Aesthetics as Phenomenology: The Appearance of Things

PHENOMENOLOGY

Introduction

The question of the essence of art no longer stands at the center of philosophy. This may have to do with art itself—with the fact that it barely still makes religious or life-reforming claims, or dissolves traditional structures and thus compels reflection. Even the effective but short-lived totalizing of aesthetic relativity under the name of postmodernism, which was also to envelop philosophy, has meanwhile become historical. As concerns art, a state of normalcy has come to dominate. The entrenchments, provocations, and absolutizations of emphatic modernism have passed; the postmodern attempt to replace emphatic modernism with a hodgepodge of styles reminiscent of the Gründerzeit has remained devoid of consequences and appears in retrospect as no more than a curiosity. By now, the modern artistic problematics developed in the nineteenth and especially in the twentieth century, as well as their corresponding modes of composition, are considered valid without question. One has entered the state of a placid modernism, which need no longer assert itself over against tradition and thus combines casually with it. Unlike emphatic modernism with its challenges, placid modernism appears to be less compelling of philosophical reflection.

There is another reason that art no longer counts as an overriding theme for philosophy. Philosophical reflection on art has been replaced more and more by research in media studies and semiotic or symbolic theories. This has gone hand in hand with a relativization of the art-character of art; one inquires less about this character than about the medial or symbolic form of text and image—aspects not limited to art alone.

Inquiries of this kind are no doubt justified; they can even be immensely fruitful. Yet they do not put to rest the question concerning the essence of art. In an image that is a work of art, its image-character is more distinct and clear; a poetic text is more able to be experienced as a text than an arbitrary piece of writing, and the experience of hearing a musical work of art could not be replaced even by the most successful of popular music pieces. Yet the question of what makes an image, a text, or a piece of music into an artwork cannot be answered through image, text, or music theory, for the art-character is common to visual, poetic, and musical artworks. Insofar as the question of the art-character of artworks demands a general answer, it is a distinct question for philosophy.

The transition from emphatic to placid modernism should be favorable to the discussion of this question. Philosophical clarifications need distance from their subject matter; every partisan for or against something loses the clarity of vision necessary for philosophy. Only when one no longer associates the philosophical discussion of art with partisan intentions can art as such be seen. Only then is a circumspect answer possible to the question of what experience art induces.

Such an answer must be especially prudent, because in modernism it was associated with either too high or too low of a demand. The conviction that art reveals truth, however this is conceived, stood over against the conviction that art is nothing other than an occasion to try out one’s own possibilities of experience in especially intense, perhaps even liberated and thus inspiring ways. The quarrel between these convictions is that between philosophy of art and philosophical aesthetics.

Philosophy of art and philosophical aesthetics have their strengths and their weaknesses. While the philosophy of art, in its various forms from Hegel and Schelling to Nietzsche to Heidegger, Gadamer, and Adorno, has developed impressive analyses of the structure of artworks, it was at the same time in danger of overloading or instrumentalizing this structure historically or anthropologically. One thereby lost track of the fact that art, despite all its interwovenness into life-contexts, is only identifiable as art if it is experienced in a way that comparable life-moments and cultural objects are not. Furthermore, one neglected that the experience of art is not unique; the experience of use-objects and of nature can be similar, in some cases even the same as the experience of artworks. This is precisely what the proponents of philosophical aesthetics—that is, Kant and Kantians of various sorts—realized and converted into the conception of a unified experience that can be called aesthetic. Of course, this conception had its price as well. If many things or almost all things can become occasions of aesthetic experience, it appears arbitrary. It is especially no longer clear, then, why aesthetic experience prefers to deal with artworks at all. This difficulty is already decisive for Kant’s Critique of Judgment, the foundational work of philosophical aesthetics. Although Kant ranks the aesthetic experience of nature much higher than that of artworks, an essential determination of aesthetic experience, namely its sociability that finds expression in communicability and critical conversation, applies above all to the experience of artworks.

