Abstract
What is truth? Is there truth only in Religion or Science? Why not in Art? It is for many people surely surprising, that modern philosophers as Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Graf York, Dewey, Bloch, Heidegger, Gadamer, Blumenberg, Ricoeur and Waldenfels has dared, to say: Art is more than entertainment or illusion (Platon). Art is an important example of sensual-symbolic truth. But why has this perception, which seems to be a “declaration of war” against Cartesianism, no echo in present cultural policy and education? This article tries to show some bridges between philosophy and (Music-)education: (1) Heideggers “Sein zum Tode” and music as “meditatio mortis”, (2) Heideggers “Kehre” (turn) and his exploration of beauty in poetry as “Sein” (being), (3) Blochs “Prinzip Hoffnung”, exposed in Beethoven’s Fidelio and Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, and (4) Gadamers ontology of “Spiel” (game) as phenomenon of Art.
This chapter was translated from German by Hanne Fossum.
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Notes
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Heidegger only once makes concrete political statements in Being and Time (p. 403f). Here he states, fairly awkward and anti-democratic: “To dissolve elemental public opinion, and, as far as possible, to make possible the molding of individuality in seeing and looking, would be a pedagogical task for the state.”
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The discussion about whether the myth lives or long since is dead shall not be discussed here. See Hübner (1985).
- 5.
In Heidegger’s Epilogue to The Origin of the Work of Art (2011: 133ff.), he refers to this dictum of Hegel, yet he does not take a view on the matter about whether his own thinking after the “turn” rejects Hegel’s view or not. However, this question has been addressed later by Heidegger’s interpreters.
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See Bloch (1986).
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It is notable that agnostic music lovers have such experiences. The philosopher Hans Blumenberg has a similar experience in his encounter with Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. See: Blumenberg (1988).
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See also Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, particularly his book I and Thou (Leipzig 1923, here cited after the edition: Buber, Martin (1970): I and Thou. A new translation with a prologue “I and you” and notes by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Scribner’s Sons) where art is given a field “in-between”: art is to Buber neither merely an “it” (“Es” – an object, a thing) nor merely a “thou” (“Du,” a person). “This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him” (Ibid: 60).
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Ehrenforth, K.H. (2015). Art and “Truth.” Heidegger’s Ontology in Light of Ernst Bloch’s Philosophy of Hope and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Play-Metaphor. Three Impulses for a New Perspective of Musical Bildung. In: Pio, F., Varkøy, Ø. (eds) Philosophy of Music Education Challenged: Heideggerian Inspirations. Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9319-3_15
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