Heidegger's Philosophy of Art

by Julian Young

• ISBN13: 9780521616225
• ISBN10: 0521616220
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book, the first comprehensive study in English of Heidegger's philosophy of art, starts in the mid-1930s with Heidegger's discussion of the Greek temple and his Hegelian declaration that a great artwork gathers together an entire culture in affirmative celebration of its foundational 'truth', and that, by this criterion, art in modernity is 'dead'. His subsequent work on H_lderlin, whom he later identified as the decisive influence on his mature philosophy, led him into a passionate engagement with the art of Rilke, C_zanne, Klee and Zen Buddhism, liberating him not only from the overly restrictive conception of art of the mid-1930s but also from the disastrous politics of the period. Drawing on material hitherto unknown in the anglophone world, Young establishes a new account of Heidegger's philosophy of art and shows that his famous essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art' is its beginning, not its end.

Author Biography

Julian Young is Honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Auckland

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
List of abbreviations	xii
Introduction	1	(4)
`The Origin of the Work of Art'	5	(64)
Hegel and the `death of art'	6	(1)
Heidegger's endorsement of Hegel	7	(1)
`Aesthetics' and the death of art	8	(4)
`Aesthetics' and `enlightenment'	12	(2)
Heidegger's rejection of Hegel	14	(1)
The question: what is art?	15	(1)
Expanding the concept of art	16	(3)
Art as the `opening up of world'	19	(2)
What is a `world'?	21	(4)
Ontology and ethics	25	(4)
What is `opening up'?	29	(9)
What is `earth'?	38	(3)
`Earth' in the artwork	41	(5)
Difficulties in the account of `earth' in the artwork	46	(4)
Great art is communal	50	(2)
The artwork creates a people	52	(5)
The artwork preserves a people	57	(3)
Clarity and the priority of poetry	60	(1)
Heidegger's self-criticisms	61	(8)
Holderlin: the early texts	69	(15)
`The Essence of Poetry'	72	(1)
`The absence and arrival of the gods'	73	(3)
Poetry, thought and politics	76	(2)
Not poet but thinker	78	(2)
Graecocentricism	80	(4)
Holderlin: the later texts	84	(36)
The festival	84	(5)
The modern poet's exclusion from `the highest essence of art'	89	(5)
What are poets for in `needy times'? The modern paradigm	94	(2)
The Apollonian and the Dionysian	96	(4)
The epic and the lyric	100	(1)
Is Holderlin a poet for `needy times'?	101	(1)
Poetry and prose	102	(3)
The Ereignis	105	(3)
From the sublime to the holy	108	(3)
From Nikeism to waiting	111	(4)
Knowledge or faith?	115	(5)
Modern art	120	(55)
Anti-metaphysical art	123	(1)
Another `turn'	124	(4)
What is dwelling?	128	(6)
Supernaturalism	134	(6)
Naturalism	140	(3)
Rilke	143	(4)
East Asian art	147	(3)
Cezanne	150	(8)
Klee	158	(4)
Cubism	162	(4)
Abstract art	166	(2)
Music	168	(3)
A philosophy of art?	171	(4)
Index	175