The intention of the present investigation is to combine the strengths of the philosophy of art and philosophical aesthetics, and to avoid their respective weaknesses. The point will be to describe the essential constitution of artworks as precisely as possible and to keep in mind that artworks as such are identifiable because they themselves demand a specific attitude, namely the aesthetic attitude. Anything that does not demand this attitude is not an artwork. Yet if that is the case, then the aesthetic attitude cannot be arbitrary or gratuitous. If there is something that requires the attitude, then everything that can adequately be experienced in the aesthetic attitude must bear an essential relation to this. In that case, artworks are of such a kind as to be essentially made for the aesthetic attitude. They need not be exhausted by this attitude, but can also have their place in social-political or religious contexts—generally in contexts that are important for cultural or historical understanding and self-understanding. Yet the fact that they are artworks is demonstrated, above all, in the possibility of the aesthetic attitude.

In order to grasp the essence of art more precisely, and with it the essence of the aesthetic attitude, one need merely reflect on the fundamental conception of philosophical aesthetics. This conception, using Kant’s formulation, was to be an analytic of the beautiful. Correspondingly, that which one now matter-of-factly calls art—as if there were no such thing as the art of healing or the art of speaking—is to be grasped as fine art [schöne Kunst]. The term may sound dated, like the eighteenth century from which it stems. But it should become evident that it still denotes the subject matter of art as appropriately as ever. In order to see this, one need merely relinquish the sedimented prejudices about the beautiful that Kant already partially refuted. The beautiful is neither the pleasant nor what is harmonious in feeling; it is also not the sterile perfection that one associates with the products of classicism. Even modern artworks are beautiful as such—indeed, especially so; their beauty needs to be conceptually elucidated, because it is only in this way that their essence can be revealed.

To be sure, such an elucidation belongs within the context of philosophical aesthetics as it has been determined by the tradition. The elucidation, however, also immediately leads beyond this context. After all, insofar as philosophical reflection on aesthetic experience is concerned with the subject matter of this experience, and thereby especially with artworks, it is phenomenological. It only begins as a reflection upon experience in order to recognize experience’s correlate; it wishes to clarify how experience is determined by this correlate. In this regard, art is no arbitrary theme of phenomenological description; it is not that an artwork can, like all other things, be observed as a phenomenon instead of in its factual being. Rather, an artwork is essentially phenomenal; it is an appearance that is not to be taken as the appearance of something, but instead purely as appearance. Accordingly, aesthetics essentially is phenomenology; it must be phenomenology if it wishes to grasp that which can be aesthetically experienced, and grasp it by way of art in its clearest and most distinct shape.

Aesthetics, thus understood, does not merely possess a phenomenological character to the extent that it is one possible form of phenomenology. Aesthetics also at the same time alters phenomenology, insofar as phenomena capable of being experienced aesthetically are not pure correlates of consciousness, but rather things. Artworks are thing-like; it is only for this reason that perception is essentially connected to the experience of them. Yet artworks are things of a special sort—not things that can also be viewed as phenomena, but rather essentially phenomenal things, or conversely, phenomena that are essentially thing-like. Artworks are, in a word, appearing things [Erscheinungsdinge]—thing-like appearances, things that are essentially made in order to appear. As appearing things, artworks are beautiful.

The present investigation intends to develop precisely what this means. At issue is the phenomenal essence of artworks, that is, that which makes the experience of art as such possible and irreplaceable. Thus, everything that the experience of art bears in common with other possibilities of experience can remain unconsidered without thereby narrowing the meaning of this essence. The experience of art, for instance, could not be described completely if one neglected its hermeneutic character. Artworks are essentially interpretable and in need of interpretation; they are inherently to be understood. Yet intelligibility and the demand of interpretation are not traits restricted to artworks. They are just as valid for juridical, religious, and philosophical texts, for historical events and for complex life-relationships in general. Conversely, the intelligibility of artworks is less idiosyncratic than their perceivability. Whereas, in the process of understanding philosophical texts, perception is nothing more than a necessary condition, it is constitutive for the understanding of artworks. Artworks are only understandable as perceived. Thus, the perceivability of artworks carries more weight for their essential determination than their intelligibility.

To grasp artworks as things of appearance means to make their thing-like appearance comprehensible as an interplay of various essential moments. This will occur—after an opening chapter that is dedicated to the possibilities of a philosophical discussion of art—in four steps, each taken with a chapter.

The second chapter will connect with Kant in clarifying the concept of beauty, initially merely from the aesthetic standpoint, then from an aesthetic-phenomenological one. It will thereby become evident that the beautiful as such is a decentered order that stands for itself as an appearance. A decentered order does not permit of being assigned to any conceptually identifiable object and thus being made comprehensible through this object. The order only exists by appearing. In artworks, this appearance is deictic. Something appears in its decentered order—for instance that which a picture shows, or that which a novel narrates. This something is shown, but only in such a way that an artwork itself shows itself. Artworks do not point to something that exists beyond them and that would be intended by the works themselves. What they show is rather only in them and with them, in the way that they show it.

