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Poetry, Language, Thought (Perennial Classics)

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Heidegger does not address the issue of poetry and truth from the vantage point of a traditional or academic art historian; nor does he employ conventional terms and classifications. Instead, he arrives at his subjects experimentally and tangentially and firmly grounds them on the approach of "ontological knowledge" which has made him famous. His highly idiosyncratic style, however, often playing with the cognate forms of the words of the original German, and which eludes translation, may make his arguments seem imprecise and willfully obscure. Though "Poetry, Language, Thought" is a collection of essays collected from Heidegger's miscellaneous later writings, it is no less formidable than "Being and Time", his masterpiece of ontological enquiry, published in 1927. The most beautiful formulation in the book is that truth is, by its very nature, poetic and this for Heidegger, does not imply a polarity between verse and prose, but actually includes prose as well. In "The Origin of the Work of Art", he defines the truth of the art work as being the setting-up of the art work in relation to the undisclosedness of Being, a conclusion which he argues up to at great length and with much skill and profundity. Like Wittgenstein and Derrida, Heidegger is not a philosopher in the traditional sense who aims to provide an all-embracing theory that would explain ultimate reality. He does not pretend to a First Philosophy which is based on some abstraction such as Reason, the Proletariat or the World Spirit. Rather, he is something of an exegete and experimentalist, probing the assumptions behind people's habits of speech and thought in a way of clarifying central misconceptions and errors. The volume also includes essays titled "What are Poets For?", "Building Dwelling Thinking" and a discourse on "The Thing", "thingness", or "thinghood". Heidegger's own poems, which are prefixed to the edition, may be flawed as art, but they serve, at least, to adumbrate the problems that occupy him in the following chapters.

Hofstader's capable translation of these extraordinary Heidegger essays makes this one of the indispensable books of 20th century philosophy. This collection is especially indicative of Heidegger's 'turn' to art and poetry, particularly in his amazingly complex 'Origin of the Work of Art' and 'Poetically, Man Dwells.' 'The Thing' is also a remarkable essay in Heidegger's descriptions of the closing of distances in modernity, as well as his phenomenological observations of the relation between things and world. This is an excellent representation of Heidegger's philosophy of Language, and Hofstader has translated them quite well, even if the translations of Holderlin are a bit too cautious.

_Poetry, Language, Thought_ is a collection of seven of Heidegger's essays collected from other works originally written or delivered as lectures between 1935 and 1951. These essays all revolve around "art" in the broadest sense possible -- Heidegger meditates upon the poetry of Rilke and Holderlin and the paintings of Van Gogh.

These purposes shouldn't be understood, however, as art or literary criticism. These essays serve as examples of Heidegger's broader project of the investigation of Being in a totalizing sense. He sought to understand Being in the sense that it is common to rock, trees, animals, and people by an examination of the human mode of being, Dasein, being that questions the nature of its own being.

Heidegger believed we have so completely forgotten about being that we have even forgotten that we have forgotten -- and as a result, we need to pay special attention to the times when Being, via our Dasein, calls attention to the fact of its own hiddenness. In everyday human experience this can happen through the experience of anxiety or boredom or, in the case of _Poetry, Language, Thought_, it can happen through art.

Heidegger examines art in this collection of essays as it unveils the hiddenness of Being.

As you can see from my brief description, a bit of a background in Heidegger would be helpful before reading this book. If you're really interested, read his _Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ first (Indiana University Press). Then read _Being and Time_. If you still want to read Heidegger after that, then turn to _Poetry, Language, Thought_ as an application of his philosophy to the understanding of art, to how we are to understand art and what we should allow it to reveal to us.

Heidegger is difficult most times (FCOM is his least difficult), and impossible at others, and _Poetry, Language, Thought_ is no exception. In one essay he seems to especially talk in circles. But don't let that discourage you from reading this book if you're serious about understanding Heidegger -- it will add nuance to the development of his ideas about language and the uncovering of Dasein in our everyday experience.

Heidegger's writings are difficult, though this is a good introduction to some of his ideas. While many of the terms he seems to use casually are not defined, a thorough read will help the reader get a greater grasp on Heidegger's thoughts. The poems he cites are central, and the poems at the beginning of the work are virtually incomprehensible without a full knowledge of what Heidegger means by this. Some important words, such as the "turning" are left undefined in this book.

