Origin here signifies that from where and through which a thing is what it is, and how it is.
4 pages covering one topic from the reading is required. The reading is “the origin of the work of art” by Martin Heidegger. I will post the file. You don’t have to read the entire passage. If you want to cite a quote from the passage just put it in quotations and end it with (Heidegger Page#).
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THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK OF ART
Martin Heidegger
Translated by Roger Berkowitz and Philippe Nonet.
Draft, December 2006.
PN revised.
[7] 1
Origin here signifies that from where and through which a thing is what it
is, and how it is. What something is, how it is, we name its essence (Wesen). The
origin of something is the provenance of its essence. The question of the origin of
the work of art asks after the work’s essential provenance. The work, according
to common understanding, springs out from and through the activity of the
artist. But through what and from what is the artist what he is? Through the
work; the saying that the work commends the master, says: The work first lets
the artist emerge as a master of art. The artist is the origin of the work. The work
is the origin of the artist. Neither is without the other. However, neither of them
alone bears the other. Artist and work are, each in themselves and in their mutual
relations, through a third, namely through art, which is the first from which artist
and artwork have their name.
Just as necessarily the artist is the origin of the work, but in a way other than the
way the work is the origin of the artist, so certainly art is in yet another way the
origin of the artist and of the work at once. But then can art be an origin at all?
Where and how gibt es2
art? Art, this is still only a word, to which nothing actual
corresponds any more. It may hold as a collective representation3
under which
1
This and all other footnotes are translators’ notes. The numbers bracketed and set in bold type
are, in the main essay and the afterword, the page numbers of the first edition of Holzwege,
(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1950); in the addendum and after, the page numbers of
the sixth revised edition of l980, the text upon which this translation is based. The sixth edition
shows the page numbers of the first edition in the margin. The first edition did not include the
addendum, which was not written until 1956.
2
“Es gibt, it gives” has, in ordinary usage, the same function as the English “there is.”
Unfortunately this translation would miss two decisive points of Heidegger’s use of the German
phrase. It would attribute being (“is”) to das Sein, when in truth das Sein des Seienden ist nicht selbst
ein Seiendes. And it would disregard the thought, essential to Heidegger, that das Sein des Seienden
originates in the giving of a gift. We shall leave the German phrase untranslated.
3
Strictly speaking, Vorstellung and vorstellen should be rendered as “proposition” and “to
propose,” but in accordance with a German tradition that goes at least as far back as Kant, 2
we bring what alone of art is actual: The work and the artist. Even if the word
“art” itself were to designate more than a collective representation, what is meant
by it could only be on the ground of the actuality of works and artists. Or is it the
other way around? Gibt es work and artist only in so far as art is, and indeed as
their origin?
However the decision may fall, the question of the origin of the artwork becomes
the question of the essence of art. Yet since it must remain open whether and
how art [8] altogether is, we shall seek to find the essence of art where art
without doubt actually sways (waltet)
4
. Art west 5
in the art-work. But what and
how is a work of art?
What art may be, should let itself be taken from out of the work. What the work
may be, we can experience only from out of the essence of art. Everyone can
easily see that we are moving in a circle. Common understanding demands that
this circle be avoided, since it is an affront to logic. People claim that whatever
art may be should let itself be inferred through a comparative observation of
artworks at-hand-before-us (vorhandenen). But how should we be certain that
what we lay as the ground for such an observation are indeed works of art, if we
do not know beforehand what art is? The essence of art, however, lets itself be
won as little by deduction from higher concepts as through some assembling of
characteristics observed in artworks at-hand-before-us; for this deduction too has
in advance already in sight the determinations that must suffice in order to offer
us as a work of art what we in advance hold such work to be. Assembling
characteristics of available works, and deduction from principles are here in the
same way impossible, and where they are used, they are self-deception.
Heidegger uses them to translate the Latin repraesentatio and repraesentare, i. e. the reflective representation
of something that has first presented itself immediately. Such a representation is
indeed an explicit “posing-before” the reflecting subject.
