ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the relation between philosophical method and art and poetry is explored. After exploring Heidegger’s ontology of work and the difference between a work of willing and a work of art, it will become clear that the straight-line distinction between works of willing and works of art is not sufficiently explained by a fundamental difference between the nature of willing projection and artistic creation and poetry, as Heidegger seems to claim. This criticism leads to the question whether the poetic founding of the transition to the other beginning, on which philosophical method depends according to Heidegger, can be performed by a post-Heideggerian concept of willing. It is argued that philosophical method delineates a radical new but distant world that ruptures human Dasein’s indifference towards being. The relevance of philosophical method is that it enables the philosopher to actually instigate the other beginning in which the truth of being is the centre of philosophical thought.