The Fly And The Bottle

Subjectivity and the Limitations of Art

Can the modern individual understand the truth in Aeschylus' Agamemnon as the Greek of that era could? Can I understand the truth of Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie the Mirror as the citizen of a Soviet state? What is the truth in a work of art? Can that truth perish? How much of the art of the "other" in time and space is open to us?

An artwork is said to have no limitations, as it is, in essence, a presentation of the human condition. In this sense, art is said to transcend temporality and cultural divides. However, the tourist site that is the Greek temple or the deserted Hanging Gardens of Babylon or even a written work like the Epic of Gilgamesh presents a distant world[1] that no longer exists. I stand before a painting, a work of art, and it shines at me, but is it shining for me?

In the final sentences of Vladimir Nabokov’s  Lolita, the character of Humbert says quite hauntingly: “I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I share.”[2] Art, therefore, is considered to be an enduring presence, a testament to the past, beyond the ravages of time. It reveals something essential about the human condition (love, mortality, jealousy etc.). We can relate to artwork from disparate places in time and space, because it tells us something about our humanity. What is more, in the absence of immortality, the argument goes, art is redemption.

            Heidegger, on the contrary, consigns art to death. Artworks can perish. Not only can artwork perish, it is open only to a particular historical people. For Heidegger, the artwork in museums and art galleries lacks one of the necessary conditions of an artwork: it lacks a world. The world signifies the domain of human meanings (anything that means from death to love). Artworks in museums, before which we often stand in wide-eyed wonder, are problematic under this definition of art. We gaze at an absolute alterity, imposing our subjective rendition on something which has perished. In this sense, I believe, Heidegger’s conceptualization of art is both temporally and culturally specific.

 I stood once in an art museum in Basel and looked at a mask used in ritual practice in Indonesia – at that point I understood what Heidegger means. I could say what I wished about this mask, about the feelings it evoked in me or about the formal aspects of the work. We are all used to individualizing the work of art. But this, for Heidegger, would not constitute listening to the work, as he demands in the beginning of “Origins”. Far from it, it constitutes an assault, because here we attempt to force our private frameworks on a work which is, in Heidegger’s estimation, dead -- “the world of the work that stands there has perished.[3]” I could, therefore, argue the work resonates with me or my life, which it does, perhaps, at some level. What the work is, its meaning in its specific context, its truth, is dead to me. I can understand it outwardly and offer an art historical account – but I remain an outsider. Historical works of art are silent, venerated as they may be, for they present worlds which no longer exist. For these reasons, truth as alethia does not come to pass; an artwork which passes to history is essentially an artwork that is dead. The same argument could be made regarding artwork from other “cultures” – since I am not, for instance, a Russian person living during the Soviet era, I cannot apprehend the alethia of a Tarkovsky film. Heidegger puts these ideas in the following terms:

...Sophocles’ Antigone in the best critical edition [is]…torn out of [its] native sphere.  However high their quality and power of impression, however good their state of preservation, however certain their interpretation, placing them in a collection has withdrawn them from their own world. But even when we make an effort to cancel or avoid such displacement of works –when, for instance, we visit the temple Paestrum at its own site of the Bamberg cathedral on its own square – the world of the work that stands there has perished.[4]

Works of art “set up a world” – that is to say, they present the meanings of a people.[5] What is missing in these works of art is the world. Heidegger says: “The world is the self-opening openness of the broad paths of the simple and essential decisions in the destiny of a historical people.”[6] In other words, the world presents the limitations and domain of a historical people. Art work reveals the world. When the artwork is taken out of this configuration (“torn out of its native sphere” as quoted above), it has perished. Any attempt to hold it together merely preserves its outwardly character. When the historical people no longer exist or are separated from the work, the work dies. Notice, Heidegger could have used the term “cultural” instead of historical. I think his use of the term “historical” is significant, because it accentuates rootedness in past as it runs into the present and the future (resonating with other Heideggerian terms such as projection and throwness).

            The canonization of literary texts, their inclusion into editions and volumes under headings such as "ancient Greek literature" are telling. The play is translated, dissected, re-contextualized and much is gained. However, much is also lost. The work has been removed from its context and has been transplanted into the schema of scholarly investigation. What Antigone meant for the ancient Greek cannot mean in the same way for the modern individual. "World-withdrawal" has occurred; "world-decay" has come to pass. And, Heidegger says, "it cannot be undone."[7] Even when read with the sincerest of intentions, the work cannot possibly invoke the same sentiments in me as it would for an individual whose gods the work brings to life. The artwork, then, does not belongs to individual’s solipsistic interpretation of the work, but to individuals as embedded in a larger totality, that of the historical people.

            Thus, Heidegger is not concerned with the individualistic apprehension of art from which modern aesthetics begins. Modern subjectivity, grounded in Cartesian thought, inquires after most things from the standpoint of subjectivity. While this might seem to be the best place to begin (where else could one possibly begin?), Heidegger finds this fixation with subjectivity problematic. Why would Heidegger be opposed to a subjective account of artwork? Why instead of addressing the work of art via subjectivity would he reverse the relation? Indeed, Heidegger addresses artwork on the basis of its disclosive function, i.e. on the basis of its power to reveal the Being of beings (alethia). Instead of beginning with the subject, he begins with the work. As for the receiving end of this disclosure, it is not the individual, but the historical people. Perhaps this approach – that of undoing subjectivity – is part of Heidegger’s kehre, under which Dasein (Heidegger’s unique understanding of the subject) is relegated in favor of the disclosive function of the artwork. After all, Heidegger characterizes his turn as a reversal – whereas in Being and Time Heidegger addresses “man in relation to being,” subsequent to his kehre, he addresses “Being and its truth in relation to man”.[8] What would such a reversal mean in relation to “Origins”?