It belongs to the self-showing of artworks that they are recognizable as artworks. One generally sees a picture that is a work of art as a picture; one does not take a novel to be a report of an actual course of events; an aria is not the expression of actually perceived joy or actually perceived pain. This recognizability of artworks has to do with their forms. Artworks show themselves and show in forms of art that are, as such, forms of appearance. The third chapter of the investigation is dedicated to these forms of art. At issue here is also the question of how the various art forms—image, poetic text, music—relate to one another. This question is already significant because there are combinations, intersections, and mixtures of the forms of art. It is only because the forms of art are not strictly separated from one another that one can speak of art. Yet the connection of art forms extends even further. We will see that every artwork as such is a mixture of various art forms; the work, as work, consists in just this mixture.

Artworks, however, do not merely show themselves and indicate through their forms, but essentially through the fact that they are perceivable. Unlike the mixture of forms, the perceptible aspect of artworks is simply there of its own accord; it stands before one’s eyes or is audible. This perceptible aspect of artworks involves their naturalness, their belonging to nature, which the fourth chapter discusses. Just as the forms of appearance are especially recognizable as forms of art, so nature too stands out particularly clearly in the artwork. In the artwork, nature evinces itself as a primordial appearance.

The way in which the self-showing of artworks stands out is only possible because something else recedes in artworks’ favor. Something must let the works show themselves; it must give the works to appearance so that these can exist as appearances. The fifth and final chapter elucidates this as space. Artworks as such are spatial. It is only from out of this spatiality that the demanding and binding aspects of artworks arises, and with these the possibility of an adequate experience of art. In their spatiality, artworks are the objects of aesthetic experience.

One concept pervades the present investigation as a basic theme: the concept of possibility. Decentered orders are never binding, always merely possible; insofar as they do not allow themselves to be grounded, they are apparent in their possibility. Even as appearances, artworks are possibilities. The appearance understood phenomenologically, that is, the phenomenon, is possibility and, in art, is set into the work as such. What the artworks show are, like Aristotle already knew, possibilities; that which they show becomes apparent in the ways it can be. The forms in which this showing occurs are forms of possibility—and as forms of appearance they are those possibilities of appearing that come forth in the self-showing of artworks as such. The perceptible aspect of artworks, too, the nature in them, is possibility. The comprehensible aspect of artworks arises out of the perceptible, and its own possibilities remain tied back to the latter. Yet the basic possibility of artworks is space. It is that which gives and enables, without therefore being the ground of artworks. Insofar as space gives artworks to appearance, they can simply be there and stand forth—as pure possibilities that have become things, and as things that have become pure possibilities.

ONE

Art, Philosophically

Why Art?

The question that stands at the outset here is sometimes also a reply. In that case, Why art? means: Are there not more important themes for philosophy, themes that are more urgent with respect to the understanding of life or for one’s orientation in action? When posed in such a way, the question need not be answered; one need not contradict the reply that it already embodies. It suffices to clarify the presupposition that informs it and to see that this presupposition is not at all evident. Philosophy, so the question insinuates, gleans its sense from some utility for life, however this utility is conceived. Philosophy is taken to be subject to the question, as Nietzsche puts it, of the advantage and disadvantage for life.¹ Yet there are philosophical clarifications that are not calculated toward effects and advantages—indeed, according to the traditional conviction that goes back to Plato and Aristotle, namely that philosophy is primarily theoretical, these clarifications are the most important.² Θεωρεῖν means observing, and observing means looking and describing, without further intentions. Observation would be superfluous if what it disclosed were also accessible in something other than observation, as for instance in action.

