On the essence of art

its coming-to-presence and its abidance

pp. 186-210

in: Joseph Kockelmans, Heidegger on art and art works, Berlin, Springer, 1985

Abstract

We have seen that at the end of his reflections on the origin of the work of art, Heidegger returns to the point where the essay began: the origin of the work of art is art itself; art is also the origin of the artist and the preserver, insofar as art lets them, each in his own way, come-to-presence as such. Art itself was provisionally defined as the setting itself into the work of the truth. Both in the text of the essay as in the later added Addendum, Heidegger explicitly states that this definition is ambiguous. Furthermore, he observes, that one should not understand his position to be that the truth is first somewhere else and now, finally, arrives in the work of art. But let us again turn to the text to see how Heidegger himself states his case.