On Gadamer's Acceptance And Development Of Heidegger's Art Ontology

Heidegger puts the issue of being and hermeneutics together, and accomplishes the turning from "methodological and epistemological hermeneutics" to "ontological hermeneutics". Heidegger's hermeneutics settles the philosophical foundation for his view of art. On this foundation, his "art ontology" mainly analyse the relationship of art to truth, to time and to language. He takes truth as the origin of art works, that is to say, he ascribes the essence of art to truth that installs itself in art works by itself. The truth in "The Origin of Art Works" means an opening place engendered by the tension between "sheltering" and "uncovering". The truth shows itself through the horizon of time, and temporality shapes a basic characteristic of art works. The essence of art is poetry which is a linguistic art; art works utter their existence by poetic language. They are a kind of poetic and linguistic being.Gadamer accepts and develops Heidegger's art ontology. First of all, he accepts and develops Heidegger's ontological hermeneutics which is the philosophical foundation of art ontology. Like Heidegger, he also disagrees to the "methodological and epistemological hermeneutics". Starting from the historicality and linguistically of understanding, he systematically elucidates "philosophical hermeneutics" whose core is "understanding". Secondly, he accepts the discussion which Heidegger had made on the relationship of art to truth, to time, and to language. In terms of his acceptance, he makes use of the concept of "art of experience" to show the relationship of art to truth. Meanwhile, he accepts Heidegger's ideas on the temporality and linguisticality of art works. In terms of his development, he makes use of the concept of "game" to promote Heidegger's ideas of the relationship of art to truth; and the concept of "festival" to further Heidegger's ideas of the connection between art works and time, and the concept of "dialogue" to improve Heidegger's ideas of the relationship between art works and language. Gadamer's acceptance and development of Heidegger's art ontology deepen the discussion of contemporary western aesthetics on the relationship of art to truth, to time, and to language. On the relationship of art to truth, Gadamer accepts Heidegger's thoughts, and promotes them from the perspective of ontology. Art and truth go forward to the further integration. While Gadamer accepts Heidegger's ideas of temporality and historicality of art works, he furthers them from the perspective of the openning and limitation of "artistic experience", and the temporality of art works is highlighted. Not only Gadamer accepts Heidegger's ideas of poeticality and linguisticality of art works, but also improves the ideas from the perspective of dialogue. Therefore, Gadamer gets rid of Heidegger's theory of work-center, and sets forth the theory of interaction between works and readers, which is the core of his art philosophy. Gadamer's acceptance and development of Heidegger's art ontology have very important significance for our research and construction in aesthetics. This is mainly embodied in two aspects. First, it is helpful for us to grasp the trend of contemporary western aesthetics. Secondly, our aesthetic research and construction should break through the perspectives of entity theory and of epistemology on our aesthetic history, and dig our aesthetic resources from the perspective of ontology. We should start from the principle of "going back to things themselves" in order to construct "Chinese aesthetics".