While this is a good introduction, The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays is helpful for anyone looking for the relationship between technology and art (techne) and also the subject-object relationship and the relationship of the world to the so-called "worldview." Anyone serious about Heidegger will have to reread and cross-reference between his works, so when advised to read this book first, it doesn't mean there is any fast track to understanding Heidegger. At best, it is slightly less difficult.

Being and Time might wisely be saved until later. The book being reviewed here is the most accessible of his writings.

Heidegger's discussion of the "void" inside a jug being what does the holding parallels Taoist discussions on emptiness. While there are many translations, Red Pine's bilingual version (now out of print) is the best I have found yet: Lao-tzu's Taoteching: with Selected Commentaries of the Past 2000 Years. In section 4 & 11 of the Tao Te Ching, the references mentioned above can be found.

Derivative writers such as Erazim Kohak continues many Heideggerian themes and writes about "rediscovering the gifts of darkness, isolation, and pain": The Embers and the Stars. A more rigorously Heideggerian interface with religion is seen in Louis-Marie Chauvet, who claims that Heidegger's approach to being is homologous to the approach to God: Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence.

For a related work on "world" and the work of the artist, Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition (2nd Edition) is highly recommended. Many of its concepts help provide doorways into Heidegger's concepts. Hannah Arendt, once Heidegger's lover, was consulted for Albert Hofstadter's translation of Poetry, Language, Thought. Richard Sennett's The Craftsman is also useful for the exploration of craft, work, and art.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on philosophy of art. Martin Heidegger's Poetry, Language, and Thought," is his treatise on how humans "see" art and is connected to his he deconstruction of phenomenology. His kind of phenomenology has to do with the idea of phenomenon, which means something that appears and shows itself. His criticism of traditional philosophy is that it gets started with categories, concepts, and notions, departing from the way human comprehension of this world first shows itself. This is Aristotelian and Aristotle is an enormous influence on Heidegger.

Yet, there is something very radical going on here, and that is the idea of "being" is connected to meaning and negativity. In the history of philosophy, being has a positive concept, something that "is" thus, the opposite of being is none being. Heidegger wants to show how the meaning of being is distorted by this understanding of being as a purely positive concept, as a "thing" a full present entity. He also very much critiques in modern art, the modern conception of objectivity, the world is transformed into an object independent of art, of its significance, its meaning, or interest in it. This was due in large part because of modern science, and its strong sense of objectification converting nature into a set of mere objects, time, and space that are measurable and analyzable through scientific means.

So, when we come across the world, first and foremost it is not a mere object that is standing apart from us or our mind, but rather it has significant elements of our environment that fit into our lives. Some things are significant, or they are useful, or dangerous, or satisfying, etc. What Heidegger wants to say in his phenomenology is we have to pay attention to this way of being. So, first and foremost he says "being" matters, it matters to us. "Being" is a significance, it is not just a bare object or a bare fact. Notice right away, when we get to the idea of art, he is going to have the same disposition toward art. Art isn't something that is just a bare object that is outside of us, nor is it a subjective interior experience it is rather, part of our world. You wouldn't want to classify art in ways that would assume certain categories ahead of time, like "it isn't a natural object therefore, it must be an expression of human emotion." That would be a very typical modern concept. Heidegger would critique this because, since he doesn't accept this idea of subject on one side and object on the other side, that means that when humans have their understanding of the world, it is not just a human projection, it is not just a human construction. It is a revealing way of seeing; it is world disclosive. The meaning of the world wouldn't happen without us, because we are the ones that find it meaningful.

