HEIDEGGER’S UNDERSTANDING OF ART IN THE ESSAY THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK OF ART

Abstract

The paper analyzes Heidegger's understanding of art, presented in the essay The Origin of the Work of Art. The research is divided into two parts: destructive, dedicated to the exposition of Heidegger's understanding of the process of aestheticization and criticism of modern aesthetics, and constructive, which presents a detailed analysis of Heidegger's understanding of art and the work of art. Although in the first part, Heidegger claims that the Hegelian thesis about the end of art has merit, as he finds that aestheticization is a process in which the work of art disappears into experience, in the second part, Heidegger opens up space for its reconsideration and thus introduces the thesis about defiant potential of art and the possibility for expelling representation and metaphysical aesthetics. This is why Heidegger begins a complex analysis of the way of being of the work of art, which is first opened in contrast to the being of thing and the being of equipment. The research reveals that the work of art should be understood within the dialectics of the world and the earth, through the concept of truth as aletheia, and concludes that art is simultaneously the truth's setting-itself-into-work and the setting-of-truth-into-the-work. Heidegger's double definition of art suggests the introduction of a balance between the reflexive and revolutionary understanding of art, between the autonomy of the work and the need for the artist and the audience, and the ontological determinations of throwness and projection. In the end, the examination of the origin of a work of art shows that art itself is a kind of origin from which the truth as unconcealment springs.