Tom Rockmore

Gerald Bruns has written a fine study of the relation of language and poetry in the later Heidegger, whose final phase lies beyond the reach of philosophical comprehension, according to Bruns. Bruns offers a clear, comprehensive, sensitive account of a number of main themes in Heidegger's final view in a discussion patient to a fault and always attentive to the nuances of expression, an application if one will of Heidegger's idea of Gelassenheit to Heidegger's own texts. As Bruns sees it, it is folly even to try to follow this stage of Heidegger's thinking, although it must be said that he himself does an outstanding job of doing just what he says it would be foolish even to attempt. According to Bruns, Heidegger is finally a comic thinker, an outsider who supposedly resists integration on behalf of scandal and freedom, even in Bruns's view a philosopher of freedom. In short, Heidegger was someone who strove for authentic thought and stubbornly followed the argument wherever it might lead.

Plato both created the Western aesthetic tradition and rejected the artistic claim to truth. I suggest that Plato’s rejection of the view that non-philosophical art is true gave rise to a debate later traversing the entire Western aesthetic tradition. I further suggest that the post-Platonic Western aesthetic tradition can be reconstructed as an effort by many hands to come to grips with and if possible overturn the Platonic judgment. I finally suggest that Hegel, in disagreeing with both Kant and Plato, presents an interesting anti-Platonic argument for “reforging” as it were the ancient link between art and truth. For in the final analysis, art, or at least some kinds of art, is not only beautiful but also in a deep sense true.