Heidegger and Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Art

In the phenomenological analysis of art two main streams can be recognized: subjective phenomenology and non-subjective phenomenology. In order to do an aesthetic analysis, while believing that aesthetics is a science, the subjective phenomenologist of art corresponds to Husserl method of exploring meaning and essence in the realm of conscience; but for a hermeneutic phenomenologist, what is at stake is the essence of art and its relation to truth Among these phenomenologist groups Heidegger is granted a special status. He, on the one hand, connects hermeneutics with ontology, believing that it is through understanding that objects appear and the existence shows up itself; on the other hand, he relates phenomenology to “disclosure” which for him equals to being; hence, his phenomenology finds a hermeneutical dimension. This is the viewpoint of Heidegger in his famous book, The Origin of the Work of Art, by means of which he analyses the work of art. He criticizes scientific aesthetics in which the art is reduced to senses and the pleasures of sensation; contrary to this notion, Heidegger believed that it is through art that we can establish an ontological relationship with the past and would be able to understand the universe of a historical nation. On the whole, Heidegger recognizes art as the place for the event or happening of truth. This article tries to show how Heidegger, using hermeneutic phenomenology, analyses the artwork and, while opening new window to understanding of authentic relationship between art and truth, introduces the artwork as the place where the openness of being happens to human.