Cologne, 19 July 1996
Erik Champion has been patiently insisting on his question regarding the work of
art. Paul Murphy recounted aspects of the worlding of the Greek artwork, the way
it founds or institutes a world of people and gods.
I'd like to draw attention to a central formulation in 'On the Origin of the
Work of Art' to then put it into relation with what has recently been discussed
concerning getting over/overcoming/twisting metaphysics. The 'formula':
"Art is truth's being set into the work." ("Die Kunst ist das Ins-Werk-Setzen
der Wahrheit.")
The work is a being (entity) created by the artist that comes to stand within
itself in the clearing of truth (Unverborgenheit). What is the truth that is set
into the work? The truth is the unconcealedness of the being of beings. By
putting truth into the work, art helps decide AS what beings appear in the
historical opening of truth. The work comes to stand in the clearing. It is an
entity (being) and thus a standing presence with its limits, its outline that
allows itself to be seen as such, as a de-fined being.
The clearing should not be confused with a so-called 'physical' space: it is the
clearing of being itself in which the AS of beings can be taken in (vernommen)
by human being.
Heidegger's discussion of the artwork is tuned to the first beginning, the Greek
beginning in which the overwhelming experience of the upsurge (Aufgehen) of
beings in the clearing (the experience of physis) compelled them to respond with
their own bringing-forth in art and philosophy. The bringing-forth of art is
techne, which is essentially not a collection of skills but a knowledge of
how-to-do: techne is guided by its view of the idea, the de-fined outline of
what is to be brought into presence. Techne is fore-seeing. The techne that
brought forth Greek artworks was still dedicated to the setting up of the Greek
world as a world of standing presence. Both works and humans come under the sway
of standing-ness (sistence).
But now we 'late moderns' are turning from metaphysics. Can art still be a
setting of the truth into the work? Can it still be guided by techne? We have to
look more closely at the turning and the step back from metaphysics.
The formula for the turning is: the essence of truth turns into the truth of
essencing. What is that supposed to mean? (GA Band 45 Grundfragen goes through
this turning very lucidly over an expanse of many pages.) The essence of truth
is rightness, i.e. the correspondence of the statement with the being to which
it refers. "My shirt is black." is true if, looking at my shirt, it really is
black. But where does this de-finition of the essence of truth come from? Why is
truth experienced as rightness, correctness? The Greeks (Plato and Aristotle)
posit the essence of truth. The essence of truth is truth's whatness, what it
is. The positing of what something is, is seeing it for what it is in the view
it offers of itself.
The view something offers of itself is its idea (from the verb 'idein' = to
see). It can also be called its form (morphe), the word Aristotle uses. The idea
of truth is not to be found in this or that being, but is a standing presence,
whether present or absent, that in-forms all experience of truth. The idea of
truth was experienced and thought by the Greeks in a simple, creative act of
positing its essence without asking what the preconditions were for this
positing.
But here comes the turning and the step back: For, we 'late moderns' can ask:
What is the truth of the idea (essence) of truth? This cannot be rightness,
correspondence. By stepping back it can be seen that the truth in which the idea
of truth is seen is the truth of unconcealedness (aletheia). Aletheia is the
unconcealedness of being within which beings as such come to stand in their
whatness as standing presence. What comes to stand most of all in the
unconcealedness of being are the ideas, the de-fined outlines of the whatness of
beings. These de-fined outlines guide and in-form (put-into-form) all artistic
creation. The aesthetic understanding of art is putting the idea, the form into
the material (hyle), thus in-forming matter to bring a being to stand in
presence.
But is there any further twist to the turning or the step back that brings truth
as unconcealedness itself into view as the opening of being in which beings can
come to stand? This would be, so to speak, the final twist to the turning. There
is one such final twist (cf. e.g. GA45 Section 41 and the Beilage).
For, the time-space clearing of being in which beings come to stand is also the
clearing in which beyng itself conceals itself. Beyng itself does not come to
stand in presence (time-space), but holds onto itself (epoche) in sending the
being of beings (their outline, idea, form) in which they stand.
The final twist or transformation in the essencing of truth is to think truth as
the openness of self-concealment of beyng itself. This is a turning away from
beings as such to thoughtfully become attuned to the openness of
self-concealment.
In the self-concealment of beyng, nothing shows itself, so how can humankind be
affected by it? There cannot be any knowledge of it in the sense of a knowing
that brings forth ideas, for the self-concealment of beyng cannot be seen in its
self-concealment. Nevertheless, there is an attunement of human being to the
self-concealment of beyng in moodedness. Beyng in its self-concealment still
reaches, i.e. affects human being with its (beyng's) moodedness. Human being
becomes enveloped in beyng's epochal (holding-onto-itself) moods.
But where does this leave art and the artwork, post-metaphysically? How can
artworks still be created which come to presence and stand in themselves? Do
artworks now become untrue in this post-metaphysical essencing of truth as the
self-concealment of beyng?
These are very large questions that cannot be answered here. But so much can be
said: For art today, there must be a turning away from the Western-metaphysical
understanding of art as bringing forth a being to stand in presence by
in-forming material. Where does the turning away then turn to? To the moods of
beyng. The artwork cannot cease to be a being, but it can accept its own untruth
by referring away from itself to the essencing of post-metaphysical truth. This
could perhaps be referred to as an artwork's aura: the outline of an artwork
that cannot be de-fined, that is, outline crossing itself out, erasing itself.
In particular, in turning-away from standing presence as the sense of beyng, the
dogma that poetry -- its language drafting a world by calling beings to stand in
presence -- is the primary artform can be broken with. In attuning humankind to
the moods of beyng, it could well be that music takes on the leading role in
current transitional epoch of turning away and stepping back from standingness.
Could it be that another music could put humankind into the mood for another
beginning? Could another music put the truth (unconcealedness) of
self-concealment of beyng into the artwork by not coming to stand? This would
require turning away from the essence of techne: the fore-seeing of the idea.
For such a turn of (the) event, Heidegger's Hoelderlin would become redundant.
He would fall by the wayside. And the virile strains that worry Tom Blancato
would be doused in a softer mood.
But there are still other aspects of the turning away from the understanding of
being as standing presence. Here it is not a matter of
thinking/becoming-attuned-to the unconcealedness of the clearing that allows
beings as such to come to stand, but to question the standing nature of beings
themselves: their coming-to-stand in presence.
For, it does not seem to me that the sense of being has always to be tied in all
history (future Western history) to standing presence. Thus, it has to be asked
whether there are modes of presencing which are not standing, whether there are
dimensions of beyng not committed to standing-ness, i.e. whether there are
granted enclitical dimensions of beyng. These are questions that Heidegger never
asked (although there are hints which he never followed up, say, in
_Introduction to Metaphysics_), but they certainly belong to the thinking of
beyng, which is what we are really on about.
And we, I would suggest, are not just a metaphor in an endless text.
Cheers,
Michael
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