Abstract: Martin Heidegger’s seminal 1936 essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ (OWA) is notorious for its sparse engagement with concrete artworks. Of the three works Heidegger makes reference to, one remains especially elusive: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s brief poem ‘Roman Fountain’. Although Heidegger reproduces it in full, the poem long went virtually unremarked, prompting Karen Gover to dub it ‘the overlooked work of art’ in OWA. Despite a recent increase in scholarly attention, both the poem’s role within the essay and the broader philosophical significance Heidegger assigns to it remain enigmatic.
Drawing on newly published primary materials, this paper contends that a substantially fuller account can now be given on both counts. First, I argue that the poem’s role in OWA’s argumentative economy is to reinforce Heidegger’s case that a work’s artistic status is independent of its representational or expressive properties, lying instead in its capacity for ontological disclosure. Secondly, I reconstruct Heidegger’s positive account of the poem’s way of working and philosophical import. The central claim here is that the poem achieves ontological disclosure by articulating and embodying the distinctive mode of being of its subject matter – the fountain – thereby making it available for direct experiential apprehension in a suitable encounter with the work. Having fleshed out the account, I conclude by drawing out its implications for Heidegger’s broader theory of art, showing how it sheds new light on the theory’s content, internal unity, and philosophical stakes.
Registration: If you do not hold a university card, please contact the seminar convenor or at least two working days before a seminar to register your attendance.
Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar Convenors: Jack Wearing, Joseph Schear, Kate Kirkpatrick and Mark Wrathall.
