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Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 23, No. 1, 57-83 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0263276406063229

Artworks in Word and Image

‘So True, So Full of Being!’ (Goethe) (1992)

Hans-Georg Gadamer

The arts, taken as whole, govern the metaphysical heritage of the western philosophical tradition. The arts possess absoluteness in that in the experience of art we recognize something as ‘aright’, as true. Art also possesses absoluteness because it transcends all historical differences between eras. Art - and philosophy - possess a contemporaneity in that they attune themselves to the present time. Art is thus not a refined pleasure but something that shows us a world that is there for itself and as such. The significance of art therefore cannot be understood aesthetically but only through Plato’s theory of ‘the exact’ and the Aristotelian conception of energeia as a motion without a path or a goal.

Key Words: aesthetics • Aristotle • art • Plato • truth


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