Mohsen Karami; Atefeh Vakili
Abstract
Abstract:
The relation between art and life has always been a most important problem that philosophers have paid attention to. Martin Heidegger is one of the great philosophers for ...
Read More
Abstract:
The relation between art and life has always been a most important problem that philosophers have paid attention to. Martin Heidegger is one of the great philosophers for whom art has a central role. So, in this study, we explored the relation between art and life in Heidegger’s thought, and by way of philosophical analysis, hermeneutics and discourse analysis, we attempted to find the relation between art and life in Heidegger’s thought. Now, Heidegger elevates art to a way of human salvation and believes that art can help us in the face of our existential problems. And, for him, of course, this salvation can only be achieved by great art so that it can fulfill its responsibilities to human life. The second objective of this study is to discover and enumerate such a relation from the heart of Heidegger's philosophy of art. The art seems to have the following duties towards human life: opening the world, making it holy, understanding how to live, creating a people, freedom, taking it out of everyday life, making ontological differences, and giving birth to a meaningful world out of a meaningless and mysterious context. The third objective we dealt with is how, in Heidegger's view, art could accomplish these tasks and, in a sense, save men. According to him, art can accomplish the tasks by thematizing, repeating, showing the other side of things, providing a passionate experience, paying attention to details, showing the simple and basic lines of the world, and distancing oneself from things. Finally, our fourth objective is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Heidegger's views on the relationship between art and life, and to show that his approach, despite its merits, has ambiguities and problems, including failure to provide a definition of art in its general sense versus great art; elitism in the art world; and the lack of a clear explanation of important concepts such as making the other aspect of beings visible, establishing the sacred, and understanding how to live.
Keywords: Truth, Dwelling, World, Meaning of Life, Being, Beings, Great Art.
Introduction
Paying attention to the relationship between art and life has a long history, and its traces can be found in almost all theories of art from ancient times to the present day. But the exploration of this relationship has increased since the 19th century with the advent of existentialist philosophers, and many questions have been raised about how these two relate. By the diminishing of things in minds and souls that gave value and meaning to human life in the ancient world (such as religions, rituals, and even myths), and by changing the general view of men to the world and to themselves, thinkers more and more sought to find alternative ways of giving meaning to human life, and sought the connection of everything in human life in giving value and meaning to life. That is, they tried to look at everything in human life from the perspective of whether it is directly related to his existential problems or not, and, ultimately, makes his life more meaningful and valuable. As a result, they gradually explored this issue more deeply in art.
It can be said that Heidegger has dealt more deeply than other existentialist philosophers in his philosophical texts with the problem of the relationship between art and life. In Heidegger's thought, the relationship between art and life is closely related to the exploration of the fundamental and important problems of human life. Existence has a complex nature and life has various and unknown dimensions in the heart of this existence. Its fundamental dimensions, such as the truth of existence and death, are aligned with this mysterious nature, and their recognition is difficult and complex. Heidegger believes that human life is existentially tied to problems such as the truth of existence, the sacred, choosing, meaning, death, and God, and that man may, due to the nature of the mind, feels confusion, anxiety, and disappointment. As a human being, human beings have cognitive limitations against fundamental problems such as truth, the existence of God, holiness, etc., and, on the other hand, in order to have an authentic, prosperous, and happy life, they must clarify their relation to these. Therefore, they need a means and a context through which to have a deep understanding of the basic problems and to give them appropriate answers.
According to Heidegger, philosophy has always thought about the "the beings" from the time of Plato to the present day, and has been oblivious to "being" and "existential" problems; That is, in giving meaning to life, relying on the human mind and not considering the world as the main and all-encompassing thing, and paying attention to the existence of things instead of focusing on the horizon in which all these beings are possible have make humans away from the concept of being. Therefore, for Heidegger, as long as the origin and principle of the creation of phenomena are lost, it is not possible to find the right direction, find meaning and answer the basic problems of life. In addition, the paucity of the element of mystery and the non-recognition of the mysterious - which reflects the essence and nature of being and the world - in philosophy has made it difficult to find answers to the problems of human existence. Hence, he proposes another solution called "art", or more precisely "great art", whose nature and relation to life, or more precisely the existential problems of life, is the subject of the present paper.
Methodology
Heidegger does not have an independent treatise or book on the subject, and therefore discovering his view of the relation between art and life requires the use of hermeneutics, philosophical analysis, and discourse analysis.
In addition, to deal with the great philosophers in philosophy, we use the works of commentators to understand and get closer to the content. Therefore, in this article, we use the interpretational works of one of the commentators on Heidegger’s philosophy of art, Julian Young, hoping that through this commentary we will be able to enter the mysterious world of Heidegger's philosophy of art and explore the relation of art to life in his thought.
