Mansbach, Abraham - Heidegger On Art

OVERCOMING ANTHROPOCENTRISM: HEIDEGGER ON
THE HEROIC ROLE OF THE WORKS OF ART

Abraham Mansbach
Abstract
In this paper I argue that although Heideggers Being and Time
and The Origin of the Work of Art, seem to deal with different
topics, there is continuity between these two texts. In the latter
Heidegger was trying to solve a central problem that arose in the
former: how to account for authentic existence and at the same
time overcome the anthropocentrism of traditional philosophy.
In Being and Time Heidegger tries to overcome traditional
philosophy, by redefining human existence in non-Cartesian
terms. Yet, his treatment of the problem of the Self preserves one
of the main tenets of that tradition: its anthropocentrism. This
anthropocentrism is implicit in Dasein and further reinforced by
the notion of the hero as the paradigm and channel of authentic
existence.
In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger solves that prob-
lem. Placing man at the periphery and the work of art at the
centre of his endeavours, gives works of art a special status similar
only to that of heroes. Works of art open up new horizons for
generations to come by drawing in advance the paths for authen-
tic behaviour.
This shift is more than merely methodological. Heidegger over-
comes not only the anthropocentrism of his previous analysis but
also the instrumentality that derived from that anthropocentrism,
thus revealing the essence of things.
One of the problems in analysing Heideggers philosophy is the
absence of a unified picture. The variety of topics he treats and
the variety of perspectives of his analyses give the impression
that some of his writings are unrelated to others. This impres-
sion is especially strong when we compare Heideggers seminal
work Being and Time with his post-1930 writings. The explana-
tion generally given is that Heideggers thought took a turn
(Khere) at this time which divided his philosophy in two main
periods.
One example of the discontinuity is the text The Origin of the
Work of Art, which was part of a series of lectures on art and the
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Ratio (new series) X 2 September 1997 00340006
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work of art that Heidegger gave in 1935 and 1936.
1
There is no
evidence that Heidegger dealt with these questions before. It is
thus reasonable to argue that he was trying to expand the range
of his thinking by exploring a new field, namely aesthetics.
Though this explanation is accurate it is also partial. In this paper
I will show that there is continuity between Being and Time and
The Origin of the Work of Art. In the latter Heidegger was
trying to solve a central problem that arose in the former: how to
account for authentic existence and at the same time overcome
the anthropocentrism of traditional philosophy.
The scope of this paper does not allow us to ponder the effect
of this continuity on the question of the turn. Nevertheless, our
suggestion is that the view that Heidegger made a radical change
at some point in the 1930s should be tempered.
In order to see how the question of anthropocentrism, a
residue of Cartesianism, remains unsolved, let us take a brief look
at Heideggers strategy to solve the problem of authentic exis-
tence.
A major problem in Being and Time is that of the Self. In that
work, Heidegger abandons the Cartesian substantial subject and
deals with the problem of Being by analysing Dasein. The term
Dasein refers to the human structure to which the inquiry on
Being in general that is, the being of all entities including
Dasein itself is essential. Dasein is what Heidegger terms the
clearing (lichtung, lumen naturalis): the place of ontological clari-
fication where Being is revealed. But if Heideggers aim is, among
other things, to account for entities in the world, the question of
the individual person, the Self, must also be solved. Taking as the
point of departure the general structure of human existence,
Heideggers phenomenological analysis must account for the way
the individual as such is constituted.
Heidegger wrestles with this query throughout Being and Time,
proposing the structure of mineness (Jemeinigkeit) as a means to
158 ABRAHAM MANSBACH
1
The first lecture was given on November 13, 1935, in Kunstwissenschaftlichen
Gesellschaft zu Freiburg im Breisgau. The second lecture, based on the first, was given in
January 1936, at the University of Zurich, under the title Vom Ursprung des
Kunstwerkes. A third elaboration on the topic, based on a series of three lectures given
at the Freie Deutsche Hochstif in Frankfurt am Main, in November and December 1936, was
published for the first time in 1945 under the title Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes.
