Work and world

pp. 95-108

in: Karsten Harries, Art matters, Berlin, Springer, 2009

Abstract

Consider once more Heidegger's use of the painting by van Gogh and the poem by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: what is their function in the context of the essay? Heidegger, it would seem, would have us understand both as examples of truth put into work. He says so quite explicitly: "Truth happens in Van Gogh's painting. This does not mean that something is correctly portrayed, but rather that in the revelation of the equipmental being of the shoes, that which is as a whole, world and earth, in their counterplay–attains to unconcealedness."