For Heidegger, he says that paintings are, the phrase he uses is, "being immortal." We are not just a subject apart from the world, but are "in it." In it not just in the spatial sense like a marble in a box, but in it in the sense of involved with it. These experiences Heidegger thinks is part of what we understand about being. A lot of this doesn't have to do with the art aspect of his work. But important to know that Heidegger primarily wants to say that the meaning of being, is something that humans are involved with in a significant meaningful way, and it can't be either subjective or objective, those two ideas he says are polarizations that both account for how the world matters to us. The fact that it matters to us means it can't be a pure objective thing. Secondly, the fact that what matters to us is our world not just our opinions and our inner dispositions mean it can't be just a subjective thing. We are absorbed in the world; we are caught up in it. Phenomenology wants to give voice to these notions rather than start with the modern categories of subjectivity and objectivity. He wants to say that before all that there are other ways of seeming As far as the art aspect is concerned the kind of phenomenology of art in other words he wants to say, "well, art can't just be a "thing." He is setting up certain traditional concepts what it means to be a thing, so he asks, "what is an artwork"? Normally one answers an artwork is a thing, it is there. Well, if that is never going to be adequate to understanding the "being" of an artwork. That is where that torturous analysis of different kinds of concepts of "thinghood" comes out. He says none of these is going to fit. Right away, you see then that Heidegger completely rejects the modern art analysis of artworks as something that is to be understood as human subjective items.

When Heidegger talks about Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes and the Greek Temple, what he is trying to do there is to say, "Well what would it mean to respond to these works in a way that doesn't just see them as merely subjective responses to art. These responses are world disclosive, they open up something about the world not just human dispositions. His meditations on these two artworks, the shoes and the temple, are in the sense, he is obviously giving an interpretation, he is trying to get into the spirit of the work to see how it opens up a world. In early periods of art prior to modern periods, where art became aesthetic, and aesthetic became ways of human expression, rather than world disclosure. Then the modern world of art became a kind of designated area of culture, so you have things like museums and concerts and so on. Prior to this period art, what we called art was an experience into the way of the world and peoples. For example, a cathedral which can be seen as an art object, or as a living place for the religious person. Aesthetic terms broaden it, but a cathedral is a world. Thus, for Heidegger, to understand the Greek temple is to understand more then architecture. The artwork matters for Heidegger unlike the expression theory.

Heidegger's interpretation leads to the idea of the hermeneutic circle. Humans don't come to something in a fresh new way, we bring baggage with us, like our culture and education, thus it shapes us in how we see art a circle of knowledge. Another way of saying you can't put the subject on one side and the object on the other side. The subject can't divorce itself from one way of thinking and say to look at the object all by itself. Anything we come across in the world will always be partly influenced by things we bring to it already; such as our upbringing, culture, expectations, etc. No such thing as what some philosophers term "a view from nowhere." This is a circle; interpretation is not just a subjective thing. This circle is a circulation between things and us; Hatab thinks the idea of a foreign language interpreter is the best metaphor because a language interpreter is standing in between the speaker and the audience.

Heidegger's phenomenology says how do we approach art on its own terms. Just respond to the work. He concedes the way we approach art isn't going to have a correct answer, it is going to be a responsiveness, and he is going to try to embody that in his essay. A key idea for Heidegger is art is world disclosive not just subjective expression. He uses Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes to evoke out of the painting elements of the world of someone who wears these shoes. This is Heidegger's method. Just as Heidegger would say there are different kinds of phenomena; there are different kinds of truths. For Heidegger scientific truth can't be the only measure or only arbiter of what counts as truth, so there can be truth in an artwork. More original idea of truth is unconcealment = Greek "alētheia" = uncovering, or unhidden. He thinks there is something in this word prior to its philosophical baggage that could be revealing. Rather then saying that truth is something that is the matching of the subjective state with an objective fact, it is a way of uncovering the way the world appears, unconcealing it. Before we see truth, it is concealed. This flexibility is a way art can act as unconcealing. How much truth is in a great novel, which is fiction? A tragic drama isn't just a work of fiction. Greeks knew that it was fiction but also it contained truths. For Heidegger, they are world disclosive. Novel and fiction, these words have modern biases for us. Aristotle in poetics wrote that poetry taught universal truths. It shows something about our existence.

