The Origin of the Work of Art: Hearing the Title properly

It is very easy to let oneself be misled as to what Heidegger's sensationally received lecture Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, is really about. One would think its about art. Certainly it is not a lecture in art history and probably more than one concerning the appreciation of art, but it would seem safe to say its a philosophical lecture about art, a lecture about the meaning of art.

Its not.

One path that leads towards understanding why this is so begins by listening carefully to something which Heidegger as a matter of routine in all of his self-interpretations stresses the ambiguity of, namely, the name of the lecture, the title. The title seems to be addressing artwork, but artwork precisely in a certain respect, namely with respect to its origin. This appearance is initially inevitable. However, there is another way to hear it, and one of the goals of the essay is to show how this alternative way is, surprisingly, the more appropriate of the two. According to this other way, what should be emphasized in the title is not the artwork, thought with respect to its origin, but rather the reverse. That this is so is indicated in the opening sentences of the lecture, which may be understood as a preparation for the destruktion of what the audience is inclined to have heard in the freshly announced title:

Origin means here that from which and through which a thing is what it is and how it is. That which something is, as it is, we call its essence. The origin of something is the source of its essence. 

The lecture is an attempt to show how we can think of origin more properly than all of the history of Western thought has yet been able to by way of a seemingly strange move: by thinking of origin as inherent to the artwork. In the title "The Origin of the Work of Art" the word "Origin" must eventually be heard and understood as a property of art. The artwork does not have its home in its origin; rather, the very idea of an origin has its forgotten home in the artwork. This is why, in the quote above which begins the whole lecture, Heidegger immediately defines ---that is to say, discloses the essence of---the origin. But his definition is peculiar insofar as it implies its own failure; it tells us that the essence of the origin, that is, what an origin is really supposed to be, is to be nothing other than the source of a thing's essence.  But the essence is "what something is, as it is".  Therefore the origin must precede anything "as it is". Of the essence of origin, then, two things may be inferred:

1.) The essence of the origin precedes itself. The origin is, essentially,  pre-essential.

2.) As pre-essential, the essence of the origin lies in a domain in which a thing can be disclosed in such a way that it is not disclosed in the manner of thinking, namely,  in the manner of disclosing "what something is, as it is".  

 What domain is this? That of the artwork. "Artwork" would then name that which belongs to a domain ahead of and prior to any thinking, a domain which the thinking of the present age of technology can only anticipate --and yet must anticipate if it is to still think at all. The reason why the lecture emerges  as a place of repose along Heidegger's denkweg  then, is not because Heidegger has turned to art in the fight against nihilism, but because in pursuing what the origin originally means, Heidegger comes to find that its meaning is not in thought but in art. One might say that origin properly means in the artwork, and thinking has been lead to give thought to this unthought meaning.

The title "The Origin of the Artwork" now sounds different: "The Origin" --that is the origin itself --"of"--that is, as it belongs to ---"the Artwork" (the artwork, which lies ahead of thought).

What Has Already Been Lost In Space? (Part 1)

Commenting on our last consideration of the problem of the definition of space (after taking the time to apply some warranted scrutiny), Amos of KTL found that same consideration to be missing something essential: the proper requisites of the very definition itself seem to have been lost on that previous consideration:

How is the coinciding permeation of space by time a definition, rather than a fact about space? Could not one ask, if space were its own being permeated by time as something other, what would it be prior to this permeation such that it could be permeated?

It is only from within the confines of the problematic of space as it was first introduced (over at A City in Speech) that a proper response can now be ventured to these important observations offered by Amos, if only because one must never fail to exercise a certain respect for the place where he already is, and this a fortiori in the case of a consideration of the a priori nature of space. What we have tried to show in our previous consideration was that the subterranean understanding which governed the initial introduction of this problematic is one that can and must be brought to light and drawn out in meticulous fashion along lines that are unmistakably Kantian. If we keep this hermeneutic situation firmly in view, then a certain light falls upon the otherwise tangled thicket of possible responses to Amos' question regarding the temporal permeation of space.

