ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a consideration of Martin Heidegger rethinking of grounding, especially as it is developed in "The Origin of the Work of Art." The work chosen is a Creek temple, which according to Heidegger, "portrays nothing" and so serves as a telling counterexample to the received conception that art necessarily involves representation. Heidegger's choice privileges immediately the Creek temple as the locus where the truth of the artwork as such will arise. The articulation of the being of beings in the sheltering withdrawal of earth find s its voice in Heidegger's summoning of a Creek temple into the text of his argument. Heidegger's characterization of a pre representational art in which truth and beauty are entwined within the same root forgets the depth of loss and alienation which resound in the thinking of history as an ethical and political event.
