For Readers of the UK Reporter
Prepared from the Original for Philosophers and Politicians of the United Kingdom.
Lemma I. It was only a half-decade after the development of his phenomenological ontology, Being and Time, that Heidegger’s interests fundamentally shifted toward the ontology of art and aesthetic theory (Bernasconi, 1988; Heidegger, 1962; Thomson, 2006). By 1930, Heidegger had a well-developed ontological framework with which to criticize the classical concepts of philosophical aesthetics which, according to him, can be found to lie in the domain of intellectual criticism as opposed to the reality with which Dasein relates to art in a natural and pre-intellective state as ready-to-hand (Bernasconi, 1988; Heidegger 1962; Heidegger 1971).
Lemma II. According to this view, the “work of art” is the true and perfect aesthetic approach to the artistic, in as much as the work itself is that which is prior to intellective relation or to onticizations of the abstract social practices which produce supercessive ideological frameworks (Heidegger, 1971; Heidegger, 1962). Unlike the work of art itself, such aesthetic frameworks are proximally mental and condition Dasein‘s reflective mode to detachment from immanent experience as Being-in-world (Heidegger, 1962; Heidegger; 1971). Then, it can be said that Heidegger was a critic of aesthetics and a supporter of art; in an Aristotelian sense, for Heidegger, art itself can be experienced in the totality of wholeness before, if ever, being subjected to judgment on rationalistic or critical premises (Dreyfus, 2005; Heidegger, 1962).
Lemma III. In contrast, Sartre could be said to hold art accountable for the narration of subjective themes in which the artist’s self-assertion assumes the role of social accountabilities. The artist is, for Sartre, an individual – but, in choosing to pursue the aestheticization of the characteristic themes of modernity (alienation and subjectification), the artist cultivates a certain de-facto responsibility to archive and transmit the theme of self-definition. If Heidegger’s Being is the matrix by which Dasein asserts himself beyond subjectivity, Sartre’s aesthesis is the nexus by which subjects share what it means to be alienated by birth and nature. Yet it is precisely in this alienation, for Sartre, that the artist’s works maintain a primary power – that of description of certain proximal social states in which individuals become subject to (particularly bourgeois) injustice.
Lemma V. It would strike Heidegger as incorrect and unsuitable to treat his thinking on art as “aesthetics” or even aesthetico-moral because he always emphasized that the aesthetic approach of intellection as opposed to experience has led Western humanity to neglect the structure of proximal social practices that disclose the art-work as pre-ontological and experiential (Heidegger, 1977; Heidegger, 1979; Thomson, 2006). As Heidegger asserts, the being-of-man that relates to the equipmental modes of culture (namely, Dasein as a “being in the world,”) is itself ontically distant from any practice which could claim as its “telos” the distinction of Dasein‘s tastes in beauty as a meta-cultural practice (Heidegger, 1962; Heidegger, 1977). In a word, post-Cartesian aesthetics appreciate the work of art in a way that seals its actual importance as an instrumentality of the lived relations that produced such work (Bernasconi, 1998; Dreyfus, 2005; Heidegger, 1962; Heidegger, 1977; Heidegger, 1962; Young, 2001). It bears mention, however, that Heidegger’s opposition to the philosophical aesthetic cannot be deemed an ‘anti-aestheticism’ (Heidegger, 1962). Any categorical anti-aesthetics would remain blindly and apophatically entwined in the aesthetics that it sought to transcend – for Heidegger, as for Hegel, any mere protest remains confined within the logic of what it opposes (Dreyfus, 2005; Heidegger, 1977; Young, 2001). In contrast, Heidegger suggests that the only way to surpass aesthetics is to phenomenally observe how it affects Dasein, and subsequently transcend such observation in the interest of determining the role such work may have in the prevalent social practices of the “polis” (Heidegger, 1969; Heidegger, 1977; Young, 2001). The work of art discloses discursive worlds that are only present pre-ontologically and to Dasein for whom enculturation in the significances of the disclosive words are proximal (Heidegger, 1977). In a word, the aesthetic philosophical approach obscures Dasein‘s access to the role that artworks play in the disclosive dynamic of world-building; and it is thus that Heidegger believes that only a post-aesthetic thinking about art can accept to restore and recognize true significance of art while helping to understand the unobtrusive way in which art effects the basic sense of significance and meaning relative to cultural existents (Heidegger, 1962). Heidegger’s attempt to restore a post-aesthetic analytic does not have as a prospect any inclination to liberate art-works from a position of aesthetic classification only to deliver them over to a ‘new analytic’ that turns out to be rigorously conceptual and thus similarly reifying (Bernasconi, 1998; Dreyfus, 2005; Heidegger, 1977; Young, 2001).
