concludes, when Hegel speaks of Greek art as the Ideal, he does not mean it as an aesthetic

model, but rather as an “exemplary cultural function of art” in history which cannot be

repeated. Greece is not the “future” of the modern world.166 The Greek Ideal is unique – one

and unrepeatable – and only historical reflection (discerning the Ideal in works of art) can bring

it back for us. As she says, it is by determining the historical-cultural function of art through the

Ideal that it becomes possible to see Hegel’s aesthetics as a model for conceiving the historicity

and “public significance” [Gesellschaftlichkeit] of art.

6. Today – in the time of Hegel and ours as well - art no longer satisfies the spiritual

needs the Greeks found in it. Classical Greek art as the artistic Ideal is past in terms of the

unrepeatability of one form of historical realization of Spirit itself, the realization of truth in

beautiful sensuous appearance. Modern culture, as philosophically reflective, has gone beyond

the reverence of a divinely significant object created by art; respectively, modern art has

become an “art of reflection.” This is what Hegel means when he says:

[w]e may well hope that art will always rise higher and come to perfection (sich
vollenden), but the form of art has ceased to be the supreme need of the Spirit. No
matter how excellent we find the statues of the Greek gods, no matter how we see God
the father, Christ, and Mary so estimably and perfectly portrayed: it is no help; we bow
the knee no longer (before these artistic portrayals) (LFA 1, 103; my emphasis).

In the modern world, art is no longer expected to accomplish world-historical tasks or provide

understanding of religious and ethical life through beautiful creations. Whereas in the Greek

polis the “aesthetic education” of the individual succeeded through the visions of the beautifully

166
Ibid., 240.

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sculpted gods, in the modern state, in order to elevate the individual to a free “citizen” and an

autonomous subject, art becomes a matter of formal education, of cultural policy, of museums

and cultural institutions.167 Art will continue to be produced, but great art as the sole

presentation of historical truth is a thing of the past.168

Yet, modern (post)romantic art may surpass Greek art, because it is the creation of a free

rational subject (individual spirituality). In R. Pippin’s formulation, “the art of the Greek polis,

qua art, is better art, but... modern romantic art is simply a greater human accomplishment.”169

The world of today still requires art in order to accomplish the reflection that can bring higher

satisfaction to reason (LFA 1, 10). Art is in a significant sense memorial, endowed with the role

of a reminder; as Hegel says, art is a “call” to us to reflect on truth. This is why Hegel can

speak of art rising ever higher and coming to perfection and, at the same time, claim that it can

no longer satisfy the highest demand of reason (LFA 1, 103).

7. While it is clear that no revival of great (Greek) art is possible for Hegel, it is also

clear that art cannot be expelled from the philosophical system for philosophy is the “after” of

art. If the possibility of art, i.e., for the end of art, comes into question for Hegel and his

contemporaries, it is because that culture is founded on understanding itself historically; the

reflection upon itself through past art is a condition of its existence (LFA 1, 606). We can now

see better, philosophically, what art was and define its essential truth as related to Spirit. The

“end” of art requires the systematic speculative knowledge concerning art. (Recall Hegel’s

167
A. Grossmann, “Hegel, Heidegger, and the Question of Art Today,” 120-121. See also A. Gethmann-Siefert,
“’Ende der Kunst’ und ‘Klassizismus’,” 207.
168
A similar thesis is suggested by H.-G. Gadamer: “When Hegel spoke of art as a thing of the past he meant that
art was no longer understood as a presentation of the divine in the self-evident and unproblematical way in which it
had been understood in the Greek world… For us the work of art is no longer the presence of the divine that we
revere. The claim that art is a thing of the past implies that with the close of antiquity, art inevitably appeared to
require justification… So long as art occupied a legitimate place in the world, it was clearly able to effect an
integration between community, society, and the church on the one hand and the self-understanding of the creative
artist on the other. Our problem is precisely the fact that this self-evident integration … no longer exists.” See H.-
G. Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, 6.
169
R. Pippin, “What Was Abstract Art?”, 15.

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words that once philosophy comprehends its concept, it comprehends the concept of art as well,

assigning it to a begriffene Geschichte) (LFA 1, 56).

Here again surfaces the question of art’s becoming past in relation to the requirements

of philosophical reflection as retrospective: to know the essence of art, we must grasp its

progressive unfolding in the different historical stages until its final achievement. Since the

essence of art is the configuration of the Concept in time, art’s history unfolds within the

bounds of a teleological order with a determinate beginning and a determinate end. This order

presumes the systematic requirements of Hegel’s philosophy of absolute knowledge: art is

declared absolute, but its absoluteness must be grounded and ratified in philosophical

reflection. As we have seen, art is only one way of representing the truth of the absolute; to

know the absolute, we must experience art in order to grasp the whole. On the other hand, only

philosophy is capable of realizing the synthesis of the sensuous and the ideal, of the particular

and the universal (the synthesis which art itself is called to effect and “unveil”). For this reason,

Hegel believes that art today gives way to the philosophy of art, which is now “a greater need in

our day than it was in days when art, by itself as art yielded a full satisfaction, art invites us to

intellectual consideration, and that not for the purpose of creating art again, but for knowing

philosophically what art is” (LFA I, 11; my emphasis). In the modern age of Hegel, as

Heidegger claims, aesthetics reaches its greatest heights.

In the end, what the Aesthetics teaches us is that art is an original project toward

conceptual self-understanding: thus the simultaneity in the beginning (and end) of art and

history (poetic creation that is also speculative reflection). We achieve in and through the work

of art unique knowledge of ourselves, because the experience of art is an experience of the

ontological structure of self-consciousness, wholly determined by freedom.170 Being both

170
“The universal need for art, that is to say, is man's rational need to lift the inner and outer world into his
spiritual consciousness as an object in which he recognizes again his own self. The need for this spiritual
freedom he satisfies, on the one hand, within by making what is within him explicit to himself, but
correspondingly by giving outward reality to this his explicit self, and thus in this duplication of himself by

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poetic and prosaic, Spirit seeks recognition of itself in the constant process of (trans)formation,

of its own education; it is a never-ending cycle of beginnings and endings, a restless labor of

loss and gain and a process of continuous farewell (to itself) in view of new levels of knowledge

thus acquired. Is art irrevocably past in that process? Hegel’s words at the end of his lectures

on art (seem to) hold the answer: “[I]n art we have to do…with the presence and reconciliation

of the Absolute in what is apparent and visible, with an unfolding of the truth which is not

exhausted in natural history but revealed in world-history. Art itself is the most beautiful side of

that history and it is the best compensation for hard work in the world and the bitter labor for

knowledge” (LFA 2, 1236).

bringing what is in him into sight and knowledge for himself and others. This is the free rationality of man in
which all acting and knowing, as well as art too, have their basis and necessary origin” (LFA 1, 31-32; my
emphasis).

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 PART TWO

HEIDEGGER ON THE BEING OF ART

CHAPTER THREE

HEIDEGGER’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE AESTHETIC TRADITION

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The previous two chapters followed the historical unfolding of art as inscribed within

the (trans)formation of Hegelian spirit. In this chapter, my task is two-fold: first, I aim to

outline the common ground (the “Hegelian legacy” in Heidegger’s view on art, in J.

Taminiaux’s words) between Hegel and Heidegger on the nature of great art, evaluating each

philosopher’s position within the tradition of Western aesthetics. Then I turn to Heidegger’s

reading of Hegel’s end-of-art statement to show how it informs his own project of revealing the

being of the work of art. Heidegger reinterprets Hegel’s statement of art as past (through a

critical reading of both Hegel and the history of aesthetics), seeking in this way to twist free of

the aesthetic tradition. As we have seen, Hegel opens up the perspective for thinking through

the end of art insofar as art must have transcended itself before it is transcended into

philosophy. While for Hegel the end of great art happens as aesthetics reaches its fulfillment,

for Heidegger the decline happens already at the beginning of aesthetics. Heidegger claims that

the tradition of aesthetics, to which Hegel also belongs, is metaphysical in nature and has thus

failed to grasp the essence of art; therefore his own project counters the Hegelian by focusing on

the nature of the origin of the work of art.

To set up the context for this examination, I turn first to Heidegger’s engagement with

Hegel in the “The Origin of the Work of Art,” concentrating on the links between the nature of

great art and art’s fate in the perspective of the history of Being. For Heidegger, this is a

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question about the possibility for art to be an origin once again, that is, to become again the

place for decision on the destiny of a historical people. In the “Origin” essay, he claims that the

history of the nature of Western art corresponds to the changes in the nature of truth in Western

metaphysics. The most decisive such change is the onset of metaphysics, which begins with

Plato and Aristotle and which has effected the concealment of the truth of Being. This event

coincides with the emergence of aesthetics and the oblivion of the original experience of the

beautiful as self-disclosure of Being. The forgetting of Being, in Heidegger’s view, under the

spell of the metaphysics of identity and subjectivity, has governed the history of

representational thinking; in modern times, the oblivion of Being has come to power with

technology and the grip of technological Gestell.

Therefore, Heidegger’s project is defined as “overcoming aesthetics”; as such, it is

inherently linked with his understanding and critical stance to metaphysics: an engagement with

the tradition of aesthetics must bring into view what the tradition of metaphysics has so far

covered over. To engage with the past history of art means to reappropriate what has been kept

unthought (promised) in the revealing of Being.171 If an end of metaphysics is to be thought for

Heidegger, it would be in terms of the accomplishment and exhaustion of the metaphysics of

presence, while that end itself points to the possibility of new relationality (in terms of an

originary disclosure of Being and Dasein, as Ereignis). Such possibility is seen as belonging to

the end insofar as the forgottenness of Being holds also the capacity for recollection (of the

unthought) and a new commencement. It is what Heidegger calls Überwindung, the

overcoming of the tradition in order to liberate the possibility of a new future.172

171
Gadamer writes that “when Heidegger speaks of the consummation of Western metaphysics which Hegel
achieves, he is not only speaking of an historical fact. He is at the same time specifying a task which lies before us,
that of ‘overcoming metaphysics’ as he calls it. In this way …a reference is also made thereby to the inception of
metaphysics in the thought of Plato and Aristotle.” See H.-G. Gadamer and P. Christopher Smith (trans.), Hegel's
Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies, (Yale University Press, 1982); 100.
172
The necessity of such critical engagement with the history of ontology is voiced by Heidegger also earlier in
Being and Time, where he writes: “If the question of being is to achieve clarity regarding its own history, a
loosening of the sclerotic tradition and a dissolving of the concealments produced by it is necessary. We understand
this task as the destructuring of the traditional content of ancient ontology along the guidelines of the question of

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 The second part of the chapter develops Heidegger’s view on (great) art, specifically his

arguments for the necessity and the vocation of art, as presented in his first Nietzsche course,

The Will to Power as Art. In many respects, the Nietzsche interpretation and the “Origin” essay

complement each other in meaningful ways. I focus on Heidegger’s presentation of the history

of aesthetics, especially what he identifies as the “six basic developments” within that history.

Several main points guide my analysis. Heidegger’s account of the history of aesthetics and of

the aesthetic conception of art targets: 1) the notion of art as reproductive and representational,

since for Heidegger the work of art is the place of the occurrence of truth; 2) the mimetic notion

of art (Plato), which presupposes the ontological “distance” of art as (copy) from truth as idea;

3) the metaphysical “form-matter” conception of art which underlies the conception of the

thing-being of the work of art; and 4) the determination of art and the beautiful in relation to

man’s state of feeling and experience (Erlebnis), that is, the subjectification (in Gadamer’s

term) and humanization of art.

The Auseinandersetzung with and the overcoming of aesthetics is necessitated by what

Heidegger perceives to be the danger of aesthetics: the transformation and concealing of the

essence of art as one of the ways in which the truth of beings as a whole comes to be. Thus,

Heidegger challenges the aesthetic view of art by conceiving of the nature of truth as an

originary disclosure of being which takes place in the work of art. Art is thought as an originary

power that can save us from the dangers of an aesthetic (and subsequently, of a technological)

mode of revealing that is dominating the current course of existence and of philosophy.173

However, such task requires the re-thinking of art independently of the categories of post-

Kantian aesthetics: as Heidegger insists, metaphysics itself has been under the spell of the

being. This destructuring is based upon the original experiences in which the first and subsequently guiding
determinations of being were gained.” M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1996); 20.
173
As it will become clear, for Heidegger the essence of modern technology cannot be detached from the
development of modern art, whereby art is seen as a new resource to resist technological Gestell (the details of this
position will be clarified in the following chapters).

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“forgetting” of being and post-Kantian aesthetics (including Hegel and Nietzsche), are part and

parcel of the metaphysical history of art.

In the discussion of Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s view on art I aim to

show why Heidegger sees the aestheticization of art as the milieu in which the art work “dies”

and what his project to overcome the “enframing” grip of aesthetics entails: namely, seeking

to ground the work of art ontologically by revealing the truth of the origin of the work of art.

As origin, art discloses and can grant a different, non-metaphysical, non-technological,

fundamentally poetic, dwelling for human beings. What Heidegger takes from his reading of

Nietzsche in The Will to Power as Art is the insight that a rethinking of art cannot take place

by adopting just another set of values and beliefs, by a simple “inversion” only clothed in a

new language. If that were the case, we would end up validating the current mode of

operation of metaphysics.

1. Heidegger’s Overcoming of Aesthetics

1.1. The “Hegelian Legacy” in Heidegger’s Project

In his article “The Hegelian Legacy of Heidegger’s Overcoming of Aesthetics,” Jacques

Taminiaux perceives an essential “ambiguity” in Heidegger’s project in “The Origin of the

Work of Art.” He defines it as “overcoming aesthetics and yet validating it.”174 Taminiaux also

formulates three questions that hold this ambiguity and show an affinity between Hegel and

Heidegger in their understanding of the nature of (great) art. The questions are as follows:

“What unites or separates the meditation on the riddle and the theory of the essence of art?

What unites or separates the overcoming of aesthetics and its metaphysical completion in

speculative dialectics? What unites or separates the history of Being and the history of the

Spirit?” For Taminiaux, the above three questions refer to a fourth one, which encapsulates

174
J. Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment, 129.

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them in an important way, namely, “Concerning art, what unites or separates the setting-into-

work (or energeia) of aletheia in the Heideggerian sense and the setting-into-work (or energeia)

of the Sprit in the Hegelian sense?”175 It seems to me that to account fully for Heidegger’s

project, we might also add another question to the list: is there something in the work of art that

can escape from aesthetic consideration, something that can resist its discourse, such that it will

disrupt aesthetics from within? Using these questions as a guideline for my discussion, I begin

first with a summary of the conclusions with respect to Hegel’s philosophy of art discussed in

the first two chapters

The analysis of Hegel’s views on art in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Aesthetics

showed that the pronouncement of art as past proceeds from within the perspective of Spirit’s

unique retroactive determination (as inherent in Spirit’s experiential-recollective

(Erfahrung/Erinnerung) movement. Spirit assigns unities of form to past individual stages of

self-consciousness’ development from the viewpoint of absolute content, i.e. the moment of the

living present. This backward perspective and assignment is embodied in Hegel’s philosophy

and the result is a “totalizing” historical discourse.176 For Hegel, this activity of retroactive

assignment of unities of form to the preceding stages of content identifies with philosophical

historicizing, i.e. dividing the development of Spirit into historical stages on the grounds of

typologized artistic phenomena. Hegel celebrates art as fulfilling a human need but also

recognizes art’s limit to claim absoluteness on its own (because of the requirements of his

philosophical system). Essentially, Hegel gives voice to the beginning alienation of truth from

art, of the high ethical purpose invested in art that is now slowly subsiding.

As we saw in the previous chapters, Hegel considers the work of art within a speculative

theory of the beautiful based on the premise that art is constitutive of the truth of absolute Spirit

175
Ibid., 132.
176
Ibid., 144.

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and proceeds from absolute Spirit.177 Considered in this way, the immediate sensuous

experience of art is originally viewed in the perspective of the infinite, and as such, it is a

conceptual construction. It belongs to the life of the Concept. Furthermore, artistic

representation is conceived as the self-actualization and self-production in externality of the

Idea. When art reaches a perfected reconciliation of content and form, art has reached its Ideal,

the realization of the beautiful as the sensuous shining of the Idea. Art is to serve as a model for

the unification of matter and spirit, overcoming the opposition introduced already by Plato

between art and rational thinking. Necessarily, when art can no longer fulfill the requirement

for such unification, its (speculative) significance becomes something past.

Hegel’s key considerations, as we have seen, confirm the stage of art as necessary in the

development of Spirit because in art Spirit becomes aware of its own absoluteness, producing

itself as such. Second, the necessity of art is entailed in the systematic unfolding and formation

of Spirit, since art constitutes a specific shape of consciousness enabling Spirit’s knowledge of

itself in the form of sensuous intuition (vis-à-vis religious Vorstellung and the philosophical

Begriff). Like philosophy, art is assigned a speculative task as a form of mediation within the

larger story of consciousness; artistic production is driven by the same desire for unity and

reconciliation in discordance (nature/spirit, freedom/necessity) as sought also by philosophy and

religion. Artistic creation is the Tätigkeit of Spirit: conceiving Spirit aesthetically means

presenting its own formative work as work (ein Werk). Finally, the fate of art, as fulfillment of

its vocation, is revealed as a stage in the history of Spirit’s truth that must be surpassed by that

same history.178 Only when Spirit knows itself as Spirit, that is, from the standpoint of

philosophy and absolute knowledge, is art recognized as an essential (i.e., necessarily past)
177
The work of art, Hegel writes, “evinces its genuine originality only by appearing as the one personal creation of
one spirit which gathers and compiles nothing from without, but produces the whole topic from its own resources
by a single cast, in one tone, with strict interconnection of its parts, just as the thing itself has united them in itself”
(LFA 1, 296).
178
In Hegel’s words: “In general it was early in history that thought passed judgment against art as a mode of
illustrating the idea of the Divine; this happened with the Jews and Mohammedans, for example, and indeed even
with the Greeks, for Plato opposed the gods of Homer and Hesiod starkly enough. With the advance of civilization
a time generally comes in the case of every people when art points beyond itself” (LFA 1, 103).

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stage of Spirit’s unfolding. Philosophy provides the only “real ratification (Bewährung)” of art.

The “end” of art marks the moment of art’s self-transcendence: the after of art is philosophical

reflection, when philosophy gathers up the totality of truth of what art is (has been).

This is what Hegelian aesthetics accomplishes in terms of comprehending art and the

relationship between art and philosophy. Heidegger is challenged to respond to Hegel as a way

of situating art within his own philosophy, most notably, in the perspective of the question of

Being, the “grounding” question. In the Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger claims that “the final and

greatest aesthetics in the Western tradition is that of Hegel” (N 1, 84).179 This echoes his

statement from the Epilogue to “The Origin of the Work of Art” where Hegel’s aesthetics is

defined as the “most comprehensive reflection on the nature of art that the West possesses –

comprehensive because it stems from metaphysics” (PLT 79). In support of this, in the

Epilogue Heidegger also cites three statements from the Lectures on Aesthetics where Hegel

gives his judgment on art. They make up the core of Hegel’s pronouncement of the end of great

art as discussed above: 1) “Art no longer counts for us as the highest manner in which truth

obtains existence for itself”; 2) “One may well hope that art will continue to advance and

perfect itself, but its form has ceased to be the highest need of the spirit”; 3) “In all these

relationships art is and remains for us, on the side of its highest vocation something past.”

All three statements reveal that great art is conceived in terms of its highest calling with

respect to its capacity in representing truth. In this regard, the statements reflect a common

point in both Hegel’s and Heidegger’s views on art. As we will see, for Heidegger too, the

necessity and existence of art are understood in relation to truth; the need of great art is

conceived historically, that is, art is subject to a historical fate of necessary progress/decline,

conditioned by the disclosure of truth itself (within a destining of Being).

179
References to Heidegger’s Nietzsche lectures are given to M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. I&II, trans. by D. F.
Krell (HarperOne, 1991); in the parentheses, the volume number is given first, e.g. N 1, followed by the page
number.

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 Heidegger does not proceed to analyze these statements in detail in the “Origin” essay;

he does not discuss the meaning of the pastness of art within the context of Hegel’s Aesthetics

but only acknowledges that art has lost its essential function (of representing truth).180 In

response to Hegel, he formulates the question that has to be understood – retroactively - as the

main concern of his own reflections on art (both in the art essay and in other texts of the 1930s).

This question is Heidegger’s implicit assessment of the Hegelian position and it also indicates

the steps or the path to unraveling the true meaning and significance of Hegel’s judgment on the

fate of art. Heidegger writes:

But the question remains: is art still an essential and necessary way in which that truth
happens which is decisive for our historical existence, or is art no longer of this
character? If, however, it is such no longer, then there remains the question why this is
so. The truth of Hegel’s judgment has not yet been decided; for behind this verdict there
stands Western thought since the Greeks, which thought corresponds to a truth of being
that has already happened. Decision upon the judgment will be made, when it is made,
from and about this truth of what is. Until then the judgment remains in force. But for
that very reason the question is necessary whether the truth that the judgment describes
is final and conclusive and what follows from it (PLT 80; my emphasis). 181

As indicated, for Heidegger Hegel’s aesthetics is the “most comprehensive” because it is based

on (and has produced) the metaphysical thought of the West. The history of this thought has

unfolded as a sequence of transformations of the nature of truth (Wesenswandel der Wahrheit),

from which is derived a similar Wesenswandel der Kunst (PLT 81).182 In Heidegger’s account,

this transformation has been governed by the metaphysical schemas imposed onto the

disclosure of Being since the Greeks. Heidegger outlines the main steps of the Wesenswandel

of truth: from eidos through ergon to actualitas, transformed into reality which completes the

180
This is why G. Seubold, for one, argues that Heidegger “levels off” (nivelliert) the complexity of Hegel’s thesis.
See Günter Seubold, Kunst als Enteignis. Heideggers Weg zu einer nicht mehr metaphysischen Kunst (Bonn:
Denkmal Verlag, 2005); 17.
181
Consider again the critical stance of G. Seubold on Heidegger’s “selective reading” of Hegel’s end of art thesis:
“An einem Satz aus diesem Nachwort läßt sich auch sehr anschaulich studieren, wie Heidegger Hegels These –
bewußt oder unbewußt – umdeutet, indem er die spezifisch Hegelschen Begriffe ‘höchstes’, ‘absolutes’ Bedürfnis’
(‘höchste Bestimmung,’ ‘höchste Weise’) durch ‘wesentlich’ und ‘notwendig’ ersetzt. ‘Allein die Frage bleibt: Ist
die Kunst noch eine wesentliche und eine notwendige Weise, in der die für unser geschichtliches Dasein
entscheidende Wahrheit geschieht, oder ist die Kunst dies nicht mehr?’“ Ibid., 17.
182
Given that statement of Heidegger’s, I believe J. Bernstein is right when he says that “Heidegger’s project is to
understand the end of art as art’s alienation from truth.” J. Bernstein, The Fate of Art, 68.

112
line when being comes to be conceived as objectivity.183 Behind each of these steps we can see

Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel himself as the figures which have effected this transformation in

their philosophy. Being, understood as objectivity, is the element that grounds the subjective

experience of such objectivity: this is the key word for Heidegger and the springboard for his

own thesis that today’s art is subsumed under sensuous apprehension and slowly dying as a

result. As he argues, aesthetics is the specialized reflection which considers the work of art as

“an object of aisthesis,” of “sensuous apprehension” or experience (Erlebnis). Today, he

claims, experience dominates the spheres of both art creation and art appreciation. “Everything

is an experience. Yet perhaps experience is the element in which art dies. The dying occurs so

slowly that it takes a few centuries” (PLT 79).

It is the “aesthetic” conception of art, then, that has brought forth the (aesthetic) “death”

of art. The failure of aesthetics is that, under the spell of metaphysics, it cannot understand

what the work of art is in its essential being. In other words, the history of aesthetics has

determined the course of artistic creation and artistic perception in a way that has resulted in the

end of art. If Heidegger is right, the Hegelian end of art should be the consequence of Erlebnis

and the humanization which has taken over art. For Hegel though, art is not encompassed or

entirely exhausted by an “aesthetic” conception of art (in which an artistic object is designed to

elicit emotion or pleasure in the spectator): as we saw, he ascribes to great art an absoluteness

that goes beyond aesthetic apprehension and the subjective reception of the work of art. The

(great) artist’s task is to find an adequate expression to the Absolute, to the substantive spirit

and ethos of peoples and eras (LFA 1, 603). The absolute content of art grants it a spiritual

significance which prevents a reduction of the work to an aesthetic object. Most clearly,

Hegel’s critique of the romantic artist who seeks to embody his own ego and contingent content

of the heart (the new Humanus) in the art work, speaks against an art and aesthetics of Erlebnis.

183
These basic steps are developed further in the Nietzsche lectures as the six basic developments in aesthetics,
discussed below.

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Art that has become a “free instrument” for the unhindered exercise of the artist’s skill is

criticized by Hegel as subjectivism which dissolves all determinacy, pushing art beyond itself.

On the other hand, by not providing an explicit critique of Hegel but only explicitly

connecting his judgment on the history of Western art and aesthetics with the history of the

understanding of Being, Heidegger gives over the responsibility for delivering that judgment to

Being itself (as Ereignis) (PLT 86). In this way he is both confirming that aesthetics

participates in the mode of disclosure (and concealment) of Being, and thus has to be overcome,

but also that this overcoming can happen by turning aesthetics against itself, so to say, if it has

to think art in a radically new way (in Heidegger’s case, thinking art as origin).

On the negative side, suspending his own judgment over Hegel’s verdict on the fate of

art, Heidegger allows for that judgment to be indefinitely postponed; connecting it to the

overcoming of metaphysics, he inscribes it within an economy of Überwindungen, of Er-eignis

that is also an Ent-eignis, of the dis-closure of origin and its preservation that is as undecided

and undecidable as his own reflections on the “riddle” of art (PLT 86). Heidegger is well aware

of this, and the Addendum to the “Origin” essay, written two decades after it, appears to confirm

this: he claims that there are no answers in the essay but only “directions for questioning.”

1.2. Preparing for the Overcoming of Aesthetics

A fragment dated from 1934 “Zur Überwindung der Ästhetik. Zu ‘Ursprung des

‚Kunstwerkes’“184 outlines the scope and range of Heidegger’s reflections on art and aesthetics

in the “Origin” essay and his subsequent texts. He begins the fragment with a brief account of

what is considered “aesthetics.” It is defined as a contemplation or consideration (Betrachtung)

of the state of feeling of human beings in terms of a relationship to the beautiful, and a

consideration of the beautiful itself insofar as it relates to aesthetic feeling, both with respect to
184
M. Heidegger, „Zur Überwindung der Ästhetik. Zu Ursprung des ‚Kunstwerkes’“ Heidegger Studies, Vol. 6
(1990): 5-7.

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the creation and appreciation (hervorbringen und geniessen) of art. Defining for aesthetics is

the relationship between subject and object based on feeling (aesthetics assumes that all other

questions about truth and being, etc., are already decided).185 According to the fragment,

“aesthetic” is any reflection (Besinnung) on “art” and the “beautiful” which takes the creating

and appreciating man as the starting point and goal of analysis. In the section of the fragment

entitled “Truth and Beauty,” Heidegger writes that only when the beautiful is conceived as a

Gestalt of truth in the originary sense of truth as aletheia, that is, when beauty is thought of as

more originary than truth in terms of correctness and logical formulas, only then does the

beautiful retain its essential relation to Being and the Being’s “unveiling” (Enthüllung).

In the short section entitled “Overcoming of Aesthetics” (“Überwinding der Ästhetik”),

Heidegger points out that it is not sufficient to simply shift the question from asking about the

aesthetic “states” of creation and pleasure to the “work” of art. He insists that it is important

how we ask about “work,” “creation” and “preservation.” He emphasizes the need to examine

the relations between “work” and the essence of truth and being, and questions whether “art”

can be understood from its determination as a “cultural phenomenon,” and its role as

“expression of life.” Heidegger writes that when aesthetics is conceived in its essentiality

(wesentlich), it will point beyond itself (weist sie über sich hinaus). The “originary reflection

(usprüngliche Besinnung) on art cannot survive in art, yet it asserts itself again and again, but no

overcoming is reached.”186 This overcoming will be accomplished only when we realize that

art is fundamentally about the occurrence of truth (Wahrheitsgeschehnis), whereby we as

subjects are transformed and grounded in our being as Dasein. Heidegger concludes the

fragment by claiming that the overcoming of aesthetics is not an easy matter because it is not

enough to conceive art aesthetically and complement it with non-aesthetical elements. Instead,

there is an essential need (the need of the beginning) to transform the essence of art in and from

185
Ibid., 5.
186
Ibid., 6.

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its very ground […sondern das Wesen der Kunst selbst muß von Grund aus gewandelt werden

aus wesentlicher Not (des Anfangs)]“ (emphasis in original).187

2. Heidegger’s Nietzsche Lectures The Will to Power as Art

2.1. The Meaning of Aesthetics

The first course of the Nietzsche lectures, The Will to Power as Art, stems from the

same period as the essay on art (winter semester 1936-37). Turning to Heidegger’s Nietzsche

will help us grasp better his take on the tradition of Western aesthetics since the question of the

end of (great) art as well as the question of experience as the element of the death of art arise

within this tradition and Heidegger addresses them in this volume. In the lectures we can see

the proximity between Hegel and Heidegger in thinking the end of art and aesthetics, and

respectively, the place that each philosopher takes in the aesthetic tradition.

Heidegger clearly describes his understanding of aesthetics; in the chapter from The Will

to Power as Art entitled “Six Basic Developments in the History of Aesthetics,” he writes:

The name ‘aesthetics’, meaning meditation on art and the beautiful, is recent. It arises in
the eighteenth century. But the matter which the word so aptly names, the manner of
inquiry into art and the beautiful on the basis of the state of feeling in enjoyers and
producers, is old, as old as meditation on art and the beautiful in Western thought.
Philosophical meditation on the essence of art and the beautiful even begins as aesthetics
(N 1, 79).

Aesthetics, in this view, designates the metaphysical (starting from Plato through Nietzsche)

understanding of art and the beautiful. In comparison with logic and ethics, Heidegger defines

aesthetics as aisthetike episteme, or “knowledge of human being’s sensuous, perceptual and

187
Ibid., 7. Such transformation from the ground up implies what J. Bernstein calls “self-exploding” of the
tradition. In his view, “aesthetics is the working of the metaphysics of presence with respect to art and beauty.
Overcoming aesthetics, then, involves noting those moments in the history of aesthetics where thinking on art
exceeds aesthetics, just as overcoming metaphysics (inaugurally) involves registering those moments in the history
of metaphysics where the texts of the tradition ‘explode’ themselves by exceeding the logic of presence that
apparently, and fatefully, governs them.” J. Bernstein, The Fate of Art, 82.

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emotional behavior, and of that which determines this behavior” (N 1, 75).188 “Aesthetics is

that kind of meditation on art in which humanity's state of feeling in relation to the beautiful

represented in art is the point of departure and the goal that sets the standard for all its

definitions and explanations” (N 1, 78). The beautiful is what causes a certain state in us,

provoking a particular feeling (N 1, 79). Hence, Heidegger claims, aesthetics is an observation

or contemplation of emotional states in relation to beauty or of beauty insofar as it stands in

relation to an emotional state. But for Heidegger “aesthetics” is not only the name of the

philosophical discipline which emerged in the 18th century. Rather, “aesthetics” designates the

basic conceptual framework which he believes has dominated throughout the entire tradition of

philosophy and the history of art. As quoted above, for him “aesthetics” designates

developments in art history “as old as meditation on art and the beautiful in Western thought.”

Philosophical meditation on the essence of art and the beautiful begins as aesthetics, that is, the

entire history of contemplation on art is only as aesthetics. It is precisely the aesthetic

conceptual framework which conceals the essence of art and precludes a more primordial

understanding of the work-being of the work of art as an occurrence of truth (this becomes

evident in his characterization of the difference between the first and the second developments

within the history of aesthetics). If Heidegger takes up the metaphysical history of aesthetics as

part of overcoming it, it is also because he perceives a critical “alienation” of art from truth in

modern times.189

Within the province of aesthetics, the work of art is “the bearer or provoker of the

beautiful with relation to our state of feeling” (N 1, 78). The work is not conceived as

disclosive of truth, but “becomes an object in terms of that surface which is accessible to lived

experience.” Aesthetic experience and aesthetic object correlate in a manner constitutive for

both, whereby the effect of the object upon the subject is seen as a relation of feeling (N 1, 78).

188
In “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger writes “Aesthetics takes the work of art as an object, the object
of aesthesis, of sensuous apprehension in the wide sense. Today we call this apprehension experience” (PLT 79).
189
J. M. Bernstein, The Fate of Art, 4-5.

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As Heidegger also claims in the “Origin” essay, when the work of art is considered as an object

of aisthesis, the danger arises that we will become oblivious to the origin of art. Precisely as

aesthetic, art is taken by the “art industry” and the business of “connoisseurs and critics” (PLT

40).190 Heidegger’s criticism of this mode of aesthetic consideration and relation to the work of

art is based on the realization that modern aesthetics follows the model of metaphysics in

privileging the subject’s certitude and cognitive stand over against an object. With respect to

creation, Heidegger observes the same in the “Origin” essay: “Modern subjectivism, to be sure,

immediately misinterprets creation, taking it as the self-sovereign subject’s performance of

genius” (PLT 76). It is significant that Heidegger emphasizes this aspect of aesthetics in

explicit association with its emergence as a discipline of modernity, visible in his description of

the third basic development in the history of aesthetics.

In “The Age of the World Picture” (delivered as series of lectures in 1938), Heidegger

clarifies further what it means to approach art aesthetically. When “art [moves] into the

purview of aesthetics” this means “that the artwork becomes the object of mere subjective

experience (Gegenstand des Erlebens), and that consequently art is considered to be an

expression of human life (Lebens).”191 In the same essay, Heidegger lists five major areas

that inform and steer the development of the contemporary world: science, technology,

aesthetics, culture, and the loss of the gods (Entgötterung).192 He explains that the way art is

pushed into the horizon of aesthetics impacts art’s conceptual and historical progress. Art’s

transformation is part of an encompassing historical process and is therefore recognized as

“one of the essential phenomena of modern age.” Heidegger argues that this development is

just as revealing and destining of our current historical situation as is the growing dominance
190
Heidegger seconds this statement with his claim in the Introduction to Metaphysics that “For us moderns, on the
contrary, the beautiful is what reposes and relaxes; it is intended for enjoyment and art is a matter for pastry cooks.”
M. Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by Ralph Mannheim (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987), 131.
191
M. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays,
trans. & with introduction by William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977); 116. Hereafter referred
to as QCT, followed by the pager number.
192
Ibid., 116.

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of science and machine technology, which force us to subsume all human activity to

calculation and to look at art simply in terms of cultural achievement. He claims that

concurrent with and underlying the emergence of these five phenomena is a quest for human

being to assert itself as subject (subiectum). Such “subjectivism” Heidegger defines as the

“human capability as a domain given over to measuring and executing, for the purpose of

gaining mastery over that which is as a whole.”193 Subjectivism, in other words, designates

humanity’s increasing drive to achieve control over every aspect of existence, to gain power

as the being “who gives the measure and draws up the guidelines for everything that is.” In

the perspective of the world becoming a construct (Gebild), the aesthetic approach to art is

identified as part of that same move; it derives from and claims subjectivism as the

contemporary effort to realize the desire for “calculating, planning, and molding [or

“breeding,” Züchtung] all things.” Heidegger’s language here is close to the language of the

essay “The Question Concerning Technology” and the critique of modern technology as

overpowering every aspect of existence.194 The German word Weltbild (a Ge-bild, as the

result of “man’s producing,” vorstellenden Herstellens, is similar to Ge-stell), means a

representation of the world that subjects create for themselves, so that it prohibits the world

from showing up or disclosing in its own visibility. “Hence world picture, when understood

essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as

picture. What is, in its entirety, is now taken in such way that it first is in being and only is in

being to the extent that it is set up by man, who represents and sets forth” (QCT, 129-130).

If Heidegger objects to aesthetics, it is because it has become subservient to the push of

the modern understanding of production, calculation, and mastery, which denies the autonomy

193
Ibid., 132.
194
Here relevant are Heidegger’s comments from the Contributions to Philosophy on the notion of “Machination”
(Machenschaft), as rooted in an objectification of world and beings such that these reveal themselves as “makeable”
(machbar), i.e., as things that can be calculated and manipulated. This objectifying, manipulative, and calculating
approach to being and art completely obscures a more fundamental sense of being and a more originary relation to
beings. For more detailed reflection on this, see D. Schmidt, “Language in the Age of Modern Technicity,” in
Lyrical and Ethical Subjects (Albany: SUNY, 2005), 173-186.

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of the work of art and considers it exclusively in the subject-object economy of production.

This is entirely in line with the criticism in the “Origin” essay of the approach to art that seeks

to reduce it to equipment and object of apprehension, instead of a work. Most importantly,

Heidegger’s objection against aesthetics follows from his critique of metaphysics and the

“history of Being” as having enabled and carried out this increasing drive to mastery and

control. Heidegger writes in “The Origin of the Work of Art”: “The whole art industry, even if

carried to the extreme and exercised in every way for the sake of the works themselves, extends

only to the object-being of the works. But this object-being [of artworks] does not constitute

their work-being” (PLT 41). He adds, “[A]re they here in themselves as the works they

themselves are, or are they not rather here as objects of the art industry?” Heidegger's claim is

that “placing artworks in a collection has withdrawn them from their own world”; as bygone

works, from which their self-subsistence has “fled,” they remain in the “realm of tradition and

conservation” (PLT 40). This reduction of art-works to art “objects” is at the core of the

aestheticization of art which Heidegger critiques and opposes. The connection between an

aestheticization of art and the rule of subjectivism is illustrated in the historical transitions of the

different stages in the history of aesthetics, described in The Will to Power as Art as “basic

developments.”

2.2. The “Six Basic Developments (Grundtatsachen) in the History of Aesthetics”

In the brief history of aesthetics that Heidegger offers, specific stages of art correspond

to basic developments in the history of aesthetics, and both can be seen as responding to

epochal transformations in the (metaphysical) history of Being. Heidegger sees the role of

aesthetics not just as a certain way of conceiving art, but emphasizes its power to effect a

transformation in the essence of art itself. He writes “(w)hether and how an era is committed to

aesthetics, whether and how it adopts a stance toward art of an aesthetic character is decisive for

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the way art shapes the history of an era or remains irrelevant for it” (N 1, 79). The basic facts or

developments tell us that if the oblivion of Being occurs in metaphysics as a veiling of the

essence of truth, such oblivion occurs in aesthetics as the veiling of the essence of beauty. In

this short account of aesthetics’ history, we witness a pre-aesthetic dawn of art, followed by a

reversal that founds metaphysical aesthetics (with Plato and Aristotle), and an anticipated turn

toward a post-aesthetic art today (following Hegel’s pronouncement of the end of metaphysical

art). Let me present each of these stages in more detail.

1. The first stage Heidegger describes is that of the magnificent art of ancient Greece,

referring to pre-Socratic thought. The Greeks of antiquity lived in a pre-aesthetic age where art

was genuinely a destiny of the truth of Being; only here was the beautiful experienced as an

originary disclosure of being. Heidegger points out that the Greeks at this stage had no

“cognitive-conceptual reflection” (N 1, 80) corresponding to their great art. The “luminous”

knowledge they had and the “luminous state of knowing” in which they lived did not

necessitate, for their good fortune, says Heidegger, any concept of knowledge, i.e., any

aesthetics.

2. The second stage is the beginning of philosophical aesthetics. This is a paradigmatic

event with significant bearing upon the subsequent development of aesthetics. Heidegger

identifies this stage with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle; as soon as aesthetic reflection

begins, great art dies; it is no longer a site for truth to take place. So this later beginning of

aesthetics pushes into oblivion the initial, originary, experience of the previous age. Key

concepts of the philosophical reflection on art emerge at this stage, such as form, matter, eidos,

techne. The first aesthetic determination proceeds with the Platonic notions of eidos and idea as

the “outer appearance” of things in terms of their demarcation from other beings, the surface

and limit of things. Heidegger writes,

What limits is form, what is limited is matter. Whatever comes into view as soon as the
work of art is experienced as a self-showing according to its eidos, as phainesthai, is

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 now subsumed under these definitions. The ekphanestaton, what properly shows itself
and is most radiant (Schein) of all, is the beautiful. By way of the idea, the work of art
comes to appear in the designation of the beautiful as ekphanestaton (N 1, 80).

The second conceptual development in the consideration of art has to do with the notion of

techne. For Heidegger, this is a critical event in metaphysics, because it delineates a path of

multiple subsequent misconceptions of art, leading up to the most current age of technological

domination. This is why the very notion of an origin of art for Heidegger requires a new (i.e.

non-aesthetical) understanding of techne. Heidegger is explicit that neither modern art can be

conceived by techne nor the artist as technites, most significantly because techne was not

originally related to (artistic) production, and second, because techne is not complete in its

meaning if severed from another key Greek term, that of physis. For the Greeks, Heidegger

notes, physis is “the first and the essential name for beings themselves and as a whole. For them

the being is what flourishes on its own, in no way compelled, what rises and comes forward,

and what goes back into itself and passes away” (N 1, 81).195 Heidegger emphasizes the core

original meaning of techne as a type of knowledge (“knowing guidance of bringing-forward”)

versus a kind of manufacturing; with Aristotle, techne becomes only one among other kinds of

knowledge. The most fundamental change in the emergence of the modern concept of

aesthetics takes place when techne is explicitly referred to the realm of the "production of

beautiful things or their representation”; this change equals a “diversion” such that the

meditation on art by way of the beautiful is entirely taken up by aesthetics (N 1, 82).

