Art, materiality and the meaning of being: Heidegger on the work of art and the significance of things

Tonner, P. (2014) Art, materiality and the meaning of being: Heidegger on the work of art and the significance of things. In: Boetzkes, A. and Vinegar, A. (eds.) Heidegger and the Work of Art History. Routledge: Abingdon, pp. 121-140. ISBN 9781409456131

Abstract

In the ‘Addendum’ to ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, Heidegger tells us that art belongs to ‘appropriation’. 2 It is apt that in the years leading up to the publication of this revised version of his essay in 1960, he should note this deep connection. It is this term – Ereignis – that Heidegger began to use for his central concern, the finite disclosure of Being qua meaningful presence in conjunction with the opening up of Dasein qua finitude, in just the period when he composed ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’. 3 Ereignis is Heidegger’s term for ‘disclosure as such’ and this term names the occurrence of Being ‘in its truth’; Ereignis signals our being appropriated into our openness, it is that movement of our being opened up by virtue of our essential finitude in such a way as to creatively receive and conserve a meaningful world of things. Ereignis , and so art, is indelibly historical: the event of appropriation is the event of the coming to be of historical worlds.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Tonner, Dr Philip
• Authors: Tonner, P.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education > Pedagogy Policy and Practice; College of Social Sciences > School of Education > Pedagogy, Praxis & Faith
• Publisher: Routledge
• ISBN: 9781409456131