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Addresses the end of art and the task of metaphysics
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Art, Origins, Otherness This page intentionally left blank. Art, Origins, Otherness Between Philosophy and Art William Desmond State University of New York Press SP_DES_i-xii 7/14/03 3:03 PM Page iv Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2003 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. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Michael Haggett Marketing by Jennifer Giovani Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Desmond, William, 1951– Art, origins, and otherness : between philosophy and art / William Desmond. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5745-1 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5746-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Aesthetics. 2. Art—Philosophy. 3. Other (Philosophy) I. Title. BH39.D4535 2003 111'.85—dc21 2003057266 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Pa`sa ajnavgkh tovnde to;n kovsmon eijkovna tino;~ ei\nai —Plato, Timaeus, 29B Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; That is the madman. The lover, all as fanatic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V, i, 4–17 To Urbain Dhondt This page intentionally left blank. Contents Preface ix Introduction 1 1 Mimesis, Eros, and Mania: On Platonic Originals 19 2 The Terror of Genius and the Otherness of the Sublime: On Kant and the Transcendental Origin 53 The Otherness of Art’s Enigma—Resolved or Dissolved? Hegel and the Dialectical Origin 87 3 4 5 6 7 8 Gothic Hegel: On Architecture and the Finer Enchantments of Transcendence 115 Art’s Release and the Sabbath of the Will: Schopenhauer and the Eros Turannos of Origin 131 Eros Frenzied and the Redemption of Art: Nietzsche and the Dionysian Origin 165 Art and the Self-Concealing Origin: Heidegger’s Equivocity and the Still Unthought Between 209 Art and the Impossible Burden of Transcendence: On the End of Art and the Task of Metaphysics 265 Index 295 vii This page intentionally left blank. Preface I have been asked more than once why I do not write, or have not written, a philosophical aesthetics, somewhat along the lines of the metaphysics of Being and the Between, or the approach to ethics of Ethics and the Between. Philosophy and Its Others does have a chapter entitled “Being Aesthetic” which might be seen to contain in nuce what could be amplified more fully, as the chapter entitled “Being Ethical” might be seen as being an ethics in nuce that flowers into Ethics and the Between. While this present book is not that work, and though behind it lie