With respect to the second “basic development” R. Bernasconi argues that “Heidegger’s

sketch of the history of art and aesthetics does nothing to ease the suspicion that surrounds the

quest for a non-metaphysical concept of art. This is because Heidegger is hampered by the lack

195
In this brief sketch of the history of aesthetics Heidegger offers only a condensed version of the problematic of
techne/physis; it continues in the “Origin” essay and is taken up again in his commentary on physis in Aristotle’s
Physics Book 1; in the essay “The Question Concerning Technology” and in An Introduction to Metaphysics. I
offer a more detailed analysis of the concepts of physis and techne in the last chapter of this dissertation, so here I
limit myself to only a few remarks.

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of a Greek concept of art. The Greek word, techne, is associated with the second stage of the

history of art and aesthetics, not its first stage, which is where Heidegger locates great art.”196

Bernasconi emphasizes that the difficulty here is that the Greeks did not distinguish between

art-making and craft, and that techne, furthermore, translates a form of knowing. Heidegger

states that circumstance explicitly (N 1, 164), but on Bernasconi’s account, this is not enough;

he argues that “Heidegger fails to address the question of why the Greeks, who belonged to the

time of great art…did not leave in their language any mark of the distinction between the

artwork and equipment.”197

The third change within the second “basic development” concerns the conceptual pair

“matter-form” which Heidegger views as applied not only to the realm of art and aesthetics, but

as sort of universal conceptual garb applicable to any issue. When coupled with the subject-

object distinction, the outcome is that representational thought wins for “its command a

conceptual machinery that nothing is capable of withstanding,” as he says in the “Origin” (PLT

27).

Concerning the second stage of aesthetics, we note a significant difference between

Hegel and Heidegger on the point of great art. While Hegel argues that aesthetics can think art

through to its end and art’s self-transcendence into philosophy as it occurs after art has run its

historical course, for Heidegger, on the contrary, aesthetics accompanies Western art throughout

its history. In Heidegger’s view the distinctive character of the philosophical reflection on art is

found right from the beginning: “Aesthetics begins with the Greeks only at that moment when

their great art and also the great philosophy which had flourished along with it comes to an end”

(N 1, 80). With the onset of aesthetics, not only does great art as art decline but it also loses its

cognitive potential, it is no longer understood as a form of disclosure (as standing within truth).

196
R. Bernasconi, “The Greatness of the Work of Art,” 101.
197
Ibid., 101.

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The understanding of how art comes to be will be gradually replaced by the technical activity of

production.

This (negative) coupling of artistic creation with a metaphysical reflection on art is the

background of Heidegger’s words in the Epilogue to the “Origin” essay that art’s dying has

spanned over a few centuries (PLT 79). This is a protracted end of art, maintained by the

conceptual reflection of it, which has created an object for its own consideration in the beautiful.

So, paradoxically, it is the end of art (or rather, the origin that is yet to begin) that has generated

the “conceptual machinery” for its own preservation. In Heidegger’s view the conceptual

development of metaphysics and its relative, aesthetics, has essentially covered over a lack, an

absence from the very beginning (the beginning itself is an “empty” origin, to borrow from V.

Foti). By pushing art within the horizon of aesthetics, art’s true essence has never been a

subject of philosophical reflection; that is, aesthetic reflection has looked for art in the wrong

place (as imitation and secondary, instead of a primary or originary level of human

comportment and attunement to the world). As Heidegger claims in “What is Called

Thinking?”, “[t]he beginning of Western thought is not the same as its origin. The beginning is

rather the veil that conceals the origin – indeed an unavoidable veil… the origin keeps itself

concealed in the beginning.”198 This is the guideline of Heidegger’s meditation on the origin of

art and the reason why neither the present nor the forgotten origin can be understood as isolated;

from the present we can access the past but in the mode of what is yet to come, an originary

opening that is to be revealed.

3. The third stage in aesthetics coincides with the onset of modern age. For Heidegger,

this is the time when aesthetics experiences a change in the mode of reflection on art, which is

triggered by a relevant change in metaphysics. That change is grounded in the assertion of the

Cartesian subject which has the power to judge all knowledge with the self-certainty of the ego

198
M. Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? trans. by Fred Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper&Row,
1968), 152.

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cogito (N 1, 81). Taste and judgments of taste become the foundation of an aesthetic

relationship to the art object. This stage is crucial because it also marks the beginning of the

decline of great art; as Heidegger writes, “concurrent with the formation of a dominant

aesthetics and of the aesthetic relation to art in modern times is the decline of great art.” The

subjectivization and aestheticization of art therefore prefigure the end of great art.

4. The fourth stage is the period associated with Hegel’s aesthetics which is the

consummation of the Western philosophical tradition, in Heidegger’s words. Aesthetics reaches

its highest achievement here and concurrently, it is able to recognize great art as a thing of the

past. Heidegger states:

At the historical moment when aesthetics achieves its greatest possible height, breadth,
and rigor of form, great art comes to an end. The achievement of aesthetics derives its
greatness from the fact that it recognizes and gives utterance to the end of great art as
such. The final and greatest aesthetics in the Western tradition is Hegel’s (N 1, 84; my
emphasis).

This remark is key to Heidegger’s proximity to Hegel’s reflection on art; clearly, Heidegger

recognizes the validity of Hegel’s statement on the end of great art as it exemplifies and

proceeds from the development of aesthetics. In the same section of the text, Heidegger cites

again three statements from Hegel’s Aesthetics in support of the end-of-art thesis (basically

repeating the statements quoted in the “Origin” essay and discussed above). Despite that

proximity, Heidegger does not come to support or justify Hegel’s position directly.

5. The fifth stage in aesthetics constitutes the collective art work (Gesamtkunstwerk) of

Richard Wagner. Heidegger considers it as a failed attempt to produce a great work of art in a

modern sense. The Gesamtkunstwerk is entirely subsumed under the pure state of feeling and

experience and thus implicitly serves to support Heidegger’s version of the end of art.

Aesthetics becomes more and more simply a study of developments in art history and occupies

itself with the aesthetic state and feelings. The time of Wagner is the time of an “increasingly

aesthetic posture taken toward art as a whole – it is the conception and estimation of art in terms

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of the unalloyed state of feeling and the growing barbarization of the very state to the point

where it becomes the sheer bubbling and boiling of feeling abandoned to itself” (N 1, 88).

Wagner's attempt is to react against “the decline of art from its essence” by projecting a “total

artwork,” in which all the fine arts are conjoined and in which the community of a people

celebrates itself religiously. Heidegger does not hesitate to claim that such an effort remains

“essential,” since thereby “art is once again to become an absolute need” (N 1, 87). However,

the paradox of Wagner's effort is, according to Heidegger, that “in its results and influence it

became the very opposite of great art”: it produced no more than a delirium of the senses, a

triumph of lived experiences, hypnotism. “[N]ow the absolute is experienced as sheer

indeterminacy, a total dissolution into sheer feeling, a hovering that gradually sinks into

nothingness” (N 1, 87). This development necessarily effects also a change in aesthetics, which

“becomes a psychology that proceeds in the manner of the natural sciences; that is, states of

feeling become self-evident facts to be subjected to experiments, observation, and

measurement” (N 1, 89).

Heidegger might find here agreement with Hegel for whom the end stage of the

romantic form of art was ridden by the attempts of the artist to present in the work of art only

her own creative activity, devoid from any essential content. And the Wagnerian

Gesamtkunstwerk provides more proof of the end of great art because it concentrates pure

feeling, “the tumult and delirium of the senses, the absorption in a bottomless sea of

harmonies.” This utter deliverance of the work of art over to feeling is seen as a reaction to the

“impoverishment and deterioration” of existence in an epoch of growing industry and

technology. Art falls away from its vocation to disclose truth and becomes merely a cultural

phenomenon, detached from the tradition of great art.

6. The final sixth stage is devoted to Nietzsche and the possibility to ground art as the

countermovement to nihilism. Heidegger finds that Nietzsche’s philosophy of Rausch and the

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“physiology of art” complete in a unique way Hegel’s aesthetics as the metaphysics of Spirit,

and can thus think through the end of aesthetics. If art is merely an object of physiology, it

ought to be "declared the upper apotheosis of nihilism - and not at all the countermovement to

it.” In Nietzsche, Heidegger writes, “the final consequences of the aesthetic inquiry into art are

thought through to the end” (N 1, 91). Aesthetics reaches its logical consummation: as applied

psychology, aesthetics “somersaults beyond itself” (N 1, 77). The stage into which it transcends

is the age of technological Gestell, of enframing revealing.

As it becomes clear from Heidegger’s description of the sixth stage of the history of

aesthetics, in Nietzsche’s conception he finds a “physiology of art” which reduces aesthetics to

an aesthetics of bodily experience, whereby the aesthetic state of feeling becomes like an

intoxication, rapture (Rausch). “Rapture” is a way of overcoming metaphysics as far as it

implies the rapture of subjectivity, grasped as the capacity to extend beyond oneself in relation

to all being; a state that is neither subjective, nor objective. The outcome of this development of

Nietzsche’s reduction of aesthetics to physiology is that the Hegelian end of art finds its

correlate in the end of aesthetics (Nietzschean style).199 But Heidegger also recognizes that

Nietzsche was unable to ask the grounding question of philosophy, namely, “what is Being

itself?” and has remained within the equally oblivious history of thought prior to him (N 1, 67).

2.3. Hegel and Heidegger on Great Art

We can attempt a preliminary assessment of the “Hegelian legacy” in Heidegger’s own

view of art at this point. In his account of aesthetics, Heidegger agrees that the determination of

the role that art has played historically comes after aesthetics has run its course, i.e., it is

consequent upon the completion ascribed to it by Hegel. In some sense, what Heidegger seeks

to do is carry out a post-aesthetic critical reading of the metaphysical past of aesthetics, but by

199
J. Taminiaux interprets Nietzsche’s recourse to physiology as an implicit reference to physis, revealing a
peculiar “ontological proximity” between pre-Socratic thinkers and the language of tragedy. J. Taminiaux, “On
Heidegger’s Interpretation of the Will to Power as Art” in New Nietzsche Studies 3:1/2 (1999): 1-22; 15.

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“leaping over” to the beginning of aesthetics, so to speak, in order to gain access to a more

originary, primordial event of art’s commencement and its subsequent historical unfolding.

That also implies seeking to disclose, in the modern experience of art, those elements which can

shatter it from within and can push “aesthetics beyond itself.” Necessarily, this includes an

analysis of the subject’s experience of art objects, in order to reveal art’s essence as a more

originary, poietic comportment of human being to the world.

Against the background of Heidegger’s account, we can understand better the

differences and similarities between him and Hegel. In the section on the fourth development

of aesthetics (N 1, 84), he quotes again three statements from Hegel’s Aesthetics: 1). “…yet in

this regard there is at least no absolute need at hand for it [the matter] to be brought toch

representation by art.” 2). “In all these relations art is and remains for us, with regard to its

highest determination, something past.” 3). “The beautiful days of Greek art, like the golden

age of the later Middle Ages, are gone.” Heidegger further acknowledges that the end of great

art does not mean literally the termination of artistic production: “Hegel never wished to deny

the possibility that also in the future individual works of art would originate and be esteemed.

The fact of such individual works, which exist as works only for the enjoyment of a few sectors

of the population (Volksschichten) does not speak against Hegel but for him. It is a proof that

art has lost its power to be the absolute, has lost its absolute power” (N 1, 85; my emphasis). In

the modern age of technological Gestell, “great art,” Heidegger says, “has departed from among

men” (PLT 79). This leads him to the main question of the “Origin” essay and the reason for

his engagement with the topic of art in the first place: is great art today an absolute need as a

way of truth to occur? As formulated, the question indicates the possibility, for Heidegger, of a

reversal of the Hegelian sense of an end of art; by way of Nietzsche, Heidegger seeks to identify

a particular need and sense of art in modern times which can come to counter technological

Gestell and all its negative consequences for humans.

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 A number of commentators (among them, J. Taminiaux, P. Lacoue-Labarthe), have

defined Heidegger’s Auseinandersetzung with Hegel in the Nietzsche lectures as (almost)

fully endorsing Hegel’s thesis of the end of art.200 We cannot but notice the Hegelian features

of Heidegger’s language in the definition of art’s basic task as one of “representing the

absolute” or of making manifest “the truth of beings as a whole, i.e., the unconditioned, the

absolute” (N 1, 84). The following paragraph on the nature of great art and the reason why

great art eventually declines outlines the commonality between both thinkers:

Great art (große Kunst) and its works are great in their historical emergence and being
because in man’s historical existence they accomplish a decisive task: they make
manifest, in a way appropriate to works, what beings as a whole are, preserving such
manifestation in the work. Art and its works are necessary only as an itinerary and
sojourn of man in which the truth of beings as a whole, i.e., the unconditioned, the
absolute, opens itself up to him. What makes art great is not only and not in the first
place the high quality of what is created. Rather, art is great because it is an “absolute
need.” Because it is that, and to the extent it is that, it also can and must be great in
rank…. Concurrent with the formation of a dominant aesthetics and of the aesthetic
relation to art in modern times is the decline of great art, great in the designated
sense…art forfeits its essence, loses its immediate relation to the basic task of
representing the absolute, i.e. of establishing the absolute definitively as such in the
realm of historical man (N 1, 83-84; my emphasis).

Based on the quote, I believe it will be correct to say that both Hegel and Heidegger concur in

understanding great art in terms of its “absoluteness,” grasped in terms of its historically

“decisive task,” its vocation and destining (Heidegger’s language even adopts Hegelian

vocabulary here, e.g., the reference to “absolute need.”) For both philosophers, the greatness of

art is not entailed in and does not presuppose some aesthetic “quality,” but has to do with its

capacity for disclosing or representing truth. Great art is devoted to the highest manifestation of

the absolute, of the divine (Hegel), and revealing “the truth of beings as a whole” (Heidegger).

Art is “great in rank” in its capacity to satisfy the highest (or absolute) need of Spirit; in works

200
Julian Young, referring to Heidegger’s “endorsement of Hegel,” claims that in the Nietzsche volume Heidegger
is in “full agreement” with the Hegelian definition of great art and its content as the manifestation of truth, which is
what gives art its “world-historical significance.” Julian Young, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art, (Cambridge
University Press, 2001); 7 ff. Here I take as a basis for my reading of the encounter between Hegel and
Heidegger on great art the work of Daniel Tate, “Hermeneutics and aesthetics: Heidegger and Art” (Ann Arbor:
UMI, 1990).

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of great art, truth “opens itself up” to “historical man.” When art becomes only a matter for

enjoyment, it “forfeits” its (absolute) essence; then “art has lost its power to be absolute, has lost

its absolute power” (N 1, 85). Great art declines once it is no longer a historically decisive way

in which truth comes to be. In Hegelian terms, art becomes past.201 In Heidegger’s terms, we

have forgotten the origin of art (and the name of Being).

Referring to the exchange between Hegel and Heidegger, Lacoue-Labarthe writes that

Heidegger recognizes the truth and necessity of Hegel’s verdict and thus subscribes to it.202

According to Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger’s position here is “necessarily double; Heidegger

gives to Hegel with one hand what he takes away with the other.” What he takes away from

Hegel is “his definitively philosophical or metaphysical point of view”; what Heidegger gives

him is “political complicity.” Heidegger agrees with Hegel that when art ceases to be “great,” it

ceases to be itself, that is, it ceases to constitute or establish the possibility of existence of an

historical community. For Heidegger, this is nothing else but art losing its “historical telos.”

What Heidegger “gives” to Hegel is the recognition of the argument that art and the reflection

upon art are mutually exclusive (as visible in Heidegger’s outline of aesthetic history, “great art

comes to an end” with the appearance of the science of art.) Lacoue-Labarthe draws the

conclusion, which he defines as the main premise of Heidegger’s own interpretation of art,

namely, that “great art is absolutely prior to all conceptual reflection.”203 If Lacoue-Labarthe is

right, Heidegger’s reading of the tradition of aesthetics must be recognized as pre-aesthetic, too

201
Again, Seubold’s critique of Heidegger: „Es ist interessant, ja erstaunlich, wie Heidegger diese These Hegels
vom Vergangenheitscharakter (‚Ende‘) der Kunst für seine eigene Interpretation der ‘kunst-losen Geschichte’
aufnimmt. Denn alle Belegstellen, die Heidegger anführt, sind vom Hegelschen Systemdenken geprägt und nur
durch dieses zureichend verständlich. Die argumentativ tragenden Worte dieser Belegstellen – höchste Weise,
höchstes Bedürfnis, höchste Bestimmung, absolutes Bedürfnis – sind ohne die Lehre von den Weisen der
Selbsterkenntnis des Geistes, also ohne die Hegelsche Konstruktion ‘absoluter Geist,’ nicht zu verstehen. Heidegger
blendet nun den gesamten Zusammenhang von Dialektik, System und absolutem Geist aus und reduziert diesen
Hegelschen Komplex letztlich auf die Aussage – die bisweilen auch im Gewand der Frage erscheint – daß die
Kunst ihre ‘geschichtebildende’ (N I 94) Kraft verloren hat.“ Gunter Seubold, Kunst als Enteignis, 16.
202
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Sublime Truth (Part 1),” Cultural Critique, No. 18 (Spring 1991): 5-31; here 15-16.
203
Ibid., 17. Compare here Gadamer’s description of great art: “Art is only encountered in a form that resists pure
conceptualization. Great art shakes us because we are always unprepared and defenseless when exposed to the
overpowering impact of a compelling work.” H.-G. Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, 37.

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(though taking place at the close of aesthetics). Two consequences follow from this: first, this

would provide evidence for the argument that Heidegger is not looking to develop a theory of

art (neither in the Nietzsche course, nor in the “Origin” essay). Second, and more important: if

he is accepting the existence of great art but without offering an alternative history of art, he

seems to have no other option but to accept also Hegel’s aesthetic history of art, which would

jeopardize the critical vigor of his approach. This is a point raised by R. Bernasconi, who writes

that Heidegger “wants a highly restricted conception of great art. This does not ease the

suspicion that Heidegger’s conception of art is trading off the very aesthetics which it is

supposed to question...Heidegger appears to take the modern system of les belles artes for

granted.”204 Bernasconi argues that Heidegger failed to complete his critical reading of great art

because he failed to recognize what he wrote in his lectures on Heraclitus, namely, that “there is

no Greek religion at all.”

Nevertheless, there seems to be a critical difference between Hegel and Heidegger

which concerns specifically the convergence of art and truth. Hegel’s metaphysics of Spirit

cannot do away with representation and this will always translate into an issue of the adequacy

of the artistic representation of truth (as sensible presentation of the supersensible. In the

culmination of romantic art, art suffers precisely because it must represent its own limit with

respect to truth.) While Hegel remains within the tradition of aesthetics and the end of art is an

aesthetic death, so to speak, Heidegger challenges the very coming to being of truth which can

come to pass as art. In Heidegger’s view, in the course of philosophy up to now, the

metaphysical construals have only concealed and covered the meaning of Being (in which case

Hegel’s statement of art as past would be just a belated recognition of an end-ing already set to

work; it would be Heidegger preceding Hegel). The critical step back into the history of

metaphysics (and aesthetics) can only occur at the end when metaphysics’ own course is

204
Bernasconi, “The Greatness of the Work of Art,” 101-102.

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exposed as the manifold attempts to conceive the true meaning of Being.

While for Hegel there is no place for great art after the end of art, for Heidegger the

possibility is (provisionally) open. He says in the essay “The End of Philosophy and the Task

of Thinking”: “As a completion, an end is the gathering into the most extreme possibilities. We

think in too limited a fashion as long as we expect only a development of new philosophies of

the previous styles.”205 If the end of philosophy is the “place in which philosophy’s history is

gathered into its most extreme possibility,”206 then might we say that the end or completion of

aesthetics (through Hegel) is the historical moment in which the essential possibilities are

gathered for thinking of a new coming of art (as a new grant of Being)?

As Heidegger argues in this essay, the different ways that metaphysics has interpreted

Being are gathered together, and in the place of the gathering (completion, Vollendung) the

forgottonness of Being makes itself known. Thus the clearing of Being, which Heidegger

thematizes in the “Origin” essay, is the place from which a second beginning can arise, a

disclosure granting anew the “possibility of the belonging together of Being and thinking.”207

Reading Hegel critically means, for Heidegger, to think the end of great art as a “withdrawal

configuration” of Being: the end of art is an instance of Being’s revealing towards another

beginning. Conceiving of great art in this way also requires that there be a new conceptual

language to reflect and address such art instead of the aesthetic tradition’s discourse. This

requirement of Heidegger’s, it seems to me, finds its answer in the “Origin” essay where art is

considered exclusively as Dichtung, Sprache, entwerfendes Sagen, and this by default requires a

new reflective mode and interpretation of the meaning/being/truth of art.208

205
M. Heidegger, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” in Basic Writings, ed. by D.F.Krell (London:
Routledge, 1996), 433.
206
Ibid., 433.
207
Ibid., 445.
208
The importance of language for Heidegger is seen in his later essays on language, e.g. “The Way to Language,”
which disclose the essence of language itself in the granting of Ereignis. Commentators have underlined the aspect
of performative language in the Contributions (to a lesser degree such is also the language in “Origin”), which
attempts to capture Ereignis and the play of unconcealment. His reflection on the source of language’s essence –
when this essence itself is not understood instrumentally but as what first brings something into the Open by

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 In contrast to great art, an “aesthetic consideration” is such because it objectifies the

state of feeling aroused by the beautiful and reduces all other conceptual analysis to that feeling,

defining it as “aesthetic.” Heidegger writes,

In recent decades we have often heard the complaint that the innumerable aesthetic
considerations of and investigations into art and the beautiful have achieved nothing,
that they have not helped anyone to gain access to art, that they have contributed
virtually nothing to artistic creativity and to a sound appreciation of art….But we dare
not derive our standards for judging aesthetics and its relation to art from such
contemporary work (N 1, 79).

Therefore, he claims that an authentic reflection on aesthetics, and through this, a reflection on

the essence of art, must be carried out only when that discourse of aesthetics is deconstructed,

because “the question of aesthetics as the basic sort of meditation (Besinnung) on art and the

knowledge of it can be treated only with respect to fundamentals” (i.e., with respect to Being)

(N 1, 79). The reflections on the relationship of art and truth lead Heidegger to question art’s

origin and its subsequent comprehension in metaphysics. In this respect paradigmatic figures

become Plato and Nietzsche, who are positioned at the beginning and end of his version of the

history of aesthetics (Nietzsche, on his part, thinks through to the end the history of metaphysics

as well).209 Starting with Plato and Aristotle, the work of art is conceived as a being that seeks

to bring together the sensible and supersensible, so that the supersensible (spiritual) can find

representation in the sensuous. “Production,” “correspondence,” “adequation,” “mediation” are

all ways to describe a “relationship” of art and truth, which requires and presupposes the

sensible/supersensible duality. If Heidegger is to overcome the tradition, then the key to it is a

naming it for the first time, echoes his reflection on art as an origin. For details, see D.Vallega-Neu, Heidegger's
Contributions to Philosophy: An Introduction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003); 3, 37, 49.
209
W. Brogan writes, “Nietzsche is merely the final stage and fulfillment of a history that began when Plato
posited the idea of the good as the condition of the possibility of beings. With Nietzsche, this condition, this
beingness, is transformed into an underlying, value-positing will to power.” W. Brogan, “The Decentered Self:
Nietzsche's Transgression of Metaphysical Subjectivity,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1991) Vol. 29/4;
421.

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new approach to the reconciliation between truth and art. Art – as work – will be the occurrence

of truth itself.

2.4. The Turn to Nietzsche

Nietzsche comes into play because of his place in the history of metaphysics; he has

carried out a reversal of the “oldest” metaphysical schema, i.e., Plato’s “two worlds” theory that

has plagued metaphysics (and art) from its inception. Nietzsche reverses that Platonic schema,

denouncing the supersensuous world as a lie, an error, and elevating the sensuous world (which

in Plato stood for semblance and error) to the status of the true world (N 1, 73). In this way

Nietzsche also reverses Plato’s devaluation of art (for whom art’s element is the sensuous),

turning it into a new principle of revaluation of life.

Heidegger’s project necessitates a turn to Nietzsche in order to draw attention to the

metaphysical background and significance of Nietzsche’s account of art, in particular,

Nietzsche’s conception of art as will to power as a final stage in the modern metaphysics of

subjectivity.210 In order to pronounce a final judgment on the end-of-art thesis and Hegelian

aesthetics and answer the question whether art can still play a role as a historical occurrence

of truth, Heidegger must address the issue of nihilism. He must determine if art has indeed

exhausted its possibilities to be absolute, if it has lost its “absolute power” (daß die Kunst die

Macht zum Absoluten, ihre absolute Macht verloren hat). Heidegger sums up the distinction

between the Hegelian and the Nietzschean take on the present state of art as follows: “What

Hegel asserted concerning art - that it had lost its power to be the definite fashioner and

preserver of the absolute - Nietzsche recognized to be the case with the ‘highest values,’

religion, morality and philosophy” (N 1, 90). Whereas for Hegel “it was art – in contrast to

religion, morality, and philosophy – that fell victim to nihilism and became a thing of the past,

210
In this section, I will be less concerned with Nietzsche and will focus primarily on the history of aesthetics
within which Heidegger inscribes him.

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something nonfactual, for Nietzsche art is to be pursued as the counter-movement” (N 1, 90).

In other words, the danger of aesthetics and the end of art ‘Hegelian style’ is far less alarming

than nihilism which threatens philosophy itself.

J. Taminiaux evaluates Heidegger’s turning to Nietzsche as seeking to bridge the

beginning and end of the history of aesthetics. With his reversal of Platonism, Nietzsche can

provide the fundamentals of a new (but, in fact, the originary), prism of the “cognitive-

conceptual thought truly corresponding to the ‘great art’ of Greece, and which was lacking at

the time of the great art.” In this way Nietzsche “marks the point where the historical process

described in six points returns to its beginning.[…] Nietzsche is looping the loop of that

process, and is therefore the most Greek of the Germans, preceded only by Hölderlin.”211

This is the internal logic of a process going on within Nietzsche’s philosophy of art as a

“physiology of art”212 that will lead to “an ontological self-overcoming of aesthetics.”

Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche is based on the analysis of the “five statements on

art” he proposes; they capture the most essential aspects of Nietzsche’s conception of art,

rooted in the notions of the will to power, rapture, and the grand style. Heidegger’s premise

is that if the will to power determines beings as such, the question concerning truth must be

included in the interpretation of beings as will to power; on the other hand, conceiving art as

will to power, necessarily links art to truth. The five statements read as follows:

1. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;

2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist;
3. According to the expanded concept of artist, art is the basic occurrence of all beings; to
the extent that they are, beings are self-creating, created;
4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism;
5. Art is worth more than “the truth.” (N 1, 75).

211
J. Taminiaux, “On Heidegger’s Interpretation of the Will to Power as Art,” 14. I rely on Taminiaux for assessing
Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche. One of the most important claims Taminiaux makes in his article is that the
“The Origin of the Work of Art,” as an attempt to pull art out of the orbit of aesthetics, “was conceived as an
attempt to revive Nietzsche's notion of art” (10).
212
Ibid., 15. Taminiaux seems to agree with Heidegger in reading Nietzsche's notion of physiology not as a form of
modern physiologism (which would reduce Nietzsche’s aesthetics to bodily states only), but rather as being “in
close attunement with the pre-Socratic understanding of physis” as well as the association of the “natural” in
Nietzsche with the Greek deinon. If we agree with Taminiaux’s other proposition that the “Origin” essay seeks to
revive the Nietzschean conception of art, then this association seems right.

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 Heidegger claims these statements provide clear evidence that Nietzsche does not

inquire into art “as a cultural phenomenon or as a monument of civilization” (N 1, 77). He

insists that “what is decisive in Nietzsche's conception of art [is] that he sees it in its essential

entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously, and in explicit opposition to that

conception of art which represents it in terms of those who ‘enjoy’ and ‘experience’

(Erlebenden) it” (N 1, 70). For Nietzsche, art is seen as the creative (das Schaffende) in the

broadest sense; it has the force and capacity to carry out a new kind of valuation of being,

negating and reversing the previous principles of such values which have proceeded from and

resulted in dogmatic religious and moral claims. The artist possesses the “yes”-saying power,

a productive power which constitutes value free from such dogmas; the artistic capacity for

creation can bestow form to and reinterpret existence in the multiple perspectives of art.

Against the nihilistic negation of life by morality and metaphysics, Nietzsche posits the ideal

of “der Künstler-Philosoph” (N 1, 73). He is the one who can go „counter” the life-negating

nihilism of Christian-Platonic metaphysics, valuing instead the truth of “beings as a whole.”

In this sense art, for Nietzsche, is the venue for overturning the old metaphysical schema

dividing the sensuous and the suprasensuous; such reversal will emancipate both art as value-

giving and the realm of the sensuous as native to art.

Heidegger is nevertheless critical of Nietzsche for not inquiring into work as essential

to the creation of art (and by extension, to the artist). Instead of conceiving creation as

bringing forth, Nietzsche speaks of a life-power conceived as a state of rapture, an art-

creating state which has nothing to do with chaos or drunken frenzy. In the interpretation of

rapture as “form-engendering force” Heidegger discovers the genuine Greek sense of the

notion of “form” and argues that here it corresponds to the Greek morphe (N 1, 118-119). In

morphe we need to hear and see the original Greek “enclosing limit and boundary, what

brings and stations a being into that which it is, so that it stands in itself: its configuration” (N

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1, 119). By “form” Nietzsche does not understand that which needs content, only the external

border of such content, the limit that brings a being into what it is. Rapture is “form-

engendering,” but it is such in the limits of form: “Form defines and demarcates for the first

time the realm in which the state of waxing force and plenitude of being comes to

fulfillment... Whenever form holds sway, as the supreme simplicity of the most resourceful

lawfulness, there is rupture” (N 1, 119). Thus, form is not conceived of aesthetically but

assumes “ontological” significance.213 “Form, as what allows that which we encounter to

radiate in appearance, first brings the behavior that it determines into the immediacy of a

relation to beings. Form displays the relation itself as the state of original comportment

toward beings, the festive state in which the being itself in its essence is celebrated and thus

for the first time placed in the open” (N 1, 119; my emphasis). The event of artistic creation is

the becoming of form.

Considered in this mode, “form” comes to actuality in the Nietzschean notion of the

“grand style,” which Heidegger considers the “unifying concept of his aesthetics.” Only with

reference to it can art be a creative counter-movement and “only then have we arrived at the

peak of his ‘aesthetics’ which at that point is no longer aesthetics at all” (N 1, 137). The

reading of Nietzsche’s grand style assumes inevitably a Heideggerian flavor, especially

because the grand style is grasped in relation to law, measure, decision (in the perspective of

the Being of beings). Style is the “event’s self-imposed law”; in Heideggerian words, this

event is the becoming of truth. The grand style exists “where the abundance restrains (binds)

itself in simplicity,” it is like a “yoke” that holds opposite forces together. The grand style is

such because “only what assimilates its sharpest antithesis, and not what merely holds that

antithesis down and suppresses it, is truly great; such transformation does not cause the

antithesis to disappear, however, but to come to its essential unfolding” (N 1, 135).

213
Ibid., 16.

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Taminiaux may be right to argue that here Heidegger is in a debate with himself,214 because

the language invokes the language of “strife” in the “Origin” essay (where strife does not lead

to a dialectical resolve but precisely lets the work bear the strife in itself as its own measure of

self-subsistence).215

Heidegger describes art in the grand style in terms of commanding, willing and, most

importantly, legislating. “Art is not only subject to rules, must not only obey laws, but is in

itself legislation. Only as legislation is it truly art. What... is to be created is the law” (N 1, 130).

Thus conceived, art in the grand style is creative in the most profound (Heideggerian) sense: it

establishes “rank, distinction, and decision”; in other words, it founds history by establishing

new values and principles of valuation (N 1, 126). In this “legislative” power Heidegger finds

the essential link between the grand style and art as a “countermovement” to nihilism: “But art

as a countermovement to nihilism is to lay the groundwork for establishment of new standards

and values” (N 1, 126). In Heidegger’s view, therefore, Nietzsche's physiological aesthetics

“somersaults” beyond itself insofar as the aesthetic state – seen as the reciprocal relation of

rapture and beauty – takes its full measure in the grand style.

In a provocative remark, Heidegger states that “the historical fact that every true

aesthetics – for example, the Kantian – explodes itself is an unmistakable sign that, although the

aesthetic inquiry into art does not come about by accident, it is not what is essential” (N 1, 131).

For Heidegger, Nietzsche’s aesthetic inquiry “explodes” (rather, implodes) its own position

when “it advances to its most far-flung border” in the examination of the “state of creation and

enjoyment” inasmuch as this state is “pursued to the farthest perimeter of the bodily state as

such, to what is farthest removed from the spirit, from the spirituality of what is created, and

214
Ibid., 17.
215
The gathering or self-legislating of the will to power in art is similar to the becoming or figuration of the rift as
form in “The Origin of the Work of Art.” There Heidegger emphasizes that the rift is a measure given to itself,
drawn out and articulated out in difference, the withdrawn revealing of Being. On this see also Christopher Fynsk,
Heidegger: Thought and Historicity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); 162-163.

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from its formalistic lawfulness” (N 1, 129). Aesthetics is exceeded when that state is taken to

its extreme – when the aesthetic state is pushed under the law of the grand style, “under the

supreme command of measure and law, taking themselves beyond themselves in their will to

advance” (N 1, 130). But even though Nietzsche takes aesthetics to its limits, it is not by that

overcome. Heidegger claims that “[s]uch overcoming requires a still more original

metamorphosis of our Dasein and our knowledge, which is something that Nietzsche only

indirectly prepares by means of the whole of his metaphysical thought” (N 1, 131). Nietzsche’s

reflections on art remain “aesthetic,” and therefore “metaphysical,” because they still represent

a “definition of the Being of beings.” Heidegger agrees that the concept of the “grand style”

points to an overcoming of aesthetics inasmuch as by means of the grand style itself “a decision

is made, indeed, about the meaning of the Being of beings” (N 1, 134).

2.5. The Discordance Between Art and Truth: Plato

The decision on whether art can be a countermovement to nihilism requires further

investigation of the relationship between art and truth, the truth of Being. Heidegger

approaches the question by juxtaposing Nietzsche and Plato, since, as is visible from the six

basic facts of the development of aesthetics, they are key figures in the history of aesthetics.

Nietzsche states that the relation of art and truth is one of “discordance” which arouses dread (N

1, 142). In Heidegger’s account, Nietzsche does not pose the question concerning the essence

of truth, nor does he ever stake out the “domain” of that question. This “oversight” on the part

of Nietzsche is, unfortunately, a characteristic of the entire history of Western philosophy since

Plato and Aristotle. “That the question of the essence of truth is missing in Nietzsche's thought

is an oversight unlike any other... The 'oversight' pervades the entire history of Occidental

philosophy since Plato and Aristotle” (N 1, 149). The implication of such “oversight” is two-

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fold: first, it means that the concealment of the essence of truth and the oblivion of Being are

inherently linked and have determined the history of metaphysics (and aesthetics) from the very

beginning. Second, the fact that Nietzsche does not address it restricts his attempt to “overturn”

Platonism and thus, to reverse the metaphysical schema reigning in aesthetics.

In the debate between Plato, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, we find three ways of thinking

the relationship between art and truth: an initial division that turns to be “felicitous” in Plato;

with Nietzsche it becomes “a dreadfully raging discord” (N 1, 142); and Heidegger, for whom

art bears the strife of truth setting itself in the work. According to Heidegger, if Nietzsche’s

philosophy is to be evaluated as the authentic overturning of Platonism, such discordance of art

and truth, “but of a reverse sort,” must be already present in Plato’s thought (N 1, 163). He

therefore turns to the Republic and the Phaedrus with the intent to first, clarify Plato’s

understanding of art, Being, and truth; and next, to map Nietzsche’s own view onto Plato’s. As

Heidegger comes to conclude, the doctrine of art as mimesis articulated in Republic X reveals

no discord between art and truth (idea) but only a “distance” between them (N 1, 190).

In Plato’s philosophy, we find developments critical for the later understanding of art

and aesthetics, most significantly, the concepts of mimesis and the beautiful; they inform the

modern conceptual framework of aesthetics grasping art as a source of aesthetic experience.

For Plato, Being is apprehended in terms of outward appearance, the true aspect of a thing. The

outward appearance (eidos) is “what a particular thing is as that which it is.” In its outward

appearance a thing becomes “present as that which it is,” permanent and selfsame (N 1, 172).

This is how the theory of ideas 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. Eidos is the whatness of being, that which is essential in a being. The shining of the

thing in its eidos, that is, in its truth, is the beautiful. Beauty is pure radiance, pure

manifestation; the most beautiful therefore will be truth itself. In Plato’s account, the eidos is

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most visible and fully manifest in the philosophical idea, not in the work of art. Art can provide

an image – eikon - of truth, but as it appears in something else, partially present and partially

disclosed (thus, the danger of art as deceptive and provoking falsehood). Only philosophy can

deliver truth as such in full presence, as idea, whereas art can only imitate the manifestation of

the thing in its truth.

What makes Plato’s view on art the beginning of aesthetics? Taking the visible as pure

presence and truth (oblivious to what remains undisclosed) – grasping the Being of beings as

based on a “particular interpretation of being” – is what brings forth the metaphysical view of

Being (N 1, 167). Art falls short of the demand to grasp truth in terms of correctness and

becomes subordinated to philosophy. In the context of Platonic metaphysics mimesis, which

defines the essence of art, stands for the relation between the ideas and their artistic rendering.

Things in the world are imitations of the ideas; respectively, art works are imitations of the

things.

Plato’s basic position on the relationship of art and truth is expressed in the affirmation

of philosophy as true knowledge as opposed to art, which cannot disclose the truth and being.

In Books II and III of the Republic art appears as necessary insofar as it can be an educational

tool used to achieve a political goal (the creation of the polis). With respect to building the

political community, Plato claims that the knowledge required to ground it is theoretical (N 1,

165). This is what makes Plato’s view on art political, i.e., he evaluates art with respect to its

position in the state and the founding principles of the state (truth and justice). The question of

the relation of the poets to the city is the question of belonging to communal life and how that

communal life places itself in decision under truth; art’s role in this process depends on its

capacity to sustain an historical community. The conclusive argument of the Republic is that art

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is denied a role as a source of knowledge in its own right.216 Even though Hegel, as we have

already seen, manages to bring art back to an absolute status (which certainly holds true for the

era of great art), with the onset of modern times art loses its encompassing religious-cultural

function as founding.

2.6. Art and Mimesis (Plato)

At the outset of book 10 of the Republic the question focuses on mimesis in the context

of what the Greeks understood to be truth. Heidegger discusses Plato’s position on mimesis as a

“distance” of art from truth (chapter 22 of the Nietzsche volume is dedicated to this topic). To

clarify the notions of production and mimesis, he refers to the example of the threefold relation

between the demiurgos, the craftsman and the painter. The demiurgos is the one who can

produce everything; to contrast this production from an imitation, Plato suggests a comparison

with reflection in a mirror (Republic, 596c-e), which shows that mimesis is removed far from

truth. The eidos is not something the craftsman himself can produce; rather it is something

eternal that he "mirrors" when he lets it show itself in the thing he is making. The craftsman

brings forth the eidos of bed, when he looks to the idea before crafting a particular exemplar; he

‘produces’ it in such a way that the eidos is present in the thing, but he does not make this idea –

“he can only be stationed before it.” Artists mislead us, in Plato’s view, for they seem to use

imitation as an end in itself. What is more, imitations themselves are inherently deceptive; they

present a likeness of an object which is, in turn, only an instance of an object rather than its

essence. Thus, mimesis interferes with the cognitive conception of identities and universals,

216
Compared with Plato, Hegel both assigns art absoluteness but at the same time argues for its ratification by
philosophy; he argues that art does not exist for the purpose of imitating nature and that imitation [as formal
Nachahmung] is not its defining feature; it does not set art’s purpose or its guiding rule. Imitation can produce no
genuine vitality but only a “mere parody of life”: “The aim of art must therefore lie in something still other than the
purely mechanical imitation [Nachahmung] of what is there, which in every case can bring to birth only technical
tricks, not works, of art [Kunststücke, nicht aber Kunstwerke]” (LFA 1, 45).

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essential not only for discerning what things are, but also for what does not appear to the eye:

their essence or ‘form’ (eidos). Plato concludes that imitators have no knowledge of what they

imitate (599a–e; 602a); thus they cannot convey knowledge. The painted bed is just a copy of a

copy; it shows just one aspect of the bed, reproduces only one point of view: “[t]he Idea is

prescribed to the craftsman and he must subscribe to it” (N 1, 175). A thing that is produced,

made, is truly only in the sense that the idea lets it come to presence in its outward appearance;

making brings the outward appearance to show itself (shine) in something else [the made thing]

(N 1, 176). Artistic production is contrasted to physis which emerges of itself, produces itself as

such, by itself, in its pure outward appearance, in its eidos – not in any other medium.217

The painter is a copier of the things of which the other two are the producers; only he is

thus called a mimetes. The craftsman produces in a way that holds together eidos and outward

appearance, and is thus more adequate and closer to truth. In the pictured bed, argues

Heidegger, the bed is manifested in general, showing its idea in some way, yet the picture

shows both idea and bed in something else, in shades of color (in a third thing) (N 1, 184-5).

Thus the distance, questioned here, from Being and its pure visibility is decisive for the

definition and understanding of the essence of mimesis: the crux of Plato’s notion of mimesis is

not reproduction or portrayal, not the fact that the painted image provides us with the same

thing again, but the failure of the mimetes, namely, what he, compared to the craftsman, cannot

do. The painted copy presents only one aspect, one particular way of the bed frame appearing.

So mimesis must not be understood as naturalistic or primitive copying and reproducing, rather,

“[i]mitation is subordinate pro-duction. The mimetes is defined in essence by his position of

distance; such distance results from the hierarchy established with regard to ways of production

and in the light of pure outward appearance, Being” (N 1, 185).

