Martin Heidegger, 1889-1976

•	Sein und Zeit (1927). Translated as Being and Time by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978). 
The Origin of the Work of Art first draft 1935, revised off and on until 1960, (cup by Gailan Ngan)
Origin and Essence
–	“Origin” means that from and by which something is as it is, i.e. the source of its essence or nature.
–	The usual view is that the origin of the work of art is the activity of the artist.
–	But the work first lets the artist emerge as a master:  it is the origin of the artist.
–	And work and artist both are by virtue of art. [Here he sounds like Plato!  But he will turn against Plato later.]
Only a word?
–	Art is only a word to which nothing real corresponds. [This is an anti-Platonic position. Heidegger is only considering this position, not supporting it: note the question he raises below.]
–	It may [just] be a collective idea for what is alone real in art:  works and artists.
–	And if it means more than this it still exists only on the basis of what is real in art: works and artists.
Or do works of art and artists exist only because art does?
–	Art is present in the artwork.
–	What and how is a work of art? 

The Circle
•	There is a logical circle here:  what art is is inferable from the work of art, and what the work of art is is inferable from the nature of art.
•	The ordinary view is to avoid the circle and compare actual art works.
•	But how do we know that they are art works?
•	The nature of art cannot be derived from higher concepts.
•	So we must follow the circle:  which is the strength and feast of thought, if thinking is a craft.  [Nietzsche?]
•	Let us go to the actual work and ask how it is. 
The Thingly Character of Art
•	Works of art are familiar:  architecture and sculpture are as naturally present as ordinary things.
–	For example they can travel from place to place.
•	All works have this thingly character, and we enjoy that aspect in enjoying the work.
–	For example, there is something stony in a work of stone architecture: it is "in stone."
One view is that the artwork is something over and above the thingly element. 

–	On this view, this something else is its artistic nature.
–	The work makes public something other:  it is an allegory or symbol of something else.
–	On this view the thingly element is like the substructure upon which the authentic element is built: it is what the artist makes with handicraft. [Collingwood?]

–	We can only find real art within the work if we arrive at the immediate and full reality of the work, and so we must know what a thing is.

But what is a thing? What is the thing-being of a thing?

–	What is the sphere of entities which we have called "thing“?
–	“Things” include a stone in the road, a jug, milk, water, cloud, even things that do not appear, e.g. God.
–	All things that are are called things.
Airplanes and radio sets are among the things that are closest to us.

–	[Yet we also say that] death and judgment are ultimate things.
–	"Thing" here means whatever is not nothing.
–	But this concept is useless to us here:  it includes a work of art, God, a man. 
–	Yet we hesitate to call God, peasant, man, or deer, a thing.
–	We sooner think of a hammer as a thing, and a stone or clod as a mere thing.
 [How we Westerners think of things depends on] the way Western thought has thought [about] the Being of beings.

•	The dominant view has been that a thing is made of matter and form. [Aristotle]
•	This view derives from the equipmental being of equipment. [equipment:  any useful object, like a pot, a hat, or a cellphone]
•	And equipment is familiar to human thinking.

•	[Yet] equipment is someplace between thing and work.
•	We will search for the equipmental character of equipment.
•	Let's not make thing and work prematurely into subspecies of equipment. 

How shall we discover what a piece of equipment is truly?
•	Let's just describe some equipment without any philosophy.
•	We choose a pair of peasant shoes to describe.
–	A picture will do:  one of Van Gogh's paintings of shoes.
•	Shoes consist of certain matter formed to meet certain functions.
–	Matter and form of the shoes will differ depending on use.
Vincent van Gogh, A Pair of Shoes, 1885
Vincent Van Gogh, Shoes, 1888 
Vincent van Gogh, Three Pairs of Shoes, Paris, December 1886,
Oil on Canvas

We know that the equipmental quality of the shoes depends on its usefulness.
–	But we should look at the equipment in its use:  the peasant woman wears the shoes in the fields.
•	Only here they are what they are:  more genuinely so the less she thinks of them.
–	It is in the process of use that we actually encounter the equipmental nature of equipment.
–	In the painting they are just peasant shoes, and yet…
Vincent van Gogh, The Head of a Peasant Woman, 
Vincent van Gogh, Potato eaters, final version, 1885
Vincent van Gogh, Peasant Man and Woman Planting Potatoes
The tread of the worker stares forth, the tenacity of her trudge, the loneliness of the field-path.

–	In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift, its self-refusal.
–	The equipment is pervaded by anxiety, joy, trembling, and shivering of life. 
Vincent van Gogh, Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset, 1890
The green vineyard 1888? Next detail The Red Vineyard 1888

Equipment, earth, and world
•	The equipment belongs to the earth 
•	[“earth” means the surrounding natural environment, especially the land upon which we live, but also the existential reality of life, with its highly charged emotional character]  
•	and is protected in the world
•	[ “world” means the entire structure of meaningful relations that constitute our experience as human beings] of the peasant woman

–	From this protected belonging the equipment rises to [its essence] its resting-within-itself.

Patrick Lakey, Heidegger: Hut, Todtnauberg, Black Forest, Germany,  2005.

Heidegger at his hut.
Heidegger in the Woods
One contemporary artist often associated with Heidegger is Andy Goldsworthy
Perhaps this is only in the painting, and in reality she simply wears the shoes.  
–	No, not so simple. 
–	In using the shoes she knows [her experience of the shoes] without noticing. 
–	The equipmental quality of the shoes lies in its usefulness, which itself rests in the abundance of an essential being of the equipment:  its "reliability." 
Through this, she hears the silent call of the earth [through it she can relate to the natural world and her existential situation], and is sure of her world.
–	World and earth exist for her “only” in the equipment.
–	The reliability of the equipment gives the simple world is security, and the earth the freedom of its steady thrust. 
–	The equipmental being of equipment is reliability, and usefulness is the essential consequence of that, and vibrates in it [?].

As the use becomes disuse, becomes usual, the equipmentality becomes mere stuff, and reliability vanishes.
–	Ordinary things of use owe their boring usualness to this dwindling.
–	This usualness, this blank usefulness, seems the equipment’s sole mode of being.
–	Then it is thought [wrongly] that equipment is mere impression of form on matter. [Aristotle’s view.]
–	But matter and form and their distinction have a deeper origin: only in its reliability do we see what equipment in truth is.
We have learned something unwittingly about the work-being of the work.
–	The equipmental quality of the shoes was discovered only by bringing ourselves before Van Gogh's painting:  it spoke.
–	It let us know what shoes are in truth.
–	We did not project our description subjectively onto the painting.
•	We probably experienced too little and expressed our experience too crudely.
–	The equipmentality first genuinely arrives at its appearance through the work [of art].
Van Gogh's painting discloses what the equipment is in truth.

–	The shoes emerge into unconcealedness of their being [Their reality becomes apparent]
–	There is here a happening of truth at work.
–	The truth of an entity has set itself to work:  it stands in the light of its being.
–	The being of the being comes into the steadiness of its shining.
The nature of art is the truth of beings setting itself to work.
–	It does not have to do with the beautiful, even though these are called fine arts. 
–	This is not a revival of the theory that art is imitation of reality.
•	Yes, reproduction requires agreement with actual being.
•	But Van Gogh’s painting need not depict a pair of actually existing peasant shoes.
•	And it is not art simply if it does so successfully.
–	It is, rather, the production of the thing's general essence