The Fate Of Art: Aesthetic Alienation From Kant To Derrida And Adorno (literature And Philosophy)

The Fate of Art Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno J. M . Bernstein The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania Copyright © J. M. Bernstein 1992 First published 1992 in the United States by The Pennsylvania State University Press, Suite C, 820 North University Drive, University Park, PA 16802 All rights reserved ISBN 0 - 2 7 1 - 0 0 8 3 8 - 5 (cloth) ISBN 0 - 2 7 1 - 0 0 8 3 9 - 3 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984 Typeset in IOV2 on 12 pt Ehrhardt by Graphicraft Typesetters Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by T J Press, Padstow To my father and sister — and in memory of my mother Literature and Philosophy A. J . Cascardi, General Editor This new series will publish books in a wide range of subjects in philosophy and literature, including studies of the social and historical issues that relate these two fields. Drawing on the resources of the Anglo-American and Continental traditions, the series will be open to philosophically informed scholarship covering the entire range of con­ temporary critical thought. Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Abbreviations ix Introduction: Aesthetic Alienation 1 2 Memorial Aesthetics: Kant's Critique of Judgement i Judgement without Knowledge ii Imperative Beauty? iii T h e Antinomy of Autonomous Aesthetics a Free and Dependent Beauty b Free Beauty and the Ideal of Beauty c T h e Beautiful and the Sublime iv T h e Question of Reflective Judgement v Beauty and the Labour of Mourning vi Indeterminacy and Metaphysics (Anticipating Deconstruction) T h e Genius of Being: Heidegger's ' T h e Origin of the Work of Art' i Introduction: Imagination and Finitude ii Overcoming Aesthetics (I): T h i n g , Historicity and Double Reading iii Overcoming Aesthetics (II): Great Art iv Great Art and Genius: On Being Exemplary I 17 18 23 29 32 35 38 44 55 63 66 66 72 82 89 CONTENTS VI v vi vii viii Genius, Community and Praxis Art and Technology Earth, World and Alterity: T h e Polis as Art Aesthetic Alienation 99 108 116 130 3 T h e Deconstructive Sublime: Derrida's The Truth in Painting i Art, History and Language ii Painting without T r u t h iii There is Painting iv Interrupting Metaphysics v Framing the Without E n d of Pure Beauty vi Framing the Sublime vii Sublimity or Tragic Politics? 4 Constellations of Concept and Intuition: Adorno's Aesthetic Theory i Reinscribing Aesthetics: Modernism, Autonomy and Synthesis ii Synthesis, Illusion and Non-identity iii Without Purpose iv Art, Technology and Nature 190 197 206 212 Old Gods Ascending: Disintegration and Speculation in Aesthetic Theory i Rationalization, Differentiation and Categories ii Disintegration, Sacrifice and T r u t h iii T r u t h or Communication? iv T r u t h and Speculation 225 225 233 241 248 5 v Speculation, Art and Politics 136 136 140 148 155 159 166 175 188 261 Notes 275 Index 289 w Acknowledgements This work would not have taken its present shape had it not been for the intense and congenial atmosphere I have enjoyed in the Philosophy Department of the University of Essex over the past dozen years. In par­ ticular, I must thank Robert Bernasco