Beyond Kant's and Hegel's Aesthetics: Heidegger's Conception of Art as Unconcealment

Abstract

It goes without saying that the humanities in general, and art and literature departments in particular are often the likely scapegoats in any reform which seeks to cut down expenses or revisit the status of university departments in times of hardship.¹ For business-minded reformers, art and literature are either non-objective and non-practical fields of knowledge or at best they are intellectual luxury that is meant merely to satisfy people's aesthetic sensibilities. Written more than eight decades ago, Martin Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art”, is even more relevant to us today since it is one of the few original attempts that question our understanding of the essence and role of art in our life. A true understanding of the nature of art, argues Heidegger, can only be achieved once two metaphysical conceptions about art are overcome: aestheticizing art, a tendency which he ascribes to Kant; and losing faith in its ability to express truth in our modern times, a view for which he blames Hegel. In this essay, I examine Heidegger's deconstruction of Kant's aesthetics and Hegel's thesis of the death of art. In the process, I explore Heidegger's conception of the ontological and historical function of art drawing on his essay "The Origin of the Work of Art,” cross-referring simultaneously to his essays : "On the Essence of Truth” and "the Age of the World Picture.”