4
The German verb walten will be translated as “to sway,” in the sense of to rule, to hold sway, to
exert power and influence, to pervade.
5
“Wesen” is the archaic verb from which stem the grammatical formations of the past tenses of
sein, to be. It is still commonly employed as a substantive translating the Latin essentia, essence.
Heidegger too uses it in that way, but with an important difference that is discussed in this essay
at p. H 39. But he also uses wesen as a verb: a being is said to wesen when it manifests itself in the
truth of its own way of being. We shall leave the verbal wesen untranslated. See also the
explanation Heidegger gives in “The Question Concerning Technique,” pp. H 29 ff.3
Hence we must go through the circular path. That is neither a crutch nor a flaw.
To tread this path is the strength of thinking, and to stay on it is the feast of
thinking, if it may be supposed that thinking is handwork. Not only is the main
step from work to art a circle, as is the step from art to work, but rather every
single step we attempt circles in this circle.
In order to find the essence of art that actually sways in the work, we seek out
the actual work and ask the work what and how it is.
Artworks are known to everyone. Buildings and images one finds on public
squares, and hung in churches and in homes. In collections and exhibitions,
works of art of the most different ages and peoples [9] are brought together. If we
look at the works there in their untouched actuality, and do not place anything
else before ourselves at the same time, then this shows itself: The works are as
naturally at-hand-before-us as other things. The picture hangs on the wall like a
hunting rifle or a hat. A painting, e.g. that by Van Gogh which presents a pair of
peasant shoes, wanders from one exhibition to another. Works are shipped like
coal out of the Ruhr and logs out of the Black Forest. Hölderlin’s hymns were,
during the war, packed like cleaning gear in the soldier’s knapsack. Beethoven’s
quartets lie in the store room at the publishing house like potatoes in the cellar.
All works have this thingly part. What would they be without it? But perhaps we
take offense at this exceedingly crude and external view of the work. Cargo
carriers or cleaning ladies in the museum may move within such representations
of artworks. We, however, must take the works as they are encountered by those
who live them fully (erleben) and enjoy them. But also this much celebrated
aesthetic life-experience (Erlebnis)
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does not bypass the thingness of the artwork.
Stone is in the building. Wood is in the carving. Color is in the painting. Sound is
in the spoken work. Ringing is in the tonal work. Thingness is so irremovably in
the artwork, that we must even rather say it the other way around: The building
is in stone. The carving is in wood. The painting is in color. The spoken work is
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It is common now to translate Erlebnis as “experience.” This practice obscures the radical
difference between Erlebnis and Erfahrung, which is also commonly translated as “experience.” In
fact erleben is nothing but an intensified form of leben, to live. An Erlebnis is an intensification of
the feeling of being alive.4
in sound. The musical work is in tone. That’s self-evident, people will counter.
Certainly. But what is this self-evident thingly in the work of art?
Presumably it becomes superfluous and confusing to pursue that question,
because the work of art is still something else over and out of the thingly aspect.
This other that is in it makes up the artistic. Of course the artwork is a made
thing, but it says still something other than what the mere thing itself is: êllo
égoreÊei. With this other the work makes publicly known, it manifests, another;
it is allegory. In the artwork, something other is brought together with the made
thing. Bringing together is called in Greek suµbãllein. The work is symbol.
[10] Allegory and symbol give out the frame of representation in whose paths of
vision the characterization of the artwork has long since moved. Only, this one in
the work that manifests another, this one that brings together with another, is the
thingly in the artwork. It almost seems that the thingly in the artwork would be
like the substructure, in and over which the other and the proper is built. And is
it not this thingly part in the work, that the artist properly makes by his
handwork?
We should like to meet the immediate and full actuality of the artwork; only so
shall we find in it also actual art. Thus, we must first bring into view the
thingness of the work. To that end it is necessary that we know with sufficient
clarity what a thing is. Only then will it let itself be said, whether the work of art
is a thing, but a thing that carries along still another; only then, will it let itself be
decided, whether the work is at bottom something else and never a thing.5
Thing and Work
What is in truth the thing, insofar as it is a thing? When we so ask, we want to
learn to know the being-thing (the thingness) of the thing. The point is to
experience (erfahren) the thingness of the thing. To that end we must know the
circle in which all those beings (all jenes Seiende)
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belong, which we have long
addressed with the name “thing.”
