Abstract

The study calls to question the traditional aesthetic-theoretic edifice as it has evolved out of the history of metaphysics, most especially in its ability to circumscribe the essential significance of the work of art for the disclosure of truth; what the work of art is in truth. The beginning chapters thus address themselves, and take as their intent, the explication of fundamental issues through which the "tradition" and its alternative, as such, are revealed. It is precisely within these distinctions then, that philosophies of art are equated with and evidenced by the metaphysical question of being as it inheres, respectively, to the work of art. ;If, to the above, one adds the realization that Heidegger's position and intent accomplishes and encompasses the move beyond traditional metaphysics, that what forms and transforms the Heideggerian perspective is the continuity of question as regards the relationship of Being and man, that Heidegger consistently over-comes static categories in designation of the historic or event character of Being: that the former {categories} are those in which we are not only disposed to think, but live: we come then to understand that in such "overcoming," Heidegger offers us a more authentic mode of being. The Heideggerian commitment, central to my work, becomes accordingly, itself clarified. Moreover, given our antecedent understanding, the position thus implicitly, and concurrently, proposes its significance in the questioning and ontological consideration of art. ;The evolution of the concept of Dasein and its co-relative, the evolution of the concept of unity, as disclosed from its origin in Being and Time, are accordingly followed through their mutual and co-relative transformations....thus consummately, to the Origin, to the extensions of the Heraclitean harmony, and finally, to the subsequently culminating significance of the work of art to the greater whole of the Heideggerian philosophic pathway. ;In a more cumulative regard, the author bears full responsibility for this 'reading' of...or perhaps more appropriately...'listening' to, or 'thinking' with, Heidegger; thus for the work which is, in either case its own...yet dissimilar...'poetic' extension