Heidegger added a postscript in 1956.
This paper is based on Alfred Hofstadter's translation of Der Ursprung des
Kunstwerkes,' which appeared as The Origin of the Work of Art,' in Poetry Language and
Thought, (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), pp. 1587.
resolve it. Mineness is that existential structure which makes it
possible for Dasein to question and to elucidate its own being.
This elucidation reveals two modes of existence which constitute
the Self: authentic and inauthentic. These are the confines of
human existence along which the Self is shaped. Inauthenticity is
due to the fact that Dasein is thrown into a world in which things,
social norms and values, and institutions were already produced
by other human beings in the course of history. That is, the world
is already invested with meaning which originated in the activities
and interpretations of Others. At the same time, the world is part
of Dasein, even though it did not acquire its meaning through
the activities of the individual, and Dasein obtains its meaning
from those things which already have meaning. It adopts and
projects onto the future a present which is not its own. Its exis-
tence is thus inauthentic. The inauthentic Self is the they (das
Man).
Heidegger regards the authentic mode of existence as possible
only after familiarity the meaning of the everyday world
collapses and authentic selfhood is laid bare. In the authentic
mode, human existence both gives meaning to itself from within
itself and makes possible the disclosure of Being, which together
allow man to fulfil his existential purpose of serving as the place
where Being is manifested.
There are three moments in which the possibility of authentic
existence is disclosed but not actually realized. These are facing
death, anxiety, and the call of conscience. In these moments
Dasein is transparent to itself. Yet, while these provide the basis
for authenticity, they are insufficient to unravel Dasein from its
inauthentic mode.
When the human being discovers his own mortality, the world
which has acquired meaning originating in Others is eclipsed,
and death appears as ones own, with no possibility of being
usurped by Others. The realization that there is something that
can be only ones own allows Dasein to focus on itself as an indi-
vidual and to realize that absorption into Others is not inevitable.
Anxiety is a state-of-mind (Befindlichkeit) which does not origi-
nate in any specific thing, and thus reveals entities within the
world to be meaningless. As a result, the world itself is perceived
as completely lacking in significance: It collapses into itself. The
possibility of self-understanding in terms of the world collapses as
well, and a feeling of uncanniness (unheimlichkeit) seizes Dasein.
Anxiety thus brings Dasein face to face with itself, the world, and
OVERCOMING ANTHROPOCENTRISM 159
things as they are that is, not independent realities but mean-
ingful insofar as they are endowed with meaning by human exis-
tence.
Yet, though this human endowed meaning constitutes the
basis for authenticity, the possibility of authentic existence is
undermined by what Heidegger says is the dominance of the
public way in which things have been interpreted. This, accord-
ing to Heidegger, has already been decisive even for the possi-
bility of having a mood . . . The they prescribes ones
state-of-mind, and determines what and how one sees.
2
The
mood of anxiety, then, and the resulting lack of meaning are thus
in some sense determined by the inauthentic they. Thus it follows
that authenticity is only a modification but not a total oblitera-
tion of inauthenticity.
3
This modification is made possible by conscience. Heidegger
treats conscience as a kind of call by the anxious Self out of its
feelings of uncanniness. Absorbed in the they and taking its possi-
bilities from the inauthentic mode, Dasein listens to others and
fails to hear its own Self. The call of conscience breaks into this
inauthentic idle talk (Gerede) and, in the process, the inauthentic
they-Self is modified . . . so that it becomes authentic Being-
ones-Self.
4
But the problem of the inauthentic source of authenticity is
not resolved by the call of conscience. Heidegger does not say
that the call of conscience comes from the authentic Self; he is
ambiguous and leaves the matter cloaked in mystery, telling us
that the call comes from me and yet from beyond me.
5
The impossibility of deriving authentic existence from the
individual is not only due to the unidentifiable source of the call
of conscience. Heidegger regards Dasein as being constantly with
others, Dasein is Mitsein. Thus, he proposes that the only way for
2
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquirre and Edward
Robinson, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), p. 213.