Lemma VI. For Sartre, like Heidegger, the aesthetic is not for its own sake – rather, it is generative, locative, and self-asserting. The Sartrean aesthetic would claim that Heidegger’s Dasein is ineluctably drawn to the aesthetic through an act of beckoning: the art-work calls “Being-For-Itself” to account for pre-ontological suppositions that are beyond society, time, and place. From Heidegger’s own perception, any properly philosophical exploration of aesthetics will seem either inappropriate or devious – and, on a level of Idealism (in the Cartesian sense of concept, logic, and deduction), will incur contradictions (Dreyfus, 2005). Heidegger himself considered his own view on aesthetics as oxymoronic and ironic, and he had three terms that he took to describe the contradictions that would inevitably arise in his own system: Christian philosopher, wooden iron and square circle (Heidegger, 1962; Heidegger, 1977; Heidegger, 1962; Young, 2001). In the early of his writing, he repeatedly compared his struggle to rescue art from aesthetics to the confrontation between philosophy and theism: true philosophy “is and remains” atheism (Heidegger, 1977; Young, 2001) since true philosophical questions must know where the questions themselves lead and thus cannot approve before-time to stand by the marginal limits imposed by authority (i.e. church) over the subject of Dasein‘s spirit or mind (Heidegger, 1962). Ironically, though, atheism itself presupposes an ideology and thus cannot “inter alia” be any basis for aesthetics, just as it cannot be conceived as a basis for metaphysics (Heidegger, 1962). Such lacunae define Heidegger’s attempts at liberating art-works from any form of aesthesis which is founded upon Cartesian Ideality (Dreyfus, 2005; Heidegger, 1985).
Lemma VII. In order to properly conceive of Heidegger’s views upon art, is important to understand to explore his motivations for criticizing the aestheticization thereof, as we have discussed above. Such exploration must be founded upon several questions which, according to Heidegger, define his search for a post-aesthetic: Primarily, to what extent and for what reasons is the aestheticization of art-works an inappropriate response to them (Heidegger, 1977)? To what extent do such aesthetic approaches conceal the actual importance of works of art (Heidegger,1985)? In the remainder of the current essay we shall consider such questions in further detail.
Lemma VIII. For Heidegger, the aestheticization of art (defined as the systematic interpretation thereof in view of ascertaining the properties of universal beauty in the abstract) renders Dasein a victim of ahistorical logical modes (Cartesian modes) as opposed to the lived experience of artworks for their own sake, as “in-der-welt-sein” (Being-in-the-world) is disposed by nature (Heidegger, 1962). Aestheticization teaches Dasein to enjoy art as an elective satisfaction – as a sort of exercise in which to polish Daseins‘ tastes as consumers of beauty-as-commodity while rendering him forgetful about the role that art-works can play in narrating and disclosing histories and present world-at-hand (Heidegger, 1977; Young, 2001). In Heidegger’s terms, the relation between Dasein and artworks renders artworks “apophantic” reductions to “pure presence at hand” (a cognitive mode of looking upon and analyzing rather than experiencing) and “ipso facto” inauthenticity (Heidegger, 1977) for Dasein (Heidegger, 1962). This inauthentic mode is founded in Dasein‘s identification of an analytic or ontological distinction between the artwork which is present and the intellective abstractions which set him to disclose a universe of relationships to it. To the extent that ontologies which reduce equipmental totalities to present-at-hand states, such states are ultimately inauthentic (Heidegger, 1977) for Dasein (Heidegger,1979). Proximally and for the most part, according to Heidegger, our search of art and beauty as well as incalculable aesthetic considerations have accomplished nothing for Dasein‘s understanding or concern (“sorge”) for Being and have not made any contribution to Dasein‘s artistic creativity (Heidegger, 1962; Heidegger, 1979).
Lemma IX. As Heidegger argues, “aesthetics” is relatively a modern term. It was devised in the 1750s by Alexander Baumgarten and later appreciated and accepted by Kant in his “Critique of Judgment” (Heidegger, 1977). Throughout his corpus, Heidegger advances the suggestion that aesthesis assumes the contemporary subject/object division which roots in Plato (namely between forms and entities-in-world), and aesthetics can be traced back to Aristotle as a set of technologies for classifying and arranging art according to the proximal social “episteme” (Dreyfus, 2005; Heidegger, 1962; Young, 2001). The modern “aesthetics” for Heidegger – as for Baumgarten – indicates that it is a science of matters distinguishable by the senses, as opposed to matters that are distinguishable by intellective processes, such as mathematical logic (Heidegger, 1977). Aesthetics explores Dasein‘s relation with the beautiful whereas logic and intellection pursue to connect our relation to the truth (Heidegger, 1962). As Heidegger argues: What determines thinking, that is, logic, and what thinking comports itself toward, is the true. Analogously, what determines human feeling comports itself toward the beautiful (Heidegger, 1979). To the extent that aesthetics becomes concerned with logic and deduction – regarding the work itself or, for instance, the artist’s motivation for creating it – the work becomes objectified and fails to impart its world-disclosive significances (Heidegger, 1977). In such reduction, the work itself is mute (Heidegger, 1977) and becomes merely an artifact (Heidegger, 1962).