What does it mean to think space as a pure form of finite intuition? More specifically, when we ask the question "What is space?", how is our search for this 'what' impacted by the peculiarity that space is not intuited like something spatial, but is rather intuited a priori along with and in advance of anything (in space)? The question of what something is either has an object or it does not. If it does, then this is a possible object of experience about which an empirical question may be raised; if it does not, then this is a condition for the possibility of such experience about which a transcendental question may be raised. In the case of the former, namely, the empirical question, what is aimed at is constituted at the most fundamental level by two elements: 1.) the receptivity of intuition and 2.) the spontaneity of the understanding; any possible object of experience, any "what" about which we make inquiry, depends upon 'what' is intuited (the sense manifold) and 'what' is understood (i.e. the categorical organization of the sense manifold). Kant sometimes calls this dual dependency which combines intuition and understanding the "unity of representation". Strictly speaking, only if space, considered in exclusion from anything else, required the unity of representation could it possibly be an object of experience to which an empirical question may be plied. Only if this is the case can we extend our knowledge about space and discover, as Amos would have it, "a fact about space". And, indeed, Kant does more than concede that such discoveries are, in point of fact, possible; his entire first Kritik relies upon and, in another way, founds such discoveries. They are none other than what Kant calls formal intuitions, and in the case of space, they are to be found in that familiar body of apodictic knowledge known as geometry. But a formal intuition of space can in no wise be confused with the form of intuition of space:

Space, represented as object (as we are required to do in geometry), contains more than the mere form of intuition; it also contains combination of the manifold, given according to the form of sensibility, in an intuitive representation, so that the form of intuition gives only the manifold, the formal intuition gives unity of representation.(CPR B161)

Space, insofar as it is formally intuited, is given as a unity of representation in reference to which facts can be established. Thus we may ask and give definitive answer to the question "what is a line?" But the question "what is space?" asks for what any such formal intuition, in its unity of representation, depends upon, namely the transcendental form of intuition of space. To this latter transcendental question and its answer the synthetic a priori judgment capable of establishing facts about space is necessarily indebted. Therefore the question "what is space?" can neither offer a definition produced by the understanding nor ipso facto can it look for that unity given in and by the "unity of representation". The definition of space as a pure intuition must be given in its unity by pure intuition. The oneness or unity of pure space can only be discovered only when its borders or confines are seen, and yet because this unity is not the unity of representation, these borders cannot be de-fined by the understanding, but rather must be intuited. It is as if we must in some way see rather than apprehend the definition of space. But how is such seeing to take place if what is to be seen is neither something we can experience nor even conceivable? It must take place by way of an intuition that is non-empirical, i.e. pure. And for this reason we cannot expect it to be positively demonstrated (and therefore understood in its necessity); it must instead be given, i.e. intuited.

Now, if there were nothing to be purely intuited other than space, then the form of the intuition of space would have to be able to give itself, in its unity, and therefore constitute itself as self-defining. But because something else is given as a form in pure intuition, namely time, this is not necessary. The question remains: is it possible? The only answer to this question must be found by way of recourse to pure intuition. Kant himself indicates the answer by the following observation:

Whatever the origin of our representations,...whether they arise a priori, or being appearances [i.e. possible objects of experience] have an empirical origin, they must all, as modifications of the mind, belong to inner sense. All our knowledge [i.e. any intuition, concept, or unity of representation] is thus finally subject to time, the formal condition of inner sense. In it they must all be ordered, connected and brought into relation.(CPR, A 98)

Kant's observation can be supplied with the testimony of a quick reference to our awareness of anything in space: this awareness itself is not spatial, it is not something that we might bump into like a tree in the forest. It is not defined by space. On the other hand, what about space? If it can be said to be anything, and it is already lost to any attempt to conceive of it, than it must be received as an intuition, i.e. as a form given in the intuition of a sense manifold. But, as Kant just observed, not just the understanding, but intuition too, and any sort of representation, takes place in time. So much is this the case that when Amos proposes the possibility of the alternative, namely,"Could not one ask, if space were its own being permeated by time as something other, what would it be prior to this permeation such that it could be permeated?" he has already presupposed time insofar as he speaks of "space prior to this permeation" ---in other words, the priority is nothing if it is not a temporal one.