In Greek world, myth, and poetry was pre philosophical world. It was already on the scene powerfully influencing Greeks on how to understand their world. Philosophers when they came on the scene, not surprisingly, found themselves as contestants with the poets. Because, the philosophers' are trying to do something different like categories and concepts. Poetry was simply inspired meaningful works of expression and stories that illuminated us. Heidegger talks about pre-philosophical experience and our ordinary ways of dealing with the world, but then he could talk about pre-philosophical cultural experience, which is where poetry and myth come in. All cultures have mythical poetic beginnings; they don't begin rationally and objectively. Myth and poetry is found in all human cultures. Myth and poetry elevated understanding beyond the everyday practices to something significant, something larger. However, it seemed evident to many philosophers, Plato especially, that poets were not only contestants they were obstacles to philosophy to do what it does. In a way that is true, because philosophy is something different, but they had to fight it out, that is why Plato wants to banish poets. However, Heidegger says that it is important that human understanding have this mythical basis. Because the thing about myth is that, it is not this abstract, reflexive and analytical, and argumentative. It is expressive with living meaning and so on, it is responsive in a very visceral way. Thus, Heidegger seems to think that philosophy itself needs to honor pre-philosophical experience and pre-philosophical cultural formations like myth and poetry. To do a philosophy of art, to press it into pre conceived philosophical structures is to already to of lost it. Greeks respond to myth the way Christians respond to the New Testament, it is a world disclosive text.

Heidegger finds that art shakes us out of our complacency. Tragedy is a disturbing truth. Experience of wonder is primal. This is also truth as Heidegger sees it; art is a form of truth, an unconcealment it is experience of a deep understanding of our world like Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes and the Greek temple he talked about. Heidegger adds one other item to the circular artworld notion of artwork, artist, audience, artworld that is the idea that art is world disclosive. Moral ruin is part of Greek tragedy. Heidegger says what is going on in art is this circulation between the work and the audience, and his third category of preserver (another way of saying artworld, and audience). Heidegger's concept of the preservers is the fact that art is not just made by artists and viewed by audiences, but that art is preserved in a culture in institutional ways and all these things go together.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of art, art history, and Greek culture.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on philosophy of art. Martin Heidegger's Poetry, Language, Thought," is his treatise on how humans "see" art and is connected to his he deconstruction of phenomenology. His kind of phenomenology has to do with the idea of phenomenon, which means something that appears and shows itself. His criticism of traditional philosophy is that it gets started with categories, concepts, and notions, departing from the way human comprehension of this world first shows itself. This is Aristotelian and Aristotle is an enormous influence on Heidegger.

Yet, there is something very radical going on here, and that is the idea of "being" is connected to meaning and negativity. In the history of philosophy, being has a positive concept, something that "is" thus, the opposite of being is none being. Heidegger wants to show how the meaning of being is distorted by this understanding of being as a purely positive concept, as a "thing" a full present entity. He also very much critiques in modern art, the modern conception of objectivity, the world is transformed into an object independent of art, of its significance, its meaning, or interest in it. This was due in large part because of modern science, and its strong sense of objectification converting nature into a set of mere objects, time, and space that are measurable and analyzable through scientific means.

So, when we come across the world, first and foremost it is not a mere object that is standing apart from us or our mind, but rather it has significant elements of our environment that fit into our lives. Some things are significant, or they are useful, or dangerous, or satisfying, etc. What Heidegger wants to say in his phenomenology is we have to pay attention to this way of being. So, first and foremost he says "being" matters, it matters to us. "Being" is a significance, it is not just a bare object or a bare fact. Notice right away, when we get to the idea of art, he is going to have the same disposition toward art. Art isn't something that is just a bare object that is outside of us, nor is it a subjective interior experience it is rather, part of our world. You wouldn't want to classify art in ways that would assume certain categories ahead of time, like "it isn't a natural object therefore, it must be an expression of human emotion." That would be a very typical modern concept. Heidegger would critique this because, since he doesn't accept this idea of subject on one side and object on the other side, that means that when humans have their understanding of the world, it is not just a human projection, it is not just a human construction. It is a revealing way of seeing; it is world disclosive. The meaning of the world wouldn't happen without us, because we are the ones that find it meaningful.