3
Martin Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, translated by Albert Hofstadter,
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 171. See also Heidegger, Being and
Time, p. 168.
4
Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 313.
5
Ibid. This interpretation of authenticity was exposed, along different lines, in
Charles. B. Guignon, Heideggers Authenticity' Revised,' Review of Metaphysics, 38 (1984)
pp. 321339; Jay A. Ciaffa, Towards an Understanding of Heideggers conception of the
Inter-relation between Authentic and Inauthentic Existence,' Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology, 18 (1987), pp. 4959; and Abraham Mansbach, Heidegger on the Self,' in
Iyyun, The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, 40 (1991), pp. 65-91.
Dasein to obtain authentic existence is within a group of individ-
uals devoted to the same matter. Dasein must shape its world and
make it its own together with the community. Heidegger terms
the mode of behaviour in which the Self may attain authentic
existence by acting in concert with its environment and Others
resoluteness (Entschlossenheit). Moreover, since Dasein is a tempo-
ral entity and hence historical, authentic existence must be not
only communal but also historical.
To achieve authentic existence Dasein must consider both its
own past and the past of the entire generation -- its heritage. To
be authentic it must choose and appropriate a common heritage
within a communal framework. But here, too, the possibility of
authentic existence is called into question. Heidegger tells us that
even resolutions remain dependent upon the they and its
world,
6
thus leaving a trace of inauthenticity in every human act
and choice, including the decision made in selecting a past.
Heideggers concept of the hero, even though he mentions it
only twice in Being and Time, comes to tackle this impasse.
7
As
Heidegger depicts him, the hero is the only being who may
perform some authentic acts. He is the only one for whom
authenticity is not a mere possibility, but an actual mode of exis-
tence. From this, one may extrapolate that choosing and follow-
ing a hero somehow do not entail the inauthenticity that is
inherent in every other choice and act. To be authentic, to act
resolutely, and to loyally follow in the footsteps of that which can
be repeated, Heidegger says, Dasein may choose its hero.
8
The heroic action may be understood as a cultural-philosoph-
ical act which reveals Being, and the heros whole existence as
identified with that revelation. The heros deeds thus open paths
that become the destiny of a historical people. In choosing a hero
Dasein chooses a role from among those which come down to it
through tradition and history, makes an authentic past its own,
and, with the community, projects that past onto the future.
Yet though the concept of hero solves the problem of authen-
tic existence, it raises doubts as to whether Heidegger succeeds in
overcoming the shortcomings of traditional philosophy, which
was one of his major motivations. As is well known, the focus on
the meaning of Being in Being and Time is directed towards that
6
7
The term hero' (Held) appears in Being and Time, on pages 422 and 437.
8
end. Heidegger argues that this question has been forgotten in
traditional philosophy, with a resulting distortion of the ontolog-
ical picture. In positing Dasein as the starting point, Heidegger
aims to provide a new and firm foundation for ontology. This is a
unique foundation in the history of Western philosophy, for it
contains no presuppositions at all about man and reality other
than the possibility of ontology itself: the possibility of raising the
question of Being. Heidegger thus erects a barrier between his
fundamental ontology and the Cartesian-Kantian tradition,
which posits as its starting point a subject with characteristics and
boundaries.
Yet although Heidegger overcomes substantialism by redefin-
ing human existence in non-Cartesian terms, his treatment of the
problem of the Self preserves one of the main tenets of that tradi-
tion: its anthropocentrism.
In positing Dasein as the starting point of his fundamental
ontology, Heidegger attempts to depart from the traditional
anthropocentric philosophical view. He describes Daseins basic
attitude as that of questioning, thus it does not set up the world
as does the cogito. Nonetheless, Heidegger does not entirely
escape anthropocentrism, for it is through human existence in
general and authentic existence in particular that Being is
revealed. The questioning reveals that Dasein has an under-
standing of Being, and, as a result, that human actions are projec-
tions onto the world of this understanding; these actions give
meaning to the world. In trying to come to grips with selfhood,
Heidegger analyzes human and non-human entities so as to show
how man is reflected in entities which he encounters in the
world. Anthropocentrism is further reinforced by the notion of
the hero as the paradigm and channel of authentic existence.