217
Heidegger writes in An Introduction to Metaphysics, “the transformation of being from physis to idea gave rise
to one of the essential movements in the history of the West, and not only of its art” (IM, 185).

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 In that distance - “a distance of order and rank” - Heidegger finds the real meaning of

the Platonic conception of art: “a position of distance with respect to Being, to immediate and

undistorted outward appearance, to the idea, is proper to art. In regard to the opening of Being,

to the display of being in the unconcealed, aletheia, art is subordinate” (N 1, 186; my

emphasis). For Heidegger’s Plato, then, art is removed from the truth, because it does not

produce the eidos as idea but the “semblance of pure outward appearance,” which is a

“residue,” as he says, of the genuine self-showing of beings and even then, this self-showing is

carried out in an alien domain (be it color or some other material).218

The overcoming of the mimetic conception of art for Heidegger is the reduction of that

distance to Being (in the “Origin” essay this is clearly the case because art is the happening of

truth, and so of Being). Distance implies a ground to be re-presented (vorstellen, darstellen),

framed in the exchange between subject-object and the inside-outside perspective in Hegel’s

philosophy of Spirit (a subject which assumes the position of standing before and over against

the object (as in Gegen-stand). The opposite of distance is the opening of the Open and the

gathering of Being in the work itself (the movement of unconcealing in the work of art, or the

berückend-entrückend movement to Being inspired by the beautiful in Phaedrus, for example).

Eliminating distance will secure for Heidegger the step away from the economy of

representation and thus of subject-object relations in the creation of art. The initial remarks in

“The Origin of the Work of Art” stress the circular nature of origination and the inseparability

of art, artist, and work of art, marking the absence of any metaphysical transcendent ground

(PLT 17-18). Ultimately, the origin of art, captured in Gestalt, does not provide a ground but

leaves the work to stand in itself (Insichselbstruhen).

218
Heidegger reverses this relation, when he argues that it is the work of art, its materiality, for example, the shining
of the temple stone, that opens the space for both truth and nature: “By contrast the temple work, in setting up a
world, does not let the material disappear but lets it come forth for the very first time, to come into the open of the
work’s world” (PLT 46).

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 If there is any trace of mimesis in the work of art, as conceived by Heidegger, it is of a

different order, a mimesis of a dynamic movement, so to speak. This topic is discussed in more

detail in the next chapter, so a brief reference to John Sallis219 and his take on the notion of a

more “originary” mimesis (mimesis that would exceed the circle of production, “art as mimesis

of truth”) in the “Origin” essay can help us see the difference between Heidegger and Plato

more clearly. Sallis writes:

It would be a mimesis not preceded by truth, a mimesis that would take place precisely in
giving place to truth, in that setting of truth into the work that is also a setting of the
work into truth, that setting of truth into its limit. It would be a mimesis that would take
place in and as the Gestalt in which truth would be set into the work.220

Heidegger ends his chapter on mimesis in Plato by quoting Erasmus on Albrecht Dürer: “[B]y

showing a particular thing from any given angle, he, Dürer, the painter, brings to the fore not

only one single isolated view which offers itself to the eye. …We may complete the thought in

the following way - by showing any given individual thing as this particular thing, in its

singularity, he makes Being itself visible….Erasmus here is speaking against Plato” (N 1, 187).

Heidegger concludes by saying that if Erasmus and Dürer could speak in such a fashion

presupposes that a “transformation of the understanding of Being was taking place.” What can

we make of this reference to Dürer? That art, in the age of Dürer, as we gather, under the sway

of (a positive) truth change, was able to execute a work of art which manifests the eidos of a

thing in the work of art. That is, the art work can capture the essence of a thing – not simply an

isolated view/aspect of it.221

219
John Sallis, "Heidegger's Poetics: The Question of Mimesis," in W. Biemel und F.-W. von Hermann (eds.),
Kunst und Technik (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1989); 177-78. On the issue of art, nature, truth and mimesis, see also
J. Sallis, “Stone” in Endings, 209.
220
J. Sallis, "Heidegger's Poetics," 188.
221
Heidegger gives the example of Dürer’s engraving Der Hase (1502?), claiming that in a particular animal, we
can see its animality.

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 2.7. Beauty and the Disclosure of Truth (Heidegger’s Phaedrus)

Contrary to the distance separating art and truth in the Republic, the Phaedrus,

according to Heidegger, reveals the beautiful as the most radiant of ideas which alone shines

amidst beings in the sensuous realm. The beautiful is discussed in terms of man’s relation to

Being itself; the view upon Being is proper to the essence of man but is obscured since the

essential order of being is concealed by appearances. Truth and beauty are both related to

Being; nonetheless they diverge because art, which brings forth the beautiful, must reside in the

sensuous, while truth by default belongs to the realm of the nonsensuous for Plato. Art

(understood in light of the beautiful) and truth are thus in a state of harmonious or “felicitous”

discord. “The beautiful elevates us beyond the sensuous and bears us back into the true. Accord

prevails in the severance, because the beautiful, as radiant and sensuous, has in advance

sheltered its essence in the truth of Being as supersensuous” (N 1, 198).

Heidegger writes that only to the extent that being is able to elicit erotic power in its

relation to man is man capable of thinking about being and overcoming the oblivion of Being

(N 1, 194). The beautiful provokes the openness of Being; the erotic relationship accomplishes

the recovery from oblivion and enables the soul to become beautiful and to see the beautiful

itself. For Heidegger, beauty captivates through “scintillating,” sensuous appearance; it affords

humans a relation to the immediacy of the sensuous world while simultaneously transporting

them beyond this world into the realm of the supersensuous.222 By way of beauty the transient,

momentary glimpse of Being itself is captured from the outward appearance of things.

Hence beauty and truth (must) belong together, as they are essential to the revelation of

the Ideas, “for that which truth essentially brings about, the unveiling of Being, that and nothing

else is what beauty brings about” (N 1, 198). Yet this belonging together of beauty and truth is

222
Beauty’s erotic power both captivates and liberates, in a berückend-entrückende, ‘push-pull’ movement
(berücken – “causing to move toward”; entrücken – “causing to move away”; both verbs indicate the relation of the
withdrawal of Being and the swaying of truth in dis-closure).

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seen as both decepive and transitory in Plato’s thought; although beauty grants an ascent to

Being, it is a subordinate phenomenon, residing in the realm of the sensuous. Therefore, despite

beauty’s power to open up to aletheia, this opening or “disclosure” of Being remains bound to

the realm of the sensuous. For Plato, however, the sensuous is always the realm of “non-being”

(me on). Thus the necessity that beauty and truth diverge from each other, but in a “felicitous

discord”: “When we consider very carefully that art, by bringing forth the beautiful, resides in

the sensuous, and that it is therefore far removed from truth, it then becomes clear why truth and

beauty, their belonging together in one notwithstanding, still must be two, must separate from

one another. But the severance, discordance in the broad sense, is not in Plato’s view one that

arouses dread; it is a felicitous one. The beautiful elevates us beyond the sensuous and bears us

back into the true” (N 1, 198).

2.8. “Overturning” Platonism

If Nietzsche must seal the tradition of aesthetics by leading it to a “somersault,” this

necessarily involves the “overturning” of Platonism. Nietzsche challenges Plato with the

assertion that art ("semblance") is worth more than truth ("reality"). Heidegger discusses this

issue in the last chapters of his lectures on Nietzsche. It is important to keep in mind that

Nietzsche’s attempt at a reversal is limited in reach – Heidegger is critical of the fact that the

question of the essence of truth and the question of Being are absent from Nietzsche's thought

(N 1, 149). This fact delimits in advance the success of Nietzsche’s project of overturning

Platonism and its potential effect for the overcoming of metaphysics and aesthetics.

The basic schema for Platonism stresses that the supersensuous is true being. In

contrast, the sensuous is non-being, that which may not be addressed as being and must

therefore be measured against the supersensuous (N 1, 154). Knowledge is by default

vouchsafed by the supersensuous, which shows itself forth in the sensuous. If for Platonism

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truth is the supersensuous, then the relationship to art will be one of “exclusion, opposition,

antithesis” – one of discordance, since art and artistic portrayal are grounded in the sensuous (N

1, 162). To overturn Platonism would be to “reverse the standard relation”; by way of reversal,

the supersensuous will be placed in service of the sensuous. When the reversal is complete, the

sensuous will become being proper, the true. Yet, such reversal should not be conceived as

simply shifting from one epistemological paradigm to another. Rather, the overturning must be

measured as “shattering the preeminence of the supersensuous as the ideal” because Platonism

founds the definitive “preeminence,” dominance and valuation of the supersensuous over the

sensuous (N 1, 160). In that respect, Platonism is also nihilism, positing the supersensuous as

the highest value and only genuine being.

“Inverted” Platonism (umgedrehter Platonismus) posits the sensuous as the true. The

inversion implies that the sensuous, the world of appearance as what “lies below” now comes to

stand above, and the supersensuous, “the true world” is pushed below (N 1, 201). For

Heidegger this procedure amounts to nothing else but indeed only an inversion, not an

overturning. As long as the positions of “above” and “below” are preserved, the basic Platonic

metaphysical schema is also preserved. If the “true” world goes, then the “apparent” world

must go, too: that is, a twisting free of Platonism requires overcoming the division of the ‘two’

worlds altogether (which itself is produced, anyway, by an errant understanding of truth) (N 1,

201). As Michel Haar writes about Nietzsche’s reversal, by “bestowing upon appearances the

dignity of the essence it keeps sustaining Platonism while abolishing it – it sustains it by

insisting upon the difference between the originary and the derived, between the affirmation of

appearance and its negation, between becoming and ‘being,’ between the artistic will to power

and the ‘logical’ fixation of truth such as the true, the same, the non-contradictory.”223 As long

223
Michel Haar, Nietzsche and Metaphysics, transl. by M. Gendre (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996); 62.

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as Nietzsche accepts the truth of art (over truth), he is still subscribing to the Platonic duality;

even in the reversal, this distinction between the true and the apparent is preserved.

Nietzsche’s achievement with the inversion (Umdrehung) of Platonism is the

emancipation of semblance as inherent into the essence of reality, erasing the negative

connotations that metaphysics has come to ascribe to “appearance.” Through the critique of

Platonism, he redefines the value of the sensuous, showing that what appears via the sensuous

(as semblance, Schein) is a meaningful aspect of the manifestation of a thing, and this aspect

(“perspectival shining”) is an inseparable part of the world of appearances (die scheinbare

Welt). Within this different interpretation of the sensuous and semblance the relation between

truth and art takes on a new distinct meaning. Truth acquires the sense of the fixing of

semblance (Anschein) and art of the “scintillating transfiguration” of semblance (Aufscheinen).

According to Nietzsche, as “will to semblance,” art idealizes and embellishes reality, so that it

will “shine most profoundly and supremely in scintillating transfiguration” (N 1, 216). This

power of art to effect a creative transfiguration defines it as significantly more valuable to life

than truth, despite the fact that art and truth are both necessary for life as modes of

“perspectival-shining.” For Heidegger this is the specific meaning of Nietzsche's claim that art

is worth more than truth: “Art, as transfiguration, is more enhancing to life than truth, as

fixation of an apparition” (N 1, 217; emphasis in original). As D.F. Krell writes regarding

Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, at this point “Nietzsche stands at that critical juncture

and pleads for art and creativity; Heidegger occupies the same point and urges meditation on

Dasein’s disclosedness - and that means on the essence of truth. But thought on the essence of

truth demands attention to the work of art, so that Heidegger's thought from hence - at least

partly as a result of its encounter with Nietzsche - will strive to rethink the raging discord

between art and truth.”224

224
David Farrell Krell “Art and Truth in Raging Discord: Heidegger and Nietzsche on the Will to Power” in
boundary 2, Vol. 4/No. 2 (1976); 388.

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 With the inversion of Platonism, the relationship of art and truth is redefined: “With a

view to the conquest of nihilism, that is, to the foundation of the new valuation, art and

truth…attain equal importance. According to their essence, intrinsically, art and truth come

together in the realm of a new historical existence” (N 1, 161; my emphasis). What is this new

relationship? In this statement of Heidegger’s, I believe, we can find the key to understanding

both the “discordant rage between art and truth,” which begins with Plato and reaches its end in

Nietzsche (within the context of metaphysics), but also see how this necessary opposition points

toward a more originary understanding of the relationship of art and truth – one in which truth

and art are equally necessary. Heidegger reveals this in the “Origin” essay.

Nietzsche drives aesthetics to its limits by transgressing the boundaries between art and

philosophy, but he carries his project in terms of his attempt at revaluation of all values.

Heidegger seems to acknowledge only certain accomplishments of Nietzsche and continues to

think of him as the last metaphysician. But since Heidegger is intent on his radical questioning

of the philosophical tradition and its categories, he cannot accept to stop with Nietzsche or to

follow him in his footsteps.225 Because of this, Heidegger finds it necessary to turn to the other

major opponent of Nietzsche, who is Kant. The context of the discussion is again the

possibility of “imploding” aesthetics – of bringing it to its own limits. Heidegger invokes Kant

and his concept of freie Gunst in the consideration of the beautiful, juxtaposing Kant’s and

Nietzsche’s take on the appreciation of the beautiful.

2.9. Beauty and the Limits of Aesthetics (Heidegger’s Kant)

In the Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger focuses on Kant’s notion of the beautiful in an

attempt to clarify a “fatal” misinterpretation of that notion by both Schopenhauer and

225
See also Heidegger’s reference to Plato and Nietzsche in section 110 of Contributions to Philosophy (From
Enowning), trans. P. Emad & K. Maly, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 150-153.

150
Nietzsche.226 According to Heidegger, only Schiller was able to grasp some of the elements of

Kant’s doctrine of the beautiful (N 1, 108). But Heidegger also says “Kant alone grasped the

essence of what Nietzsche in his own way wanted to comprehend concerning the decisive

aspects of the beautiful” (N 1, 111). Heidegger’s discussion places Kant in the third stage of

development in the history of aesthetics, a time leading up to the most comprehensive system of

aesthetics in Hegel and a time in which aesthetics seems to flourish while great art comes to an

end (Gadamer defines it as the time of “subjectification” of aesthetics).227 Furthermore, the

significance of this stage is determined by the circumstance that with the firm establishment of

the subject as the ground of philosophical knowledge, the notions of taste, aesthetic reflection

and aesthetic judgment are affirmed as the main subject of aesthetics, too. Heidegger’s

discussion is limited to only one aspect of Kant’s aesthetics – the construal of the beautiful; it is

not a full-fledged interpretation of Kant, but it indicates ways for moving beyond aesthetics.

More specifically, Heidegger focuses on the Kantian notion of “disinterested pleasure”

or “delight devoid of all interest,” which defines our behavior or comportment to the beautiful

in a judgment of taste. The beautiful can never be an object of interest, because that implies a

desire, intention, goal, possession. Kant’s position requires that we look at the beautiful with

226
Nietzsche writes on Kant in the third essay of the Genealogy of Morals: “Kant thought he was honoring art
when among the predicates of beauty he emphasized and gave prominence to those which established the honor of
knowledge: impersonality and universality. This is not the place to inquire whether this was essentially a mistake;
all I wish to underline is that Kant, like all philosophers, instead of envisaging the aesthetic problem from the point
of view of the artist (the creator), considered art and the beautiful purely from that of the “spectator”, and
unconsciously introduced the “spectator” into the concept ‘beautiful.’ … [T]hey have offered us, from the
beginning, definitions in which, as in Kant’s famous definition of the beautiful, a lack of any refined first-hand
experience reposes in the shape of a fat worm of error. ‘That is beautiful,’ said Kant, ‘which gives us pleasure
without interest.’ Without interest! Compare with this definition one framed by a genuine ‘spectator’ and artist –
Stendahl, who once called the beautiful une promesse de bonheur. At any rate he rejected and repudiated the one
point about the aesthetic condition which Kant had stressed: le desiteressement.” F. Nietzsche, Basic Writings of
Nietzsche, transl. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1992), 539-540.
227
For Gadamer, basing aesthetics on the subjectivity of the mind’s powers and the Lebensgefühl generated through
the harmonious correspondence of our spiritual powers in the experience of beauty is the beginning of “a dangerous
process of subjectification,” rooted in the gradual disappearance of the validity of the natural order and its
theological justification. Gadamer argues that with the disappearance of this content, the process of subjectification
radicalizes in the development of the doctrine of the freedom of genius from rules. This process will culminate in
Hegel, even though for Gadamer Hegel’s aesthetics still stands “within a universal ontological horizon” as long as it
succeeds in reconciling the infinite and finite, the sensible indication of a spiritual truth. See H.-G. Gadamer, “The
Truth of the Work of Art,” in Heidegger’s Ways (Albany: SUNY, 1994); 101.

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“unconstrained favoring” (freie Gunst). Heidegger writes that such “favoring”228 means above

all letting the object be free, “let[ting] what encounters us, purely as it is in itself, come before

us in its own stature and worth,” instead of dismissing the object in indifference (N 1, 109). We

must “release” the beautiful to its way to be, “we must grant it what belongs to it and what it

brings to us.” What this implies is that instead of judgment, which is a product of the faculties

of the subject, the relationship to the beautiful elicits a different kind of position of the human

being in the world (closer to what Heidegger finds described in the Phaedrus). In the

experience of the beautiful we are oriented toward the object, but it is also necessary to

understand that this object is not constituted by a transcendental ego; there is no concept of this

experience because it is not constructed by reason. We are affected by the object, drawn to it

because the laws of constitution derive from the object itself.

For Heidegger, philosophy has committed an error towards Kant first, by taking this

statement of Kant to exhaust his view of the beautiful, and, second, by misunderstanding the

claim that “without interest” in the object meant that no relation at all to the object is possible.

Heidegger argues instead that

[t]he misinterpretation of ‘interest’ leads to the erroneous opinion that with the exclusion
of interest every essential relation to the object is suppressed. The opposite is the case.
Precisely by means of the ‘devoid of interest’ the essential relation to the object itself
comes into play. The misinterpretation fails to see that now for the first time the object
comes to the fore [zum Vorschein kommt] as pure object and that such coming forward
into appearance [dieses in-den-Vorschein-kommen] is the beautiful. The word ‘beautiful’
means appearing into the radiance of such coming to the fore [Das Wort ‘schön’ meint
das Erscheinen im Schein solchen Vorscheins] (N 1, 110).

Further, Heidegger links Kant’s position to Nietzsche’s statement from the Will to Power, #804:

“The beautiful exists just as little as the good, the true” (N 1, 111). But Heidegger is not

attempting to reduce Nietzsche’s concept of the beautiful to that of Kant; Nietzsche understands

the beautiful as what is “estimable and worthy” (N 1, 113). Heidegger emphasizes that the

228
In the 1943 “Postscript to “What is Metaphysics,” Heidegger speaks of the “favor of Being” (Gunst des Seins) to
which man responds with thinking as thanking. See M. Heidegger, Pathmarks, ed. by W. McNeill (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 236.

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exclusion of interest from aesthetic behavior for a “pleasure of reflection” makes possible a

more intimate relation to the object. The interpretation of aesthetic behavior as pleasure of

reflection “propels us,” he writes, “toward a basic state of human being in which man for the

first time arrives at the well-grounded fullness of his essence.”

Heidegger’s reading does not view Kant’s judgment of the beautiful as referring to an

entirely subjective matter; instead, Heidegger emphasizes that a “free favouring” enables an

essential relationship to the world and not a subjectivist one. Kant himself indicates that the

judgment of the beautiful discloses the good for us in the actual, singular experience of the

beautiful, to which no objective form can be given. Therefore, it cannot be approached

theoretically, but only critically. The judgment of taste points to a supersensible substrate in

humanity with which we identify and share the pleasure of the beautiful. Both Kant and

Heidegger seem to be on the same page in claiming that the encounter with the beautiful is not

given in a concept nor is it a representation of an object; rather, it signifies a finitude such that

representation fails to capture it. On the other hand, the absence of discussion of aesthetic

judgment, as central to modern aesthetics, speaks in support of the argument that Heidegger is

not looking to develop a theory of art but considers art in its possibility of being ontologically

grounding.

As J. Bernstein points out, Heidegger seems to offer a “double” reading of both Kant

and Plato in the Nietzsche course. On the one hand, Heidegger sees in Plato a “discord”

between art and truth, a distancing of art from true being (e.g., in the Republic), only to find in

the Phaedrus how this accord turns out to be “felicitous.”229 This puts in question Heidegger’s

placing of Plato at the beginning of aesthetics as the discipline which effects the veiling of truth

and beauty. In the same way, in his reading of Kantian Gunst, Heidegger is suggesting a “non

aesthetical comprehension of art and beauty” within a philosophy that “institutes the radical

229
J. Bernstein, The Fate of Art, 80.

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autonomy of aesthetics and art.” When we adopt the “disinterested” stance and “unconstrained

favoring” towards the work of art and the beautiful, a “relinquishment of transcendental

subjectivity” takes place. Therefore, Bernstein claims, an aesthetic stance, one which is

constituted by metaphysics, is in this way “exceeded,” and metaphysics itself is exceeded.230

To the Kantian state of disinterested pleasure Heidegger juxtaposes Nietzsche’s state of

rapture (N 1, 113). The state of rapture implies a going beyond ourselves; an ascent to Being

triggered by how the beautiful claims us. This intimate connection between rapture and the

beautiful elicits that of which we are capable in our essence. Heidegger defines the state of

rapture as “mood,” an attunement; rapture and beauty are “reciprocal” and where “[r]apture is

the basic mood; beauty does the attuning” (N 1, 123). He writes, “Thus the beautiful is

disclosed in rapture. The beautiful itself is what transports us into the feeling of rapture” (N 1,

113). For Heidegger, rapture and beauty represent the two "basic words" of Nietzsche's

aesthetics; they define the entire aesthetic state in such a way that it bursts asunder the subject-

object framework. “Rapture as a state of feeling explodes the very subjectivity of the subject ...

Beauty is no longer objective, no longer an object” (N 1, 123). The effect of coupling beauty

and rapture is a transformation where the aesthetic state is neither subjective nor objective;

hence, the metaphysical position of the closed sphere of the “object” as placed before a

“subject” can no longer obtain.

J. Taminiaux reads Kant’s notion of Gunst, considered as Freigabe, a gift, in the

perspective of the attunement to beauty which serves as an opening of the limited sphere of

both the subjective and objective encounter with the art work and suggests that for Heidegger

Kant was probably more Nietzschean than anyone would admit. In his view, the notion of

230
Ibid., 82. An argument in support of this comes also from Lacoue-Labarthe: an understanding of the beautiful
rooted in Scheinen accomplishes a full rapture with the eidetic conception of art. Kantian aesthetics in his view
accomplishes a “rapture” or an “abandonment of aesthetics” prior to Hegel, but through the category of the sublime.
Kant’s concept of the sublime brings the closure of aesthetics because with the sublime (understood as the counter-
concept of the beautiful) aesthetics experiences its own limit in the presentation of the infinite. See Lacoue-
Labarthe, “Sublime Truth I,” 19-20.

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freie Gunst “is but another name for the yes-saying dimension of the will to power.”231 But

Heidegger is not willing to concede to Kant what he gives Nietzsche, i.e., “expanding the

meaning [of the beautiful] to all historical significance and greatness” (N 1, 111). Heidegger

concludes that Nietzsche did not achieve clarity on the subjectivity of rapture here, and even

Kant, who possessed much more refined possibilities to interpret aesthetics, “remained

trapped within the limits of the modern concept of the subject” (N 1, 123). Neither did

Nietzsche succeed in leaving the domain of aesthetics, because the aesthetic state is his point

of departure; in this case, even a “physiological” aesthetics remains aesthetics (N 1, 91).

Nietzsche’s concept of art as “life stimulans” still designates a position rooted in art as based

on metaphysics (since the will to power is itself metaphysical), despite the attempts to move

away from it and redefine the aesthetic experience.232

All that said, we need to acknowledge that in the appreciation of the beautiful in

Phaedrus or in Kant, as well as the Nietzschean rapture, seen as a fundamental openness to

beauty and the self-showing of being in its own constellation, there is an experience that

escapes aesthetic conceptuality. As Taminiaux writes, specifically with regard to Kant, we

find an opportunity to project a different history of aesthetics, not subsumed under gradual

and foreseen decline, but seen as an “enigmatic irruption of nature that does not cease to be

renewed in the interplay with the tradition that inspired it.”233 It also becomes clear that

Heidegger is not looking to produce an alternative history of art or an elucidation of that

history. Rather, he is questioning the metaphysical unity of this history, as presented in

Hegel’s Aesthetics, where it is based on a progressive logical movement toward completion,

231
J. Taminiaux, “On Heidegger’s Interpretation of the Will to Power as Art,” 18.
232
In Mindfulness, Heidegger says that “Nietzsche’s concept of art as ‘stimulant of life’ takes a peculiar position
between aesthetic, metaphysical artwork and the art that completes and consolidates its ownmost in the mode of
organizing machination. Thus this concept remains entirely in the metaphysical domain, of course, according to
Nietzsche’s way of reversing Platonism.” See M. Heidegger, Mindfulness, trans. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary
(London: Continuum, 2006); 27.
233
Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment, 151.

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vouchsafed by the telos of absolute Spirit. In other words, Heidegger is not looking for an

alternative beginning which will produce an alternative ending, but in tracing the difference in

the thinking of the (epochal) truth of Being (as art) which happens in the space of the

withdrawal or disclosure of Being and which has remained so far unthought (by default,

aesthetics has concealed the essence of art.) The goal of Heidegger’s questioning of the

conceptual framework of metaphysics and aesthetics is to retrace and set forth new

relationships between art, truth, and history, showing what in art and in what way it is (not)

accessible to philosophical interpretation.234 This is what produces the “tension” in

Heidegger’s position on the history of Western aesthetics: between endorsing key Hegelian

features of it while pointing out ways that disturb its (Hegelian, totalizing) unity.235

CONCLUSION

This chapter began with a few questions raised by J. Taminiaux concerning the

“Hegelian legacy” in “The Origin of the Work of Art.” At this point, only a partial answer can

be given to these questions, as we are yet to see Heidegger’s own position on art. The

preceding discussion confirmed some of the basic assumptions regarding Heidegger’s proximity

to Hegel on the issue of the historical fate of great art. It was shown, first, that both are in

agreement when it comes to how they conceive the need for and the task of great art. For both,

great art can introduce and sustain transformations in the history of individuals and

communities; most significantly, such art can shape their religious and ethical thought, destining

234
The introduction by Heidegger of earth in the work of art, for instance, can be seen as otherness that counters
rationality as fully dominated by an intending, controlling subject. K. Ziarek identifies “aspects and significations of
the work of art that cannot be accounted for in aesthetic terms, that not only overflow the categorizations of art in
aesthetic terms of a beautiful object, taste and aesthetic judgment, but put in question the edifice of aesthetics and
the system of thought that has produced it.” This non-aesthetic element opens an alternative, poietic space of
experience that both underlies and questions the dominance of rationalistic articulations of experience in modernity.
Krzysztof Ziarek, “After aesthetics: Heidegger and Benjamin on Art and Experience,” Philosophy Today (Spring
1997), vol. 41/1: 199-208; 200.
235
Taminiaux, op. cit., 144.

156
in this manner their originary comportment and existence in the world. Great art, and this holds

true for both Hegel and Heidegger, works by fulfilling tasks and meeting criteria that are “non-

aesthetic.”236 For Heidegger, art is “dying” only in the milieu of aesthetics, but this aesthetic

death of art at the same time indicates the possibility of a (re)birth of art, outside the framework

of the subjective experience (feeling) of an aesthetic object. Both Hegel and Heidegger make a

strong claim for the intrinsic historicity of the work of art: it arises and belongs to a concrete

historical epoch but the work of art also founds an historical age and sustains a community of

people.237 For Heidegger, as we will see in more detail in the following chapters, art is

historical because the essence it brings to presence is historical and itself unfolds in history;

great art inaugurates new epochs of Being.

Looking back at the essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” in 1938, Heidegger writes:

The question of the origin of the work of art does not aim to set out a timelessly valid
determination of the essence of artwork which could also serve as the guiding thread
for a historically retrospective clarification of the history of art. The question is most
intimately connected with the task of overcoming aesthetics, which also means
overcoming a certain conception of beings as what is objectively representable.
Overcoming of aesthetics again results necessarily from the historical encounter with
metaphysics as such.238

For Heidegger, it is the aestheticization of art and the reduction of art’s appreciation to a

subjective experience that brings great art to an end. The more the grip of aesthetics over art

expands, the stronger the claims of subjectivism. Heidegger’s critique of modern subjectivity as

defined by representation in its relationship to the world is in line with his critique of Hegel for

upholding the modern interpretation of being as self-certain subjectivity. Following the

metaphysical tradition, Hegel “is destined to forget our real finitude” in the drive towards a

reconciliation in rationality; Hegel in effect pushes further the “drive for self-coincidence, self-

236
Bernstein, Fate of Art, 84.
237
For Heidegger, art “transports a people into its historical endowment” (PLT 77).
238
M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, 354.

157
certainty, and total presence that lies at the root of modern subjectivity and its will to power.”239

In this respect, there seems to be congruence between the history of Spirit, at the completion of

which art has exhausted its speculative potential and the history of Being, especially in the age

of Gestell and Gebild that feeds into subjectivism empowered by technology. Heidegger’s later

critique of technology is thus a way to respond to the issue of subjectivization as a cause for the

end of art. Heidegger hopes that through a rethinking of art, Gestell could lead beyond itself

into an age that could overcome the modern technologization and the obliteration of all intrinsic

meaning. This anticipation of a new historical turning sustains Heidegger’s project seeking an

originary, post-aesthetic encounter with art.

Furthermore, Heidegger’s relation to the history of art takes the form of a critical

assessment, but without him offering his own version of that history. His account of aesthetics

is also selective, arranged from the viewpoint at the close of metaphysics. The concept of great

art as epoch-making can be read both as art originating epochs of Being, but also as the

reflexive projection of the epochs of Being into art. Heidegger declares the need for the

overcoming of aesthetics from the viewpoint of the destinal-epochal character of Being, which

is already under the reign of technological Gestell in modern day.240 Reading the end of art

question as inherently linked to the question of Being seems therefore to have more profound

effect on Heidegger’s philosophical mission than on the Hegelian system. As John McCumber

describes the encounter between Hegel and Heidegger on art, “Heidegger’s account of art is

thus neither a univocal critique of Hegel nor a reversal. Rather, to adapt Bernasconi’s word, it

oscilates between instating, or perpetuating, Hegelian categories and annulling those categories

239
David Kolb, The Critique of Pure Modernity. Hegel, Heidegger, and After (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986); 214.
240
In section 277 from Contributions to Philosophy entitled “’Metaphysics’ and the Origin of the Work of Art,”
Heidegger specifically distinguishes between “thinking historically” (geschichtlich) and “calculating historically”
(historisch). In other words, the historical reflection on the origin of the work of art and on the history of aesthetics
in particular, does not mean simply looking at the historical facts and lining them up in a certain way. Rather, it is
an inquiry into the essential (wesentlich as geschichtlich) unfolding of art.

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by throwing their epochal nature into relief, showing them as gifts of Being (rather than as

moments of the Absolute).”241

With respect to the issue of truth, the first course on Nietzsche shows Heidegger seeking

to go beyond Hegel by radicalizing the metaphysical concept of truth. That metaphysical

concept of truth spans from the Platonic understanding of truth as correctness or correspondence

to Nietzsche’s reversal of truth as “the kind of error without which humans could not live.”242

In Heidegger’s view, Hegel remains caught within the metaphysical determination of truth as

correspondence and being as presence. On the other hand, Heidegger’s considerations of the

work of art may present “the most radical transmutation of ‘aesthetics’ not only since Kant but

since the Greeks,”243 but as he himself says, they are just the “preparations” for a new

coming/turning of Being. This is needed also because, as we saw, the “overcoming of

aesthetics” for Heidegger is necessitated by the “historical encounter with metaphysics.”244 The

overcoming of metaphysics, in turn, does not mean “discarding” the existing philosophy but

taking a “leap into the first beginning.” Most essentially, this leap is understood as a historical

reflection on the sense (Besinnung, mindfulness) of the first beginning, yet this reflection cannot

have as its domain “art” as it has unfolded in history (historisch). No such consideration or

preparatory thinking can help us ‘renew’ the first beginning; rather such Besinnung prepares us

for the transition or crossing (Übergang) into the realm of the “other” beginning.245

In this context, Heidegger also brings up the issue of what he calls Kunstlosigkeit, “lack

of art” or an “art-less” epoch. “Lack of art” does not reflect a lack of capacity to produce art,

nor lack of technical mastery; rather, it reflects “the power of knowing the essential decisions

through which that must pass which up until now and seldom enough occurred as art.” Neither

is lack of art determined by those who ‘know’ how to experience (erleben) and enjoy “art.” A

241
John McCumber, “Introduction,” in Endings. Questions of Memory in Hegel and Heidegger, 16.
242
John Sallis, “Interrupting Truth” in Heidegger Toward the Turn, 20.
243
M. Haar, Song of the Earth, 95.
244
M. Heidegger, Contributions, 354.
245
Ibid., 355.

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time of Kunstlosigkeit seems to correspond to a time when art has been freed and disengaged

from the metaphysical concept of art, which takes art only as an aesthetic object and cultural

accomplishment (Leistung), i.e., Kunstlosigkeit is the time of great art. What is “ownmost to

art,” Heidegger claims, is “putting the truth of be-ing to a decision.”246

From this perspective, we cannot qualify Heidegger’s turn to the Greek origin of art as

nostalgic; his reflections here do not seek to replicate or return that origin back to the (German)

descendents of those Greeks. Rather, his is an attempt to go even beyond or behind the original

Greek experience of Being and to reappropriate the “unthought” of the disclosure of Being the

first thinkers were given.247 He is guided by the knowledge that the “art” of the Greeks is

incommensurable with the understanding of “art” today, because “what sways essentially in

Greek art can and will never be determined by that which we have to unfold as essential

knowing about ‘art’.”248

The epochal history of Being proceeds as “sendings” or “destinings” of Being (Geschick

des Seins) and the reflection on art aims at preparing for a new such sending. What and how

this new sending will take place remains the task for those who are yet to come to see.

Heidegger himself admits of this uncertainty when he says:

Something else – the question raised in the lecture – what is the exhibited work of art? –
does not yet seem clear in all respects. The question that could be hidden behind all of
this is whether there exists an art work at all. Or does all art become untenable along
with metaphysics? Is there perhaps, behind the uneasiness brought about by a non-
objective art, a much deeper shock? Is that the end of art? The arrival of something for
which we do not have a name?249

246
Ibid., 355. In the same spirit are Heidegger’s remarks on art in section 11 of Mindfulness, “Art in the Epoch of
Completion of Modernity” (Die Kunst im Zeitalter der Vollendung der Neuzeit), to which I refer in chapter 5.
247
In the lecture “Die Herkunft der Kunst und die Bestimmung des Denkens” (1967), Heidegger describes the
(re)turn to Greece: “Zurücktreten des Denkens vor der Weltzivilisation, im Abstand von ihr keineswegs in ihrer
Verleugnung, sich auf das einlassen, was im Anfang des abendländischen Denkens noch ungedacht bleiben mußte,
aber dort gleichwohl schon genannt und so unserem Denken vorgesagt ist.” See M. Heidegger, “Die Herkunft der
Kunst und die Bestimmung des Denkens” in Distanz und Nähe, ed. Petra Jaeger und Rudolf Lüthe (Würzburg:
Königshausen and Neumann, 1983), 19.
248
M. Heidegger, Contributions, 355.
249
H. Wiegand Petzet, Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger, trans. by P. Emad and K. Maly,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); 152-153.

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 CHAPTER FOUR

FROM HEGEL'S END OF ART TO HEIDEGGER'S OTHER BEGINNING

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The considerations so far outlined the proximity between Hegel and Heidegger on the

issue of great art. Though Heidegger seems to accept the thesis of the end of great art, he

reformulates it by questioning the possibility to have great art again: “Is art still an essential and

necessary way in which that truth happens which is decisive for our historical existence, or is art

no longer of this character?” (PLT 80). The essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” explores

this possibility in more detail without providing a definitive answer to the question; yet it is this

possibility that sets Heidegger apart from the aesthetic tradition and from Hegel. I believe that

the primary impetus for the essay is to prepare for an understanding of the “other” beginning yet

to come, thought from out of the question of Being. A new “beginning” is a way of referring to

a “return” to the origin of metaphysics (and aesthetics) thought as the granting of Being, an

epochal en-owning (Ereignis) of Being and man. The reflection on Greek art and philosophy

defines Heidegger’s project of retrieving the “unthought” origin of Western philosophy in terms

of revealing a pre-metaphysical, “inceptual” thinking and a notion of art conceived from the

grant of Being’s disclosure.

In attempting to recuperate art from aesthetics, Heidegger, as we have seen, begins in

implicit agreement with Hegel, recognizing the statement of the end of art as the

pronouncement of metaphysics on what has been, essentially, a metaphysical history of art.250

Heidegger’s interpretation of art proceeds from the Hegelian premise that art has become a

250
In a letter to R. Krämer-Bardoni from 1960, cited in G. Seubold, Kunst als Enteignis, 23, Heidegger says:
“When in the Afterword of my essay (Holzwege, p. 66-67), I agree with Hegel’s quotation which says that art is ‘on
the side of its highest vocation for us something past,’ this is neither an agreement to Hegel’s conception of art nor
the affirmation that art is finished. I would rather say that the essence of art has become for us worth questioning. I
cannot ‘remain standing near Hegel’ because I have never stood near him, this is prevented by the abysmal
difference in the determination of the essence of ‘truth’.”

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thing of the past, but with a twist: we are at the end of art in the sense that we now do not exist

at the origin of art. While Hegelian aesthetics is a work of Spirit in Erinnerung, Heidegger

must also presuppose recollection in order to engage with art, but by working to disclose an

originary (primal) occurrence of art. In the recuperation of art as origin we are given the chance

to become, in effect, “preservers” of the very possibility of art to be an origin again.

The art essay and the focus on the notion of origin also reflect the “turn” in Heidegger’s

thinking of Being and his continued commitment to working out the ontological difference. As

Gadamer writes, “Heidegger’s essay does not restrict itself to giving a more suitable description

of the Being of the work of art. Rather his analysis supports his central philosophical concern to

conceive Being itself as an event of truth.”251 Tracing the notion of art to (its) Greek origin and

developing the understanding of Being as event is part of Heidegger’s project of overcoming

metaphysics. As he puts it in the essay “The Question Concerning Technology,” such project

requires taking up the pre-metaphysical notions of art: “...to think through still more primally

what was primally thought is not the absurd wish to revive what is past, but rather the sober

readiness to be astounded before the coming of what is early” (das anfänglich Gedachte noch

anfänglicher durchzudenken).252

In the following chapter, I discuss Heidegger’s concept of the work of art as origin,

focusing on the work of art as the site where truth happens, on the work-being (Werksein) of the

artwork, examining in detail Heidegger’s claim that art is the “setting-itself-into-work of truth”

(sich-ins-Werk-Setzen der Wahrheit.) Heidegger thematizes truth in the sense of the Greek

aletheia, which emphasizes the play between concealing/revealing against a sense of truth as

correspondence or judgment of correctness. Thus, to think the work of art as an origin would

mean to think truth as letting unconcealment show itself. Truth as aletheia, unconcealedness,

251
H.-G. Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, 105.
252
M. Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, 22.

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and the Open of the openness of Being into which we are brought through the encounter with

art, is thought from out of the work-being of the work of art.

To unpack the view of art in relation to aletheia, I also discuss the concepts of the rift

(Riss), Gestalt, earth and world, arguing that they make possible a notion of art beyond

representation and subjective creation. Defining the work of art as a distinctive way of truth to

occur, Heidegger delimits a metaphysical notion of art: art is not of Spirit or of a creator, there

is no foundation of the work of art outside of it, but it bears its origin in itself. In this context, I

also engage with Heidegger’s interpretation of the poetic essence of art, the definition of the

work of art as Dichtung. Close textual analysis shows that the work as poietic has the ability to

sustain the tension between clearing and concealment and thus to resist the forgetfulness of

Being in language. The work of art as poietic can name and invoke the holy into the Open;

Heidegger’s understanding of art as origin is intrinsically linked to the holy and this allows him

to claim the possibility of another beginning which could genuinely overcome the oblivion of

Being. The question of art as the question of Being is essential for the granting of a new epoch

in the history of Being – in the most endangered times, where Being is most withdrawn. In the

discussion of “The Origin of the Work of Art” I also touch upon the issue of the political

dimension of Heidegger’s views, primarily in view of thinking the role of art as shaping the

historical destiny of a people and the way great art “thrusts” itself in history.253

1. History of the Essay “The Origin of the Work of Art”

1.1. Die “Erste Ausarbeitung”

As discussed in the previous chapter, Heidegger’s thinking on art and the overcoming of

aesthetics begins prior to the “Origin” essay. Heidegger gave lectures under the title "Vom

253
R. Bernasconi states that Heidegger’s “writings on art are fundamentally political” and that “to neglect the
political dimension of Heidegger’s text is to risk restricting “The Origin of the Work of Art” to the realm of
aesthetic alienation, instead of recognizing it as a response to aesthetic alienation.” R. Bernasconi, “The Greatness
of the Work of Art,” 99.