Julian Young, a philosopher and professor at Wake Forest University, has done important research on Heidegger's philosophy, including: Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism, Heidegger's Later Philosophy, Heidegger: Off the Beaten Track, The Death of God and the Meaning of Life, and Heidegger's philosophy of art. The last book provides an accurate and scholarly description of Heidegger's philosophy of art and, unlike many writings on Heidegger's philosophy of art, does not confine itself to the treatise the origin of the work of art and a few other direct works, and explores all of Heidegger's works. He has dealt at length with all his thought. Accordingly, we have made this book a basis for research into the relationship between art and life in Heidegger's thought, although we have tried not to neglect the other related works.
But it is clear to the reader familiar with Young's recent book that the answer to the problem of the "relationship between art and life in Heidegger's thought" is not the main subject of this book, and Young has dealt with the whole philosophy of art in the book. Therefore, using the analytical and interpretive approaches mentioned above, we will first try to find out exactly what Heidegger's conception of art is, then we will try to discover the tasks that art owes to life, and finally how art will accomplish these tasks.
Findings and Conclusions
As we have seen, for Heidegger, among all the solutions to the problems of human existence, art is the best option above philosophy, because it has two elements of mystery and creativity, which are inherent in the problems of human existence. According to Heidegger, Art also covers and pays attention to our existential problems well. For example, in the opening of the world, he recognizes the important points such as awareness of the world as a whole, its pre-existence, and the importance of the continuity of the world for the birth of meaning; Or in the matter of the sacred, he thinks the restriction and confinement of space for the rebirth of the sacred, the concept of its construction and the inhalation of its ethereal space are important. On the other hand, with his analyzes of the works of Cezanne and Klee, he presents a practical model to us and provides objective models for great art.
In the next step, we saw how art fulfills its tasks in relation to our existential problems. That is, art deals with the subject of existential problems, with repetition and the use of repetitive novelty, by showing the other aspect of beings, by moving on the border of abstraction and realism, by providing a lively experience, by paying attention to details, by showing basic and fundamental lines of the world, and by taking some distance performs these tasks.
In his description, Heidegger is the first philosopher in our time who, on the one hand, places art in such a lofty position and, on the other hand, puts such a heavy burden on art: Art is the way of human salvation in this agony days. But the art is not an art which can be reduced to the aesthetic, but an art which, in its Eastern sense, is an artless art (Starrs 1998; Watts 2011: 230-244) - by meditating and immersing in it, we get out of the control of ordinary subjectivity, open our eyes to the mysteries of life, and discover a more meaningful and valuable world.
However, despite the strengths found in Heidegger's thought on the relationship between art and life, his approach also has ambiguities and problems, including the lack of a definition of art in its general sense versus great art, elitism in the art world, which in a way again distances art from the context of ordinary life and leads to a violation of Heidegger's main purpose, and the lack of a clear explanation of basic concepts such as making the other aspect of beings visible, establishing the sacred, and understanding how to live.
References
Denkerfahrungen 1910-1976 (Frankfurt-on-Main: Klostermann, 1983).
Denken und Kunst in Japan und Heidegger – Gedenkschrift der Stadt Messkirch zum hundertstag Geburtstag Martin Heideggers (Sigmarinen: j. Thorbecke, 1989), pp. 211-15.
Martin Heidegger: Gesamtausga, ed. F. W. von Hermann (Frankfurt-on-Main: Klostermann, 1977 and onwards).
Holderlin and the Essence of Poetry in Existence and Being, ed. W. Brock (London: vision, 1949), pp. 291-315.
Ister Holderlin’s Hymn ‘The Ister’, tr. W. McNeill and j. Davis (Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1996).
Neitzsche, 4 volumes, tr. D. F. Krell (San Francisco: Harper- Collins, 1979-82).
Pathmarks, ed. W. McNeill(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. A. Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, tr. W. Lovitt (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977).
Harries, K. (2009). Art Matters: A Critical Commentary on Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”. Springer.
Starrs, Roy. (1998). An Artless Art: The Zen Aesthetic of Shiga Noya. London and New Yourk: Routledge.
Süner, Ahmet. (2017). A critical evaluation of Heidegger’s criticism of aesthetics in: ‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’ Journal of European Studies, 38.2: 11-26.
Watts, Michael. (2010). The Philosophy of Heidegger. Cambridge.
Young, Julian. (2001). Heidegger's Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Young, Julian. (1395SH). Heidegger's Philosophy of Art. Translated by Amir Maziar. Tehran: Gam-e Now.
* assistant professor of IRIB university, mohsenkarami@iribu.ac.ir
* MA in Soore university, ativ1366@gmail.com