For Heidegger, he says that paintings are, the phrase he uses is, "being immortal." We are not just a subject apart from the world, but are "in it." In it not just in the spatial sense like a marble in a box, but in it in the sense of involved with it. These experiences Heidegger thinks is part of what we understand about being. A lot of this doesn't have to do with the art aspect of his work. But important to know that Heidegger primarily wants to say that the meaning of being, is something that humans are involved with in a significant meaningful way, and it can't be either subjective or objective, those two ideas he says are polarizations that both account for how the world matters to us. The fact that it matters to us means it can't be a pure objective thing. Secondly, the fact that what matters to us is our world not just our opinions and our inner dispositions mean it can't be just a subjective thing. We are absorbed in the world; we are caught up in it. Phenomenology wants to give voice to these notions rather than start with the modern categories of subjectivity and objectivity. He wants to say that before all that there are other ways of seeming As far as the art aspect is concerned the kind of phenomenology of art in other words he wants to say, "well, art can't just be a "thing." He is setting up certain traditional concepts what it means to be a thing, so he asks, "what is an artwork"? Normally one answers an artwork is a thing, it is there. Well, if that is never going to be adequate to understanding the "being" of an artwork. That is where that torturous analysis of different kinds of concepts of "thinghood" comes out. He says none of these is going to fit. Right away, you see then that Heidegger completely rejects the modern art analysis of artworks as something that is to be understood as human subjective items.

When Heidegger talks about Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes and the Greek Temple, what he is trying to do there is to say, "Well what would it mean to respond to these works in a way that doesn't just see them as merely subjective responses to art. These responses are world disclosive, they open up something about the world not just human dispositions. His meditations on these two artworks, the shoes and the temple, are in the sense, he is obviously giving an interpretation, he is trying to get into the spirit of the work to see how it opens up a world. In early periods of art prior to modern periods, where art became aesthetic, and aesthetic became ways of human expression, rather than world disclosure. Then the modern world of art became a kind of designated area of culture, so you have things like museums and concerts and so on. Prior to this period art, what we called art was an experience into the way of the world and peoples. For example, a cathedral which can be seen as an art object, or as a living place for the religious person. Aesthetic terms broaden it, but a cathedral is a world. Thus, for Heidegger, to understand the Greek temple is to understand more then architecture. The artwork matters for Heidegger unlike the expression theory.

Heidegger's interpretation leads to the idea of the hermeneutic circle. Humans don't come to something in a fresh new way, we bring baggage with us, like our culture and education, thus it shapes us in how we see art a circle of knowledge. Another way of saying you can't put the subject on one side and the object on the other side. The subject can't divorce itself from one way of thinking and say to look at the object all by itself. Anything we come across in the world will always be partly influenced by things we bring to it already; such as our upbringing, culture, expectations, etc. No such thing as what some philosophers term "a view from nowhere." This is a circle; interpretation is not just a subjective thing. This circle is a circulation between things and us; Hatab thinks the idea of a foreign language interpreter is the best metaphor because a language interpreter is standing in between the speaker and the audience.

Heidegger's phenomenology says how do we approach art on its own terms. Just respond to the work. He concedes the way we approach art isn't going to have a correct answer, it is going to be a responsiveness, and he is going to try to embody that in his essay. A key idea for Heidegger is art is world disclosive not just subjective expression. He uses Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes to evoke out of the painting elements of the world of someone who wears these shoes. This is Heidegger's method. Just as Heidegger would say there are different kinds of phenomena; there are different kinds of truths. For Heidegger scientific truth can't be the only measure or only arbiter of what counts as truth, so there can be truth in an artwork. More original idea of truth is unconcealment = Greek "alētheia" = uncovering, or unhidden. He thinks there is something in this word prior to its philosophical baggage that could be revealing. Rather then saying that truth is something that is the matching of the subjective state with an objective fact, it is a way of uncovering the way the world appears, unconcealing it. Before we see truth, it is concealed. This flexibility is a way art can act as unconcealing. How much truth is in a great novel, which is fiction? A tragic drama isn't just a work of fiction. Greeks knew that it was fiction but also it contained truths. For Heidegger, they are world disclosive. Novel and fiction, these words have modern biases for us. Aristotle in poetics wrote that poetry taught universal truths. It shows something about our existence.

