The Origin of the Work of Art

The following was presented at the Fourth Collegium in the Humanities held at Thammasat University on Janu ary 4 and 5, 200 I. The paper is intended as an introduction to Heidegger's impor tant essay, "The Origin of the Work of Art". In the course of the paper, I dis cuss the following themes:Heidegger's questioning of the concept of truth in terms of Aletheia, the self disclosing and concealing of Being, as the setting for a radical revaluation of techne, (the Greek word for art, as a practical, productive knowledge (Wissen)), in which techne will now be conceived as not only a way of kno win g that stands alongside theoria, but even more, as a decisive site for the disclosure of Being. The actu ality of art, its "thingly" character, will not be seen as a static object, therefore, but as energeia, activity or "being-at work". Techne will be thought as event, an event of Being, the site for the hap pening of Truth (Aletheia) This culmi nates in Heidegger's delimitation, or definition, of art as the site or place (topos, Orter; in the German word Heidegger uses) of truth's setting-itself to-work. This is art's "activity", its "ac tuality". Finally, the significance of this is.in the way it opens a new questioning of the European experience of nihilism as the "death of God", or withdrawal of and the triumph of in the the art, which