Heidegger and the question of Aesthetics.

This thread is dedicated to Heidegger's On the Origin of the Work of Art, as well as any relevant aesthetic theory.

A most promising thread so far!

First observation. Connection between, on the one hand: the nothing and the thing, the object of the painting and the nothing that surrounds it, frames it, gives it its shape, its form, and on the other hand: Being itself, this no-thing, ontologically distinguished from beings-in-the-world; Being gives these beings in unconcealing itself, it discloses for us its own truth in the form of beings. Is the nothing of the painting not the nothing of Being itself? The movement of both are a type of disclosure; but of the same type of truths, or must we distinguish these from each other?

Yes, the painting is to be considered a symbol of reality.
This includes the frame, the three-dimensional surface it is expressed on, the space surrounding it.

I consider all art an indirect approach to reality. Like trying to catch a glimpse through the corner of your eye at what evades you when you turn to see.

Art, and I include language in this category, contradicts reality when it is considered literally rather than figuratively.
Man is burdened by a method of conceptualizing which is contradicted by the real.
His words and imagery is always an ideal or the surreal, in reference to the real.

You haven't read the article, have you?

Quote :

Yes, the painting is to be considered a symbol of reality.

It seems to me this is the precise view that Heidegger wants to oppose!

Quote :

I consider all art an indirect approach to reality. Like trying to catch a glimpse through the corner of your eye at what evades you when you turn to see.

Art, and I include language in this category, contradicts reality when it is considered literally rather than figuratively.
Man is burdened by a method of conceptualizing which is contradicted by the real.
His words and imagery is always an ideal or the surreal, in reference to the real.

Is that Schopenhauer I smell? In any case, you've missed the mark when it comes to Heidegger. Which reminds me: I should be more clear. I intended for this thread to be a discussion of this specific article of Heidegger's, the thoughts within it, and perhaps their implications outside of Heidegger. I don't want to simply discuss aesthetics; perhaps we can start another thread for that, for a worthy endeavour it no doubt is, just not my intention in this space.

Ah...I thought you were interested in art.

I was not aware that you wished to engage the subject through another mind, perhaps to aid you in your understanding.

Do you require help with your homework, or is it that you must burden us with homework to enter into discussion?

My bad.

You know, I once made a reference to how Schopenhauer was one of my favorites and the comment appears to have taken off.
I've learned from many, one of which was Schopenhauer.
I admired his directness and honesty, with none of that flowery verbiage pretending to be more than it actually is.

But why should I speak when the man says it himself?:

Schopenhauer, Arthur wrote:

The works of really capable minds differ from the rest in their character of decisiveness and definiteness, together with the distinctness and clearness springing there from, since they at all times clearly and definitely knew what they wanted to express; it may have been in prose, verse, or tones. The rest lack this decisiveness and clearness; and in this respect they can be at once recognized.
The characteristic sign of all first-rate minds is the directness of all their judgments and opinions. All that they express and assert is the result of their own original thinking and everywhere proclaims itself as such even by the style of delivery....Therefore every genuine and original thinker is to this extent like a monarch; he is immediate and perceives no one who is his superior. Like the decrees of a monarch, his judgments spring from his own supreme power and come directly from himself.

Schopenhauer, Arthur wrote:

Thus a man who thinks for himself only subsequently becomes acquainted with the authorities for his opinions when they serve merely to confirm him therein and to encourage him.
The book-philosopher, on the other hand, starts from those authorities in that he constructs for himself an entire system from the opinions of others which he has collected in the course of his reading.

Indeed, I am interested in art. Here, however, I want to engage Heidegger's text, specifically. It is academically relevant, so I won't lie: this discussion may prove productive for me, academically. However, I don't want "help" with my homework so much as I'm currently thinking my way through this article, and would like to be able to do so with other minds. Perhaps we can speak aesthetics in another thread, though?

As for Schopenhauer, I see his influence quite clearly in a lot of what you write -- particularly, in your metaphysics.

Schopenhauer: A noble, but simple man, who has taught himself to aspire to honesty in talk, but is still walking his protestant perspective. The hallucination of a liberated priest. In a sense Nietzsche was simply a more powerful hallucinator, able to see more detail for longer periods of time. Neither Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche were able to overcome the disappointment in their thinking. Whereas Zarathustra affirms the ER, the passage where this happens is to be read tragically, a collapse of Nietzsches mind into madness. He has not understood. He has affirmed pain as necessary and willed bliss as eternal -- an emotional triumph stands as the grand finale of his intellectual work.

But we move on.