            In order to answer this question, we first need to understand what the kehre entails. We will proceed by deepening our understanding of the quote above. In Being and Time, Heidegger attempts to unravel and destroy binary oppositions perpetuated by eminent philosophers such as Descartes and Kant. The subject was interpreted as a neutral agent, the transcendental ego. For Heidegger, on the contrary, prior to the  philosophical enterprise is our primordial state of Being. Our Being is grounded in what Heidegger terms “understanding” –understanding presents beings qua beings.[9] If we see that this understanding is grounded in language and language differs, then we can make the argument that the understanding of beings differs under different languages. This view, I believe, is central to Heidegger’s orientation towards language – that in order to reveal the truth of beings, we need to turn to our language, because that is where our understanding of beings qua beings is located.      

            In thus marrying our context (our being-in-the-world, which includes language) to philosophy, Heidegger undermines the argument forwarded by the likes of Descartes that an amorphous ego, free of prejudice, and capable of making absolute judgments can exist. The place of the subject as the most obvious starting point, thus becomes more questionable – there is nothing given about the subject’s primacy. Indeed, Descartes’ pursuit for the certainty of the self bespeaks the orientation of his philosophy. “Mathematical knowledge,” Heidegger says, “is regarded by Descartes as the one manner of apprehending entities which can always give assurance that their Being has been securely grasped.”[10] In other words, Descartes views mathematics as the highest form of epistemological certainty, the most secure way towards knowledge. Under this approach, “the timelessness of mathematical propositions becomes a basic determination of truth.”[11] That is to say, for something to be considered true it must be ascertainable and supratemporal much like a mathematical axiom. In a sense, then, the self takes up the form of a mathematical axiom as well, not only absolutely certain, but also similarly timeless and neutral. For Heidegger, on the contrary, the self exists only in tandem with the world. This feature of his philosophy becomes more pronounced in his later work, where subjectivity is submerged, being negotiated on the basis of the disclosure of Being.

         In Being and Time, Heidegger says: “here it is not a matter of perceptually tracking down and inspecting a point called the ‘Self,’ but rather one of seizing upon the full disclosedness of Being-in-the-world throughout all the constitutive items which are essential to it, and doing so with understanding.”[12] In other words, a self, according to Heidegger, is not a point of detachment, a floating consciousness, but a seizing upon the wholeness of Being through understanding. Heidegger’s account of the subject as Dasein defies and opposes the construction of the subject as an isolated ego.

         The latter is made more evident, in Heidegger’s later philosophy, in works such as “Origins” in which the subject as Dasein is presented via the disclosure of beings. Thus, we do not only better understand Heidegger’s reasoning for starting with the artwork (its most obvious feature, i.e. thingliness), but also why Heidegger continues to suppress the individual’s place as paramount in the reception of artwork. The individual is enmeshed in its historical existence and cannot make any claim that is dispassionate and rootless. This is, indeed, what Heidegger expresses in “Origins” – there is no claim for the individual which is not historically grounded. Even the experience of artwork -- which we consider to be fundamentally individualistic -- centers on the concept of historical existence. Truth, as revelation of beings, is, then, also contingent on our historical existence. We asked in class how truth can happen – and this is our answer. Truth is not something out there, but changeable, on the basis of historical circumstance. Of course, it is important to keep in mind that Heidegger is not necessarily speaking of scientific truth or mathematical truth, but existential truth. That Heidegger is “inimical to rationality, science, logic, and mathematic” is a prejudiced account perpetuated by his opponents.                             

            Thus, Heidegger’s reasons for insisting on the work of art as being both temporally and culturally specific are deeply rooted within his general philosophy. After re-reading these passages from Heidegger’s “Origins”, I am somewhat distraught. The work of art does not shine for me, after all.  Instead, I look at it arduously, but it has withdrawn; I am closed forever to its alethia. Yet I wonder if Heidegger is right, if there is only one interpretation of how artwork works. Indeed, art could reveal the truth to a historical people, but does that have to be the only level at which artwork operates? Could one not argue that Heidegger is imposing metaphysical constraints on the work of art? Is Heidegger really letting the artwork speak or, in the midst of a politically charged period, attributing the significance of a work of art to its historical people. Even if Heidegger is correct, how would he explain the trembling upon looking at a Rothko painting? People claim to have religious experiences while looking at artwork, even if it proceeds from a different historical people. How would Heidegger account for that?

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[1] Heidegger employs the term "world" in a more specific sense. I will soon present his conception of world.

[2] Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, Lolita (New York: Vintage, 1997)

[3] Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings (London: Routledge, 2008),106.

[4] Ibid., 105-106.

[5] Ibid., 108.

[6]  Ibid., 111.

[7] Ibid., 106.

[8] Barash, Jeffrey Andrew. Martin Heidegger and the Problem of Historical Meaning. New York: Fordham UP, 2003. 192.

[9] Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell Publ., 2007. 182

[10] Ibid., 128.

[11] Brian Elliott, Phenomenology and Imagination in Husserl and Heidegger (London: Routledge, 2005) 96.

[12] Heidegger, Being and Time, 187.

[13] Käufer, Stephan. "Michael Roubach - Being and Number in Heidegger's Thought." Philosophical Reviews - University of Notre Dame. 10 Mar. 2010. Web. 01 Oct. 2010. .