The lecture The Origin of the Work of Art comes to solve this
problem. Here Heidegger invites us to go to the actual work and
ask the work what and how it is.
9
He calls on us to ask the ques-
tion of truth with a view to the work [of art].
10
Human existence
is no longer the centre of the analysis, and no longer serves as the
conduit of meaning. The focus is shifted to art and its product,
the work of art.
Using the work of art as a prism for his phenomenological
analysis, Heidegger accords it a special status which sets it apart
9
Heidegger, Poetry, Language and Thought, p. 18.
10
from the entities in Being and Time. Heidegger had defined these
entities as present-at-hand (vorhanden) and ready-to-hand (zuhan-
den). The work of art is neither, but rather an entity through
which the truth of beings is disclosed. It has a privileged relation
to Being, similar only to that accorded to Dasein.
Like Dasein, the work of art generates truth by constituting the
world, thereby permitting entities, including human beings, to
be part of the world. Dasein shapes and structures the world
through its constant involvement with other entities in a complex
web of relationships. The work of art gives meaning to the space
in which it appears and thereby creates a place where all entities
are brought forth.
Works of art have a thingly nature, while Dasein is existential.
In placing man on the periphery and the work of art at the centre
of his endeavours, Heidegger thus did more than make a merely
methodological shift. He overcame not only the anthropocen-
trism of his previous analysis but also the instrumentality that
derived from that anthropocentrism.
Consistent with his rejection of the representational world view
and adherence to the aletheiac conception of truth, Heidegger
denies that the capacity of the work of art to disclose truth derives
from its mimetic nature. He holds rather that the connection
between the work of art and truth lies in the formers being the
reproduction of the things general essence.
11
The problem with
Dasein based analysis is that it cannot fully reveal the essence of
things, that is, the thingness of beings. Dasein encounters entities
in the world through use, and thus reveals them either as beings
that are ready-to-hand, when useful for some purpose, or present-
at-hand, when they become un-ready-to-hand and cease to be
useful for Daseins purposeful activity. In other words, when the
lens is the structure of human existence, beings reveal only their
instrumentality.
Analysis based on the work of art allows the thingness of
beings to be brought to light. The revelation of thinghood is
made possible by the nature of the relationships between the
artist and his creation and between the work of art and the being
reproduced through it. The relation between the artist and his
creation is not instrumental. Works of art, especially great ones,
stand by themselves, unrelated to other entities or even to the
artist who created them. The only aspect of the artists intention
11
preserved in the work of art is its having been created to stand on
its own.
Standing by themselves, works of art have a unique relation to
what is reproduced through them. Taking Van Goghs painting of
a pair of peasant shoes as an example, Heidegger tells us that it
is the disclosure of what the equipment, the pair of peasant
shoes, is in truth.
12
The relation between the painting and the
pair of shoes allows us to see the latter within its environment.
The painting brings its own world into the open, revealing the
peasant, the field-path, the dampness and richness of the soil,
13
and, most importantly, the thingly character of the thing: the
earth which vibrates in the shoes. More will be said shortly of
the role of earth. Here what is important to emphasize is that
great works of art thus make the world, and this is the source of
their power to reveal truth.
Another important function of art lies in its historical dimen-
sion. Heidegger illustrates this historicity with the example of a
Greek temple:
It is the temple-work that first fits together and at the same
time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and rela-
tions in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory
and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of
destiny for human being. The all-governing expanse of this
open relational context is the world of this historical people.
14
The temple opens up a world both for individuals and for the
entire community: both are nourished by the history it evokes, by
the heritage it transmits. But the temple is only a particularly
clear example of the way in which works of art enable people to
live a common present shaped by an acknowledged past and
projected future. This is a major function of all works of art.
