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Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment: The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology PDF

197 Pages·1993·14.504 MB·English
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POETICS, SPECULATION, AND JUDGMENT The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology Jacques Taminiaux translated and edited by Michael Gendre "Jacques Taminiaux has demonstrated his preeminence as a historian and philosopher of post-Kantian continental philosophy. In this book, he explicates the emergence of aesthetic judgment in Kant's thought, traces the theoretical provocation it provided for accounts in its wake in German Idealism, and finally, shows the effect of these considera­ tions on developments in more recent accounts. To this end Taminiaux provides important readings of Schiller, Hölderlin, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. "Taminiaux's discussions of the interface between issues concerning the end of metaphysics, the problem of speculation, and the question of the death of art are especially informative. His analyses throughout are unparalleled, and the book is to be recommended for the insights it provides to issues concerning the history and impact of aesthetics. "The book also provides insight to the itinerary of Taminiaux's own thought, covering issues which the author has treated over a period of three decades and whose timeliness recurs precisely because he is still willing to put his analyses to the test. His insight regarding questions of the history of aesthetics and its relevance for contemporary issues is unparalleled." —Stephen Watson, University of Notre Dame Jacques Taminiaux is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College and at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, where he is the Director of the Center for Phenomenological Studies. He is the author of Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, also published by SUNY Press. A volume in the SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy Dennis J. Schmidt, editor STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS ISBN 0-7914-1547-3 POETICS, SPECULATION, and JUDGMENT SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy Dennis J. Schmidt, Editor POETICS, SPECULATION, JUDGMENT and The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology Jacques Taminiaux Translated and Edited by Michael Gendre State University of New York Press Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1993 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Production by Dana Foote Marketing by Bernadette LaManna Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Taminiaux, Jacques, 1928— Poetics, speculation, and judgment : the shadow of the work of art from Kant to phenomenology I Jacques Taminiaux: translated and edited by Michael Gendre. p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy.) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-1547-3 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-7914-1548-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Aesthetics, Modern—18th century. 2. Aesthetics, Modern—19th century. 3. Aesthetics, Modern—20th century. 4. Aesthetics, Ancient. I. Series. BH151.T36 1993 111 '.85'0903—dc20 92-35025 CIP 10 987654321 Contents Preface vii 1. Speculation and Judgment 1 2. The Critique of Judgment and German Philosophy 21 3. Speculation and Difference 41 4. Between the Aesthetic Attitude and the Death of Art 55 5. The Nostalgia for Greece at the Dawn of Classical Germany 73 6. Fire and the Young Hölderlin 93 Ί. Art and Truth in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche 111 8. The Hegelian Legacy in Heidegger’s Overcoming of Aesthetics 127 9. The Origin of “The Origin of the Work of Art” 153 10. The Thinker and the Painter 171 Index 187 Preface I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Dennis Schmidt for his kindness in suggesting that some of my essays on philosophers and art be published in this collection. These pieces are the result of many years of teaching at the Uni versite de Louvain and at Boston College. Perhaps they have no greater merit than to attest to some extended readings in the authors investigated, and therefore should only claim to be reading notes. In any case, judgment should be passed by the readers themselves. Since these texts bear on philosophers—who all attempted to be origi­ nal—and since furthermore they were written over more than two decades, it is possible that collected they form a disparate assortment. At any rate, I find it useful to point out that I decided to unite them under the title Poetics, Spec­ ulation, and Judgment because in close proximity they allow two axes of thought to come to the fore in the philosophy of art: the speculative axis and the judicative axis. Regarding the history of philosophy from its Greek ori­ gins, these two axes are already outlined, on the one hand, in Plato’s critical attitude toward the artists of his time and, on the other hand, in Aristotle’s reaction against the views of his master. From the perspective of speculation adopted by Plato, art is without value and should be allowed to die if it does not lead to the ultimate knowledge of essences and of the ground aimed at by the philosophers. Such knowledge aspires to self-sufficiency and, conse­ quently, validates a view disparaging human plurality as well as the world of appearances to which this plurality is connected. In contrast, from the per­ spective of judgment adopted by Artistotle, art is accepted as what it is, and is deemed to be worthy of this acceptance not because an access is being pre­ pared in it for some metaphysics, but rather because art concerns the finite condition of human beings, their plurality, the phenomenal world that they inhabit together, and because it sheds light—if not on the impossibility of the self-sufficiency sought by metaphysicians—at least on the limits and the blind spots inherent in their pretensions to reach what is ultimate and a totality. It is striking that these two philosophical perspectives on art find themselves reproduced under various shapes and forms in modern and viii I Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment contemporary philosophy. In short, the essays brought together in this col­ lection attempt to examine some modern and contemporary versions of these two perspectives—the former leading to the depreciating of art in the name of some absolute, and the second leading, in the name of human finitude, to the acknowledgment that we are taught by art. I also wish to express my gratitude to Michael Gendre for the patience and attention he devoted to this translation. The papers have been lightly edited since their first French or English publication. All words or remarks in square brackets appearing in the footnotes are translator’s notes of original words. Speculation and Judgment Let me formulate at the very outset the question with which this essay will be dealing: Is there a link between the way philosophers approach the political realm and the way they consider the fine arts? That there is indeed a link is suggested at the very beginning of our philo­ sophical tradition by the fact that the earliest political philosophy as well as the earliest philosophy of art were both articulated in one and the same text, namely, Plato’s Republic. Whatever their divergences, most interpreters ad­ mit that this simultaneous presence is no mere coincidence. In addition they often concede that the justification for taking up these two topics together is to be found in the most decisive pages of the dialogue, namely, the story of the cave, in which Plato sets forth in a metaphorical manner his concepts of truth and of being. Concerning Plato, I propose to express the link in one word: speculation. To be sure, the origin of the word speculation is not Greek but Latin. It stems from speculum, which means “mirror.” Moreover, the systematic use of the word only appeared in modern philosophy, and rather late at that, namely, in German idealism. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is probably the first major text in which words such as speculation and speculative are sys­ tematically and repeatedly used. But in Kant they convey a negative and de­ rogatory connotation: They characterize ironically a way of philosophizing that trespasses the limits of the human mind. In a deliberate reaction against the Kantian emphasis on these limits, however, Hegel later grants to the same words the highest and most affirmative worth. In fact, my first intention was to focus this essay on the confrontation between Hegel and Kant regarding the political and the artistic realms, and to show that in Kant’s stand toward This paper was written in English by the author for the Dotterer Lecture given in the De­ partment of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, spring 1991.

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