Book chapter
The Other Origin of the Work of Art
This article argues that the origin of the work of art is not some kind of “happening of truth” (Heidegger); rather, it is what the Greeks call “improvisation”—that is, not simply free play, but far more self-schematization.
Zimmermann (1824–1898) contributes an important Ästhetik to the history of aesthetic formalism and he is a major representative of Vienna Herbartianism. In my analysis I show, on the one hand, that he aims at delivering a systematic work, based on the insights which Herbart had already provided, without treating them exhaustively. On the other hand―I argue―it is not unproblematic to reconcile Zimmermann’s views with Herbart’s ideas, especially when crucial notions such as ‘form’ and ‘relationship’ are considered. Paradoxically, the distance between the two thinkers ultimately emerges from the essay in which Zimmermann examines the analogy Herbart himself had drawn between music theory and practical philosophy. My conclusion thus is: where Zimmermann broadens Herbart’s theories, pursuing their explanation and systematic completion, he betrays the main issues of Herbartian formalism and philosophy; Herbart’s most profitable theories―concrete formalism and functionalism―are abandoned in favour of abstract, void constructions.
In this article one can find a treatment of early Wittgenstein’s conception of sense of the world in “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”. What makes a physical fact to be a murder or a prayer? Wittgenstein considered that facts had no relations with sense, in other words, with Ethics. Facts are accidental. Only their logical structure is necessary. The sphere of necessity, or not accident, is the sphere of Aesthetics. It contains logic and Ethics as vision of the world from the point of view of what one ought to do. Aesthetics is located outside the world and cannot be expressed.
What is the origin of language? For Levinas, from Aristotle to von Humboldt, the tradition of Western metaphysics has understood language as a representation of reality, going beyond or transcending experience. In this way, language is a metaphor that substitutes for experience—and all language is originally metaphorical. Experience however, is essentially inexpressible—for it not only transcends language, but it does so because experience is always experience of the other, of that which remains infinitely other. And language reminds us of its failure (a failure which Derrida sees, ironically, as a success) to express this other by maintaining a trace of the inexpressible in every expression—and metaphor is failure of expression par excellence. But what is the origin of this original failure? In fact, it can be found in the way in which language makes metaphors (which is the way in which it makes itself, transcends itself, substitutes for itself, becomes other than itself). For as Aristotle reminds us: metaphor-making (indeed, all language, every word and deed) is poiēsis—and the origin of poiēsis is improvisation. If we have, however, discovered the origin of language in improvisation—but what is that?
This work is mainly devoted to finding a place of ethical in early Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Science the problem of Ethics is inextricably linked with the logical point in “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” (role of logic in language, it’s relation to the world), considerations about the key issues are precede by a detailed analysis of Wittgenstein’s conception of logical space and object. It is important here that logic seems to be transcendental to the world. In other words, logical structure is necessary. However, it can be only shown. Both these cases are also essential for Ethics. In the end Aesthetics, defined as vision of the world from the point of view of necessity, is considered in relation with Ethics and logic.
The present catalogue contains abstracts for some 150 volumes, among which books, periodicals, miscellanies, published by the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the principal institute in Russia for academic research in all kinds of philosophical knowledge. These works, written by eminent Russian scholars, cover such fi elds as the history of Russian, Western and Oriental philosophy, ethics and aesthetics, synergetics and epistemology, social and political philosophy and concentrate on problems that have attained particular importance in the age of globalization and growth of national self-consciousness.
A largely unquestioned assumption of (musical) aesthetics holds that art should imitate nature or try to reproduce in its own sphere the effects of natural beauty on the perceiver. The paper introduces a third dimension of the concept of beauty: 'cultural beauty', designating objects of art which have aesthetic value because of their relation to the culture we live in.
The close conceptual tie between music and nature originated in the aesthetic debates of the 18th century. Even Adorno is still indebted to this basic tenet of romanticism. Compositions by Ives (Central Park in the Dark) and Cage (Concert for Piano) negate this close connection between music and nature as a place of order: They relate to the world we live in and mirror its fragmentary, chaotic reality. Therefore, only if we take them to have cultural beauty, may we understand them properly.
This work shows that being must originally be understood as implication. We begin with what Heidegger calls Hegel’s ‘new concept of being’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit: time as history is the essence of being. This concept however, is not univocal—for supersession means destroying-preserving. Hegel shows himself to be the thinker of truth as essentially ambiguous; and the Phenomenology is onto-heno-chrono-phenomenology, the history of the being and unity, time and aspect, of the concept’s ambiguity. For Heidegger however, conceptual ambiguity confirms that Hegel’s history of being is stuck in a vulgar interpretation of time; and the Phenomenology can explain neither the origin of this time, nor the necessity of negation for the historical determination of being—for Hegel cannot think the ground of the concept of being, that is, the grounding of the ground. If Heidegger argues however, that the Phenomenology is predetermined by its ancient point of departure, we must go back to the Greeks, back to Aristotle’s original insight (overlooked by the entire history of philosophy as metaphysics): being and unity imply one another—for they are essentially implications. Thus the question of the meaning of being becomes the question of the meaning of implication.