origin of the work of art

is a rejection of the Western tradition of aesthetics and a retrieval of its forgotten sources.

The text explicitly rejects the terms that usually dominate discussion of this kind. It refuses to speak of art in terms of ‘form’ and ‘content’, ‘individual creativity’, ‘meaning’, ‘artist’s intention’ , ‘aesthetic experience’ or ‘aesthetic judgement’ or ‘taste’ . The essay is a rejection of the Western tradition of aesthetics and a retrieval of its forgotten sources.

is concerned with the question of the nature and potential of art works in the time of the dominance of technological thinking.

At issue throughout ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ and not fully resolved by the end is the nature and potential of art works in the time of the dominance of technological thinking.

is an essay that seeks to draw our attention to arts failure to play a decisive role in our epoch.

So, the very possibility of effective art in modern society is questionable for Heidegger. Is it techno-science, not art, that is now fundamental to the West’s outlook on everything? This question will extend to the very end of Heidegger’s career. ‘Heidegger, far from insisting that art plays a decisive role in every epoch, as many readers of “The Origin of the Work of Art” have supposed, is in fact seeking to draw our attention to its failure to do that’ (Bernasconi 1985: 36).

is an attempt to rescue the possibility of art from aesthetics; to hearken to art as the site of a resistance to the subjugation of being to theoretical knowledge.

Heidegger’s lecture in the mid-1930s forms an attempt to rescue the possibility of art from aesthetics, i.e. to hearken to art as the site of a resistance to the subjugation of being to theoretical knowledge.

is an attempt to save art by dissociating it from the aesthetic.

Heidegger’s great lecture, viewed in retrospect, appears as one of several attempts in the twentieth century to save art by dissociating it from the aesthetic.

origin of the work of art, n.Definitions

origin of the work of art