The stone on the way is a thing, and so is the clod of earth in the field. The jug is
a thing, and also the spring on the way. But how does it stand with the milk in
the jug and with the water of the spring? These too are things, if the clouds in the
heavens and the thistle in the field, if a leaf in the fall wind and a hawk over the
forest are correctly named things. All these must indeed be named things, if one
covers with the name “thing” also what does not show itself like what we have
counted up so far, i.e. what does not appear. One such thing that itself does not
appear, namely a “thing in itself,” is according to Kant e.g. the whole of the
world; one such thing is indeed God Himself. Things in themselves, and things
that appear, all beings (alles Seiende) that are at all, are called in [11] the language
of philosophy a thing.
Airplane and radio-set belong surely today among the closest of things, but if we
have in mind the ultimate things, then we think about something totally other.
Death and judgment, these are the ultimate things. On the whole, the word
“thing” here names everything that is not simply nothing. According to this
signification, the artwork is also a thing, insofar as it is altogether something that
is (etwas Seiendes). However, this concept of the thing does not help us at all, at
least immediately, with our purpose: to delimit the beings (das Seiende) whose
kind of being (Seinsart) is that of the thing, as against the beings (das Seiende)
whose kind of being (Seinsart) is that of the work. Moreover, we also shy away
from calling God a thing. We even shy away from taking the peasant in the field,
the stoker before the boiler, the teacher in the school to be things. Man is no
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The most decisive thought in all of Heidegger’s work is first articulated in paragraph 2 of Sein
und Zeit. It says: “Das Sein des Seienden ‘ist’ nicht selbst ein Seiendes.” Translated in English, it loses
all sense: “The being of the being ‘is’ not itself a being.” The problem arises from the fact that
English employs the same form, “being,” for both the gerund, das Sein, and the participle, das
Seiende. The problem is inescapable. It renders English incapable of thinking that thought. As a
makeshift, we indicate every time in parenthesis the German word that “being” translates.6
thing. Of course we call a young girl who is confronted with an overwhelming
task, still too young a thing, but only because here in a certain way we miss
being-man (das Menschsein), and rather mean that we find what makes out the
thingly aspect of the thing. We even hesitate to name the deer in the forest
clearing, the beetle in the grass, or the blade of grass, a thing. Rather the hammer
is to us a thing, and the shoe, the axe, the clock. But mere things even they are
not. As such we hold only the stone, the clod of earth, a piece of wood. The
lifeless in nature or in use. The things of nature and of use are the commonly so
called things.
Thus we see ourselves brought back from the widest domain, in which all is
thing (thing = res = ens = a being, ein Seiendes), even the highest and ultimate
things, to the narrow domain of mere things. The “mere” here means first: the
pure thing, that simply is thing and nothing further. The “mere” means at the
same time: only a thing in an almost contemptuous sense. The mere things,
excluding things of use, are held to be the things proper. Now in what does the
thingness of these things consist? The thingness of things must let itself be
determined from out of them. By this determination we stand ready to
characterize thingness as such. So equipped we shall be able to characterize that
almost palpable actuality of works, to which then again still something other
sticks.
[12] Now we hold it to be a familiar fact that, already in antiquity, as soon as the
question was put, what is the being (das Seiende) altogether, things in their
thingness pressed themselves forward ever again as the measure-giving being
(das maßgebende Seiende). Consequently, we must meet the delimitation of the
thingness of things in the traditional explications (Auslegung)
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of the being (des
Seienden). Hence we need only to secure expressly for ourselves this received
knowledge of the thing, in order to be relieved of the dry effort of searching on
our own after the thingly aspect of the thing. The answers to the question, what
is a thing, are in one way so easy, that one sees behind it nothing worthy of
asking any more.
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