Art As Basic Happening Of Being

With the transition from ancient thought to modern thought, Art has freed itself from the domain of feeling and reason, and then discovered itself as the basic happing of Being as a result. For Nietzsche, the happening of Being is the creative activity of the will to power, while for Heidegger, it is the opening of the truth. Modern thought, just as traditional thought's thinking of the whole of the metaphysics, owns history, world and language as it's the distinctive whole, and Being is the sole theme over which it ponders. Art as the basic happening of being, therefore, must be interpreted in the perspective of history, world and language. As a result of its limited length, this dissertation discusses the inner difference and relation between Nietzsche's and Heidegger's thought of art only according to history and world. The former part of it, which contains chapter one, two and three, discusses the relation between art and history, and the latter, which comprised of chapter four, five and six, inquires after the relation between art and world.Chapter one: Nihilism constituted Nietzsche's basic historical experience. Nietzsche argued that European history was the history of nihilism that overcomed itself, during which the highest value was set up firstly, and then was devalued. European history of nihilism was initiated by Plato with his inventing the world of eidos as the unique true world, and then gained successively its form and content in Christianism, German idealism and Positivism and at last was completed in Nietzsche's philosophy. During the history of Nihilism Art played a role of opponent because it indulged in sensual lives. Sinking into the mood of decadence, modern art was the practice of nihilism however. Only art with great style, which is an order radically, i.e., a will to endow chaos with its form, can serve as an opponent to Nihilism. By resisting negative Nihilism, Art (only great art) that expresses the will to power in its highest lever boosts the transition of old history to new history.Chapter two: Unlike Nietzsche, Heidegger regarded history as history of Being or Truth, which showed itself as history of metaphysics in the first beginning. The history of the first beginning commenced in the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, went through Cartesian thought and arrived at its end, Nietzsche's philosophy. Accordingly the idea of truth had experienced its transformation from the idea of correspondence to that of certainty and then rightness. As the last metaphysicier, Nietzsche overturns the Platonism and as a result the history of the first beginning accomplished. Any accomplishment is neither perfection nor suspension, but an end, an exhaust of all possibility. Heidegger overcame the metaphysics and then transferred thought from the first beginning to the other via reminiscence of the history of the first beginning. Not the truth of Being but of beings were thought in metaphysics. What is not thought yet is what should be thought in the future. Art as the happening of the truth, i.e., the history in essential sense, grounds the history. Hoelderlin, a poet in a poor time, founded the nature of poemtry as that a poem is a founding in words of Being. We understand founding here in a triple sense: founding as bestowing, as grounding and as beginning. Act becomes the original place of Dasein of a nation when the foundation where a nation lives is set up with bestowal. The history begins or re-begins whenever Art happens.Chapter three: Both Nietzsche and Heidegger are eschatologist. They all believed that their own philosophy was not only the end of the ever-happened history but also the foundation of the future history. This belief originated from the essentially differentiation in their thoughts respectively. Nietzsche differentiated will to power between positive and negative one, while Heiddeger did so between beings and Being in the sense of ontology. Then the history could be divided into two parts. Nietzsche tried to transfer the history of Nihilism to the history of eventual-return via positive will to power, while Heidegger attempted to transfer the history of metaphysics to the history of Being via dialog and reminiscence. Although the meaning of the turn of the history varies from Nietzsche to Heidegger, they all paid attention to Art at the crucial moment of the turn of the history.Chapter four: Not historical experience of Nihilism but experience of world in its nonsense returning, which is the decisive field where Nietzsche pondered, formed Nietzsche's core experience. He experienced the world as chaos. Chaos, however, is not in disorder but in eventually changing. The world of chaos consisted of two sides, one is will to power, the other eventual return. The former is the thought of the world, while the latter the thing of it. Its nothing and its nonsense is everlasting, if the world itself is chaos and chaos is everlasting. In order to stand the nonsense of the world, the human beings have to keep talking about the world and interpreting it, by which the senses are embedded. It is impossible to avoid that the world would be regarded as that which owns its deiformity or humanity. Art as the highest form of will to power leads changes in the world to Being. In virtue of giving form to chaos Art apotheosizes the world.Chapter five: The experience of the world is decisive for Heidegger too, which is his beginning and end. He, from his early to his later period, gained his various experiences in the world, which unified in clearing. The world in his early period is the world of Dasein, i.e., the Da of Dasein. The Da of Dasein is the same as clearing. The war between the world and the earth is enkindled by the work of Art during his middle period. However that war is replaced by the war between the world and things. By language both the world and things are called into their Innigkeit, i.e., into their common game where they give themselves to each other. The world worlds and things thing in the collection of the four-fold: heaven, earth, mortals and divinities. Where the four folds are collected is the Ortschaft of the clearing. Above the earth and around the earth darkens the world. With the experience of the world's darkening Heidegger went to the world of works of Art. ssence of the truth is attained through the original war of truths, i.e., the war between clearing and closing, which is stimulated by the war between the world and the earth.Chapter six: For Nietzsche, Art, as the expression of the highest will to power, branded Being on changing world, that's to say, in the field of art, the will to illusion will hold change as being. Unlike Nietzsche, Heidegger referred to world in the sense of clearing. In the eye of Heidegger, Nietzsche's thought of change still moved in the path of traditional metaphysics initiated by Parmenides and Heraclitus. Heidegger tries to overcome Nietzsche's will to change through becoming. Becoming becomes, while it deprives itself.Conclusion: Standing on the horizon of modern thought, we may conclude that Heidegger, along with Nietzsche, thought the question of Being forgotten by western metaphysics. Of course, Being here is not one in the sense of Heidegger, but one in the sense of distinguishing from reason, the main theme of traditional philosophy. However, modern thought represented by Nietzsche and Heidegger faced challenge and oppugnation from analytical philosophy and deconstructivism.Metaphysical sentences about nothing and Being have no sense in the perspective of analytical philosophy. Derrida replaced the first and the last original place of Being by differance. As far as the above is concerned, analytical philosophy and deconstructism are still halting in the field of metaphysics and nihilism critiqued by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Here should be listened the language which speaks about itself to itself. Such a language, at the same time, is the logos itself, from which the central issues of Art accepts their determinations, and in which art becomes itself.