Furthermore, in addition to constituting the world, the work
of art also sets forth earth. Earth and the world are the two
essential features in the work-being of the work [of art].
15
These
two features make the revelation of thinghood possible. The
addition of earth to Heideggers philosophical menu is more
than a matter of terminology, but rather points to an important
12
13
14
Heidegger, Poetry, Language and Thought, pp. 4142.
15
development in Heideggers thought. Earth differs from world in
a vital way. While the world consists of things that have meaning,
earth consists of the totality of things that lack meaning and the
vague aspects of entities which are part of the world of Dasein but
cannot be fathomed. Among the latter are the colours of the
painting, which are impenetrable in the form of colour as such
but comprehensible in their embodiment in the painting, and
the stones of the temple, whose thingness similarly becomes
comprehensible only in the work of art.
In contrast to the instrumentalities of anthropocentric analy-
sis, earth is essentially irrational and incomprehensible.
According to Heidegger, it retreats when we want to give it form;
it withdraws when we attempt to appropriate it. Earth shatters
every attempt to break into it; it is essentially self-secluding
(Sichverschliessende).
16
While the world consists of the familiar,
earth represents otherness. Earth represents the limitations of
human existence, the difficulty and indeed the impossibility of
making intelligible all the aspects of entities: There is much in
being that man cannot master. There is but little that comes to be
known. What is known remains inexact, what is mastered inse-
cure.
17
Analysis focused on Dasein ignores earth, since it treats entities
as equipment and emphasizes their instrumental purposes. In
that instrumentality, the material earth disappears into useful-
ness. In the production and use of a tool, material is secondary to
design. We see a hammer as a tool, and not as a wooden handle
with an iron head.
Being set forth by a work of art does not make earth intelligi-
ble in and of itself. For instance, while it is possible to quantify the
heaviness of the stone, still, this precise determination of the
stone remains a number, but the weights burden has escaped
us.
18
To be set forth through art means to be laid bare as unin-
telligible.
At the same time, Heidegger maintains that the work of art
opens up a world but does not cause the material to disappear;
it rather causes it to come forth for the very first time and to
come into the Open.
19
Material is used here in a broad sense,
16
17
18
19
covering the paint of Van Goghs painting, the sounds of
Beethovens Eroica, the words of Sophocles Oedipus, and the
stones in a work of architecture. The work of art manifests the
thingness of entities by revealing their earthly aspects. It is in
these great works of art that the rock comes to be rock, colours
come to glow, tones to sing and words to speak.
20
And, in this
sense, the artist uses colours, stones, voices and sounds, but they
do not disappear (as they do in instruments), but are preserved
in the work of art.
Besides disclosing the line between the rational and the irra-
tional, works of art are free of residual inauthenticity. This, for
Heidegger, is the feature that makes them unique. It is also the
feature that makes them very much like heroes.
In analysing the Self in Being and Time, Heidegger reinterprets
the traditional meaning of reflection. The traditional view holds
that the ego or Self is known through reflection. Heidegger
claims, however, that reflection is not to be understand as intro-
spection, as the ego bent around backward and staring at itself.
Rather the ego show(s) itself in a reflection from something.
21
In reflection, we discover ourselves in things,
22
namely in things
that have acquired meaning through our acts. By reflection,
Dasein gets its ontological understanding of itself . . . from those
entities which it itself is not but which it encounters within the
world.
23
Works of art, like other objects, are sources of reflection. But
though Heidegger tells us that, like these other objects, the
Greek temple gives to things their look and to humans their
outlook on themselves,
24
and in this sense has a thingly charac-
ter, the work of art also functions like a hero. The disclosure
generated by the work of art is unique. The work of art acts like
anxiety except in that it is entirely authentic. Anxiety brings
Dasein back from its absorption in Others. It causes everyday
familiarity to collapse and Dasein to fail to understand itself and
the world as interpreted by the anonymous they. It makes it
clear that what we are anxious about is not a thing, but does not
have the character of any being at all and, in fact, is nothing.
