THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK OF ART
"To place" must be thought in the sense of θέσις. So one reads on p. 36: "Setting and taking possession [Setzen und Besetzen] are here always (!) thought in the sense of the Greek θέσις, which means a setting up in the unconcealed." The Greek "setting" means: placing as allowing to arise, for example, a statue. It means: laying, laying down a sacred offering. "Placing" and "laying" have the sense of bringing hithera into unconcealment, bringing forth among what is present, that is, allowing to lie forth. "Setting" and "placing" here never mean the summoning of things to be placed over and against the self (the "I" as subject) as conceived in the modem fashion. The standing of the statue (i.e., the presence of the radiance that faces us) is different from the standing of what stands over and against us [Gegenstand] in the sense of an object [Objekt]. "Standing" (cf. p. 16 above) is the constancy of the radiance. In the dialectic of Kantian and Gem1an idealism, on the other hand, thesis, antithesis, and synthesis refer to a placing within the sphere of the subjectivity of consciousness. Accordingly, Hegel — correctly in terms of his own position — interpreted the Greek θέσις as the immediate positing [Setzen] of the object. This positing is for him, therefore, untrue since it is not yet mediated by antithesis and thesis (compare "Hegel and the Greeks" in Pathmarks5).
But if, in the context of the artwork-essay, we keep in mind the Greek sense of θέσις — to let lie forth in its radiance and presence — then the "fixed" corresponding to "fix in place" can never mean the stiff, motionless, and secure.
"Fixed" means: outlined, admitted into the boundary (πέρας), brought into the outline (compare pp. 38ff. above). The boundary, in the Greek sense, does not block off but, rather, as itself something brought forth, first brings what is present to radiance. The boundary sets free into unconcealment: by means of its outline, the mountain stands in the Greek light in its towering and repose. The boundary which fixes and consolidates is what reposes, reposes in the fullness of movement. All this is true of the work in the sense of the Greek ἔργον. The work's "being" is ἐνέργεια, a term which gathers into itself infinitely more movement than the modem "energies."
It follows, then, that, properly thought, the "fixing in place" of truth can never run counter to "allowing to happen." In the first place, this "allowing" is nothing passive; rather, it is the highest form of action (see Vorträge und Aufsätze, 1954, p. 49) in the sense of θέσις, an "effecting" and "willing" which, in the present essay, is characterized- as "the existing hwnan being's
a Reclam edition, 1960. "Hither": from out of the clearing.
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