The Lingering on of the God of Poets or the Ontologisations of Art

Abstract

The article discusses the role of ontology in philosophy of art. Through Badiou’s critique of Heidegger’s aesthetisation of ontology, the author tries to apply Badiou’s ontological notion of representation to aesthetics, in accordance with his method of metaphorical affinity. Likewise, he confronts Agamben’s and Rancière’s outlooks on the origins of modern aesthetics, which are irreconcilable in a similar way as Heidegger’s and Badiou’s ontologies. To the ontological scheme that sees the abolition of representation as the unveiling of being, the article opposes representation as not-whole, spread between its impossibility and its excess. Philosophical interpretation of art is not seen as a search for the hidden being or the protector of its immanence, but rather as a supplementary exposure of its thought.