Even everyday experience attests to the fact that observation is irreplaceable: In our daily life replete with action, there are insights that cannot be won through acting, but instead only in pausing and reflecting, which can only lead to results if they are not subsumed under a purpose. Contrary to acting, observation is not oriented toward aims. The more it corresponds to its essence, the less it is concerned with a result posited beforehand. Observation could only be goal-oriented if one knew ahead of time what one wanted to experience. Yet precisely that remains open; that is why one observes thoroughly and is absorbed in something. Observation is not concerned with an aim but with a matter. The sole aim of observation is that the observed matter come forward as clearly and distinctly as possible. Insofar as action is embedded in states of affairs, this is also true for its realm; the conditions of action—the knowledge of which is required for any adequate action—only have a bearing if one steps back from the situation of action and its demands. One usually only sees this objective side of action, or sees it more clearly, when one relinquishes the pursuit of a goal and attempts to clarify the situation in which one finds oneself—without partiality to one’s own interests.

For an observational philosophy concerned with objectively oriented clarification, the question of art is no simple issue among others. It concerns philosophy itself. Art approaches the observational attitude, and thus philosophy, in a peculiar way. Art awakens observation; it even opens up the attitude essential to philosophy in prephilosophical life. If one has any sense for art at all, observation—even in the extended sense that includes listening and reading—arises as if on its own.

An indication of this might be that one tends to dedicate oneself to art outside of one’s working hours. One can spend free time in worse ways than with music, painting, and literature. That the occupation with art is typically only possible in one’s free time, but is nourished precisely in this time, speaks against the action and purpose-orientation of life as a whole. In dealing with art, one senses another side of life, a side that has meaning for itself and not in relation to action or purposes. The occupation with art is no mere distraction, for it demands concentration. It does not serve the purpose of recreation, insofar as the latter is determined by the aim of recuperating one’s capacity for work. The occupation with art is not directed toward the care of one’s own abilities, but instead toward artworks; it is not relaxation, but an activity that is effortlessly intent and thus particularly animated. When one feels vivified by the occupation with an artwork, this results on its own accord, not from the aim of recreation. One has been elsewhere than in the quotidian, and this, it seems, is a complement—as if now life were more complete. One has experienced something that was lacking in the everyday, and now once again feels entirely and encompassingly alive. That which complements is that which allows something to be whole. Art cannot replace action or goal-directed research. But it has a power that, as it seems, reaches and leads beyond these.

If this is the case, then art is part of human life. The history of art supplies further evidence for this. Art exists in all cultures; cave paintings such as those of Altamira and Lascaux demonstrate it in the earliest cultures. Further, the fact that art is part of life is something immediately evident; one senses it as soon as one turns to artworks. How else are we to explain, for instance, the attractive pull that exhibitions of significant paintings exert? Exhibitions that prompt true pilgrimages are rarely experienced as mere sensations. Whoever travels there simply because it is a must-see is able to anticipate their disappointment: One just sees pictures. Yet whoever understands what it means to observe will return enriched. It is comparable to literature and the joy of reading, which cannot be forced by anything. It is comparable to music; the excitement for great interpreters—singers as well as instrumentalists and conductors—is an indication of this. It differs quite obviously from the fascination for athletic achievements, as the interpreters of artworks are not admired for their performance, but for the fact that they bring the works to fruition adequately and in particularly astonishing ways.

What speaks for art, therefore, is more than pleasure. One should rather speak of delight. Even the most serious of artworks, in all that they demand of their viewers, can exhilarate in such a deep way that dealing with them affects one’s entire life-attunement. The experience of these works can even provide energy; one carries one’s burdens more lightly, one feels newly adequate to the demands of life, if anything because one has experienced that there is something beyond these demands.

But there must be more involved. The interest in art is, in its essence, an interest in the variety of artworks. Each work is different and new; no work is simply an example of something general that could be called art. One only looks or listens attentively, extensively, precisely, and repeatedly if there is something to be experienced that is only shown in this one work. Despite being bound to actual perception, artworks are not reducible to it. They have residual effects, engaging our reflection, and demanding a conceptually articulated account. Thus, the interest in art reveals a desire to understand, and it must be eminently important what artworks give us to understand. Why else would we turn, ever again, to a poem, a musical piece, or a painting?

