202 BOOK REVIEWS
ultimately decadent attempt to combat decadence.
This is so because Flauberts decadence is under-
stood in a radically nihilistic manner as the
equalization of everything. Yet this equalization
undoes the idea of decadence, which appeals to a
standard of meaning that establishes significant
differences (p. 54). Bernheimers argument is
stated with insufficient precision to be graspable,
at least by myself. Again, this is symptomatic of
much contemporary criticism, which combines
close reading of passages (those that sustain the
critics thesis, often taken out of context), with
abstract thinking of an imprecise kind.
Bernheimer observes that a number of deca-
dent writers drew inspiration from the novel. But
that decadent writers may have been inspired by
Flaubert and for that matter Baudelaire does not
make either decadent. Furthermore, Salammb is a
life-affirmative work in many ways, a fact that
accounts no doubt in part for its popularity with
Flauberts contemporaries, if not with the critics.
(The same could be said about Baudelaires Les
Fleurs du Mal, as Erich Auerbach has argued.)
The greatest flaw of this book is its refusal to
make value judgements, since the concept of
decadence is most interesting when viewed in
terms of value. As noted above, it is not the case
that the term is necessarily one of complete
approbation, in the same way that, say,
degenerate is. The initial period of decline of a
civilization offers opportunities of a kind peculiar
to it, as Nietzsche saw. Pynsent, for instance, sees
the late nineteenth century as not only a decadent
age but also one of cultural innovation, and the
latter because of the former. But once that period
has passed, so does the opportunity for inno-
vation. It is, then, the peculiar mlange of positive
and negative cultural conditions that makes an age
decadent. The age that follows would perhaps be
a degenerate one, culturally speaking, but not a
decadent one. This account explains the mixed
value connotations of the term decadent as well
as the fact that it is not a term of contemporary
criticism: it is too positive.
OLIVER CONOLLY
London
Heidegger s Philosophy of Art. By JULIAN YOUNG.
Cambridge University Press. 2001. pp. xi +
179.
TO INTRODUCE to English-speaking students the
complex labyrinths of Heideggers ever-evolving
philosophical engagement with the visual arts and
poetry in a lucid manner is no mean achievement.
W ith admirable precision, Julian Young distils
Heideggers imaginative meanderings into crisp
philosophical prose. The success of this brave
philosophical and cultural translation is manifest.
Youngs text is divided into four parts, each
addressing successively Heideggers ground-
breaking essay on The Origin of the Work of
Art, his early texts on the poet Hlderlin, the
later essays on Hlderlin, and, finally, an appraisal
of Heideggers engagement with Rilke, Cezanne,
East Asian art, abstract art, and music. Youngs
scholarly and yet approachable text offers the
great service of making available a good deal of
material that is has hitherto only been available to
German speakers. Nevertheless, it is hard to write
about Heidegger without stirring a little bit of
controversy. Youngs avoidance of certain
criticisms of Heideggers Ursprung are a case in
point. Is Heideggers notion of a great art work
still plausible?
The Ursprung essay endeavours to escape the
difficulties orbiting around the role of subjectivity
within aesthetics. Heideggers evolution of
Husserlian phenemenology strives to discern the
objectivities within the (inter)subjective frame-
work of experience. Heideggers anti-subjectivist
tendencies and his association of subjectivism
with (Romantic) aesthetics are both so strong as
to make his use of the term aesthetics rather rare.
Yet, it is clear that the question of what happens
objectively within our experience of artwhat
Heidegger terms as the event of artis fundam-
ental to his attempt to articulate the relationship
of philosophy to Being. The arguments sup-
porting the notion of art as an event stress the
participatory nature of aesthetic reception. Indeed,
he claims that great art objectifies and con-
solidates the hidden historical presuppositions
within a communitys horizon. In so far as such
art allows the horizon of a community to come
forth, it becomes the focus (as in the case of a war
memorial) of the losses and hopes of that
 BOOK REVIEWS 203

community. Such an argument grounds one of determined mission of the people. Only this
Heideggers best-known claims: great works of can rescue us from the night of contemporary
art do not so much appear within history as meaninglessness. (p. 57)
establish a history. These arguments prompt a
Note that this passage would have an altogether
number of questions.
less ominous tone if the term people were
In so far as a great artwork grounds and pre-
replaced with the term other. This slight obser-
serves a community, is Heideggers veneration of
vation in effect points to the crux of the matter.
great art a veneration of public art? All art, it
Can we continue to think of great art in this
might be argued seeks to be seen, seeks to become
way? Is it not the case that we now ask something
public, but is this the same as claiming that all
different of it? Do we not now expect great art to
great art has to have, ontologically speaking, a
be somewhat interrogative, questioning our
civic function? Are medieval Limoges enamels or
assumptions and making us in part strangers to
is the Book of Kells to be denied the accolade of
our more familiar selves? Heideggers views
being great art because they are not public?
about art and poetry are a challenge to expound
Indeed, much of what is presently regarded as
clearly but, nevertheless, Young might have
public art is almost by definition excluded from
challenged Heideggers views more forcefully.
