Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art

Introduction

ART, ORIGINS, OTHERNESS Our time is often said to be postreligious and postmetaphysical, but is it not true that art has become for many the happening where some encounter with transcendence continues to be sought? With art, it will be said, some important communication of significant otherness happens. With art, it will also be said, we find ourselves thinking in terms of perhaps the exemplary expression of human originality. Indeed, here it may also be said that art’s otherness and originality often leave us with an enduring insinuation of enigma, such that we are given to wonder if great art privileges us with some intimation of an even more ultimate origin. Even in a time of abundant kitsch, the sustaining power of art to offer more is not yet dead. What are we to make of this situation ? What are some of the philosophical considerations arising in connection with art, origins, otherness? The studies in this book deal diversely with such questions, and with how some major philosophers might shed light on them. Art, origins, otherness—but why bring philosophical reflection to bear on these three concerns together? The connection may not be immediately selfevident . The themes of otherness, origin, art may have been a continuing preoccupation in some of my previous works, but what of the matter itself? First, questions concerning origins have marked a set of essential perplexities for philosophy since its beginning. Then, questions about art have contributed to new forms of perplexity, not least since philosophy has taken on new questions about its own tasks, especially since Kant. Finally, questions about otherness have assumed an evident prominence in our time, witnessing to our sense of distance from former, seemingly less self-lacerated practices of philosophy. Why then ask about art, origins, otherness together? Because what we discover may well tell us something important about the following questions . First, why does our perplexity about origin not disappear, despite its being banned from “legitimate” thought by some practices of philosophy? Second, why does art continue to matter, despite the hara-kiri on spiritual seriousness it seems intent on performing in recent times? Third, why is the question of otherness less some novel discovery of postmodern discourse as 1 Introduction an abiding worry surviving uneasily, and perhaps sometimes too recessively, in the tradition of philosophy? Has art something important to tell us about that otherness, and the enigma of the origin, as well as something about the continuing tasks of philosophical thought, tasks now more plurivocal in nature than univocal? Great art has always drawn its admirers by its power to renew our astonishment before the mysterious happening of being, not of course in such a seemingly generalized way, but by an aesthetic fidelity to the inexhaustible singularities of the world, human and nonhuman. In its being true to these singularities, it recharges our sense of the otherness of being, and so it offers a gift and challenge to philosophy. The gift: here something of replete moment is opened or released.The challenge: now think that! We philosophers fail here more than we succeed, not least because we think of the singular as just an instance of the neutral universal, and there we feel more at home. What if philosophical thought were to renew its community with art and what art communicates? To say the least, it would have to rethink what singularity and universality mean. And what of origins? The theme of “originality” is one of the major preoccupations of Romantic and post-Romantic culture, and in an exemplary form with reference to art. Yet this preoccupation has often hidden metaphysical presuppositions that constitute incognito lines of connection to the longer philosophical tradition , and its concern with origins, and the meaning of original being. Art matters for this preoccupation, no less than for the issue of otherness, and these incognito lines of connection. If there is something exemplary shown in and through artistic originality, perhaps it may be of singular help in aiding us to philosophical mindfulness of origin or original being. The word “metaphysics” is often thoughtlessly used to refer to some naïve and fantastic resort to an otherworldly transcendence. Call this the cartoon version of “Platonism,” or “Christianity,” a cartoon that is one of the poisoned chalices offered us by the postidealistic inheritance. We are said to have left that behind us. But how often we are still captive to some variation of the scheme of Comte: first theology, then metaphysics, then, alleluia, positive...