In Greek world, myth, and poetry was pre philosophical world. It was already on the scene powerfully influencing Greeks on how to understand their world. Philosophers when they came on the scene, not surprisingly, found themselves as contestants with the poets. Because, the philosophers' are trying to do something different like categories and concepts. Poetry was simply inspired meaningful works of expression and stories that illuminated us. Heidegger talks about pre-philosophical experience and our ordinary ways of dealing with the world, but then he could talk about pre-philosophical cultural experience, which is where poetry and myth come in. All cultures have mythical poetic beginnings; they don't begin rationally and objectively. Myth and poetry is found in all human cultures. Myth and poetry elevated understanding beyond the everyday practices to something significant, something larger. However, it seemed evident to many philosophers, Plato especially, that poets were not only contestants they were obstacles to philosophy to do what it does. In a way that is true, because philosophy is something different, but they had to fight it out, that is why Plato wants to banish poets. However, Heidegger says that it is important that human understanding have this mythical basis. Because the thing about myth is that, it is not this abstract, reflexive and analytical, and argumentative. It is expressive with living meaning and so on, it is responsive in a very visceral way. Thus, Heidegger seems to think that philosophy itself needs to honor pre-philosophical experience and pre-philosophical cultural formations like myth and poetry. To do a philosophy of art, to press it into pre conceived philosophical structures is to already to of lost it. Greeks respond to myth the way Christians respond to the New Testament, it is a world disclosive text.

Heidegger finds that art shakes us out of our complacency. Tragedy is a disturbing truth. Experience of wonder is primal. This is also truth as Heidegger sees it; art is a form of truth, an unconcealment it is experience of a deep understanding of our world like Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes and the Greek temple he talked about. Heidegger adds one other item to the circular artworld notion of artwork, artist, audience, artworld that is the idea that art is world disclosive. Moral ruin is part of Greek tragedy. Heidegger says what is going on in art is this circulation between the work and the audience, and his third category of preserver (another way of saying artworld, and audience). Heidegger's concept of the preservers is the fact that art is not just made by artists and viewed by audiences, but that art is preserved in a culture in institutional ways and all these things go together.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of art, art history, and Greek culture.

Martin Heidegger's philosophy is difficult and rewarding. What is the origin of the work of art? What is the origin of the artist? What is the nature of art?

I read this book for a graduate seminar on philosophy of art. Martin Heidegger's Poetry, Language, Thought," is his treatise on how humans "see" art and is connected to his he deconstruction of phenomenology. His kind of phenomenology has to do with the idea of phenomenon, which means something that appears and shows itself. His criticism of traditional philosophy is that it gets started with categories, concepts, and notions, departing from the way human comprehension of this world first shows itself. This is Aristotelian and Aristotle is an enormous influence on Heidegger.

Yet, there is something very radical going on here, and that is the idea of "being" is connected to meaning and negativity. In the history of philosophy, being has a positive concept, something that "is" thus, the opposite of being is none being. Heidegger wants to show how the meaning of being is distorted by this understanding of being as a purely positive concept, as a "thing" a full present entity. He also very much critiques in modern art, the modern conception of objectivity, the world is transformed into an object independent of art, of its significance, its meaning, or interest in it. This was due in large part because of modern science, and its strong sense of objectification converting nature into a set of mere objects, time, and space that are measurable and analyzable through scientific means.

So, when we come across the world, first and foremost it is not a mere object that is standing apart from us or our mind, but rather it has significant elements of our environment that fit into our lives. Some things are significant, or they are useful, or dangerous, or satisfying, etc. What Heidegger wants to say in his phenomenology is we have to pay attention to this way of being. So, first and foremost he says "being" matters, it matters to us. "Being" is a significance, it is not just a bare object or a bare fact. Notice right away, when we get to the idea of art, he is going to have the same disposition toward art. Art isn't something that is just a bare object that is outside of us, nor is it a subjective interior experience it is rather, part of our world. You wouldn't want to classify art in ways that would assume certain categories ahead of time, like "it isn't a natural object therefore, it must be an expression of human emotion." That would be a very typical modern concept. Heidegger would critique this because, since he doesn't accept this idea of subject on one side and object on the other side, that means that when humans have their understanding of the world, it is not just a human projection, it is not just a human construction. It is a revealing way of seeing; it is world disclosive. The meaning of the world wouldn't happen without us, because we are the ones that find it meaningful.

