Notes on Gadamer, 2

Chapter 2: The Ontology of the Work of Art

Play: the mode of the being of the work of art itself (106).

1. The work of art is not an object that stands over against a subject for itself; it has true being in the fact that it becomes an experience for the knowing subject.
   1. Play reaches presentation through the players
   2. The mode of being of play is mediation.
   3. The structure of play absorbs the player into itself (similar to the liturgy).
2. Play takes place in the Heideggerian realm of the “in-between.”
3. “Play” is consummated in the transformation into structure.
   1. This transformation produces what is otherwise hidden.
   2. Structure: the raising up of untransformed reality.
   3. Thesis:the being of art cannot be defined as an object of aesthetic consciousness…it is part of the event of being that occurs in presentation (120).
      1. Performance brings into existence.
      2. It acquires its proper being into being mediated.
      3. Total mediation means that the medium as such is superseded (aufhebt).
4. Repetition does not mean a literal repeating.
   1. Festivals repeat, but the point is not another copy of an original.
   2. A festival exists only in being celebrated.
5. Tragedy: the unity of a tragic course of events that is experienced as such.
   1. Commiseration and apprehension are modes of ek-stasis.
   2. This being overcome with involves a division of oneself.
   3. The final effect of tragedy is to dissolve this disjunction and to liberate the heart (132).
6. The Ontology of Picture
   1. How is presentation (Darstellung) related to “picture?”
   2. By being presented, it experiences an increase in being.
   3. A picture is not a copy of a copied being, but is in ontological communion with what is copied (143).  It is coming-to-presentation.

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