The conflict between phenomenology and hermeutics in Martin Heidegger’s The origin of the work of art

Abstract

Since the publication of Heidegger's Being and time, he had already shown an open hostility to hegelian thought. In Heidegger's words, Hegel was a mere continuator of the metaphysical tradition initiated by Plato and Aristotle. After this, in his book about Nietzsche, Heidegger refers Hegel like a representant of an unconditional metaphysics of the subjectivity. Nevertheless, the famous essay The origin of the work of art (1936) contains not only one positive mention of the hegelian aesthetic but a flexion that would indicate that Heidegger take refuges in a pair of slight worked by Hegel in its Lessons on the aesthetics, related both with the objectivity of the work: first, the authentic originality of the art work only resides in the rationality of the content that agrees with the objective reason; and second,the artist's subjetivity is forced to extend all particularisms, animated by an urgent rationality, to the content in true itself. It is clear, for Heidegger, that what Hegel emphasizes is the autonomy of the work of art.