PHILOSOPHY OF ART

Discussion about aesthetics

We can guess that there is much more than a mere coquetry of vocabulary in the dispute around a word (aesthetic), depending on whether we are legitimate or refuse the very idea of aesthetic philosophy. In the subsequent postface to the conference on The Origin of the Work of Art, which he delivered in 1935, and which he resumed in 1936, Heidegger * returns to this debate: « Since we have explicitly Art and artists, this consideration took the name of Aesthetics.
 Aesthetics takes the work of art as an object, namely, as the object of aisthesis, of sensible apprehension in the broad sense of the word. Today we call this apprehension: lived experience. The way art is experienced by man is supposed to enlighten us on its essence. Experience is the authoritative principle not only for artistic enjoyment but also for creation. Everything is lived experience. « . An allusion to the antipositivist hermeneutics of Dilthey, according to which the interpretation of historical phenomena belonging to the world of the mind requires an understanding of the effects of meaning (as opposed to the explanation of the phenomena of nature).
 What Heidegger refuses here in « aesthetics » is his subjective orientation, which leads him to measure the value of the work of art by the yardstick of sensation or feeling; The greatness of the work comes, on the contrary, according to Heidegger, that it reveals the truth of the being and makes appear the Being from which it comes. From this truth Dasein, that is to say, man, is not the measure, as is the case with sensation; On the contrary, it must be said that he is subjected to it, and this by the experience of anguish and anxiety. We should not be surprised, therefore, if Heidegger quotes Hegel-the first critic of the aesthetic orientation of the philosophy of art-in the same postface as a sign that art is no longer for us What it was in the days of its greatness (« In all its relations, and as far as its supreme destination is concerned, art is and remains for us something past »), when it was not lowered to The only criterion of « aesthetic » enjoyment: « For us art is no longer the supreme mode in which truth procures its existence. According to Heidegger, the word « aesthetics » is the symptom of this decline.**

*Martin Heidegger, Born 26 September 1889 in Messkirch and died on 26 May 1976 in Freiburg im Breisgau, is a German philosopher.
Heidegger is considered one of the most prominent philosophers of the twentieth century: his approach has influenced phenomenology and all contemporary European philosophy. It has had an impact far beyond philosophy and, for example, on architectural theory, literary criticism, theology and cognitive sciences.  [wikipedia.org]

Source: Jacques Darriulat, « From the Idea of Beauty to Aesthetics ».
To read more in French, contact: jdarriulat.net