Reflection 4

                On first consideration, I was hesitant about how to answer this question. Before beginning this section of reading I thought for a long time on this question, and I was perplexed.  The first hurdle I had to overcome was the idea that artworks can communicate truth, but they do not necessarily communicate truth. This was an important question for me, because my idea was that the communication of truth as a necessity would automatically discount non-representational works of art and even the entire category of music as art. And then I was concerned about how strictly I was to understand this notion of truth. I began to work that fiction writing was at risk, because it is not based in the type of truth that is factual.

                Upon reading the philosophers in this section, I realized many of my worries were misguided. My worries about truth were taking truth to mean the strict true/false factual sense. In reading Aristotle, however, I found that art works could communicate truth. For Aristotle, this truth is not based in historical facts but general ideas. He notes that in art, specifically poetry, we get the universal truths. He also is forced to confront and acknowledge Plato who says that art is necessarily mimetic and therefore twice removed from the truth i.e. the forms. Aristotle confronts this by claiming that yes, artworks are mimetic, but they still hold universal truths. He goes on to explain the particulars of poetry and drama that make them so apt for communicating truth, however I found his one later claim about truth most intriguing. He explains that all of the elements of plot and tragedy, but they all amount to one thing. Our interest is in truth claims that are not 1) actually true, or 2) necessarily true, but possibly true.

                For Nietzsche, art is not at all about the communication of truth. Rather, it is about deceit. He claims that art is an escape, a way to combat the world’s hindrance of our will to power. Indeed, art for Nietzsche is a human’s way of asserting its will to live and exerting its purposed on the world. He claims we delight in the deceptions and illusions of art. While he completely differs from Aristotle in these important and central claims, he also agrees with him in certain places. For example, he agrees that art is imitative by nature. But instead of perfectly displaying the world as it is, Nietzsche believes that art does the opposite. He argues that art distorts and deliberately transforms the world. This is again in an illusory fashion, because we need art in order to make life more agreeable. He goes even further to boldly claim that this is a “higher truth” than the everyday truth of the world.

                With Heidegger, my initial claim about a factual truth is more explicitly addressed. Heidegger, in fact, remarks that this true/false idea of the truth of an art work is a diminished concept of truth. He is not concerned with this or that particular instantiation of the truth. In fact he says that particular, factual truths should make us wary of the existence of the truth he thinks we should look for in artwork. He even claims that this understanding of truth is not only problematic for art considerations, but all philosophical considerations, as “truth” should be applicable in all situations, including art and others left by the wayside. He uses the Greek work for truth “alethia” with can be literally interpreted to mean “not concealing”. To interpret truth as “unconcealing”, Heidegger is defining truth as a happening in artworks, not just a property of them. He argues that true is the concealing and revealing cycle in a work. He also notes that this push and pull between concealment and revealing are obscured in everyday life but highlighted in the work of art.

                The readings and discussions in the section opened my eyes to understand the idea of truth in artwork beyond facticity. I was initially caught up in the idea of facts being relayed by art, but I understand and borrow some understanding from each philosopher. I believe can hold universal / non particular truths, and I believe that the structures and plausibility of how those truths are portrayed are relevant to their truthfulness.