For Heidegger, he says that paintings are, the phrase he uses is, "being immortal." We are not just a subject apart from the world, but are "in it." In it not just in the spatial sense like a marble in a box, but in it in the sense of involved with it. These experiences Heidegger thinks is part of what we understand about being. A lot of this doesn't have to do with the art aspect of his work. But important to know that Heidegger primarily wants to say that the meaning of being, is something that humans are involved with in a significant meaningful way, and it can't be either subjective or objective, those two ideas he says are polarizations that both account for how the world matters to us. The fact that it matters to us means it can't be a pure objective thing. Secondly, the fact that what matters to us is our world not just our opinions and our inner dispositions mean it can't be just a subjective thing. We are absorbed in the world; we are caught up in it. Phenomenology wants to give voice to these notions rather than start with the modern categories of subjectivity and objectivity. He wants to say that before all that there are other ways of seeming As far as the art aspect is concerned the kind of phenomenology of art in other words he wants to say, "well, art can't just be a "thing." He is setting up certain traditional concepts what it means to be a thing, so he asks, "what is an artwork"? Normally one answers an artwork is a thing, it is there. Well, if that is never going to be adequate to understanding the "being" of an artwork. That is where that torturous analysis of different kinds of concepts of "thinghood" comes out. He says none of these is going to fit. Right away, you see then that Heidegger completely rejects the modern art analysis of artworks as something that is to be understood as human subjective items.

When Heidegger talks about Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes and the Greek Temple, what he is trying to do there is to say, "Well what would it mean to respond to these works in a way that doesn't just see them as merely subjective responses to art. These responses are world disclosive, they open up something about the world not just human dispositions. His meditations on these two artworks, the shoes and the temple, are in the sense, he is obviously giving an interpretation, he is trying to get into the spirit of the work to see how it opens up a world. In early periods of art prior to modern periods, where art became aesthetic, and aesthetic became ways of human expression, rather than world disclosure. Then the modern world of art became a kind of designated area of culture, so you have things like museums and concerts and so on. Prior to this period art, what we called art was an experience into the way of the world and peoples. For example, a cathedral which can be seen as an art object, or as a living place for the religious person. Aesthetic terms broaden it, but a cathedral is a world. Thus, for Heidegger, to understand the Greek temple is to understand more then architecture. The artwork matters for Heidegger unlike the expression theory.

Heidegger's interpretation leads to the idea of the hermeneutic circle. Humans don't come to something in a fresh new way, we bring baggage with us, like our culture and education, thus it shapes us in how we see art a circle of knowledge. Another way of saying you can't put the subject on one side and the object on the other side. The subject can't divorce itself from one way of thinking and say to look at the object all by itself. Anything we come across in the world will always be partly influenced by things we bring to it already; such as our upbringing, culture, expectations, etc. No such thing as what some philosophers term "a view from nowhere." This is a circle; interpretation is not just a subjective thing. This circle is a circulation between things and us; Hatab thinks the idea of a foreign language interpreter is the best metaphor because a language interpreter is standing in between the speaker and the audience.

Heidegger's phenomenology says how do we approach art on its own terms. Just respond to the work. He concedes the way we approach art isn't going to have a correct answer, it is going to be a responsiveness, and he is going to try to embody that in his essay. A key idea for Heidegger is art is world disclosive not just subjective expression. He uses Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes to evoke out of the painting elements of the world of someone who wears these shoes. This is Heidegger's method. Just as Heidegger would say there are different kinds of phenomena; there are different kinds of truths. For Heidegger scientific truth can't be the only measure or only arbiter of what counts as truth, so there can be truth in an artwork. More original idea of truth is unconcealment = Greek "alētheia" = uncovering, or unhidden. He thinks there is something in this word prior to its philosophical baggage that could be revealing. Rather then saying that truth is something that is the matching of the subjective state with an objective fact, it is a way of uncovering the way the world appears, unconcealing it. Before we see truth, it is concealed. This flexibility is a way art can act as unconcealing. How much truth is in a great novel, which is fiction? A tragic drama isn't just a work of fiction. Greeks knew that it was fiction but also it contained truths. For Heidegger, they are world disclosive. Novel and fiction, these words have modern biases for us. Aristotle in poetics wrote that poetry taught universal truths. It shows something about our existence.