163
Ursprungs des Kunstwerks" in Freiburg in November 1935, in Zurich in January of the

following year, and then in Frankfurt at the end of 1936.254 The first version of the essay was

published in Heidegger Studies in 1989 under the title “Vom Ursprung des Kunstwerks. Erste

Ausarbeitung” and is the transcription of a hand-written manuscript believed to date from

1934.255 The lecture 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

published in 1987. I will not make use of this second version.256 Heidegger finished writing the

third version in 1936, which was printed in the Holzwege. The text we read today has

undergone some changes - the epilogue (“Nachwort”) is added after 1936 but before the 1950

publication; the addendum (“Zusatz”) was added by Heidegger in 1956; in the 1960 Reclam-

edition of the essay, Heidegger edits several passages.257

254
For a brief account of the history of the lectures, see also the introduction of D. F. Krell to the translation of the
essay in Basic Writings, 140-142.
255
Andreas Grossmann refers to recent publications of F. W. von Herrmann, who was able, on the basis of a letter
of Heidegger to E. Blochmann to show that Heidegger’s engagement with Hölderlin and with the nature of art goes
back to 1931-32, which would indicate that Heidegger’s turn to art should not be seen as a reaction to his
disappointment with the political situation of the day and his involvement in it. Grossmann does not agree with this
early dating, given that the art lectures were delivered in 1935. On the basis of textual analysis he shows that the
“Origin” essay has a direct relationship to the first Hölderlin lectures from 1934/35. “Umgekehrt lassen sich die
Vorträge über den Ursprung des Kunstwerks ohne Schwierigkeit als direkte Fortführung der ersten Hölderlin-
Vorlesung lesen. Sie knüpfen an die Jahre 1931/32 an, sofern die Leitgedanken des Ereignis-Denkens der Beitrage
in jener Zeit ausgebildet werden; sie finden daran den ,,gereifteren" Anschluß, ,,gereifter" nämlich als die erste
Holderlin-Vorlesung“ (48). See Andreas Grossmann „Kunst, Geschichte und Technik. Konstellationen von
Heideggers Denken im Lichte seines Gesprächs mit Hegel und Friedrich Georg Jünger,“ 40-63.
256
Martin Heidegger, "De l'origine de l'ceuvre d'art", tr. E. Martineau, Paris: Authentica 1987. For a more detailed
analysis of the Freiburg version, see Françoise Dastur, “Heidegger’s Freiburg Version of the Origin of the Work of
Art,” in Heidegger Toward the Turn, 119-142. Dastur points out the emphasis in this version on the notion of work
as one way of truth to happen. Heidegger considers works of art as belonging to the past (die Gewesenen) and refers
to the Hegelian statement on the pastness of art, as in the 1936 essay, emphasizing that a decision on the truth of the
essay has not been made. In the Freiburg version, too, the work of art has two essential features – setting up a
world and setting forth earth; the conflictual relation of world and earth is described in the context of the
unconcealment of truth. In terms of the critique of the metaphysical conception of art, Dastur points out three
claims from the Freiburg version that are further explored in the final essay. First, the opposition of creation to
production (Geschaffensein vs. Erzeugtsein); second, the primacy of knowledge over pleasure in terms of the
fundamental relation to the work of art; third, the opposition of representation vs. commencement: “Allein das
Kunstwerk stellt nie etwas dar, aus dem einfachen Grunde, weil es ja nichts hat, was es darstellen kann, weil das
Werk dasjenige erst schafft, was erstmals durch es ins Offene tritt.“
257
J. Taminiaux explores the history of the essay and shows that key concepts refer back to Aristotle and his
distinctions between techne, poiesis, ergon (155). In Taminiaux’s view, Heidegger both “appropriates” and
“critiques” Aristotle’s own terms; second, Taminiaux argues that prior to the “Origin” essay, techne was not
considered as a privileged mode of unconcealment, which happens for the first time in the Rectoral Address (157-
8). The same transformation in terms of emphasizing the “superior techne of the poet, the thinker, the state creator”
takes place in the first lecture course on Holderlin (1934-5, Germanien and the Rhein) and in An Introduction to
Metaphysics. In the latter text, we find the key description of techne as the overpowering, mastering of being and

164
 In this study, my references are to the final version of “The Origin of the Work of Art.”

A few important points become clear when we compare the third final version with the first, Die

Erste Ausarbeitung.258 Even though the first version is only about one-third of the final text (it

has two sections, Das Kunstwerk als Werk and Die Kunst als Ursprung des Werkes), many of

Heidegger's main concepts - like origin, work, world, earth, strife, and rift - are already in place

in the first version of the essay. Let me draw attention to some of those similarities and

differences in the two texts.

1. To begin with, the Erste Ausarbeitung starts with the proposition that the purpose of

the consideration of art is to prepare a change in our attitude to art: “eine gewandelte

Grundstellung unseres Daseins zur Kunst mit vorzubereiten” (EA 5), whereas Heidegger

defines the purpose of the reflections on art in the final version as trying to “see the riddle of

art” (PLT 86).

2. In the first version, there is a statement which does not appear in the final text;

Heidegger says that the “greatness of the work of art is measured by its capacity to destroy its

audience (Publikum) (EA 8). In discussing the openness (Offenbarsein) of the work of art,

Heidegger writes that this does not involve the contemplating or observing (experiencing)

audience or public. “Zum ‘Publikum’ wo es das gibt, hat es nur den Bezug, daß es dieses

zerstört. Und an dieser Zerstörungskraf mißt sich die Größe eines Kunstwerks“ (emphasis in

the original polemos between concealment and appearance – it is “great” techne, in Taminiaux’s words, contrasted
to “the everyday and petty techne” (161). The most significant difference between other texts of the 1930s and the
final version of “The Origin of the Work of Art” for Taminiaux has to do with the “remarkable shift” in the
occurrence of truth: in the essay, the locus of truth is no longer Dasein, it belongs to Being itself, it is not a matter of
human decision because the movement of un-concealment has become the site of the undecidable. See J.
Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment, 153-169.
258
For a more detailed comparison of the three versions of the “Origin” essay, see also R. Bernasconi, “The
Greatness of the Work of Art,” 95-117. References to Heidegger’s first version are to “Vom Ursprung des
Kunstwerks. Erste Ausarbeitung,” Heidegger Studies, vol. 5 (1989): 5-22 (hereafter referred to as EA, followed by
the page number).

165
original). This is quite different from the conception of great art as presented in the Nietzsche

volume, which shows greater proximity to Hegel.259

3. A third point to note is that many of Heidegger's main concepts - like world, earth,

strife and rift, the consideration of the artist as simply a “passageway” (Durchgang) in the

creation of the work of art, and art as Dichtung - are already in place in the Erste Ausarbeitung.

The work of art is described as having two essential features (Wesenszüge): it is aufstellend

(with respect to setting up, aufstellen of a world) and herstellend (bringing forth, herstellen of

earth). The main feature of the work of art (Grundzug) is the fighting off of the strife

(Bestreitung) of earth and world, thus the essential features of setting up and bringing forth also

obtain. Art is conceived in its true nature as the occurrence (Geschehen) of truth in the work,

die Ins-Werk-Setzung-der Wahrheit (EA 16). Thus, the essence of art (Wesen der Kunst) as

Dichtung is the “Stiftung des Seyns” (the founding of being), not the production of beings

(Hervorbringung des Seienden) (EA 18).

4. In terms of the role of art, Heidegger writes that the work of art as founding (Stiften)

opens up an open place (das Da). Man is responsible for this open place, as it is man who can

build a community, not as an individual (Einzelner): “Indem der Mensch das Da ist, d.h.

geschichtlich ist, wird er ein Volk” (EA 19). The Da is where a people is projected (Zuwurf as

Entwurf), poetically, into its destiny. The references to Volk in the final version change to

include a more sustained questioning of “who we are” (referring, presumably, to the German

people). According to commentators, dropping the language of Volk in the subsequent versions

is again a sign of Heidegger’s (re)consideration of his own position to national-socialism.260

259
R. Bernasconi reads this statement as highly politically charged: “[f]or Heidegger, art destroys the public to
become a people.” The critique Heidegger wages against theories of art as an “expression” are to be read as urging
the German people to take art for what it is – i.e., as a way of choosing their destiny. Bernasconi, op.cit., 106.
260
Bernasconi, op. cit., 109-110. For Taminiaux, both versions of the 1935 lecture – the Erste Ausarbeitung and the
French version, “turn out to be voluntarist proclamations in the name of the German Dasein,” but he also admits a
change in tone in the final version. Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment, 167.

166
 5. The first version does not mention other ways of truth happening, besides the work of

art. In the final Frankfurt version as well as in the second Freiburg version, Heidegger lists the

work of the poet, the thinker, the founding of state, and essential sacrifice as ways of truth to

happen.

6. In the first version, Heidegger makes a stronger claim to the historicity of the work of

art in terms of its rootedness in a historical time, within a historical community. He says: “Der

Anfang der Kunst eines Volkes ist immer Anfang seiner Geschichte und das gleiche gilt vom

Ende. Daher gibt es keine vorgeschichtliche Kunst weil mit der Kunst schon Geschichte

angefangen hat...’Die Kunst’ an sich gibt es nicht’” (EA 21; emphasis in original). In this

statement Heidegger seems to follow closely Hegel’s idea of the historical determinateness of

art, all the more so because Heidegger discusses this in the context of “world-decay” and

“world-withdrawal” (Weltzerfall und Weltentzug). Historical recollection (geschichtliche

Erinnerung) can help us learn about works of art but we cannot reverse (rückgänging machen)

world decay. Furthermore, it is the works of (great) art themselves that determine their times –

“([Kunstwerke], die so am Werk sind, da sie ihre Zeit sich gemäß machen und verwandeln”

(EA 15). We can be “inspired” (begeistern) by the „splendid German cathedrals” (Heidegger

puts these expressions in quotation marks in the text, silently quoting Hegel); however, they are

no longer, “world decay has broken their work-being” (Werksein).261 This also explains why

art for its own sake, or aesthetic art, could not be for Heidegger. In other words, only great art

is, because only great art founds history. This provides the context of the questions at the end of

the essay, where a connection is made between art as origin and the knowledge of “who we are”

(we, Germans), in order to determine whether great art can happen again.

261
Recall here Hegel, “We may well hope that art will always rise higher and come to perfection, but the form of
art has ceased to be the supreme need of the spirit. No matter how excellent we find the statues of the Greek gods,
no matter how we see God the Father, Christ, and Mary so estimably and perfectly portrayed: it is no help; we bow
the knee no longer [before these artistic portrayals].” (LFA 1, 103)

167
 7. Both versions of the essay end with the quotation from Hölderlin, “Schwer

verläßt/Was nahe dem Ursprung wohnet, den Ort” [Reluctantly/that which dwells near its

origin departs]. The question in the first version is if art is an origin or a supplement used for

ornamentation (Ist die Kunst uns wesentlich, ist sie ein Ursrpung und damit ein stiftender

Vorsrpung in unsere Geschichte...oder nur ein Nachtrag) (EA 22). In the final version, the

question shifts to whether art can be once again an origin for us. In the Erste Ausarbeitung,

Heidegger refers to the “we” of the German people, linking the question of art as origin to

whether “we” are near it or are “stumbling” our way in art business [Denn die Klarheit darüber,

wer wir sind und wer wir nicht sind, ist schon der entscheidende Sprung in die Nähe des

Ursprungs. Solche Nähe allein verbürgt ein wahrhaft gegründetes geschichtliches Dasein als

echte Bodenständigkeit auf dieser Erde] (EA 22, my emphasis).

8. The first version mentions the temple at Paestum, the Bamberg Dom, the sculpture

“Barbelle” by Niclaus van Leyden, the Aegina in Munich, and Antigone, but only in passing.

There is no discussion of van Gogh or Meyer’s fountain poem, no mention of Hegel either

(Heidegger introduces Hegel only in the final Frankfurt version of the essay; the Freiburg draft

quotes Hegel on art as past and declares that the truth of this statement has not yet been

decided).262 In the first version, Heidegger claims that Hölderlin’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 (EA 15). The claim is made in the context of the

discussion of the “untimeliness” of great works of art, because they are the true measure of their

world and have the power to shatter it, thus providing ground and opening up a future for the

historical people of Germany.

In the final version, as we know, Heidegger reflects on the Greek temple, a painting by

Van Gogh, and the poem Der römische Brunnen by C. F. Meyer. The absence of these or other

262
F. Dastur, “Heidegger’s Freiburg Version of the Origin,” Heidegger Toward the Turn, 125.

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works of art in the first draft raises a few questions. It seems that the history of art is not

essential for the conclusions on art that Heidegger makes (in contrast to Hegel’s grand

narrative). The Erste Ausarbeitung contains substantially the same arguments that will appear

in the final version. This comes to support the argument that his purpose is not a new theory of

art or reclaiming the past greatness of art in a romantic return to Greece. Still, one has the

feeling of some arbitrariness in the choice of works of art to be described (the reference to a

“Greek” temple does not thematize any specific architectural features of it but only a

“fundamental Greek experience,” perhaps more philosophical in spirit than artistic). His choice

precludes a more nuanced reading of the (Greek) end of art in the time of Plato and Aristotle

versus its end in the time of Hegel and our present, which could have provided a more nuanced

reading of how and what kind of art today would be disclosive of truth. The exemplary works

of Chillida, Klee, Braque, and Cézanne with which Heidegger engages later on do not ease the

suspicion that they have been chosen because their art shows the occurrence of Being in the

manner of philosophy (though perhaps, the reverse may be true as well). This only feeds into

the ambiguity of Heidegger’s standing within the aesthetic tradition and his reasons for turning

to art in the first place.

1.2. Philosophical Context of the “Origin” Essay: the Essence of Truth

Heidegger’s reflections on art in “The Origin of the Work of Art” reveal a tension in his

thinking, articulated as the “turn” and guided by the thought of the “other beginning.” T.

Sheehan’s interpretation of die Kehre stresses that it is neither a “shift” in Heidegger’s language

and style in the 1930’s, nor the supposed “emergence of a new topic, such as Ereignis” in his

work or the abandonment of his overall philosophical project begun in 1927. The “turn” means

“overcoming the ignorance of appropriation” and calls for recognizing “the privative dimension

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of disclosure and the corresponding structure of human transcendence.”263 It is a question of

the fundamental relationality of Being and Da-sein which has been Heidegger’s concern long

before the art essay. In the Addendum to the essay he admits of this: “the relation (Bezug) of

Being and human being, a relation which is unsuitably conceived even in this version – a

distressing difficulty, which has been clear to me since Being and Time” (PLT 87).264 This

relation has been variously conceived and in his later works comes to be designated as Ereignis,

a movement of (reciprocal) appropriation. In the “Origin” essay and in texts of the 1930s and

subsequently, this relation is recognized as Dasein being claimed and solicited to respond:

“Being, however, is a call to man and is not without man” (Sein aber ist Zuspruch an den

Menschen und nicht ohne diesen) (PLT 86). There is a belonging together of Being and man

that reveals the way of Ereignis, which “appropriates and owns” (er-eignen) man, while in turn

man sustains the openness which first opens Being’s self-concealing. Dasein is the opening of

the truth of Being, as epochal disclosure, and thus it is the “turning point in the turning of

enowning,” as Heidegger writes.265

Accordingly, the core arguments in “The Origin of the Work of Art” focus on the

disclosive withdrawal of Being, which determines the essence of truth (Wesen der Wahrheit)

and simultaneously, gleichursprünglich, effects a transformation in human being. Heidegger’s

vision of art as origin indicates the leap (Ur-sprung) of thought as responding to a call of Being.

The unfolding of the art essay proceeds from Heidegger’s attempt to think the origin of truth by

thinking from the origin, thus reflecting the turning of Being. To think from the origin means

that thinking (indeed, it is the task of both thinkers and poets) experiences a reciprocal en-

ownment as it re-joins that which gives itself to it, i.e., Being as it discloses. Art responds by
263
T. Sheehan, “On Movement and the Destruction of Ontology,” in Heidegger Reexamined, vol. 3 Art, Poetry, and
Technology (New York: Routledge, 2002); 325.
264
Reflecting on the turn in his philosophy from Being and Time to Time and Being, Heidegger claims that the
central topic and subject-matter of his enquiry from Being and Time does not change. “This turning is not a change
of standpoint from Being and Time, but in it the thinking that was sought first arrives at the location of that
dimension out of which Being and Time is examined, that is to say, experienced from the fundamental experience
of the oblivion of Being.” Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism," in Basic Writings, 231-32.
265
M. Heidegger, Contributions, 219.

170
offering a site to “shelter” the originary presencing of Being. The path which Heidegger

follows to overcoming a metaphysical view of art entails a recovery of the relation to Being of

the pre-classical Greeks described as attunement, response, Zuspruch. The Greeks attended to

this presencing even though they did not think the concealment at the heart of it; thus, the

original concealing or forgetting of metaphysics’ own ground (the consequences of which are

revealed most strongly in the age of Gestell).266 So, when Heidegger calls for “inceptual”

against metaphysical thinking this implies retrieving the origin of metaphysics as it derives from

an originary dimension which carries within itself the potentiality of a new revealing. Re-

turning to the origin in the overcoming of metaphysics correlates to thinking of art in a non-

metaphysical way: from the art essay to Heidegger’s later texts we can trace a transformation in

thinking performed as the attunement to Being. This transformation goes from “truth-setting-

itself-to-work” (sich-ins-Werk-setzen) to a sense of making as “bringing-to-work of truth” (ins-

Werk-bringen in the essay on space), to letting and “letting appear” (the notions of poietic

dwelling, the fourfold belong in this line of “easing” the grip of metaphysics and focusing on

gathering and mutual appropriation). “Gelassenheit” refers to a way of thinking after the close

of metaphysics that attends to the occurrence of truth; it is conceived as “releasement” rather

than “producing” or “instigating” strife and setting-up of truth.

The specifics of Heidegger’s turn can be discerned in his 1930 lecture (revised in 1943),

“On the Essence of Truth.” There Heidegger writes: “The answer to the question of the essence

of truth is the saying of a turning (die Sage einer Kehre) within the history of Beyng.”267 He

analyzes the metaphysical notion of truth by inquiring into the essence of truth understood in a

more originary way as the “lighting” or “clearing” of Being. The metaphysical point entails the

266
Reiner Schürmann explains: “The so-called pre-Socratics are anfängliche Denker [inceptual thinkers] because
they experienced presence as pure presencing.” They thought “essentially” because they thought according to the
essence of a thing as it presenced, and not as fully present. R. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From
Principles to Anarchy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 122.
267
M. Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” in Pathmarks, ed. by W. McNeill, (Cambridge University Press,
1998); 154.

171
understanding of the world as a relation of correspondence between the presence of things as

“that which is” and humans determining the truth of such presence categorically. Heidegger

contrasts truth as correctness or correspondence, a propositional form of truth (proceeding from

a subject’s judgment), with a more originary, ontological sense of truth. The latter appears in an

opening or clearing of Being. Such opening is not created by representation but is “already

given and taken over as a domain of relatedness (Verhältnis).”268 Heidegger points out that the

representation of something as an object means to “let the thing stand opposed as object,” as an

independent thing (ein Ständiges), within “an open field of opposedness.” Truth is not

considered a feature of a correct proposition, asserted about an object by a human subject; rather

“truth is disclosure of beings through which an openness essentially unfolds (west).”269

Engaging with the beings in the open region, the “exposure to the disclosedness of beings,” is

“letting” beings be, letting them reveal themselves. Such “engagement with the disclosure of

beings” Heidegger defines as a state of freedom.270

Yet, Dasein cannot grasp the totality of beings through its own disclosedness; indeed,

the openness of Being necessarily exceeds its expression or presencing. Heidegger invokes a

particular “mystery of Being,” which is the clearing-process that both opens up beings in their

presence but also conceals beings and itself in this process. The “mystery… holds sway

throughout the Dasein of human beings.”271 As a consequence of this revealing-concealing

process, there is a co-originary occurrence of untruth as concealing and errancy [die Irre].

“Errancy” signifies the forgottenness of the concealing dimension of Being, in favor of the

unconcealment of beings as presence. Since the concealing of beings is co-originary with their

unconcealing, Heidegger concludes that untruth similarly belongs to the essence of truth.

“Errancy” is responsible for erring in the sense of incorrectness of statements; by turning away

268
Ibid., 141.
269
Ibid., 146.
270
Ibid., 144.
271
Ibid., 148.

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from the concealing dimension of Being, human beings are subject to errancy as the “essential

counteressence” to the originary essence of truth.272

At the end of this essay, Heidegger introduces the notion of Seyn, or Beyng, as “the

difference that holds sway between Being and beings.” This notion reflects Heidegger’s

continuing effort to think the truth of Being beyond the ontological difference and the

conception of Being as the “beingness” of beings; on the other hand, this is a challenge to the

modern conception of Being as objectivity grounded in self-conscious subjectivity (i.e., Hegel).

The resulting turn in Heidegger’s conception of truth as equally untruth, a clearing and

concealing all at once, “accomplishes a change in the questioning that belongs to the

overcoming of metaphysics.”273 Heidegger’s “turn” relates his earlier project of the analytic of

Dasein’s existence as the ground for questioning into the meaning of Being to what now is the

form of thinking that seeks to experience the truth of Being by responding (attuning itself) to the

event that reveals it.

This prepares the scene for the “Origin” essay and the question of art’s contribution to

thinking Being as an appropriative event (Ereignis). The essay reflects on art as a special mode

of disclosing and sheltering the truth of Being. As sheltering (preserving), the work of art (be it

a painting, a temple, or poetic words) is an inceptive attunement to the play of unconcealment as

truth. This new understanding of the connection between truth and art also helps Heidegger

rethink the traditional aesthetic categories of production (poiesis) and imitation (mimesis). A

significant aspect of his argument in the “Origin” essay is his insistence not to think the work of

art as the product of a process of making but from its work-being (in a verbal sense). In this

context comes also Heidegger critique of the “matter-form” schema as incapable of letting the

work of art show itself in its truth. Respectively, the conception of art as craft is shown to be a

limitation of the original meaning of art (as techne). In the rest of this chapter, I provide an

272
Ibid., 150.
273
Ibid., 154.

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exposition of the “Origin” essay, outlining Heidegger’s main arguments on the nature of great

art (even though the reference to “great art” appears only once in the text of the essay).

2. The Work of Art

2.1. The “Circle” of Art

Heidegger begins the discussion in “The Origin of the Work of Art” by asking the

question of the “origin.” He claims that we have to understand the origin as the essence or

nature of something: “the origin of something is the source of its nature” (PLT 17). Thus, the

question of the origin of the work of art is about the source of its essence, or Wesensherkunft.

Art is the origin of both the artist and the work of art; the latter two are only by means of this

third, which precedes them essentially (even though precedence here has no temporal meaning).

For Heidegger, there is an intrinsic circularity and interdependence of art, artist, and artwork;

beyond or outside (the work of) art there is no origin (i.e., no art).274 For us, this essential

oneness is covered over so that “art is nothing more than a word to which nothing real

(Wirkliches) corresponds.”275 We have only a “collective idea” (Sammelvorstellung) of what

we consider real in art: works and artists (PLT 17). Staying with/in this circle for Heidegger is

not a vicious repetition, a “makeshift” or a “defect”; on the contrary – it is the “feast of

thought”; we are already en-circled and by recognizing it, we recognize both the possibility of

the situation to affect us and to delineate a path for thinking.

Heidegger argues that to start the inquiry, we must accept what is most near to us - that

there are actual works of art (PLT 18). What art is should be inferable from the work, and

274
According to D. Schmidt, Heidegger’s refusal to anchor the origin of art in the artist is an important aspect of his
critique of the metaphysical understanding of techne as subjective production, which is how both modern aesthetics
and technology see it. D. Schmidt, “Economies of Production: Heidegger and Aristotle on Physis and Techne,” in
Crises in Continental Philosophy, ed. Arleen Dallery and Charles Scott (Albany, SUNY 1990): 145-157; 154.
275
Accordingly, in An Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger defines the task of a critical rethinking of aesthetics
and art: “But art is disclosure of the being of the essent. On the strength of a recaptured, pristine, relation to being
we must provide the word “art” with a new content” (IM 132).

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conversely, what the work of art is should be understandable from the nature of art. Works of

art are as obvious as anything else, but precisely that should make one suspect an enigma here, a

displacement. “One finds works of architecture and sculpture erected in public places, in

churches, and in private dwellings….Works are of course on hand [vorhanden] like any other

thing. The picture hangs on the wall like a rifle or a hat. A painting, for example the one by Van

Gogh that represents a pair of farmer's shoes, travels from one exhibit to another. Works are

shipped like coal from the Ruhr and logs from the Black Forest” (PLT 19).

The self-evidence of artworks as objects is put in question by their resemblance to things

and equipment. This is why he insists that behind or beneath the “semblance of evidence” we

must be able to see the “riddle” of art. Thus the reflection on the work of art necessarily takes

place in the space between the nearness (“self-evidence” of works of art) and the understanding

that “everything is a thing,” and the realization that “the unpretentious thing evades thought

most stubbornly” (das unscheinbare Ding entzieht sich dem Denken am hartnäckigsten) (PLT

21, 31). This undecidability persists throughout the essay. The chosen art works (the Greek

temple, Meyer’s poem, and Van Gogh’s painting) are to present and exemplify his argument in

the essay, each in its own way and by reflecting on each other’s way of disclosing truth. Most

importantly, Heidegger’s introduction of these examples serves to hold at a distance any

aesthetic description of art. Their presentation reveals Heidegger’s strategy to conceive of the

thing-being of the thing by rethinking the equipmental-being of equipment and to rethink

equipmentality from the work-being of the work. Coming full circle, at the end we arrive at an

understanding of the true work-being of the work of art.

2.2. Thing, Work, Equipment

Reflecting on the art essay, H.-G. Gadamer writes that it was a “surprise” for

Heidegger’s students to hear the lectures on art which employed a “startling new

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conceptuality,” referring, notably, to “world” and “earth.”276 Gadamer defines as Heidegger’s

point of departure in the “Origin” essay the critique of the “ontological prejudices” of idealist

aesthetics prior to him, with its key claims concerning the thing-character of the work of art and

being an object of lived experience. Besides the critique of the aesthetic tradition, presented in

the Nietzsche volume, “The Origin of the Work of Art” challenges the pervading aesthetic

conception of art by questioning thingness vis-à-vis the concepts of work and equipment, and

by demonstrating that the pervading matter-form understanding of art obstructs the thingly

element to show itself directly and freely. Heidegger does this by inroducing the concept of

earth, seeking to undermine the foundation of the “oldest” (metaphysical), but still prevailing,

conception of art as the product of a process of making. The alternative conception offered by

him sets the matter-form distinction back into the (creative) strife of earth and world.

In order to determine the thingness of the thing, Heidegger reviews the different

philosophical conceptions of it. The main three consider the thing as 1) “bearer of traits”

(substantia plus accidens; Greek symbebekos/hypokeimenon); 2) as the “unity of a multiplicity

of sensations,” the aistheton; and 3) as “formed matter” (geformter Stoff) (stemming from

Aristotle) (PLT 30). All three are wanting; they turn out to be obstacles to grasping the true

being of the thing and consequently, the true being of the work of art. None of them reveal the

thingness of the thing since they do not let the thing “rest upon itself on its very own being”

(Insichruhen, Standhaftigkeit). While the first sets the thing, so to speak, at too great a distance,

the second makes it press too hard upon us, as Heidegger claims (PLT 26). The third is a

transformation of the thing into an aistheton, a perceptible structure which separates sensations

from the thing; this is precisely the approach to artworks “native to aesthetics.”

The “formed matter” concept seems best suited to reveal a thing: “The thingly element

is manifestly the matter of which it consists. Matter is the substrate and field for the artist’s

276
Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, 99.

176
formative action” (PLT 27). According to this conception, form and matter are interfused;

“form” can refer both to the distribution of the material parts in a spatial arrangement that

results in a particular shape (for example, a marble block), or form can determine the

arrangement of matter in terms of the thing’s usefulness (which is the domain proper of

equipment) (PLT 28). The matter-form arrangement appears to be the conceptual schema used

“quite generally for all art theory and aesthetics”; it takes the artwork as matter formed

according to some aesthetic value extrinsic to the work. But for Heidegger, matter and form did

not originally determine the thingness of the thing; even more, there is no proof that “[the

matter-form pair] belongs originally to the domain of art and the art work” (PLT 27).277 Rather,

any interpretation of the artwork which postulates its thing-being is already misconceived,

because it implicitly attributes the character of equipmentality to it. In his view, the matter-form

concept obstructs the access to the thingly character of the thing (and the workly character of

the work), because it is derived from the nature of equipment. Heidegger writes: “As soon as

we look for such a thingly substructure in the work, we have unwittingly taken the work as

equipment, to which we then also ascribe a superstructure supposed to contain its artistic

quality” (PLT 38).

Thus the question about the origin of the matter-form pair turns to a third entity:

equipment. The discussion of equipment begins with a critique of our assumptions concerning

the self-evidence of equipment (for example, of a pair of shoes). Equipment seems even easier

to imagine and is more “trusted” because we bring it into being through production, through our

own making (PLT 33). Yet equipment differs from both thing and work and takes a mid-way

position between them: “The piece of equipment is half thing, because characterized by

thingliness, and yet, it is something more; at the same time it is half artwork and yet, something

277
Compare also Heidegger’s claim in the Nietzsche volume: “The distinction 'matter and form’ sprang from the
area of manufacture of tools and utensils, [hence] it was not originally acquired in the realm of art in the narrower
sense, i.e., of fine art and works of art, but [... ] merely transferred and applied to this realm. Which is reason
enough to be dominated by a deep and abiding doubt concerning the trenchancy of these concepts when it comes to
discussions about art and works of art” (N 1, 82-83).

177
less, because lacking the self-sufficiency of the art work” (PLT 29). The distinctive

characteristic of equipment is its usefulness (Dienlichkeit), which determines the fusion of form

and matter from the outset instead of emerging afterwards.

It is a surprising choice for Heidegger to “illustrate” equipmentality and usefulness with

a “visual aid”: since this is a matter of “direct description,” he says, a “pictorial representation”

(eine bildliche Darstellung) should suffice. The turn to a painting – a painting of a pair of shoes

by van Gogh - is a “detour” (Umweg) to uncovering the essence of the work of art: at the end of

this detour we realize that “the road toward the determination of the thingly reality of the work

leads not from thing to work but from work to thing” (PLT 39). Heidegger’s aim is to let the

work disclose itself as work, while also revealing the essence of equipment; this is a preliminary

staging of the play of earth, world, and truth discussed in the subsequent sections of the essay.

2.3. Van Gogh’s Shoes278

Heidegger’s argument concerns an everyday experience with equipment (a pair of

shoes) that comes to disclose a much deeper sense of it and of world. He rejects the claim that

the painting reproduces with any “likeness” an existing pair of shoes (if truth is taken to mean

an adequation between original and copy). When Heidegger says that the painting represents

“nothing,” this is to be thought both as reference to a metaphysical nothing in relation to being

and also in the sense that it is not a re-presentation as making present the object as projection of

a mental image, itself a representation of another real. “There is nothing surrounding the pair of

peasant shoes…A pair of peasant shoes and nothing more. And yet…” (PLT 33).279

278
Among the many commentators of Heidegger’s reading of van Gogh are Derrida, “Restitutions” in The Truth in
Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Robert Denoon
Cumming “The Odd Couple: Heidegger and Derrida” in The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 34 Issue 3, 1981; Meyer
Schapiro, “The Still Life as Personal Object: A Note on Heidegger and Van Gogh” in Theory and Philosophy of
Art: Style, Artist, and Society Selected Papers, Vol. IV (New York NY: George Braziller, 1994).
279
Heidegger refers to van Gogh also in the Introduction to Metaphysics: “A painting by Van Gogh: a pair of rough
peasant shoes, nothing else [sonst nichts]. The picture really represents nothing [Das Bild stellt eigentlich nichts
dar]. Yet, what is there, with that you are immediately alone, as if on a late autumn evening, when the last potato

178
 The painting lets us see something and this is the equipmental being of equipment, i.e.,

its usefulness. In Heidegger’s reading of the painting, what comes to appear from within the

“nothingness” surrounding the shoes is an insight into the “world” of a peasant woman (the

presumed owner of the shoes) as held together by equipment: “[…] world and earth exist for

her and for those who are with her in her mode of being, only thus – in the equipment. We say

‘only’ and therewith fall into error; for the reliability of the equipment first gives to the simple

world its security and assures to the earth the freedom of its steady thrust” (PLT 34). The

painting puts to the spectator’s eyes nothing else but this very emergence of a world (arranged

and secured through equipment) that comes to “stand” in a pair of shoes. Usefulness is derived

from the shoes’ “reliability” (Verlässlichkeit); it is the Wesensfolge of reliability (PLT 34).

The key concept in Heidegger’s analysis is the notion of reliability, which makes

explicit the bond between the woman’s world and the earth upon which it is built. Reliability

grants equipment its role as “gatherer” of world: “The equipmental being of equipment,

reliability, keeps gathered [in sich gesammelt] within itself all things according to their manner

and extent.” Insofar as the shoes are the crosspoint of both world and earth, the woman can rely

on them and on her world. What is revealed in the painting is the reliability of equipment as

relationality holding together a specific constellation of the belonging of world and earth in the

repose of equipment. But just as much as world can be held together in equipment, it can also

withdraw with the wasting away and “dwindling” of equipmentality and reliability. This

“dwindling”, Heidegger states, is testimony to the orignal (ursprünglich) nature of equipment,

i.e. equipment discloses itself in disclosing a world.

Though both equipment and the painting are something produced, Heidegger insists on

the difference between making, the “readiness” (Anfertigung) of equipment and the

“createdness” (Geschaffensein) of the work. In equipment the fact of its being made

fires have burned out, you yourself were heading wearily home from the field with your hoe. What is here? The
canvas? The brush strokes? The spots of color?” (IM 35).

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(Geformtsein) disappears in its usability, the material for its making is used up; the tool

becomes inconspicuous (in contrast to the work of art which lets the material as such come forth

for the first time) (PLT 64). The very fact that the work of art is rather than not reveals its

extraordinariness as being created. Whereas equipment sets us back into the reliability of

world, the work of art unsettles our bond to the world. We do not engage with art the way we

do with equipment (thus the difference between inconspicuous/extraordinary), which accounts

for the hesitation and uncertainty as to giving the work of art its proper place.

Putting the shoes before us to see, we seem to have learned something significant but

“unwittingly, in passing.” Heidegger asks, “What happens here? What is at work in the work?

Van Gogh's painting is the revelation (Eröffnung) of what equipment, the pair of peasant shoes,

is in truth. This entity steps out into the unconcealedness of its being. This unconcealedness is

what the Greeks called aletheia” (PLT 36, translation modified). This is the first mention in the

essay of the idea that the truth of an entity happens in the work. In this, properly speaking,

Heidegger finds the ursprünglich nature of the work of art; art carries the disclosed being to

presence, “to a stand in the light of its being.”280 A clue as to how we should understand the

revelation of truth in a painting comes from K. Maly, interpreting the following statement from

“...Poetically Man Dwells…”: “The nature of the image is to let something be seen” (Das

Wesen des Bildes ist: etwas sehen zu lassen) (PLT 226). According to Maly, to “let something

be seen” means the “imaging” of disclosure, the self-showing of an entity, so that both the

visible and invisible come to the fore.281 No substance or a thing is revealed in the painting,

because “the image-original dichotomy collapses completely, in favor of

disclosing/revealing/showing as such.”282 This does not mean that the painting in some way

280
Robert Bernasconi argues that Van Gogh's painting “is supplementary art, rather than great art.” According to
him, the painting is not so much an "origin" as it is an example of art that "expresses a world rather than instituting
one." R. Bernasconi, “Greatness of the Work of Art,” 111.
281
Kenneth Maly, “Imaging Hinting Showing: Placing the Work of Art,” in Kunst und Technik, ed. by Walter
Biemel and F.-W. von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main, 1989); 189.
282
Ibid., 195.

180
fabricates equipment; rather, one can see equipment in the sway of its truth as it happens in the

work. The ordinary nature of equipment depicted underscores the extraordinariness of the work

of art as neither thing nor equipment. The work of art works (in a verbal sense) insofar as it

makes this happen.

The discussion of van Gogh’s painting ends with two questions, which guide the

subsequent course of the essay, namely: “What is truth itself that it comes to pass as art?” and

“Can truth happen at all and thus be historical?” (PLT 38-39). Heidegger’s response brings up

the following main points. First, the account of how the work of art makes manifest the original

“strife" between clearing and concealing as which truth “occurs,” i.e. truth is an event which

takes place in art. Second, art is named the site of the un-concealment of Being; thus, the

process of artistic creation is described as the “bringing forth” of unconcealment and the

reception of the work as “preserving” (Bewahrung) of the truth set into it. Third, as the site of

truth, art works to open up a world for a historical community. All three statements reveal the

work of art as a unique entity such that as it comes into being, it reveals Being itself at the same

time. Summing up the principal argument of the entire essay, Heidegger states “The nature of

art would then be this: the truth of beings setting itself to work” (PLT 36).

The elements of art referred to above: occurrence of truth, disclosure of being, defining

the path of a historical community, constitute for Heidegger the elements of great art. It is

significant that only after the discussion of van Gogh’s painting does Heidegger mention, for

the first time, “great” art in the essay, though he does not explicitly refer to the painting as great

art (PLT 40). The choice of his second example of artwork – the Greek temple – raises some

questions with regard to ranking both works and tracing the different “kinds” of art that are the

subject of the essay.283

283
See G. Bruin, “Heidegger and Two Kinds of Art,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 52, No. 4
(Autumn, 1994): 447-457; here 449–50. The temple and the painting belong to different epochal destinings of
being, to different historical beginnings, springing from the originary.

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 Heidegger is quick to defend the proposition of art as truth setting itself to work against

its misinterpretation as imitation or artistic re-production. Such misinterpretation would only

confirm the prevailing philosophical belief that truth belongs to the realm of logic while “beauty

is reserved for aesthetics.” This is the same critique of the aesthetic conception of “fine” art as

the “production of the beautiful” that he leveled against the aesthetic tradition in the Nietzsche

volume. Such “production” reflects the restricted view of techne, limited to handicraft,

manufacture (Handwerk, Anfertigung), which reduces production and the work of art to the

willing artist’s creative forces or to a merely re-productive model (“transposing” something into

the artwork) (PLT 37).284 Clearly, Heidegger’s argument centers not on rejecting the process of

artistic production, rather on disclosing a different sense of production which would issue not

from the artist, but from the concealing-revealing nature of truth, of Being itself.285 In other

words, artistic production is a bringing forth but conceived on the model of aletheia, of

revealing the sending-withdrawing movement of Being (i.e., art sets into work that revealing

itself). As one commentator states, it is this particular understanding of the nature of art that

will also help Heidegger “break with the twofold problematic of production (poiesis) and

imitation (mimesis) that is so central to traditional aesthetics.”286

Somewhat in passing, between the discussion of van Gogh’s painting and the Greek

temple, Heidegger makes a reference to the poem of C.F. Meyer, “Roman Fountain.” From the

context we gather that the poem is not a “poetic painting” of a pre-given Roman fountain nor

the reproduction of some “general essence” of Roman fountains, but it does, nevertheless, set

truth to work. It seems though that for Heidegger the poem belongs rather to art conceived as

representation; immediately following the poem, he turns to the temple, which has been

284
The German words are indicative here: Heidegger speaks against art conceived as Wiedergabe, Abbild des
vorhandenen einzelnen, versetzen des Wirklichen ins Kunstwerk, Abbildverhältnis, Nachahmung, Abschilderung.
285
The import of this position of Heidegger’s is duplicitous: on the one hand, he renounces a subjectivist
(anthropocentric, humanistic) aesthetics; on the other, his submission of the artist to the “essential” strife of
revealing and concealing of Being amounts to a sacrifice of human being: the artist is only a “passageway” for the
work.
286
M. de Beistegui, The New Heidegger (London: Continuum, 2005), 138.

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“deliberately” picked as art “that cannot be ranked as representational” (as a matter of fact, this

is the only reference to “representational art,” darstellende Kunst, in the essay, but Heidegger

does not thematize it further).287

2.4. The Greek Temple

To “make visible” the work-being of the work of great art and how truth happens (das

Geschehnis der Wahrheit im Werk sichtbar machen), Heidegger turns to the Greek temple. His

purpose is two-fold: first, to substantiate his claims about non-aesthetic art and its relation to

truth, and second, to broach the question of the relation between work and world as a way of

exhibiting the historicity of both as implied in the notions “world-decay” and “world-

withdrawal.” The latter two are vital to understanding Heidegger’s take on Hegel’s end of art

thesis as well as his own position.

Heidegger refers to the temple simply as “work” or a “temple-work” (Tempelwerk). The

temple does not reproduce anything (bildet nichts ab); there is no “Idea of Temple” represented

in the building. By housing the god, the temple becomes an integrating center of the sacred

world it opens up; the temple’s precinct is holy. The temple works by first, revealing an open

space in which world and earth come to emerge; second, by gathering and holding together the

essential relations (Bezüge) that found and sustain the historical community of a people; and

third, by defining human existence and beings as what they are – it “gives to things their look

and to men their outlook on themselves” (PLT 42-43).288 The temple gathers around the “unity

287
K. Gover argues that the fountain poem offers a strong support to the ideas of truth as an excess, a flow initiated
by the origin, as well as representing the epochal sendings of Being (exemplified in the three basins of the
fountain). The poem, he claims, is an example of Dinggedicht, “a type of object-oriented poem, stemming from
early modernism, that presents an object in its thingliness while reducing the I-orientation of lyrical expression and
avoiding explicitly subjective meaning.” See K. Gover, “The Overlooked Work of Art in “The Origin of the Work
of Art” in International Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 48, No. 2, Issue 190 (June 2008). Similar is also R.D.
Cumming’s take of the fountain poem in “The Odd Couple.”
288
William McNeill refers to this process as the “designing” of human beings in their historical being, while the
work of art in its work-being is the “designing of the designed.” In what follows, I am indebted to W. McNeill’s
interpretation of the temple and creative rift as described in his “Design and the Enigma of the World” in Design

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of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace,

endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being… Only from and in this

expanse does the nation (geschichtlichen Volkes) first return to itself for the fulfillment of its

vocation (Bestimmung)” (PLT 42).289 The possibility of historical destining opened up by the

work can be called a “protoethical configuring.”290 It indicates that artistic creation and

attending to the work by the future preservers reveal a primordial ethical concern, an originary

ethicality tied to art that can be thought only from within a turning of Being (as reciprocal, co-

responding relation between man and Being).

