4.0Reflection Paper (SL)

Nancun Yu

PR. Kyle Grady

PHIL 330: Aesthetics

29^th, Oct. 2014

4.0Reflection Paper (SL)

Before we discuss whether an art work do communicate truth, the problem we must face is that what truth really is. I was struggling with my personally believe that there is truth in artworks when we entering this section. I think there are obviously truth values in the artworks. However, I cannot distinguish how “true” the Artistic truth is, in comparison in the broad sense of truth.

            In order to critique art we must choose a subject. In this case I would like to use artworks as the source. By Heidegger, The ultimate source of artworks is Art and Art is obviously present (exist) in artworks. Thus, if Art communicates the truth, the artworks must communicate the truth. Identically, many of the artworks contain the material of existing subjects. However, people cannot declare the truth value of artworks by identifying the existed physical subjects the artwork represents. It shifted back to the earlier question of whether artworks mainly represent. If we admitted that artwork represent another physical subject we correspondingly admitted that truth within artworks must be less realistic than the actual existed thing itself. Heidegger rejected that by separate artworks from the role of representation, he argues that measure the truth value based upon the represented subject hide the path to find real Artistic truth. It also granted by Kant, that Kant believes the pure aesthetic judgment should not involve anything other than the artwork itself as the subject.

            And again, the problem shifted back to the question of what is truth. From my personal experience, I think there had never been any standard of truth for examination. The truth can only defined by its time periods. And the idea of truth had also been changed throughout the history. The part reason of that, I think, is because human had never found the exact truth. In the past ages people practiced the thing they think are relevantly close to the truth. I.e., during the middle Ages, people believe that higher voice of music represents virtually, because they believe singing higher pitch make people closer to God. However, finding what does close to the subject not means that subject is the real truth. Furthermore, it is crucial to see that the technology improvement have been turning the previous unrealistic believe in true existed. The technology improvement had weaken the boundaries between illusory and real.

            Accordingly, the truth has such flexibility. And thus instead of saying the Artistic truth is not truth, I would rather call it another form of truth. By Heidegger, he argues the Artistic truth is actually more “real” than other form of truth. For Heidegger, artworks are where the truth originally floated. In order to understand what makes Heidegger means of Artistic truth people can trace back to his shoe store. He concluded that the Artistic truth is the truth create by being self-sufficient and being self-contained.

Again, it is likely that people struggling with the question how true the Artistic is. As we mentioned in class, the story told by Heidegger about the shoes in his essay is totally wrong. How can a falsehood story contained any truth? I would assume Heidegger will reply that the Artistic truth do not, and should not involve with the “truth” outside of artworks. In Heidegger’s opinion the artistic truth is independent. It is the process that creating the artistic truth within the artwork declare it into truth. The Artistic truth is meant to be self-sufficient.

            However, other than questioning the truth value of Artistic truth, there is another question need to be present: if the Artistic truth is the self-evaluated kind of truth, does that means the Artistic truth is a kind of subjective truth? It is identical that Heidegger was trying to not put Artistic truth into subjective truth. However, I feel it will make more sense if we agreed the concept of truth being subjective. Again, the question shifted back to the pure definition of truth. Majority people might think that truth are supposed to represent a universal concept, and thus, the truth should be objective instead of subjective. The key point here is how we define truth. Instead of defining truth by its quality of being “True, ” there is also a way to define truth as if it is convincible. That is the space lifted for subjective truth. As long as the subjective person decide to believe it, it is the relevant truth of that subjective being.

            Thus, the artwork does communicate truth, even know the Artistic truth is a less true version of truth in comparing with the other sense of “Truth”.