The aim of this paper is to bring to light some of the fundamental differences between Heidegger’s approach to art and the traditional approach, and to do so within the context of Heidegger’s project of what he calls “overcoming metaphysics”

Duits, Rufus

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18Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 1, No. 1, April 2004HEIDEGGER AND METAPHYSICAL AESTHETICSRUFUS DUITSUNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDONHeidegger’s most precise and extensive treatment of art is to be found in his 1935essay The Origin of the Artwork.1  This is, however, no work of aesthetics as traditionallyconceived.  The aim of this paper is to bring to light some of the fundamental differencesbetween Heidegger’s approach to art and the traditional approach, and to do so within thecontext of Heidegger’s project of what he calls “overcoming metaphysics”.  AsHeidegger sees it, traditional aesthetics is metaphysical in essence.  Therefore a part -indeed, a crucial part - of the project of overcoming metaphysics is the development of anon-metaphysical and hence non-aesthetic approach to art.What does Heidegger mean by “metaphysics”?  Put briefly, Heidegger uses this wordto refer to, on the one hand, the particular, and still current, historical epoch of theWestern world which began with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece,and, on the other, the particular way of thinking that fundamentally defines anddetermines this epoch.  This way of thinking is characterised by a particular conception oftruth, and by the failure to raise what Heidegger calls “the question of being”.  We shallnot investigate Heidegger’s reasons for attempting to overcome metaphysics in thispaper, and we shall be concerned with this attempt only insofar as it manifests itself inHeidegger’s approach to art.Fundamentally, claims Heidegger, metaphysics, in failing to philosophically thematisebeing as such, has failed to understand what it is to be a being.  Artworks, whatever elsethey might be, are beings.  The crucial failure of aesthetics, then, according to Heidegger,has to do with the understanding of what it is to be a being in the sense of an artwork.                                                           1 Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger, ed. David Farrell Krell (Routledge: 1993).RUFUS DUITS19This is to say that aesthetics has misunderstood the essence of the artwork.  It is for thisreason that Heidegger’s consideration of the essence of art orients itself around thequestion of what he calls “the origin of the artwork”.How does aesthetics misunderstand the essence of the artwork?  This question can beanswered only once it is clear in what way metaphysics has misunderstood the essence ofbeings of the type of which the artwork is.  Artworks might in the first case be calledthings.  What is a thing?Heidegger distinguishes three types of thing and three understandings of what it is tobe a thing.  The three types of things he distinguishes are (i) works, (ii) equipment, and(iii) “mere” things, the latter being lifeless beings of nature (stones, clods of earth, etc.).The three different understandings of what it is to be a thing are (i’) the thing as thebearer of traits (expressed in the Latin categories substantia and accidens), (ii’) the thingas the unity of a manifold of sensations, and (iii’) the thing as the conjunction of matterand form.  For our purposes, only a consideration of the third of these understandings isnecessary.Heidegger claims that ‘The distinction of matter and form is the conceptual schemawhich is used, in the greatest variety of ways, quite generally for all art theory andaesthetics.’2  However, it stems, he claims, from a consideration of things foreign to art,namely, from the way of being of equipment.  A piece of equipment is fabricated by theshaping of particular matter into a particular form.  The particular matter and particularform are prescribed beforehand by the use to which the piece of equipment is to be put.  Itis in regard to the concept of usefulness that the being of equipment is defined.  However,Heidegger asserts that historically this thing-concept - the thing as formed matter - hasstepped beyond its essential relation to equipmental things and has attained a priority asthe standard metaphysical understanding of the being of all things.  At least one reasonfor this is the Judeo-Christian interpretation of the totality of all things as the work of acreative, purposeful god.More importantly, however, this understanding of the essence of the thing is groundedin the very essence of metaphysical thinking itself.  In this regard only two considerationscan be mentioned here.  The first is as follows.  It was part of the task of Being and Time                                                           2 Ibid., 153.RUFUS DUITS20to show that equipment ontologically lies closer to man than any other type of being sincethe way of being of man is such that beings are primarily disclosed with regard to apurpose of his being, that is, with regard to possible usefulness.  