By defining its own region, the temple makes visible and grants appearance to the air,

the sky, the earth, and living beings around it. Thus, the temple effects a reversal (Umkehren)

in the process of revealing: standing in the open region opened up by itself, we see how this

emerging itself is possible, thought as the coming into appearance (herauskommen, aufgehen)

of entities in the vicinity of the temple (rather than thinking the emergence of the temple as

bound with and owing to the surrounding world). World first comes up with the temple, and

grounds itself onto the “native ground” (heimatlicher Grund) of earth (PLT 42). But earth

should not be understood, as Heidegger warns, in terms of some mass of matter or the technical

sense of planet. Rather, the earth is what receives back unto itself the emerging and arising (das

Philosophy Papers, www.desphilosophy.com (Issue 2, 2006).

http://www.desphilosophy.com/dpp/dpp_journal/paper2a/body.html
289
Compare Hegel’s description of the temple: “For architecture is the first to open the way for the adequate
actuality of the god... Thereby it levels a place for the god, forms his external environment, and builds for him his
temple as the place for the inner composure of the spirit and its direction on its absolute objects. It raises an
enclosure for the assembly of the congregation, as protection against the threat of storm, against rain, tempest, and
wild animals, and it reveals in an artistic way, even if in an external one, the wish to assemble. … Indeed in this
respect architecture may itself attempt to go so far as to fashion in its forms and material an adequate artistic
existence for that content; but in that event it has already stepped beyond its own sphere and is swinging over to
sculpture, the stage above it. For its limitation lies precisely in retaining the spiritual, as something inner, over
against its own external forms and thus pointing to what has soul only as to something distinct from these. (b) But
by architecture, after all, the inorganic external world has been purified, set in order symmetrically, and made akin
to spirit, and the god's temple, the house of his community, stands there ready. Then into this temple, secondly, the
god enters himself as the lightning-flash of individuality striking and permeating the inert mass, and the infinite,
and no longer merely symmetrical, form of spirit itself concentrates and gives shape to something corporeal. This is
the task of sculpture” (LFA 1, 84).
290
McNeill, op. cit. http://www.desphilosophy.com/dpp/dpp_journal/paper2a/body.html

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Aufgehen alles Aufgehenden, i.e. physis) and shelters it (das Bergende). Earth and world

reciprocate each other in their counter-movement, and this is how the temple works and sets

them to work: opening up a world and setting the world back onto the earth. The temple’s

gathering power “first clears the openness of the opening into which it comes forth” and into

which beings emerge, too:

Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so
first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence. The luster and gleam of the stone,
though itself apparently glowing only by the grace of the sun, first brings to radiance the
light of the day, the breadth of the sky, the darkness of the night. The temple’s firm
towering makes visible the invisible space of the air. The steadfastness of the work
contrasts with the surge of the surf, and its own repose brings out the raging of the sea.
Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes
and thus come to appear as what they are. The Greeks early called this emerging and
rising in itself and in all things physis. It illuminates also that on which and in which
man bases his dwelling. We call this ground the Earth (PLT 42).

The upshot of Heidegger’s turn to the temple is the singling out of world and earth as the agents

of the essential work-being of the work of art. As it sets up a world, the work “demands” that it

itself be set up: a rightful demand because the work “consecrates” the holy, invites it to

presence; by opening up the dimension of the holy (the invisible, unsayable), the work also

makes it visible, brings it to speak (PLT 44). The opening up of world (aufstellen) is the first

essential feature (Wesenszug) of the temple, i.e. of the work of art.291 World here is not

understood as an object or a “collection of countables.” By setting up a world, the possibility of

history opens up, a relationality of space and time which enables things to come to presence as

what they are. The world “worlds” in that all things gain “their lingering and hastening, their

remoteness and nearness, their scope and limits.” This worlding of the world gathers the

“spaciousness” (Geräumigkeit) for the holy to emerge, giving the world a new dimension. Most

importantly, the work as work “liberates” and holds open the Open (das Offene) of the world.

291
Heidegger contrasts ausstellen, which means to set an artwork in a gallery, for example, with aufstellen, setting
up in terms of erecting (errichten), consecrating, according to a guiding measure (Maßtab). In errichten one can
also hear ‘richtig’ and Recht, in reference to right, necessity, justice, close to the language in Introduction to
Metaphysics (IM, 157-164).

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 In setting up a world, the temple-work also necessarily sets forth (herstellen) the earth,

which is the second essential feature of the work-being of the work. The two essential features

belong together in unity in the work-being of the work. The work “sets forth” insofar as it lets

the material out of which it is made come to the fore for the first time (metal comes to glitter,

colors to glow, tones to sing, etc.) In the same way, setting forth the earth means to bring it into

the Open. Earth withdraws from the opening up of historical world, but both earth and world,

though different from one another, are maintained as such in their reciprocating movement: “the

world grounds itself on the earth, and earth juts through world.” The world sets itself back

upon, or inscribes itself into the Earth which, as the sheltering and concealing (sich

Verschliessende, die Bergende), remains withdrawn. However, as the self-secluding other (of

world), earth also denotes the hidden, inaccessible ground of emergence – it becomes visible

only as the strife of both is carried out. Heidegger warns that we should not think of world

simply as that which is the Open, corresponding to clearing, and think of earth, conversely, as

the Closed, that corresponds to concealment. They belong together and their interdependence is

profound: the hiddenness of the earth happens for us in the same moment of disclosing the

world. What the work sets forth for us to see is the very movement of unconcealing as

essentially also self-concealing. Such confluence is not falsity or error, not a “blurring of the

outlines of all things of earth” or an “inflexible staying-in-the-dark” of earth but the unfolding

“into an inexhaustible richness of simple modes and shapes” (PLT 47) (in the way one would

see them perhaps in a painting by Cézanne).

To sum up: the Greek temple is the example of the two essential features of the work of

art, setting-up world and setting-forth earth. The temple-work consecrates and commemorates

the space it opens up. The greatness of the work comes in fighting and deciding the “primal

conflict” for “what is holy and what unholy, what is great and what small, what brave and what

cowardly,” says Heidegger, invoking Heraclitus (PLT 43). In An Introduction to Metaphysics,

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Heidegger states that “The struggle meant here is the original struggle…it is this struggle that

first projects and develops what has hitherto remained unheard of, unsaid, and unthought.

Thereafter this struggle is carried on [sustained] by the creators, poets, thinkers, statesmen.”292

In the case of the temple, the logic of its work is not to “represent” or “render” anything but to

bring to unconcealedness “that what is as a whole” and to “hold” it. “To hold,” Heidegger

explains, “originally means to tend, keep, take care (hüten)” (PLT 56). There is no

contradiction in truth appearing as both clearing and concealing (in verbergen, one hears also

bergen, which alludes to protecting, sheltering, keeping safe). The vocation of art is to stage

and bear the conflict of earth and world in a way that is unique, extraordinary, and unsettling.

Such understanding of art’s vocation sets the stage for the question with which the second

section of the art essay closes, namely, “What is truth that it can happen as, or even must

happen (as art)?” The following part delves into these questions, with a particular focus on

Heidegger’s understanding of truth as aletheia and how it comes to be in the work.

3. Truth and Art

3.1. The “Primordial Strife” of Unconcealment

As we saw from the examples of van Gogh’s painting and the temple, Heidegger thinks

the emergence of truth as struggle in the course of which Being comes to presence. The

premise of the “Origin” essay is that the contemporary understanding of truth as correctness and

propositional agreement itself rests on something “unexperienced and unthought.” Yet

presupposing truth as unconcealedness is not a human doing; we find ourselves compelled to

think this way: “[…] the unconcealedness of beings (Being) puts us (versetzt) into such a

condition of being (Wesen) that in our representation we always remain installed within and in

292
M. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 62 (translation modified.)

187
attendance upon unconcealedness” (in die Unverborgenheit ein- und ihr nachgesetzt bleiben)

(PLT 52).

The possibility of thinking truth as unconcealedness derives from a primordial strife,

Urstreit, of clearing and concealing (Lichtung/Verbergung). In Heidegger’s description, from

within the “primal strife” of clearing and concealing is “won” an “open place” in which every

being shows itself (PLT 55). Truth is and occurs as this very strife of clearing-as-concealing

plays itself out. As he writes, truth is un-truth,293 insofar as truth is thought to harbor in the

margins of its origin (Herkunftsbereich) the “not-yet-revealed.” Each being is in the midst of

the clearing, “holding itself” in the “strange opposition of presence (Anwesen) in that it always

withholds itself at the same time in a concealedness” (PLT 53).294 Concealment and

unconcealment thus belong to the process of presencing itself; this duality is perhaps best seen

in a work of art (in its own coming to existence, in the painting of a pair of shoes, for example,

which is a play of visible and invisible, showing and hiding). Therefore the Open in the midst

of beings is never a “rigid stage with a permanently raised curtain on which the play of being

runs its course.” Opposed to clearing is a two-fold concealing – as “refusal” (Versagen) and

“dissembling” (Verstellen). “Refusal” and “dissembling” are what causes confusion and error

(though we can never tell them apart), but this way of concealing is of a different kind or a

different order than concealing in the sense of Verbergung. Because both refusal and

dissembling belong to un-concealing, truth is conceivable not as an existent, fixed state or a

property of things, but as an occurrence (ein Geschehnis).

For truth to be, there must be always some being in which the openness can take a stand

and attain “stability”; only so can truth sustain the openness of the Open. Heidegger describes
293
In Being and Time, Heidegger also speaks of “equiprimordiality” or “co-originarity,” Gleichursprunglichkeit, of
“truth” and “untruth.”
294
Gadamer argues for an “isomorphism” between the work of art as “conflict” and Being as “conflict”: “The
conflict between revealment and concealment is not the truth of the work of art alone, but the truth of every being,
for as unconcealedness, truth is always such an opposition of revealment and concealment (belongs to Being itself
as physis, Heraclitus). […] Rather it belongs just as much to their Being that they withhold themselves. As
unconcealed, truth has in itself an inner tension and ambiguity. Being contains something like a ‘hostility to its own
presence.’” H.-G. Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, 107-108.

188
the taking stand of truth as “taking possession” (besetzen), where setzen and besetzen have to be

understood in terms of the Greek thesis, as a “setting up in the unconcealed” (Aufstellen im

Unverborgenen).295 Heidegger’s second important point is that this play-space of the Open is

the granting of Being itself as the Lichtung des Da, a space in which “each being emerges or

arises in its own way.” However, the art work does not make manifest only a single, isolated

being; if it manifests anything at all, the work “makes unconcealedness as such happen in

regard to what is as a whole” (PLT 56). The more authentically beings are disclosed in their

essencing, the “more directly” do they attain to a greater degree of Being - thus “self-concealing

Being is illuminated.”296

Heidegger describes truth’s establishment in a being as “erecting” or Einrichtung (in the

sense of setting forth a measure, a boundary, a decision).297 When he says that the work is

erected, it is to be thought both as a bringing to stand but also as consecration and

commemoration of the fact that being has happened here (PLT 44). Such erecting means “to

open the right in the sense of a guiding measure, a form in which what belongs to the nature of

being gives guidance.” It is important to note that the clearing of openness and the self-

establishing of truth are simultaneous acts (gehören zusammen). What a being is is inseparable

from its self-showing, self-manifestation. Charles Guignon refers to this as “expressivist

295
In the Addendum, Heidegger remarks concerning thesis: “The Greek thesis means ‘placing’ as in setting up a
statue. Placing and laying have the sense of bringing here into the unconcealed, bringing forth into what is present
(Her- ins Unverborgene, vor - in das Anwesende bringen, d.h. vorliegenlassen)” (PLT 82). He emphasizes that
setting and placing (setzen, stellen, feststellen) are not to be understood in terms of placing of an object over-against
a subject. The remark clarifies the meaning of feststellen or “fixing in place” of truth (PLT 63, 64, 72, 83) as
bringing a being into form, into its boundary, peras. “Boundary” is what “sets a being free into the unconcealed,” in
its truth; in this respect, he argues for understanding the work of art as ergon, as the gathering together of energeia.
That applies specifically to the definition of the work as the repose in movement: “continually self-exceeding
composure of the work’s movedness” (PLT 50), as well as to the discussion of the work’s createdness and the
reciprocal relationship between physis and techne.
296
This „illumination“ is the appearance of beauty (PLT 56). The beautiful issues from the essential history of
Being, its concealing-withdrawing movement, which has nothing to do with a technical production of beautiful
objects.
297
In the Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger explains “coming to stand” [ständig] as “achieving a limit for
itself, to limit itself (peras). This limit is not something that comes to the essent from outside…[nor] a deficiency in
the sense of a harmful restriction […] it is what first makes the essent into an essent as differentiated from a non-
essent. ... Limit and end are that wherewith the essent begins to be....That which places itself in its limit, completing
it, and so stands, has form, morphe. Form as the Greeks understood it derives its essence from an emerging placing-
itself-in-the-limit” (IM 60).

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ontology”: “’Expression’ here is supposed to capture the way something only becomes what it

is through its concrete realization in a specific form. We can find this expressivist ontology in

Heidegger’s recurrent descriptions of how an entity of some sort emerges out of an initially

inchoate and unstructured background and, in doing so, defines and realizes its own Being and

the Being of what surrounds it.”298

The self-establishment of truth indicates that truth is ground-less, “an abyss” (Abgrund),

because it has no other ground but the work in which it sets itself. Heidegger names that

essential aspect of truth its “impulse toward the work” (Zug zum Werk). It also means that truth

is radically singular, happening as “this openness of the Open” - and just as singular is the work

of art (PLT 61). As singular, the work of art is an original: “the establishing of truth in the work

is the bringing forth of a being such as never was before and will never come to be again” (PLT

62).

3.2. Earth, World, and the Rift

To the Open of the original strife of clearing and concealing belong earth and world.

They are “belligerent by nature”; world as measure, limit, decision is opposed to earth as the

hidden, measureless, self-closing. “Only as such,” writes Heidegger, “do they enter into the

conflict of clearing and concealing” and thus, into (historical) truth. The counter-movement

between self-opening world and self-secluding earth is an “essential strife” (wesenhafter Streit)

(seen not as “discord” or “destruction,” but a struggle for self-assertion.)299 Yet striving to

298
Charles Guignon, “Truth as Disclosure: Art, Language, History,” The Southern Journal of
Philosophy, vol. 28 (1989) (Supplement): 105-120; 106.
299
We can see here a relation to the notion of “self-assertion” from the “Rectoral Address“; Heidegger writes of art:
“Die Selbstbehauptung des Wesens ist jedoch niemals das Sichversteifen auf einen zufällingen Zustand, sondern
das Sichaufgeben in die verborgene Ursprünglichkeit der Herkunft des eigenen Seins“ (PLT 49). „Surrender“ -
Hofstadter’s translation of Sichaufgeben – can also invoke “sacrifice” and the submission, indebtedness to
overpowering Being. In the relationship hetween world and earth, which is “belligerent by nature,” one can see the
limits of the historical: earth, the “unmastered,” the unknown is always the risk to historical decision and
undermining the foundations of a historical people. The work of art bears this violent founding of (historical) truth
and in this it resembles the founding of political state; both are ways of responding to Being, subsumed under the
concept of the “destiny” and “destining” of Being.

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overpower each other, world and earth only give themselves up to the “intimacy” of their

belonging. What the work of art does is cut out (outline, sketch) the figure of their strife. But it

does not nullify the strife in artistic unity; rather, the work of art works in “instigating” or

enacting (Anstiftung) the strife: the working of the work “consists in the fighting of the battle

(der Bestreitung des Streites) between world and earth” (PLT 49). As this strife is fought, it

issues in the work’s repose (“composure of movement,” “repose in the concentrated agitation”

of work) (übertreibende Sammlung der Bewegtheit des Werkes).300 As de Beistegui comments,

“Only to the extent that it can function as the very space in which truth takes place, can it [the

work of art] be seen as an event. And it is only as such an event that the work is indeed a work

of art, and not merely a thing.”301

The dynamic counter-movement of world and earth opens up a “rift” (Riss), 302 a tear –

Heidegger presents it as a unifying-differentiating outline that draws out/up their respective

boundaries as they strife. In the rift, the essential difference of self-secluding earth and

opening-up world is sketched (but not made). While world refers to the new relational structure

that the work opens up and in which it exists, earth indicates withdrawal, a certain

impenetrability, which “juts through” the world and unsettles and endangers the openness. The

following quote describes the rift, emphasizing its double nature:

World … lets beings attain to the open of its paths. Earth, bearing and jutting, endeavors
to keep itself closed and to entrust everything to its [own] law. The strife is not a rift in
the sense of the mere ripping open (Aufreißen) of a cleft. The strife, rather, is the
intimacy in which the opponents belong together. This rift draws out the opponents
together (reißt... zusammen] into the source (Herkunft) of their unity from out of their
unitary ground. It is a basic design (Grundriß). It is the tearing open that draws the
fundamental features of the rise of the clearing of beings. (Er ist Aufriß, der die
Grundzüge des Aufgehens der Lichtung des Seienden zeichnet.) This rift does not let the
opponents burst apart; it brings what opposes measure and boundary into their unitary
outline (Umriß) ...The rift is the drawing together of tearing open and basic design,

300
This gives Chris Fynsk reason to argue that the work of art achieves identity founded on difference: the work of
art is the original work of difference as drawn out by rift; this makes truth finite and within it is inscribed human
finitude, too. Ch. Fynsk, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity, 134.
301
Miguel de Beistegui, The New Heidegger, 139.
302
Riss and its derivatives (Aufriss, Umriss, Grundriss) can be also translated as fissure, crack, outline, sketch,
rending stroke, drawing, design.

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 traversal and outline. (Der Riß ist das einheitliche Gefüge von Aufriß und Grundriß,
Durch- und Umriß) (PLT 63).

The rift both brings together and sets apart the opponents so that one can “see” drawn out the

essential features of the clearing of being. In this “rifting” (in the multiple meanings of Aufriss,

Grundriss, Umriss, Durchriss), the rift acquires form and determination, “splitting” into the

“designing” and the “designed,” “producing” and “produced” (mirroring the play of

clearing/concealing), so that what might be thought as “form” of rift becomes the “content” of

form itself. In the rift thus sketched as basic design (Grundriss) fall together (or fall apart) all

metaphysical doubles, such as inner-outer, essence-appearance, intelligible-sensible, nature-

spirit, that have so far determined the work of art. The derivatives of ‘–riss’ indicate an

originary “spacing” opened up by the rift itself, as the articulation of a structure of relationality

which emerges each time in a singular fashion, in a singular being, i.e. in the work. The work

thus cannot be envisaged outside of the strife of earth and world and the rift that marks it: the

strife finds repose in a “figure, shape, Gestalt” (PLT 64). The rending stroke of rift is

“composed” in a Gestalt; it is what composes and preserves the original strife in the work of art

and makes it visible, intelligible, for the first time.

What Heidegger describes here as being composed in a figure is not a representation of

strife or the rift. The work is set up in the rift as the work is being set forth. This is why

Heidegger conceives of art as the event of truth setting itself in the work, because truth does not

pre-exist the work but occurs in this setting. In other words, the work has no other object to re-

present but the clearing of the Open, the clearing of being as it sends itself. By the very terms

of the clearing, the originative moment (‘source’ of un-concealment) escapes philosophical re-

presentation and explication. The origin is never fully given, so the work of art can never

objectify the truth of the origin, which precludes its becoming an object of cognition (and of

sublation) from the very beginning. Being thus remains beyond limits.

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 There are in the Heideggerian rift and Gestalt some important parallels to Hegel’s

thinking of the self-differentiation of Spirit in the process of its formation. To explore some of

them, I take as my basis John Protevi’s article “The Stilling of the Aufhebung,” which

juxtaposes Hegel and Heidegger on truth and “originary split.”

3.2.1. Urstreit, Riß, and the Zerrissenheit of Spirit

We recall the Hegelian conception of art in which the work of art is ideal content

showing itself in sensuous form. The work of art reveals (enthüllen) the identity of concept and

reality, Spirit and objectivity in a sensuous shape. Art accomplishes the reflexive path of Spirit,

since in the work Spirit shows itself to itself as complete, in pure speculation, an identity of

subjectivity and being. As Hofstadter writes about Hegel, “In art, the absolute Spirit perceives

itself in the art-work: its perception is the intuition of the identity of truth in the work, and the

object of its perception is the subjectivity in the work as it finds its identity with the objectivity

in the work.”303 At the same time, as Hegel shows in the Phenomenology, Spirit comes to its

own by overcoming negativity and internal scission.

In his piece, John Protevi marks the points of commonality and divergence between

Heidegger’s and Hegel’s understanding of negativity and difference, and how that affects the

two philosophers’ understanding of art and truth. For Protevi, in Heidegger’s analysis of art as

the happening of truth, such happening takes place without an “ongoing spiritual movement.”304

Whereas for Hegel the movement of Spirit to self-certainty and truth is a movement of “equi-

originary splitting/healing,” the relationship of rift and strife, of Riss and Streit for Heidegger,

“in the truth of art insures that no movement beyond the truth of the singular art occurrence is

possible, as such occurrence opens its own world by instigating ever more non-healable

303
A. Hofstadter, “How to Escape From Hegel’s Aesthetics!”, 15.
304
John Protevi, “The Stilling of the Aufhebung: Streit in the 'Origin of the Work of Art,'” in Heidegger Studies, 6
(1990): 67-83; 68.

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strife.”305 For Heidegger, the work of art must be considered in its singularity as an occurrence

of truth, not, as in Hegel, as a moment in an ongoing spiritual movement. Protevi refers to the

rift as an “unhealable difference,” “difference as such,” whereas the “movement of the Absolute

is the absolutely certain originary healing of an originary split.”306 (Recall Hegel’s statement

from the Phenomenology, “The wounds of the Spirit heal and leave no scars behind.”) Hegel

resolves the negation within Spirit by reducing it to logical difference within thought itself.

In Protevi’s view, the Heideggerian strife cannot be resolved or healed, since the

opponents of this Urstreit, held together in the apartness of their striving, “cannot address

themselves, since they are not within the same ‘sphere’: one is the appearing process, the other

the withdrawing ground of this process.” For him, the Heideggerian strife is not Hegelian

contradiction, because the strife is already resolved in favor of world, which for Heidegger is

always linguistic. The Hegelian Spirit, on the other hand, heals itself from its own (self-

inflicted) wounds by sublating the difference in unity, which is always presupposed from the

beginning. The Heideggerian Riss, which holds open the Open for Being, is a constant

(re)composition of the strife; it is always both Er-eignis and Ent-eignis, presence and

withdrawal. As the above quote from Heidegger shows, earth and world only attain to

“intimacy” and a state of “repose” (bergende Inständigkeit), but not reconciliation; the unity of

earth and world is not a dialectical unity. In contrast, for Hegel the task of art is the unveiling of

the reconciliation of Spirit and nature in a sensuous shape.

In support of Protevi, we can take Heidegger’s own words in the section “Leap” of the

Contributions that the origin of the strife has to be thought from “within the intimacy of the not

in be-ing! Enowning.” Hegel, according to Heidegger, apparently did experience negativity,

this “not” (as did Plato and Heraclitus),

305
Ibid., 69.
306
Ibid., 70.

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 but yet differently – experience what is essential but sublated it in absolute knowing:
negativity only in order to let it disappear and to keep the movement of sublating going.
[That is] precisely not the essential swaying. Why not? Because [for Hegel] being as
beingness (actuality) [is determined] in terms of thinking (absolute knowledge)… [What
is important] [is] the sheltering inabiding – and strife as the essential swaying of the
‘between’ [Zwischen].307

Heidegger’s words here are in line with his main criticism of Hegel for prioritizing presence as

the reality of the object, of “that which is” over the “reality of the real.” As Heidegger sees it,

Hegel’s philosophy is therefore grounded only in a semblance of being rather than being itself

(cf. chapter one). Protevi concludes that the difference between Hegel and Heidegger does not

lie in their views concerning the specifics of the cognition of things but in the “possibility of

knowledge of the ground.” For Hegel the ground of intelligibility, the movement of Spirit, is

itself intelligible. For Heidegger, conversely, the ground of intelligibility in any one epoch is

metaphysically knowable as the Being of beings, but Being itself, the “‘ground’ of the

appearing process, withdraws as it grants a particular flow of time for each epoch; thus any

attempt at finding a Grund brings us to face an unknowable Ab-grund.”308 To put it differently,

the ground is always only a Grund-riss, always already marked, projected but always yet to be

finished. Thus, the possibility of plural shapes and rendings, an essential play at the heart of

truth.

It is important to mark the divergent paths that Hegel and Heidegger take with respect to

the being of the work of art. Heidegger’s effort in reflecting on art is to demonstrate the

fundamental transcendence of the antithesis between subject and object, and, respectively, to

find ways to describe the nature of art without recourse to subjectivity. Hegel’s description of

art moves in a different direction for it is the sensuous manifestation of the Idea, conceived by

self-conscious thought that constitutes the work of art. In thinking the Idea, therefore, the truth

of sensuous appearance is cancelled (aufgehoben); truth acquires its shape in the form of the

307
M. Heidegger, Contributions, 186.
308
Protevi, “The Stilling of Aufhebung,” 83.

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concept. When Heidegger speaks of the struggle between world and earth and describes the

work of art as the thrust in which truth occurs, this truth is not taken up and perfected further in

the truth of the philosophical concept. Truth occurring in the work of art is unique, singular,

unrepeatable. This is why, as Gadamer also suggests, the reference to the work of art in which

truth comes forth “should indicate clearly that for Heidegger it is meaningful to speak of an

event of truth….Rather his analysis supports his central philosophical concern to conceive

Being itself as an event of truth.”309

Furthermore, the Heideggerian Gestalt cannot be thought in the model of aesthetic form-

content, as Hegel and traditional aesthetics would conceive of it. It is neither an image of a

thing nor a product of Spirit or a dialectical synthesis of ideal form unifying the sensible aspects

of an object. Gestalt arises and is inscribed in the dynamic of the rift between world and earth

as an ‘original’ ‘figure’ of truth. In setting forth truth – aletheia, the work sets to capture the

very structure of clearing – that something is. „Where this bringing forth (Hervorbringung)

expressly (eigens) brings the openness of beings, or truth, that which is brought forth (das

Hervorgebrachte) is a work” (PLT 62). Through the notion of rift, Heidegger effectively

rescripts the form-matter distinction so that the “form” is the boundary of historical world [the

paths, identity, and destiny of community relations] which has to ground itself on earth, while

“matter” as such [materiality as metal, wood, stone] is for the first time drawn out into the light

of world. Earth resists disclosure while remaining the withdrawing origin of the work; as such

it sets a limit to any possible disclosure [i.e. world], determining the fundamentally historical

nature of art. It is this ambiguity of disclosure which never attains to full manifestation and that

is the “riddle” of the work of art. The work is both a “fixed” instant (composition of rift in a

figure) and the event of drawing it out; the wesen (in the verbal sense) of the work is the waying

of truth in the line of the rift, between visibility and setting itself back into undisclosed earth.

309
H.-G. Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, 105.

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As such, it unsettles and puts to question the very possibility of the metaphysics of presence and

of representation.

3.3. On Gestalt, Creation, and Createdness

a) Gestalt

When Heidegger describes Gestalt and the “createdness” (Geschaffensein) of the work,

his notion of creation is far from the traditional aesthetic vision of the artist as the source of

creative energy, whose product is the work of art. In this lies a substantial difference between

Hegel and Heidegger, insofar as in Hegel artistic imagination brings forth the work of art.

Heidegger’s account has references both to the Greek notion of production as techne and poiesis

and to the Nietzschean account of the dual forces of the Apolinian and Dyonisian, respectively,

world and earth, taking shape in the rift.310 In what follows, I focus on creation as an aspect of

the work-being of the artwork and the implications for Heidegger’s main thesis that art

originates both the work of art and the artist.

As discussed above, the rift attains to repose because “[t]he work fashions and bears in

itself the event out of which it comes to stand.”311 Gestalt is itself configured in configuring the

rift, i.e. configuring at once un-concealment and the process of appearing as such. As

Heidegger puts it, “the composed (gefügte) rift is the fitting or joining (die Fuge) of the shining

of truth” (PLT 64). In this way, the work of art is the “exemplary” being, which in its own

disclosure reveals the very conditions of disclosure itself. The very forces that find repose in

the work of art and bring it into existence also define the work’s historical context (in each

constellation of earth and world). Createdness therefore belongs to the work-being of the work

as a happening of truth (i.e., the movement of unconcealing): “both createdness and creation

310
More details about this idea can be found in M. Haar, The Song of the Earth, esp. chapter VII “Earth in the Work
of Art and in the Poem.” As Michel Haar writes, “the proximity to Nietzsche is very great: art as a harnessing, as
conquest, implies in both thinkers a struggle, an act of power” (107).
311
Ch. Fynsk, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity, 146.

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must be defined in terms of the work-being of the work” (PLT 60). Because the work-being of

the work is essentially truth-setting-itself-to-work, “createdness” is nothing else but truth’s

being “fixed in place” in the Gestalt. Heidegger clarifies that “Gestalt is always to be thought

in terms of the particular placing (Stellen) and framing or framework (Ge-stell) as which the

work occurs when it sets itself up and sets itself forth” (PLT 64).

All the words referred to here (Gestalt, Stellen, Gestell, but also stehen, Insichstehen,

Inständigkeit), have a metaphysical legacy.312 Heidegger admits this himself when he

comments on the above quote in the Addendum, pointing to the discord of the claim that truth is

“fixed in place” (feststellen) and a claim made several pages later, namely, of “letting happen of

the advent of truth” (PLT 82). The contradiction in the two claims is between “a willing which

blocks and thus prevents the advent of truth” and a “letting-happen” in which “compliance” and

“non-willing” are manifested which can clear the way for this advent. Two points need to be

made here. On the one hand, this is evidence of the transformation in Heidegger’s own path of

thinking from the 1930s toward the later stance of Gelassenheit and away from the language of

a willing, resolute, subject. The art essay still conceives truth and work in terms of “strife,”

“erecting,” “fighting,” “setting up” and “setting-into.” The disclosure which art provides

“wrests” beings out of concealment, and this wresting involves power and belligerence. On the

other hand, as Ed Casey notes, this example indicates an “allegiance to reunification-within-the

origin,” expressed in Heidegger’s recourse to words that imply “gathering,” “constellation,”

some condensation. Such words (Ge-stell, Ge-stalt, ge-eignet, Ge-schick), in his view, might

expose a “shadow” of metaphysics in Heidegger’s project and the ambiguity of his position

within the history of aesthetics.313

312
Lacoue-Labarthe, Typography, 61, note 31.
313
Ed Casey, “Origin(s) in (of) Heidegger/Derrida,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 81/10 (1984); 603. For
Schürmann, on the other hand, the “displacement” of the aletheic process to works and Gestalt remains within “the
history of presence,” which thus retains the ambiguity of Heidegger’s relationship to metaphysics. Schürmann,
Heidegger on Being and Acting, 144.

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 b) Creation and Createdness (Geschaffensein)

In discussing Gestalt and creation, Heidegger thematizes the difference between two

modes of production or bringing-forth (hervorbringen), that of art works and equipment.

Accordingly, art’s createdness “reveals itself as the conflict’s being fixed in place in the figure

by means of the rift” (Das Geschaffensein enthüllte sich als das Festgestellt-sein des Streites

durch den Riss in die Gestalt) (PLT 66). The use of the past participle here indicates that

disclosure is not effected by human beings nor are they directing the process of creation.

Rather, our taking part in the establishment of truth, being drawn into the Open, shares in the

movement in which we are similarly “transported into our historical task” and into a world

projected for the first time by the work itself. Creation is not a matter of accomplishment or

artistic capacity, nor the effect of a cause. The creator can only respond to what has always

already happened, re-drawing, as it were, the original for the first time, but without intention.

As Heidegger puts it, “it is not the ‘N.N. fecit’ that is to be made known. Rather, the

simple ‘factum est’ is to be held forth into the Open by the work” (PLT 65). We must be able

to experience “the emergence of createdness,” that is, the coming to the fore of its having been

created from out of the work itself: the event of its having come forth. Heidegger states,

“Precisely where the artist and the process and the circumstances of the genesis of the work

remain unknown, there this thrust, this “that it is” of createdness, emerges into view most purely

from the work” (PLT 65). It is in great art, in the “essential strife” of truth where the artist is

effaced as inessential compared to the work (gegenüber dem Werk). S/he is only solicited to

respond to the clearing of Being. The work “has to be released (entlassen) by him to its pure

self-subsistence (Insichselbststehen).” Entlassen here has the sense of “letting things be”

(indicating perhaps the receptivity of Gelassenheit or ‘giving it up’ to Being), but also of

relegating the creator to a “self-annihilating passage” (sich selbst vernichtender Durchgang)

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that lets the work of art come forth (Hervorgang). Great art is entirely the work of Being in

providing the clearing for being/s to appear in the appropriative event.

Heidegger’s claim that createdness is part of or is joined in the created work (das

Geschaffene mit hineingeschaffen ist) means that createdness is what “makes it up” and gives

the work its standing and resting in itself (Insichruhen) (unlike equipment, where its being made

disappears in usefulness). Creatededness reveals a peculiar temporal indexation of the “simple

fact” of creation: “this, that unconcealment of a being has happened here and first happens as

this having happened (und als dieses Geschehene erst geschieht)” (PLT 65). The work of art

occurs as already having happened, as “has been” (geschehen). What comes towards us – what

the work throws at us – is a projection, a solicitation to retrieve its essential pastness, its “having

been” (the “resonance” or “echo” of the work, as Heidegger says). This would mean that

creadedness is an act of repetition, of truth differing in itself as (re)drawn. The work is futural

to us (projected as standing within the Riss), but as already having happened; resting in itself,

the work has already happened in unconcealment. In this lies the originary (ursprüngliche)

repetition of the originative process, a self-differentiation within the origin.314 Repetition is not

a replication of a process that has occurred; rather, the work of art is its own origin but as

“withheld,” as Fynsk says.315 Heidegger writes:

The event (Ereignis) of its having been created (Geschaffensein) is not simply a
subsequent resonance in the work (nachzittern); rather, the work casts its own character
as event (das Ereignishafte) - that the work is as this work - forth before itself (wirft vor
sich her) and has constantly cast it about itself (um sich geworfen) (PLT 65, translation
modified).

I believe Heidegger means here an originary temporality316 that is operative in the origin, such

that a distinction between the originary (ursprünglich) and the original (as beginning) can be

314
What is meant here is “not the re-appearance of an originary (and now lost) (because past) presence, but a
generative act of repetition that ‘precedes’ presence itself.” Ed Casey “Origin(s),” 605. Still, for Casey it is
questionable how this originary re-appearance is not representation (whether in Gestell or in Gestalt).
315
Ch. Fynsk, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity, 155.
316
I take from Schürmann the distinction between the “originary” and “origin.” R. Schürmann, op. cit., 145.

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conceived. The reference to both Ereignis and Geschehen in the above quotes sustains the point

of such distinction (which should not be understood causally or in terms of temporal

succession). In the work of art truth is set up in a “figure” which “appears” and thus marks the

difference between the originary/origin; in this way truth becomes historical. The work sets up

relationality without relation (representation without representation) to the originary, to the

source of unconcealment which always remains concealed. To account for the presencing of

the withdrawal (since revealing always happens from out of the unrevealed, the unknowable,

the concealed), there is the need for “truth” to appear (as Zug zum Werk) and art is a secure way

for us to “see” Being.317 Yet the work remains a negativity; it cannot bring everything into the

open – there remains in it an enigma, something “unmastered,” unsayable (unheimlich,

ungeheuer). The most concealed is at the same time the work’s ownmost origin, just as the

origin of truth is concealedness.

If the originary comes to view in the original outline, this is how the “circle” of art

closes: as the designing, projecting of the rift in a figure, art (Being’s disclosure) is the origin of

both artist and work, “designed” and “design” (Entwurf, entworfen). But as such it “arrives”

within what is already a “thrownness” within the opening of the Open (PLT 71). The work of

art is so ahead of itself, projected, it “leaps over” itself – and the fact that it is, rather than not,

presents it as an “offering” (darbringen) from/to Being.318 In this feature of the work consists

its finitude, a singular, solitary occurrence that happens against the background of Nothing.

Heidegger cannot emphasize enough the strangeness, extraordinariness, uncanny nature of this

origination of something (rather than nothing) that comes to be as art. As Fynsk remarks, “[the

work] is offered to truth, or it offers itself as a site for the event of truth (to which belongs also

the holy), in such a way as to become its address. The creator and the receiver [of the work of

317
That strangeness of the work accounts for the ambiguity in the power it can exercise over us: the Zug zum Werk
can also indicate that we are being pulled towards it, drawn into the Open that the work sustains.
318
It is telling that Hegel uses the same word (darbringen) to describe the gifts of the Muses, offered to Spirit as
remnants of its past (cf. chapter 1 above).

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art] are founded upon an irreducible alterity that appears in the form of certain strangeness in

the work.”319

Precisely as such offering, there is also sacrifice in the origin of the work of art. Recall

the paragraph on the artist who is only as a “passage,” destroyed in the coming forth of the

work. The creative rift is a moment in the history of Being and against it, the creator gives way.

The act of bringing forth is the specific mode of founding (stiften) Being, understood and

working as a response to the destining (Geschick) in Being’s own unconcealment. Similarly, in

the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger stages the work of art as the struggle of man to win

the measure of Being, to sustain the Open: “In the work of art the conquering of disclosure, and

thereby of being itself, this conquest of the disclosedness of being which itself comes about only

in the form of a constant antagonism [continuous conflict], is always simultaneously a struggle

against the hidden, against concealment, against appearance.”320 This is not an “offering” of

Being; rather, it is a struggle for overpowering, a “taming and ordering of powers.”321

Accordingly, (great) art would be not the creation of great poets, but an awesome thrust that

enters history. Once again, for Heidegger it is the “uncanny” one, the one ready to “shatter

against being” who can be historical by breaking the given limits as the force of

“overpowering.” Such shattering power is the “condition for all great questioning and

knowledge.”322

One final point on creation: besides defining it in terms of shaffen, Geschaffensein,

hervorbringen, Heidegger refers also to creation as a drawing up or bringing out (herausholen),

contextualized by a remark of Albrecht Dürer on art and nature: “For in truth, art lies hidden

within nature; he who can wrest (herausreißen) it from her, has it.” In the short paragraph

dedicated to this remark, Heidegger clarifies that by “’wrest’ is meant the drawing out of the rift

319
Ch. Fynsk, Heidegger: Thought and Historicity, 134.
320
M. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 192 (translation modified).
321
Ibid., 157.
322
Ibid., 107.

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and the rift design, as if with a drawing-pen” [Reißen heißt hier Herausholen des Risses und den

Riß reißen mit der Reißfeder auf dem Reißbrett] (PLT 70). Heidegger claims that such view of

art has been misinterpreted by subjectivist aesthetics as signifying the “self-sovereign subject’s

performance of a genius” (PLT 76). That would mean thinking of art as hidden in the folds of

nature and of the artist as the “mouthpiece” of nature (to use Kant’s words).323 But neither

seems to be Heidegger’s position here, even though a couple of pages later he makes another

reference to creation as heraufholen, concluding that all creation is like “drawing water from a

spring” (…ein solches Holen, alles Schaffen ist ein Schöpfen) (PLT 76). In my view, he is

referring here to the plurality of [creative] configurations of the rift between earth and world, as

many possible configurations of unconcealing. Understanding creation and createdness this

way only comes to underscore Heidegger’s view of truth as happening in the work of art “in

terms of the scope, depth, and originality of disclosure.”324

In response to Dürer, Heidegger writes „Gewiß steckt in die Natur ein Riß, Maß und

Grenze und ein daran gebundenes Hervorbringenkönnen, die Kunst. Aber ebenso gewiß ist, daß

diese Kunst in der Natur erst durch das Werk offenbar wird, weil sie ursprünglich im Werk

steckt“ (PLT 70). This exchange between Dürer and Heidegger thematizes the relationship

between art and nature, respectively, the relationship between techne and physis (Heidegger’s

essay on Aristotle’s Physics B1, also from the 1930s, deals extensively with this issue).

Without getting into detail here because I will pursue the topic again below, the following could

be said. Underlying Heidegger’s response is the view of bringing forth in terms of the Greek

poiesis, referring to something passing over from absence to presence. It is also significant that

323
As M. Haar claims, despite a proximity to Nietzsche in the account of artistic creation as mastering and
imposition of creative forces, Heidegger “still never adheres to the basic principles of Nietzsche’s aesthetics,
namely the idea that the artist and his subjective “creative state” are the origin of art, that this creative state itself is
the expression of ‘natural’ artistic forces or the expression of the artistic will to power immanent in the universe.”
M. Haar, Song of the Earth, 108.
324
D. Schmidt, Ubiquity of the Finite, 107.

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here again there is no talk of causality in the ordinary sense of one thing affecting another.325

Heidegger is not seeking to privilege neither nature nor art, because the unifying-differentiating

Riss in which the work of art appears remains hidden and indeterminate before the work’s

appearance. “Riss, measure, boundary” are not before the work is (the use of the verb reissen in

reference to both drawing out the Riss and re-drawing it on the “design board” supports that

point; PLT 70). Here we go back to the issue about “originary mimesis”: art is not thought in

terms of “subordinate production” as Heidegger referred to mimesis in Plato (cf. chapter 3

above). But neither does he suggest thinking art as preceding nature, because art lets both

emerge from the hidden into presence. John Sallis argues that Heidegger “reverses the

relationship between art and nature, undermining the classical concept of art as mimesis” and

setting this relationship at the same time “in terms of circling,” so notions of precedence or

hierarchical order are not applicable any longer.326 Art is originary because in the work the

Riss, measure, boundary are articulated for the first time as such. Heidegger concludes by

saying that art is ein daran gebundenes Hervorbringenkönnen – a “capacity” to bring forth, to

let appear (PLT 70).