That which is there to be understood in art is the work itself, and yet at the same time not just the work. In understanding an artwork, one understands something with it, in it, or through it. The understanding of artworks is not simply geared toward these alone, but discovers in them the possibility of also understanding other things. With respect to these other things, however, artworks are no mere means of understanding with the help of which one arrives somewhere and which, as soon as one arrives, one can relinquish. It seems that artworks mediate something that, through them, becomes accessible in a special and irreplaceable way. Every artwork mediates that which it alone can mediate. Otherwise, a novel like Tolstoy’s War and Peace could be replaced with any other historical novel, or even by an arbitrary historical representation of Napoleon’s campaign in Russia; a sociology of French bourgeois life would be as illuminating as Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

Yet this comparison and the competition it insinuates are alienating. Artworks can indeed be researched with a clarifying intention from a historical, sociological, psychological, or other angle, but they are not essentially historical or sociological sources, nor symptoms of social or psychological states. It is not to be denied that one can glean information from images, buildings, novels, poems, or musical pieces, but this has nothing to do with their character as artworks. To become involved with artworks is not to be informed of something, but to be touched in an originary way and displaced into a state of elemental openness: art provokes wonder—in all forms that wonder can take—from joy to irritation. If it is so, then art displaces one into that attitude that Aristotle described as the origin of philosophical observation.³ Art, like all astonishing things, is wondrous in its lack of self-evidence. With artworks, something is revealed that was not known without them. They displace one into wonder because they allow an ignorance to appear.⁴

In the experience of art, this is an ignorance of a special sort. It has nothing to do with ignorance about states of affairs that one could learn about in a myriad of ways. With every work, one experiences something that one did not know before and that one could not anticipate in the way that it is experienceable in this work. An artwork cannot be expected, and this not only in one’s initial experience of it, but anew in every instance. One can think one knows an image; one has read a text several times or heard a musical piece countless times, and yet it will always again seem as if one encounters what is to be seen, read, or heard for the first time. Every experience that one has already had with the artwork thereby enters anew into the context of the present experience. It is as if, despite everything one already knows, one did not know the most important aspect about the work and needed to explore the work in an entirely new manner. But this ignorance—the suspension of all supposedly secure prior knowledge—is in turn rescinded by the work itself; it reveals, and does so anew each time. Art is insight. It is a relation to the states of affairs and things of the world, and aims to make these accessible in a way that is different from the manner that we are accustomed to: it makes them accessible in the work alone.

From the beginning, philosophy has viewed art, more specifically poetry, under the guise of insight. Philosophy’s claim to knowledge was formulated in competition with poetry, and that only makes sense if poetry is either knowledge or at least counts as knowledge. Only then can poetry be shown to be insufficient in comparison to philosophy; only then can one argue whether poetry is truly knowledge, such that philosophy gains in profile through comparison with it. It is with this intention that Heraclitus speaks of knowing-much (πολυμαθίν) that does not teach one to have reason. He names Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hekataios as those who know much; they are not knowers in the sense of knowing those structures and orders that Heraclitus articulates around the term λόγος.⁵ Heraclitus claims that Homer deserves to be thrown out of the competitions and thrashed, presumably for the same reason.⁶

What remains overbearing contempt in Heraclitus is developed much more soberly in Plato—though not without an ironic polemicism. Among other things, Plato criticizes the inability of poets to give accounts concerning that which they write about. They merely tell myths, stories,⁷ and in this way even the early natural philosophers were still poets who treat their readers or listeners as if they were children.⁸ To be sure, as the Apology attests, the poets bring forth much that is beautiful. Yet this does not occur through established knowledge (σοφία), but by virtue of nature (φύσει) and in enthusiasm (ἐνθυσιασμός); poems are like the statements of soothsayers and oracle singers. Thus, almost all others speak better than poets themselves about that which they have brought forth.⁹

There are relevant elaborations in the second, third, and tenth books of the Republic that remain similar in tendency but are more extensive and oriented more by poetry itself. There, works of poetry are determined as illusions—not because they are fundamentally false, but because they present something in such a way that one cannot inquire as to its true nature and composition.¹⁰ Works of poetry do not owe their existence to clear, generally identifiable knowledge. That is also why they cannot be matter-of-factly evident, but rather only suggestive;¹¹ if one does not scrutinize their problematic character, one takes them at face value and does not ask questions. The question concerning the λόγος of a matter, of its true determination, remains foreign to the poets. This question can therefore only be brought to bear on their works as if from the outside.

