Truth and art

pp. 139-153

in: Karsten Harries, Art matters, Berlin, Springer, 2009

Abstract

The last chapter concluded with Heidegger's question: "What is truth, that it can happen as, or even must happen as art? How is it that art exists at all?" A first answer is suggested by the preceding discussion. How are we to understand the truth of things, when we are no longer able to appeal to an allseeing God, when instead we follow Nietzsche and proclaim the death of God? Does the truth of things then not have to become adaequatio rei ad intellectum humanum, the adequation of the thing to the human intellect? This becomes what Heidegger calls the truth of beings and identifies with the "opening up of the Being of beings". That "opening up of the Being of beings" presents itself to us as Heidegger's recasting of the Latin adaequatio rei ad intellectum. To be sure, adaequatio is hardly the right word for what Heidegger has in mind.