When this problematic of the temporal definition of space as Kant has framed it is reflected upon, a paradoxical formulation which it seems we must be content with asserts itself regarding the definition of space: the essence of space is, in the immediate pure intuition of space, lost in that intuition. Space, because it is definable by the pure intuition of time and this alone, must first be lost, since the essence of space is not only, according to the order of intuition, found later, but above all because it is found precisely as what is found later. The de-finition of space is found as what has been lost in space. And it is in this sense that I would like, at least initially, to read the last and most astute comment Amos has left in connection with our recent post on Ereignis:

Also, is space as it transpires in the shifting encounter an example of what "always comes too late?"

Lost in Space

If borders or limits are required for definition, and if space by definition cannot be anything spatial --and must therefore by definition be refused any limit or border --then we seem prima facie to confront in the problem of space an irresolvable ἀπορία. The apparent force of this problematic has once again asserted itself in a debate that has since fallen into ellipsis over at A City in Speech:

We will close at the present by highlighting that space constantly retreats to the background whenever it is involved in a question. Turn your mind now to the concept of space, and try to fix your thoughts upon it. What comes into your mind? If there are any images of objects within space itself, clear them at once, since space itself cannot be that which it contains. Clear away all materiality from the conception, and fix your gaze upon space itself. Stripped of matter, what remains? What is space?

Thus does the problematic initially impinge itself upon our initial effort to in any way clarify it. But what initially, that is immediately, seems to of itself deny any resolution, often needs only enough pause to embark on a second reflection, i.e., it needs only the mediation of time; although space will refuse all shape and form, it nevertheless must permit of definition insofar as there properly belongs to it the possibility of being encountered as formless. After all, it must be admitted that space is not in the first place experienced as indefinable. The question is therefore begged:

What condition is necessary to make such an encounter of space, namely, as indefinable, possible?

The answer can be brought into relief negatively: there must be something non-spatial about our very encounter of space, something which allows us to see it at first only as a backdrop that is always already there in our encounter of any object of experience, only to allow us to see it later on as an indefinable fore-ground that vexes our attempts to think it. And indeed, in the course of this shift, space itself does not change, yet our encounter with it changes emphatically. The implication being brought into relief has now become obvious:what is capable of constituting the condition for the possibility of any such shifting encounter of space is not space itself but something outside of space itself, something which, being other than space, could not simply reside alongside of space (in just another space, as it were), but would have, at the same time as it remained outside of and beyond space, to permeate it through and through. Of course, in keeping with this a priori permeation, the positive identity of this non-spatial condition has, even in this our present musing upon the definition of space, necessarily already been mentioned. Space is not only bordered by what already permeates it; it is defined by this very coinciding permeation: space is defined by being defined already, i.e. it is defined by time.

Such an answer is in many ways a stock response. It is clearly drawn along Kantian lines, and is --like many things Kantian --easily incorporated into the System of Hegel. As Kant would have it, the pure inner intuition of time is not simply some complement to the pure outer intuition of space: time is not only inner intuition but also universal intuition. What is spatial is already temporal. What is important to see is that this universal status does not erase or correct time's designation as internal. Rather, time is universal intuition in a manner that outer intuition cannot be, and it must therefore be other than what is outer; it must be internal. Time must be internal intuition at the same time as it is universal intuition, and this alone vouchsafes its universal status. But what time is this, which would allow the intuition of time to be necessarily differentiated into what is internal and what is universal, while at and as the same time, insisting upon the necessity of their identity?