The Platonic determination of the poet and of poetry continues to have an effect. When Kant, in the Critique of Judgment, determines fine art as the art of genius and says of this genius that it is "the inborn disposition (ingenium) through which nature [gives] the rule to art, this is not far removed from the Socratic-Platonic characterization of the poet by means of ἐνθυσιασμός. With Kant, the divine power that works through the poet has simply been replaced with nature, yet not in the sense of a world that obeys laws and is therefore knowable by science. Rather, nature is here meant in the sense of the inaccessible, that which occurs on its own, and that which allows a talent to be present or not. Since the talent, as an artist’s inborn, productive capacity, belongs to nature,"¹² it is not a form of knowledge that could be clearly articulated and passed on. The material that a scientist like Newton compiled is, as Kant articulates, clearly structured according to rules and can be learned accordingly. Yet no poet, according to Kant, could show how his ideas, rich in fancy and yet also in thought, arise and meet in his mind; he does not know it himself, and thus cannot teach it to anyone else.¹³

The inaccessibility and unteachability of art, however, only count as a disadvantage if one takes an identifiable and thus teachable knowledge to be possible. Accordingly, any doubt concerning the possibility of such knowledge ushers in an appreciation of the poet and, finally, an identification of knowledge and poetry. If all knowledge arises from sources that remain opaque, then it has the character of poetry even if it is not inspired. In this sense, Nietzsche took his task to see science from the perspective of the artist, but to see art from the perspective of life—for art is a reality of self-sustaining and increasing vitality.¹⁴ Within the philosopher, the theoretical human (116) whose archetype is Socrates, Nietzsche discovers the inhibited, indeed the corrupted artist. Whereas in all productive humans the instinct [is] precisely the creative-affirmative power, in Socrates "the instinct [becomes] the critic, consciousness becomes the creator—a true monstrosity per defectum. Socrates’ logical drive (90) in its uninhibited sweep evinces a force of nature, the likes of which we only meet, to our shuddering surprise, in the greatest of instinctive powers" (91). In Socrates, there is a logical and therefore no longer recognizable ingenium; even the knowledge of philosophical and later of scientific theory, seemingly so clear and controlled, is a force of nature, inaccessible as an instinct and not transparent.

With his critique of Socrates, Nietzsche reverses the valuation established by Plato. If the author of the Republic wanted to demonstrate the superiority of philosophy and situate his philosophical hero in Homer’s place,¹⁵ so Nietzsche replaces the central figure of philosophy with that of the artist. And just as Plato redetermined myth (and poetry as such) under the sign of philosophy, so Nietzsche understands philosophy as a special case of poetry, such that there are no longer any boundaries between philosophy or science and art. If purported knowledge is, in truth, art, then every knower proves to be an artist. The knower, especially the philosopher, misjudges himself if he conceives of himself as an observer, that is, if he understands himself theoretically. What he takes to be observation is actually a bringing-forth, such that the philosopher merely thinks he is placed as an observer and listener before the great play of sights and sounds that is life. As Nietzsche, describing this delusion, continues, the knower calls "his nature a contemplative one and overlooks the fact that he himself is also the actual poet and poetizer of life: We, the thinking-feeling ones, are those that really and evermore make something that is not yet there: the entire ever-growing world of estimations, colors, weights, perspectives, stepladders, affirmations and negations."¹⁶

Both the ancient critique of poets and the modern apology for them are based on an unquestioned presupposition: It is alleged that the question concerning insight can be answered with reference to the relation of poetry and philosophy, by comparing poetic and philosophical knowledge. This, in turn, is grounded in the assumption that insight and knowledge are, in any case, to be understood as human properties that arise in the actions of a knower.¹⁷

For Plato, knowledge entails the possibility of recognizing the known for what it is under various conditions. That which is recognizable under various conditions must be determined as itself. Accordingly, one must be able to say what is the case independent of the various circumstances of its givenness. In this conception, the knowledge of the poets is, in fact, insufficient; they can neither justify nor elucidate that which they present and make known in their poetry. As they do not possess a situationally independent view of the matter itself, they cannot say in other terms what they know. They lack the insight into the matter’s structure; to put it Platonically, they lack the insight into the εἶδος. It is only with a view to the εἶδος that different accounts can complement each other in their variation such that they result in a meaningful whole. Only when a matter is present independently of its respective circumstantial accounts can the presentation of the matter be transparent.

