Rudi Visker

In Being and Time the broken piece of equipment (§ 16) or the dead body of an Other (§ 47) were seen as resulting from a process of transition (Übergang) between an original state and a position not so removed from it that one had to do with something entirely different. ‚The Origin of the Work of Art‘ takes a more radical approach: rather than leading toward a ‚no longer, but not yet‘, the movement here is toward a ‚no longer, but already‘. Hence its famous thesis: either art is at work, or it is no longer art and already a mere object of art, a piece of art. Contrary to those of Heidegger’s readers who have suggested that his earlier views on transition would have saved him some of the (i.e. political) trouble the art essay runs into, the present paper aims to show that both the earlier and the later view fail to come to terms with what happens in transition as such. This is illustrated by an analysis of the corpse (ad BT § 47), and of junk (ad BT § 16) and leads us to a different approach to what is at stake in art and in the kind of Darstellung exemplified by it. mehr

The present article plays off two conceptions of the public sphere against one another. The first one sees in it a sign of what is already present in the private sphere, whereas the second regards it as a symbol that has to inscribe its own symbolic force into the private realm. That this is by no means a mere academic question becomes obvious by way of several examples analyzed at great length: the institution of mourning and the discussion about the presence of religious symbols in the public sphere. An argument for considering the Muslim veil as a protection against the divine is put forward in an attempt to clarify the presuppositions of our current predisposal against it. Ultimately, pluralism should perhaps not just be taken to refer only to the presence of others outside of us who we are able to numerically count, but might be the more difficult plight of having to cope with an otherness within each of us. Should the latter be the case, then we are in need of a public sphere where we can leave behind and thus honor what is not only differentiating us from others but also from ourselves. mehr