Affirming Art: Heidegger and the Sense of a Beginning

This essay offers a philosophical perspective that, in breaking with both the open and surreptitious dialectical method still so prominent in academic discourse, follows Heidegger in trying to conceive of a radically non-dialectical manner of approaching affirmation, negation, and neutrality. As with Heidegger, this is attempted through a turn towards art and the “emancipated contingency” that characterizes much creative production. In contrast to action and production within the knowledge economy, the creation of the artwork concerns a knowing of unknowingness (described by Maurice Blanchot as the neutral) that demands a rethink of action in relation to truth and errancy. Indeed, the very working of the work of art is conceived here as a truth that is precisely “set to work” (Heidegger) by errancy. Through a consideration of the essential difference between choice and decision and the different “beginning” of art that this suggests, the essay concludes with some reflections of the theme of art’s fascination and the and the affirmation of the unknown