Such consideration of the nature/art relationship is on the way of overcoming aesthetics

inasmuch as it challenges the traditional conception of art as mimetic. Heidegger’s view

exposes also the untenability of the “self-evidence” of the matter-form (or “formed” matter)

distinction in its application to the sphere of art and art works, indicating that this distinction

both follows from and restricts a more primordial understanding of art that is reflected in the

experience of the early Greeks.

325
Heidegger says, “The working of the work does not consist in the taking effect of a cause (wirken). It lies in a
change, happening from out of the work, of the unconcealedness of what is, and this means, of Being” (PLT 72).
326
J. Sallis, “Stone,” in Endings, 209. This is seconded by Lacoue-Labarthe who claims that “techne [mimesis] is
not representation in the sense of a second, specular presentation or a reproduction, duplicative one, but
representation in the full sense of the word, i.e. in the sense of making present. The difficult thing is, as ever, to
think an originary secondarity – or rather to think the origin as second, as initially divided and deferred, which is to
say in difference.” Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics, (Oxford & Cambridge, MA: Basil
Blackwell, 1990); 83.

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4. The Work of Art and Historicity

4.1. On “Preserving”

In the discussion of createdness as the “composure” of the rift, Heidegger speaks of the

“displacement” (entrücken, einrücken, Verrückung)327 that art effects – thrusting (stossen) to the

surface, it transports men out of the realm of the ordinary and into a new measure and law of a

world (PLT 66). “Displacement” captures also the movement in which the familiar becomes

unfamiliar, uncanny; it is consistent with the Zug or “pull to work” through which a world

comes up. Heidegger sees such displacement as transformative (Ver-wandlung) because it

forces us (or enables us?) to “transform our accustomed ties to the world and earth.”

Displacement is necessarily two-fold; the work of art for the first time articulates new structures

of relationality within a historical world, to which human beings and the work belong; at the

same time, the relations that make the work possible are transformed (i.e., as the preparation for

a new Geschick, a destining of Being). This transformative displacement effected by the work

of art founds its genuine, primordial historicity.

The work of art as a new constellation of truth sketches out in advance the guidelines for

possible decisions and a “measure” of being, “transport[s] a people into its “endowment”

(Mitgegeben) which is their “appointed task” (Aufgabe) as well (PLT 77). It is only through the

world opened by the work that humans can come to appear on the scene as a people of a

particular epoch, granting us “a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access to

the being that we ourselves are” (PLT 53). But to be such people and to sustain the openness

opened by the work, the work itself must be preserved. We must “stay within the truth that is

happening in the work.” “Staying within the truth“ (verweilen) Heidegger calls „preserving“

327
The translators of Heidegger’s Contributions point out that rücken and its derivatives, entrücken, einrücken,
verrücken, berücken, reflect the “enactment-character of being-historical thinking” and the “profound recasting and
transformation of man” in this event. I believe this holds true for the use of these words in the art essay as well. See
P. Emad & K. Maly, “Translators’ Foreward,” Contributions, xxxiii.

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(Bewahrung) of the work of art, so that work is for the first time what it is.328 Bewahrung (the

root –wahr- for ‘true’ is significant here) means preserving the ontological truth of the work as

happening within extraordinary strife (PLT 66).329

There are several aspects to the notion of preserving that are relevant to the issue of the

origin of art, primarily in terms of situating the work of art within history and the possibility of

art to become a site of another beginning. Createdness, as we saw, bears in itself the

unconcealment of truth as withdrawal from presencing and thus harbors the tension of

instability, undecidability or even fragility of truth. Preserving is another mode of creation

when thought of as responding to the work’s createdness as a unique figuration of truth in the

particular sending of Being. “Preserving” is therefore Heidegger’s name for an authentic, i.e.,

non-aesthetic, relation of humans to the work of art. It describes a relation that does not take the

work in terms of an aesthetic object eliciting a feeling but instead lets the work be by “standing-

within the happening of the openness of being.” Creation and preserving are both essential for

the being of art: “Just as a work cannot be without being created but is essentially in need of

creators, so what is created cannot itself come into being (seiend werden) without those who

preserve (die Bewahrenden) it” (PLT 66).

Heidegger explicitly contrasts preserving with the Pflege and Erhaltung (care and

conservation) of works of art offered by the art business (PLT 40). Preserving and creation

could be understood as two modes of sheltering330 the truth of being against metaphysical

forgottonness and abandon, and both are equally necessary. The work opens a destiny to be

328
The same word verweilen is used by Hegel to describe spirit’s “tarrying (verweilen) with the negative.”
Verweilen in Heidegger stands both for attending to truth and letting the work be as it is, but also for the sense of
tarrying with the extraordinary, uncanny nature of the work. In the “Origin,” discussing the “transformative
displacement” effected by art, he writes that our “submission” to it is a staying with, or dwelling (verweilen), with
truth, anticipating the language of dwelling and building in his later works (PLT 66).
329
In the Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger writes: “The essence of original truth could not be maintained in
its initial, original force” (in seiner anfänglichen Ursprünglichkeit, original originariness), thus the need to
“preserve its force [of the beginning] is to repeat, to draw once again (wiederholen) more deeply than ever from its
source” (IM, 190-1).
330
Along with other modes such as “thinking, poetizing, building, leading, sacrificing, suffering, celebrating,”
described in Contributions, 213 (section 177).

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taken up and accomplished by future preservers: “in the work,” Heidegger claims, “truth is

thrown toward the coming preservers, that is, toward a historical humanity.” Preserving is thus

futural and as Charles Guignon observes, “[t]he very Being of the work, then, is seen as

something impending and yet to be realized.”331 Heidegger goes further saying that the work of

art “always remains tied to its preservers, even and particularly when it is still only waiting for

preservers and only pleads and waits for them to enter into its truth. Even the oblivion

(Vergessenheit) into which a work can sink is not nothing; it is still a preservation. It feeds on

the work” (PLT 67).

He emphasizes that preserving is a matter of historical decision and vocation of a human

community, an essential task. In preserving, historical Dasein attempts to re-capture or wrest a

place for itself – exactly as historically grounded by/through the work, from within the

projective nature of the work of art. Heidegger sums up the nature of art: “Art is the creative

preserving of truth in the work” (PLT 71). By this he means that the work prescribes or

indicates its own right manner (measure) of creative preserving; it is nothing else but the setting

forth of the unconcealment of being. In that sense, preserving is a disclosive occurrence on a

par with creation and both are modes of Dasein against the calculative, technological (or,

equally, aesthetic, metaphysical) obstruction of disclosure. This understanding of the

relationship to the work of art allows Heidegger to think both creating and preserving outside of

the subject/object exchange in aesthetic experience. Indeed, artistic enjoyment and

“connoisseurship” develop when we forget the “extraordinary awesomeness of truth that is

happening in the work.” “Merely aesthetic enjoyment” has nothing to do with preserving, not

even the historical tradition of art can accomplish it; the most it can accomplish is

“recollection.” Recollection can grant the work “a place” from which one can see the historical

circumstances of its emergence, but the work’s genuine work-being will remain inaccessible.

331
Ch. Guignon, op. cit., 113.

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 Therefore, when Heidegger refers to “world-decay” and “world-withdrawal”

designating works having lost their work-being (which are now mere Gegenstände, exhibited in

the museums), he means that they have been displaced from the “opening” of the site of truth

which has first granted them their “self-subsistence.” It is hard not to hear in Heidegger’s

words of art as die Gewesenen Hegel’s thesis of art as ein Vergangenes. Heidegger’s statement

here reflects, I believe, the distinction made in the art essay between Historie and Geschichte.

There was an indication of this already in the Erste Ausarbeitung of the essay: in the distinction

between a vision of history as a linear series of facts that are representable, collectable (i.e.

Historie), as opposed to a sense of history that thinks being as occurrence and human being as

involved in such occurrence. The “present” age is part of the historical view (historisch) based

on an objectification of world and beings, which has completely obscured a more originary

sense of being and beings. In this age, we dispose with facts, artifacts, art objects, stemming

from and reflective of a certain “cultural” period, which, no matter if they are exhibited in a

museum or standing in their original location (e.g., we visit the temple at Paestum or the

Bamberg Cathedral), are seen as the individual creations of authors, artists, etc. Art works

today are involved in a specific process of production and reception (consumption), dominated

by the aesthetic view of experience.

Conversely, thinking from history as Geschichte forces us to see beings and our own

being from out of the disclosure of Being, from out of the originary event of truth (Geschichte

bears both the sense of geschehen as happening, occurring, but also the sense of Schicht, layers,

depth of disclosure). In this case, history would open up through the work to reveal and attune

us in an originary way to its own taking place. Great art as originative belongs to Geschichte; it

is always polemical as it pushes in the new measure of a “dawning world” (aufgehende).332

332
In a short piece from 1955, “Über die Sixtina,” Heidegger develops the idea of the art work as the site of truth
in the sense that art creates its own “place” (Ort) of exhibition. In a museum, there is no place for art - the
museum exhibits (ausstellen) refuse the work its own space and level off all works of art. The Sixtina belongs
“essentially” to the church, not in an exhibition where there are “..nur Stellen, keine Orte.[…] So bildet das Bild

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World-withdrawal and world-decay indicate that art is dis-placed, out of time; it has lost its

“absolute power,” a geschichtebildende power, as Heidegger says in the Nietzsche volume. But

the reverse is also true: the lack of great art that could unify a historical age also brings about

world-withdrawal and world-decay.

This is why he describes preserving as a “standing-within” (Inständigkeit) the openness

of being that happens in the work. Such “standing-within” is a “knowing,” but “knowing that is

also a willing,” as the “sober” resolute standing in relation to unconcealment (PLT 67). This

knowing-as-willing is described as “having seen” (Gesehen-haben), correlative to the

temporality of the createdness of work as “having happened” (Geschaffen-sein.) Preserving in

the mode of knowing-as-willing is Entschiedensein, “being resolved” (PLT 68). But note here

again the indication of the past participle (Entschieden-sein), which emphasizes that through the

work of art (which is itself projected, entworfen, zugeworfen, aufgerissen), historical Dasein is

also already projected, thrown into history; in other words, en-owned by Being, but out of its

future and the other beginning.333

Here, I believe, is disclosed also an originary ethical dimension of the work of art as the

occurrence of truth which calls for an originary response to it by a historical community. This

is an ethical dimension insofar as it reflects a human comportment or attunement to being in the

primordial modes of concealment (loss), openness (disclosure), oblivion. Thus Heidegger can

claim human being as “[s]eeker, preserver, guardian, and caretaker…Man’s determination is

gathered in these names, insofar as he is grasped according to his ground, i.e. according to Da-

den Ort des entbergenden Bergens (der A-letheia), als welches Entbergen das Bild west.“ The notion of Ort
Heidegger takes up in the piece „Art and Space,“ discussed in the next chapter. See M. Heidegger,
Gesamtausgabe, Band 13, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens 1910-1976 (Klostermann: Frankfurt am Main, 1983),
119-121.
333
Reflecting on this question, D. Vallega-Neu suggests that Heidegger was aware of the tension between a
“reserve” of Being to which thinking must respond with “reservedness” or “restraint.” The work of art sets in a
figure the withdrawal from presencing, which constitutes the undecidability of truth: Being exposes man to
displacement, blindness (as ambiguity, refusal, dissimulation of unconcealment). In the singularity of truth thus
“fixed” consists the essential risk (Gefahr) and a limit for human being. So a “decision” concerning the new
beginning at the end of the first, is “infinitely postponed”; thinking (but also Being) “holds itself in indecision.”
See D. Vallega-Neu, “Thinking in Decision” in Research in Phenomenology, 33/2003, 260-261.

209
sein, which in turning is enowned by enowning as by be-ing’s essential sway.”334 Thematizing

the issue of the nearness/distance from the origin (in the guiding question of the art essay,

namely, “are we historically at the origin”) or in terms of the possibility of “poetic dwelling,”

Heidegger is indicating the scope of an originary attunement to Ereignis as a new

commencement.

It is important to note the mutual originary belonging of the work and its creators and

preservers; none is without the other, so the circle of art, announced in the beginning of the

“Origin” essay, can be drawn to a close. Preserving is of poetic nature, just like creation,

insofar as it moves us out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary where we can bring our

own nature (wesen) to “take a stand” in the truth opened by the work (PLT 75). Thus, unlike

Hegel, for whom (great) art is irreversibly past in its historical function and vocation of

founding a historical world, for Heidegger art is thrown, cast forth to the community of the

“coming preservers” (den kommenden Bewahrenden); it can become past (dis-placed) only out

of the future (PLT 75). Preserving is, ultimately, a task of retrieval oscillating between what

has been and what is not-yet (or yet to come).

4.2. Art as Dichtung

Thinking through the historical character of the work of art requires thinking of art as an

origin. For Heidegger, this includes two lines of argument: 1) the conception of the nature of all

art as poetic (essential poetry, or Dichtung), and on that basis, 2) conceiving of the poetic nature

of art as originative in the triple sense of bestowing (schenken), grounding (gründen), and

founding (stiften). As the culmination of Heidegger’s reflection on art, the conception of origin

reveals once again the proximity and distance between him and Hegel and the entire tradition of

334
M. Heidegger, Contributions, 13; emphasis in original.

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aesthetics. As already indicated, Heidegger’s stance to the tradition is thinkable as both

interpretation and transformation of basic aesthetic categories and, necessarily, of the relation

between thinking and poetizing, between philosophical and poetic thought, and between

thinkers and poets.

The idea of the nature of art as poetry requires that we go back to the notion of clearing

(Lichtung), discussed above, as providing a reciprocal openness of man to Being. In

Heidegger’s view, it is language as poetic which determines the clearing simultaneously with

our experience of Being, yet clearing as such remains concealed from Dasein’s experience.

Second, it is the work of art, conceived as Dichtung, which sets to work in giving shape to the

clearing, constructing in this way the possibilities of disclosure and grounding the historical

paths of Dasein. This is possible because language itself is originative and determines the

clearing by saying beings. That is, art as Dichtung affords us an intelligible structure for

understanding and interpreting beings as emerging; it sets up a relationship of attunement or

correspondence between man and Being. We might therefore say that Heidegger’s model of

thinking art is linguistic in the most basic way, namely, in the sense of the originary saying of

Being.335

At the end of “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger states that truth – the play of

the clearing and concealing of being, occurs in being composed, gedichtet; therefore, “[a]ll art,

as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of beings as such, is essentially poetry” (PLT 72).

What is composed and finds itself placed in a figure is the trans-formation (Wandel) in the

unconcealedness of Being. That is, Heidegger does not think of dichten or Dichtung in the

narrow sense of poesy (of “aimless imagining of whimsicalities”), but as illuminating projection

335
Heidegger does not succeed, in my view, in arguing that all the other arts - architecture, painting, sculpture, and
music – can be thought on the basis of poetry since poetry is conceived in a “broad sense”; at least, the discussion
he offers in the art essay is not sufficient to adequately answer such questions. In addition, he privileges the
linguistic work of art among the other arts (PLT 73). The latter again puts in question his critique of aesthetics,
given that such classification stems precisely from the history of aesthetics (for Hegel, recall, poetry is also the
highest of the arts).

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“of the clearing in which announcement is made of what it is that beings come into the Open

as” (PLT 73-4). Art is poetry as projection (projected sketch, Riss as Entwurf) of an openness

in which a being comes to stand and is revealed as such for the first time. Heidegger concludes

that such turning of Being itself cannot be thought in terms of the subjective power of

imagination.

It is possible to conceive of art as poietic (i.e., poiesis) because language itself is “poetry

in the essential sense,” it is “projective saying” (entwerfendes Sagen); as such, language

preserves (verwahrt) the original way of poetry. As projective saying language is a

“renunciation of all the dim confusion in which a being veils and withdraws itself.” The word

itself is an origin (inceptual); in this sense, the reflection on the work of art as unconcealment is

a reflection on aletheia and the mode in which the word gives rise to a world. Poetic words are

the “echo” of the aletheic play of being; in the word, the echo is preserved. What inspires a

work of art or the saying of a poetic word is precisely this play, to which the poet or the thinker

attend and make it visible. The linguistic work of art is a “projective saying... which, in

preparing the sayable, simultaneously brings the unsayable as such into a world” (PLT 74).

Heidegger shows here the homoiosis between art and language - in the same way that the work

of art opens up and sustains the Riss336 in a shape, language lets truth be through the saying of

being as disclosed in the Riss. Language is originative as a response to Being itself in its

turning; the projective saying is not a secondary inauguration, trailing upon the disclosure of

what emerges originally in the work. The word and naming itself is inauguration, as Heidegger

says in the “Postscript” to “What is Metaphysics.”337 Dichtung is thus the bringing forth into/as

336
Let me also note in passing that Heidegger speaks of Riss in language as well. In “The Way to Language” he
thematizes that the unity of the essence of language remains hidden to us and proposes to call this unity the “rift-
design.” The rift is a kind of line that draws forth, the “drawing-out” of the essence of language. In speech,
language’s essence is “drawn out” into the linear form of words; like a farmer’s furrow, the rift-design “opens up
the field, that it may harbor seed and growth.” M. Heidegger, “The Way to Language,” in Basic Writings, 407-
408.
337
M. Heidegger, Pathmarks, 236.

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language the (silent) Ereignis or coming to presence of Being338 (hence, Heidegger’s

determination of art as poetic in a fundamental sense). Poiesis, in relation to the Riss, is what

takes up and “brings forth,” “designs” one instance of the originary play of concealment-

unconcealment, preserving it in artistic creations.

The projective saying defines the destiny and worldviews of a historical people, as

Heidegger claims, which is not that far from the Hegelian claim of art (art-religion) as shaping

the destiny of a people (exemplified in classical Greece). Heidegger states, “The linguistic

work (Sprachwerk), originating in the saying (Sagen) of a people ... transforms the people's

saying so that now every living word fights the battle and puts up for decision what is holy and

what unholy, what great and what small, what brave and what cowardly...” (PLT 43).339

Commenting on the art essay, Andreas Grossmann writes that the question of art for Heidegger

receives a clear “eschatological” dimension in the projective Saying (Sage). In his view, this

indicates a new “mythology” of art and becomes the message of a turn in historical times, the

saying of the self-lighting of Ereignis, which decides on humans and divinities, gives birth to

each, and unites them. Grossmann finds support for his claim in Heidegger’s talk of the

Andenken des Seins, die Eschatologie des Seins, die Frömmigkeit des Denkens.340 This is one

of the reasons why Grossmann rejects the idea that Heidegger ever aimed at a philosophy of art

or aesthetic theory (Kunstphilosophie or Kunstlehre) but perhaps at a revived notion of a

(Hegelian) Kunstreligion.341 Grossmann also argues that “[i]t is not just that Heidegger departs

essentially from Hegel’s course by again attributing to art a world-historical function” - of art as

founding history and establishing in language [Sage] a new “mythos.” For Grossmann, “It

338
Ibid., 236.
339
Compare also the statement in the Introduction to Metaphysics: as “the saying of the unconcealment of
beings,” language is “the primordial poetry in which a people poetizes or composes [dichtet] Being” (171). The
essay “The Way to Language” discusses “Saying” (die Sage), defined as a “showing” that “pervades and
structures the openness of the clearing” where anything can “show, say [and] announce itself.” See M.
Heidegger, Basic Writings, 410.
340
M. Haar argues that „it is in the concept of the eschatology of Being that the Heideggerian thought of history is
most in accord with Absolute Knowledge and in another sense, that from which it is most divergent.” M. Haar,
“The History of Being and its Hegelian Model,” in Endings, 54.
341
A. Grossmann, Spur zum Heiligen, 15ff.

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would also have been impossible for Hegel to state that art prepares the ground for philosophy,

that truth is revealed in art in an exclusive way. Rather, Heidegger, following Hölderlin, clearly

reverses the supremacy of art and philosophy.”342 Heidegger seems to anticipate the possibility

of a new Kunstreligion, which would work by instituting the (poetic) measure of a new

dwelling place for a historical community, shaping their identity and destiny in a new epoch of

Being. The political significance of art for Heidegger is rooted in this founding-historical role

of art.

Unlike Hegel, for whom the fulfillment of the vocation of art happens in classical Greek

art as the consummation of the Ideal, such a possibility for Heidegger would reflect the

absolutely foundational, inaugural nature of art as opening of the holy (the appearance of the

space of Being in its presencing/absencing, as in the case of the temple-work) and reflecting the

relationality of mortals, divinities, earth and sky (as in the later concept of the Fourfold).

Understanding Heidegger as seeking to establish a new mythology for a historical community

seems to find support in the Rectoral Address and the Introduction to Metaphysics. In the

Introduction, for instance, Heidegger speaks of the spiritual destiny of Western Europe and the

historical vocation of the German people (“the most metaphysical of nations”) in times of

“spiritual decline of the earth,” arguing that it can unfold its historical future by "recaptur[ing],

repeating the beginning of our historical-spiritual existence in order to transform it into a new

beginning.”343 But a historical community can “win back [its] roots in history” and “wrest a

destiny” from its “vocation” only if it “takes a creative view of its tradition.” A beginning is not

to be repeated nor reduced to something already known and simply “imitated.” It must be

“begun again, more radically, with all the strangeness, darkness, insecurity that attends a true

beginning.”344 It is necessary to acknowledge that Heidegger’s language here indicates a

political meaning of beginnings, of epochal turnings in history – seen, as in the art essay,

342
A. Grossmann, “Hegel, Heidegger and the Question of Art Today,” 124.
343
M. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 39.
344
Idem.

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through the question of the beginning of Western metaphysics. As he writes in “On the Essence

of Truth”, the “originary disclosure of beings as a whole, the question concerning beings as

such, and the beginning of Western history are the same; they occur together in a ‘time’ which,

itself immeasurable, first opens up the open region for every measure.”345 The forgotten reserve

of the Greek beginning holds out the possibility of repeating the Greek originary experience,

however not in the form of simple replication of the Greek philosophical language. What

Heidegger seeks to repeat, as Lacoue-Labarthe has suggested, is that which has not yet

occurred, a Greece that has never existed.346

4.3. Art as Origin: Founding, Grounding, Bestowing

If the essence of art is poetry, a distinctive poiesis or bringing into Being, the nature of

poetry as such poiesis is a founding (Stiften) of truth. To each mode of founding there is a

correspondent mode of preserving, as “standing-within” of truth (PLT 75). Founding itself is

understood in a threefold sense. It is, first, the bestowal of a gift (Schenken), inasmuch as the

opening of unconcealment in the work is a sudden opening up of the extraordinary, one that

overturns the ordinary and the customary order of the day. The extraordinary can never be

derived from the ordinary, and so it is an “overflow, an endowing, a bestowal.” Second, art as

founding of truth is grounding (Gründen), in the sense of a “ground-laying-grounding” (grund-

legenden Gründens). Heidegger does not mean a “ground” as some first cause or principle, but

the instituting of Being as an opening up of “that into which Dasein, as historical, has already

been thrown. This is the Earth... the self-concealing ground, upon which a people rests, together

with everything that it already is, though as yet concealed from itself” (PLT 75). This opening

up of the earth occurs, as we saw, only in and through the simultaneous emergence of a world,

345
M. Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” Pathmarks, 145 (my emphasis).
346
Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art, and Politics, 58. He writes, “Heidegger, following Hölderlin’s practice
directly, ‘invents’ a Greece which has never actually seen the light of day; repetition in the Heideggerian sense, is
repetition of what has not occurred.”

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in which the earth, as concealed ground, is first grounded and brought into unconcealment.

This “ground-laying-grounding” is no pregiven measure of being or primordial ground, but is

set in the “drawing out” (Schöpfen) of measure.

Both bestowal and grounding entail the “unmediated” character of a beginning;

beginning (Anfangen) is the third aspect of understanding art in the sense of a founding. Yet

this beginning is not an ordinary beginning, but a leap, a leap ahead “in which all that is to come

is already leapt over albeit as something veiled” (Der echte Anfang ist als Sprung immer ein

Vorsprung, in dem alles Kommende schon übersprungen ist, wenngleich als ein Verhülltes)

(PLT 76). A truly great “beginning” has nothing of the character of the “primitive.” In

Heidegger’s words, a “genuine beginning […] always contains the undisclosed fullness of the

unfamiliar and extraordinary, which means that it also contains the strife with the familiar and

the ordinary” (PLT 76).347 That is, art is founding in the third sense of “beginning” as it

instigates the strife of truth (unconcealment). Art is thus one of the ways for truth to become

historical, configuring the strife of world and earth in a being. Greece was such a beginning,

followed by several other beginnings in the history of Being (PLT 77).348 In Heidegger’s

words, whenever art happens, “a thrust (ein Stoss)349 enters history, history either begins or

starts over again” (erst or wieder anfangen): the history of a people, their historical vocation

and endowment. In this sense, art is essentially historical (wesenhaft geschichtlich), which

captures here both the element of continuous transformation in terms of the destining of Being,

but most importantly, the fact of truth as occurrence, Ereignis.

347
Basically, this constitutes art’s greatness. Again, a reference to Introduction to Metaphysics is helpful: “But what
is great can only begin great. […] The great begins great, maintains itself only through the free recurrence of
greatness within it, and if it is great ends also in greatness” (IM 15). In his commentary on origin, D. Schmidt
refers to it as an “enduring origination,” which is always displacing, dislocating, and never returning to itself. D.
Schmidt, Ubiquity of the Finite, 111.
348
Heidegger writes, "Always when that which is as a whole demands, as what it is, a grounding in openness, art
attains to its historical nature as foundation. This foundation happened for the first time in Greece" (PLT 76).
349
Stoss (stroke, blast) always is, as Heidegger says, a „thrust into the extraordinary (Stoss ins Un-geheuer)” (PLT
68). This extraordinary occurrence, immense and terrifying, is a happening of truth in the work, a happening in
which „everything ordinary and hitherto existing becomes an unbeing. This unbeing has lost its capacity to give and
keep being as measure” (PLT 72). Stoss has, in this sense, something of the experience of the sublime.

216
 4.4. Thinking and Creating From the Origin

Heidegger begins the art essay with the statement “Origin (Ursprung) here means that

from and by which something is what it is and as it is… The origin of something is the source

of its nature. The question concerning the origin of the work of art asks about the source of its

nature (Wesensherkunft)” (PLT 17).350 At the end of the essay, vis-à-vis the discussion of art as

Dichtung, Heidegger provides a few more indications on how the “origin of art” should be

understood and the bearing this would have on the question of the end of art, including a self-

reflection on our historical existence in its proximity/distance from the origin. What is clear is

that thematizing the origin of the work of art Heidegger comes to think art as itself an origin.

Clarifying the notions of origin, beginning, leap, will help us bring together the arguments

developed thus far. More specifically, the following discussion should show that Heidegger is

not on a quest for a lost origin nor inventing a new, and neither is he simply introducing a new

scheme of the type original/derivative to identify a more fundamental ground of being, history,

or thinking. Rather, it is a question of re-trieving the (Greek) beginning of thinking Being, in

order to grasp both its origin and its end, so to prepare for the “other” beginning.

Let me recall Heidegger’s references to origin. 1.) Art as “origin” (Ursprung) “is a

distinctive way in which truth comes to being, that is, becomes historical” (PLT 78). 2.)

“Origin” means “to bring something into being from out of the source of its nature in a founding

leap”351 (Etwas erspringen, im stiftenden Sprung aus der Wesensherkunft ins Sein bringen, das

meint das Wort Ursprung) (PLT 77-8). 3). Art as “beginning” (Anfang) is a “leap” (Sprung)

350
Heidegger’s statement here is close to the meaning of physis as arche (origin) discussed in his essay on
Aristotle’s Physics B,1: “Usually, the Greeks hear two meanings of this word. On the one hand, arche [as Ausgang]
means that from which something takes its origin and beginning; on the other, it signifies what, as this origin and
beginning [Verfügung] likewise keeps rein over. … arche [is] originating ordering and ordering origin.” M.
Heidegger, “On the Being and Conception of Phusis in Aristotle’s Physics B,1” transl. T. Sheehan, Man and World,
9 (1976), 227-8. See also W. Brogan, “Double “Archê” in Angelaki, 11:3 (2006): 85-92.
351
“Ur-sprung,” literally, “primal leap.”

217
and a “leap ahead” (Vorspurng) “over all that is to come.” 4.) Art as “beginning” grounds

history; such beginning takes place as a “thrust” into history.

To unravel these statements, a reference to Reiner Schürmann’s reflection on the origin

as an “historical-ahistorical happening”352 might be helpful. Schürmann approaches the

meaning of origin in Heidegger by introducing a distinction between the original and the

originary (ursprünglich) in order to account for the case of origin as “origination,” but also as

historical and identical with “beginning.” The upshot of the distinction between

original/originary is the possibility of thinking difference at the heart of origin, which makes

possible for truth as Gestalt to “appear.” For Schürmann, origin is by no means “a mythical

source of all.” He seeks to account for the meaning of Heidegger’s reference to an originary

event of presencing (an ‘originary origin’), instead of understanding origin as the “original” (in

terms of a localizable “beginning.”)353

Schürmann conceives of the above distinction as a “temporal difference,”354 where the

origin is thought as the “inception” (Anfang) of an epoch; the originary figures as a primordial

temporality, enabling such epochal sending. Conceiving the origin in terms of a “temporal

difference” intends the overcoming of the ontological difference, by pointing to the single

(simultaneous) occurrence and disclosure of the truth of Being in historical beings. The

originary is not given to thought as that which initiates (in the sense of empirical beginning or

“first cause”); the originary “occurs” outside of history and so enables or founds a historical

epoch. As Schürmann writes, “The originary is a rise out of ontological nothingness, out of the

pull toward absence that permeates presencing to its very heart ...this presencing-absencing is

originary time” (which both Heidegger and Schürmann seem to think as reflective off
352
R. Schürmann, op.cit., 130. I am indebted to Schürmann for the discussion of “origin” and “originary thinking”
in what follows.
353
Ibid., 131.
354
“The difference between the originary and the original is the temporal difference, the ontological difference
radicalized. Heidegger established it in three successive approaches: 1) the originary is the a priori of the original;
2) to think the originary is to bring the history of epochal beginnings, that is, of original origins, to its end; 3) the
concealment that belongs to the essence of the original is cancelled, superelevated, and preserved in the originary.”
Schürmann, op.cit., 145.

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physis).355 In this perspective, the originary appears as an “aletheiological constellation,”356

(the constellation or play of revealment and concealment, of lethe and aletheia). Conceiving the

originary as an infinite reserve of such constellations allows Heidegger to escape from thinking

Being as a transcendental ground. That is, the originary is what enables pure presencing; it is

not the presencing of a being (in the sense of “pro-ducing”).357 The origin (as a “great

beginning”) is the leap up from out of these possible constellations, an Ereignis, which can

come to set a new epoch according to the unique configuration of presence/absence of Being.358

In the leap, the originary does not reveal itself; the rift-design sustains the “temporal difference”

between the origin and the originary and the difference is marked as such in the leap (the

language of reissen, Stoss, Sprung, captures the sudden, irruptive nature of origin). For

Heidegger, the possibility of the “other beginning” to come is the anticipation of such primal

leap. Such possibility has always been there, but appears as futural according to the temporal

perspective of metaphysical history, as we find ourselves at its close.

In other words, when Heidegger speaks of origin, it is not a question of return to one

origin. His project is to understand the originary through late - occurring at the end of

metaphysics – constellations of the aletheic play.359 Such retrieval and repetition is only

possible because “a true beginning contains latent in itself the end,” as Heidegger claims. A

beginning is the leap through which the originary thrusts itself into an epoch, while art receives

it by offering a shelter for it in “founding preserving.” In the context of the reflections on art as

Dichtung, a poetic preserving would be the preserving of a particular sending of Being as one

original instance (i.e., historical) of the aletheiological constellations; or, that is to say, as a new

355
Ibid., 141.
356
Ibid., 123.
357
Ibid., 148-9.
358
This is what Heidegger means when he says that the “beginning” as „leap“ is a „leap ahead,“ in which what is
yet to come is already always “leapt over,” indicating the futurity of the essential pastness of the originary, or, what
is the same, that the beginning veils the originary (Der echte Anfang ist als Sprung immer ein Vorsprung, in dem
alles Kommende schon übersprungen ist, wenngleich als ein Verhülltes). For the same reason he claims that poetic
projection “never comes from Nothing in that what is projected by it is only the withheld (vorenthalten) vocation of
the historical being of man itself” (PLT 76).
359
Schürmann, op. cit., 130-131.

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name of Being. It is a poietic preserving as it composes that instance in an original figure,

Gestalt; truth as a particular Gestalt is the beginning of an epoch of thinking as a new destining,

Bestimmung, of thinking. The originary therefore is not a beginning in the sense of cause-effect

relation, but only as that which enables or “favors” the possibility of creative Ursprung: “… it is

rather a receiving and an incorporating of a relation to unconcealedness” (... ist es eher ein

Empfangen und Entnehmen innerhalb des Bezuges zur Unverborgenheit) (PLT 62).360 The

originary appears as a constant rise to presence, Aufgang, manifestation, whereas Gestalt inserts

a caesura, a break in it (e.g., the references to the work of art as Insichstehen, Inständigkeit).

But Gestalt is not a metaphysical ground, as it is possible only in the originative movement of

the “co-appropriating relation” between Being and man and the “belonging together of Being

and Saying” (PLT 87; my emphasis).361

So, how is the origin art and how is art an origin? The work of art, which has for its

being (Werksein) the Being of Being, cannot be identified as an object for a subject. In the

Urstreit of clearing and concealing, the work occurs as the “figure” of this movement of

unconcealement; that is, “the essence and origin of the work of art is found in the very creative

act that happens in the work; it bears its own origin within itself and opens up its own

conditions.”362 The origin of the work of art is the opening up of the Open, in which occurs the

site (the Da) where this opening can be preserved in its unconcealment. The work of art

‘works’ by opening up this openness and holding it open (initiating in this way “the movement

of origination.”)363 Working in this mode, art is an origin. Or, this origin may come to be as

art. Heidegger writes:

The bringing forth places this being in the Open in such a way that what is to be brought
forth first clears the openness of the Open into which it comes forth. Where this

360
Emp-fangen and Ent-nehmen (grasp, receive, take, conceive, gather) indicate the inceptual/enabling nature of
origin; it repeates the same dynamic of einrücken/entrücken as being drawn into the space of truth.
361
On the relation of origin and the grounding of thought, see also D. Vallega-Neu, “Thinking in Decision.”
362
On the issue of origin and beginning in Heidegger (and Hegel), see D. Schmidt, Ubiquity of the Finite, ch.3.;
here 102.
363
Ibid., 104.

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 bringing forth expressly brings the openness of beings, or truth, that which is brought
forth is a work. Creation is such a bringing-forth (PLT 62).

4.5. Responding to the Origin

In the introduction to his translation of „The Origin of the Work of Art,” Albert

Hofstadter writes: “Heidegger’s thinking about art, as about all else, is - a thinking that

memorializes and responds, ein andenkendes Denken” (PLT, ix). A thinking that “memorializes

and responds,” I believe, is what Heidegger later calls “originary” or “inceptual” (das

anfängliche Denken); it is the response to the turning of Being as the anticipation of a new

beginning. This thinking is commemorative because it must think the dis-closive configuration

of Being at the end of one and prior to the other beginning. Such thinking is not understood as

grasping something conceptually or through representation, but, as Gadamer says, this is

something like “’a projection’ of Being into our thinking, even if only in the radical form of the

total absence of Being.”364 Originary thinking does not set up nor reflect a pre-given ground; it

is non-foundational, non-representational. Originary thought is poietic as it has no other object

but the “originary leap” (Ur-sprung). The leap itself is Dichtung, a incipient experience in

which beings in their Being are first brought out of concealment and into the unconcealedness

of the Open.

For Heidegger, the early Greek thinkers related to Being in an inceptual way; at the

origin of metaphysics, they were able to contemplate the pure presencing of Being even though

they did not think the withdrawal at the source of this presencing. Schürmann explains that the

task of the ancient Greeks was to think pure appearance: “Pure ap[pearance] is the incipience to

which the Greeks knew how to respond and correspond.”365 Yet, at the end of the first

beginning such inceptual thinking and experience is blocked by Gestell. So when Heidegger
364
H.-G. Gadamer, “The Way in the Turn,” in Heidegger’s Ways, 134.
365
Schurmann, op.cit., 123.

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invokes originary thought at the close of metaphysics, he is suggesting that we ‘become like the

Greeks’ in the sense that we must prepare (in a turning of Da-sein) to think within the

multiplicity of “aletheiological constellations,” abiding in the ambiguity of the unconcealment

of Being.

It is important to emphasize that for Heidegger the necessity to prepare for this other

beginning requires a “mindfulness” (Besinnung) of the “inceptual (Greek) thinking” but that

this in no way implies a revival of “classicism” in philosophy.366 In the same way, Heidegger

rejects the view that a “retrieving” questioning, a Rück-besinnung, seeks to merely repeat the

first beginning. He writes, “…precisely where preparatory thinking most likely reaches the

sphere of the origin of the first beginning, the illusion emerges that the first beginning is only

renewed and that the other beginning is only a historically [as discipline, Historie] improved

interpretation of this one.”367 The following passage from the Introduction to Metaphysics

echoes the same concern: “We shall only master Greek philosophy as the beginning of Western

philosophy if we also understand this beginning in the beginning of its end. For the ensuing

period it was only this end that became ‘the beginning’ so much so that it concealed the original

beginning.”368 This has determined, and still determines, in the “space” between the two

beginnings the “solitary remoteness” of the first beginning to all the historical supplements that

have followed “historically” in its wake.369

In the 1943 essay “Postscript to ‘What is Metaphysics?’” Heidegger states: “Originary

(anfängliche) thinking is the echo of being’s ‘favor’ (Widerhall der Gunst des Seins) in which a

singular event is cleared and let come to pass (sich ereignen): that beings are. This echo is the

human response to the silent voice of being. The response of thinking is the origin of the human

366
M. Heidegger, Contributions, 355.
367
Ibid., 355. On this point see also Ed Casey, “[W]hen we think back to the origin(s) of Western philosophy, we
think back not to an event in history (i.e., a beginning point) but to an event of withdrawal – ultimately the
withdrawal of the ontological difference between Being and beings.” Casey, op. cit., 607.
368
M. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 179.
369
M. Heidegger, Contributions, 355.

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word.”370 One could say that as “response” to Being, original thinking carries a certain

reservedness in relation to the originary time-space of unconcealment. By contrast, originary

(inceptual) thinking, as the “echo” of Being, would be the enacting of thinking and Being in the

appropriative event. Thinking as echoing is the doubling which grants the possibility of saying

the ‘is’ ‘as’ this being. This echo of Ereignis, we recall, is what “reverberates” (nachzittern) in

the work of art as created, namely, daß es sei. In active preserving, the human being is called to

listen and stay attuned to this echo.

In Heidegger’s later work, listening and attuning oneself to Being are tasks specifically

assigned to the poet and the thinker. A full treatment of that issue as well as a detailed

engagement with language is not possible here, but these remarks indicate the path of

Heidegger’s thinking on art and Being after the “Origin” essay and the important changes it

undergoes. By listening inceptively and standing in the unconcealment of being, the poet and

thinker may come to “repeat” the experience of the ancient Greeks (i.e., repeat the origin).371

The modes of listening and attunement (zu-hören) as originative contrast with the subjective

stance of the Hegelian aesthetics of speculation and respresentation, of the reflexive positing in

which Spirit attains being in self-transparent presence. A further step away from the notion of

“setting” truth to work or the “bringing-forth” of truth is also Heidegger’s later emphasis on

“letting be.” “Letting be” shows a kind of thinking that does not seek to re-present or re-

produce, but experiences itself as aligned with Being’s disclosure.

Going back to the “Postscript to “What is Metaphysics’” there is a second notion that

stands in relation to the “favor” of Being: sacrifice in relation to preserving the truth of Being.

But this is not, I think, the “essential sacrifice” as described in the “Origin” essay. Heidegger

now says, “In sacrifice there occurs (ereignet sich) the concealed thanks that alone pays homage

370
M. Heidegger “Postscript” to ‘What is Metaphysics?’” in Pathmarks, 236.
371
As D. Schmidt writes, such “inceptual thinking” reveals the notion “that something…appears that holds a
promise for a different future …[It is] a thinking that founds (and of course, what is founding is always, equally,
disruptive), and it is a thinking that loves to begin.” D. Schmidt, “Language in the Age of Modern Technicity,” in
Lyrical and Ethical Subjects, 171.

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to the grace that being has bestowed upon the human essence in thinking, so that human beings

may, in their relation to being, assume the guardianship of being.”372 Sacrifice is “at home in

the essence of the event (Ereignis) whereby being lays claim [needs and uses] upon the human

being for the truth of being.” This picture of inceptual thinking as thanking and sacrifice is

distinct from the more forceful language of the “Origin” essay, and even further from the spirit

of the Introduction to Metaphysics, where the work of art and poetry pits itself against the

overpowering, in order to wrest its own place against it while itself seeking to overpower it.

The “Postscript” describes an “attentive thinking,” a reciprocating relation of belonging together

(zu-ge-hören), which allows one the saying of Being and giving oneself over to it. Heidegger’s

key sentences in the text read: “The thinker says being. The poet names the holy.” Eventually,

it will be the possibility of art to reveal the holy that will grant it as a saving power over

technological enframing.