Just as anxiety discloses the nothingness behind all phenomena
20
Ibid.
21
Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, p. 159.
22
Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, p. 161.
23
24
and thereby gives new meaning to phenomena, so too does the
work of art. When placed in a designated setting -- or erected, as
in the case of the Greek temple -- it radiates a light, opening up
a clearing which gives new meaning to its surroundings:
Thought of in reference to what is, to beings, this clearing is in
a greater degree than are beings. This open centre is therefore
not surrounded by what is; rather, the lighting centre itself
encircles all that is, like the Nothing that we scarcely know.
25
Until they are integrated into the new world constituted by the work
of art, beings lose their meaning and slide into nothingness. The
clearing which the work of art creates makes authentic existence
possible. For it discloses the nature of all entities and thus grants
and guarantees to us humans a passage to those beings that we
ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves are.
26
Works of art counter inauthenticity. For in containing the
opposition between earth and world, each work of art opens up
a world which is the clearing of the paths of the essential guid-
ing directions with which all decision complies.
27
Daseins choice
can be guided by the paths cleared by works of art, just as it can
be guided by adopting the heros past as its own.
Great works of art are analogous to heroes in placing the
newly-generated world within the historical perspective of a
nation giving birth to history: Wherever art happens . . . a thrust
enters history, history either begins or starts again.
28
By giving
historical significance to their environment, they provide Dasein
with a heritage, a past that can be appropriated to shape an
authentic future, making authentic existence possible.
The work of art, like the hero, acts historically in a dual
manner: it inaugurates history and it also endures throughout
history for generations to come. The world generated by the
work of art is not absorbed and exhausted within one generation;
it is not revealed once for all time. The earth within the work of
art challenges each successive generation anew to realize,
preserve and interpret its inexhaustible meaning.
The work of art determines in advance the future that coming
generations must appropriate and preserve. In the work of art,
says Heidegger, truth is thrown toward the coming preservers,
25
26
Ibid.
27
28
that is, toward an historical group of men.
29
This group consists
not of the entire community, but of the preservers who appreciate
the historical and artistic value of the work of art and the truth it
generates. They are the interpreters and readers of the great
works of art, not necessarily academics or experts. These
preservers mediate the relationship between the community and
the work of art. It is not enough that a work of art is created. It
must function as a projected truth which engenders new concepts
with historical meaning for future generations. The role of the
preservers is similar to that of the artists, for what is created
cannot itself come into being without those who preserve it.
30
The work of art discloses Being and enables authentic self-
hood. This happens when we remove ourselves from our
commonplace routine and move into what is disclosed by the
work, so as to bring our own nature itself to take a stand in the
truth of what it is.
31
Like the heroes in Being and Time, works of
art open up new horizons for generations to come by drawing in
advance the paths of authentic action. Through art, history
becomes the transporting of a people into its appointed task as
entrance into that peoples endowment.
32
Any attempt to draw narrow political conclusions from
Heideggers short discussion of heroes would be mistaken.
Heideggers concept of history, as it evolves from our examina-
tion, would fall under what Nietzsche calls monumental history.
Heidegger regards history as a chain of human creations, each
one arising as a monument and representing a new era. Each
monument opens up a new perspective from which to look at
things, human beings, and history, and thereby throws new light
on the past and confers new meaning on the future. Unlike
Nietzsche, however, Heidegger does not think of history as serv-
ing life and an unhistorical power, but rather as disclosing Being.
His concept of the hero is not romanticism in a new garb. It does
not point to the man behind the creation, but to the creation
itself, which makes the disclosure possible.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Ber-Sheva, Israel
29
30
31
32

Mansbach, Abraham - Heidegger On Art

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OVERCOMING ANTHROPOCENTRISM: HEIDEGGER ON

THE HEROIC ROLE OF THE WORKS OF ART

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