transitional decision), and what is early of the first beginning can be chosen as the most apt illustration in this case as well. Yet at the same time it must be acknowledged that what essentially occurs in Greek art can never be touched—and never wants to be touched—by what we need to unfold as essential knowledge about "the" art.
Nevertheless, the task here is always to think historically, i.e., to be historical, instead of calculating historiologically. The question of "classicism," the overcoming of the "classicist" misinterpretation and misprizing of the "classical," and likewise the characterization of a history as "classical" are not questions about the position taken toward art; instead, they concern a decision for or against history.
Eras which, through historicism, know a great deal and forthwith know everything, will not understand that a moment of history which is without art can be more historical and more creative than eras of widespread bustle over art. The absence of art does not derive here from inability and decline but from the power of knowing the essential decisions. That which has occurred hitherto—and seldom enough—as art must proceed through these decisions. Within the horizon of this knowledge, art loses its relation to culture; art manifests itself here only as an event of beyng. The absence of art is grounded in the knowledge that the exercise of fully developed talents deriving from the most consummate mastery of the rules, even following the highest previous standards and models, can never be "art"; that planned arrangements for the production of things corresponding to previous "works or art" and to their "goals" can yield extensive results without an originary necessity for the essence of art (its bringing the truth of beyng into decision) ever making itself compelling on the basis of a need; and that the bustling about with "art" (as a business resource) has already placed itself outside the essence of art and therefore is precisely too blind and overly weak to experience, or even to "validate," the absence of art in the power of this absence, as assigned to beyng, for preparing history. The absence of art is grounded in the knowledge that the approval and agreement of those for whom "art" is a matter of enjoyment and lived experience can decide nothing as to whether the object of enjoyment stems at all from the essential domain of art or is merely an illusory product of historiological cleverness, borne by the prevailing goals of the age.
As to the knowledge whereby the absence of art is already historical without being publicly known or conceded within a constantly increasing "artistic activity," this knowledge itself pertains to the essence of an original appropriation which we call Da-sein. Steadfastness in Da-sein prepares the disintegration of the priority of beings and thus prepares the un-usualness and un-naturalness of another