Nietzsche doubts the possibility of such an eidetic grasp of a matter. In his understanding, whoever varies his statements does not elucidate something grasped previously, but rather creates something new. No statement is sustained by the matter revealed in observation; instead every statement, according to its particular possibilities, brings something to appearance that is never given purely as itself. Even the philosopher who believes he is describing something that is grasped in observation is not a knower, but a poet of life.¹⁸

The results of Plato’s and Nietzsche’s determinations of the relation of poetry and philosophy are considerably different. Yet as concerns art, they agree; both neglect the same thing, namely the artwork. The artwork is neither a variable pronouncement of knowledge nor the expression of a view that changes from moment to moment. It stands for itself and is even withdrawn from its creator as soon as it is there. Assuming the poet Socrates interrogated in the Apology had had the opportunity to respond and had refuted the Socratic judgment concerning the poets’ incapacity to elaborate on their work, he could nevertheless not have supplemented his work by means of an additional justifying or clarifying statement. He would have merely shown himself to be someone who can say illuminating things about an artwork, independently of the fact that he is the author. Yet as before, his work would stand simply for itself—unchangeable, not variable in any way.

This work nevertheless exists for Plato, and it is seen as a work about which there is something to say. What is more, Plato knew very well that his own writings are not artless treatises oriented solely by the factual, but are in fact poetry. These writings challenge one to inquire about the essence of a philosophy that articulates itself poetically and thus appropriates characteristics of poetry, but that is not exhausted by this. An answer to this question clearly presupposes a clarified understanding of the essence of poetry and its artistic character. Since it must begin with the artwork, the question concerning a free relation of poetry and philosophy can only be worked out in a philosophically elucidated determination of art. The free relation lies in this determination inasmuch as the latter lets art be as it is instead of using it for philosophical purposes. In contrast to this, Nietzsche, with his notion of a poetry of life, makes art into an occasion for philosophical generalizations. This notion envelops any creation of something that is not yet there,¹⁹ without the result being something one can relate to as to an artwork. Such a totalization of art dissolves art; it takes away that which makes art what it is—namely the artwork. Any discovery and joining of words would then appear as art, regardless of how tentative, processual, and ungraspable it may be.

Yet it is with respect to philosophy itself, and not only to art, that the competitively construed comparison between the artist and the philosopher yields so little. Unlike in early and classical antiquity, philosophy is no longer in its beginnings; it is established. It need no longer be distinguished from other forms of world-disclosure in order to show its peculiar profile. Even if the form of philosophy that goes back to Plato and Aristotle and is carried all the way over into modernity does not possess a matter-of-fact validity, there is no clear reason, following Nietzsche’s suggestion, to dissolve it into literature.²⁰ Instead, the putting-in-question of philosophy belongs to its essence; its challenging of modernity is thus nothing special. As thoroughly as philosophical reflection turns against the handed-down form of philosophy that has, since Nietzsche, become questionable as metaphysics, its own possibilities are so unmistakable that even the attempt to take them back into poetry cannot level them down.

Art can remind philosophy precisely of these possibilities. Because art invites one to observe, it gives philosophy an opportunity to reflect upon its own observational character, its theoretical essence, and to actualize this essence without inhibitions. Thus, through art, philosophy gains independence from all that has befallen the concept of theory in modernity and modernism. Instead of relinquishing its theoretical character to art,²¹ philosophy can discover it anew. After all, the term is rarely still used in its classical meaning, but stands instead for a system of statements, determined by certain basic suppositions and concepts that describe a more or less limited realm of objects and explain circumstances specific to this realm. In this sense, theory is above all a matter for the sciences, yet this theory has little or nothing to do with θεωρία in the classical sense. If there are moments of classical θεωρία within modern science, these are not constitutive; thus, an orientation according to the modern sciences is not helpful in clarifying the observational essence of philosophy.

Viewed more closely, the relationship between philosophy and science never was any different. Even if the two belonged closer together in the tradition—so closely that, since Aristotle, philosophy can be called a science²²—the peculiar aspect of philosophical observation, its origin in wonder and its enactment in impartial and purposeless looking, can never be explained from its character as a science. Philosophy exists independently of science. As, for example, the sayings of Heraclitus, the Platonic dialogues, the works of Nietzsche and the later Heidegger and Wittgenstein attest, philosophy remains independent of scientific procedures such as explanation or foundation. It does not fundamentally exclude these procedures, but it also does not need them. Because of its independence from science, philosophy is also not threatened by the fact that sciences make claims to clarify matters that have traditionally belonged solely to philosophy. Philosophy need not be a science in order to maintain its justification in the face of science. But for this, it does need to reflect upon its theoretical essence. Theory in the philosophical sense does not