Heidegger has not been comprehensively understood by those who have learned to think in terms of will -- the concepts φύσις and will-to-power are not easily compatible. There is still wilderness between them. This jungle is where the subject hides. We now know what is at its root.

Until recently, only postmodernists have understood Heidegger, and naturally they have understood him in a futile way.

To the learning Nietzschean thinker, it has not been possible to think as Heidegger. At the root of Heideggers thinking is an axiom that is can not be derived from the ontology of will-to-power. This axiom is perceived by Heidegger as φύσις -- to which he attributed the epitheton "the commanding unfolding".

Implicit in this unfolding is a definite somethingness, to which Nietzsche was radically opposed. Heidegger is an essentialist.

And he is not wrong.

Quite interesting, Fixed. As you know, I'm very much so new to Heidegger -- but I've had some trouble with several of his thoughts so far, as I think most students new to him must. Do you mind developing what you've called Heidegger's "essentialism"?

without-music wrote:

Quite interesting, Fixed. As you know, I'm very much so new to Heidegger -- but I've had some trouble with several of his thoughts so far, as I think most students new to him must. Do you mind developing what you've called Heidegger's "essentialism"?

I will make an introduction by means of quotes. Where Nietzsche sees will, Heidegger sees emerging. The emergent. He is the objectivism of Nietzsches subjectivism. As much as this is possible. This is not to a Platonic or mathematical extent, so he remains elusive. Heidegger is by his honest view incapable fo defining, he only approaches, he approaches the emergent, thereby somehow recording, documenting emergence as it occurs in the mind.

Conceptually this has brought him as far as this: I think that this is his final definition. It serves as an example of how we may begin to define the world in natural terms, in terms of emergence.


This is the description of the bridge as essence, producing emergent context.

As you see the leap from Nietzsche to here is very great, as Nietzsche would simply have the bridge as an instrument to power, and perhaps an object of artistic beauty. But what we see is that Heidegger approaches the bridge as a metaphysical form, or rather as an essence standing in between the physical and the metaphysical. Essence always does, I think -- compare to the sense of the essence of a plant, which remains throughout the series of incarnations. Likewise, a man-made essence, such as the wheel or the bridge, is the 'immortal' axis of the revolving wheel of emerging and dying cultures. Essence is thus both in nature and technology.

Following Heidegger, may add to the kingdoms of mineral vegetable and animal only the kingdom of man, when we have understood man as a product of technology -- not vice versa!

Yes this is what Heidegger feared, and what he was confronted with by his nazism, and what he was not able to overcome. Man is determined by his technology -- his use of tools made him conscious of time-space, because it displaced nature, created essences out of the seasons. Yes, the error now is visible. The solution is surprisingly simple: man needs to re-orient his technology on the patterns of mineral, vegetable and organic life.

It may be extraordinarily boring to mention the company Apple, but of all technology-producers this is perhaps the one speaking most to a Heideggerian ambition. And the fact that it has a fruit, an essence, as its representation may do something to illustrate this point, which is weak compared to the task to transform agriculture, warfare and heavy industry. Combined with the bridge metaphor this may perhaps allow the imagination to run as far as to arrive at the awareness of a possibility of designing the world to human proportions, to approach science aesthetically, to submit politics to the philosophical implementation of science as humanity.

To value our tools to the utmost, because they are our metaphysical backbone. As by these tools we have emerged as conscious, to value the tools (and the quintessence of tool-making) properly is to to understand their benevolent and malevolent use. Much of it comes down to a refining, an educating. It is for this reason that Heidegger is so much more boring than Nietzsche -- Nietzsche brings a finale, Heidegger arranges a beginning. Nietzsche does the work for us, Heidegger proposes that we get to work. He does so addressing what it is in us that does the work. What it is that we may identify as truth, as constant, as law to our system, which must surpass the state-system.

Heidggers emerging is in a sense the antithesis to N's will to power formula. It is at least the other side of the coin. Where the will to power is affect as subject, emergent essence is the description of the formation of an object as a harmony of affects. This in turn produces affect in other such objects. The science of how subject becomes object. Will becomes conditioned by the aesthetics of the system in which it functions to power, herein is the essence, in the formula of this conditioning. It is will justifying itself in a mould - an evolutionary advantage - which is what leads to the sublime effort of art - will manifesting itself as what is at its root - valuing - by surpassing the utility of a form to create power, and show the form itself as will to power.

-- I consider myself no expert however. These are just the insights (and/or fantasies) my presently all too relaxed mind produces reflecting on what I have read by him, which is fairly limited.
Carry on.