Art and Sacrifice: Human Self-Transcendence towards Freedom and Truth

Abstract: Jan Patočka and Hans-Georg Gadamer, two students of Martin Heidegger, have much to say on these phenomenological and hermeneutical questions. Basing their research on (but also criticising) the scholarship of their teachers Kant and Hegel, both thinkers re-assess and redefine the nature of art and its role in the human struggle to attain understanding and truth. The truth, they believe, is not above or beyond the work of art but lies rather in the work itself. They differ, however, in their understanding of how that truth is disclosed. This presentation will introduce art as a free but active endeavour (or “movement of human existence”) which aims to transcend the everydayness of our lives and disclose the truth or meaning and whose process of creation is best explained in terms of sacrifice.

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