Indeed, Heideggerclaims here that beings can only be disclosed in the first place within an existentialframework to which the categories of usefulness and purposefulness essentially belong.Is it not inevitable, then, that the things that set the standard for the interpretation of whatit is to be a thing are equipmental in essence?The second consideration is this: Heidegger claims that of the three types of thingmentioned above, equipmental things, insofar as they are essentially determined by aconjunction of the characteristics of the other two types of thing, occupy an intermediateposition between the other two types of thing. What he presumably means is that whilstequipment is fabricated, just like the artwork, it retains the “self-contained-ness” that ischaracteristic of “mere” things, and which the artwork, insofar as it is considered as awork, does not have, since it suggests some sort of reference beyond itself, either to theartist, or to the viewer, or to what it represents.  The implication that Heidegger wishes todraw is that the categories proper to the being of equipment are therefore projected on tothe interpretations of the other types of thing.This appears at first to be a highly objectionable claim.  More sense can be made of itperhaps if, against the background of the first consideration, it is suggested that, since thevery disclosure of beings grounds a fundamental priority of equipment in thethematisation of what it is to be a thing, it must be in reference to equipment that non-equipmental things such as artworks and “mere” things are to be understood.  What needsto be explained here is precisely the non-equipmental nature of “mere” things and ofartworks.  This is straightforward in the case of “mere” things for they are simply givenwith the individuation that is afforded by the mere fact of disclosure.  The case ofartworks, however, is different: they are created.  In what sense could artworks,conceived as non-equipmental things, be a creative possibility of man when the horizonfor the understanding of things as such is equipmental in essence?  But perhaps theartwork is not to be conceived as a non-equipmental thing in this sense at all.The dominant, that is, metaphysical, interpretation of things in terms of matter andform is grounded in the existential nature of the disclosure of beings.  Aesthetics is oneRUFUS DUITS21mode in which metaphysical thinking expresses itself.  It should be expected then thataesthetics interprets the artwork, as regards its “thingly” character, in terms of the schemaof matter and form.  Insofar as it is a thing, the artwork is matter formed according tosome aesthetic value extrinsic to the work’s “thingly” character.  Heidegger wants to saynot simply that since this is not the understanding of “thingliness” that is applicable toartworks, this understanding of the artwork must be wrong.  Rather, he wants to take thefurther step to the claim that, given the metaphysical understanding of the thing, anyinterpretation of the artwork that begins by interpreting it as a thing has already goneastray, for it implicitly thereby attributes the character of equipmentality to it.  Thus, hewrites: ‘As soon as we look for such a thingly substructure in the work, we haveunwittingly taken the work as equipment, to which we then also ascribe a superstructuresupposed to contain its artistic quality.’3  But this way of approaching the artwork is, heclaims, ‘the formulation native to aesthetics.’  The attempt to overcome aesthetics thusinvolves the attempt to confront the artwork apart from the characterisation of it as athing.  Instead we are to ask after the character of the artwork insofar as it is a work, thatis, we are to ask after its work-being .  This is the turn away from aesthetics.Fundamentally, it consists in the attempt to consider the artwork along the horizon of thebeing of beings.  What does this involve?In the artwork, claims Heidegger, there is a happening of truth.  It is the happening oftruth in the work that defines the artwork as a work.  Truth, for Heidegger, stands in anessential relation to being.  Consideration of the artwork as the happening of truth is thusdetermined on the horizon of the being of beings, and is therefore no longermetaphysical.  But in what sense is there a happening of truth in the artwork?  What istruth on Heidegger’s account?Metaphysics conceives of truth as the relationship of correctness between intellect andobject.  Heidegger points out that this conception of truth presupposes the prior disclosureor unconcealment of the object.  It is in terms of this original unconcealment of beingsthat Heidegger understands truth.  Truth is unconcealment.  This accords the concept withthe etymological meaning of the corresponding Greek word: aletheia.To the essence of truth as unconcealment, however, belongs the basic possibility of                                                           3 Ibid., 164.RUFUS DUITS22concealment.  The reverse holds as well: only on the presupposition of unconcealmentcan there be concealment.  This pair of mutually implicatory concepts form the structuraldynamic within which beings are first disclosed at all, that is, come to take a stand in thatwhich Heidegger calls the “clearing”.  The clearing is “won”, Heidegger tells us, as theresult of the “primal strife” between concealment and unconcealment.  Beings are able tobe disclosed at all only insofar as the clearing in which they presence is constituted out ofthe opposition of concealment and unconcealment.  Truth is this dynamic opposition, andtruth as the unconcealment of beings is constituted out of this dynamic opposition.  