[analytic-borders] Aesthetics 10: Heidegger
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This summary is based mostly on an article by Simon
Glendinning, who focuses on the later Heidegger's
conception of art as something that can save us
from technology.
Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976) is best known for
his first book, BEING AND TIME, and for his behavior
as a Nazi apologist during the Holocaust. Heidegger
rivaled Sartre as the center of continental philosophy
after World War II. My own view of Heidegger places
him in the tradition of perspectivism, where he reworks
earlier ideas.
In a strange twist, Heidegger's right-wing hatred of
technology, democracy and mass culture have made him
a hero to some on the current left. Among them is
Richard Rorty, who has, oddly, hailed Heidegger as a
fellow pragmatist.
At the center of Heidegger's philosophy is the concept
of _dasein_, which is being in the world -- in terms of
affective relationships with surrounding people and
objects. This concept may or may not be comprehensible,
but it is almost impossible to discuss, "so what in effect
replaces it is peoples' own consciousness of their place
in the world or of what the world is for them" (THE
OXFORD DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 169). In short,
each of us has his or her own perspective or world view.
STAKES
"For Heidegger," Glendinning writes, "what is at stake with
the rise of modern technology is not the growing presence
in our midst of a distinctive and dangerous new kind of
thing" but a new and dangerous way of viewing the world.
We see ourselves as scientific dominators of the natural
world. In the end, as we learn to view everything in
terms of technological measurements, we may see man
himself (male chauvinism seems apt here) as a set
of measurements. That is the real threat.
To counter this, Heidegger found a saving power in art.
For Heidegger, art gives us a perception of world that
counters the world view developed through technology.
I don't know how many different "ways of revealing"
existed for Heidegger, but I see no reason to stop at
two: technology and art.
I'm not going to attempt to use Heidegger's inflated
diction, which I doubtless fail to grasp fully. Instead
I will attempt to put matters into plain language, at
he considerable risk of not doing these matters justice.
CLEARING THE PERSPECTIVE
Heidegger pointed out that art is not a collection of mere
things, unless, perhaps, you are in the moving business.
Then you relate to art as things to be moved from one
site to another.
He asked, What occurs when there is a work of art? "What
is essential to art . . . is, like the essence of modern
technology," that a world appears. What Glendinning means,
I believe, is that art changes our consciousness of
our surroundings, changes our perspectives, changes
our perceptions of the world. Heidegger called this "a
happening of truth," a revealing of beings as such. The
essence of art is a way of revealing.
(Heidegger's claims that art has an essence and that truth
is revealed to us seem to me to be dubious.)
WORKS OF ART
Heidegger's core belief was that interpretations that conceive
of a human as an entity within the world are false. A
human should not be conceived of as a presence in the
world but as a perspective, a point of view. Like some
others I don't find the truth of this claim self-evident. In
fact, I start with the assumption that I am a mammal in
an indifferent world, the view Heidegger was opposing.
The strength of perspectivism (and postmodernism) is
that, if you are a Nazi, well, Fascism is just a perspective,
and all perspectives are equal. The weakness of perspectivism,
going back to Protagoras, hangs on Plato's rebuttal, which
is that perspectivism cannot deny that its own claims are
false when seen from another perspective.
At some point, though, Heidegger becomes, if not convincing,
at least poignant. Apparently he is claiming that
our consciousness creates, in some sense, the world we
have. That is what differentiates us from whales, say,
who in Heidegger's proudly human view, lack the same
sort of consciousness and ability to create worlds. For
humans a work of art sets up a perception of the world,
rather than appearing in the world as a thing. (Or does art
do both? Why not?)
I live with this: the knowledge that someday the world,
as it exists in my consciousness, will end. That is, my
view of the world will end.
THE AUTONOMOUS WORK
A woman makes a water color but "remains
inconsequential . . . like a passageway that destroys
itself in the creative process" (Heidegger). "That is, the
work of the artwork can 'occur' in the radical absence
of the artist as the producer of an object" (Glendinning).
This, as Glendinning notes, seems mysterious and magical.
"How on earth could a work of art, even a great work of
art, by itself set up a world?" But it occurs to me that
perhaps what is meant is mundane. You can look at a
work of art and find your view of the world altered,
even though the artist has left town to celebrate her
aunt's birthday in Patagonia.
THE WORKED WORK
Heidegger's conception "can be brought out by imagining
a scene in which an old man is walking with his old dog.
Both are alive, and thus both lives can naturally come
to an end. Suppose that, on this walk, this happens." The
death of the dog is an event within the world. The end of
the old man is the end of the world in which such events
take place. Or, as Wittgenstein noted, "so too at death the
world does not alter but comes to an end."
Glendinning attempts to find a parallel to art. The craftsman
and the artist (like a dog and man) both create objects,
but what is going on only looks similar. The craftsman
makes an object. The artist makes something with its
own enigmatic productivity and autonomy. But the parallel
with the deaths of the dog and man seems forced and inexact
to me.
Just as death marks the end of a world, art makes the
beginning of a new world. But again the comparison fails.
The opposite of the end of a consciousness isn't art; it's
the beginning of a consciousness in an infant.
Also, whales are conscious, although not verbal, and I
would expect each whale to have its own rudimentary
perspective, which vanishes when the whale's
consciousness ends. The difference Heidegger cites
between the work of a craftsman and an artist seems
to me to be largely a matter of opinion. What makes one
chair an autonomous work of art and another chair a
mundane object to plant your rump on remains unclear.
Or maybe this is better -- whether an object is art
depends on the context. In one context a motorcycle is
a tool used for transportation. In another setting, the
same motorcycle may be an art object with the potential
to change my perspective slightly or, to puff up the
terminology, to create a new world.
Best,
Gary.
To all Patriot Act Email Snoopers:
"Lafayette, we are here."
-- John J. Pershing
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