CONCLUSION

In the Epilogue to the “Origin” essay, Heidegger asks “Does this talk about immortal

works and the eternal value of art have any content or substance? Or are these merely half-

baked cliches of an age when great art, together with its nature, has departed from among

men?” (PLT 79) It is clear that there is no such “eternal value” of art for Heidegger (that would

mean to give being value, too). If great art has departed, it has done so with the gods and being

itself. Heidegger does not say art has disappeared; rather, the end of great art is the only path

that can lead back to its greatness. Let me recap how great art is, for Heidegger. The work of

art is strife, an aletheic strife; a thrust into being and leap into the extraordinary; a founding, a

free bestowal; as all that, great art decides on the being and destiny of a historical community.

It is clear in what ways both Heidegger and Hegel share in the understanding of the nature of

372
M. Heidegger, “Postscript,” 237.

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great art: art is essentially related to truth, respectively, as representation and occurrence of

truth; a manifestation of the divine and naming of the holy; determining the worldview of a

historical community and founding its destiny.

So we must again ask the question: does Heidegger’s critical reflection on the Hegelian

thesis of art as past succeed to go beyond (überwinden) the aesthetic view of art, to twist free of

metaphysics – twisting and turning the origin itself? If the work of art is a world-disclosure out

of Being itself, then it must be immeasurable, a free bestowal in excess of all aesthetic

categories. On the other hand, it is also legitimate to ask to what extent can Heidegger fend off

arguments that in his conception of art it is “delivered over to the rule of truth” and if he only

accomplishes a “reversal of metaphysics” by setting truth in the art work? 373 In J. Caputo’s

view, by setting (setzen) the truth of Being in the work to “shelter” that truth in self-repose,

“Heidegger seems to remain within the domain of metaphysics, even though shattered and

shaken, by the work of art.” Caputo is in fact trying to settle the score between Derrida and

Heidegger, to adjudicate between Derrida’s emphasis on repetition, dissemination, and plurality

(versus identification, attribution, restitution, appropriation) and Heidegger's critique of

aesthetics (which Caputo calls “aletheo-ontohermeneutics”), as still “keyed to the truth of Being

and the soundings of Greek master names (physis, ousia, logos).”374 The question is whether

the work of art can be in any way defined by its frame, restored to oneness and stability

(perhaps in the Gestalt) or if it nevertheless signifies a difference which disrupts any such

mastery. Caputo argues that the a-letheic process, which grants clearing while it at the same

time withdraws, is the source of the plurality of meanings or “truths” of Being, so that for

Heidegger truth turns out to be not a single, absolute value but an “effect,” differential,

difference. In that sense, he concludes, “a-letheia is not a Greek word” nor is it the Greek truth

373
John D. Caputo, “Telling Left from Right: Hermeneutics, Deconstruction, and the Work of Art,” in The Journal
of Philosophy, Vol. 83, No. 11 (1986): 678-685; here 681, 683.
374
Ibid., 683.

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of Being, but the “process by which Being and truth are granted without privilege.”375 Because

a-letheia is always also lethe, the disclosure is also a refusal and displacement. What the riddle

that the work of art is reveals, is exactly this ambiguity at the heart of being – that the process of

appearing is concealment, the ground (the origin of clearing) is withdrawn. It is the finitude of

disclosure, I believe, that makes possible the step back from the “most comprehensive

aesthetics” for Heidegger; but equally important is that philosophy does not have a privileged

access to disclosure; the poet and the thinker are not rivals but share a common origin in the

saying of Being.

Section 277 of Contributions complements and clarifies, in my view, the art essay in

some important points about metaphysics-free art, though not in detail. Here Heidegger writes

that “[o]vercoming of metaphysics is, however, not discarding the hitherto existing philosophy

but rather the leap into its first beginning, without wanting to renew this beginning – something

that remains historically [historisch] unreal and historically [geschichtlich] impossible.”376

Referring again to Heidegger’s notion of Kunstlosigkeit (as correlative of the forgottenness of

Being), we see that he finds in the experience of this “lack” or “loss” (or “need”) the genuine

realization that art can “’count’” in its power for preparing for history and for being allotted to

be-ing.”377 This power of art is the turning within Being that will come to pass as art.

Turning to the Greek experience of an origin, but going beyond it, at the same time,

Heidegger seeks not so much to recover a past shape but to probe the possibility of such

primally given comportment and being in the world (as “dwelling”). To the extent that art

opens up such possibility – a dwelling that will be near the origin, in the clearing – art effects a

turning in the metaphysical (and aesthetic) stance. Accordingly, a poetic dwelling – one that

prepares and keeps open the play-space of the holy, divinities, mortals, sky, and earth - is the

path delineated by Heidegger in the works following the texts of the 1930s.

375
Ibid., 684.
376
M. Heidegger, Contributions, p. 354.
377
Ibid., 356.

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 In the next chapter, I set out to explore some of the key steps on that path, in order to be

able, at the end, to decide on Heidegger’s own engagement with art and thus, on his encounter

on the issue of the end of great art with Hegel.

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 CHAPTER FIVE

BEYOND THE ORIGIN OF ART: HEIDEGGER ON TECHNOLOGY, SPACE, AND

POETIC DWELLING

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The lesson, so far, from discussing Heidegger’s reflections on art, is that, first, he shares

the belief that the Western philosophical tradition from the ancient Greeks until today is at an

end, and second, that the overcoming of this tradition must happen in a turning of Being itself.

Art is situated between the “first beginning” and the “other beginning,” in which the first

beginning is taken up again, but from the point of view of its unthought, forgotten essence. Art

can prepare us for the “crossing” over because it sustains the difference between the two

beginnings, between what is manifest, open and what remains hidden, withdrawn. The work of

art is charged with disclosing the grant of Being (the origin), which metaphysics has so far

shrouded; art in this sense is an essential lateness but also recollective of what has already

happened. Between the two beginnings, the question of art is another way of shaping the

question of Being itself, of what is worthy of questioning, the Fragestellung.378 At this

moment, the grant of Being appears as both excess and lack and the work of art oscillates in the

nearness or distance to it. Thus the work of art is ambiguous and the site of tension (or danger),

which requires one to stay attuned to the “mystery of all unconcealment.”

To account fully for Heidegger’s notion of art beyond the “Origin” essay, it is

necessary to pursue the following distinct but related topics. First, in relation to the position

of art in the age of technological Gestell, I turn to the essay on technology. This discussion

378
As John Sallis suggests, since Being and Time, Heidegger’s attempt had been to shape the question of Being
(Fragestellung) in a more “originary” way (anfänglicher zu gestalten): “To persist in questioning is to sustain this
attempt to shape the Fragestellung more originarily, to deploy the question in a way that is more in accord with the
origin.” Sallis, “Echoes: Philosophy and Non-philosophy After Heidegger” in Philosophy and Non-philosophy
Since Merleau-Ponty, ed. H. Silverman (London: Routledge, 1988), 93.

228
will show that only when we understand art beyond the confines of subjective production and

a restricted sense of making, we can see it as a “saving power” that can prepare a poetic

dwelling for man. The notion of dwelling, on the other hand, will guide me to Heidegger’s

later thought on art and space (notably, as presented in the essay “Art and Space”), which

opens up a different sense of the originality of art and a shift in the language of great art. I

complete the chapter with some remarks on Heidegger’s encounter with the art of Cézanne

and Klee.

1. Does Heidegger Develop a Philosophy of Art?

Before I move on to the discussion of those issues, I focus briefly on the debate whether

one can consider “The Origin of the Work of Art” as Heidegger’s own philosophy of art. Even

broaching the question in this way assumes some sort of commitment to aesthetics in

Heidegger’s project beyond what appears to be his goal in the essay. Still, the question is

justified as long as we agree that the notion of an end of art reflects a certain tension in the

philosophical discourse on art, which itself harbors metaphysical concepts. The question of a

Heideggerian philosophy of art is on a par with the issue of language as capable of capturing a

more originary comportment to being, in view of Heidegger’s emphatic insistence that art is not

about an intense living experience of aesthetic objects. What would be the language of a

Heideggerian philosophy of art is the same as the question of the language of the “other”

beginning. In asking about Heidegger’s philosophy of art, we also acknowledge the exhaustion

of the language of speculative philosophy (Hegel’s), precisely of its major story – that of art as

the representation of the absolute truth of absolute Spirit. In a broader context, the issue is

whether the question of what art is, and the related notion of the end of art, can be answered by

art, in art or if it should be given up to philosophy. In what follows, I attempt to at least outline

the directions for possible answers to those questions.

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In the introduction to his translation of the “Origin” essay, A. Hofstadter writes:

It is not aesthetics, then, that one will find in this book. Rather, it is fundamental
thinking about the constitutive role that the poetic has in human life. Aesthetics, as we
know it from the history of philosophy, is a talking about appearances, experiences, and
judgments... But Heidegger here thinks through the basic creative function that obtains
its creativeness from its willingness to stop, listen, hear, remember and respond to that
call that comes from Being. He does here, and in all his writings, what thinking is called
upon by nature to do: to open up and take true measure of the dimension of our
existence (PLT xvi).

I take this as an insight into Heidegger’s project in “The Origin of the Work of Art” and

agree with Hofstadter. Heidegger is not, in my opinion, trying to lay the grounds of a new

aesthetics, nor is he pushing for an ideal art form, modeled upon Greek art. There is no

nostalgia in Heidegger for the (Greek) origin of art and no “revival of classicism,” as he states

in the Contributions (cf. chapter 4). Rather, it is the insistence on shifting the focus onto what

has remained unthought at the outset of Western metaphysics in order to think it through to its

end. At least two implications follow from the art essay in this respect: first, Heidegger’s

reassessment of the relationship between philosophy and art, where both share in a sense of

truth, and second, the possibility of a non-metaphysical understanding of art. Such possibility is

rooted in understanding the work of art as the event of truth, thought as the interplay of

concealing and revealing, the presencing and withdrawal of Being. A new philosophy of art

would have to reflect on this possibility of art and once we recall that truth is a turning of Being

in self-disclosure, the question of a new philosophy of art seems to give way to a new task for

thinking (Bestimmung des Denkens) at the end of philosophy.

As was presented in the preceding chapters, in the art essay as well as in the first

Nietzsche volume, Heidegger is seeking to identify an element of art to confront aesthetic

experience as the sole domain of art. Do we take this as Heidegger’s looking to uncover and

communicate some abiding essence of art, which would be the subject of a philosophy of art?

In the “Origin,” Heidegger claims to reflect on great art; the work-character of art and what art

230
can accomplish as the disclosure of Being is assigned to great art only (and the impression from

the “Origin” essay is that great art is the only kind of true art.) As we have seen, the disclosive

power of art is historical in a fundamental way, but this does not imply one can isolate it as a

formal feature belonging to art. Heidegger reveals the being of the work of art as brought forth

in the essential strife of earth and world, thus revealing an originary structure of the

intelligibility of Being. Still, this does not equal setting up an unchangeable matrix of artistic

creation; otherwise, he would have been more intent on exploring the consequences of his views

of art regarding a future non-aesthetic art. One key element of Heidegger’s view in the art essay

is the rejection of the artist as the single “author” of the work; some of his critical remarks target

the conservation and exhibition of art works in the museum as an exemplar of the aesthetic

approach to art, where one can identify the works’ authorship, ownership, historical periods of

art, etc., but not their work-being. Furthermore, taking Heidegger by his word, he repeatedly

states that his essay does not provide answers to the question of what art is but only prepares us

for a turning in the thinking of being, and not for a systematic teaching in aesthetics.

Otto Pöggeler is one of the supporters of the argument that Heidegger does not have a

“philosophy of art,” because Heidegger does not think art distinctively as art but only in terms

of the role that art plays disclosing being in time. The first sentence in Pöggeler’s chapter on

the “Seminality of Art” states that “’The Origin of the Work of Art’ provides no ‘philosophy of

art.’”379 He believes that Heidegger’s concern in the mid-1930s is not art, but Being, and that

art is merely a way for addressing being in a novel way (he refers to Heidegger’s own

admission in the Addendum that art must be thought out of Ereignis). According to Pöggeler’s

interpretation, at the center of Heidegger’s thinking is the question of truth and the question of

Being; respectively, the art essay gives Heidegger an opportunity to think truth in a new way, as

an event. Following Pöggeler, we could say that (for Heidegger) art is not a topic for

379
Otto Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, transl. by Daniel Magurshak and Sigmund Barber (New
Jersey: Humanities Press, 1987); 167.

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philosophy in its own right; it is worth only as a venue for contemplating Being. J. Taminiaux

shares Pöggeler’s view that Heidegger’s initial motivation for turning towards art is not art

itself; still, Taminiaux locates an important philosophical shift in the period when Heidegger

finalizes the art essay. Taminiaux claims that the first versions of the original lecture on art

“turn out to be voluntarist proclamations in the name of the German Dasein” - proclamations

that seem politically motivated rather than concerned with artworks.380 However, Taminiaux

thinks that there is a shift in the final version of the essay, where, as he writes, the “Promethean”

themes seem to be weakened in favor of “the riddle of art” which Heidegger invokes in the

epilogue.

In the opposite camp is F.-W. von Herrmann,381 one of the commentators who argues

that the art-essay represents a philosophy of art, rather close to an aesthetic theory (Lehre) in the

traditional sense, and that Heidegger stands by the philosophy of art presented throughout his

career. Von Herrmann’s reading proposes a similarity between the project of the art essay and

the phenomenological project of Being and Time, such that the “Oirigin” may be construed as a

hermeneutic phenomenology of art.382 He writes that in Heidegger's essay “the philosophical

question concerning art is set on a new ground, which is won in working out the question of

Being.”383 Accepting this claim would mean to grant Heidegger a completed teaching on

Being; however, if we follow Heidegger’s own description of his philosophy as a “pathway,”

the question of art remains as undecided as the question of Being itself.

In a recent commentary on Heidegger, Julian Young, finds a distinctive philosophy of

art only in his later works. Young disagrees with the claim that the vocabulary of Being in

380
Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment, 167.
381
F.-W. von Hermann, Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst: Eine systematische Interpretation der Holzwege-
Abhandlung "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" (Frankfurt A.M.: Klostermann, 1980).
382
Ibid., 4, 20.
383
Ibid., xix.

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Heidegger’s works mutes the possibility of a philosophy of art.384 Furthermore, Young

believes that Heidegger’s engagement with individual artists has been systematic throughout

his life, which has led him to develop a more or less consistent view of the arts “in general.”

According to Young, the requirement that a philosopher should not impose her philosophic

vocabulary onto art is erroneous and unjustified.385 Contra Young, it seems to me that here

the issue is whether the meaning of the concepts of “essence” and “art” is thought or

determined from the truth of Being, and if so, then the questioning goes beyond a philosophy

of art. If Heidegger’s was a new philosophy of art from the viewpoint of Ereignis, that would

imply he’d already “crossed” onto the side of the other beginning, speaking from it.

Heidegger’s engagement with art, in the best case, retains an ambiguity which seems to

persist through to the end of his philosophical reflections.386

In my view, there is evidence in Heidegger’s own words that he was not looking to

develop a new aesthetics. Besides the relevant parts of the Contributions already discussed,

such claims can be found also in the text of Mindfulness (Besinnung, written in 1938-39).387 In

section eleven of the book, entitled “Art in the Epoch of Completion of Modernity” (very

Hegelian in spirit, seems to me, with a reference to multiple completions, Vollendungen),

Heidegger spells out his consideration of modern art and the history of art so far as

“metaphysical” (…sich vollends erfüllenden metaphysischen Charakter der Kunst).388 Art’s

metaphysical character is complete in the “disappearance of art works” and the latter process is

concurrent with the completion of the “consolidation” of Being’s “abandonment of beings.” All

384
J. Young, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art, 172. Young answers to a claim made by Günter Seubold that such
vocabulary of “'Being', 'clearing', 'Ereignis, is, 'therefore', quite evidently, not intended to possess 'the character of a
philosophy of art.’”
385
Ibid., 173.
386
Bernasconi has directed the attention to this ambiguity or “inconsistency” in Heidegger’s project, namely, the
attempt to “twist free the concept of art from aesthetics” while also looking to anchor art in poetry, in language as
the Saying of being, relating it perhaps to a new mythos. R. Bernasconi, “Heidegger's Displacement of the Concept
of Art,” in M. Kelly (ed.), Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, vol. 2. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). In this case,
pursuing the issue of how such “originality of its own” of art can be put into aesthetic terms would have to delve
deeply into Heidegger’s later works on language.
387
M. Heidegger, Mindfulness, 28.
388
Ibid., 23.

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of these are core aspects of “the age of the completion of modernity” (das Zeitalter der

Vollendung der Neuzeit), governed by two distinct yet related forces: the completion of the

metaphysical first beginning which stands in essential relation to the notion of machination.

Heidegger’s argument is that in this age what is “metaphysically ownmost to art becomes

complete.”389 In an almost Hegelian fashion, he argues that with the completion of what has

been (bisheriges) art’s metaphysical nature, the work of art no longer is, it has disappeared, but

not art itself (“work” here has an explicit reference to the understanding of work in the “Origin”

essay). In the present age, metaphysical art completes itself in becoming a “mode of organizing

machination (Einrichtungsweise der Machenschaft).”390

“‘Art’” in this age brings forth not works, understood in a “being-historical sense” but

“’installations’” (“Anlagen”), which Heidegger defines as “forms of organizing beings”

(Formen der Einrichtung des Seienden; emphasis in original). Accordingly, unlike art as an

origin and a site of decision, as described in the art essay, art in the age of the completion of

modernity has become “a manner in which machination completes itself in a thought

construction of beings unto the unconditioned, secure disposability of the organized.”391 The

domination of machination precludes the possibility of a more originary experience of being in

favor of just the experience (Erlebnis) of art or even the machination of lived experience

(“Machenschaft des Erlebens”). To designate the destructive effect of culture and the art

business on art, Heidegger introduces a new reference to the domain of lived experience,

namely, that all dealing and thinking of art in the modern day is a “training in” or “instruction”

in lived experience (Erlebnisschulung).392 In this age of metaphysical completion, beauty,

389
Ibid., 23. The German for „ownmost“ reads: “Dieses sich vollendende metaphysische Wesen der Kunst.“ In
Heidegger’s “Klee-Notizen,” the following statement regarding contemporary art can be read: “Today’s art:
surrealism= metaphysics; abstract art = metaphysics; objectless art = metaphysics.” Günther Seubold obtained
permission to view the Klee notes and has published part of it in G. Seubold, “Heidegger's nachgelassene Klee-
Notizen” in Heidegger Studies 9 (1993): 5-12; here 10. Hereafter the “Klee-Notizen” are cited as KN, followed by
the page number.
390
M. Heidegger, Mindfulness, 27.
391
Ibid., 23.
392
Ibid., 25.

234
Heidegger writes, is only “what pleases and must please the being of the power of man, the

predator.” The production of art and art genres continues but they are ‘art’ only “by name”

(recall the same claim in the beginning of the “Origin” essay); such are the modern “’poems,’”

“’dramas,’” “’painting.’”393 The institution of the “’museum’” has assumed the role of being

the place of exhibiting what is “planned” and “organized” beforehand, as a proclamation of the

power of the “producibility,” calculability and “orderability” (beherrschen) of the whole,

instead of storing what is “past.”394 Overall, what has come to dominate the world of ‘art’ and

‘culture’ is “‘kitsch’” which does not designate a form of “’inferior’” art but, Heidegger writes,

simply perfected “skill” devoted to what is “empty and is not fundamental (Un-wesen).”395

The key statement in this section has to do with the possibility of a different kind of art

and of a reflection or consideration of art beyond its metaphysical past. Heidegger writes that a

new mindfulness or reflection upon art should not be devoted to the history of the metaphysical

art hitherto and “its possibilities”; instead it should consider art free from the constraints of

culture and machination. A new “understanding or such mindfulness of art can only take place

outside all theories of art (außerhalb aller Kunsttheorie). This mindfulness has nothing to do

with emphasizing the ‘work in itself’ over against the artist, over against the recipients of art,

and over against the historical circumstances and historically effective interconnections that

condition both the artist and recipient.”396

The above quotation throws much light on Heidegger's position on art and aesthetics

after the “Origin” essay. Three points stand out: first, Heidegger clearly announces that his

project does not aim at building a new aesthetic theory or conversely, ‘rearranging the furniture’

of existing aesthetic theory. Second, the overcoming of aesthetics is not a goal in itself, but an

393
Ibid., 23. Heidegger puts these words in double quotation marks in the text, to underscore the distinction
between works of art and simply “’products of art,’” and the growing “’affability’” of the “’profession of art.’” My
use of inverted comas in the above quotations shows that the words are placed in quotation marks in the original
text.
394
Ibid., 25.
395
Ibid., 24.
396
Ibid., 28.

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accompanying, “concurrent,” task (beiläufige Aufgabe), because it must and will be thought

from the point of thinking Being in a more originary way. Third, any emphatic engagement

with the inherited history of art or the historical world relations of the “work itself” is

metaphysically fraught, because history itself must be rethought. Indeed, in this section and

throughout the book, Heidegger maintains the distinction between Geschichte and Historie, as

he does in Contributions. The spirit of Heidegger’s statement here actually echoes the

statements made already in the fragment “Zur Überwindung der Ästhetik” from 1934, discussed

in chapter 3, where he argued that the overcoming of aesthetics entails a transformation in the

Wesen of art. In his words from Mindfulness, what a new refection should accomplish is “put to

decision a transformation of what is ownmost to art…on the grounding of the truth of be-ing”

(…sondern einen Wandel des Wesens der Kunst zur Entscheidung stellen muss).397

The last topics Heidegger brings up in the section of Mindfulnnes deal with the past and

future of art. As I have already indicated, Heidegger’s take on art does not invoke a romantic

nostalgia of the past or some revival of classicism. Here, this position is confirmed again:

immersion in the “genres of art hitherto” is a reflection into something emptied of sense, a

“remote, unreal realm of preoccupation for futureless “romantics” who have arrived too late.”398

Such “romantic latecomers” transform the reading of the past of art into a form of “mourning”

and remembrance, which itself turns into nothing else but another “spiritualized cultural

operation.”399 What can we discern about post-modern art (after the completion of the age of

modernity) from this text? Not that much indeed; Heidegger remains steadfast in his insistence

that any non-metaphysical art will remain out of the “public” and “private” art industry,

distanced from the culture world, not tied to an artistic “biography” because such art “does not

belong to man.” For this reason, Heidegger does not provide details about what form any future

art should take. As he writes, “[t]he criteria (Maßstäbe) of the future “art” cannot at all be

397
Ibid., 28.
398
Ibid., 23.
399
Ibid., 29.

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gleaned from the metaphysical art hitherto, even if one would look for these criteria in some

kind of “classical” art and would enhance the latter beyond itself.”400 What is clear though is

that at the time of Mindfulness, Heidegger is not setting up some universal standards to apply to

present and future art; rather, he still views art in its significance as situated in the truth of being,

under Being’s claim. In short, the work of art is still thought from a seynsgeschichtliche point

of view and is assigned a historical-destinal role as the “site of decision of the ‘rare ones’”

(Entscheidungsstätte der seltenen Einzigen).401

2. Kunst und Technik402

Taking my lead from the title of a piece delivered as part of a series of lectures in 1949

(which will become the basis for the 1953 essay on technology), in the following section I focus

on the critical connections between art and technology, specifically with respect to the issue of

the mode of revealing of Being in the age of the completion of metaphysics. As Heidegger

writes in this very short text, the “and” in the title belongs to what is “worthy of questioning”

and indicates the “piety” of thinking that he will invoke at the end of the essay on technology.

Drawing upon the lines of thought in the “Origin” essay and the section “Art in the Epoch of

Completion of Modernity” from Mindfulness, Heidegger situates the question of art first within

the context of the concept of truth and the destinal history of Being (Kunst und Geschick), and

second, within the question of technology, because the latter not only “makes possible” but

“demands” a meditation or Besinnung upon art. With regard to the former, Heidegger states

that art is not an absolute (sie ist selbst nichts absolutes); yet it is only art that can pass judgment

on itself from the point of view of truth. He writes “What and how art can be in the age of

enframing? Cannot be determined, cannot be read off somewhere - only: "artistically" decided,

400
Ibid., 29.
401
Ibid., 28.
402
M. Heidegger, „Kunst und Technik - Ge-stell,“ in Kunst und Technik, eds. Walter Biemel and F.-W. von
Herrmann (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989); xiii-xiv.

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so that in such art and in it alone lies the answer to itself, within the event.”403 With regard to

the latter, he formulates here the question he did not ask in the “Origin” essay, namely: “When

art is metaphysically at its end, following the logic of the completion of metaphysics, does art

not finally dissolve in this completion, in the Gestell?”404 Heidegger makes this explicit

connection between the historical fate of art and the understanding of the meaning of Gestell

both in “Kunst und Technik – Gestell” and in the Addendum to the “Origin.” His recognition of

the significance of such connection in the completion of metaphysics is expressed in the key

statement from “Kunst und Technik”: “We no longer have an essential relation art. We have not

yet established an essential relation to technology.”405 To clarify the meaning of this statement

and to trace further the development of Heidegger’s thought on art, I will now turn to the essay

“The Question Concerning Technology.” The purpose of my reading is to show that through

the critique of technology, Heidegger can move later on to a poetics of dwelling, away from any

form of dominant discourse or practices associated with technology and its challenge to being.

2.1. The Essence of Technology

Heidegger’s essay on technology bears a similarity to both the description of

machination (Machenschaft) in the earlier texts (e.g., Contributions, Mindfulness) and is also

consistent with the description of the "cybernetic world" in the lecture given by him in Athens

in 1967.406 The preceding discussion of Mindfulness showed that years prior to that essay,

403
Ibid., xiii.
404
„Wenn Kunst metaphysisch am Ende, sie nicht gemäß der Vollendung der Metaphysik in diese Vollendung (im
Ge-stell) sich auflöst?“ (emphasis in original).
405
„Wir haben nicht mehr einen wesentlichen Bezug zur Kunst. Wir haben noch nicht einen wesentlichen Bezug
zur Technik“ (emphasis in original).
406
M. Heidegger, “Die Herkunft der Kunst und die Bestimmung des Denkens,“ [„The Origin of Art and the
Destination of Thinking“] in Distanz und Nähe: Reflexionen und Analysen zur Kunst der Gegenwart, ed. Petra
Jaeger and Rudolf Lüthe (Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen und Neumann, 1983); 11-22. References to the text are
to HK, followed by the page number. Translations from this text are mine, though I have consulted also A.
Mitchell’s in Heidegger Among the Sculptors (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). For a brief account of
the main themes in the lecture, see also W. Biemel, “Elucidations of Heidegger’s Lecture “The Origin of the Work
of Art and the Destination of Thinking,” in Reading Heidegger. Commemorations, ed. by John Sallis
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); 370-383.

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Heidegger perceives the culture of modernity as developing against the background of

machination. Thus, it is no surprise when he voices his critical position on aesthetic culture and

the alienation of art from truth in “The Question Concerning Technology.” Referring both art

and technology to an originary sense of production (poiesis), Heidegger emphasizes that art in

Greece was not conceived aesthetically; it was not a “sector of cultural activity,” as it is today,

but was essentially linked to being as what shines forth, to the beautiful. The questioning

“concerning technology” seeks “to prepare a free relationship” to technology, where such

freedom is defined in terms of responding to the “essence” (Wesen) of technology (QCT 3).

The possibility of a free relationship is premised on the claim that the “essence of technology is

by no means anything technological.” What Heidegger means by this is that technology cannot

be conceived in terms of instrumentality or an anthropological activity set to employ given

means to achieve given ends. The non-technological essence of technology is most properly

grasped as a “mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence (west) in the realm where

revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth happens” (QCT 13).

Therefore, the free relationship to technology is not a matter of technical facility or

experience with technological products, but has to be thought as a way of relating to truth as

revealed by/in technology. However, the mode of revealing that technology realizes is in the

form of the “standing reserve,” as the constant orderability of presence and the making of all

things potentially or actually present (which has been the dominant drive of all metaphysics

since its beginning). In that, Heidegger’s non-technological interpretation of technology is, I

believe, close to his non-aesthetic thinking of art, since in both cases the underlying issue is

thinking the revealing of truth407 as a mode of bringing-forth. In both cases, the question is

407
On thinking technology’s essence from the nature of truth, see Tracy Colony, “Concerning Technology:
Heidegger and the Question of Technological Essentialism,” Idealistic Studies, vol. 39/issues 1–3 (2009): 23-34,
section 3 in particular.

239
about conceiving the distance or nearness to an original granting of Being, as effected by art or

technology in Gestalt or Gestell, respectively.408

Thus, the question of technology is a question concerning the “constellation of revealing

and concealing, in which the coming to presence of truth comes to pass” (QCT 33).409 One can

hear in this pronouncement the similarity to the words used to describe the coming to pass of

truth in the work of art.410 So Heidegger can write that because “the essence of technology is

nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it

must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the

other, fundamentally different from it. Such realm is art” (QCT 35). Why do we need to

approach technology via art and what will this tell us about art itself? For one, Heidegger can

rethink the notion of production with reference to poiesis and techne, showing how a more

restricted notion of techne has come to reign over art in metaphysical aesthetics. Accordingly,

he argues against a view of art as craft and the production of beautiful objects in favor of

production understood as opening up a world as the essential work-being of art. Second,

thinking art and technology together will reveal the original meaning of bringing-forth not as a

willful drive to mastery over things, but the self-endangering nature of such misunderstood

mastery. Indeed, the discussion of the self-secluding, resisting all objectification earth in the

“Origin” already showed the impossibility of such complete mastery.411 Third, both technology

and art are revealed as a “destining” of Being (Geschick, but not Schicksal), a historical

configuration of a grant of Being, in which we engage as the ones who are both solicitors and

408
In the Addendum to “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger writes that there is an explicit connection
between Gestalt thought in the “Greek sense of form,” morphe, and Gestell, which goes back to the Greek poiesis
and thesis. He clarifies that Ge-stell is conceived as “die Versammlung des Her-vor-bringnes, des Her-vor-
ankommen-lassens in den Riß als Umriß, (peras)“ (PLT 84). Heidegger also acknowledges that technological
Gestell is “thought from” this more primary Greek experience of Being, which itself is defined as “essential,
because related to the destiny of Being” (wesentlicher weil seinsgeschicklicher.)
409
„Die Frage nach der Technik ist die Frage nach der Konstellation, in der sich Entbergung und Verbergung, in
der sich das Wesende der Wahrheit ereignet.“
410
Heidegger makes use of the same concepts, such as “revealing,” “concealing,” the “open,” etc.
411
Yet, in the age of Gestell “[m]eanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of
lord of the earth” (QCT 27).

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solicited to respond to this destining. In this lies the historical (as Geschichte) vocation of both

art and technology.

2.2. Gestell

The mode of revealing peculiar to technology, described as “enframing” or Gestell, has

its origin, like art, in “bringing-forth” (hervorbringen) (QCT 29-30). As Heidegger conceives

it, producing in the sense of poiesis lets what presences come forth into unconcealment. Unlike

art, Gestell works as a “challenging” or “challenging forth” (heraus-fordern) of coming to

presence, an imposing ordering of things which relies on power rather than attunement and

letting beings be.412 Gestell is understood as determining in advance the proper place (stellen as

placing, positioning, imposing, disposing, calculating) of things, setting up their availability as

resource. In other words, both art and technology reveal truth but Gestell, unlike the work of

art, closes off its own essence as such disclosure. Gestell is a constellation of truth but it

remains concealed and alienated from its source as revealing this truth. Therefore, as Heidegger

writes, the two kinds of production, e.g., “the erecting (Aufstellen) of a statue in the temple

precinct and the challenging ordering (herausfordernde Bestellen) of technology are indeed

different, though they remain related in that both are ways of revealing, of aletheuein” (QCT

21). Technology and science can yield “correct determinations” when nature is considered as a

“calculable effect of forces” yet this is precisely the moment of withdrawal of Being. This is

the limit of the mode of revealing of Gestell as the limit configuration of this withdrawal: being

challenged and ordered himself, “in this way the impression comes to prevail that everything

man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct” – his Gestell or Gebild, as described in

412
Lacoue-Labarthe deals with the ambiguity and metaphysical “legacy” in stellen, Ge-stell, Gestalt, Herstellung,
Darstellung. He claims that by focusing on Herstellung as the coming into appearance of the being (truth),
Heidegger does not admit of the production of this image as Darstellung. Through poeisis as Darstellung truth
becomes an object of production which is installed in accord with the logic of subjective representation
/reproduction. P. Lacoue-Labarthe, “Typography,” in Typography. Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, transl. by Ch.
Fynsk (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 66-73.

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“The Age of the World Picture.” Herein lies the “ambiguity” (zweideutig) of Gestell, for it calls

on man to both enframe and order Being, as well as to help it to bring itself forth. In its destinal

turning, Being both solicits and resists man’s attempt to gather Being in a single truth

constellation. In this process, man himself is already “enframed” so one can never be certain of

what lies before: Being “can look and turn out now one way and now another” (QCT 13).

2.3. Poiesis, Techne, Physis

As indicated, Heidegger argues that both the model of art and of technological revealing

share in a poietic nature. Without rehearsing the details of his arguments, let me outline the

basic links between techne and poiesis that mark the limits of the production view of art, as

Heidegger sees it. His approach is the same as in the art essay: starting from Gestell, at the

completion of metaphysics, to question about the inceptual thinking of techne, which is

displaced and alienated from its historical truth in Gestell. Only by “stepping back” into the

“essence of technology,” which itself is seen as belonging to the metaphysical past of revealing

(destining) of Being, can one grasp the shift in thinking and the dimensions of the danger and

the saving power growing within technology. In the age of technology, because poiesis as a

mode of revealing is obscured by the demand of Gestell, techne itself is detached from its

essence and comes to present not as the knowledge which supports bringing-forth or creation,

but as mere “making.”413

With reference to production, Heidegger’s aim here is to move away from a causal

productivist theory of art, which retains the primacy of the subject in the process of making an

object in accordance with an eidos (the Aristotelian eidos prohaireton, which thinks physis on

the model of techne (implying re-presentation, re-production).414 He gives physis primacy in

making techne possible – in terms of physis as a source of revealing; he makes such claims both

413
On this, see also M. de Beistegui, The New Heidegger, ch. 4.
414
D. Schmidt, “Economies of Production,” 154.

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in Contributions (where he states that physis is not techne, but “physis makes techne

exprienceable”)415 as well as in the 1967 lecture “Die Herkunft der Kunst und die Bestimmung

des Denkens,”416 discussed below.

Referring to Plato’s Symposium (205b), Heidegger contends that for the Greeks every

occasion in which “something passes over from absence to presence,” i.e., is a form of

revealing, is poiesis, a bringing forth (Her-vor-bringen) (QCT 10). “Bringing-forth” happens

only insofar as something concealed comes into unconcealment; thus described it refers both to

the growing things of nature (physis) as well as to production in the crafts and the arts.417

Techne belongs to bringing-forth (i.e., to poiesis) insofar as it reveals whatever does not bring

itself forth and does not yet lie here before us. Following this logic, Heidegger traces the name

and meaning of technology to techne, arguing that “techne is the name not only for the activities

and skills of the craftsman, but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts” (QCT 13). What

is decisive to understand about the early Greek notion of techne is that its being does not lie at

all “in making and manipulating nor in the using of means,” but in revealing as the “presencing”

(Anwesen) of that which comes to appearance in bringing-forth. Therefore, Heidegger claims, it

is “as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techne is a bringing-forth” (QCT 13). This

415
M. Heidegger, Contributions, 133.
416
In this lecture, Heidegger provides a slightly different context for the question asked already in the “Origin”
essay, namely, what is the origin (Herkunft) of art and the “destination” or the “task” of thinking in the age of
“cybernetics” and “futurology.” In this late text, he “returns” to the origin of art in Greece [he emphasizes that
“Greece established (stiften) the beginning for the Western-European arts”] through an excursus on the goddess
Athena, who was the one “counseling,” “helping,” “guiding” the Greek technites (HK 13). The second section of
the lecture describes the advances and progress of the modern cybernetic world, where everything has become the
subject of exchange and production, including the self-(re)production of human beings. Describing the rule of
science and scientific method (HK 16), [the description echoes the technology essay as well as the essay “The Age
of the World Picture,” esp. in the discussion of Züchtung, or “breeding,” and Besinnung, in the critique of the
planning-calculative thinking], Heidegger asks whether today, 2500 years after the Greeks, there is still art which
exists under the same “claim” (Anspruch) as the art in Greece, and if not, to what would today’s art respond.
Modern art does no longer respond (entsprechen) to a world defined by the “national and the people” (des
Volkhaften und Nationalen). Rather, such art belongs or conforms to “the universality of world civilization” (HK
15). Accordingly, the third question Heidegger raises is “from where is the modern thinking on art which now
reflects on the origin determined?”
417
Еven physis, Heidegger claims, as power that emerges in spontaneous unfolding from concealment to
unconcealment is understood as poiesis; in fact, “physis is poiesis in the highest sense” (QCT 10).

243
particular aspect of techne as poietic has now been obscured by modern technology in the

Gestell.

As we recall, this shift in the meaning of techne and its alienation from poiesis

Heidegger thematizes not only in the technology essay, but also in the Nietzsche lectures and

the “Origin” essay. In all of the texts, Heidegger considers the correlate sense of techne and

episteme, and techne and physis. As claimed in the Nietzsche lectures, “physis is the first and

essential name for beings themselves and as a whole” (N 1, 81). Responding to physis as what

“rises and comes forward, and what goes back into itself and passes away” takes the form of

techne; here it refers to a way of knowledge which guides human beings as they relate to other

beings and to the ordering of physis. Heidegger insists on the fact that “the word is not, and

never is, the designation of a 'making' and a producing; rather, it designates that knowledge

which supports and conducts every human irruption into the midst of beings” (N 1, 81). His

conclusion is that when the Greeks called the artist a technites, that word had nothing of the

modern sense of a “handworker” or craftsman. Instead, the word (as paired with physis) meant

that “the bringing-forth of artworks... is an irruption by the man who knows, and who goes

forward in the midst of physis and upon its basis” (N 1, 82).418

Furthermore, Heidegger claims that this originary and comprehensive meaning of techne

is pushed into oblivion and “loses the force of its original, broad significance" once it is

subsumed under the dominant matter-form schema (and that means, under the causal

understanding of production as “formed matter”). Techne is no longer considered a mode of

knowledge and participation in the disclosure of Being, but merely a process of making. The

age of Gestell exposes this bifurcation in the meaning of techne – the acquired late sense of

418
Consistent with this claim is also the Introduction to Metaphysics: “techne means neither art not skill, not
technique in the modern sense. Techne is knowledge […] Knowledge in the authentic sense of techne is the initial
and persistent looking out beyond what is given at any time…. [t]his transcendence [hinaussein] effects [setzt ins
Werk] what first gives the datum its justification, its potential determinateness and hence its limit. Knowledge is the
ability to put into work the being of any particular essent. The Greeks called art in the true sense and the work of art
techne, because art is what most immediately brings being [i.e. the appearing that stands there in itself] to stand,
stabilizes it in something present [the work]” (IM 159).

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“making” or “producing” and a more original experience of techne indicative of an originary

openness of human beings toward beings as a whole. So Heidegger concludes that Gestell also

“blocks poiesis,” specifically because it is now an ordering or “challenging-forth” (heraus-

fordern) (QCT 30). In his discussion of the history of aesthetics (cf. chapter 3 above),

Heidegger asserted that “to the extent that techne is then brought expressly into relation with the

production of beautiful things, or their representation, meditation on art is diverted by way of

the beautiful into the realm of aesthetics” (N 1, 82). In other words, the restriction or narrowing

down of the meaning of art as techne is concurrent with a restriction of the meaning of beauty,

no longer conceived as the radiance of being in originary disclosure. In a rather Hegelian-

sounding statement, Heidegger writes:

In Greece, at the outset of the destining of the West, the arts soared to the supreme height
(die höchste Höhe) of the revealing granted them. They brought the presence [Gegenwart]
of the gods, brought the dialogue of divine and human destinings, to radiance. And art was
simply called technē. It was a single, manifold revealing. It was pious, promos, i.e.,
yielding to the holding-sway and the safekeeping of truth (QCT 34).

The lecture before the Athenian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967, entitled “Die

Herkunft der Kunst und die Bestimmung des Denkens,” poses questions relevant to the

perspective of both the “Origin” essay as well the topic of the transformations in art/techne.

The provocative element in the lecture is the reference of the physis/techne relation to the Greek

goddess Athena and situating techne as “fore-seeing” or “fore-thinking” (vorblicken) in the

problematic of aletheia and the dynamics of the visible/invisible. The latter proves also

productive for thinking Heidegger’s later engagement with sculpture and painting (discussed at

the end of this chapter). In this lecture, Heidegger states right at the outset that “art is techne but

no technology,” nor is it “a making or finishing” (verfertigen); respectively, “the artist is

technites but neither a technician nor a craftsman” (HK 13). Rather, Heidegger writes, “techne

co-responds to physis,” but techne is by no means to be conceived as imitation or copy of what

is already present; both techne and physis “belong in an enigmatic way together” (HK 14). That

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is, art is neither subordinated to nor an imitation of physis. Techne responds to physis by

bringing into the world a thing so that it enters into the space of world. Accordingly, what the

artist brings forth is not a product but that which is not yet present, making possible a form for

the thing to appear (as its boundary, delimited by other things), to come to visibility. Heidegger

writes:

Because art as techne resides in a knowing, because such knowing resides in that which
indicates the form, gives the measure, but remains yet invisible, and which first must be
brought into the visibility and perceptibility of the work, for this reason such a glance
forward (Vorblicken) into what has not yet been sighted requires vision and light in an
exceptional way (HK 13).419

In this “fore-sight” or “fore-thinking,” the artist is “counseled” and “aided” by Athena,420 the

goddess with the “gleaming-glowing eyes” (glänzend-leuchtend, as in the shining of the sea,

stars, moon) who guides the artist in his work.421 In this way, the artist and art are ways of

attending to physis in the world, that is, to how what is brought forth finds its own place, is

placed amidst other beings. Heidegger clarifies this with reference to Athena who fixes her

“sinnender Blick” (a sensing, meditative look) on the limit, the boundary of the things: she

“contemplates the limit” (die Grenze nachsinnend) where limit (Grenze) is understood not only

as “outline (Umriss) and frame (Rahmen), not only as that whereby something ceases. Limit

means that whereby something is gathered (versammelt) into its ownness, in order to appear

from out of this in its fullness, to come forth into presence” (HK 13).422 Physis and techne

correspond in providing the boundaries, frames, designs (as in Riss), which allow things to

419
„Weil die Kunst als techne in einem Wissen beruht, weil solches Wissen in das Gestalt-weisende, Mass-
gebende, aber noch Unsichtbare, das erst in die Sichtbarkeit und Vernehmbarkeit des Werkes gebracht werden solI,
deshalb bedarf ein solches Vorblicken in das bislang noch nicht Gesichtete auf eine ausgezeichnete Weise der Sicht
und der Helle.”
420
For a commentary on this part of the lecture, see also J. Sallis, Stone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1994), 94-97 and A. Mitchell, Heidegger Among the Sculptors, 58-65.
421
The picture of art as granting things in the world their own radiance is reflected also in the following statement
from “The Question Concerning Technology”: “There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the
name techne. Once that revealing that brings forth truth into the splendor of radiant appearing also was called
techne” (QCT 34).
422
Heidegger comes to define “limit” or “boundary” in the same way in discussing the bridge as the “thing” which
in “gathering” grants for the first time a “place” (Ort), thus opening up “space” for the fourfold in “Building
Dwelling Thinking.”