Lemma X. As in his ontology, Heidegger’s departure from Aristotelian categories of the aesthetic is stark (Dreyfus, 2005). For Heidegger, that quasi-obsession of modern aesthetics with the Aristotelian categorical classification of beauty effects, in a Hegelian sense, an aesthetic obsession with the antithesis of the categorical ideal: in particular, with the vulgar, obscene, and abject (Heidegger, 1977). Consequently, Heidegger argues that aesthetics is a complex of meditations upon art in the abstract in which human emotion – catharsis and “cathaxis” – form the primary aim (Heidegger, 1962). While Heidegger does not take the reifying view that all modern aesthetic philosophies involve precisely and formally the same suppositions, he argues that even with these disagreements, modern aesthetic philosophy occurs within the context of a mutual Cartesian aesthetic strategy (Heidegger, 1962; Young, 2001). As expected, this basic strategy undergirds the classic analysis of modern aesthetics of Schelling, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Kant – even romanticism, argues Heidegger, pursues the investigation of beauty through a reflection of the interior locus of human emotional intellection (Heidegger, 1962) concerning the beautiful – and even the rationalism of Kant and the Idealism of Hegel are incapable of transcending such a view (Heidegger, 1977). The generativity of this eidetic strategy contributes forcefully to the prevalent subject/object dichotomy, principally by forcing Dasein to choose an a-priori interpretive mode for engaging with art-works -a mode for which Dasein is unsuited by temperament due to the disclosivity of the equipmental contexts defined by art in the liminal social practices represented by it (Dreyfus, 2005; Heidegger, 1962). Such division contributes forcefully to the objectification of modern perspective (Heidegger, 1962). Misreading of Heidegger regarding the subject-object relation with artworks is quite prevalent (Dreyfus, 2005). Heidegger does not reject the existence of subject/object relation, but rather shows that Dasein‘s experience with subject/object relationship originates from and assumes a more basic level of ontically and ontologically prior experience – namely in presence and not in intellection (Heidegger, 1979; Young, 2001). Heidegger considers the failure of modern philosophy to dispel cynicism regarding the existence and properties of the external world (the nexus between intellection and presence) a fundamentally aesthetic failure, since such cynicism also provisionally invalidates any proximal experience of beauty as immanent, or, as it is said, readily present (Heidegger, 1962). In contrast, Heidegger emphasizes that the primordial stage of practical engagement between “in-der-welt-sein” (Dasein in the world) and art-works in their pre-intellective encounters with Dasein‘s states be the starting point of any explanation of regular experiences that aim to justify the reality of such experiences (Heidegger, 1962).
Lemma XI. Heidegger’s own understanding of the work of art is accessible only through his radical objectives, which amount, even in his candid expression, to be nothing less than a Nietzschean rescue of art from the aesthetico-idealist complex of modernism (Heidegger, 1977; Heidegger, 1979; Young, 2001). Sweeping Nietzchean claims, such as that art grounds history by allowing truth to emerge form the basis of this rescue (Heidegger, 1971). As in Nietzsche, Heidegger’s “imagos” for the liberation of art is grounded upon the pre-Socratics: namely, the Heraclitan dialectic of the persistent tensions of normative abstract oppositions (i.e. noble/base, worthy/worthless, good/bad and so on) that exclusively create and undergirded the sense of the Homeric self (Heidegger, 1962). Such dialecticism, according to Heidegger, situates cultures (and the Homeric culture) within the disclosive worlds generated by their own primordial, pre-intellective, equipmental, historical modes (Heidegger, 1977). For instance, ancient Greek temple at Paestum once aided in the world-disclosure of Homeric culture by relating artefacts of primordial time with the equipment of God-worship, situating proximal Dasein within a managed instrumentality of meaning, presence, and history (Heidegger, 1962). Heidegger states that the temple itself derived its nature as art because it was the first structure that concurrently gathered and joined about itself the “harmonia” of the lacunic affairs and paths which Homeric culture concerned itself: namely, fortitude and decline, victory and disgrace, disaster and blessing, birth and death – representations not of contrasts which, as a Cartesian analytic would predict, take form from a “cogito” or an eidetic – but rather assume for Dasein in his present state the “lichtung” (clearing of eidetic presuppositions) of presence-at-hand (Heidegger, 1977). The pre-Socratic-era temples employed styles and modes of expressive artistry that were already imbued with cultural relevance; and, moreover, such temples found their forms in the practical usages (in Heidegger: disclosive contexts) for which the entire culture could establish common practices, customs, and meanings (Heidegger, 1962). This, according to Heidegger, was the authentic foundation of modern Western culture; the artistic expressions of which defined more clearly than in recent history the forms and states that artworks should properly and normatively inhabit (Dreyfus, 2005; Wright, 1998).
Lemma XII. The current investigation of the implications of “sorge” in Dasein‘s behavior toward the aesthetic is inherently incomplete; we have, due to the historical mode of favoring Sartre’s works in the English-speaking world, not given complete attention to the role of Sartrean freedom in the construction of the aesthetic. It is hopeful that future research can fill this gap, as Dreyfus (2005) also opines. Further venues for comparison exist: Namely, the extent to which Sartre’s “cogito” fueled later work by Heidegger on the ontology of the aesthetic, or whether both merely drew from the same wellspring of mid-century existentialist themes. Another inquiry concerns the possible reciprocal role of “sorge” in Sartre’s later construction of moral individualism. In the modest length of the current essay, such questions are not possible to address, but provide promising avenues for further study.
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