In Greek world, myth, and poetry was pre philosophical world. It was already on the scene powerfully influencing Greeks on how to understand their world. Philosophers when they came on the scene, not surprisingly, found themselves as contestants with the poets. Because, the philosophers' are trying to do something different like categories and concepts. Poetry was simply inspired meaningful works of expression and stories that illuminated us. Heidegger talks about pre-philosophical experience and our ordinary ways of dealing with the world, but then he could talk about pre-philosophical cultural experience, which is where poetry and myth come in. All cultures have mythical poetic beginnings; they don't begin rationally and objectively. Myth and poetry is found in all human cultures. Myth and poetry elevated understanding beyond the everyday practices to something significant, something larger. However, it seemed evident to many philosophers, Plato especially, that poets were not only contestants they were obstacles to philosophy to do what it does. In a way that is true, because philosophy is something different, but they had to fight it out, that is why Plato wants to banish poets. However, Heidegger says that it is important that human understanding have this mythical basis. Because the thing about myth is that, it is not this abstract, reflexive and analytical, and argumentative. It is expressive with living meaning and so on, it is responsive in a very visceral way. Thus, Heidegger seems to think that philosophy itself needs to honor pre-philosophical experience and pre-philosophical cultural formations like myth and poetry. To do a philosophy of art, to press it into pre conceived philosophical structures is to already to of lost it. Greeks respond to myth the way Christians respond to the New Testament, it is a world disclosive text.

Heidegger finds that art shakes us out of our complacency. Tragedy is a disturbing truth. Experience of wonder is primal. This is also truth as Heidegger sees it; art is a form of truth, an unconcealment it is experience of a deep understanding of our world like Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes and the Greek temple he talked about. Heidegger adds one other item to the circular artworld notion of artwork, artist, audience, artworld that is the idea that art is world disclosive. Moral ruin is part of Greek tragedy. Heidegger says what is going on in art is this circulation between the work and the audience, and his third category of preserver (another way of saying artworld, and audience). Heidegger's concept of the preservers is the fact that art is not just made by artists and viewed by audiences, but that art is preserved in a culture in institutional ways and all these things go together.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, epistemology, ontology, philosophy of art, art history, and Greek culture.

One of the clearer expositions of Heidegger's later thought is Das Ding, anthologized in this volume. You are free to read the other selections ("the essence of language is the language of essence" ad nauseum) but das Ding begins with a phenomenological description of a Krug (a cup) that became rarer as Heidegger got older. The emptiness in the cup is the origin, like the hand that reaches out (from the past and the future) of being and the world. The Krug which pours out its offering (Gift: poison and present) from the emptiness of the Krug: the emptiness is the absent center (the eccentric core) of being and world. The Krug offers its gift, but not the krug, but its emptiness, and it is that gift which is the gift of world.

These essays were a rather unenlightening analysis of the poetic "process." Heidegger seems to indulge in enumerating the merits of, and illustrating his preference for certain German poets (i.e. Fredrich Holderlin), adherents to the "flowery" school of expression. The emphasis he places on these works, and the soaring epiphanies he experiences in the rather mundane wordplay he attempts to aggrandize by theoretical justifications...convinced me that at the very least, he is a poor judge of the poet's mission.

I am of course familiar with Heidegger by reputation, but concede "Poetry, Language, Thought" is my first exposure to his theoretical writings. In examining his ideas, I think it is critical to be aware of Heidegger "the man," as what one thinks can not but be influenced by what makes up the person who propounds a world view or as a professional philosopher, a theoretical discipline.

I think it is of significance that Heidegger was able to retain his university post when the Nazis came into power in Germany. He was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945, and apparently saw no ethical or moral conflicts between his role as educator and adherent to a totalitarian political system, which in every way was contrary to free expression and the conveyance of truth. Some post-World War II apologists explained this alliance as a personal failing, but it must stand as illustrative of the man and the impact this association had on his professional gravitas.

Heidegger's early life was also greatly impacted by the Catholic church, his father being in its employ, and there is a strong underpinning of Christian consciousness impacting the rigor of his theoretical process and conclusions.

For a much more cogent, revelatory exposition on the same topic, I would recommend Roland Barthes essays on writing and language, specifically "Writing Degree Zero."