Heidegger, in depth.

SUMMARY
Ferrara begins with a brief insight into Heidegger’s development as a philosopher, explaining that before an analysis of his work “On the Origin of the Work of Art,” we must first see the larger context of his shift in approach in the time following “Being and Time.” This begins with a review of ‘Dasein’ and the idea that resoluteness is an action decided by Dasein as “it experiences it’s ‘throwness’ into the world” (Ferrara 123). The character is transformed in his later works into a less active role.
We then move to an analysis of Heidegger’s work in the deconstruction of Western Metaphysical tradition, which partially occurs in “Being and Time.” Ferrara tells us that Heidegger later realized his deconstruction was limited, because it was trapped within the confines of what it wished to undercut. Heidegger made a choice to radically defer from traditional Metaphysics and move to new ground. He abandoned much of his earlier terms in favor of a more “meditative and poetic stance” (Ferrara 124).
Heidegger, according to Ferrara, then moved to thoughts of the Greeks, and their way of allowing phenomenon to show themselves. He wanted to rediscover this talent, seen in pre-Socratics, and reclaim early Greek thinking. “Meditative thinking” includes the Greek traditions of gathering, and/or apprehension and collection. Waiting becomes important to Heidegger as well. “Waiting” he says, “releases itself into openness.” This is separate from our preconceptions of waiting, which can be misconstrued as human nature or subjectivized. “Waiting” to Heidegger is more like “Waiting upon,” and allowing a releasement of the will. This allows for thing itself to be within its horizon, it’s region, and reveal it’s Being.
Next, Ferrara moves to a discussion of “On the Origin of the Work of Art.” Heidegger is referring to all forms of art in his essay, from music to visual art to poetry. In a roundabout way, the artist is defined as the source of the artwork, although the act of creating art is what defines the artist as such. Somehow art is present in the work and guides the artist (Ferrara 126). Ferrara says that in some ways the art work can be considered a thing. Heidegger specifies three types of being, the ready-to-hand (equipment, useful, like automobiles), the present-to-hand (junk, a pile of leaves for example), and Dasein (human existence). He relates the art work to the second kind, referred to as “mere-things”. However when defining things, traditionally, there are three types: thing as substance, thing as a sum of what is given to the senses, and thing as formed matter. Heidegger refutes them all.
Ferrara then explains why each of these falls flat in Heidegger’s mind. Heidegger’s exegesis of thing theories, however, is meta-critiqued by himself as not bringing the analysis closer to the “thingly element in art” (Ferrara 127). Heidegger moves from a meta-theoretical level to one of an art critic, interpreting a specific thing. He then muses on the existence of a pair of shoes, and what makes the shoes the thing that they are. Heidegger concludes that the shoes are much more than the “matter and form,” but are also determined by setting, purpose, and even key moods of human existence, exuded by the shoes. He comes to this reasoning by looking at a Van Gogh painting, thus using the art work to obtain the true Being of the shoes, instead of the shoes themselves. The work allows the shoes to reveal themselves in truth, (as ‘aletheai’ or “unconcealedness”), an important point in Heideggers conception of art. Ranking truth over beauty is a big step from traditional art critique.
The shoes in real form do not reveal their true being, according to Heidegger. It is only through the painting, that they are transformed into a “virtual” form, and allow for the “artist’s crystallization of human feelings and ontological insights” (Ferrara 130). Virtual forms are marked by truth.
Heidegger explores the duality that art work’s are also things and related to the things they try to describe by analyzing a greek temple. He steps back and instead of a formal critique of structure, looks at the work materials (the stones themselves), derived from the Earth. According to pre-Socratic thoughts of ‘physis,’ the physical nature of the Earth was always rising around us, and the work materials should be treated as such. Heidegger attributes this to the artist’s workmanship. Ferrara draws the conclusion that art is not static; it is something that “emerges and unfolds in our experience of it.” The thing, present-to-hand, can become art if it emerges.
Heidegger provides more discourse on the relationship between world and earth, similar to the relationship between Being and actual existing reality. The world, to Heidegger, can forever be expressed by art works such as Greek temples. Without these works, their ontological worlds would vanish. The world must be an open one, but when successfully open, creates a “spaciousness” that allows for Being. What happens in the world of art, to Heidegger, is called “worlding.”
But remaining spacious is only part of it. Heidegger uses the example of the transformation of stone from just a useless stone on the side of the road, to part of the temple. Something happens to the stone, that allows it show itself as stone for the first time. The importance of the relationship between world and earth is discussed, and how by defining earth, we can understand the relationship between earth and art objects as well.
Ferrara then discusses ‘rift-design,’ Heidegger’s concept of how truth happens in the artwork, because of its strife. Rift-design is the drawing together of basic design, breach and outline. It is a set structure, not the earth, but something more formed. Finally Ferrara concludes with a step back at the fundamental elements of “art work” in the art work; “earth (materials), rift-design (syntax), and world (reference)” (138).
To Heidegger, art must be appreciated to happen in the work of art. The truth can only happen “if an inspired person allows it to happen” (Ferrara 139). Art is different from mere things in its many fundamentals. Heidegger also asserts that all art is poetry. Since language is more than a means of communication, but is in fact rooted in Being (when referring to the sound, and not the words as objects), poetry is the art of language, and makes the language of the various arts possible. Briefly, the historical element of art is noted, for it’s importance (“History is the history of Being”) (140).
REACTION
Despite that this is a ton to take in, Heidegger’s philosophy of art seems to be a key element in all discourse when discussing an art-work. In reference to “Being There,” (a hilarious nod to Dasein, no?) it seems relevant to discuss Chance as above thinking in post-Socratic terms. He sees all objects as truth, because he has almost no concept of practicality versus aesthetic. The elevator is just another uninhibited experience to him, a present thing, and he looks at it the same way we’d look at a painting or a sculpture. He enters the world in a beautiful scene, and after years of isolation, the poverty and dirt of the streets of Washington rise up from the Earth, and present a new truth. To Chance, everything is art.
Except the television, which presents an interesting problem when taking this approach to Chance; what is TV? We know Chance believes TV to be the ultimate truth, but what kind of Being does it represent? I wonder what Heidegger would consider TV to be… a form of art object, or merely a medium of transmission? Does the television stand alone in Being, or merely broadcast Being to others? If a book could be an art object, then surely television programs could as well.
TV certainly lends itself to the idea that Chance lives in a world of mimesis, because he only knows and imitates what he sees on television. I forget what Heidegger thought of mimesis, but he probably dismissed it at being too developed by post-Socratics. Appreciation of art seems to be more rooted in the language, the poetry of art and its fundamentals, levels of understanding that Chance could never intellectually reach. So how is it that he is so uninhibited by the blocks the common man faces in reaching Heidegger’s understanding of Being or truth?
I believe that Chance wouldn’t just kick the stone aside on the roadside, he would stop and look at it as if it were part of a temple and try to recognize that it comes from earth. He does not need the context that we do to see something for it’s Being or to find truth. Even though to Heidegger the stone on the road cannot achieve Being, to Chance I think it can. He is above Heidegger’s method.