the halls of greatness. More work needs to be
Youngs treatment of the later Heidegger is
done here on the relationship between the
quite masterful. His discussion of Heidegger and
concepts of greatness and what is public. The
the art of the Far East is particular fresh and
argument that the great work of art preserves a
insightful. Heideggers phenomenology docu-
Volk has unavoidable historical resonances. Yet
ments the decline and the consequences of the
with regard to the question of the relationship
Wests metaphysical inheritance. His philosophy
between great and public art, if taken on a certain
jeopardizes many of the conventional assump-
level this argument states something amusing
tions concerning the relationship of thought and
if not obvious. Who could dispute that the
image to reality. In many respects he radicalizes
evolution of reggae or the tango has had an
the astonishing critique that Nietzsche makes of
extraordinary impact upon consolidating the
the relationship between aesthetic effects, relig-
confidence and cultural identities of the peoples
ious art, and metaphysics in his book Human All to
of the Caribbean and of the Argentine? Can great
Human. Nietzsches critique ironically inverts
art be popular (and hence, public) art? Is there not
Platos denunciation of art as the appearance of
a non-trivial sense that the Greek temple is all of
appearance and thereby raises the question of
great, popular and public? If so, the currency
what non-metaphysical or post-metaphysical art
of Heideggers concepts continues to have a
might be. It is Heideggers philosophy of art that
continued and unexpected relevance. Can we
begins to answer the question. As the apotheosis
continue to think about great art in the way that
of a coming into appearance, art becomes an
Heidegger does? Should Young have been more
instantiation of a conception of being whose being
robust in facing up to this question? Heidegger
resides solely in its endless Vergehen and Entgehen.
claims that great art allows a people to establish
Heidegger moves towards articulating aesthetic
itself. This is conceived quite unabashedly as a
reflection as an abiding, as a dwelling within the
unificatory project. Young observes,
abundant processes of appearing that constitutes
The realisation of a people is important . . . our world. The context of this argument is
because it is the pre-condition of the obtaining telling. Part of the Platonic philosophical inher-
of genuine IThou relationships. Equally, it is itance is a highly sceptical attitude towards the
important as the precondition of meaning. alleged reality of arts representations. In relation
Meaningful work says Heidegger, is simply the to reality, the ontological status of art is appraised
title of every well-ordered action that is of as unreal, insubstantial, and apparent. However,
service to the people. Individual life acquired the decline of Western metaphysics has seen the
meaning by and by the individuals contrib- reality against which art was judged as apparent,
uting, each in its own way to the historically itself judged as apparent. Platos Being has
204 BOOK REVIEWS
become a nothingness. Now for the later
Heidegger there is no beyond beyond beings or to
put it another way, beyond beings there is
nothingness. What Heidegger does, of course, is
to claim that Being is not the reality beyond
appearance but is the being of all that comes forth
and passes away. Appearance no longer surrounds
one as the abysmal but is rather a plenitude of
possibilities emerging into disclosure and then
falling back into the withheld. Heideggers fascin-
ation with Zen art is thus perfectly explicable for
no other style of art work succeeds in conveying
the transitory nature of actuality with such
serenity. Young is to be congratulated for discus-
sing Heideggers interest in Zen aesthetics in such
a lucid and accessible manner.
NICHOLAS DAVEY
University of Dundee
Hanslick on the Musically Beautiful: Sixteen Lectures
on the Musical Aesthetics of Eduard Hanslick. By
GEOFFREY PAYZANT. Cybereditions. 2002.
pp. 159. 11.00.
EDUARD Hanslick famously championed a view
of musical aesthetics in which formalism and
autonomy were paramount. The content of
music, he notoriously proclaimed in On the
Musically Beautiful (1854), is tonally moving
forms (p. 29) and he refuted fiercely the idea that
musics value rested in its ability to express
emotion. For Hanslick, the development of
musical aesthetics was predicated on the jettis-
oning of its supposed representational aspects.
Geoffrey Payzants book contains a collection
of personal responses of varying lengths to
Hanslicks writings compiled over a period of
thirteen years and delivered as lectures or pre-
sentations throughout North America, principally
Canada. As such, this book deals as much with
the development of the authors treatment of
Hanslick as it does with his subject. Payzant is
often self-critical, analysing the approaches and
mistakes from his earlier considerations of
Hanslicks work and the responses that previous
articles and translations provoked. And here, it
would seem, lies both the weakness and the
appeal of this present volume. By virtue of the
mediumessentially the transcription of lec-
turesPayzants book tends towards repetition, a
feature he does himself acknowledge. Many of
the talks assumed little knowledge of Hanslicks
writings on the part of the audience, but now
collected together and read consecutively, fre-
quent repetition of phrases such as, in his book
On the Musically Beautiful first published in 1854
begins to grate. However, to read these chapters
consecutively is perhaps not what is intended,
because they are evidently not designed to build
upon one another. Each covers a different aspect
of Hanslicks work from scratch, but Payzant pays
particular attention to the problems and results of
earlier mistranslations of Hanslicks original.
Payzant illustrates this issue with the results of
what he believes to be the mistranslation of the
German word Ton. He explains how his trans-
lation of On the Musically Beautiful is based on a
new reading of this word in particular.
In 1980 I began work on a new English
translation of Hanslicks book. My sole reason
for tackling this project was my growing con-
viction that [Gustav] Cohens ill-considered
and imprecise renderings of its Ton-words [in
his 1891 translation] denied access to Hans-
licks meaning and intentions. (p. 103)
Essentially, the rendering of Ton in English by
words other than tonePayzant prefers tone
throughout his editiondeprives the translation
of the precision that Hanslick intended, since in
English, tone has a more non-specific resonance.
His point can be seen, but once again, it is
repeated several times in varying degrees of detail.
Although perhaps the most favourite pre-
occupation of those writing about Hanslick is to
criticize, often vehemently, his musical theories,
the conspicuous lack of such a critique among the
lectures that Payzant includes in this book is, in
my view, a mistake. Hanslick undoubtedly had
a profound effect on the appreciation of the
aesthetics of music, but this took the form largely
of a reaction to his theories rather than an accept-
ance of them. Payzant tries too often to defend,
explain and justify how critics have simply
misunderstood Hanslick and how Hanslick
should be understood. Occasionally, it might