Anti-Metaphysical Thinking on Art

Abstract

Sanctioning by his system the apparently unbridgeable abyss between the sphere of the thinking subject and the thought-of object, between thinking and being, Descartes became the patron of a definite philosophical tradition. This tradition, originating with Aristotle, was characterized by the conviction that the essence of the philosophical experience of the world lay in applying the measure of human thinking to the objective dimensions of reality that are external with respect to man. Even if it was a common measure, and this was the case in ancient idealistic rationalism (this measure was the laws of Logos which determined the rational character of both being and thinking), the fact remained that at the root of the truth of philosophical cognition was the subject-object relation. The classical definition of truth presupposes “comparing” knowledge and being. It places them “in ready form,” as it were, opposite each other. It does not take into account the fact that knowledge belongs to being and, on the other hand, that being is nothing “ready,” but that — if it comes within the scope of our cognition — it is in some measure human being, the object of our cognition.