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linger or dwell (verweilen) in their presence in the open, in the midst of other beings. To give

or grant a form (which is also wesen) in bringing-forth then is to let be, to clear away space

(“place-in-space,” ein-räumen), as Heidegger will say a couple of years later in the essay on art

and space. The “gleaming-illuminating gaze”423 of Athena is the light for the passage from

concealment to unconcealment, into visibility, in which the artist can make a dwelling.

The second part of the lecture in Athens is dedicated to the critique of the present time

and the possibility of art to be a “work” in the age of “industrial society,” the reign of

“cybernetics,” and the art business (HK 19). The arguments here are already familiar.

Heidegger sees the danger of art being overtaken by production, lost in information processing

and calculative thought. In the present, man is “locked in” in this world, with no chance of a

new destination (Bestimmung) of Being coming about. Human being is “closed off from that

which sends man to the attunement peculiar to him” (HK 20). The possibility to break free

from this predicament is through a “step back.” He formulates this as a task or “need” for

thinking to turn to that which has remained unthought and unnamed in the beginning of

philosophy, to that “realm with which today’s planetary civilization began.” This must be a

turn to thinking aletheia and the rethinking of the belonging together of physis and techne, in

the presence of things “at the limit” of their shining forth (HK 21). Heidegger concludes by

suggesting that in the thinking of the origin of art, man might find dwelling on this earth which

would be “in tune” or “attuned” (destined, bestimmt) to the “voice of the concealing

unconcealment” (ein Wohnen, das von der Stimme der sich verbergenden Unverborgenheit

bestimmt wird) (HK 22).

Yet, Heidegger’s final answer as to such possibility is the same as in the essay on

technology: whether this could happen and whether art could come to think its origin, to be

423
In the “Origin” essay, Heidegger speaks of the “Glanz Gottes” (splendor of the god); accordingly, in the
“reflected luster” (Abglanz dieses Glanzes) “gleams, i.e. there lightens itself (lichtet sich) what we call the world”
(PLT 44, translation modified). The god's presence in the temple as opening and delimiting a holy precinct is an
intimation of the reciprocal presencing, receiving, and preserving of the fourfold and mortals in the building and
dwelling in “Building Dwelling Thinking.”

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destined by its origin today, “we do not know.” This uncertainty is the uncertainty of all art: as

the insight, the look into the invisible, into what is not yet – which may sometimes turn into the

uncanny or come to offer us a dwelling place.

2.4. Technology and Art: Danger and Saving Power

The above discussion indicated that it was the shift in understanding techne as

makeability and making, instead of a revealing, and the obliteration of physis as natura, that has

casued the reign of Gestell today. This leads Heidegger to speak of the “danger” growing in

technology. Technology, though, is no “demonry”; the point he makes focuses on the

“mystery” of technology’s essence: “[t]he essence of technology, as a destining of revealing, is

the danger” (QCT 28). As the essay unfolds, we see several aspects of “danger.” On the one

hand, Heidegger shows that through Gestell, the apophantic dimension of the experience of

Being is lost and is now set on ordering, challenging being. Technological revealing is a danger

that involves man, too, because it is a turning of Being which “needs” and “uses” man for it.

Gestell “sends on the path of ordering man as well, to the point where he himself will have to be

taken as standing-reserve.” Furthermore, the age of Gestell is co-extensive with a presumed

end of philosophy, so that philosophical questioning itself is at risk of turning into technological

relations, reflected by the consideration of language as an instrument. The “danger” of Gestell

lies not only in its refusal to allow for other possible modes of revealing, but also and most

importantly in its concealing of revealing itself. Gestell “blocks the shining-forth and holding-

sway of truth” and in this it perpetuates not only the forgetting of being but the forgetting of this

forgetting itself. As H. Dreyfus says, the danger or threat of technology “is not a problem for

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which we must find a solution, but an ontological condition that requires a transformation of

our understanding of being.”424

This is why Heidegger writes, “The destining of revealing is in itself not just any danger,

but danger as such. Yet when destining reigns in the mode of Enframing, it is the supreme

danger” (QCT 26). Commenting on this statement, O. Pöggeler writes that “The danger is most

dangerous because it awakens the appearance of the lack of danger and of need and thus

conceals itself as the danger which it is.”425 Not seeing the danger is the inability or the fear to

“catch sight of what comes to presence in technology,” but also the danger that man may “quail

at the unconcealed and may misinterpret it” (QCT 32, 26). That is, the turning of Being in

Gestell harbors a danger since the granting of any mode of revealing beings entails withdrawal

while also giving precedence to that which is revealed over concealment. The discussion of

danger culminates in the realization that it is this ambiguity in the turning of Being that allows

us a glimpse into this mysterious essence of revealing, and so, of truth. Heidegger dismisses the

idea that to truly understand Being and the way of truth is to have to choose between seeing

them as revealing or as concealing (QCT 25). He sidesteps this misconstrued choice by

showing that there is a third way. Being is neither revealing nor concealment; it is revealing-as-

concealment, a continuous interplay and recurring transference between the two. Thus, the

danger is also that which saves: “the granting that sends in one way or another into revealing is

as such the saving power” (QCT 32).

Hölderlin’s line, quoted by Heidegger, “Where danger is, there grows that which saves,

too” implies that Gestell contains within itself what is needed to form a free relationship to

technology as revealing. This twisting free will occur when humans recognize the possibility

that Gestell is but one mode of destiny, not the final mode (Geschick, but not Schicksal). Thus,

the question about a “more primally granted revealing that could bring the saving power…in the

424
Hubert L. Dreyfus, “Heidegger on the Connection between Nihilism, Art, Technology and Politics,” 28. Text
available at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/pdf/HdgerOnArtTechPoli.pdf.
425
Pöggeler, Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, 199.

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midst of the danger” basically pits against one another the artistic Gestalt and technological

Gestell, with the premise that Gestalt is the shape of truth as brought forth poetically, whereas

Gestell is what is posited, placed upon, imposed on Being, seeking to overpower it and arrange

relations according to such power of producing. So, when Heidegger asks “Could it be that

revealing lays claim to the arts most primally, so that they for their part may expressly foster the

growth of the saving power, may awaken and found anew our look into that which grants and

our trust in it?” (QCT 35), he means that with the coming-to-pass of truth in art such a grant and

turning in Being is effected. The difference in Gestalt and Gestell and their designation to

being either the “danger” or the “saving power” depends on how the grant of Being is disposed

(appropriated): whether as an ordering-manipulative production and consumption or as the

gathering relationality of dwelling, the granting of a place for humans to dwell.

Art, then, can be the saving power insofar as both art and technology are thought in their

essence as revealing and insofar as they are thought as techne in its original meaning, as a mode

of aletheuein in the order of beings. The realm of art is the one that can counter Gestell and

technological revealing, yet there is no certainty this will happen. This is possible only if, first,

a “reflection on art, for its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth after which we

are questioning” and by accepting that granting art as the “highest possibility of its essence in

the midst of the extreme danger” is “not something that man can secure” (QCT 35). Humans

remain on the side of the possibility of another revealing and this is what art can accomplish -

not so much in confronting Gestell, but in pointing to the manifold of revealing.

As Heidegger writes, “The saving power must come from where there is a turn with

mortals in their nature” (PLT 118). Therefore, saving can happen only in a turning of Being,

which itself requires that there be a turning around of man; only if man first turns toward Being

is it possible for Being to turn toward another beginning. The critical difference in the way in

which technology and art both claim and need man is that art is a mode of revealing "more

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primally granted." Art does not expose man to the extreme danger of Gestell but preserves him

in “the highest dignity of his essence” as the one who can enable, echo and safeguard the

coming to pass of truth [in the sense of preserving from the art essay].

This is the core importance of the essence of art as a poetic mode of revealing (QCT 32).

Art can be such a “primally given” mode of revealing because, as we recall from the “Origin”

essay, art is in its essence a grant, a bestowal, a gift, and as such it can also save. It is to this

granting power of art as instituting or founding the “embodiment of the truth” of being and of

human dwelling to which Heidegger turns in conceiving the originarity and the counter-

technological capacity of art in his later writings. The notion of opening up of world (i.e.,

history), as discussed in the “Origin,” is the essential feature of art which most strongly plays in

the consideration of space, place, and dwelling in these writings. The opening up of world is

preserved, sheltered in the work, and in this sense, preserving is a mode of dwelling, in securing

a place for man on earth defined by essential attunement to being. As opening up a world and

safeguarding earth, art is a saving power and holds in reserve the possibility of the other

beginning. This originative power of art is what stands opposed to technological ordering. To

account for the issues as outlined, I will look at two essays written after “The Origin of the

Work of Art”: the 1951 “Building Dwelling Thinking” and the 1969 “Art and Space.”

3. Art, Space, and Poetic Dwelling

3.1. “Building Dwelling Thinking” 426

In summary, “Building Dwelling Thinking” is an insight into building and dwelling as a

rethinking of techne (art) with a view to the fourfold, Geviert, (the gathering of earth, sky,

divinities, and mortals). The fourfold is seen as the “measure” of Being according to which

426
References are to “Building Dwelling Thinking” in M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, transl. by A.
Hofstadter. Hereafter cited as BDT, followed by the page number.

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building and dwelling (as correlative to creation and preserving in the “Origin” essay) are the

modes for the poetic dwelling of man in response to and in unity with the holy. In the essay,

Heidegger looks at the notions of building and dwelling in their relation to openness and the

receptivity of man to the grant of Being which makes possible both “place,” “space,” and

dwelling. Both techne and physis are thought here from the perspective of their originary

ground in bringing forth, in the sense of “letting appear.” Both building and dwelling challenge

the displacement (homelessness) caused to art and human beings by technology.427

Displacement reflects in a new way the absence of a word for Being in the age of technology

and its substitution with Gestell at the close of metaphysics. To the emptied meaning of Being

and thing in technology, “Building Dwelling Thinking” opposes the thing conceived as

gathering power. The thing (exemplified by the bridge) gathers the world and humans in

nearness, and by being thus gathered, we are secured dwelling amidst things and mortals,

between earth and sky. Genuine building [as such gathering] is poietic dwelling, according to

Heidegger; here building is thought out of dwelling and not the other way around. In this

context, dwelling can be thought in relation to place, as described in the essay “Art and Space”:

“place is not located in a pre-given space,” in contrast to the restriction of man as subject to the

physical-mathematical space (Raum) of metaphysics. Unlike in the “Origin” essay, the polarity

and strife of earth and world now give way to a play which joins earth and sky, mortals and

divinities; accordingly, Heidegger’s language of making (producing) gives way to a language of

receiving, of letting be. The fourfold comes to presence in things, and it is mortals who

preserve it in dwelling (since only mortals can dwell and they dwell as mortals).

In the discussion of building, Heidegger again refers to the process of making and

production, tracing it to Greek techne. The etymology he employs here is to tikto, clarifying

427
Kathleen Wright, „The Place of the Work of Art in the Age of Technology,” The Southern Journal of
Philosophy, vol. 22/4 (1984): 565-582. Wright claims that “it is within and out of the displacement of the work of
art in the age of technology that an alternative to place as cult site or exhibition setting emerges, an alternative
which exemplifies what is for Heidegger the saving power of art,” namely, a dwelling place (566).

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that techne is not reducible to handicraft but means “to make something appear, within what is

present, as this or that, in this way or that way” (BDT 159). Building, conceived as techne is

more than the result of a process; thought “solely as letting appear something made, as

something present among the things that are already present,” building is misconstrued (BDT

159; emphasis in original). Rather, building is “a founding and joining of spaces” and it

“accomplishes its nature in the raising of places by the joining of their spaces” (BDT 160).

Thus building incorporates techne in the bringing forth of places428 and of space, conceived as

the joining of the “boundaries” of places. In bringing forth place, building is revealed as a

“letting-dwell.” The crucial argument in the essay is that place and space are thought from out

of the notion of “thing,” considered here as “gathering.” “Place” is not available prior to the

thing, because the thing is what gathers and allows for a place to be. A thing does not mark a

place, but is itself such a place. “For building brings the fourfold hither into a thing, the bridge,

and brings forth the thing as a place, out into what is already there, room for which is only now

made by this place” (BDT 159).429

Thinking building as dwelling restores techne to its more originary nature because it

enables the unique comportment of human beings in the world and as such, the opening of

space to admit and preserve the fourfold as it abides in things.430 Thus building is the disclosure

– the “letting appear” - of a new measure of Being in the “primal oneness” of the fourfold. To

dwell is to be on earth under sky, but so being means also “to dwell in the presence of gods”

and to belong to “the community of men.” Heidegger writes, “From the simple oneness in

which earth, sky, divinities and mortals belong together, building receives the directive for its

erecting of locations (Ort)” (BDT 158). Like the temple, which reveals the guiding measure
428
Hofstadter translates Ort as “location,” whereas other texts such as “Art and Space,” translate Ort with “place”
and Ortschaft as “locality” (Ortschaft is not referred to in BDT). I have used “place” instead of “location” in the
discussion of BDT.
429
As J. Sallis writes, Heidegger reverses “metaphysics” here, in the sense that he questions the “there being
already a there, a place, a Da, in which then something like the stone of the temple could come to shine.” Sallis,
Stone, 106.
430
The bringing-forth in building is two-fold: “For building brings the fourfold hither into a thing, the bridge, and
brings forth the thing as place” (BDT 159).

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(Mass, Grenze)431 in the occurrence of truth and opens up the “holy precinct for the presence of

the god,” building “takes over from the fourfold the standard for all the traversing and

measuring of the spaces that in each case are provided for by the locations [places] that have

been founded” (BDT 158). Only when building can bring to presence and preserve the fourfold

(“to save the earth, to receive the sky, to await the divinities, to escort mortals”), only then is it a

genuine “letting-dwell.”

Heidegger actually comes to describe Ereignis in terms of the “mirror-play of the simple

onefold of earth and sky, divinities and mortals” (das ereignende Spiegel-Spiel der Einfalt von

Erde und Himmel, Göttlichen und Sterblichen) (PLT, 179). In the play of the fourfold, in their

belonging together, each “reflects itself, in its own way into its Eigene, its own, within the

simplenes of the four,”432 without assimilation, without the imposing of an order. Building (and

that is, techne as the original “letting appear”) is not only a revealing but a “response” to

Ereignis. Thus understood, techne is an overcoming of its constriction as a “challenging forth”

of things. At the same time, this rethinking is also transcended insofar as it is no longer a

specific artistic form that is produced, but dwelling as the primordial relationality of mortals,

gods, earth, and sky. It is not a thing brought forth to appear, but the “worlding of world,” the

“thinging of thing,” the “spacing of space.”

3.2. “Art and Space”

The ideas on building and dwelling in relation to granting a place and preserving the

fourfold surface again in the 1969 essay “Art and Space.”433 The essay was written and

431
Recall the description of the temple: “But this setting up [of work in exhibition] differs essentially from setting
up in the sense of erecting a building (Erstellung eines Bauwerkes), raising (Errichtung) a statue, presenting
(Darstellen) a tragedy at a holy festival. Such setting up is erecting in the sense of dedication and praise. Here
'setting up' no longer means bare placing. To dedicate means to consecrate, in the sense that in setting up the work
the holy is opened up as holy and the god is invoked in to his presence… To e-rect means: to open the right in the
sense of the guiding measure, a form in which what belongs to the nature of Being gives guidance (PLT 43-4).
432
A. Hofstadter, “Introduction” to Poetry, Language, Thought, xix.
433
References are to M. Heidegger, “Die Kunst und der Raum,” (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2007), 5-13; hereafter
cited as KR, with the page number following. Translations are mine but I have also consulted the English
translation by Ch. Seibert, “Art and Space,” Man and World 6/1 (February 1973): 3-8.

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dedicated to sculptor Eduardo Chillida and appeared in a limited edition booklet including

seven lithocollages by him.434 Heidegger’s interest here is no longer the issue of building and

dwelling, though he makes a remark to that respect (KR 9). According to Andrew Mitchell,

“Heidegger’s sculptural reflections are born out of a rethinking of limit whereby…the limit

marks the beginning of a thing, not its end.”435 That is, in plastic arts (and sculpture, in

particular), an incorporation of space is at work, such that material embodiment is not seen as a

deficiency and the sculpted form is not a delimitation, but the setting free of spatiality. In the

discussion of sculpture Heidegger’s basic assumption is the opposition of the “technical-

scientific taking-over, conquering of space” (Eroberung) against sculpture which embodies

space (Verkörperung).

Several major ideas emerge from Heidegger’s discussion of plastic art and space in the

essay. He makes a brief reference to “The Origin of the Work of Art,” written over thirty years

earlier, specifically on the relationship between art and truth and the vocabulary of the founding

character of art. Heidegger writes, “When we take it for granted that art is the bringing-into-

the-work of truth (das Ins-Werk-Bringen der Wahrheit), and truth means the unconcealment of

Being, then must not the true and genuine space, that, which unconceals its ownmost itself,

become decisive in the work of fine art? (im Werk der bildenden Kunst)” (KR 8). Truth here is

no longer thought as a “setting” or “positing” (sich-ins-Werk-setzen-der Wahrheit), it is not

“wrested” from Being in a belligerent strife; rather it is the “bringing” of truth in the plastic

work (sculpture), which thereby founds a place. Truth is still conceived as the unconcealment

of Being (das Ins-Werk-Bringen der Unverborgenheit des Seins) and sculpture is the

434
A. Mitchell, op. cit., 66. In developing this and the following sections of the chapter, I have relied on the works
of A. Mitchell, U. Guzzoni, “Heidegger: Space and Art,” in Natureza Humana, 4(1), (2002): 59-110, as well as
remarks about Heidegger’s connection to sculptors and artists as reported by Petzet in his Encounters and
Dialogues with Martin Heidegger and G. Seubold, Kunst als Enteignis. Mitchell, in particular, provides an
insightful reading of the art of sculptors B. Heiliger, Ernst Barlach, and Chillida, and Heidegger’s own thinking on
art and spatiality, from his early to his later works.
435
A. Mitchel, op. cit. 1; see above for the discussion of limit as well as Heidegger’s remarks in the “Origin,” for
example, that “boundary sets free into the unconcealed” (PLT 83).

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embodiment of unconcealment as a “bringing into work of places” (als ein verkörperndes Ins-

Werk-Bringen von Orten) (KR 13). That is, sculpture “works” as the embodiment of the truth

of Being whereby it “institutes” (founds) a place (die Verkörperung der Wahrheit des Seins in

ihrem Orte stiftenden Work). In both “Building Dwelling Thinking” and “Art and Space,” art

reserves its role as gathering and sheltering unconcealment, showing that Heidegger stays away

from an aesthetic notion of art, conceived as representational-reproductive subjective making.

The second issue in “Art and Space” is the notion of space as “spacing” or clearing

away (Räumen). Spacing or “clearing-away, thought in its own, is the free giving of places, to

which the destinies of dwelling man turn in the blessed of the home or the ruin of

homelessness” (KR 9).436 Clearing-away as the “granting” (Freigabe) of place makes possible

human dwelling in a way that echoes the art essay’s argument that the work of art opens up

space for a historical community (PLT 42, 48). The “gathering of places” (Ortschaft)

Heidegger defines as an “interplay,” indicating that space in its most fundamental sense is a

“release,” a granting, a giving. Linked to the relationship of place and space is the third aspect

of Heidegger’s reflection on sculpture, concerning the “place seeking and place forming

characteristics of plastic embodiment.” Sculpture does not “confront” (Auseinandersetzung)

space, rather both are thought as happening in which the plastic form makes space visible.

Heidegger characterizes works of sculpture as follows: “Sculpture [plastic art] would be [t]he

embodiment of places (Orten) which by opening and preserving a region (Gegend) hold

gathered together around them something free (ein Freies), which grants (gewähren) a whiling

(Verweilen), a place to stay for things, and a dwelling place (Wohnen) for man in the midst of

things” (KR 11). Clearly, art thus understood cannot be a respresentation of some existing

being, rather, the relations of things as spaced, incorporated into sculpted form but also the

sculpted form as letting space “pass” through it. As A. Mitchell writes, for Heidegger space is

436
In the “Origin,” Heidegger speaks of “making space” as “liberating” the Open and establishing it in the work of
art (PLT 45).

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thought as movement (spacing as verbal): “… the spacing of space itself gives rise to a

contoured, variegated field of space…already gathering and furrowing and stretching out and

snapping back, into regions, distances, directions, and bounds.”437 In sculptural embodiment,

even emptiness (die Leere) plays in the manner of a seeking-projecting “instituting” (Stiften) of

places. In this, sculpture clears up space for the holy (KR 9).

Based on what we read in the essay, we can think the relationship between Heidegger

and Chillida as that of the poet and thinker in their naming of being. Both Heidegger and

Chillida, in Mitchell’s assessment, think space not as void but as “traversed by tension and the

vibrations of form, a space permeated by the things that take place throughout it, a poetic space

of relation in the incorporation of space into sculpture and of sculpture into space.”438 This

tension is palpable in most of Chillida’s sculptures and seems to be the best example for

Heidegger’s thinking of art as strife, as rifting and emerging in the rift of earth and world,

maintaining itself in this rift. Chillida’s works are mostly “abstract” (if we take this to mean

non-representational, object-less); in some of them the heaviness of stone or metal seems hard

to defy and others are large constructions of sculpted iron, where form is given by the

protruding earthy material.439 One can see here the reversed direction of revealing of the

material in the artwork, the primacy of the “elemental” showing itself (to which Sallis alludes in

discussion of the Greek temple, for instance), the relativization of what may be ‘inside’ or

‘outside’ of the work of art.

Heidegger concludes his essay with a quote from Goethe, which supports his own claim

made in the last paragraphs of the text, namely, that truth does not need to be put in a structure;

437
A. Mitchell, op. cit., 44. In his piece from 1955, „Über die Sixtina,“ Heidegger reflects on the way that a
window “spaces” and affords form (an out-line) to the perception of the openness of space. As he claims, it is the
picture itself that first makes the window visible. He writes, „Sein Rahmen grenzt das Offene des
Durchscheinens ein, um es durch die Grenze in eine Freigabe des Scheinens zu versammeln...Aber in dem
einzigen Geschehnis dieses einzigen Bildes erscheint das Bild nicht nachträglich durch ein schon bestehendes
Fenster, sondern das Bild selber bildet erst dieses Fenster und ist darum auch kein bloßes Altarbild im
gewohnten Sinne.“ Martin Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denken, 119-121.
438
A. Mitchell, op.cit. 64.
439
For example, Praise of Air, Wind Comb, Around the Void, etc. See also Mitchell, 73-4.

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truth is such that art is only one way for it 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” (KR 13).

3.3. Heidegger and the Artists (Cézanne, Klee)

In this section, I look at Heidegger’s response to the art of Cézanne and Klee,440 in an

attempt to understand the link between his early and later views on art. In the literature, this

topic continues to receive attention and several studies provide a detailed analysis of it.441 In

both cases, Heidegger looks for a rapprochement between his own views and those of the

artists, though it remains unclear if the philosophical did not appropriate into its own language

that of the artists. In both cases the textual basis from Heidegger is insufficient to allow for

comprehensive interpretation. I will therefore just point to some of the themes that Heidegger

has himself brought up in working on either artist and relate them to his own texts discussed in

this study.

3.3.1. Cézanne

Heidegger frequented Cézanne’s homeland, the region around Aix-en-Provence, in the

mid-1950s and is quoted by Petzet saying that looking once at the St. Victoire Mountains,

Heidegger had found Cézanne’s pathway, “the pathway to which, from its beginning to its end,

my own pathway on thinking responds, in its own way.”442 Heidegger’s interest in Cézanne’s

work had been partly initiated by Rilke’s letters on the artist. The text on the basis of which we

can attempt to understand Heidegger’s view is a poem inspired by one of Cézanne’s final

440
On Heidegger’s reception of Braque, see Neil Cox, “Braque and Heidegger on the Way to Poetry,” in Angelaki,
12/2 (2007): 97-115.
441
Among them, H. W. Petzet, op.cit., Julian Young, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art, Günther Seubold, Kunst als
Enteignis, Stephen Watson, “Heidegger, Paul Klee, and the Origin of the Work of Art,” The Review of Metaphysics
60/no.2 (2006): 327-57.
442
Petzet, op. cit, 143.

258
works, a portrait of his gardener. The first part of the poem invokes “…the thoughtfully

released, the earnest stillness of the shape of the /old gardener Vallier, who cared for what is

inconspicuous/on the chemin des Lauves./ The likeness: gardener and mountain - / barely

noticeable signs/of the transformative path/of duality into simplicity, /directing into the same

the shaping and thinking/that anticipate the origin.”443 The reference here suggests Heidegger’s

later thought on dwelling and releasement, on gathering and the care/preserving of earth.

In the second part of this poem we read, “What Cézanne calls la realization is/the

appearance of the present [des Anwesenden] in the clearing/ of coming-to-presence – such that

the duality of both/is bound up in the simplicity of the pure /shining of its images.” In a further

comment,444 he clarifies the above statement changing it to “What Cézanne calls la realization

is / the appearance of the present in the clearing / of coming-to-presence – such that the duality

of both [Zwiefalt] / is bound up in the simplicity [Einfalt] of the pure /shining of its images. /

For thought this is the question of / twisting free of the ontological difference between / Being

and beings.”445

The key statement in the poem is the second verse, the reference to “realization” and the

overcoming of the dualism between “presencing and the present” in an “onefold,” which alludes

to Heidegger’s own thought of the disclosure of Being as it happens in the very coming to

presence of a being. Again, I believe, we see Heidegger focus on the occurrence of things, on

their limit in terms of visibility and relatedness to other things and to man. Already in the

discussion of van Gogh’s shoes, he rejected that painting is a depiction of an object. Rather, it

seems to be the presencing itself (the event) that Heidegger sees in Cézanne’s paintings, in

terms of the illuminated, shining radiance of the world – as it happens in the temple work or the

bridge. Such interpretation seems to be supported by another statement of Heidegger: “In the

443
“From the series “Gedachtes,” in Heidegger Reader, ed. by Günther Figal, transl. Jerome Veith (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2009); 310-11.
444
Seubold, op.cit., 107.
445
Figal, Heidegger Reader, 311.

259
late work of the painter, the tension of emerging and not emerging has become onefold,

transformed into a mysterious identity. Is there shown here a pathway that opens onto a

belonging-together of poet and thinker?”446 In this case, the thinker, Heidegger, is following the

path of the poet, in attempting to “see” the mystery itself. Nevertheless, for Heidegger in

Cézanne’s work one finds only the preparation of what will become apparent in Paul Klee.447

3.3.2. Paul Klee

Similar with Cézanne, Heidegger’s encounter with Klee’s art is reported by his art-

historian friend, Heinrich Petzet. We learn that during the 1950s Heidegger used to visit the

home of Ernst Beyeler in Basel, who had a large collection of Klee paintings which he made

available to friends and scholars at his home.448 As both Pöggeler and Petzet report, the

discovery of both Klee’s paintings and his writings on art made a deep impression on

Heidegger, to the extent that he was contemplating writing a “pendant,” a “second part” to the

“Origin” essay.449 According to these reports, in the “work” of Klee something “happened”

or is found, which we “have not grasped/seen” (erblicken). Besides Klee’s paintings, it is also

the artist’s self-reflections that seem to have drawn Heidegger to Klee. The highlights of

Heidegger’s thoughts on Klee can be summed up as follows, without at all being exhaustive.

For Klee, in his own writings on art, the most important for art is the transition “‘vom

(from the) Vorbildlichen zum (to the) Urbildlichen.”450 Here Vorbildlich could pertain to both

the visible that art will represent, but since vor-bild-lich means also “exemplary,” Heidegger

sees in it a reference to metaphysical art as looking to bring forth the “-bild,” as eidos. The

Vorbildlich has to be abandoned but not for the sake of an Ur-bildlich that might be perceived

446
Petzet, op.cit., 143-4.
447
Ibid., 146.
448
Ibid., 146. Petzet reports as some of Heidegger’s favorite paintings of Klee: Saint from a Window, Little City of
Rock (Kleine Felsenstadt), Harmonisierter Kampf (Harmonized Struggle), Ein Tor (A Gate), Bunter Blitz (Colorful
Lightning) (148).
449
G. Seubold, „Heidegger's nachgelassene Klee-Notizen,“ 5.
450
Ibid., 6.

260
as some primordial, more originary being.451 Rather, as Klee writes (and Heidegger agrees),

the Ur-bildliche refers to the “Form-Enden” as the “forming powers” which will bring forth,

generate the visible for the first time. In this sense, the “Form-Enden,” as written by

Heidegger [combining “form” and “end” in the word Formend, which means “forming”],

leads again to thinking the limits (edges) of things, as they come to appear (in a more basic

sense, we go back to the art essay and the description of Riss as outline, design, sketch, etc.)

Klee himself describes the Urbildliche as “the secret ground where the primordial laws

(Urgesetz) of developments are stored [hidden].”452 In this line of thought should be

understood also Klee’s statement, which Heidegger quotes, namely, that “art does not

reproduce the visible, it makes it visible” (Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern

macht sichtbar).453 In his commentary on this topic, G. Seubold suggests that this thematic

falls within Heidegger’s conceptualizing of Ereignis and would be correlative to Heidegger’s

own attempts to bring Ereignis to language, i.e. the possibility of the saying of Being.454

In his remarks on Klee’s Saint from a Window, Heidegger writes: „If we erase the

picture – what is to ‘see’?” [Wenn man den Bildcharakter auslöscht – was zu ‘sehen’?) (KN

11). This captures Heidegger’s position that in Klee one doesn’t see objects presented, no

“finished” things, as the word “picture/image” (Bild) would imply. His further observation

reads that “the sparser the indication of the object the more [it presents itself as an] appearing”

(je weniger gegenständlich - um so erscheinender). The emphasis is on the enabling of seeing

itself, not so much of what stands-ready-before-oneself. This is also the meaning of the claim

that in Klee we have no pictures, “nothing” to see but the emergence of a “state” (Zu-stand).

This is far from an “enframing” state or stance; rather, we have to think here of the “stay”

(verweilen) of world as it comes in the fourfold or the attunement to the whole of Ereignis

451
Seubold., Kunst als Enteignis, 124-5.
452
Ibid., 124.
453
Seubold, “Klee-Notizen,” 8. In the Athens lecture we read “das Unsichtbare, das erst in die Sichtbarkeit und
Vernehmbarkeit des Werkes gebracht werden soll“ (HK 13).
454
Seubold, „Klee-Notizen,“12.

261
“seen” in the work and the relation to the work itself.455 Heidegger’s final observation makes

such interpretation possible: for him in Klee’s paintings, “objects... [do] not disappear but step

back ... into a worlding which is to be thought out of the Ereignis” (KN 10).

This meeting of Heidegger and the artists indicates to what extent Heidegger

appropriates art for his own philosophical project, as discussed in the beginning of the chapter.

It seems that his response to them admits more of acceptance than of confrontation. In both

cases, Heidegger’s focus remains on the critique of representation of objects (as Darstellung)

and an emphasis on what makes their presencing possible. Thus, as Seubold concludes, it is the

relationship of presence and withdrawal and their interplay that art may bring to the fore.456

The painting Saint from a Window (a face on an empty background), which Heidegger is said to

have liked a lot, may exemplify this “step back” as a Zu-stand, a state and “standing within,”

attending the “between” of truth, of Er-eignis/Ent-eignis. Perhaps, Heidegger would claim that

this painting does not found history or set up a world. But he would admit that this is the place

of the releasement to the world, the place which can allow the “Einblick in das, was ist.” The

same could be said about the other painting Heidegger seemed to have liked, Death and Fire.

Here there is no longer the force of a great work of art, of strife that “pulls and pushes” one into

the overpowering of Being, but just mortals, turning/turned in the granting of a world which

neither the poet nor the thinker can claim to set up for us to behold.

455
Seubold, Kunst als Enteignis, 132.
456
Ibid., 135.

262
 CONCLUSION

(THE “END OF ART”: HEIDEGGER AND HEGEL REVISITED)

By way of conclusion, let me put together the findings of the last chapter and the issues

of the “end” and “origin” of art on which this study has focused. In doing this, I (1) offer some

remarks intended to assess the significance of Heidegger’s radical questioning of art and to

outline further possibilities for thinking the relationship between being, art, and philosophy; (2)

offer final reflections concerning the encounter of Hegel and Heidegger regarding art as a

historical phenomenon.

For the purposes of the current study, drawing a parallel between some of Heidegger’s

early and later texts on art helped to outline a meaningful development in his thought that

bears on the issues of great art, truth, and being. Thematizing space and place, it has been

possible for Heidegger to find new ways to think artistic form and to deal with the limitations

of conceiving the relation of physis/techne based on the model of production/representation.

The exposition of these key texts delineated his path from the “Origin” essay in thinking the

work-being of the work of art as setting-truth-to-work to thinking art (specifically, sculpture)

as a bringing, gathering, free grant of places.457 The new step on this path is conceiving the

occurrence of Being as the simultaneous passing or enacting of Being and beings in the

interplay of space and time, as the “realization” of the “two-fold” of “presencing” and the

“present” into their “one-fold.”

We have seen that the focus in Heidegger’s later writings on “bringing” truth or

unconcealedness into the work of art means showing the way in which humans and things can

stay and “while” in the world. Such thinking and such art would be free from the stance

inherent in subjective making (poiesis) and would be conceived of as “releasement.”

457
Indicated also by a shift in the language used to describe how the truth of being is in art: from setzen, einrichten,
feststellen to bringen, einräumen, versammeln, abgrenzen, ausgrenzen, verkörpern.

263
Following J.-L. Nancy, that would designate a mode of relationality to Being which happens

through listening and attunement, through an intimate nearness and disclosure of Being

(thought as the “touch” by Being and humans responding to Being as its own “making

sense.”)458 This can open up further research on Heidegger in exploring the rift of earth and

world in terms of things bordering or “touching” as they come into presence. At the same

time, this will provide a new meaning to production (her-vor-bringen), thought now as

participative in such “making sense” (rather than as subjective positing of sense), as our

response to such ontological poetics – of Being coming to pass as art. Production thus

understood challenges the divide between sensible/supersensible and shifts it to letting-see or

letting-dwell, making possible for a sense of the Open of the world to form in the singular

work of art. Such an experience of art cannot be fully appropriated in aesthetics and would

thus invite for a thinking of Heidegger’s later reflections on Being and art in terms of an

originary ethicality (as was indicated in chapter 4 above).

Heidegger’s reflections on painting and sculpture, on Klee and Cézanne indicate a

more intimate, if I can put it this way, relationship of art and philosophy. This is not an

external reflection on art but a philosophical “seeing” in terms of being affected, moved,

claimed by what happens in the work of art: not in the sense of perceiving something already

constituted, but the reciprocal “catching sight of” humans and Being (an Erblickung, which in

the Klee notes Heidegger aligns with Ereignis)459 in attending a work of art. Heidegger is

thus able to show ways that reveal the limitations of aesthetics and of the metaphysical

approach to art and open up room for a different encounter with works of art. This gives us

reason to conclude that Heidegger is not developing an essentialist philosophy of art which is

458
In his essay “Originary Ethics,” J. L. Nancy explains that “making” should not be understood as “producing” but
as conducting. Being gives itself as the “sense” of Being; a relation to the sense of Being is accomplished by letting
Being be in the way of sense (explained with respect to the “touching” of Being, where touch (rühren) means more
than the sense of touch, rather “more dynamically to stir, affect, move”) (25-26). Jean-Luc Nancy, “Originary
Ethics” transl. by Duncan Large, Studies in Practical Philosophy 1(1), (1999):12-35.
459
G. Seubold, Kunst als Enteignis, 131.

264
then applied universally to artists and works of art. The exposition of his views so far

supports a claim that he is not dismissive of modern art. Neither should we look for a unitary

(identitarian) approach to art, based on thinking a single (Greek) truth of Being, given that the

history of Being itself is seen as multiple destinings. I therefore conclude that there are

changes in Heidegger’s thinking from “The Origin of the Work of Art” to the later works

which I have here presented that preclude interpreting Heidegger as being committed to one

great origin of art. Rather, it is always a grant of Being, a revealing-as-concealing, a

recurring transference that involves both Being and man and that may come to be as art.

I also propose that a change occurs in Heidegger’s thinking of great art, traceable from

the earlier to the later works, of gradual moderation, specifically in terms of the relation to

Being as polemos, strife, overpowering, for the sake of giving way to a gathering of being in a

dwelling place. Heidegger has been able to hold open Hegel’s claim of the end of art, while

simultaneously uncovering a relation between art, truth, and history which delimits the validity

of that claim. The discussion of both philosophers’ texts showed that Heidegger’s conditional

acceptance of Hegel’s thesis of the end of art led him to an encompassing critical reflection on

both Western metaphysics and aesthetics: returning to the pre-Socratics who preceded

philosophy (the “inceptual” thinking/thinkers) and recalling the great art of the Greeks that

flourished prior to the introduction of aesthetics by Plato and Aristotle and its subsequent

development. In this historical journey, Heidegger comes to tone down the rhetoric of the

geschichtebildende power of art, which, I believe, allows him to develop a greater sensitivity to

what art can accomplish when understood in the perspective of attunement and releasement.

Heidegger’s revisions of his own text support such claim, too; in fact, in this Heidegger

discovers the critical (saving) power of art (as countering the technological age, for example).

Concerning Hegel’s and Heidegger’s views on how great art is, I have argued in this

study that there is common ground shared by both, made possible by their respective concepts

265
of truth and the role that Greece plays for each of them. I have shown that Heidegger’s reading

of the origin of the work of art (the origin of art and art as origin), proceeds as an interpretation

and re-examination of Hegel’s end-of-art thesis, by way of situating Hegel and himself in the

tradition of aesthetics as delivered by metaphysics. (Yet, I also think that Heidegger remains

ambiguous to the “Hegelian legacy” in his project of overcoming aesthetics.) Through this

examination, it has become clear that Heidegger’s understanding of the vocation of great art

runs parallel with Hegel’s on many levels. Heidegger’s “Origin” essay, along with the

Introduction to Metaphysics and the lectures on Nietzsche, share the Hegelian language of

highest need, vocation, highest manner of truth to be shaped in great art, as representation of the

absolute and the divine. The comparative reading of Hegel’s and Heidegger’s writings

underlined the emphasis both place on thinking art in its capacity to establish and guide the

historical destiny of a human community; in thinking art in its encompassing religious-historical

effect; both see also a political significance of art, though far more pronounced and critical in

the case of Heidegger. In both Hegel and Heidegger, the reflection on art is commemorative, in

terms of recuperating what has already been and is now preserved in art, in the context,

respectively, of the historical path of Spirit and of Being.

Concerning the differences established, for Hegel, as I have discussed it, art is

conditioned and analyzed in terms of its contribution to the actualization of Spirit; thus the

statement of the pastness of art is enshrined in the view that reason develops and accomplishes

itself in history, and respectively, philosophy itself develops historically. While Hegel

surpasses Heidegger in the development of a system of aesthetics, there is no such ambition in

Heidegger. Yet even in Hegel, there is recognition of the limits of the system (i.e., the criticism

that the philosophical system may force art to an end). As I have shown, art harbors a

subversive power (for instance, drama, comedy) that puts philosophy’s presumed privilege over

art in question.

266
 One aspect that Heidegger’s reading of the statement of the end of art leaves out, is the

multiple beginnings/endings of art in Hegel (the transitions between the art forms, between the

art of the classical Ideal and romantic art, the attention to the practice and concept of art, etc.),

which could provide for a more nuanced understanding of the meaning of art’s historical

unfolding and its pastness. Heidegger does not reflect on Hegel’s insight into this historicism

on the level of the art forms and the individual arts, which allows for a repetition and self-

differentiation in the actualization of Spirit (as the subject of art), thus potentially undermining

the claims of a grand metaphysical narrative of art. A more careful reading by Heidegger of this

historicity of the concept of art and its practice would have given him opportunity to think the

self-transcendence of art as constitutive of Hegel’s thesis of the end of art. Further potential in

Hegel, to which Heidegger seems to remain oblivious, is the historicism and plurality of the

individual arts, which can highlight particular spheres of cultural and ethical life as inspired by

art.

In terms of Heidegger’s own project, he cannot avoid thinking of an art of the future

without settling the score with the aesthetics of the past, and it seems that with the turn to

Dichtung, language, and space, he has found a way to “save” art from aesthetics. Only a

turning of Being can reveal if such saving will be a new Kunstreligion.

267
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