Truthas unconcealment is in this sense self-grounding for Heidegger.What is the relation of this concept of truth to the artwork?  Heidegger tells us that theartwork is a “site” of the happening of truth.  This could be taken to mean either one oftwo things: on the one hand, it could mean merely that the artwork in some senseunconceals particular beings; on the other hand, it could mean that the artwork itselfinstigates “strife” between unconcealment and concealment.  Heidegger does notdisambiguate these two meanings, and it is not clear whether the ambiguity is notessential to what he is trying to say about the artwork.  In what follows we shall only gosome way towards disambiguating them.  To make the discussion clearer we shall borrowthe somewhat paradigmatic example that Heidegger himself uses as illustration: a Greektemple.  What is it that the temple unconceals?The temple does not portray anything.  But it is also not without “reference” of somekind.  It “refers” to the world of the Greeks: to its employment in the worship of gods, tothe role it played in a society; it “refers” to that which the Greeks held in the highestesteem and to that which they derided, to the development of a great civilisation and itsdecline; it “refers” also to the labour and care which erected it in the first place.  In thischaracter of “reference”, a world is unconcealed.  Heidegger calls this aspect of the beingof the temple the opening or “setting-up” of a world.A world is not all that the artwork unconceals.  The simple standing there of thetemple reveals the solidity, strength and endurance of the stone from which it is made, itreveals the location in which it is situated, the valley or hill-top, and throws into relief thequalities of its environment: the movement of the sea, the clemency or inclemency of theweather, the firmness of the rock on which it stands.  The temple illuminates or “sets-RUFUS DUITS23forth” that which Heidegger calls earth.The essential character of world is openness.  World is the openness - the “openrelational context” - that first grants the possibility of directions for decision.  It issomething historical and is related to Heidegger’s existential concept of freedom.  Theessential character of earth, on the other hand, is closedness, or what Heidegger calls“self-seclusion” [Sichverschließen].  Earth is the impenetrable facticity on which a worldis grounded and is connected to the notion of finitude that recurs throughout Heidegger’sphilosophy.  The relation or opposition of world and earth is strife - the strife of opennessand seclusion, that is, the strife between unconcealment and concealment.  Insofar as theartwork instigates the strife between unconcealment and concealment in the setting upand setting-forth of world and earth it is a site of the happening, or “setting-into-work” oftruth.Despite this brief exposition, we have insufficiently developed Heidegger’s claims andconcepts here to be able to evaluate them fairly; nor is it our concern to search forcounter-examples to his analysis of the artwork in terms of world, earth and truth,although there are no doubt many.  The claim that the artwork is the site of the happeningof truth also remains ambiguous, although it should have become clearer in what thisambiguity consists.  The important question for our purposes concerns the way in whichthis interpretation of the artwork offers an analysis that is demonstrably non-metaphysical- and therefore non-aesthetic - in essence.The metaphysical concept of the artwork is grounded, as we saw, in a particularconception of what it is to be a thing.  This conception is rooted in the mode of being ofequipment.  Since an artwork is something different from equipment, it is subsequentlyattributed with an extra artistic quality or value.  Accounting for the nature and possibilityof this extra quality or value is the task of aesthetics.  Heidegger claims that this approachmisunderstands the essence of the artwork from the outset.  For the artwork, insofar as itis a work, is never a thing in this sense at all.  Rather, the essence of the artwork is to bediscovered in its work-being, that is, in regard to its being as an artwork .  Themetaphysical approach had neglected to ask after the being of the artwork.  This revealeditself in terms of the happening, or setting-into-work of truth - in the characterisation ofwhich, an important ambiguity was retained.  Consistent with this new account,RUFUS DUITS24Heidegger subsequently comes to conceive of the process of artistic creation as the“bringing forth” of unconcealment, and of the individual’s encounter with the work interms of the “preservation” of the truth set in to it.Insofar as this approach to the artwork enquires, at the outset, after the being of theartwork rather than after its “thingly” character, and insofar as it is premised upon aconception of truth as unconcealment, it is - according to Heidegger’s own definition -essentially non-metaphysical in nature.  If, however, aesthetics is understood to beessentially metaphysical in nature, then it is also non-aesthetic.  It can perhaps be bestdescribed, in accordance with the general project of overcoming metaphysics, as aphenomenological fundamental ontology of the artwork.

Heidegger And Metaphysical Aesthetics

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Heidegger And Metaphysical Aesthetics

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