Sunday, January 27, 2008

"Truth is the unconcealedness of that which is as something that is. Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance - as this being of truth in the work and as work - is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth's taking of its place. It does not exist merely relative to pleasure and purely as its object. The beautiful does lie in form, but only because the forma once took its light from Being as the isness of what is."

- Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art

3 comments:

Cheshire Cat said...

"Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth"

There's perhaps an unconscious self-referential aspect to this. It's certainly a productive phrase.

Alok said...

you mean the sentence itself is heralding the advent of truth? It's an interesting thought... I feel many of his linguistic formulations can be turned into a sort of poetry, the kind he himself talks about in these essays, with very little effort. It is actually one of the theses of these essays - poet as a philosopher of Being.

Cheshire Cat said...

Yes, exactly. To me, his style gives the impression of communicating revelations that have been vouchsafed only to him. The philosopher as oracle. That's a similar persona to the Romantic poets.